Juba central prison is seriously overcrowded with over a thousand inmates currently incarcerated there, according to the director of the prison.

Major General Simon Wani says that the prison should only take two hundred and fifty inmates and the conditions are now posing serious health risks to both prisoners and staff.

He told Eye Radio that some of the inmates will be sent to agricultural fields to work during the day, in order to ease overcrowding in the prison.

“The prison was built to accommodate one quarter of the present population of the inmates. Now we are facing problems, the population is big, and the population is over 1000 the health situations there really need a lot of work” he said.

General Simon said that the majority of detainees have no legal representation, because they cannot afford a lawyer and South Sudan has a badly functioning legal aid system.

However, in May this year, the Council of Ministers granted five million pounds for a legal aid fund to allow people without means to contract lawyers to defend them in court.