The Worst Prisons In History

Nelson Mandela said you can’t truly know a nation until you’ve been inside its jails, and this article will go beyond nations, we’re going back through the centuries. From unimaginably hellish prison pits, to very literal suspended sentences, wave bye-bye to the free world as we step inside the worst prisons in all of history, from ancient times to today.

Mamertine Prison

With the society’s penchant for violence and war, pervasive slavery, and harsh punishments, life as a citizen in Ancient Rome could be pretty grim. But have you ever stopped to imagine just how horrible life as a prison inmate would’ve been under the Roman Empire? Well, get ready to learn the history of Prisons.

Known as the Carcer in Latin, Mamertine Prison was an ancient maximum-security prison that dates back to as early as the 7th century BC. Commissioned by the fourth king of Rome, Ancus Marcius, between 640 and 616 BC, Mamertine largely consisted of a network of dank subterranean dungeons.

The lowest of those dungeons was known as the Tullianum which was located within the city’s subterranean sewer system. That truly hellish pit was only accessible via a small manhole in the upper cell floor, through which prisoners of the state were thrown to await their fate. With the only way in and out just above arm’s reach for those thrown into the pit, it’s easy to imagine how torturous it must’ve been.

Long-term imprisonment wasn’t a sentence under Roman law, and any kind of incarceration was usually intended to be a temporary measure prior to trials and executions. Even so, some very famous faces reportedly spent time in that hell of a Prison.

Legend has it that Jesus’ very own apostles Saint Peter and Paul were both held in Mamertine prior to their crucifixions. And if the thought of waiting in a cramped sewer for your own, very public, un-aliving wasn’t horrible enough, some prisoners, like Jugurtha, King of Numidia, were just left in the Tullianum to waste away completely.

Mamertine was used as a prison until the 4th century AD, and in the 17th century the Church of San Giuseppe dei Falegnami was built right over top of the site. Today, the remnants of Mamertine are open as a museum right next to the Roman Forum and includes special dedications to both Saint Peter and Paul.

Oubliette

Medieval prisoners often faced a myriad of painful punishments, but if you’ll believe it, one of the worst often inflicted no violence at all. Also known as bottle dungeons, oubliettes were narrow shafts with only one escape route, through an out-of-reach trapdoor in its ceiling. Oubliettes the name of which is derived from "oublier", the French word for "forget" were sometimes built within the walls of the upper floors of a castle rather than in dungeons, so that victims could hear life going on without them as they were slowly forgotten and left to expire.

But if the idea of suffering the oubliette alone is too horrible to bear, don’t worry! Sometimes prisoners would find themselves sharing the already cramped space with what was left of previous victims not to mention the rats that nibbled on those remains.

Oubliettes have been found in medieval castles all across Europe, but one of the most infamous can be found in Ireland’s Leap Castle. Home to the O’Carroll clan in the 1500s, the castle’s oubliette is said to have once been used to hide valuables. But that cold-blooded clan eventually decided to use the space for an entirely different purpose.

When Leap Castle was taken over by the Darby family in 1649, its rumored the new owners made a shocking discovery in the castle’s oubliette. Inside, the Darby’s found the dungeon was fitted with a number of wooden spikes, as well as three cartloads of, previous prisoners who’d been left inside.

Some believe the clearing out of that oubliette roused up vengeful spirits of the departed prisoners who are said to wander Leap Castle to this day. But whether you believe in ghost stories or not, the horrible and very real past of the oubliette provides enough nightmare fuel on its own.

Gibbet

While most kinds of imprisonment see inmates locked out of sight from the world, our next prison cell was very much a matter of public interest. Gibbeting was a type of imprisonment in which the condemned was locked in a human-shaped cage before being hung up for public display.

Most of the time those who were gibbetted had already met their end at the hands of the authorities but, shockingly, sometimes live prisoners found themselves in gibbets too. One such story tells the tale of a villainous vagrant who, after committing some atrocious deeds, was sentenced to a live gibbeting in the 1600s at a place called Gibbet Moor in Derbyshire, England.

As was customary in live gibbetting's, the vagrant was left to succumb to starvation, dehydration, and exposure to the elements, and legend has it his unearthly screams are still heard by hikers today. Accounts of live gibbetting's like that happening in England are rare and often unsubstantiated.

However, there is evidence that live gibbetting's were practiced in the British-colonized Caribbean as late as the 1760s. Gibbets were meant as a sort of warning from the state to keep citizens in check and deter any potential crime, but they were also a source of fascination for the public.

In fact, a day out to visit the local gibbet was considered fun for all the family in medieval times, with some gibbets attracting crowds amounting to tens of thousands. I guess, in the time before movies and TV, you got your entertainment however you could! However, things weren’t so fun for residents living nearby. Gibbeted individuals would stink so badly, after expiring, that nearby residents would have to shut their windows to keep the wind from carrying the stench inside.

Typically, gibbets weren’t allowed to be removed until well after the prisoner inside had become nothing more than a skeleton in irons, which could take days, weeks, months, and in some cases years. Gibbeting was formally abolished in England in 1834, but even today, there are several disused gibbet posts standing across England as a grim reminder of the practice’s grisly history.

The Clink

With a name that’s thought to come from the sound of the clanging chains worn by its inmates, there aren’t many prisons in history with a reputation quite as notorious or significant as the Clink. Established in the mid-12th century in London, England, The Clink Prison was built by the Bishop of Winchester of the day, Henry of Blois, on the South bank of the River Thames.

At the time, the Bishop of Winchester was second in power only to the king of England and ruled an area of London known as the Liberty of the Clink. That basically meant he could act as judge, jury, and serial imprisoner of those under his jurisdiction who didn’t tow his line.

The Clink prison was in operation for 600 years, and what initially began as a small operation controlled by the Bishop of Winchester grew into one of the most infamous prisons of all time. Overcrowding was rife in the iron-barred, cold, stone cells of the Clink, and disease and malnutrition were also regular companions to the unfortunates who found themselves clapped in irons.

As for the hospitality? The less said about that, the better. Jailers in the Clink were, shall we say, masters in the art of teaching inmates a lesson through less than gentle means, and employed a whole host of implements to maintain order.

As the jailers were very poorly paid, the only way to get yourself a slightly less grim existence in the Clink was through bribery. Prisoners would sell their clothing and other possessions to buy extra food for double the rate outside the prison, as well as candles, bedding and sometimes a bit of time out of their iron chains.

Despite its bottom-of-the-barrel conditions, the Clink wasn’t just for your everyday drunkards, crooks and vagrants. It welcomed just about anybody who dared to question the established order. One of the most famous inmates of the Clink was Sir Thomas Wyatt the Younger, who is thought to have spent time there after staging an uprising against Queen Mary the first in 1554.

Needless to say, things didn’t end so well for Thomas, who met a fate too gruesome to mention. Still, the Clink continued operation for the next 200 years, in that time even imprisoning the likes of Puritans, belonging to the wider group that ultimately left England to settle what eventually became Massachusetts.

The Clink clinked on, until, in 1780, the prison was torched to the ground by rioters and was never rebuilt. While, thankfully, the Clink’s reign as a prison is no more, today, the Clink museum stands in its place, constructed among the ruins as a reminder of the prison’s notoriety.

Iron Maiden

One of the most famous torment contraptions of all time, the Iron Maiden’s bone-rattling reputation surely makes it one of the worst one-person prisons cells in history. Often depicted as a human-sized box lined with spikes in the interior, victims of the Iron Maiden would find themselves forced inside with the door shut in on them spikes and all.

Sounds more horrible than you can imagine. Well, turns out that’s kind of the point. While the Iron Maiden is commonly assumed to have been a popular and permanent punishment for criminals of Medieval society, modern historians now question whether they even existed at all.

The first historical reference to the Iron Maiden that we still have evidence of came more than 200 years after its supposed reign of terror through the Middle Ages. That reference came from German philosopher Johann Philipp Siebenkees in the 18th century, who wrote an account of a coin forger in Nuremberg meeting his end via the Iron Maiden in 1515.

Although no Iron Maidens from the medieval period are known to exist, throwing the authenticity of Johann’s tale into question, replicas were soon constructed and passed off as medieval torture devices in museums around Europe and later the United States. One of the most famous of those was the Iron Maiden of Nuremberg that was brought to the US by Robert Ripley of Ripley’s Believe It Or Not, which is still on display to this day.

That’s not to say for certain that the Iron Maiden has never been used for ill-intentions. Disturbingly, in 2003, Time magazine reported that a compound owned by Uday Hussein, the famously sadistic son of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, had been found to house a functioning Iron Maiden.

Time claimed Uday used it to punish insubordinates, and given Uday’s proven track-record of unspeakable acts of cruelty that’re too disturbing. It seems likely that that modern monster broke the Iron Maiden’s track record of being purely the stuff of legend.

Phu Quoc Prison

Located around 20 miles off the coast of Vietnam, it’s easy to be enchanted by the island of Phu Quoc’s white sandy coastlines and lush plant life. But believe it or not, that tropical paradise was once home to one of the world’s most nightmarish prisons.

Also known as the Coconut Tree Prison, the Phu Quoc prison gained notoriety during the Vietnam War. Constructed in 1949 by French colonialists to imprison Vietnamese patriots and rebels who defied French control, Phu Quoc could hold as many as 40,000 prisoners at one time. Those 40,000 were spread across 12 areas of ramshackle huts, guarded by police battalions.

The prison changed over to U.S. control in the 60s, but it seemed regardless of whichever nation was running it, the prisoners experienced prolonged periods of incarceration under appalling conditions. Not only was the prison overcrowded, but prisoners were provided with very little food, poor sanitation, harsh physical punishments, and basically no medical care which led to widespread disease among inmates.

Following the end of the Vietnam War, the prison was officially closed in 1975 after almost three decades of suffering. Since then, the grounds of the prison have been preserved as a war memorial and museum to serve as a sobering reminder of the horrific conditions endured by prisoners of war.

These days the only inmates at Phu Quoc are mannequins that represent what life was like for former prisoners. That chilling re-enactment represents one of the worst punishments at Phu Quoc known as the tiger cage. Made of barbed wire, the cage was too low for those inside to sit up fully and too short for them to comfortably lie down, meaning inmates were forced into uncomfortable positions to avoid the wires. Today, the Phu Quoc prison museum attracts more than 10,000 visitors every year, including former inmates, and serves as a reminder that the worst prisons of humanity’s past aren’t all that far in the rear-view mirror.

El Salvador’s Hell Prisons

It’s clear to see that cramped conditions in prisons have run rampant throughout history, but sadly, the problem of prison overcrowding still exists today. At 12 feet wide and 15 feet tall, those jail cells in El Salvador are often crammed with more than 30 criminals apiece. While those cells were designed to accommodate stays of up to just 72 hours, many prisoners wind up being held in Salvadorian police holding cells for more than a year.

But why? In El Salvador, prison overcrowding is a severe problem that has plagued the country for decades. In fact, there are more than two times the number of inmates in El Salvador as the country’s prisons can safely hold, meaning that many detainees are never actually sent to proper prison facilities; instead, they find themselves in those horridly cramped jail cells.

Most of the crime in El Salvador is perpetuated by two gangs known as MS-13 and Barrio 18, which have a combined total of 25,000 members at large, with over 9,000 in prison. Because of the high crime rate, El Salvador has implemented severe law enforcement strategies which has in turn led to large numbers of arrests, and naturally, prison inmates.

In January 2023, the Salvadorian government opened CECOT which is now the largest maximum-security prison in Latin America. Cecot was specially built to hold only the highest-ranking members of MS-13 and Barrio 18, who are all thought to be serving life sentences with no possibility of release.

Inside Cecot, each cell is built to hold a staggering 156 prisoners, including metal bunks with no mattresses and just two toilets to share. Not only do inmates have no privacy from one another, but cells are also fitted with grated ceilings so guards can see exactly what’s going on inside. Those ceiling lattices are also made of sharpened metal to prevent prisoners from trying to climb them.

Contrary to international guidelines on prisoners’ human rights, Cecot has no outdoor recreational space and doesn’t even allow family visits. While it’s clear many sent to Cecot are likely to have committed crimes more horrible than we can imagine, knowing that prisons like that exist in our world today is nonetheless disturbing, and a point of controversy for human rights advocates.

Chateau d’If

Originally built on the orders of King Francis I in 1524, the Château d'If was intended to be an island fortress to protect the French city of Marseille from sea-faring attackers. In 1540, however, the island found its new purpose. Thanks to its isolated location and dangerous offshore currents, Château d'If was the perfect escape-proof prison.

The prison was housed inside the original fortress, and prisoners were placed in cells in accordance with their status. The poorest prisoners were kept in the cells on the ground floor, often in horrifically cramped groups of as many as 20 prisoners per cell. The cells had no windows, damp surroundings and only a straw mat or hard floor to sleep on.

Vermin constantly scurried underfoot, and indeed the conditions and hygiene were so poor in that part of the fortress that the life-expectancy of inmates inside the prison was just nine months. Wealthier inmates, on the other hand, were able to purchase themselves more spacious cells fitted out with windows and sometimes chimneys. Whatever their social class, many prisoners were sentenced to life imprisonment there, many of whom spent much of their time chained to the walls, or forced into labor.

Chateau d’If was a notorious prison in its own right, but it became world famous with the publication of Alexandre Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo in 1844. It’s the tale of sailor Edmond Dantès who’s wrongly accused of treason and spends 14 years at Château d’If before a daring yet successful escape in a body bag, thrown into the sea.

In reality, no one is known to have pulled off such an escape, as the waters surrounding the prison are incredibly powerful, much like San Francisco’s Alcatraz, any attempt at escape would more likely than not result in drowning. And that’s what made it such a formidable prison: after all, nothing breaks a prisoner’s morale and escape instinct than the near-guarantee of death beyond the walls.

Coffin Prison

While life sentences often make headlines, nowadays, life sentences rarely last the full remainder of the convicted individual’s life. But our next method of historical incarceration was specifically designed to imprison its victims until death do they part.

Immurement, also known as live entombment, was a type of capital punishment in which the victim was permanently enclosed in a tight confined space with absolutely no means of exit. Some of the earliest recorded instances of immurement goes back to priestesses of ancient Rome known as the Vestal Virgins, who used that method to punish those who broke their vows of chastity.

Methods of immurement have varied through time, but some of the most common included the victim being locked in a box, or sealed inside a cavity behind a brick wall. Though the history of immurement dates back centuries, shockingly, cases of live entombment are traceable even in more modern times.

During the early 20th century, the Urga prison in Mongolia was notorious for its use of what came to be known as coffin prisons. Coffin prisons were extremely small, cramped boxes that resembled coffins that were used as a method of immurement.

Usually measuring in at no more than four feet long and two and a half feet wide, those boxes were specially designed to make sure that prisoners trapped inside could neither lie down nor stretch out. Not only were those inside left to contend with intense physical strain and discomfort, but each box had just one small porthole.

Sometimes those portholes were used to funnel small amounts of food to those imprisoned inside to prolong their punishment. Thankfully, that utterly medieval method of imprisonment was outlawed in Mongolia in around 1920, and more broadly in 1966, the use of unusual or cruel methods of punishment like immurement was prohibited by the United Nations in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

Guantanamo Bay

Out of all the prisons in history, few are as infamous as Guantanamo Bay. Located within a US naval base in south-east Cuba, Guantanamo Bay has been known for its ultra high security and usage in detaining individuals deemed a security risk by the U.S. government.

Prisoners at Guantanamo Bay often face indefinite detention, meaning many are held without trials or formal charges, nor a clear timeline for release. That uncertainty means that those inside are frequently faced with unimaginable psychological distress and a sense of true hopelessness.

Since its establishment as a prison in 2002, the conditions of confinement at Guantanamo Bay have been widely criticized by human rights organizations. Accounts from prisoners have pointed to regular instances of harsh treatment and severe interrogation techniques.

Those include sleep deprivation, with guards deliberately making as much noise as possible to keep inmates awake, as well as the opposite: sensory deprivation, where inmates’ eyes and ears are kept covered for days at a time, all while having their hands tied within thick gloves. In protest of their harsh treatment, detainees have been known to go on hunger strikes which are met with even harsher punishments, including the extremely unpleasant practice of force-feeding.

Not only does the facility’s remote location further isolate inmates from the outside world, but it also complicates legal and humanitarian access. As Guantanamo Bay is in Cuba, there has been much political debate over whether the facility falls under US law, which creates difficulties for inmates seeking to receive legal help.

The strict military control over the facility further restricts access for lawyers and human rights groups, not to mention the fact that detainees are prohibited from communicating with the outside world via email or phone. It’s reported that around 30 prisoners remain in Guantanamo Bay today, but efforts to close the facility are ongoing, reflecting the complex legal, political, and ethical issues surrounding its existence. Needless to say, Guantanamo Bay is not the kind of place you want to end up.

San Quentin State Prison

Opened in 1854, San Quentin is the oldest prison in California, but sadly, that place hasn’t gotten better with age. San Quentin’s notorious Condemned Row is home to prisoners who have been sentenced to, a government-issued early finale. With a total of 652 condemned prisoners throughout the state, California holds the most Death Row inmates in the entire US, and 546 of them are held at San Quentin.

The condemned prisoners inside are some of the worst criminals in the country and they certainly endure a great deal of punishment for that. The average condemned inmate spends around 22 years living on Death Row, during which they are locked alone inside a solitary cell, often for 23 hours a day.

While the more well-behaved inmates are sometimes allowed small luxuries like radios, TVs, and books, those among San Quentin’s 3,200-strong total populace who break the rules can find themselves locked up in what’s known as the Adjustment Center.

That Adjustment Center is designed to house inmates who are too dangerous to be elsewhere in the prison, and is locked down so heavily, that even the guards can’t come and go as they please. They get let in at the start of their shift, and the locks stay locked until it’s time to leave all to ensure the state’s most dangerous inmates never escape.

The Adjustment Center inmates themselves, meanwhile, are kept behind heavy cement doors, and are often seen with leg restraints, all to minimize risk to the staff. For the small amount of time allowed outside their one-man cells, Adjustment Center prisoners spend almost all their time inside cramped cages, even for outdoor exercise and group therapy sessions.

In March 2023, Governor of California, Gavin Newson, announced plans to close the Death Row at San Quentin and transform the prison into a rehabilitation-focused facility. The move doesn’t reduce the prisoners’ sentence but aims to provide inmates without parole opportunities to access educational courses, work assignments, and recreation time in the prison’s outdoor areas, all in response to claims that the prison’s current setup being inhumane.

Either way, that new approach is inspired by prisons seen in countries like Norway. Norway have one of the lowest crime rates around the world, but also the lowest rate of former prisoners returning to jail after release. Many believe that is due to Norway’s prison system prioritizing inmate rehabilitation over punishment, with a focus on re-integrating them into society after their sentence is complete.

As we’ve learned, most prisons throughout history have, and continue to, work on the assumption that harsh punishment is the only way to deter crime. But countries like Norway are starting to show that there might be other ways to make the world a safer place for everyone.

If you were amazed at the worst prisons in the world, you might want to read about the worst punishments in history. Thanks for reading.