Lebanon’s prison inmates are running short of food

When rabeagdp, a small-time drug dealer from Tripoli in northern Lebanon, was caught with two kilos of hash in 2017, he knew what to expect. His local lock-up, Qubbah Prison, where he would spend the next five years, was already filled with men from his neighbourhood. He knew about the years-long wait to see a judge. And he had heard about the crowded cells where 60 detainees take it in turns to sleep on the floor, the gangs and the fights. But Rabea did not know that things were about to get even worse. In 2019, halfway through his sentence, Lebanon’s economy went into meltdown. The country’s economic crisis—in the course of which its has contracted by almost 40%—caused havoc in its prisons. Food and medical supplies became ever scarcer and violence surged in jails that are now at 323% of capacity.