6. Alcatraz Island Prison, San Francisco
This prison, known as “The Rock”, or “Devil's Island” was built to house the criminals of the 1920′s, who broke laws during the times of Prohibition leading into the Great Depression.
Another study in stark, soul-destroying discomfort and isolation, Alcatraz was known for its unique design, which made escape almost unthinkable.
Inmates had no contact with the world outside the prison gates, and suffered harsh discipline from prison officials, as well as an inhumane policy of “silence” that forced prisoners to forgo speech for long periods of time.
As can be expected, this was no boon to mental health, and many inmates went insane as they were forced to endure the stringent conditions of the prison without any conversation or other release of their emotions.
The prison was shut down in 1963, but its grim legacy lives on, in film and legend.
5. La Sante Prison, France
According to whistle-blower and former prison official Veronique Vasseur, this prison was a hellhole, where prisoners were forced to live out their sentences in concrete cells full of rats and lice.
Inmates were prone to lose their sanity as they dealt with the harsh daily realities of life at La Sante – which translates, ironically, to “health” in the English language.
The well being of inmates was very low on the list of priorities for the French administrators of this torture chamber on a grand scale: weaker inmates were routinely enslaved by stronger ones, and rapes were a daily event at the prison.
Suicide was rampant at la Sante, with a staggering 122 self-inflicted deaths of prisoners in 2002, and 73 more by mid 2003.
The tendency to suicide could be linked to the terrible living conditions that plunged inmates into clinical depression: overcrowding, understaffing, and prison violence led these people to swallow drain cleaner in order to end their suffering once and for all.
4. Diyarbakir Prison, Turkey
This prison has been cited for its human right violations, which are thought to cross the line into true atrocity.
From 1981 to 1984, 34 prisoners lost their lives due to the excessive instances of torture, both mental and physical, practiced at Diyarbakir.
This prison is notorious for the sexual abuse of its inmates, and its unlivable conditions.
Prisoners have attempted hunger strikes, set themselves on fire in protest of prison conditions, and committed suicide in order to escape the horrors of this Turkish facility.
Diyarbakir is known to incarcerate mere children for sentences of life imprisonment, and its “crimes against humanity” make it one of the word's most sadistic and forbidding penal institutions.
