Published: September 30, 2026
MONROVIA – Kakata Central Prison was holding 217 inmates in space built for 60 when prisoners broke out on Sept. 20. A rule-of-law group said 158 of them had never been convicted of a crime and blamed the escape on court delays and a corrections budget it said is smaller than the Police Training Academy’s.
By Lennart Dodoo
The group Sawabenu reported that the Margibi County prison was at more than 360% of capacity on the day of the breakout and that pretrial detainees made up more than 72% of its population. Nationally, prolonged pretrial detention accounts for more than 60% of Liberia’s prison population, the group said.
“No institution can be held responsible for outcomes it has not been resourced to deliver,” Sawabenu said in a statement Friday, signed by Sarnyenneh M. Dickson, its acting executive director.
The group said responsibility for the breach rests with the Legislature, the Executive and the Judiciary. It said the Police Training Academy alone receives 20% more direct budgetary support than the entire corrections sector, and that food and hygiene consume 73% of what corrections receives.
Sawabenu reserved its sharpest criticism for the courts, saying that part of the backlog stems from judicial practice rather than funding. It said cases eligible for dismissal under Section 18.2 of the Criminal Procedure Law remain on dockets “because no judicial actor has moved them,” and that Section 13.5, which allows magistrates to release detainees in defined circumstances, is applied inconsistently or not at all.
The escape is the second mass breakout from Kakata Central Prison in 24 months, following one in September 2024, the group said. It cited earlier mass escapes at the National Palace of Correction in 2012, Monrovia Central Prison in 2013, Voinjama Central Prison in 2016, and the Grand Cape Mount prison in 2018, and blamed the pattern on negligence, staffing shortages, and underfunded facilities.
The government has said joint security forces are pursuing the escapees, according to the statement. Sawabenu urged residents to report escapees to police and warned that harboring one is a crime.
The group said it works directly with the Kakata prison. In June, it said, its volunteer lawyers, working with the Public Defender, the City Solicitor, and the Kakata City Court, ran a fast-track trial at the prison that freed 21 pretrial detainees, many of whom had been held for months on minor offenses. It said the rising pretrial numbers its lawyers documented were among the drivers of the breakout. That work and a similar intervention in late 2025 were supported by SIDA, the Swedish development agency, the group said.
Three weeks before the escape, on Aug. 27, Sawabenu convened a national dialogue on pretrial justice reform at the Ministry of Justice that produced 19 recommendations. The group said several of the measures it is now demanding were previously raised by the institutions responsible for carrying them out.
Sawabenu called for a public, impartial investigation into the breach with negligent officials held accountable; an urgent national judicial review of pretrial detentions, prioritizing bail for nonviolent offenders; restraint by security forces hunting the escapees, including no excessive force, arbitrary searches or collective punishment; active auditing of court dockets; expanded jail delivery and fast-track proceedings in every county; more public defenders in magisterial courts; and a larger corrections budget.
Sawabenu was founded in 2023 by former staff of The Carter Center’s Rule of Law Program in Liberia.
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