“FREEDOM! We want freedom!” cried inmates of the Camp Street prison in Guyana’s capital, Georgetown. But in three days of unrest that began on March 2nd, 17 of them burnt to death. The rioting started after guards seized drugs and mobile phones from prisoners awaiting trial for violent crimes. The prisoners set fires; on March 3rd one flared out of control. Trouble continued the next day, with prisoners knocking down wooden cell-block walls and the authorities firing tear gas.  

That highly public tragedy is the consequence of a hidden one. Of the 50 countries with the highest incarceration rates, 15 are, like Guyana, former British Caribbean colonies or current ones. High levels of violence are partly to blame. So are the criminalisation of cannabis use and harsh sentencing laws. Last November Guyana’s former national football coach was sentenced to three years in prison, the minimum penalty for possessing more than 15 grams of cannabis.

Conditions inside are often horrendous. Antigua’s prison, known as 1735 from the construction date carved above its entrance, was built to hold 150 inmates. It now houses around 400. Some are jammed 15 at a time into cells that are furnished with two bunk beds and two slop buckets. The government plans to install modern sanitation and convert a former nurses’ hostel into a remand prison. It may release 100 prisoners on parole to ease overcrowding.

When such overcrowding is not dealt with, rebellions can get out of control. In 2005 Glendairy prison in Barbados, then 150 years old, was burnt down by prisoners. Its replacement took two years to build, at a cost of $144m.

Guyana’s government, in office since May last year, reacted quickly to the Camp Street disaster. The public-security minister, Khemraj Ramjattan, met a group of prisoners during the protest and promised better meals and additional telephone calls. A public inquiry, chaired by a former judge, is to report within a month on what went wrong and what should be done to prevent a repeat of the violence.

Mr Ramjattan wants to build a new prison, but says the government cannot afford it now. He argues for judicial reforms to unclog the courts and prisons, including making it easier for young first offenders to be released on bail. Before the riot, backbench parliamentarians had proposed more lenient drug-sentencing laws.

Last September Britain’s prime minister, David Cameron, offered Jamaica $40m to help build a new prison to house both local inmates and some of the 600 Jamaicans serving time in British jails. The Jamaican government of the time, which lost an election last month, was cool to the idea, and many Jamaicans were outraged.

There is, to be sure, something tin-eared about a political leader offering to pay to lock people up in a former colony. But dirty, crowded prisons add to the misery of inmates, many of whom were impoverished before they turned to crime. If Jamaica does not want Mr Cameron’s money, perhaps he should offer it to Guyana and Antigua instead.