How secured and safe is the sanitation and hygiene services in a maximum-security correctional facility in Southwest Nigeria: a descriptive cross-sectional study

ABSTRACT

Poorly maintained living conditions and infrastructure are the banes of Nigerian prisons. The study investigated its environmental conditions and the prevalent diseases among inmates.

The descriptive, cross-sectional study enrolled 420-inmates through a multistage sampling technique. Pre-tested instruments were administered and results presented with descriptive and logistic regression to identify predictors of toilet-cleaning and handwashing practices at P_∝0.05.

The mean(±SD) age and modal inmates/cell were 30±7.2 years and 36. Most inmates were males (97%), await-trial (79%) and lives in overcrowded cells (58%). Sixty-nine percent of free-cells has pour-flush toilets and 36% waits for 2–5 minutes before accessing toilets.

Fifty-three percent of inmates clean latrines with water and soap, 71% burn solid waste while handwashing period-prevalence was 36%. Religion, toilet-cleaning, and education were predictors of handwashing while types of toilets and access predict toilet-cleaning behaviour. Malaria (81.1%) and scabies (7.3%) were endemic. The prison rehabilitation shall satisfy basic life needs and promote prisoners’ health.

KEYWORDS:

• Handwashing sequence
• inmates
• overcrowding
• prison accommodation
• prison sanitation

Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to the management of the maximum-security prison for the opportunity given to conduct this study and the respondents who were either staff or prison inmates for their cooperation during the field data period.

Notes on contribution

OOA, OTA, UAA, AAA, OTE and OMJ conceived the study and all authors contributed to the study design, development, pretest and finalisation of the data collection instruments. All authors supervised the field data collection. ODO supervised data entry and data cleaning. OOA, OTE and ODO conducted, transcribed and did contents analysis of the recorded qualitative interviews. OTA coordinated data analysis with additional inputs from OOA, OTE, UAA and OMJ. OTA, ODO and UAA provided the results dummy tables and interpreted result tables. OTE, AAA and OMJ wrote the introduction and methods. OTA OOA, OTE and ODO wrote and reviewed the results and discussion components of the manuscript while OTE coordinated the integration of feedback into the draft manuscript. All authors contributed to the development of and finalised the final draft of the abstract, vetted, approved the final draft of the manuscript and its submission to the Journal.

Data availability statment

The article data is confidential but available upon reasonable request from the corresponding author.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.