Correlates of violence in Guinea’s Maison Centrale Prison: A statistical approach in documenting human rights abuses

摘要

Les Mêmes Droits Pour Tous (MDT) is a human rights NGO in Guinea, West Africa that focuses on the rights of prisoners in Maison Centrale, the country’s largest prison located in the capital city of Conakry. In 2007, MDT completed a survey of the prison population to assess basic legal and human rights conditions. This article uses statistical tools to explore MDT’s survey results in greater depth, shedding light on human rights violations in Guinea. It contributes to human rights literature that argues for greater use of econometric tools in rights reporting and demonstrates how human rights practitioners and academics can work together to construct an etiology of violence and torture by state actors, as physical violence is perhaps the most extreme violation of the individual’s right to health.