Malaysia may soon see prison riots like the recent deadly riot in Mexico unless conditions are improved for both inmates and prison officers, said the Human Rights Commission of Malaysia (Suhakam) today.

In the Ceresco state prison flare-up on May 11, one prisoner and four others were injured. About three years ago, a riot left six dead and 10 injured in the same prison.

Drawing a parallel between the prison conditions in Cereso and those of the 52 prisons in Malaysia, Suhakam commissioner Hamdan Adnan said there were at least two to three times more inmates in each facility than the numbers 'gazetted' for it.

This poses a threat to the security of the inmates as well as that of the prison officers tasked to manage them, he said.

Citing the case of a particular prison where 700 inmates are, at certain times, guarded by only four prison officers, he noted that such conditions could only be perpetuated at the risk of the whole facility.

"Studies have shown that, when there is overcrowding, the tendencies for aggressive behavior increase," he told a press conference at a Suhakam-organised human rights awareness workshop in Kuala Lumpur for senior prisons officers.

"This has to be looked at, before something like the prison riot of Mexico happens here."

Hamdan said that overcrowding requires external solutions and should be solved by the higher authorities. For one thing, most of the prisoners are foreigners arrested for immigration-related offences.

"At the prison in Belantik, Kedah, you could set up a United Nations assembly. There were at least 50 different nationalities represented there, even from some countries we have never even heard of," he added.

Bleak working conditions

Zamzuri Ghani, from the Prisons Department's human resources department (research and development), said the 'ideal' ratio of prisoners to officers was 1:3 and it was nowhere applicable in prisons here.

"In one women's prison, there were supposed to be only 400 inmates as gazetted by the authorities. In reality, there have been from 3,000 to 5,000 prisoners (at any one time) in that prison," he said at the same press conference.

Zamzuri said that in some facilities, there were usually five prisoners to every prison officer, while in other places, every 10 to 20 prisoners were guarded by only one prison officer.

"Throughout the whole country, we have over 45,000 prisoners, much more than the actual (gazetted) capacity of 30,000 inmates," he added.

Zamzuri also highlighted the plight of the country's 11,280 prison officers who are over-burdened with duties.

"The only thing we have at our disposal (to prevent crises) is good management and psychology. How can you control 700 prisoners with just four prison officers? How can that happen? We have to be careful with the smallest things," he said.

"If we handle things wrongly, it can impact upon the whole facility."

Citing the high turnover rate of prison officers, who are faced with bleak working conditions and low salaries, Zamzuri urged the authorities to recruit additional personnel of "higher quality" and to provide more incentives and allowances to all officers.