http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/24/world/africa/24africa.html?hp&ex=1167022800&en=212a0f864805dbe7&ei=5094&partner=homepage
Across sub-Saharan Africa, where 350 million young people often subsist amid poverty, orphanhood and separation from their parents, running afoul of the law is a fact of life.
Prisons for Africa's Children
Juvenile justice here is, in almost every sense, an oxymoron.
Children languished in rehabilitation centers with little food, few beds, no activities, not even electricity.
Ambrose, a 17-year-old with hooded eyes, hails from Mpigi, west of Uganda’s capital, Kampala. He is detained in the Naguru Remand Home in Kampala, a complex of brick halls, their windows shrouded in wire mesh, built in 1954 for 45 inmates. On this day, it holds 98.
The crime he is accused of — and which he denies — is having sex with his employer’s 16-year-old daughter. Underage sex is called defilement here, and 36 of Naguru’s 86 boys, ages 12 to 17, face defilement charges. The penalty, in theory, is death.
