CPOY 75 International Picture Story Award of Excellence: Prison is a Way Out of Poverty

Like other young men Bangis has dreams for his future. But in the least developed country in the world the way from dream to reality is hard to pave. Bangis has comitted a crime and therefore he is prisoned in Agadez, Niger. But where prison often is a dead end, the criminal teenager has chosen a new path for his life by being part of a rehabilitation project in the Prison Civile d’Agadez. He is taught a craft with the aim of being independent upon release. With the reality on the other side of the prison wall sometimes being rougher than the one they are facing inside the prison, it is paramount to find employment. The point of the rehabilitation project is to prevent migration by helping the juvenile delinquents to open their own shop in Agadez - a city in crisis with no rightful employment found.

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Slide 7 of 8

October 17, 2019

It usually pays a couple of cigarettes to wash the clothes of the adult inmates. The rehabilitation project, which is facilitated by the local NGO Penseé Sains Frontieres, PSF, is trying to push the minors towards a new path in their lives. Currently only 5 out of 38 prisons in Niger have a rehabilitation project as part of their programme. Agadez is one of five. “The city transformed after the criminalisation of the migrant industry. Agadez is a city of transition, no longer for migrants on their way north, but for poor migrants on their way home. Those who had to give up their journey. The city went from living off the migrants, for them to be a burden. The locals no longer benefit from the migration,” says Alexandre Bish, PHD and working in the area, being an expert in organised crime and migration.

Marius Renner Christensen / The Danish School of Media and Journalism

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