Who Are We
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Why Our Work Matters
Sierra Leone’s detention facilities are marked by overcrowding, prolonged pre-trial detentions, poor living conditions, and systemic neglect. Vulnerable groups, including women, children, and youth, face severe challenges both during and after incarceration. PWSL addresses these issues by:
- Supporting legal aid for unjustly detained individuals.
- Facilitating skills training and social reintegration programs.
- Advocating for humane conditions and policy reform.
Our Vision is that Human Rights of persons held in detention are respected and fulfilled. Persons in conflict with the law receive support to reform and become productive and respected members of society.
Our Mission is to defend human rights of persons deprived of their liberty. We monitor prisons, we investigate, we document and report incidents of human rights violations in places of detention. We assist people in detention with skills training and other forms of support, we train criminal justice actors, we work on knowledge generation and advocate for penal reform. As such we work for a just, safe, and humane society.
- To maintain monitoring presence in the Twenty-one (21) functional correctional centers, Three (3) juvenile homes and selected police stations across the country.
- To investigate, document and report incidents of human rights violations in places of detention.
- To collect data on all persons passing through the correctional centers, juvenile homes and the selected police stations and use such data for research purposes.
- To create collaboration with like-mind organization (locally and internationally) to promote and protect the rights of persons in places of detention in Sierra Leone.
- To work with the Sierra Leone correctional Service to make lives better behind bars.
- Daily/weekly detention monitoring visits.
- Data collection, research and knowledge.
- Innovative detention monitoring – female Icon Sessions (FIS), Juvenile Social Intervention (JSI) and Inmate’s Leaders Meetings (ILMs)
- Collaboration and networking
- Humanitarian support
- Capacity building support for detention managers
We are courageous, we are flexible, we are determined and dedicated to change the narrative around prison in Sierra Leone and we are moved by our passion to serve humanity.
We have a team of dedicated and committed persons driven by their passion to serve humanity and transform lives even in detention. The team consist of persons with shared attitudes, values, goals and practices that characterizes our passion to serve people who are less fortunate. We have a total sixteen (16) permanent staff (ten in the head office and six in the regional office) we are also joined in the mission by our Human Rights and Detention Monitors (HRDMs) across the country. They serve as our foot soldier in the detention facilities where we maintain presence.