Their journey begins before dawn. Carrying bags full of food, clothes, and medicine, the family sets out on a long and costly trip to a remote prison in the desert, hoping for just a few precious minutes with their loved ones behind bars.
The logistics of the visit take over their lives. What supplies should we bring? Which foods? Will fruits be allowed in? Are bottled water and toiletries permitted? How do we reach the prison? Can we afford to rent a private car? At what time will the visit begin? Will all of us be allowed in?
Their days are consumed by questions like these, laced with dread and worry. What should be an opportunity for comfort and emotional support for Egyptian families has instead become a ritual of suffering, one that drains what little energy and dignity they still cling to.
“At first, I used to eagerly wait for visiting days, but later, I started begging [the family] not to come,” one former inmate said. “The trip and the humiliation were just too much…I knew I wasn’t getting out anytime soon, and the visit wouldn’t change anything.”
Prison visits exact a heavy psychological and economic burden on inmates’ families. Conversations with five families detail their exhausting journeys to remote prison facilities, the many restrictions they face to see their loved ones, and the mounting expenses they must endure.
Collective punishment: Inside and outside prison walls
“When someone is imprisoned, their family is imprisoned with them.”
A former inmate in Torah maximum security prison
The impact of imprisonment in Egypt extends beyond the prisoner and encompasses their entire family. This phenomenon is sometimes described as “secondary prisonization,” a term that refers to the social, psychological, and logistical constraints experienced by families as a result of their ongoing engagement with the carceral system.
Families find themselves trapped in the prison’s orbit. Their daily routines revolve around arranging visits, purchasing supplies for their detained relatives, and enduring continuous emotional and financial strain. The situation worsens when the detainee is the family’s primary breadwinner, leading to a total loss of income and the reallocation of scarce financial resources to cover prison-related expenses.
Inside the prison, families are often subjected to repetitive and humiliating security checks, with prolonged waiting times, and overcrowded and poorly ventilated waiting halls. The denial of access to drinking water or basic amenities reinforce a deep sense of helplessness and humiliation, mirroring the experience of imprisonment itself.
One woman, whose relative is detained in Badr 3 Prison, described how prison authorities allow one visit at a time, making the wait “a form of torture.” “Each visit lasts about 40 minutes. So imagine waiting through six or seven rounds before it’s your turn.” She described having to wait for over four hours for her turn, in addition to the time spent being searched.
“The waiting room has no fans, of course. We were incredibly hot and thirsty. My son was so tired, he fell asleep on the floor… There weren’t enough chairs for all of us, the waiting room was tiny, and there was a toilet that stank terribly right next to it. The floor was dirty, and there was no drinking water. We weren’t allowed to move, not even to go and buy water,” she explained.
Long journeys
“The car would drop us off three or four kilometers before the prison, and then we’d have to walk a very long distance until we reached the gate. The gate itself is set up in a winding, zig-zag pattern, followed by long queues that are more than 300 meters-long. It’s extremely difficult, and the area where the prison is built is extremely desolate.”
The sister of a detainee in Borg El Arab Prison
The legislation regulating prisons does not require authorities to hold prisoners in facilities near their places of residence. As a result, the Community Protection Sector, the new name for the Prisons Authority, exercises broad discretion in assigning inmates, often without consideration for geographical proximity or family circumstances.
The wife of an inmate held at Badr Prison (60 kilometers east of Cairo), explains that the road between her house in Fayoum (100 kilometers south of Cairo) and the prison takes up to four hours. And because visit registration starts at dawn, she leaves her house at 1:30 a.m., and rents a private car at a high cost to get there.
The silence of Egyptian legislation on prisoner allocation directly contradicts Rule 59 of the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, which states that “prisoners shall be allocated, to the extent possible, to prisons close to their homes or their places of social rehabilitation.” In such a legal context, authorities use “banishment”, the practice of transferring inmates to far away prisons as punishment, without any legal recourse to challenge these decisions. In June 2024, for example, the administration of Badr Correctional Center responded to prisoners’ strikes to protest poor living conditions by transferring dozens of inmates to facilities in Minya and New Valley governorates, which are 260 kilometers and 600 kilometers south of Cairo, respectively.
These actions not only intensify inmates’ suffering but also impose a heavy burden on their families who must travel long distances and bear ever-increasing costs to see their loved ones. They also deepen prisoners’ isolation and sever one of their few remaining ties to the outside world.
But even without “banishment,” the opening of new correctional centers in the past few years has worsened the crisis. Since mid-2022, inmates from older prisons such as Tora, Banha, Alexandria, and Minya have been relocated to remote and isolated facilities like Badr, Wadi El-Natrun, 10th of Ramadan, and Akhmim. These transfers were carried out with no consideration for the families, especially given Egypt’s poor public transportation network and the remote desert locations of these prisons.
The wife of an inmate in Badr 3 Prison said the prison is so remote that she makes sure to go with a driver who knows the way or otherwise they will get lost. The road to the prison has “endless turns and no lighting. If something happens on the road, no one would find you or even hear about it. So, everyone goes by private car; some people rent cars in groups, others alone.”
These difficulties have been compounded by successive waves of inflation and currency devaluation, with the price of fuel and transportation sharply rising in recent years. The average cost of transportation for each visit now ranges between 1,000 and 1,600 Egyptian pounds (around $20-$35), a significant sum for low-income families.
Continuous humiliation
“Sweets are banned entirely. Only one type of protein and one type of vegetable are permitted [per visit], and even those have to be in small quantities. If the food is deemed too much, they only let in a part of it and keep the rest aside until we leave. By then, in this heat, the food spoils and becomes useless.”
The sister of an inmate held at Badr 1 Prison
Besides seeing their jailed loved one, visitation offers families the opportunity to bring medicine, clothes, and homemade food. They painstakingly prepare what little they can, endure multiple invasive searches and demeaning treatment, but in many cases are faced by arbitrary rejection of all or part of their care packages, adding to their sense of estrangement and isolation.
Laws regulating correctional and rehabilitation centers are ambiguous when it comes to determining which items prisoners are not allowed to receive. As a result, prison officials wield wide discretionary powers to ban items at will, with no consistent criteria or accountability.
“Some people would be able to bring in a certain item one time, but not the next,” the wife of an inmate in Badr 3 Prison said. “After the last hunger strike, they started allowing shampoo. I brought it twice, but they refused it, even though others were still allowed to bring it in.” “We are subjected to about three body searches and two inspections of our bags,” she added. “Each visit different officers search us, and nothing is consistent.”
Such emotional burden is compounded by the financial costs of visitations. Preparing food and supplies cost around 1,500 to 3,000 Egyptian pounds ($30-$60), in addition to pocket money families send to inmates to buy food and other supplies inside the prison, which ranges from 500 to 2,000 pounds ($10-$40) a month. Add to that the cost of transportation, and you end with a crippling expense for most families.
“Visits are allowed every 15 days. But the trip is long, I bring the children, and it is very expensive,” the wife of an inmate in Wadi El-Natroun Prison said. “After the first visit, my husband told us not to come so often; it was too costly and exhausting for us…now we visit every three weeks.”
Continuous drain
“It’s emotionally devastating. After experiencing all the humiliation and lack of respect there, and thinking of my daughter sitting inside, I can’t bear it. I stay inside just for a short time and feel like I’m suffocating, so what about my daughter who is in there? When I go in, I’m happy and impatient to see her, but when I leave, I can finally breathe.”
The mother of an inmate
These testimonies show how the suffering of families is no less severe than that of the prisoners themselves. Their experiences expose major legal and procedural gaps, namely in the law on the Organization of Reform and Rehabilitation Centers and its executive regulations. There is an urgent need for a comprehensive legislative reform to ensure that detainees are placed in facilities near their families’ places of residence, to reduce the logistical and financial strain of visits. Also, there must be a clear and standardized list of items permitted during visits to limit the discretionary powers of prison authorities and prevent arbitrary enforcement that further isolates prisoners and punishes their families.
The endurance of detainees’ families caught in a painful cycle of waiting and hardship deserves recognition. The visitation journey has become both a psychological and financial ordeal. Egyptian authorities must end this suffering and cease using detention as a tool of political reprisal, which in practice inflicts collective punishment on families who, during each visit, experience the same sense of confinement, emotionally and physically, as their detained loved ones.
Dina Kamel is a Nonresident Fellow at TIMEP focusing on rule of law in Egypt.