Who is in Pretrial Detention? This section provides detail on the people held in pretrial detention. The ďŹ ndings show that detainees tend to be male, around the age of thirty and have a limited amount of education, but who nevertheless are income-earners responsible for supporting a range of dependants.
Gender of detainees Some 9 out of 10 detainees were male, as is the case in most countries. 16
Some 90% of the detainee respondents in the sample were male. This corresponds with a count of the Sierra Leone prison population conducted in 2009.7 Usually over-representation of men occurs in prisons because men in general are more likely to be involved in crime, to be arrested and to be incarcerated.8
Age of detainees The average age of detainees is 30 years. This is younger than the average age of the Sierra Leone adult male population. Although children are, in terms of international law, supposed to be held in detention separately from adults,9 ďŹ ve children aged 15–17 were in the sample, due to their being held together with adults and thus forming part of the random sample drawn from the adult prisons.10 This suggests that children are sometimes not held separately from adults in Sierra Leone, particularly if they are close to age 18. The Sierra Leone Children and Young Persons Act determines the procedure to be followed in the trial of children. The average age of detainees, as well the most common age (the mode) was 30, with the median being 29 years of age. The range of ages among