A man sits in a Freetown police cell. He has been there for 76 days. He has not been charged. He is not going anywhere, because his case involves authorities in Guinea, INTERPOL, and the Sierra Leone Ministry of Foreign Affairs and none of those institutions has moved with sufficient speed to resolve it. Somewhere in another cell, a man accused of sexual penetration has waited 46 days for legal advice from the Director of Public Prosecutions. In yet another facility, a father and son charged with murder have been held for 29 days after their charge unable to access the court process that is supposed to follow. And at one police station, a man was locked up for four days over an alleged civil debt of Le 365.
These are not isolated anomalies. They are among the documented case studies contained in a sweeping new empirical report released on 9 May 2026 by the Campaign for Human Rights and Development International (CHRDI), which monitored 15 police stations and posts across Freetown across three separate visits in late April and early May. The findings present a justice system in which the rule of law is observed more in name than in practice.
Ground Report Africa previously reported on CHRDI’s February 2026 inspection of Sierra Leone Correctional Services facilities, which found hundreds of detainees held without indictment some for more than four years in catastrophically overcrowded conditions. Among the most alarming findings at that stage were allegations that 76 men and 17 women were in “safe custody” without official records explaining the basis of their detention, while 385 male and 36 female detainees were being held beyond legally permissible periods without indictment, contrary to the Criminal Procedure Act and international due process standards.
The May 2026 report shifts the lens upstream to the police station cells where the journey through the justice system begins. What it finds is that the dysfunction documented inside the prisons is not the product of court backlogs alone. It is being seeded at the very first point of contact between citizen and state.
Across 953 individuals monitored during visits on 28 April, 5 May, and 7 May 2026, CHRDI found that 495 representing 52 percent of all detainees surveyed were being held beyond statutory time limits. The remaining 458 were within lawful bounds. In a system that prides itself on constitutional guarantees of due process, the finding that the majority of police detainees are unlawfully held is not a margin of error. It is the system.
The Criminal Investigations Department emerged as the single worst performer. Of the individuals monitored there, 144 were detained beyond legal limits, against only 12 held lawfully a ratio that CHRDI describes as a critical facility bottleneck. Lumley Police Station recorded 45 over-detained individuals, Aberdeen 38, and Kissy Barracks 36. Only Kissy Shell recorded zero over-detained suspects. The variation between facilities is striking, but the distribution of the problem is not it spans east, west, and centre, covering every geography of Freetown’s policing architecture.
The access to legal representation finding is arguably more alarming. Of the 953 detainees monitored, over 900 lacked access to legal counsel. At the CID alone, 140 individuals were isolated without representation. Smaller posts, including Adelaide Street and Kissy Shell, recorded the same pattern. CHRDI describes this as a systemic deprivation of a constitutional right one that creates the conditions for coerced statements, arbitrary detention, and prolonged confinement without the checks that legal representation is designed to provide.
The problem of legal access is not new to Sierra Leone’s justice monitoring record. Human rights organisations including CHRDI, Amnesty International, and Prison Watch Sierra Leone have for years documented that defendants at magistrate court were not always afforded access to counsel, with state attorneys overburdened and defendants who could not afford private representation often having no access to legal aid prior to trial. The May 2026 data suggests that structural situation has not improved and at the police custody level, it is acute.
Among the most legally unambiguous violations documented in the report is the placement of minors in adult detention areas. Across 11 of the 15 facilities monitored, children under the age of 18 were found held alongside adult detainees. Kissy Barracks recorded the highest number, with 13 minors. Calaba Town recorded 7, as did Eastern Police Posts combined.
Sierra Leone’s Child Rights Act and international obligations under the Convention on the Rights of the Child are explicit: children in conflict with the law must be separated from adult detainees and handled within a specialised juvenile justice framework. The finding that this rule is being violated in 11 out of 15 monitored facilities in the capital city suggests that the violation is not the exception but the operating norm.
At the Central Police Station, a man was detained for four days without bail or formal charge over an alleged civil debt of Le 365 — a sum that at current exchange rates represents a fraction of a dollar, and which, in any event, constitutes a civil matter that has no lawful basis for custodial detention.
At Ross Road Police Station, three murder suspects formally charged but unable to access the court process have been in custody for between 25 and 29 days. The charge was laid; the system then effectively stalled.
The sexual penetration case a suspect held for 46 days awaiting legal advice from the Director of Public Prosecutions due to the absence of an approved surety illustrates how procedural technicalities within the prosecutorial system translate directly into months of pre-charge confinement.
Most extreme is the cross-border case at the CID: a suspect held for 76 days while delays involving Guinean authorities, INTERPOL, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs remain unresolved. That case represents the longest documented detention period in the monitoring exercise, and it points to a specific failure mode the inability of Sierra Leone’s justice institutions to manage international cooperation cases in a manner consistent with domestic and international legal standards.
Against a population of 953 monitored detainees, the monitoring period saw only 42 suspects released on bail and 55 charged in court. Four facilities Ross Road, Kissy Shell, Adelaide Street, and others recorded zero court charges during the monitoring window. Four others Kissy Barracks, PWD Kissy, Texaco, and Kissy Old Road recorded zero bail releases.
The demographic concentration is predominantly young and male. The 18-to-35 age group forms the majority of detainees across the facilities, with Ross Road recording 123 in that bracket and the CID 91. Ninety-three percent of all detainees are male; women account for seven percent.
Abdul M. Fatoma, Chief Executive of CHRDI, said the organisation would not accept administrative explanations for what the data describes as a structural failure. “Every individual entering our justice system is presumed innocent until proven guilty,” he said. “Yet these findings reveal a deeply alarming reality hundreds of people are languishing in detention without access to legal representation or due process. This is not a minor administrative lapse; it is a systemic failure that undermines the rule of law and erodes public trust in our institutions.”
Read Also: Nigerian star Mr Eazi launches Chopwin gaming platform in Sierra Leone
CHRDI is calling for immediate and decisive action to restore compliance, protect detainees’ rights, and ensure accountability at every level of the system. The organisation holds Special Consultative Status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council and is accredited to multiple UN agencies a standing that gives its monitoring findings weight in international accountability forums as well as domestic ones.
The Sierra Leone Police, the Attorney General’s office, and the Directorate of Public Prosecutions had not issued formal responses to the findings at the time of publication. Ground Report Africa has sought comment and will update this report accordingly.
