Haiti's prisons resemble the gates of hell for inmates.(Knight Ridder Newspapers)

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti _ In Haiti, there is no capital punishment. But for many inmates, getting thrown in jail is a death sentence.

In one month this year, 11 inmates died in the Penitentier National, the nation's largest prison. Some died from malnutrition and lack of sunlight, the rest from tuberculosis and AIDS.

There is no medication at the prison clinic, and little medical care. Beds are in short supply, and only the inmates with influence get assigned one.

Other patients crawl onto any available space, and that often means a cold cement floor. The men who become too sick to treat are put out in the courtyard, where they die, often alone.

``The world has to intervene here very fast,'' said Jean-Paul Lupien, a French Canadian who consults for the United Nations Development Program.

Lupien bows his head as he stands in the shade of a tree in the prison's courtyard. A former warden in his native Canada for more than two decades, Lupien is an authority on jails. Since his retirement, he has been working as a consultant, trying to improve jails in Africa and the Caribbean. Haiti's prisons are the worst he has ever seen.

When Lupien got to Haiti five years ago, he found a prison system still suffering from years of control by the Haitian army and budgets controlled by the military. Cells were without roofs. Prisoners were not fed. Inmates were not registered. They didn't know their status, and neither did officials. The people running the prisons didn't know how many people they had inside. Human rights violations were constant, and inmates were beaten.