“The woman said she came together with a few others and did pickpocketing in markets,” Sophea says, looking down at the concrete floor of her house while nursing her youngest child. “I joined her to steal people’s wallets, but soon the police caught us and I was in jail, charged with petty theft.”

Naly Pilorge, director of the Cambodian League for the Promotion and Defence of Human Rights (Licadho), confirms there was a 220 per cent rise in the number of pregnant women and young children in prison between January 2017 and August last year.

About 9 per cent of the country’s prison population of 31,000 are women.

“Most women are incarcerated on small drug and petty theft charges,” Naly Pilorge says. “There are [women] locked up for crimes like stealing a chicken.”

Even before Hun Sen bulked up drug arrests to bolster his votes, poor conditions and overcrowding in prisons were chronic problems. Naly Pilorge echoes a common theme of those familiar with the state of Cambodian prisons: that many incarcerated women are, in fact, suffering from psychiatric disorders and should instead be receiving mental health support.

But the biggest problem is that it is not just a matter of serving your time, often there is no sentence to be served out – women are locked up until they can afford to pay a bribe for their release. And with the rising trend of women locked up on dubious drug charges, Naly Pilorge says “most women serving sentences are too poor to not be in prison”.

Chamroeun denied the pills were hers but the police arrested everyone in the house. She was taken to prison without trial, and not having spoken to a lawyer, she spent the rest of her pregnancy behind bars.

Sophea says she, too, was taken to prison without trial after her arrest: “[Prison authorities] told me if I didn’t pay a US$1,000 bribe, I’d stay in prison forever. I wouldn’t see my family again. I had to pay before I could have my trial.”

That amount of money is astronomical in a country that, despite having the world’s sixth fastest growing eco­nomy and a sprinkling of swanky new high-rises dotting the capital’s skyline, remains classi­fied by the World Bank as among the least developed nations, one that rarely enforces its minimum wage of US$170 a month.

According to Berlin-based anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International, Cambodia is also among the world’s most corrupt countries, its citizens believing the judi­ciary to be its most corrupt institution. The United States State Department’s Country Reports on Human Rights Practices claimed last year that corruption among judges, prosecutors and court officials was widespread.

The Cambodian legal system is based largely on the French civil system. Under its laws, both Sophea and Chamroeun had rights following their arrests, but being poor and uneducated, neither was aware of them, and they were easy targets for bullying and extortion.

Simon Walker, Cambodia representative of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, says, “The OHCHR used to conduct confidential interviews with inmates across the country, but around a year ago, the Ministry of Interior stopped issuing this permit to us.”

Even if the UN wanted to help women like Sophea and Chamrouen, it is being blocked from doing so.

“It was the most difficult time of our lives,” says Piseth, the tears flowing, Sophea remaining seated next to him, rocking the baby. “Why do you have to remind us again?”

When Sophea was in prison, Piseth begged in markets and at tourist sights around Phnom Penh while neighbours took care of the children. The little money Piseth made went on bribes for prison amenities and visitation.

When Post Magazine establishes contact with Narith, an inmate with a young child incarcerated with her in Phnom Penh’s Kandal Provincial Prison, she says that while each prisoner is entitled to one visit per week, the prison director and his staff require a “processing fee”, payable in cash, up front, and in amounts that can run to half a month’s salary for those earning the minimum wage.

Hong Kong’s jails have highest proportion of women inmates

Inside, everything has a cost. Prisoners report that all aspects of life, from sleeping space to food and recreation time, come with a price tag – one that impover­ished women such as Sophea and Chamroeun can ill afford.

Inmates who had the necessary means were able to secure their own private cells. One, Sophea says, even had a room renovated. (A phone conversation with authorities at Kandal made clear it would be possible to report from inside the prison, in return for a bribe, but that photos would not be allowed. The offer was declined.)

According to research published in 2011 by the Australian National University, titled “Inside the Cambodian Correctional System”, abuses of power and violence committed by guards are prevalent. The report concluded that “whilst not all prison officers were corrupt or were in positions to corrupt, a majority of prison authorities were corrupt, to a degree”.

Held in pretrial detention, guards took Chamroeun to a hospital when she went into labour. After giving birth she remained there overnight. With potential medical complications, she says, she should have stayed longer, but the guards returned her to prison the next day when she could not pay a bribe. Chamroeun and her one-day-old baby spent the following night on the concrete floor of a prison cell.

In Cambodia, children are incarcerated with their mothers up to age three, after which they can join relatives outside prison. Bribes can shorten their stay significantly. According to Licadho figures, last August there were more than 120 women with small children in 18 prisons. Most of those children were under the age of two. Prison authorities allocate 1,400 riels daily for a child’s food and other needs, and 2,800 riels for adults.

When Licadho staff pulled some strings, where the UN could not, and interviewed pregnant women and women with infants in prisons, they found that many had no access to health care.

“On paper, there are doctors, but very few are actually qualified. They often don’t show up to work,” says Pilorge. “Pregnancy and childcare can be particularly problematic as there is no nutritious food, safe water or prenatal and postnatal care.”

“That was no food for humans,” Sophea says of the prison fare, shaking her head. “Pigs wouldn’t eat that.” Affluent inmates were able to buy food and supplies from outside, and wives of guards sold cooked food to prisoners, she adds. There was no running water in the prison, and inmates were given five litres a day for all their needs.

Sophea says she spent five months in a cramped, dark cell shared with about 20 other women.

“Some of them were locked up for life for violent crimes, but all of us, including the children, were in the same room,” she says. “We all slept on the concrete floor. There were rats and mosquitoes and it was hot and humid all the time.”

Many suffered from skin infections, diarrhoea and mosquito-borne diseases, such as dengue fever. As her pregnancy advanced, Sophea felt like a time bomb, afraid to give birth in prison knowing that so much could go wrong after hearing horror stories from the other women.

“The worst part of being in prison was when my daugh­ter was sick,” says one recently released woman after a two-year stint for a minor drug offence, served with her child who was 2½ years old by the end of the sentence. “I was afraid she would have problems. I tried to buy milk for her because she could not eat the food.”

Sophea says her youngest son is experiencing develop­mental problems. “He gets ill all the time and he doesn’t grow properly. None of my other children had these issues.”

Rachel Machefsky, an early-childhood development manager at the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, in Britain, with experience across Asia, says spending pregnancy and early years in such conditions is likely to have an irreversible impact on children’s lives.

“Growing up in a prison poses multiple risks and these risk factors compound easily,” she says. “Stress hormones released due to poor nutrition and sanitation, parental mental health issues, potential exposure to violence and low stimulation can have a lasting damaging effect. Children need to take safe risks to touch, smell and discover their surroundings.”

Two reasons ‘improved’ childcare does not mean better childcare

According to a 2009 Harvard University study, titled “Five Numbers to Remember About Early Childhood”, youngsters who spend their first years in adverse condi­tions are more likely to suffer health problems in adult­hood, including cardiovascular disease, diabetes, hyper­tension, stroke, obesity and cancer.

A 2012 report by the American Academy of Paediatrics concludes that such children often have lower IQs and a higher risk of failing in school, drug abuse, gang member­ship, unemployment, poverty, homelessness, committing violent crimes and being incarcerated.

And yet, OHCHR’s Walker says that separating infants from their mothers is not in their best interests either. While there is no perfect solution, he says holistic improve­ments in Cambodia’s judicial and prison systems would alleviate the burden on disadvantaged families.

“Alternatives to prison sentences, such as community service, as well as counselling, shelters and mental health services can relieve overcrowding in prisons and some of the injustices,” says Walker.

The OHCHR is in talks with the Ministry of Justice about such alternatives, and is working to promote trans­parency in the prison system. It distributes posters and leaflets highlighting the rights of prisoners to receive visits, have court documents facilitated by prison staff, access electricity and television, and receive health care without having to pay bribes.

After Sophea had served five months in prison with no official sentence, her husband raised the US$1,000 needed to buy her freedom, and once paid, early last year, she was released, nine months pregnant and without ever standing trial. Soon afterwards, she gave birth.

The ordeal has left the family with crippling debt in a society that, as of April 2018, has a combined household debt of US$30 billion, according to CEIC Data, a company that compiles economic data.

Now, after what she describes as the most traumatic experience of her life, Sophea is again a ragpicker – as are so many adults and children in her community – and Piseth continues to beg.

“We don’t have any hopes for ourselves any more,” she says. “But we are grateful to have each other and our neighbours. I just hope my son stops getting ill.”

 Still, she considers him luckier than other children she saw in prison. The couple say they feel they fell between society’s cracks and Sophea worries for her children. Even though formal education is not available, they do attend some basic classes offered by a local NGO in a nearby pagoda, and this gives her some hope for their future.

“I hope my children get some education and find a way of making money,” she says, “so that they never go through what I have and end up in prison.”

Some names have been changed.