In a room thick with heat and sweat, light from a small window falls on rows of squatting prisoners and plastic bags of belongings hung from nails on every inch of the wall. The guard explains that 74 men live in this room, which is roughly 10 by 20 feet. A further 85 are usually in the corridor, he adds, while 12 are kept next to the toilet.

This is Hibhib prison on the outskirts of Baquba, the dusty, volatile capital of Diyala Province roughly 40 miles from Baghdad.

It is just one of the prisons in the province where detainees and US forces allege overcrowding, lengthy pretrial detention, and torture used to extract confessions. While the conditions here may be more severe than elsewhere in the country, Iraq's national detention system as a whole has been harshly criticized by Western human rights organizations.

A December 2008 report by the New York-based watchdog Human Rights Watch (HRW) went as far as to assert a "disturbing continuity" with Saddam Hussein-era detention. A committee set up by the Iraqi government in June is investigating abuses. But a lack of accountability and political will, say human rights workers, are serious impediments to reversing the culture of abuse cultivated under Mr. Hussein.

Lt. Col. Shaun Reed, commander of a Baquba-based US infantry unit, often runs up against that culture. He says it's hard to change prison workers accustomed to brutality. "What I consider humane treatment of prisoners, is not what they would consider humane treatment," says Reed, whose work with Iraqi security forces has exposed him to Iraqi prison conditions. "If you ask Iraqis what they think – it's completely different."

The issue has taken on new urgency as the US dials back its presence in Iraq, accelerating the release and transfer of Iraqi prisoners in its custody. Most of the prisoners deemed unlikely to reoffend have been released already, which means a higher proportion of the 8,947 remaining as of early September are likely to go to jail, according to Capt. Brad Kimberly, a US media relations officer.

In the first nine months of this year, more than 5,000 detainees were released, with nearly 1,200 transferred to Iraqi custody, according to Kimberly and other US officers interviewed for this article. At the current release rate of 750 per month, an additional 1,400 detainees are expected to go to Iraqi jails before the US transfer is completed – probably in August 2010.

After the exposure of abuses at Abu Ghraib, American officers are eager to point out measures to ensure proper treatment of Iraqi prisoners.

But now it is essential that they take equal care to prevent the transfer of prisoners to a system where there is a substantial risk of torture or mistreatment – an action that violates international law, says HRW researcher Samer Muscati, who travels often to the region.

"In our research over the last couple of years ... we heard credible allegations of torture and mistreatment during initial detention by Iraqi forces," wrote Mr. Muscati in an e-mail. "So it will be incumbent on the US to verify conditions in Iraqi facilities that receive such transfers through regular inspections of those facilities by impartial and independent observers."

Laundry day at Camp Cropper

US officers are endeavoring to do just that, they say. Every prisoner in US custody awaiting release or transfer to the Iraqi prison system comes through the US-run Camp Cropper detainee facility near Baghdad. It was laundry day when the Monitor visited recently, and the yellow uniforms were drying in the sun, as detainees played games or sat on gaudy prayer rugs reading the Koran together.

US officers here are eager to offer tours in which they point out the abundant space, art and computer classes, and Ping-Pong and football for the detainees.

"I know the right way and the wrong way to do things," says Col. John Huey, the commander responsible for the Americans' three Iraqi internment facilities at camps Cropper, Bucca, and Taji, who has worked with detainees in Iraq since 2003. "After Abu Ghraib there were 240 recommendations on detainee treatment."

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