The riot this week in Guayaquil, Ecuador, evidenced the serious prison crisis that this Andean country is experiencing. But the deadly confrontations also illustrate the situation in Latin America as a whole, since its conditions are common to most of the prisons in the region. Marked by overcrowding, precariousness and neglect by authorities, the region’s prison systems are among the most brutal in the world.
The death toll in the worst prison riot in Ecuador’s history rose to 118, authorities announced on Saturday, October 2. “I feel pain, anger and helplessness. I cannot bury my brother even though I know he is dead.” These are the words of an Ecuadorian woman who saw in a video posted on social networks how her 23-year-old brother had been beheaded in the Litoral Penitentiary detention center, in the city of Guayaquil.
To restore order, the authorities sent hundreds of police to the scene of the massacre. “We will continue cleaning inside this detention center because the inmates must understand our clear message: the State is present,” said the police commander, Tannya Varela. “It is us, not them, who have authority,” he said.
But will this “cleaning” be enough to reestablish order in this Guayaquil prison in the long term? And what about the rest of the prisons in Ecuador?
This bloodshed is believed to be related to a war between Mexican drug gangs. Ecuador’s prisons have become a battlefield for thousands of inmates linked to the Mexican cartels. In all, some 200 inmates have died from the violence so far this year. Observers also blame corruption, which allows inmates to introduce weapons and ammunition.
The list of massacres in prisons does not stop
Corruption? Criminal gangs? What can explain this massacre? And the past ones? In reality, these questions can be extended to the rest of the tragedies that occur in Latin American prisons. Indeed, this tragedy in Guayaquil is only the latest in a long list to occur in the penitentiary systems of the continent.
In 2005, after a riot, a fire devastated an overcrowded prison in the city of Higuey, in the eastern Dominican Republic, leaving at least 135 dead.
In 1992, in Brazil, 111 prisoners were killed when security forces quelled a riot in the huge Carandiru prison, on the outskirts of Sao Paulo.
More recently, in 2019, a riot between two rival gangs bloodied the walls of Altamira prison, in the northern Brazilian state of Pará. The attack left at least 57 people dead.
And so goes the list of prison sinister in Latin America. To try to explain them, one of the common factors, and the most obvious -because it is quantifiable-, is overcrowding.
Overcrowding affects prisons throughout the region, “with occupancy rates that vary from around 110% in Chile and Uruguay to 350% in Central America,” Gustavo Fondevila, professor at the Center for Research and Teaching Economics of Mexico and specialist in the Latin American prison system.
In Colombia, there is currently an overcrowding of 49% in prisons, according to the most recent figures from the National Penitentiary Institute, Inpec. Experts explain it by the lack of public policies, the absence of investment in infrastructure and flaws in the penal system.
In Mexico, prisons also suffer from this scourge. By way of illustration, one can compare 2006, with a population of 3,000 inmates in federal prisons, with 2010, which shows an increase of 345% of that population, with 12,450 prisoners, according to the central government.
However, one of the most dramatic cases is that of Brazil, which housed 755,274 prisoners until the end of 2019, a figure that places it as the third country with the largest population of this type in the world, only behind the United States and China.
An irreplaceable factor in the prison crisis: corruption
This situation, common to most prisons on the continent, affects the rights of inmates, who are deprived of the minimum requirements for accommodation, hygiene and food. But prison overcrowding also favors corruption within them.
This is illustrated with bribes from prisoners to have objects such as cell phones and weapons. Or put another way, he resides in a pay-for-privilege business involving prison wardens and directors. In Venezuela, it is the mafias that established an extortion system in prisons, where inmates must pay if they want to receive visits.
But that corruption also knows more serious levels. Thus, although it is a difficult situation to verify, it is accepted that in some countries the deplorable conditions of the inmates led the authorities to hand over a large part of the control to the inmates themselves. For example, in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, gangs run cell blocks and even entire jails.
The escape of ‘El Chapo’, an example of the influence of organized crime in prisons
Self-government or co-government has also been normalized in Mexican prisons. Ten years ago, Joaquín Guzmán Loera, ‘El Chapo’, starred in the most famous escape in the recent history of the country. But behind this case is the suspicion of the infiltration of organized crime in the very direction of the jail.
Another case of great magnitude in the region: in 2019, the directors of two prisons in Bogotá, the Colombian capital, were accused of collecting money from prisoners in exchange for some advantages, such as access to better cells.
If overcrowding and corruption already make life behind bars hell, unsanitary conditions complete the nightmare. Many of the prisons throughout the region are old and have health problems.
And that already catastrophic situation worsened with the coronavirus outbreak. Until June 2020, Central America accumulated almost a thousand infected prisoners, so the president of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, Esmeralda Arosemena, warned that “prison structures do not allow meeting the minimum sanitary measures” in times of pandemic .
Health measures imposed during the pandemic worsened the situation
In reaction, the decision of many governments was to reduce the right of visits. But in many of the region’s prisons, inmates often receive food and medicine through them. Therefore, the suspension of visiting hours was synonymous with starvation for the prisoners.
This is probably why in Venezuela restrictions on access rights ended in a riot in May 2020 in a western prison: at least 47 inmates died and another 75 were injured, according to the NGO Observatorio Venezolano de Prisons.
In Brazil, in response to the authorities’ decision to limit the right of temporary exit, almost 1,400 prisoners escaped from various prisons in the state of Sao Paulo.
Faced with this explosive situation, several countries in the region have tried to alleviate the pressure through releases. Bogotá, the Colombian capital, thus freed some 4,000 prisoners who have served 40% of their sentences, are over 60 years old, suffer from “catastrophic illnesses” or have disabilities.
Mexico approved a law that grants an amnesty to prisoners who have not used firearms. And about 30,000 of the more than 700,000 inmates in Brazil, according to official figures, changed their jail for house arrest.
These measures were decisions made in the face of the urgency created by the pandemic. But improving the prison system continues to be one of the continent’s pending issues.
In the recent case of Guyaquil, the Minister of Government, Alexandra Vela, announced the intention to grant some 2,000 pardons “immediately to the elderly, women, people with disabilities and the terminally ill.” He also spoke of beginning the repatriation of foreign prisoners and the return of 82 is already in process. The Government also plans to promote the construction of additional centers.
And indeed, many leaders respond to this crisis by building more prisons and advocating for tougher penalties. However, analysts believe that a more effective solution could be, for example, to seek alternatives to prison for less serious crimes. Experts also mention the need for a criminal policy that preemptively addresses problems in order to avoid crime.
With EFE, AFP, Reuters and local media
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