Imagine being the warden of a prison where some of the most feared criminals in the country are held. One day an order comes from the president to take away their cell phones—with which they are extorting citizens, devices that should never have gone to prison. And, in addition, they ask him to transfer some of them to other penitentiary centers, where they will be far from their families and the criminal gangs of which they continue to be part. One of those prisoners threatens him if he follows orders. But, with the help of other officers, he manages to carry out the mission. The work shift ends. He leaves by car or bus to his house, with the satisfaction of doing the job well. The criminal decides to carry out the threat. Two hitmen approach the car, shoot. It is not a fictional narrative, it is a possibility that several guards from INPEC, the National Penitentiary and Prison Institute of Colombia, are well aware of. At the beginning of the year, several of them were attacked, and this Thursday the scene happened to one more, more visible and higher-ranking, in the country’s capital.
“The situation in the prisons is not out of control,” said Justice Minister Néstor Osuna this Friday, when the Government seemed to lose control. He said it 12 hours after two hitmen murdered Elmer Fernández, the director of one of the country’s main prisons, called La Modelo. The minister has no shortage of reasons to call for calm: there are no riots in prisons like in 2020, there are no fires like in 2022, there are no escapes of high-profile criminals like that of Pablo Escobar in 1992. Those deprived of freedom remain deprived of freedom. But today’s fear is felt above all by those who work in prisons: this homicide shows them that control of penitentiary centers and their security is not entirely in their hands.
“They killed the director of La Modelo because he did his job, and it is clear that they kill all of us for doing our job,” Adolfo León Penagos, president of the Colombian prison workers union and who works at the Palogordo prison, says by phone. , in the department of Santander. In addition to Fernández, in recent months there have been attacks and homicides against members of INPEC in Cartagena, Cúcuta, Medellín, La Plata (Huila) and Jamundí (Valle del Cauca). Faced with the violence, in February, the Government decreed a prison emergency, but Penagos does not see that the situation has improved. “The Army and the Police came to support us in some establishments, but they did so in a very random way, at specific times, and this really did not provide solutions to reduce the risk against us,” says the dragoneer, the lowest rank in the hierarchy. military style that the guards have.
![La Modelo Prison Colombia](https://imagenes.elpais.com/resizer/v2/YSMR2OQCTZEGXDPAEHPB4Z5MUA.jpg?auth=0e0b7afd390bbab18f3cdfe17c8023d3803824e022a81195c2fce2c38d8fce12&width=414)
The Minister of Justice has said that he is now seeking special measures with the National Protection Unit to save the lives of the guards: in the last two years, 506 threats have been received against INPEC officials, and 27 of the 125 prison directors are threatened. . “All officials on the red line must be defended,” ordered President Gustavo Petro. Those would be especially those of INPEC.
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Penagos agrees with the diagnosis that explains this escalation of violence: the threats worsened after a Government Domino Plan to combat extortion committed from prisons. The guards have increased their control of communications and visits, the INPEC has transferred criminals from place to place to reduce their power. In other words, violence increased not because the Government was being lax with criminals, but because it wants to exert more control over them. Other governments had created a certain implicit agreement in which, at the expense of having peace in the prisons, cell phones, cigarettes or drugs were allowed. Trying to break that implicit agreement, which fostered corruption and criminal power, has been very dangerous.
“The director of La Modelo had been doing what all INPEC officials are called to do, control the establishments. But what happens if you push harder to achieve it? You’re going to have a harsh reaction. If we don’t do anything new to prevent it, it will only continue,” says Penagos. For Libardo Ariza, a law professor at the Universidad de los Andes and an expert on the prison system, the murder of Fernández is a dangerous step in a problem that was already quite complex. “It is an unprecedented event in what had until now been a kind of cold war for control of the world of confinement,” write on the portal 070. “It is a movement that attacks two positions that until now were untouchable: the management of a prison and a senior officer of the National Police. [Fernández era coronel retirado de esa institución]”, Add.
“I am very shocked, I expected this to be fake news,” says Diana Velasco, dragoneante in La Modelo, about the homicide that occurred on Thursday night against her boss. There was already alarm among her colleagues about the murders in other parts of the country, but the fact that the same thing happens in Bogotá only shows her that there is no security for INPEC in any region. “Self-care is the only way to protect yourself,” she says. Velasco adds that Fernández’s only job was not to stop extortion, but rather she was trying to have a more humane approach inside prison.
![An INPEC agent watches over prisoners in the Bogotá District Prison, in 2019.](https://imagenes.elpais.com/resizer/v2/42A7UGSGARCI5H3Q37XEIDFNTY.jpg?auth=53c05fec9581830dbf3f7e8155d73b9670d388234690b8ab54a937d966398c5e&width=414)
“He arrived with the best attitude to make the establishment work, he was very responsible, a good administrator, close to the people and the causes of redemption with the academy,” says Velasco. Other directors had hindered the educational programs, he adds, while in the barely 40 days he was there, Fernández tried to encourage those deprived of liberty to enroll in university academic programs.
Carlos Medina was Vice Minister of Justice during the Government of Juan Manuel Santos and had to deal with another prison crisis, that of overcrowding in prisons, which is still in force. He says that this critical situation against prison staff is not entirely new, although it is more acute. “The threats against the guard have been permanent, historical, but what did not happen before is that they materialized,” says Medina. “The risk is greater if you are not able to weaken the criminal muscle outside of prison: I can be the ringleader of a yard, but if I do not have muscle outside, I remain like a charlatan.” [si hago una amenaza que no se cumple]. But if there is an operating muscle outside the prison, which the State does not persecute, the ringleader may not govern the prison but his threats do materialize. So here the key thing is: where is the Executive and, above all, where is the Prosecutor’s Office to pursue these criminal structures?” adds Medina.
![La Modelo Prison Colombia](https://imagenes.elpais.com/resizer/v2/CCVQH5HCFVAZHEQDJZMZETYCAE.jpg?auth=452cf9fc313bbf3f2826edc64053cba4aeb070c3fc446ef65a1a0ed5db93f39c&width=414)
In short: any effort by the Government to have control inside the prison will be insufficient if criminal gangs continue to strengthen outside its walls. And today they do have muscle. Any effort to protect INPEC guards will have to take into account that, when they leave their uniform at the end of their shift, they go to sleep in their neighborhoods. And in many of them today the most powerful criminal gangs in the country are present.
Although the mastermind has not yet been confirmed, indications first point to a detainee at La Modelo who signed a threat to the director with the name of Pedro Pluma. “If he searches the yard again, the family will kill him. So that you can see that I do have power and if you transfer me I will kill your family,” the threatening message said. If his authorship is confirmed, Medina and Penagos explain in separate calls, his power outside and inside prison would increase: he shows that his threats have consequences. But there is also the possibility that larger criminal groups, the Tren de Aragua or La Inmaculada, were behind the murder, which have also threatened INPEC since the capture of their leaders. The prison guards have more than one enemy and the great danger, for all those who want to carry out the president’s orders to stop extortion, is that these enemies have a lot of strength outside the prison.
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