In its 2022-2025 work plan, the Government seeks to reduce violence in Ecuadorian prisons, which, in 2021, left more than 300 prisoners dead.
The project for the rehabilitation of prisons in Ecuador, presented by William Lassoon Monday, February 21, 2022, not the first that has arisen in recent years.
On November 2019the government of Lenin Moreno launched the prison transformation project in which $38.9 million would be invested. The money would be used mainly for two things: to readjust and repower the 54 centers and to provide and strengthen technological capabilities and equipment. But once that year was over, it was determined that the 96% of the project was not fulfilled.
In 2020, the Constitutional Court requested Lenín Moreno that a plan be generated, duly financed. This is how the Moreno government presented a calculation of $206.8 million to restructure the prison system in four years. The main lines of action were: build 10 new rehabilitation centers by 2025 (two per year), refurbish the 36 prison centers in the country, buy 9,000 new electronic shackles and provide hygiene products and clothing to prisoners
But this project did not see the light. In both cases, from National Comprehensive Care Service for Adults Deprived of Liberty and Adolescent Offenders (SNAI) it was explained that budget cuts did not allow it to be fully implemented.
health focus
The new public rehabilitation policy President Social, William Lasso, details that in its first year of action (2022), $27.4 million are allocated. His approach is different from the one presented by Moreno, who was focused on equipment and on having more prisons. Something that, for Marianella Donoso, a sociologist, was to fall into an error, since the country does not need “neither more prisons, nor mega-prisons, but rehabilitate and generate agile processes”.
Therefore, Donoso sees it as a success that Lasso proposes a project focused on the axes of education, sports, culture and health. In this last section, even, it is where more money will be invested, about 45% of the budget.
For the health of the prisoners, $12.1 million will be allocated, the administration of which will be the responsibility of the Ministry of Health. The plan does not only focus on generating a health model in detention centers, but also on generating access to mental health programs, sexual and reproductive rights, women’s health, and provision of food and water.
And it is that, says Donoso, decent conditions are a first step towards violence reduction. The Dignity Foundation maintains that the lack of psychological assistance, workshops and hours outdoors are effects that produce violence and repression.
Terrible prison infrastructure
In November 2021, after the prison massacre in the Litoral penitentiary, the Assembly Justice Commission learned about the problems access to basic services (water, electricity), inadequate infrastructure, insufficient access to physical and mental health and precarious living conditions for prisoners.
For Vianca Gavilanes, coordinator of the Fundación Dignidad, the Government should prioritize its investment in improving the quality of inmates lifeFor her this is the root of the problem.
“The most populated deprivation centers are those that do not have a architectural planning. We have been able to show that, since its construction, the provision of drinking water, for example, was not coordinated with the Decentralized Autonomous Governments (Gad’s).
From the Foundation it has been determined that in the Littoral Penitentiary it is common the disease outbreaks, such as tuberculosis, due to the lack of medical and health care. (AVV)
