He Las Parras Penitentiary Center It was delivered in August 2020 with more than 90% apparent completion. At first glance, it seemed ready to go into operation. But a technical review revealed the opposite: there were no records that any state institution formally received the work and the buildings did not meet the minimum conditions to house inmates or to operate with prison staff. That documentary gap marked the beginning of a four-year period of deterioration, delays, litigation and abandonment.
From the beginning, the penal It was uninhabitable. Educational facilities were lacking and workshops were well below the scale required for the intended population. The surveillance systems presented design flaws and several structures were incompatible with the standards of a medium security center. There was no way to know what the construction companies actually delivered or what the real progress of the project was.
Failures and an abandonment that aggravated them
The lack of clear leaders, as a result of the non-existent official reception, left the project without supervision. The infrastructure deteriorated without maintenance or surveillanceequipment disappeared and previously liberated areas were occupied again by invaders. But a good part of the problems did not arise from abandonment: they were in the very conception of the work.
1,720
agents graduated from the Institute of Penitentiary Studies will require Las Parras to operate
He penal It was designed for more than 8,500 inmates, a scale that made any individualized rehabilitation model unviable. Its distribution in four separate quadrants Only by cyclone mesh complicated control, increased internal displacement and did not meet medium security standards. The location was also problematic: an unpopulated area between Santo Domingo and Monte Plata, far from courts and communities, with part of the buildings built on a ravine that overflows when the waters of Lake Los Reyes rise.
RD$1,097 million in earth movement
The conditioning of the land required more than 1,097 million pesos in earth movement. The main access, 1.4 kilometers, made emergencies, visits and personnel transportation difficult. Added to this was the poor quality of various materials: out-of-specification fans, deteriorated stainless steel equipment despite their supposed guarantees, buildings without operational use, kilometers of internal roads and cyclonic meshes installed without a clear purpose.
He redesign: 8 centers where there were 4
As of August 2020, a technical survey began that proposed transforming the original structure. The central idea was to divide the four initial quadrants into eight autonomous centerseach with its own classrooms, workshops, library, dining room and commissary, to manage smaller populations and improve security. He redesign contemplated the creation of additional access to avoid the traffic jam that would be caused by a single entry point to a complex of more than eight thousand people.
The approach also included correcting the thirteen watchtowers, whose doors were oriented towards the outside; eliminate 22 exterior checkpoints with no real function; and simplify the perimeter roads, some duplicated and others laid out with unnecessary lengths that increased operating costs and demanded more personnel than necessary.
In theory, the construction companies could complete the work in eight or nine months. He Government He transferred 300 million pesos, but the work did not advance. The stoppage was extended while a dispute over the previous contracts.
An increasingly lost work
The project passed from the Executive Branch to the Ministry of Public Works and then to the Ministry of Housing and Buildings, without progress. During those four years, The Vines was exposed to equipment theftloss of machinery and illegal occupations. When the Ministry of Housing finally took on the project, it only received the plans: there was no technical documentation of the actual status of the work.
A new survey, which took six months, revealed educational deficiencies, insufficient workshops, problems in maximum security areas and a oversized perimeter infrastructure: five layers of security where only three were necessary. An inefficient distribution of barbershops and commissaries was also detected—eleven of each, dispersed in internal courtyards—which increased the staff required and increased risks. The recommendation was to integrate them into the laundry and dining areas, respectively.
The reorganization included redesign parking lotsunify visitor areas and review the institutional color palette. The progress plan called for completing the first quadrant in five or six months and delivering each of the remaining ones every two months, prioritizing transfers from critical areas such as La Victoria.
To operate fully, The Vines will need 1,720 correctional officers trained at the Specialized Higher Institute of Penitentiary Studies, distributed in four promotions between the end of 2024 and September 2025.
The objective: recover what is recoverable
Four years later, The Vines finally enters a phase of comprehensive recovery. The purpose is to transform an unfinished, deteriorated and poorly conceived project into a functional and safe center. The correction of design flaws, the replacement of equipment, the reorganization of spaces and a reinforced surveillance They are now the pillars to provide the country with a penitentiary system according to its present and future needs.
The Dominican Liberation Party (PLD) denounced yesterday that the PRM Government has raised the cost of the La Nueva Victoria prison complex, renamed by the authorities as “Las Parras”, by more than 3,000 million pesos, which, according to the organization, constitutes a serious lack of transparency and fiscal responsibility.
In a statement, the LDP stated that current government officials have distorted information to justify this increase. According to the organization, the project was already completed, equipped and inaugurated on August 10, 2020, during the PLD administration, and was subsequently certified by the Attorney General’s Office in June 2021.
The PLD recalled that the construction of the complex was part of the modernization and humanization plan of the Dominican penitentiary system, designed to transform the country’s 41 prison centers and build new facilities that would put an end to structural overcrowding.
The 3,000 million
According to the PLD note, during the 2016-2020 period, 3,000 million pesos were invested, coming from the agreement with Odebrecht, and another 6,500 million pesos from the state budget to finance said prison plan.
He claims the work was already complete
The political entity detailed that, despite the fact that the infrastructure was complete and operational, the government of the Modern Revolutionary Party increased the cost through addendums and revisions that do not correspond to qualitative improvements to the project, but to minor changes.
