The inmates of the country’s prisons go days without food or water. Added to this is the lack of psychological care due to the confinement and the outbreak of diseases.
‘Terrible conditions and permanent violation of Human Rights’, This is how the president of the Assembly’s Security Commission, Ramiro Narváez, described the situation experienced by persons deprived of liberty (PPL) in the country’s prisons.
Access problems to basic services (water, electricity), inadequate infrastructure, insufficient access to physical and mental health, and precarious living conditions were some of the aspects that were determined in the report of the Security Commission, which heard yesterday (November 17) the National Assembly.
Between tears and helplessness, Carmen (name protected) prefers not to reveal her identity for fear of reprisals. She says her 24-year-old son is in the Litoral Penitentiary, Hall 2, from April 2021.
She relates that since the ‘massacre’ occurred (Friday, November 12) your child has not been fed. “Just last night he called me from a friend’s cell phone to say that they had been given something to eat,” says Carmen when recounting the precarious situations in which her son lives in a cell with 16 members.
For José Antonio Pérez, General Director of Prevention and Social Reintegration of the State of Jalisco-Mexico, it is essential that the State negotiate and begin by investing in “the fundamental services of every human being: health, food, work, sports, recreational and cultural activities”, as a measure to reduce the level of violence that has been evidenced in the country in recent months.
According to a report by Public Expenditure Observatory, in 2020 the State allocated a budget of $ 40,257,403 to feed 38,967 people deprived of liberty.
For this 2021, the food budget of the National Service of Comprehensive Attention to Adults Deprived of Liberty and Adolescent Offenders (SNAI), is around $41’093.068, according to information from the Dignidad Foundation, in charge of promoting the rights of people in confinement contexts. This amount will go to a prison population of 37,324 PPL.
More investment
The government has announced investment amounts in the prison system. For example, in August of this year, the then director and now head of SNAI, Fausto Cobo, announced the investment of $ 75 million for the restructuring of the prison system, in the next 4 years.
This amount, he said, will be invested in control and surveillance, infrastructure, technology and human talent.
In October more investment was announced but, this time to reduce the overcrowding. The Minister of Government, Alexandra Vela, mentioned that $ 3 to $ 5 million will be invested to reduce violence and overcrowding in social detention centers.
The voice from Human Rights
For Vianca Gavilanes, coordinator of the Dignity Foundation, the Government should prioritize its investment in improving quality of life of the inmates, for her this is the root of the problem.
“The most populated centers of deprivation are those that do not have an architectural planning. We have been able to show that, since its construction, it was not coordinated with the Decentralized Autonomous Governments (Gad’s) the provision of drinking water, for example ”.
To this is added that, when ‘massacres’ occur, such as the last one in November, which left 62 PPL dead, the services of the commissars, visits and, therefore, the entry of toilet kits are suspended.
Faced with this, Gavilanes highlights that, after the last confrontation between inmates, in the Cotopaxi prison, which left eight PPL dead, the inmates “were locked up for three weeks without bathing, brushing their teeth, or leaving their cell,” a situation that qualifies as inhuman.
He adds that if the State were to invest in these basic needs, it would break with the illegal economic structure of prisons because, thus, those who are not aligned with crimes such as drug trafficking or organized crime -which are the majority-, they would not need as many things as now.
“Everything would be cut off if the State complied with its minimum obligations of attention in all the standards and even in recommendations at the international level ”, he details.
Psychological assistance: an urgent and priority issue
“My son is being tortured psychologically. In this last ‘massacre’ José (protected name) told me: ‘Mommy I saw how they cut the throat of a colleague and how they killed others in my face,’ “says Carmen indignantly, as she recounts everything her son went through the night and early morning of November 13.
For Vianca Gavilánes, the lack of psychological assistance, workshops and hours in the open air are the product of violence and repression.
She adds that from the Dignity Foundation, more than 37 calls have been made for basic care such as clothing, physical and mental health, and food. He denounces that since October, the PPLs have not had adequate food.
From the opinion of the lawyer and teacher, Elsa Guerra, the President’s measures have been raised from a securitist look, which “puts on the table the existence of a system of corruption but does not make visible or take action to understand that the deaths are of structural character”.
“The few services that the inmates have are monopolized by the power groups”, Vianca Gavilánes, coordinator of the Dignidad Foundation.
“When my son went to prison I had to pay $ 200 for the cell, plus a percentage for the one in charge,” Mother of a PPL from the Litoral Penitentiary.
En la Penitenciaría del Litoral es común el brote de enfermedades como tuberculosis, por la falta de asistencia médica y sanitaria.
