Interior adds 65 agents to monitor compliance with alternative measures to prison
The graduation ceremony of the first generation of Police officers trained to work in the National Directorate for the Supervision of Assisted Liberty, which monitors compliance with the alternative measures to prison ordered by the Justice. Minister Heber said that he ranked the dependency in the budget and that in the portfolio that he directs the will to imprisonment does not prevail.
The act was also attended by the Secretary of the Presidency, Álvaro Delgado; the director of the National Rehabilitation Institute (INR), Luis Mendoza, and ministerial and police authorities.
Heber highlighted the training that the agents received, run by the Penitentiary Training Center (CEFOPEN), and indicated that it complements their education as police officers. He affirmed that it is necessary to continue investing in it to ensure efficient monitoring of compliance with the measures and that they do not constitute a form of covert freedom. “We have to put ourselves in the place of the victims,” he said.
In addition, the hierarch remarked that this is the first generation of CEFOPEN graduates to fulfill this specific task. He considered that this represents a great change, since the officials dedicated to the work up to now had been derived from different INR prison establishments.
Mendoza, meanwhile, valued the Interior strategy of strengthening the management and stated that with these 65 agents the number of workers available is increased by 40%. He also recalled that the INR also supervises the temporary release of inmates.
In Uruguay, there are more than 20,000 measures in force, alternatives to confinement in prison establishments, among which are the development of community tasks, probation and house arrest, partial or total, he reported. In this sense, he pointed out that the ministry completed the purchase of 800 electronic anklets: 200 for home prison control and 600 with global positioning system (GPS, for its acronym in English).
