2023-11-06 08:05:59
Twice it is stated “we will strengthen the Penitentiary System” in the so-called Innovation and Development Plan, with which the then candidate Alejandro Giammattei Falla was promoted, whose four-year term is 69 days away from ending without a single detention center having been built, despite the increase in the prison population and the experience that the president once had as director of Prisons. Until August, according to the Ministry of the Interior itself, more than 50 searches had been carried out in prisons throughout the country, and in all of them illicit objects were found: weapons, drugs, cell phones, internet equipment, household appliances, all incompatible with a state. of deprivation of liberty under sentence or in preventive condition.
The porosity of the country’s prisons is attributed to transfers made by visitors, but the quantity and recurrence of prohibited objects could not be explained without the collusion of guards and employees of the Penitentiary System. In fact, according to former Prison officials, there are cases of payments to occupy the position of director of certain prisons, in order to obtain the enormous profits from said contraband. It is unknown whether such a phenomenon or perhaps, on the contrary, some attempt to put detainees in order, was the cause of the deadly attack against the director of the Matamoros detention center, Edwin Patzán, which was completed yesterday a few meters from such a military facility.
It should be noted that said civil prison within a barracks would be temporary, while a maximum security prison was being built. It was built in 2010, but its current operation dates back to June 2016. It currently has 43 inmates, among whom there are drug traffickers and gang members.
Just on July 22, another prison director was also killed: Eulalio Arriaza, who was in charge of the Los Jocotes prison, Zacapa, was ambushed. Individuals on a motorcycle shot him and to date there is no trace of the perpetrators and even less of the cause of the attack. One can guess, however, the strong economic interests that surround the country’s prisons, which, instead of being rehabilitation and reintegration centers, are criminal training centers and unpunished logistics centers for extortion, an illegal act that is accompanied by execution orders. against victims who resist or who simply cannot pay.
There is no plan to strengthen, modernize or make prison security transparent; There are no facilities suitable for monitoring the content of visitor conversations or the delivery of messages written on paper. The high security prison project in Masagua, Escuintla, has not yet begun, because the land was invaded and an eviction process had to be undertaken. But the studies, bidding and awarding of the work caused delays and controversies, due to accusations against the company that won the competition.
On the other hand, the focus of a modern, proactive and productive penitentiary vision should be on enabling the rehabilitation of inmates, especially those who commit crimes for the first time. One of the top prison experts, Byron Titus, is Guatemalan. The successful reintegration models implemented in the United States are already being developed in countries such as Colombia or Argentina. He has offered them to several Guatemalan governments, but no one has paid attention to him. It is worth asking why. And a filthy business continues behind bars.
#Dysfunctional #archaic #Penitentiary #System