The "New Penitentiary Culture": US Designs for Colombian Jails

[Downwinder]

How the USAID, Federal Bureau of Prisons and the School of the Americas Have Impacted Colombia's Prison System

http://narconews.com/Issue67/article4200.html

[Bacchus39]

1. probably not a place you would want to be

or here either

http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal/world-news/eight-killed-in-venezuela-prison-brawl_100234507.html
Eight killed in Venezuela prison brawl
Tuesday, August 18, 2009 8:53:34 PM by IANS ( Leave a comment )
Caracas, Aug 19 (EFE) At least eight people have been killed and five injured in a brawl among inmates at an overpopulated prison in the southern Venezuelan state of Bolivar, a prison watchdog group has said.
The incident occurred at the Vista Hermosa prison early Tuesday morning when a gunbattle broke out among the prisoners, Humberto Prado, the head of the Venezuelan Prison Observatory, told Union Radio.

Media outlets reported that the bodies were taken to the morgue at the Hospital Ruiz y Paez in Ciudad Bolivar, some 800 km south of Caracas.

The same outlets said that on Tuesday afternoon new armed clashes broke out among the prisoners at the facility and thus it is presumed that the number of injured or dead could rise.

Prado complained that currently the Vista Hermosa prison houses 850 inmates although its capacity is for just 400.

“We have always made suggestions to the government to properly relocate the prison population according to (each inmate’s) type of crime and level of dangerousness,” he added.

Separately, Venezuelan media reported that the prisoners at the Tocoron jail in the central state of Aragua Tuesday began a hunger strike to protest the death of one of the prisoners there.

Venezuela’s prison system, considered to be one of the most violent in the region, consists of 29 prisons and 16 penitentiaries which house a total of 20,000 inmates, according to government figures.

The Venezuelan Prison Observatory tallied 320 murders of prisoners between January and October 2008, compared to 498 in all of 2007.

[Judi Lynn]

2. I'm sure this isn't a surprise by those in the US gummint who crafted this wizard idea. Far from it.

Look as as if they got what they planned: Colombia simply has thrown far more people in prison! That'll learn ya to cram too many people into too few prisons. Ya gots ta have far MORE prisons to cram full of citizens.

From the article:

Amid much talk of human rights and improved conditions for those deprived of liberty, in March of 2000, the US ambassador and Colombia’s Minister of Justice signed the “Program for the Improvement of the Colombian Prison System.” Called the dawning of a “New Penitentiary Culture,” the US government, through the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and the US Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP), would redesign Colombia’s maximum and medium security institutions, providing millions of dollars in funding, advice and oversight. Central to this restructuring has been the building and expansion of as many as sixteen new jails designed to handle an influx of some 30,000 new inmates—an increase in capacity of more than 40%. The reason cited for building these new jails was to alleviate overcrowding as a necessary first step toward better conditions.

Have conditions improved significantly? Indications are that they have not, and the greater capacity seems to have motivated a surge in arrests and the exercise of social and political control rather than with the alleviation of overcrowding. According to some observers, prisons have been turned into fronts of war, and at least five of the sixteen new prisons have been or are currently directed by graduates of the infamous School of the Americas. According to the Colombian Coalition Against Torture, “It is of serious concern that Colombia’s prisons are increasingly militarized. Indeed, the majority of prisons visited by the Fundación Comité de Solidaridad con los Presos Políticos...are under the command of high-ranking members of the military and police forces, either retired or active, and lack the skills necessary to manage a prison.”

Besides detaining members of the political resistance, the dominant purpose for these new prisons appears to be the incarceration of large numbers of prisoners arrested for crimes arising from a worsening economic crisis coupled with a lack of social investment. The Colombian government is following a playbook based on the US experience. The US puts a higher percentage of its population behind bars than any other nation on Earth.

The growth of the prison population has been phenomenal since the inception of the new US/Colombian prison program. One Ministry of Justice document from Dec. 2007 shows a prison population of 63,603. An INPEC document from January, 2010 puts the population at 76,471. Just over three months later, an article in the Colombian daily, El Tiempo said that there were 106,000 prisoners under the custody of INPEC.3 If these figures are all true, then the increase in the prison population has already exceeded the new spaces being built. So much for the stated purpose of relieving prison congestion.

~snip~
The prison system in Colombia had numerous problems before the involvement of USAID and the US Bureau of Prisons. These included overcrowding, inadequate conditions and instances of beatings and torture, especially in regards to political prisoners and prisoners of war. There was, however, written into law and penal policy a commitment to the reeducation and resocialization of inmates, and to some extent, there were provisions for work and programs for personal advancement, if inadequate. At least these were stated goals that were sometimes acted upon.

With the signing of the US-Colombian agreement, the argument is difficult to make that there has been “improvement” or that a “new culture”—at least a culture that can be described as positive—has emerged in Colombian prisons. The previously cited Narco News article on La Tramacúa shows that the period of this New Penitentiary Culture and prison construction has coincided with a rise in instances of torture committed by Colombian government personnel alongside an increase in arbitrary arrests of members of the political opposition. The predominance of active and retired military personnel in managing Colombian prisons, many of whom were trained by the School of the Americas5, underscores the idea that the prisons are being restructured as a new front of military containment and political intimidation.

In a CSPP survey between April and June, 2008, a majority of prisoners said they had been tortured at least once and 86% said they had been psychologically tortured. The survey revealed that INPEC guards committed a majority of the acts of torture in the prisons, although in some cases Army and Police officials were involved.

Thank you, Downwinder.

Isn't it odd how little we'd know if we didn't go out of our way to look beyond the designer corporate "news?"