A fire that killed 134 inmates Monday in the Dominican Republic is the latest in a string of deadly incidents that plague the region’s overcrowded, corrupt and poorly managed prisons.
In February, five inmates were killed in Peru after gang members rioted in a prison designed for 1,800 inmates that was holding more than 7,000. In El Salvador, rival inmates fought with sticks and knives, killing at least 31 people in August.
A three-day uprising at a Brazilian prison in May left 30 inmates dead–some beheaded and dismembered. And at least 103 gang members died the same month after a fire swept through a Honduran prison during a riot.
The U.S. State Department’s annual report on human rights, released last month, described prison conditions across Latin America as inhumane, with violent inmates packed into antiquated cellblocks without adequate food, sanitation or health care.
Horrific conditions
Trafficking in weapons and drugs by inmates is common, as are sexual exploitation, extortion and other abuses, the report said.
Adding to the problems are out-manned and poorly trained prison guards, who are susceptible to corruption and intimidation by inmates who exert almost unchallenged control inside many penal institutions.
In some Latin American countries, inmates must bribe guards to get food, medicine and other necessities, and allegations of beatings and torture by prison officials are common, the report said.
“There is very little internal security in the prisons,” said Eric Olson, Amnesty International’s advocacy director for the Americas. “The guards guard the outside, but inside many prisons, organized criminals and prison guards are involved in violence and drug trafficking.”
Experts say the bad situation is made worse in Central America and the Caribbean by the surge in U.S.-style street gangs, whose members often have been deported from the United States and take their bloody rivalries inside prison walls.
Daniel Erikson, director of Caribbean programs at the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington-based policy group, said U.S. prisons suffer the same problems of overcrowding and gang influence–if not with the same intensity–as prisons elsewhere.
Yet, he said, U.S. prisons are rarely engulfed in massive rioting and fires because the facilities are closely supervised and built with more modern technology.
Erickson said prisons across the Latin American region are “tinderboxes” and lack emergency evacuation plans for inmates, which contributed to the high death tolls in several recent incidents. A jammed entrance thwarted rescuers at the jail in the Dominican Republic, according to a local fire department official.
“There are a lot of quick things that can be fixed, such as having buildings that are flame resistant, having adequate exits and better monitoring of inmates,” Erikson said.
Dominican officials said the violence at the jail in Higuey, 75 miles northeast of the capital, Santo Domingo, began late Sunday when a gang leader fired shots at his rival and wounded him in a bid to regain control over the cellblock, according to local media reports.
The battle spread as gang members fought with fists, iron bars and machetes. The rioting raged even as the fire began and engulfed the cellblock.
Dominican officials said inmates set fire to their bedding, but some inmates said security forces fired tear gas into the cellblock, igniting the blaze, and then did little to save them.
Bodies were found “piled up on top of each other” at the door, chief firefighter Nestor Vera said.
Investigation scheduled
Dominican President Leonel Fernandez, who is in Spain, said the government would pay for burying the dead and for the medical care for the 19 inmates injured in the blaze.
He said a high-level commission headed by the attorney general and national police chief would investigate the incident.
On Monday, Dominican Vice President Rafael Alburquerque and other top officials visited the jail in Higuey, where he expressed “profound dismay” at the tragedy. Grieving relatives gathered at a local hospital Tuesday to identify the dead.
In the human-rights report, the U.S. State Department described prison conditions in the Dominican Republic as “poor to harsh.” It also said allegations of “torture and mistreatment in prisons were common.”
The State Department report said more than 13,500 Dominican prisoners and detainees were being held in 35 prisons with a capacity of about 9,000.
Dominigo Porfirio Rojas Nina of the Dominican National Human Rights Commission said the Higuey jail was built to hold up to 80 inmates but housed 436 prisoners on the day of the tragedy. Rojas Nina said he has denounced conditions at the jail, which was so packed that inmates slept in bathrooms.
“It was hell on earth,” he said. “They lived like animals there, not like human beings.”
The State Department said prisons throughout Latin America suffer chronic overcrowding.
Venezuelan prisons were at 118 percent of capacity and inmates often “had to pay guards and other inmates to obtain necessities such as space in a cell, a bed, and food,” according to the State Department. Violence between gangs is common, its report said.
The State Department said Colombian prisons and jails held more than 68,240 inmates, almost 30 percent over their capacity of 49,645. In Mexico, 182,530 prisoners were held in facilities with an official capacity of 147,809, it reported.
State of chaos
“In many prisons, inmates exercised authority, displacing prison officials,” the report said about the situation in Mexico. “Influence peddling, drug and arms trafficking, coercion, violence, sexual abuse, and protection payoffs were the chief methods of control used by prisoners against their fellow inmates.”
The State Department described conditions in Cuban prisons as “harsh and life-threatening,” despite assertions by Cuban officials that prisoners are treated humanely.
The report said Cuban police and prison officials “beat, neglected, isolated and denied medical treatment to detainees and prisoners, including those convicted of political crimes or those who persisted in expressing their views.”
Olson and other experts said prison systems throughout the region are underfunded. But the chaos and violence in Latin American prisons also reflects a general breakdown of security in many nations. Some detainees are held for months or years without trial, experts said, and sometimes torture is used to gain confessions.
Rojas Nina said he is confident the commission would learn the truth about the fire tragedy.
But Erikson said an investigation could prove embarrassing to the government, adding that inmates garner little public sympathy.
