The IACHR asks Ecuador to regain control of its prisons and prevent crimes

Quito, 17 Mar The solution to the crisis of violence in Ecuadorian prisons involves the State regaining control of prisons, now in the hands of criminal gangs, and developing a policy that prioritizes crime prevention rather than imprisonment, according to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR). In its report published this Thursday following its visit to Ecuador between December 1 and 3, 2021, the IACHR gave Ecuador guidelines to address the crisis that left 316 prisoners in State custody dead in different clashes between rival gangs fighting for internal control of prisons in 2021. According to the IACHR, the Ecuadorian State acknowledged to the Commission that it does not have control of walls inside, where “the leaders of these groups (criminal gangs) charge illegitimate and abusive prices to other inmates for their cells and beds, as well as for access to services.” “At the same time, the lack of control in the centers would facilitate the entry of drugs and weapons into prisons,” reported the IACHR, which warned of “unprecedented violence and corruption within prisons.” MORE GUARDS To this end, the Commission considered it essential to increase the prison staff in charge of the security and surveillance of prisons, since they were classified as “insufficient” to handle the large volume of prisoners and without the necessary training. For the IACHR, the causes of this situation are structural, due to a “weakening of the prison system for at least two decades, under the responsibility of the different functions of the State.” This is compounded by the “increase in penalties and the catalogue of crimes that favour imprisonment, drug policy, excessive use of pre-trial detention; legal and administrative obstacles to the granting of benefits and pardons; and the deplorable conditions of detention”. In this regard, the IACHR report urged the Ecuadorian State to change its security policy, from one that favors imprisonment to another that contains effective measures for crime prevention and crime control, especially in the most disadvantaged settings. EXCESSIVE PRETRIAL DETENTION The Commission placed special emphasis on reducing the abuse that the justice system makes of preventive (provisional) detention, which has meant that 39% of the 36,599 that had prisons in Ecuador as of November 29, 2021, were deprived of liberty without a conviction. In this regard, the document requested that no new prisoners enter the Guayas prison, the most populous in the country with 7,231 prisoners and one in which the worst episodes of violence occurred. The IACHR also called for the adoption of a gender perspective to protect women and other vulnerable groups while the internal control of prisons is in the hands of criminal gangs, some of them international in nature. UNWORTHY CONDITIONS It was also emphatic in calling for guarantees that prisoners had “conditions of detention consistent with human dignity and respect for human rights”, as well as the care of health personnel and “adequate, safe and acceptable water”. This is because the IACHR found that prison conditions in Ecuador “depart from inter-American standards regarding deprivation of liberty” due to lack of separation by category according to hazardous, lack of medical care and gender perspective, poor infrastructure; inadequate food and obstacles to effective social reintegration. The Commission was informed that only 50 per cent of the prison population would be able to access activities aimed at reintegration, which would result in 8 out of 10 released persons returning to crime. NEW POLICY IN PROGRESS In this context, the Government of President Guillermo Lasso presented on February 21 “Ecuador's first Public Policy for Social Rehabilitation with an emphasis on the promotion of the human rights of persons deprived of liberty.” This policy, which seeks to change prison conditions and the reintegration of prisoners, has a budget of approximately 27 million dollars to develop 12 axes and more than 300 actions between different ministries. “We are going to dignify prisons. Life doesn't end there. Our main goal is that their stay behind bars is the transition to a new life,” said Lasso, who also recently signed a decree aiming to pardon 5,000 prisoners sentenced for minor offences. CHIEF fgg/jrh