On Tuesday, May 9th, the Barinas Judicial Confinement Center broke its peace after a confrontation between wards. As a result of these events at least five inmates were injured, as reported by lapatilla.com.
By Correspondent lapatilla.com
Néstor Luis Pérez Sampayo, Jhonatan Rafael Salcedo, Wilmer Andrés Calles Valderrama and Luis Domínguez Fernández, are the names of four of the injured inmates who were taken to the Luis Razetti Hospital as reflected in an internal report.
Currently two hypotheses are being handled, but the strongest one was a fight between factions, where inmates transferred from Carabobo State are mentioned.
On February 14th of this year, Vice Admiral Celsa Bautista was appointed as the new Minister for the Penitentiary Service, and she pledged to continue strengthening the system that her predecessor Mirelys Contreras had been developing.
After the event that resulted in serious injuries with piercing and stabbing weapons, presumably prison-made, an inmate who has not been taken into account to obtain the benefit of a precautionary measure that could restore his freedom, made a revelation to lapatilla.com: “The measures that the new minister is taking are going to lead to an explosion in the prisons.”
For obvious reasons, the name of the prisoner will not be published, nor of his family and friends, who were intermediaries to contact him with this media outlet.
Of the confrontation, he said: “There was a revolt between a group of Valencians and Barineses.”
What would have caused the fight, supposedly, is that those “deprived of their liberty” (euphemism for prisoner, inmate) have been demanding to see their children and other relatives, and are asking to be transferred to their cities of origin to make it easier to receive visits from them.
“They want to be taken to the cities where they are from, that is, they seek closeness with family, but this government does not understand (listen to) the people of Caracas, Valencia and the Guaros from Lara, who want to leave. They have asked to be transferred and the way they have to attract attention is to attack other inmates.”
“You cannot wait for this to reach extremes, where it could cost the life of more than one ‘deprived’,” said the inmate.
“This prison had four years without having an injury (wounded inmate), and look, that minister has barely been three months (in her post), and they are going to take care of lighting the fuse.”
In the Judicial Internment of Barinas, the inmates understand that the Minister for the Penitentiary Service is a Vice Admiral. “The people are rebellious (wary) in case they want to come and impose military things (military style discipline), as her motto is “Chávez lives, the country continues”, the prisoners are not going to accept that crap motto.”
They want to eat well
According to this source, those “deprived of their liberty” (euphemism for prisoner, inmate) at the Barinas Judicial Confinement Center receive poor nutrition, and those who used to help them maintain a medium-quality food complement are no longer allowed to support the inmates with meals.
“With the new prison regime they have taken away our food, and the consequences have already begun to be seen with the riots.”
“The food they give here (in the Barinas prison) is very poor and they do not allow relatives to bring us (food). This population is hungry and is going to explode.”
The inmates consider that: “the new minister with her new team, is waking up the demon that was asleep, and if she comes with the tonic of coming to impose and change the system that is in place, it will be fatal because there will be many deaths, because that’s what prison is like, they kill prisoners and that’s called ‘sacrifice’, so that the government stops its stupidity.”
“This government thinks that it is going to come and change a system that, by the way, did not harm anyone, it was lived in peace (sic). Now they want us to starve, to eat whatever they want and come treat us inhumanely, as if we were dogs or sheep, that we have to do things as they say, even if it harms us.”
Among other human rights aspects, they denounce that “they are not aware of the health of private individuals, they only think about treating us like trash, and we are not going to allow that.”
“Why are they separating us from our children? We only see them twice a year. They demand that we wear uniforms and they do not provide us with anything, which is the duty of this government, because we are in a regime and they must give us benefits and redemptions.”
“The visit is for a single person and it has to be a woman, otherwise, nobody can visit us.”
Damage can be avoided
These confessions of the Barinas inmate “should be taken into account by the authorities, because he could be pointing and warning about the mood of the prison population, which are unknown to those of us outside the judicial internment,” warned criminal lawyer Jameiro Aranguren.
The lawyer considers it essential to make this recommendation: “Join the efforts of the actors in the penitentiary system.”
“Injuba Barinas must reorient its penitentiary policy in order to reconsider these detention centers, not as a place to deposit human beings.”
Due to his extensive involvement in criminal matters in Barinas State, Aranguren believes that the point should be “to form an alliance between relatives of the convicted and human rights defense lawyers, observatories and NGOs to denounce internal events, during the phase of execution of sentences in the penal system.”
“All the benefits of the Organic Penitentiary Code must be implemented, such as guarded trust regimes, as well as making the granting of procedural benefits more flexible as a humanist criminal policy that aims at the reinsertion of the prisoners who must be given an opportunity to reunite with relatives, in crimes that are not dangerous to society.”
The jurist’s appreciation is in response to the alleged discomfort that exists within the Judicial Confinement Center of Barinas regarding the reconsideration of sentences, through which many of the inmates aspire to obtain freedom.
Aranguren concludes that the objectivity of Elio Gómez Grillo, father of Venezuelan penitentiary studies must be taken into account. He expresses real concern for everything that the penitentiary system entails: social and family situation, the place of confinement, type of sentences and even the proposal to eliminate prisons as happens in other countries.
Overcrowding: a bomb
The overcrowding that exists in different prisons in the country, including the Judicial Confinement Center of Barinas, does not help the peace of mind of the inmates. This opens the way to the emergence of groups that opt for rebellion as an element of protest, and the erroneous application of repressive criminal proceedings and imprisonment in order to contain crime by the judges. All this makes the situation worse.
“The constitutional principle of the presumption of innocence allows solving issues related to minor crimes or misdemeanors, without having to deprive the person of their liberty. It is the proper way to avoid overcrowding in detention centers,” explains criminal lawyer Richard Dávila.
The Barinese jurist states that in Venezuela there are no detention centers equipped for the confinement of those deprived of liberty (euphemism for inmate), and generally the facilities attached to the police forces are used.
This circumstance, according to Dávila, has resulted in preventive and non-preventive detention centers, where those deprived of their liberty (euphemism for inmate) begin serving their sentences there (police station jails).
The criminal lawyer mentions this type of cases in Barinas, the Cicpc, Bolivarian National Police, State Police, among others.
“This is a real problem, let’s say that it contributes to overcrowding and promotes disturbing events such as fights and the contagion of serious diseases such as tuberculosis, which has reappeared in prisons in Barinas,” he said.
Procedural delay
Lawyer Richard Dávila said that one of the issues that is not addressed as a central issue “is the lack of courts that can decentralize the justice administration system.”
For example, “in Barinas there is a need for (more) courts, just as there is a need for (more) prosecutors in the Public Ministry.”
The Criminal Judicial Circuit of Barinas has six control courts, where Dávila points out that “there should be eight or ten.” There are only four trial courts, and “there should be at least eight.” There are only two execution courts. In the area of violence against women, girls, boys and adolescents there are two control courts and “a single trial court in this jurisdiction of violence.”
This lack of instances for the administration of justice is, in Dávila’s opinion, a “bottleneck that delays criminal proceedings.”
The deferrals is another of the aspects which the inmates of the Barinas Judicial Confinement Center also claim demanding that this must be resolved. So much so, that the criminal lawyer Richard Dávila confirmed this situation by reviewing (for us) his client portfolio, where they appear affected with 15, 20 and up to 25 deferrals and remain deprived of their liberty, without having had a preliminary hearing.
One more situation that Dávila mentioned is the lack of adequate vehicles for the transfer of inmates from the detention center to the Criminal Judicial Circuit and the competent court.
“This causes an additional problem for the prisoner, because his relatives must hire a vehicle or provide a certain amount of fuel for the official units so that the transfers can be made.”
The lawyer considers that these extraneous requirements create a chain of delays that become a huge procedural delay.
Calculations and redemptions
The criminal lawyer specified that there is a serious problem due to the slow handling (of cases), “at the pace of a morrocoy” (morrocoy = land turtle) by the Ministry for the Penitentiary Service, in all that concerns updating the calculations and redemptions.
“This creates a great difficulty, because there are prisoners who, even when they have paid their sentences, remain in jails for a year or more, because the officials of that ministry have not fulfilled this task.”
This last aspect pointed out by the criminal Dávila is among the main claims made by the inmates of the Judicial Confinement Center of Barinas State.