Transfer of leaders can weaken leadership within gangs if prison control is consolidated: specialists analyze actions in prisons

After the armed and explosive attacks perpetrated by criminal gangs the week of November 1 to 3 in different locations in the country, a new state of emergency was decreed that includes a curfew between 9:00 p.m. and 5:00 a.m. in three provinces : Guayas, Esmeraldas and Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas. With this, the Government aims to counteract the violence that was also experienced in the Litoral Penitentiary, within the framework of the transfer of a group of inmates, among them, leaders of criminal groups.

The President of the Republic, Guillermo Lasso, maintains a constant call for unity in what he has called a “crusade for the country”. At the same time, his slogan is to act with a firm hand to curb criminal actions related to international drug trafficking.

More than 3,000 operations and more than 800 apprehended are the result of the work of the police and military in the areas where attacks were registered in which six police officers were killed.

As for the incidents at the Penitentiary, the situation has been brought under control, according to the Government. Videos of the incidents and photographs of the apparently neutralized inmates have circulated from this prison center on social networks.

These images have been disseminated by the president himself on his Twitter account, who on that platform announced these days that the leaders who lead the Chone Killer gang and made armed resistance to police and military personnel in pavilion 2 have already been transferred. to the maximum security prison known as La Roca.

In the photos, the faces of the antisocials appear blurred and their identities are kept secret despite the fact that they are people serving a final sentence in prison.

Los Chone Killer, from the resistance in pavilion 2 to the attacks in Durán

For the criminal profiling expert Ana Minga, when these people already have a sentence and are serving a sentence, there is no legal limitation for them to be fully identified before the public.

“Once apprehended, they already have time and are doing all the trouble for the transfer, there would no longer be a problem with showing faces; now, if it is someone who has not yet been caught, who has not been sentenced, then I would say that it is a mistake, but in this case they are already identified, behind bars and sentenced, ”he argued.

However, he pointed out that with this exhibition absolutely nothing is gained. On the contrary, he considers, in the criminal world, being exposed tends to enhance a certain gang leader.

“Those people don’t mind being exposed, one. And they are evidenced and they are already leaders and have been the executing brains of all this chaos and panic that exists in society, the better for them. I speak to you from the profile, how they would think (…) What does the Government gain or lose? It does not win or lose anything, it only exposes them, ”said the specialist.

The security expert and professor at the Institute of Higher National Studies (IAEN) Daniel Pontón stressed that the latest measures taken in pavilion 2 of the Litoral Penitentiary demonstrated forcefulness when it came to regaining control of the prison.

However, he pointed out that the photographs of the prisoners on the ground, the dissemination of the separation of the leaders of the criminal gangs are only part of a communication issue that aims to demonstrate the success of a larger issue for which the solution has not yet been found. : the prison crisis and violence in the country.

This is the diagnosis of the Government regarding the penetration of organized crime in the country

“It is a communication issue, but many things are also effects, not to say exaggerations or with certain criteria that are not true,” argued Pontón.

For example, he cited that seized firearms are shown as a success, when that, according to him, is proof of poor control in prisons, which allows prisoners access to prohibited items such as weapons.

Regarding the transfer of inmates to other prisons, in the opinion of the teacher, transferring an entire pavilion to another prison on the coast of Ecuador is only moving the problem to another place. “Then first we should ask ourselves if the conditions of El Rodeo are adequate to house such a high number of people and such danger,” he added.

In addition, for Pontón, having separated these leaders and transferring them to La Roca prison will cause the creation of new leaders. “It would seem to me that they are going to try to maintain group cohesion with the new leaders.”

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Ana Minga agrees with that criterion. “A king dead, king set,” she said and added that it is true that new leaders emerge. But she also pointed out that the State has to gain territory and control of these spaces.

“Of course, more leaders are going to come out, but they are going to be weaker, that is where the intelligence teams have to work to identify them quickly and neutralize the new leaders in time,” she said.

Finally, Pontón identified three points that must be worked on to combat the prison crisis: first, remove the ability to manage the monopoly of violence, they need to prevent more massacres from happening; the second is the issue of weapons, it cannot be that they continue to arm themselves inside a deprivation of liberty center, it is a symbol of how the security system is; and third, the issue of communications, he pointed out that they cannot have a crime operations center from the prisons.

“We are very far from achieving these three elements, now what it does is transfer a problem to another place and alter an ecosystem that is already problematic,” the specialist remarked. (YO)