“The lack of opportunities favors the conditions for organized crime,” says Juan Pappier, acting deputy director for the Americas at HRW

Overpopulation and the lack of state control in prisons have allowed gangs to recruit new members and murder more than 400 people detained since 2021, said the 2023 report that was presented by Human Rights Watch (HRW) on the prison situation in Ecuador. .

The document that refers to the human rights situation was presented worldwide and refers to poverty, inequality, corruption, insecurity and environmental degradation.

Juan Pappier, acting deputy director for the Americas of HRW, in an interview with this newspaper, gave details about the state of prisons in the country, the suggestions they have given to change that reality and what shortcomings still exist.

Pappier has conducted investigations and reported on abuses related to armed conflict, repression of protesters, and attacks on the rule of law, among other topics.

You have presented a 2023 world report, how was the information collected?

This is a global report that we do on more than 100 countries around the world, including 15 Latin American countries, which is the result of our constant monitoring of the human rights situation in these countries, which is the result of interviews with victims of violations. of human rights, of witnesses of human rights violations, but also of meetings with the government, meetings with specialists, meetings with other human rights organizations, that is, we interviewed a wide range of people, we also requested information from the authorities in order to have the most detailed film possible about what is happening in terms of human rights, in this case in Ecuador.

In the case of Ecuador, you refer to the prison crisis, what conclusions did you reach?

The prison crisis is one of the issues that most concerns us in terms of human rights in Ecuador, because it has already killed more than 400 people in the massacres that have occurred in 2022 and 2021.

And that crisis is the result, these massacres are a reflection of serious problems that exist in Ecuadorian prisons that have to do with overcrowding, with a lack of state control over what happens in prisons, and with a lack of provision of services and basic rights for detainees, for example, some detainees do not have access to mattresses or do not have access to medicines, they have to request these goods from criminal groups and that leads to criminal groups later being able to recruit them and make them part of their ranks who may be in custody for minor offences.

We have had several meetings with the Government to promote prison reforms to reduce overcrowding, to regain control of the population.

I think some measures have been taken, for example, overcrowding has been reduced, but much more needs to be done to improve prison conditions today.

Lack of state control of prisons has allowed gangs to recruit new members, Human Rights Watch report warns

According to the report, you also refer to the fact that one of the causes of overcrowding would be the excessive use of preventive detention, the harsh policies against drugs and delays in the granting of prison benefits. How could making these changes help improve the situation of prisons in Ecuador?

What is happening today in the prisons in Ecuador is that they are overcrowded, and there are people who are imprisoned who should not be imprisoned.

They should not be imprisoned, for example, because they are people who have not been prosecuted, who are in pretrial detention, but who do not comply with the requirements of international standards on pretrial detention or with the guidelines that the Ecuadorian courts have accepted in the matter, that is, pretrial detention must be a measure of last resort when it appears that a defendant is going to try to destroy the evidence in his case or is going to flee from justice.

The same happens with people who could receive the benefits established by Ecuadorian law, for example, because they have had good behavior and have served part of their sentence, but due to delays in the process to grant those benefits, these people are not released.

And we also see a serious problem in terms of drug policy, an important part of those detained in Ecuador are imprisoned for crimes related to drug possession, which is a bad policy in terms of human rights.

It is a policy that has proven, throughout the world, to be unsuccessful in avoiding the health problem, which is essentially drug use, and that is why we propose reforms on this issue.

What reforms?

Reforms to prevent drug possession from being penalized directly or through figures, let’s say micro-trafficking, which are sometimes used abusively to penalize possession.

Policies for the fight against drugs have, let’s say, we must look for new policies that do not attack the weakest chain, which are consumers or who are perhaps vulnerable people who end up forcibly involved in the drug business, but have more serious policies to search for the leaders of those criminal groups that promote drug trafficking and to do it from a perspective also for people addicted to public health to protect their rights.

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But perhaps the underlying problem also lies in attacking social problems?

Of course. Another crucial problem that favors the conditions for organized crime in Ecuador is the lack of opportunities, there is poverty, which makes it much easier for these drug trafficking groups, organized crime groups, to be able to recruit these vulnerable people, these young people who they don’t have opportunities.

One of the steps that the Government has taken in recent months is to carry out a prison census and also incorporate agents to control the prisons. How do you look at this?

They are positive steps. We believe that the prison census is necessary because the situation in which Ecuador was in was a serious situation, because there was no detailed, concrete, credible information about who were the people who were imprisoned in prisons, and it is also good that they have been incorporated prison guards.

The problem is that many more prison guards are needed, according to our estimates, about 6,000 more prison guards are needed in Ecuador to have enough to control the prison population.

In what way could you support, if you do, perhaps with legal, technical advice or with funds to continue in the process of change, because it is something that is not going to happen overnight?

Our objective is to make recommendations to the Government and we do it in Ecuador and in the other countries of the world in which we work so that, based on our diagnosis and their obligations, they can progressively solve these problems.

We have had meetings with the Government to propose different options and give them our recommendations on how we believe that legal reforms and public policy reforms can be carried out to address this problem.

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Is there no financial support, any program?

No. Our mandate is not, for example, unlike the United Nations, which does provide economic or technical support.

Our mandate is to monitor and give concrete recommendations so that the reforms can be carried out, but we do not work on issues of economic support for governments.

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Any recommendations regarding the infrastructure of prisons?

I believe that is an important issue. There is something that is scandalous in Ecuador and that is that the maps of several of the country’s prisons have been lost.

There is a significant effort that must be made in this sense to recover the maps and to review the infrastructure that is necessary to house the population, so that they have their basic rights guaranteed and also so that the effective control of the arrested.

Has this document that has been submitted already been sent to the Ecuadorian authorities or will they do so soon?

We are in constant communication with the Ecuadorian authorities, of course, in the next few days we are going to send them the document so that they have it and we have also had several meetings to discuss various issues that are in the report such as the prison issue, the Despite the protests that occurred in the middle of the year, we have a good relationship with the Ecuadorian government. (YO)