In the Guayaquil prison complex there is one guide for every 193 prisoners, far from the UN international standard of 1/10

The Guayaquil prison complex, the scene of bloody massacres of inmates this year, is made up of five centers that until October housed 15,264 people deprived of liberty. And here they only exist 238 prison security officers, divided into three groups of 79 each. In other words, there is a real ratio of one guide for every 193 inmates on each shift.

The figure is far from the international standard recommended by the UN, which is one guard for every 10 inmates. And it does not fit because, in addition to the fact that there are few guides, there are 4,356 inmates who exceed the capacity of this entire prison complex, which increases the lack of control, according to information collected by a legislative commission to address the prison crisis in Ecuador.

In this prison complex in Guayaquil, 203 inmates have died so far this year, which represents 60.6% of the 335 deaths throughout the country behind bars.

The members of the Assembly’s Sovereignty, Integration and Comprehensive Security Commission, who visited this prison on October 4 for three hours, were told that the ratio is one guide for every 108 inmates and this was recorded in a report of more than 600 pages.

This means that at some point two shifts must be put together to add 141 agents to the care of a prison population that exceeds, on average, 40% of the capacity of this complex, but that reaches up to 62.83% in the Penitentiary of the Litoral, scene of the death of more than 200 inmates this year, and that climbs to 133.58% in the Provisional Detention Center, where it is supposed that only those not yet convicted should be, but it is not like that.

It is that in 2020 the members of a gang (Los Lagartos) were transferred to the CDP who decided to surrender their weapons and disappeared from the confrontation in the Penitentiary in exchange for staying in a safe place for them; And as there is no longer a place for anyone else there, those who are taken to preventive detention are mixed in the pavilions with no other criteria than to belong to a gang, or to say that they are part of it even if they are not, to seek their protection inside, relatives say.

But the union of two shifts means a long day for the few guides who are not well paid, their representatives complain, and lack a minimum number of non-lethal weapons. “They do not have handcuffs to transfer people deprived of liberty from the pavilions to the administrative area from where the virtual hearings are held and to the health area”, says the report of the assembly members.

Cristian Peñaherrera, president of the Association of Penitentiary Servants of Ecuador, notes that the guides no longer have life insurance, which they previously had. “In their activities they even have to contribute with their own resources. The institution does not have the means of mobilization, they do not have weapons, there is no infrastructure for the agents, the lack of personnel is totally evident: 1,600 agents for 40,000 inmates nationwide ”.

The situation is more critical in the Penitentiary, where according to the legislative report, “there is only one bulletproof vest.”

Marcelo Toro, an expert in penitentiary issues, says that the lack of personnel and equipment translates into the confinement of inmates without guidance. “Before, prison guides received basic courses in psychology. Since 2014 they have been prison treatment agents, no longer dealing with inmates, and since 2016 they have been prohibited from contacting inmates. The PPL no longer have a guide, being that they spend all the time locked up ”.

As the guides are not enough for the large number of inmates, the support of the police becomes necessary, who have reached up to 7,000 elements in the most critical moments of the crisis. And they are supported by the Armed Forces on the outer perimeter. But neither the police nor the military are trained to deal with inmates, warn human rights organizations.

In Guayaquil, the parliamentarians wrote down in their report what the director mentioned to them and what they managed to observe, which was not much. “It is impossible to enter the pavilions. The keys are held by those who control criminal organizations in the interior ”. This has changed after the November massacre, according to the government, and they are in control.

But because of this impediment, legislators say, in October they could not verify the living conditions of the inmates, if there is care for priority groups or if the food reaches everyone, what quality it has and under what criteria it is distributed. Nor were they able to verify that the UN standard on the separation and classification of inmates according to the crimes committed and their level of dangerousness is met.

“It was reported that a technical separation is not possible. Neither by age nor level of danger. The criterion of separation that is applied is that of belonging to a certain criminal gang ”, Reads the report that was known by the plenary session of the Legislative and sent to the Presidency of the Republic, among other institutions, key to implement changes in the prison system.

Francisco Estupiñán Barrantes, an expert in criminal law and security, says that “the prison infrastructure must be developed based on rehabilitation; must comply with human rights standards; with modern security standards ”, but that does not happen for now and is clear in the parliamentary report.

In the women’s center, the women of a pavilion complained that they had not been allowed to sunbathe for a long time, as a punishment measure, although that is also contrary to international standards that seek to prevent all forms of mistreatment and torture. They also do not have access to the commissary to stock up on hygiene products and basic necessities, as well as food.

“It was reported that when there are riots they are not fed. The director informed that it is because the food providers are afraid to enter and deliver the food ”. This is how the mistreatment of men and women in the Guayaquil prison complex is justified.

“You have to identify the prisoners who are part of organized crime. They should be classified into maximum, medium and minimum security pavilions, according to the different degrees of danger ”, suggests Estupiñán, who was received by the commission; in other words, the State must comply with what the international standards say for prison security.

As in the administrative part the prisoners do not send, then the assembly members were able to enter and saw that there is no equipment for digitization of documents or basic office resources such as bond paper and accumulated, deteriorated and moth files are piled up, because “the staff it is not enough for the preparation of pre-release files ”.

At the national level, only 57% of the people locked up have a sentence, that is, 43% are under the preventive prison regime, without a conviction, according to data from the Kaleidos Interdisciplinary Ethnography Center, part of the Alliance against prisons. that he made a diagnosis of the penitentiary system of Ecuador and that was included in the report of the Parliamentary Commission.

Among those killed in the last massacre at the Penitentiary were people without a sentence, investigated for crimes without social or serious impact, who tried to prove their innocence and could not achieve it.

The commission found that prisoners without sentence continue to arrive while others are leaving, pardoned, for suffering catastrophic and terminal illnesses, one of the first decisions of the Executive after the last massacre in the Litoral Penitentiary. (I)