Guillermo Lasso delegates to SNAI the contracting of construction and remodeling works in prisons

Within the period of renewal of the state of exception in prisons for an additional thirty days, the President Guillermo Lasso issued the Executive Decree 280 to delegate to National Service of Comprehensive Attention to Persons Deprived of Liberty and Adolescent Offenders (SNAI) the competences for contracting construction and remodeling works in the Social Rehabilitation System.

Cleaning, restoration, adaptation, modification and incorporation of areas are included.

The SNAI may be in charge of the entire pre-contractual and contractual process of the works, including the preparation of specifications, the award of contracts, the organization of the inspection and supervision of the execution.

Government announces $ 75 million investment to restructure the prison system

In a term not exceeding ninety days, the Service must coordinate the actions necessary for the execution of the executive decree with the Ministry of Government and Ministry of Transport and Public Works.

In August, the Government announced the $ 75 million investment to restructure the prison system. Back then, Fausto Cobo, director of SNAIHe said that these resources would not be used to build more prisons, but for adjustments to pavilions, the adaptation of a maximum security penitentiary and a smaller one with “maximum, maximum security.”

Actions were also announced, in six months, for repairs in technology and infrastructure and, in two years, to solve the overcrowding.

This announcement was made after the murders that occurred in July this year in two prisons.

With the murder of 62 inmates in the Litoral Penitentiary, in November, Lasso pointed out that security is the government’s number one priority and that intervention with infrastructure and technology in the system is one of the mechanisms they implement to try to overcome the prison crisis.

After the latest attacks on the Litoral Penitentiary, the reconstruction of several walls that were destroyed by the inmates to be able to pass to another ward and commit the murders is also pending. (I)