Guillermo Lasso signs decree to create a commission for dialogue and pacification of the Ecuadorian prison system

To face the crisis in the social rehabilitation system of Ecuador, the President of the Republic, Guillermo Lasso, signed Executive Decree 265 this Thursday, December 16, to create a commission of nine national and international experts.

President Guillermo Lasso signed the agreement and presented the nine members of the Intervention Commission for Penitentiary Dialogue and Pacification, which will begin to work in a maximum period of two weeks and which has six months to present a report to generate strategies, programs and plans to strengthen the rehabilitation system, which currently coexists with an extended period of state of exception due to the continuous confrontations between criminal groups that operate inside the country’s prisons.

To do this, the members of the Commission will visit prisons, interview people deprived of liberty, their families and prison guides, officials and former offenders, to learn about the shortcomings.

Claudia Garzón, a native of Colombia and an expert in Criminology, stressed that it is important to create a more dignified, humane and fair prison system. “We really need to work from human dignity, that transforms (…), the loss of sensitivity has caused violence to be decriminalized and that we see prisons as warehouses of human flesh,” said Garzón, who has also worked in Mexican prisons .

IACHR delegates received folders with testimonies from relatives of murdered inmates

Father Luis Barrios, a native of Puerto Rico and who has worked for decades in Boston (USA), is another member of the Commission. He is an expert in clinical psychology, addictions, justice, and rehabilitation.

The Commission delegates mentioned that a prison census is currently being carried out. This collection of information will allow to know more details of the prison population and classify the inmates by type of crime, time of sentence, diseases and others.

The Minister of Government, Alexandra Vela, explained that the members of the Commission are from civil society, the Church, the academy, and experts on human rights issues such as Nelsa Curbelo, who stressed that reparation for families is important. , but he clarified that it can be done not only with financial compensation.

“There are other ways, because compensation has huge costs and is paid by society. Giving scholarships to the children of inmates and ensuring access to health for family members is another way to repair, “said Curbelo.

The recent massacres of last September and November that took place in the Litoral Penitentiary, in Guayaquil, caused the death of 187 inmates. This week, another inmate appeared suspended in one of the bathrooms of that same prison.

Faced with the constant incidents in prisons, a group from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) visited several penitentiary centers in the country to analyze the treatment of human rights in those places. In Guayaquil they were in the Regional and Women’s prisons, however, they did not enter the Penitentiary for security.

At that time, on December 2, despite the police and military presence in the perimeters of the penitentiary centers, Colonel Fernando Vaca, general coordinator of perimeter security of the deprivation of liberty centers, in Guayaquil, said that there were all the facilities for the visit of the commissioners in the centers where violent acts have been registered and added that the situation was under control, but admitted that there was a “tense calm.”

Members of the Commission:

Claudia garzon

Father Luis Barrios

Christian Nieto Salamea

Prudence Loor Mendoza

Miriam Delgado Chavez

Monica Ingarévalo Jaramillo

Jorge Narvaez Matamoros

Nelsa Curbelo Cora

Ricardo Morales Vela. (I)