SNAI presents a plan for prison management; There is still no date for the transfer of leaders

Close to 5,000 beneficiaries of the semi-open regime with simplification of procedures this year, a draft decree to pardon people who have served 40% and 60% of sentences for minor crimes, a prison census that is being carried out this year, the creation of a prison school, the start of a selection process for 1,400 aspiring agents in April, the future purchase of 5,000 electronic surveillance devices, the implementation of infrastructure projects and the repatriation of foreign prisoners are some of the actions that make up Part of Prison Security Plan, presented on the morning of this Monday, February 14, by Comprehensive Care Service for persons deprived of liberty and adolescent offenders (SNAI) to the media.

In figures, what the SNAI currently knows about the reality of prisons is that there are 34,714 people deprived of liberty and 403 adolescent offenders, a total of 35,117 prisoners; that overcrowding is 15.07%; that all detainees have received the first dose of the vaccine against COVID-19 and that there are 1,600 prison guides.

However, what is known so far is not enough to define a classification of prisoners and the transfer of the “leaders” of criminal gangs that operate from prisons. Responding to this question from the press, the director of the SNAI, Paul Ramirezpointed out that first the prison census in coordination with the Civil registration and the National Institute of Statistics and Censuses (INEC), and a date cannot yet be defined.

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Several actions of the plan are related to the International cooperation, for example, the penitentiary school, to train agents and personnel who work in prisons, which will be implemented with the collaboration of the Pact of the European Union, the National Penitentiary and Prison Institute (Inpec) of Colombia and the Penitentiary Service of The Savior. Chile, Italy, France and Portugal will join.

In addition, the reclassification of prisons with five parameters: existing infrastructure, installed capacity in human and logistical resources, level of security and target population, rehabilitation centers of type A, B and C or maximum, minimum and medium security, respectively.

The “conversation” with media, called ‘Peace managers: communication, justice and humanism’, It is the first approach that the SNAI has made with the media, after almost nine months in which the director has been changed four times and after a year 2021 that registered more than 300 violent deaths in the country’s prisons.

The appointment began with a video of two detainees who had been able to see each other physically on February 14, known as Valentine’s Day, and with the placement of Claudia Garzon, criminologist and victimologist from Colombia and presented as part of the Pacification Committee, for media representatives to point out what the press is doing to “humanize” prisons and not see them as “warehouses of human flesh.” The response of those present was that there is a lack of access to information, secrecy and ignorance of what happens inside the penitentiary centers.

The event was held without cameras or recorders, with questions written on paper and transferred to the authority that was in that same space and, in the middle of those nearly two hours, six minutes of press statements by Ramírez without the possibility of questions, although with the initial promise that this “conversation” will be the first step towards transparency in information. (I)