2024-01-12 17:43:31
Ecuador’s prisons are out of control. Despite the hundreds of prisoners who died in orchestrated massacres in recent years, and the repeated promises to improve security in prisons, they remain in the hands of powerful mafias that from the penitentiary centers control drug trafficking, extortion, order murders, among other crimes. One of the campaign promises of the new president Daniel Noboa was precisely to reform the system and take control of the prisons. And since the beginning of this month he made announcements about it.
To illustrate the power that criminals have in prisons, one example is enough. One of the crimes that has impacted Ecuadorians the most was the murder of presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio, which occurred on August 9, 2023 in Quito. Investigations have determined that the order to carry out the crime possibly came from the Cotopaxi prison, which is controlled by the Los Lobos criminal gang, since the group of Colombians who carried out the murder had previous contacts with inmates of said prison.
LOOK: What is known about the escape of alias Fito, one of the most dangerous criminals in Ecuador
All the hitmen arrested for the Villavicencio crime were later murdered in prison.
The president of Ecuador, Daniel Noboa, speaks during a radio program in the north of Quito, on January 10, 2024. (Photo by Leaflet / Ecuadorian Presidency / AFP).
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Now, the objective of the Noboa Government, embodied in the so-called Fénix Plan, is to separate the ringleaders from the gang members.
At this point, it should be noted that prisoners in Ecuador are not classified by their degree of danger, but by their membership in criminal gangs. This explains the fact that in prisons each group is in a specific cell surrounded by their cronies, something similar to what happened in El Salvador but on a larger scale, since the members of the Mara Salvatrucha could not be in the same prison. than their enemies from Barrio 18. Today the reality in Nayib Bukele’s country is different.
Another example of what is happening in Ecuador: the recently escaped Adolfo Macías, alias Fito, leader of Los Choneros, occupied a cell in the Guayaquil Regional Prison surrounded by members of his same criminal organization. From there he continued to control the illicit businesses of his gang abroad and, in addition, inside he extorted other inmates, according to the authorities.
Photograph released by the Ecuadorian Armed Forces showing Adolfo Macías, alias Fito, leader of the Los Choneros criminal gang, while being transferred to the La Roca maximum security complex in Guayaquil. (AFP).
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After the murder of Villavicencio, Fito, who allegedly threatened to kill the politician, was transferred to the maximum security prison called La Roca, which is within the Penitenciaría del Litoral complex in Guayaquil and serves to isolate the most dangerous inmates. But he did not spend even a month in that place, since a judge ordered that he be returned to the Regional prison.
Photograph provided by the Armed Forces of Ecuador on Monday, January 8, 2024, showing the intervention in the Litoral Regional prison, in Guayaquil. (EFE/Courtesy of the Armed Forces of Ecuador).
Noboa’s plan: Bukele-style prisons and prison barges
At the beginning of January, Noboa confirmed that he will build prisons similar to those in Mexico and El Salvador. In the latter country, President Nayib Bukele built the Terrorism Confinement Center (Cecot), also known as the “Bukele megaprison,” in record time.
During the election campaign, Noboa also promised to purchase prison barges to locate criminal gang leaders 80 miles (129 kilometers) off the Pacific coast.
Regarding the prisons on land, Noboa said that “they are prisons that will be ready in 10 to 11 months. They are going to be the same, because it is the same company, under the same design, that made the maximum security prisons in Mexico and that made them in El Salvador.”
“We have already completed the conversations with international groups that built the prisons in El Salvador and Mexico and with that we will lay the first stone in January,” Noboa announced.
“It is Israeli cooperation in the design of maximum and super maximum security prisons and the segmentation for minor crimes and contraventions. It is a system that was not invented by Bukele, but came from Mexico, and before then they achieved it in Thailand, in Singapore. Then it was Mexico, El Salvador and now Ecuador would have it,” the president emphasized.
Ecuador has 20 prisons
where 31,300 people are held, although its capacity is for 27,500 prisoners; That means there is 13% overcrowding.
Noboa added as a joke: “for all the Bukele lovers, it is an equal, identical prison. If they want to go, take a walk, meet her, stay one night, they can go, commit a crime.”
The president also gave the location of the new prisons, saying that they will be built in the Amazonian province of Pastaza and the coastal Santa Elena.
Why were those places chosen? Noboa maintained that “they are the areas of least influence of narcoterrorist groups.”
He explained that the prisons will be located between 20 and 30 minutes away by vehicle from the population.
He said that his government is going to separate the most dangerous inmates and this will stop the prison massacres that since February 2021 have left 460 prisoners dead.
“They are prisons to have segmentation, adequate isolation of people,” Noboa continued.
The Government has not revealed how much these two prisons will cost.
The indigenous people of Pastaza,
Grouped in the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of the Ecuadorian Amazon (Confenaie), they oppose the construction of the prison in their province.
On Thursday, Noboa detailed that the new prisons will have cellular and satellite signal inhibition, electronic systems with cutting-edge technology, digital and analog access control, triple perimeter security and electrical self-generation. In addition, a water treatment system, armored construction, faceless guards, environmental licenses and permits.
The prisons will have capacity for 736 prisoners in three modules: one high security, which will have 160 cells, each for four prisoners.
A second module will be maximum security, with 32 cells and two prisoners for each one, and finally, the third module will be super maximum security for 32 prisoners “with a high level of danger, one per cell.”
The accommodation barge Bibby Stockholm remains moored at the dock in the port of Portland, on the southwest coast of England, on August 8, 2023. Ecuador wants to use this type of boat as prisons. (Photo by Ben Stansall / AFP).
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Regarding the prison barges, the president said in December that he has seen three that could arrive in Ecuador within seven or eight months. He said they were in Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States.
These prison barges have the capacity to hold up to 400 people and would cost about $8 million. “A barge can arrive in seven or eight months, depending on how far away it is. Many of the barges are not operational or are not autonomous, they have to be pulled by another ship,” Noboa explained.
An aerial view of the Terrorist Internment Center (CECOT), in Tecoluca, 74 km southeast of San Salvador, taken on February 24, 2023. (Photo Salvadoran Presidency / AFP).
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Bukele’s megaprison
In the absence of more specific details about what the new prisons in Ecuador will be like, it is necessary to explain what the one built in El Salvador is like, which is the model that the South American country will imitate.
The Terrorism Confinement Center (Cecot) was inaugurated by President Bukele on January 31, 2023 and is considered the largest prison in America.
It is located in a rural valley about 74 kilometers southeast of San Salvador. It was built in a record time of seven months. 3,000 people worked and the work was supervised by a Mexican company.
The location of the Bukele megaprison. (AFP).
According to the government, it has a capacity for 40,000 prisoners and is exclusive for those “profiled as high-ranking” of the Mara Salvatrucha and the two factions of Barrio 18.
An inmate talks in a CECOT cell. (Photo by Marvin RECINOS / AFP).
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To enter Cecot, both inmates and security and administrative personnel have to reach registration areas before passing through three fortified gates controlled by security guards.
Each arriving gang member, in addition to going through a body scanner, must register at an entry area where photographs are taken.
For the water supply, two wells were drilled and a 600 cubic meter plant and four cisterns were installed. Regarding electricity, eight electric power substations were built.
A wastewater treatment plant was also built.
The arrival of inmates belonging to the MS-13 and Barrio 18 gangs at CECOT. (AFP).
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The pavilions have a curved roof for natural ventilation.
Each pavilion has a construction area of 6,000 square meters. Each of its 32 cells equipped with steel bars are prepared to house more than 100 gang members.
Each cell is about 100 square meters. In them, gang members have two pipes with running water for personal hygiene and two toilets.
For sleeping, each cell has iron sheet cabins without a mattress.
One of the Cecot cells where cabins without mattresses are shown. (Marvin RECINOS / AFP).
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Inmates remain in a CECOT cell. (Photo by Marvin RECINOS / AFP).
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Furthermore, in each pavilion there are dark, windowless punishment cells.
The megaprison does not have patios for inmates, nor recreation areas or conjugal spaces.
Opinion…
Corruption and prisons in Ecuador
By Ernesto Anzieta, Ecuadorian specialist in security issues
The problem of the penitentiary system in Ecuador It is structural, among other factors due to the overcrowding and the lack of segregation of prison population. This caused ordinary prisoners to mix and contaminate with those linked to organized crime.
The penetration of criminality into the prison system also allowed the entry into prisons of advanced communications systems, weapons, explosives, ammunition, among other prohibited objects. Now prisons are very armed spaces.
Corruption in general (infiltrators in the police, in the prisons themselves, etc.) means that information about operations is easily leaked, frustrating any action by the State to recover the prisons.
Regarding Bukele’s prison model, before making a decision it must be analyzed in depth, starting with the amount of organized crime in Ecuador and the number of prisoners, since the country is much larger and more permeable than El Salvador. .
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