Mariano Gaik Aldrovandi
07/04/2020 - 7:00
- Clarín.com
- Police
Jonathan Gustavo Chuliver (26) died from the burns he sustained in a fire at the Devoto prison in April last year. At that time the authorities spoke of a "fiery focus". What actually happened was that two prisoners set fire to a mattress during the early hours of the morning, burned six inmates, including the one who died, and left Pavilion 30 practically destroyed.
Chuliver has been detained for aggravated robbery since 2014 and died on April 14, 2019 at the Zubizarreta Hospital, after spending three days hospitalized with 50% of his body burned. His is just one of the 50 names on the list of deaths that were recorded in the custody of the Federal Penitentiary Service (SPF), and one of the 18 classified as violent.
The data is part of the “Annual Report 2019 on the situation of human rights in the country's federal prisons” presented this week by the National Penitentiary Office (PPN).
In addition to the number of deaths and crimes recorded in national prisons, the other alarming statistic, and one that cuts across all the other problems in prisons, is overcrowding . The number of people deprived of liberty in SPF establishments increased for the fourth consecutive year and peaked at 14,067 as of December 31 of last year. While at that time the capacity of the units was 12,778.
This is how the pavilion that caught fire in the Devoto prison in April 2019 was left.
“There is still a persistent violation of human rights in the prison system despite the fact that protocols have already been established and measures have been taken. There has been a decline in working conditions due to this overcrowding, ” the prison attorney, Francisco Mugnolo , told Clarín .
Federal prisons have been in “emergency” since March 25, 2019 , when it was declared by the then Minister of Justice, Germán Garavano, for a period of three years. The measure was a response to a harsh ruling by Chamber VI of the National Court of Appeals that ruled that, with exceptions, the conditions of the SPF prisons "are not suitable for the human condition." And he defined the prison situation as "very poor". At the time of the failure the population was 13,574.
Overcrowding in Unit No. 28 of the Federal Penitentiary Service in Courts, in February of last year.
According to statistics compiled by the PPN, since 2010 the prison population grew by 47.7%. While the increase in the number of places in the same period was 21.33%. The year the number of prisoners exceeded the accommodation capacity was 2017.
In this context, last year was one of those that recorded the most deaths in SPF custody in the last decade.
Of course, that is the photo as of December 31, 2019. Today with the coronavirus the country is another and the prisons too. In the official SPF records, overpopulation no longer exists. The data of this Friday showed that there are 11,730 prisoners (10,786 men, 631 women and 26 trans) housed in the national penitentiary units over a capacity of 12,198. There are 2,337 fewer people in jails , compared to the last day of last year,
That does not mean that the overcrowding problem has been solved, since the PPN estimates that some 2,000 detainees were reached by the accords of the national and federal Cassation chambers against the coronavirus and are now in house arrest. But when the pandemic ends, they will have to go back to jails and, according to projections, they are again beyond their capacity.
In addition to poor housing conditions, the main consequence of overpopulation is that it conspires against the function of generating a change in the life model of people who committed a crime.
In that sense, Mugnolo exemplified: "In some units the educational stretch is one week yes and two no because there is no capacity for everyone to attend classes," he said.
The Attorney General of the Nation, Francisco Mugnolo. (Gerardo dell'Oro)
And, on the other hand, he warned of the deterioration of the relations of the prisoners with their families when they were arbitrarily transferred to prisons far from their place of origin. "Those who live in Buenos Aires are sent to Jujuy and those from Jujuy to Tierra del Fuego," he said. In December, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights declared that Argentina's transfer policy violates human rights and called on the country to resolve the situation in one year.
Die in jail
The report indicates that between 2009 and 2019 there were 475 intra-wall deaths, which is equivalent to an annual average of 43.2 cases. 2019 was one of the three periods in which the average was exceeded.
The highest record was in 2012 when there were 56 deaths, of which 25 were violent. The two prisons with the most violent deaths in the last decade are Ezeiza and Marcos Paz, with eleven each, and they are followed by Unit 21 of Infectious Diseases and Devotee, with 6.
The novelty is that last year there was a record number of homicides since the application of the "PPN Procedure" in 2019. Of the 18 deaths classified as "violent", 12 of them were murders, 3 suicides and 2 for "self-attacks on the framework of force measures ”.
Cases of torture and mistreatment are one of the main axes of the report on human rights in prisons. Last year, the PPN released 427 episodes. Of these, 390 were from physical violence and 37 from serious threats or harassment. In this total, several of the events combine different types of mistreatment and torture and also prolonged isolations in the so-called "mailboxes" and no food.
Only 41% of the victims were encouraged to file a criminal complaint for the attacks suffered by the prison guards. And even so, in the Attorney General's Office they recognize that the 427 cases surveyed do not represent the total since many do not dare to report.
The encouraging fact is that the cases of abuse and torture were progressively decreasing from the peak of 820 cases registered in 2014.
"That is a good phenomenon, despite the overcrowding," Mugnolo told Clarín. "It has to do with the fact that the Judiciary issued harsh sentences against penitentiaries for violation of people's rights. For the first time, he gave life sentences that shocked ”, he explained about the downward trend.
Likewise, Mugnolo remarked that due to the pandemic, some prisoners "are worse than before" and exemplified cases of isolation measures poorly implemented in Chaco, or excesses by the Justice of San Martín that "will be denounced".
“The SPF has a hard time starting to transform. There is a certain network of young people who are more likely to carry out the task most closely tied to human rights, but there is very little because the corporation is very strong and they treat someone who respects human rights as a traitor or a soft man, "said Mugnolo, and He also warned about the situation in police stations , which in practice also function as places of detention: “We don't know what's going on there. It does not appear in the statistics. We started touring the police stations and in some jurisdictions they are in a terrible situation. ”
The prison crisis worsened with the coronavirus pandemic and led to protests in different prisons in the country. One of the most important was in the Devoto prison, where the inmates climbed onto the roofs, there was a fire and there were clashes with the prison guards. The PPN reported that two prisoners were wounded with lead bullets.
After that riot, the director of the SPF, Emiliano Blanco, presented his resignation. In June, the Government appointed former judge María Laura Garrigós de Rébori as intervener.
“Everyone has said that they are going to try to improve the situation in prisons and the truth is that they have always left with good intentions. Once again I have expectations of giving you all the support to have the possibility to make certain changes. It is very difficult, look at what happened to Víctor Hortel with the escape, ”said Mugnolo and recalled the episode in which 13 prisoners escaped from the Ezeiza prison in 2013, which led to the resignation of the then director.
“There is a situation that I do not give to anyone. I am very confident. People always have to be given time to start so they can work, ”said the attorney.
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