The specific functions of these institutes are to protecting citizens and reintegrating the prisoner is not punishment, although our imagination tells us otherwise.
In Norway, there is the Bastoy Island prison, where inmates live in comfortable cabins, surrounded by a sunny environment, where they play sports and buy their food in a supermarket that operates inside the prison. In contrast to this, in Rwanda there is the Gitarama prison, in deep Africa, where some eight thousand malnourished people survive in a space for four hundred inmates, of whom dozens die daily.
Since 1955, the United Nations has established minimum rules for the treatment of prisoners called the Mandela Rules, in tribute to the South African leader who remained imprisoned for twenty-seven years.. There, the different principles to be taken into account in dealing with prisoners are established: the principle of human dignity, impartiality and non-discrimination, not aggravating suffering, reintegration and minimizing the differences between free life and the secluded one. Unfortunately, there are different prisons in the world for similar crimes, even within the same country, and it is the states who should ensure that the objectives of the prisons are met.
Penitentiary institutes are relatively modern since before the 19th century there were only prisons or dungeons where inmates waited there until their release or execution. The specific functions of these institutes are to protecting citizens and reintegrating the prisoner is not punishment, although our imagination tells us otherwise.
Article eighteen of the National Constitution in the declarations, rights and guarantees expresses: “The prisons of the Nation will be healthy and clean for the safety and not for punishment of the prisoners detained in them, and any measure that, under the pretext of precaution, leads to mortification beyond what it requires, will hold the judge who authorizes it responsible.”. In Argentina the humanization of prisons began under the direction of Roberto Petinatto (father) who banished the shackles and the striped suit and ordered the closure of the prison at the end of the world in Ushuaia, in addition to stimulating the literacy of the prisoners.
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In recent months, videos have circulated of the maximum security prison in El Salvador called CECOT, the Terrorist Confinement Center (known as Bukele prison by the name of the president), where thousands of members of the gang of gang members called maras were housed. Regarding the opening of the prison, the Minister of Justice of El Salvador, Gustavo Villatoro, said in a BBC note: “The members of terrorist organizations are going to go there, it is not a place for the detention of collaborators. The collaborators are going to be in other prisons, where they will have rehabilitation programs, to be able to work. With those who go to CECOT, we have a commitment to the Salvadorans that they never return, that they do not return to the communities. And we are going to be in charge of putting together the necessary cases so that they do not return.” I reiterate, the Minister of Justice of El Salvador said this to the BBC.
I do not consider myself an abolitionist of prisons, nor a guarantor of criminals, but I believe, wish and manifest that in my head there is a prison model that, without needing to reach the resort model of Norway, respects the rights of convicts, provides them humanitarian assistance and family support. Initiatives such as the Espartanos in our country or the Second Oportunidades Internal Restaurant in Colombia, run by inmates, are examples that reduced recidivism when purpose and humanized treatment are added to confinements.
In our imagination, sometimes Manichean, we tend to be guarantors or punitivist according to our greater or lesser proximity to the inmate. It is an inevitable swing, because what is subjective can affect us and that is why the function of justice is indispensable, an instrument that must balance this pendulum movement, that protects the citizens and assists the convict until he recovers what is valued much more when is lost: freedom.
Source: Ambito
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