Appalling Conditions in Latin America’s Prisons

In the aftermath of last week’s gruesome Comayagua prison fire, one fact stands out: Almost two-thirds of the 800 inmates were awaiting trial or being held without charge. Under Honduran and international law, these people were innocent until proven guilty. In a functioning judicial system, many of these prisoners would have been released on some form of bail. Instead, they were packed into overcrowded cells as part of a misguided battle against Honduras’ appalling crime rate. Many of them are now dead.

Where the focus should be on professionalizing and reforming a police that are either too corrupt or too unskilled to perform investigations, instead Honduran lawmakers have continued to increase penalties for all levels of crime. Judges refuse bail even for low-risk defendants. The police focus on filling prisons with people mostly accused of low-level property and drug crimes. The result: According to local press, Honduras has 24 prisons with a total capacity of 8,000, but they currently hold 13,000 prisoners.

This approach has left those most responsible for Honduras’ status as the most violent country in the region—the murderers, gang leaders, drug kingpins and kidnappers—free to abuse the country’s citizens with impunity.

Unfortunately, with some variations, this scenario recurs elsewhere in Latin America. After the Honduras fire, the spokesman for the U.N. Commissioner for Human Rights highlighted the appalling conditions found in prisons across Latin America, citing “the lack of access to basic services such as adequate floor space, potable water, food, healthcare, and lack of basic sanitary and hygienic standards.”

The spokesman also noted that the situation is made worse “by judicial delays and excessive resort to pretrial detention.” In short, many people held in these terrible places should not be there at all.

In Honduras people can spend years detained without conviction. According to the latest government figures, around 50 percent of the entire prison population is awaiting trial. In Peru the figure is around 60 percent, while it takes an average of 46 months—almost four years—for a case to come to trial. In Mexico the figure is a still dismal 42 percent (in the United States, around 20 percent of the prison population is in pretrial detention).

Allowing the release of the vast numbers of people charged with low-level offenses would not just improve conditions for those released and their families. It would also reduce overcrowding and ease the pressure on prison resources.

This is not an idealistic dream. A professional police force in Chile, for example, coupled with a vibrant judicial system, keeps that country’s pretrial population at around 20 percent (although Chile had its own fire disaster in 2010 and needs to invest more in its prison infrastructure). Reforms that promote pretrial release are already underway in various countries in the region, and are showing signs of success. In Ecuador the criminal defense system has been revamped to focus on precisely the issue of reducing pretrial detention.

In Mexico the first pretrial services office in the region enables the release of low-risk young people in the state of Morelos, and the system is now being extended to adult detainees as well. Similar pretrial release programs are being developed by the government authorities in Rosario, Argentina and Huaura, Peru.

Lawmakers and concerned citizens need to recognize that mass incarceration of low-level persons who have yet-to-be convicted does not stop crime. Instead, it contributes to overcrowding in prisons that breed disease and corruption. Leaving a breadwinner behind bars unnecessarily for months or years leaves families economically broken, and prevents reintegration into society.

Perhaps even more importantly, the discrimination endemic in Latin American prisons—the rich seldom spend time in pretrial detention—undermines confidence in the entire system of law and justice.

International aid donors and advocates have paid too little attention to this issue, allowing governments to pretend that increased sanctions and reduced procedural rights will make the countries in the region safer. We need to help countries develop real solutions such as proper bail and legal aid systems.

Small steps are under way, but more needs to be done.