The San José Penal Execution Court ordered the closure of new admissions at the Institutional Attention Center (CAI) Gerardo Rodríguez, As a result, the country was left without penal centers for men with the possibility of receiving people from judicial cells.
As explained by the Minister of Justice and Peace, Fiorella Salazar Rojas, this extreme situation was warned on various occasions and The closure order comes at a time when the CAI San José (located in San Sebastián) has at least 300 spaces, after it was subjected to a series of improvements, but a closure order weighs on it that does not allow to use the available spaces.
“With this closing we come to the moment when there is not a single center (for men) in the country without judicial closure. We face an unprecedented and very complicated situation. We are on high alert “the hierarch warned.
The Minister added that the CAI San José withdrew the entire sentenced population to open space to the non-indicted population (without a sentence), and improvements were made at the infrastructure level, but the closure order is still in force.
In the current conditions, at this moment we do not have materially how to fulfill the mandate to receive new income. On the one hand, the Constitutional Chamber orders us to receive people within 48 hours; on the other, the court orders make it mandatory for us to comply with the closure orders. If you strangle the prison system, you strangle the entire criminal justice system in the country. I am concerned about the people who are accumulating in judicial cells and the work of the police forces in the street. What will happen when the fruit of Public Security work on the street cannot reach the prison system? How are citizens going to feel?
According to the Ministry of Justice, the court order they received recognizes the limitations that the prison system has been dragging for decades and indicates that “Every day with the same work team, an increased prison population must be served without having the necessary infrastructure.”
It also states that “The excessive use of confinement and preventive detention, as well as the punitive ideology that prevails in prison management, are directly generators of the very serious situation.”
The State has the power to determine its criminal policy, But if you opt for greater control, you are obliged to assume the consequences of that decision. and ensuring the budget, infrastructure and personnel necessary for the administration of the prisons.
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