Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic: They are known as “Rana Men”, inmates who are forced to sleep in prison floors through the Dominican Republic, often next to bathrooms or holes overwhelmed on the ground that serve as one.
Thousands of them are crowded in severely overpopulated prisons in the country, some operate their capacity seven times. Most languish there without having been accused of a crime, and activists warn that they face inhuman conditions and lack of medical care.
Despite the promises of improving the system, critics say that the Dominican Republic continues to press and allow prior arrests to the trial in almost all criminal cases in which no charges have occurred and has made few changes as problems inside of prisons continue to grow.
“The prisons have not become the land of any man,” said Rodolfo Valentín Santos, director of the National Office of Public Defense of the Dominican Republic.
More than 60% of the approximately 26,000 inmates in the country are arrested under preventive detention, without charges, according to the National Office of Public Defense. The proponents argue that the measure aims to protect society and allows the authorities to raise evidence in a case.
But some detainees have passed up to 20 years in prison without being convicted of a crime, said Valentín.
He pointed out that the Constitution and the Criminal Code of the country dictate that preventive detention is an “exceptional” measure. There are six other measures that do not imply imprisonment, including bond, but Valentín said they are rarely used.
‘We have a situation’
On a recent afternoon, Darwin Lugo and Yason Guzmán left the National Penitentiary of Victoria, in the northeast corner of the extensive capital, Santo Domingo.
The prison was built for a maximum of 2,100 inmates, but has more than 7,000 of them, with more than 3,300 under preventive detention, according to the National Office of Public Defense.
It is the oldest and most populated prison in the country.
“You have to take into account your life,” said Lugo, who with Guzmán visited several friends held there, some under preventive detention.
“There are many of them that are not well,” Guzmán said about the inmates there. “There is extreme poverty.”
They said that their friends, who have passed more than five years imprisoned there, are well connected and only occasionally request money or ask that the SIM card of their cell phone be recharge.
Last year, at least 11 inmates died in the victory after a short circuit in a cell that caused a fire and an explosion. It was one of the most mortal prison fires in the country since 2005, when at least 134 inmates were killed in the eastern city of Higüey after rival gangs set fire to their bedding.
After last year’s fire in La Victoria, the Dominican President, Luis Abinader, appointed former Prison Director Roberto Santana as head of a commission in charge of reviewing and improving the more than 40 prisons in the country.
“We must admit, gentlemen, that we have a situation in all the prisons of the country,” Abinader said when he announced the appointment last March. He also announced that the money recovered from corruption cases would help finance the construction of new prisons.
Santana has long requested the closure of the victory and prison of 15 of Azua, located in the western region of the country. The commission he directs is working on those and other monumental tasks, free of external interference, he said.
“We do not receive orders from politicians or anyone else,” said Santana, who previously trained the staff for the new prisons built in the early 2000s.
Santana, who once served as president of the Dominican Student Federation in the 1970s, was arrested several times under President Joaquín Balaguer, known for having imprisoned political and dissident opponents already killed.
Santana knows first -hand the conditions of victory: he spent two years in lone confinement there.
‘At the edge of collapse’
In the early 2000s, the Dominican Republic began building 21 new prisons to improve conditions. They were attended by trained personnel, non -police and soldiers, who supervised the other 19 prisons in the country.
But the conditions in the new prisons have deteriorated, according to the National Human Rights Commission of the Dominican Republic.
“The Penitentiary System of the Dominican Republic is on the verge of collapse,” said the commission in its 2023 report, the last available one.
In prisons throughout the country, overcrowding is rampant. The cells lack bathrooms, natural light and ventilation, which leads to the worsening of health conditions. Some 5,000 inmates are sick of conditions that range from heart problems to cancer to HIV, but receive only the most basic medicine, if that, and some prisons do not have medical staff, according to Valentín, whose office issues an annual report in depth on the conditions of all prisons.
In his 2023 report, the last year available, his office requested the closure of prisons, including one in the northern coastal city of Nagua.
“The overcrowding level … makes it impossible to achieve true rehabilitation for inmates, since the State has forgotten,” reads the report. “In the conditions in which they are, it is obvious that they are treated as objects and not as human beings endowed with rights.”
Another prison was so crowded that the government kept the outdoor inmates in trucks with metal roofs that were prowling under the sun, causing demands, said Valentín.
A spokesman for Colonel Roberto Hernández Basilio, director of prisons, did not respond to the requests of an interview. Hernández has previously said that his office is taking measures to improve conditions.
Meanwhile, the Dominican Attorney Miriam Germán Brito has repeatedly talked against preventive detention, but pointed out that the decision is in the hands of the judges. A Germán spokeswoman said he is not giving media interviews.
Both Santana and Valentín said they believe that government corruption is one of the reasons why the country has dragged their feet to review the system, accusing soldiers and police officers who direct the prisons of benefiting from illegal activities.
Public corruption also led the authorities to stop the construction of a very promoted prison in recent years that the overcrowding was expected.
Although this imprisonment wasted, Santana said that he expects 2028 to build 25 new prisons capable of keeping more than 20,000 inmates by 2028.
While they are expected to help relieve overcrowding, there are concerns. Activists point out that inmates are not released even when a judge has legally released them.
The National Human Rights Commission said that approximately 2,700 inmates are still in prison because their paperwork is paralyzed in the backward courts. Meanwhile, hundreds of others remain imprisoned despite being officially released because they owe money to the government and cannot pay fines ordered by a judge.
