ask relatives of prisoners after another massacre in prison in Ecuador

Relatives of prisoners in a prison in Ecuador where at least 12 people were killed in another massacre on Monday they wonder how similar events continue to occur in that nation’s prisons.

This is the seventh violent incident of these proportions in the last year and a half. Initially 13 victims were reported, but the Ministry of the Interior corrected the figure to 12.

Prison violence has left at least 350 prisoners dead, attributed mainly to disputes between members of gangs linked to drug trafficking.

Monday’s massacre occurred at the Santo Domingo de Tsachilas prison, about 100 kilometers southwest of Quito, Ecuador’s capital. Images released by Reuters showed moments after the violent incident, on the outskirts of the prison, where men and women anxiously awaited news about their imprisoned relatives.

“I say one thing, the people who are killing there, how did the weapons enter (…) the police are the corrupt ones,” said one of the women, while others around her cried, speaking through cell phones.

“Do you not have relatives or what is happening out here does not hurt you,” he added as ambulances and policemen on motorcycles entered and left the prison.

The government said on Monday that “a total inspection is being carried out inside” the prison. After the incident, the elite body of the police and members of the Army guarded the place.

On his Twitter account, the Minister of the Interior, Patricio Castillo, referred to the “harshness” with which the police are criticized, but warned that it is a “pending task” to study human nature, in an apparent allusion to recent events. .

The images of the events traveled through social networks and messaging services, in which dismembered and throat-cut bodies appeared, in the middle of a prison yard. These plans revealed the violence in the attack, which was initially classified as “a fight”, according to the National Service for Adults Deprived of Liberty and Adolescent Offenders (SNAI).

On Monday, towards the end of the afternoon, the SNAI reported that control of the center had been regained.

Carillo said on Monday that the government regrets “very much what is happening,” referring to the degree of violence used and described the acts as “enormously irrational.”

The official reiterated that the prison system continues to face structural problems.

Some more details of the incident

The interior minister said that the recent incident occurred in a minimum security pavilion. He mentioned that a fraction of the organization known as ‘Chone Killers’ was involved.

Carrillo did not rule out the possibility of changes in the management of the prison, after the balance of victims left by this new fact.

The murders this Monday occurred just two months after a similar massacre -in the same center- in which 44 inmates lost their lives, including Ecuadorian and Venezuelan citizens.

“What happened today shows that the measures that have been adopted in the center are not what we would like them to be…on behalf of the national government, we are very sorry for what is happening, we are sorry that the psychological profile of people is increasingly much more affected in the prisons so that they commit these acts of irrationality,” said Minister Carrillo.

These events occur less than a week after President Guillermo Lasso presented 1,300 aspiring servants of the Penitentiary Security and Surveillance Corps (CSVP) and 100 new educational inspectors for the Centers for Adolescent Offenders.

In said act, the director of the SNAI, Police General Pablo Ramírez, asserted that the government’s actions made it possible to reduce overcrowding in prisons from “26.75% in December 2021 to 8% this month.”

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