Reubicación del establecimiento penitenciario y carcelario de mediana seguridad de Duitama (EPMSC-DUITAMA)

Abstract

Corrections and prisons in Colombia are characterized by critical overcrowding and lack of access to rights, such as health. The overcrowding, the lack of foresight and good administration in the prisons have not allowed a real classification of the prison population. In many establishments, the accused share the same space with convicted persons, as well as the detainees of different armed actors in the Colombian internal armed conflict, are forced to live together in courtyards and even cells. Indeed, both the right to dignity and the right not to receive cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment are undermined by the overcrowding and poor conditions of the physical structure and public services found in the detention centers; the rights to life and physical integrity are imminently violated or threatened by the same overcrowding, by the mixture of all categories of inmates and by the lack of the required guard personnel; The right to family is violated by prison overcrowding and administrative deficiencies, conditions that imply that inmate visitors have to endure long waits, under inclement weather, to enter the center, and which make it extremely difficult conjugal and family visits; the right to health is violated given the infrastructural deficiencies of the sanitary areas, the prison congestion, the deficiency of the water and sewerage services, and the shortage of duty to comply with the referrals to the hospital centers; the rights to work and education are violated, as a very high percentage of inmates do not obtain job or educational opportunities and that access to these rights is conditioned by extortion and corruption; the right to the presumption of innocence is violated to the extent that the accused are mixed with the convicted and that no special, more benevolent conditions are established for the confinement of the former, etc.