The Dirty Business Between Soldiers and Prisoners

The Dirty Business Between Soldiers and Prisoners / Dania Virgen Garcia
/ HemosOido
Posted on March 20, 2014

What about the wages of who officers who guard correctional facilities?
Do they traffic in narcotics and various benefits?

HAVANA, Cuba. – The ingestion of alcoholic beverages and
psycho-pharmaceuticals is a very common vice in prisons, encampments and
forced labor penitentiary settlements. They provide, moreover, a
business that is carried out day by day, in most cases, by prisoners
with financial power.

Innumerable civilian workers and officials of the MININT (Ministry of
the Interior) have been sanctioned in tribunals for the crimes of
bribery and embezzlement.

Events like these often cause homicides.

There is a multitude of problems within the prisons and encampments:
fights, bloodshed, theft, self-harm, escapes; these last are well
paid-for to MININT's civilian and military workers.

Life in the penitentiary settlements is incomparable to that of the
jails. They are workplaces or warehouses that belong to MININT. The
quantity of prisoners that must inhabit them is reliably between 15 or
20, or those that bribe the re-educator of the prison or encampment.

Business is different in these places. The prisoners are privileged.
Once they arrive they are free to do what they like. The supply of
psycho-pharmaceuticals, alcohol, and the illicit businesses are not
controlled. They may go outside the area when they want, ask permission
to go to their homes and other benefits provided they bribe the guard
and the officer.

The defenseless prisoners who report these outrages are exposed to
reprisals, threats, severe beatings, shakedowns, punishments cells and
prohibitions of their rights. They subject them to physical and
psychological torture to make them shut up.

The inmates who do not allow themselves to break continue informing the
independent press, which is their only means of defense.

When the punishments do not break them, they take away family visits and
then transfer them to other prisons, some more than 200 kilometers from
their families.

Another method that the guards use is to incite prisoners to physical
attacks or accuse them of crimes not committed.

The heads of the Bureau of Prisons, Encampments and Forced Labor
Settlements, within and outside of them, are not able to control this
fully corrupt environment. Something is wrong when there is so much
corruption.

Cubanet, March 18, 2014, Dania Virgen Garcia

Translated by mlk.

Source: The Dirty Business Between Soldiers and Prisoners / Dania Virgen
Garcia / HemosOido | Translating Cuba -
http://translatingcuba.com/the-dirty-business-between-soldiers-and-prisoners-dania-virgen-garcia-hemosoido/