With a projected 20,000 more inmates this year than last, the Colombia’s prison authority is calling for the construction of more prisons, Caracol Radio reported Friday.
Director of the prison authority INPEC, General Augusto Cesar Ricaurte, said Friday that Colombia needs to increase the number of prisons from 144 to 180 by 2022, and to construct five new prisons by 2014 due to overcrowding.
“We ended 2010 with an overcrowded population of 16,800 inmates. This year we could finish with 36,000 more overcrowded inmates,” said the general.
“The prison population is growing not at 0.8% but at 1.6%, which means that in one month 3,500 inmates can enter and only 800 leave, due to this, the growth increases rapidly,” the prison official told RCN Radio.
Concerns over abuse in prisons have reached the Senate, according to Mauricio Lizcano chairman of the Senate’s Human Rights Commission. He told RCN, “We have received 45 complaints, many about overcrowding and others for sexual abuse by members of INPEC and also for mistreatment and human rights violations from members of INPEC to their own associates.”