Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic - They are called "frogmen" and are forced to sleep on the floor of the prison in the Dominican Republic, usually next to a cave filled with toilets or ground.
Thousands of them were squeezed into seriously crowded prisons in the country, some of whom had seven times the capacity. Most people struggle there without being charged with crime, while activists warn them of inhuman conditions and lack of medical care.
Critics say that despite the promise of improving the system, the Dominican Republic continues to push and allow pre-trial detention in almost all criminal cases where all charges are not filed, and that as problems in prisons continue to increase, few changes have been proposed.
"The prison has become a land without people," said Rodolfo Valentín Santos, director of the State Public Defense Agency of the Dominican Republic.
According to the National Public Health Agency, 60% of the country's approximately 26,000 prisoners are held in detention in preventing detention, with no charges. Supporters believe the measure is intended to protect society and allow authorities time to collect evidence in cases.
But some detainees have been sentenced to jail for up to 20 years without being convicted of crimes, Valenti said.
He pointed out that the country's constitution and criminal law state that preventive detention is a "special" measure. There are six other measures that do not involve bail time, but Valentín said it is rarely used.
Northeast Kona Capital (Sanctia) Sunday was a problem for Darwin Lugo and Yason.
According to the National Public Defense Office, the prison was built with up to 2,100 prisoners, but more than 7,000 of them were detained and more than 3,300 were detained.
It is the oldest and most populated prison in the country.
"You have to be careful of your life," Lugo said. Lugo visited several friends with Guzman, some of whom were detained before trial.
“Many of them are underperforming,” Guzman said of the prisoners there. “There is extreme poverty.”
They said their friends were imprisoned there for more than five years and they have been connected well, only occasionally asking for money or asking for charging their phone’s SIM card.
Last year, at least 11 prisoners died in La Victoria after a short circuit in the cell caused a fire and an explosion. It has been one of the deadliest prison fires in the country since 2005, when at least 134 prisoners were killed in Higüey after rival gangs burned in beds by rival gangs.
Dominican President Luis Abinader appointed former prison chief Roberto Santana to be responsible for the handling of more than 40 prisons in the country after a fire broke out in La Victoria last year Head of the committee for overhaul and improvement.
"Gentlemen, we must admit that we have situations in all prisons in the country," Abinader said in announcing the appointment last March. He also announced that the money recovered from corruption cases would help Funding the construction of new prisons.
Santana has long called for the closure of La Victoria and 15 De Azua prisons located in the western part of the country. He said the committee he led was dealing with these and other huge tasks without external intervention.
"We don't accept orders from politicians or anyone else," Santana said, who previously trained the new prison built in the early 2000s.
Santana, who served as president of the Dominican Studger in the 1970s, was arrested several times under President Joaquín Balaguer, as a political opponent and dissident. Sometimes sentenced to jail and sometimes killed.
Santana knew directly about the conditions in Victoria - he stayed there for two years.
In the early 2000s, the Dominican Republic began to build 21 new prisons to improve conditions. They are supervised by trained personnel, not police and soldiers, who oversee 19 other prisons in the country.
However, according to the National Human Rights Commission of the Dominican Republic, conditions in the new prison have deteriorated.
"The prison system in the Dominican Republic is on the verge of collapse," the commission said in its 2023 report.
In prisons across the country, it is overcrowded. Cells lack bathrooms, natural light and ventilation, causing worsening health. According to Valentín, the conditions of all prisons are.
In the 2023 report (the latest year), his office requested the closure of prisons, including the northern coastal city of Nagua.
"The overcrowded … makes it impossible for prisoners to achieve true recovery because they are forgotten by the state," the report reads. "In the conditions they are in, it is obvious that they are regarded as objects, not as given by rights," the report reads. Humans.”
Valentine said another prison was so overcrowded that the government placed prisoners outdoors in trucks and the metal roof was baked in the sun, sparking lawsuits.
A spokesperson for the prison director Colonel Roberto Hernandez Basilio did not respond to the interview request. Hernandez had previously said his office was taking steps to improve conditions.
Meanwhile, Dominican Attorney General Miriamgermán Brito repeatedly opposed pretrial detention, but pointed out that the decision was in the hands of the judge. A Germán spokesman said she did not conduct media interviews.
Both Santana and Valentín said they believed government corruption was one of the reasons the country was delaying its pace in overhaul systems, accusing soldiers and police of running prisons to benefit from illegal activities.
Public corruption has also prompted authorities to stop building the highly praised prisons in recent years, which is expected to alleviate overcrowding.
Santana said even if the waste from that half-body prison is wasted, he hopes to build 25 new prisons that can hold more than 20,000 prisoners by 2028.
While these are expected to help alleviate overcrowding, concerns remain. Activists point out that even if the judge legally released the prisoner, the prisoner was not released.
The National Human Rights Commission noted that about 2,700 prisoners are still in prison because their paperwork is paralyzed in the above courts. Meanwhile, despite being officially released, hundreds of others were still imprisoned for their money owed to the government and were unable to pay the fines ordered by the judge.