El Salvador President Nayib Bukele has already found a landing pad for his most controversial government policy in Colombia: mega-prisons to fight crime. The architects of this track are Diego Molano and Jaime Arizabaleta, pre-candidates of the Democratic Center for the mayoral offices of Bogotá and Cali, respectively. Like Bukele, both are defenders of authority and a strong hand as a solution not only to crime but, in this case, to corruption. Inspired by him, they have proposed building mega-prisons if they win the October 29 regional elections.
The first to announce the idea was Arizabaleta, who announced the joint proposal on Wednesday evening via his Twitter account: “In Colombia there will be two Bukele-style mega-prisons, one in Bogotá and one in Cali, which I will build for criminals corrupt people.” Molano, a former defense minister during the government of Iván Duque, came up with the idea Thursday on Blu Radio: “We need a prison in Bogotá, a mega prison, to hold at least 3,000 of the criminals caught.”
There will be two Bukele-style mega prisons in Colombia, one in Bogotá and one in Cali, that I will build for criminals and the corrupt
Well, former Minister Diego Molano
— Jaime Arizabaleta 🇨🇴 (@jarizabaletaf) July 13, 2023
Neither Arizabaleta nor Molano have referred to the cost of the mega-prisons they propose or the time it will take to build them. However, it is a first tangible element of the admiration that a broad segment of the Colombian right-wing has shown towards the Salvadoran President. Bukele’s last name is increasingly being heard on the streets, in the mouths of people who believe that a vertical crusade like the one he undertook should be repeated in Colombia. But it’s also wormed its way into polls like Datexco’s last May, where 55% of respondents asked if the country needs a president like the Salvadoran answered “yes.”
Fernando Tamayo, director of the Prisons Group at the Universidad de los Andes, explains that the biggest problem with this type of prison is how difficult it is to manage it: to allow visits with all the controls that this entails and to ensure security between them the inmates, knowing what they are doing, etc. Guards are needed for all of this. And there aren’t enough in Colombian prisons, he stresses. “The only Latin American experience of mega-prisons, namely El Salvador, showed us that the rights of the population deprived of their liberty have no direct meaning,” he said in a phone call.
The idea of adopting Bukele’s model is also an obvious symptom of the lack of clear leadership in the Colombian right: since there is no visible head in the country, inspiration for solving problems comes from outside. Not even the country’s most conspicuous conservative leader, María Fernanda Cabal, has contributed any novel ideas: she has also drawn on the character of Bukele, with whom she has spared no laudatory adjectives.
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Diego Molano in Congress, May 2021.Leonardo Vargas / HANDOUT (EFE)
The impact of the proposal is largely due to the insecure situation in different parts of the country. Terrorism has returned in recent weeks to Buenaventura (Valle del Cauca), described by President Gustavo Petro’s government as a “laboratory” for total urban peace and where there have been agreements with the gangs operating there. In addition, skepticism about negotiations with armed groups such as the Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN) and the Estado Mayor Central – a dissidence of the FARC – fueled by actions such as the killing of four indigenous minors in May favors the idea Hand.
However, the agency’s recipe leaves a major stain on Colombia’s history: extrajudicial executions, also known as false alarms, during Álvaro Uribe’s tenure (2002-2010). In them, the military, encouraged by the depiction of losses in combat, murdered civilians in order to pass them off as guerrillas. But there is no need to go that far back in time: in 2021, Diego Molano himself, in his capacity as Defense Minister in the Uribe government, was subjected to a motion of no confidence in Congress by Iván Duque, accused by the opposition of suppressing civil demonstrations against give the executive branch “war treatment”.
The seams were also exposed in El Salvador. During the emergency regime declared by President Bukele more than a year ago, authorities arrested more than 60,000 gang members in a country besieged by criminal gang crime for decades. However, a Human Rights Watch report last January revealed that “abuses on a large scale” were being committed, including violations of due process, mass arrests, deaths in custody and overcrowding.
Jaime Arizabaleta poses with a portrait of Nayib Bukele in a picture posted to his social media on May 12.
Overcrowding is also an issue that arises from the idea of building mega prisons. Professor Tamayo recalls that in 1998, when a case was declared unconstitutional due to prison overcrowding – a tool used by the Constitutional Court when certain requirements are met to deal with a serious situation – there were 33,009 prisoners in the country and an overcrowding. of 31%. Since then, more places have been created, but there has been no solution: today, prison overcrowding in Colombia is 24%, at times even 50%. “This idea of providing more seating to control overcrowding has proved a failure as the seating is created and filled.”
On the other hand, the effectiveness of rehabilitation incarceration – what its goal is – is also not clear, although it is difficult to draw a conclusion due to the lack of effective measurements. Tamayo admits that it’s difficult to talk about the Molano/Arizabaleta idea because it lacks a clear structure. However, it is recommended to make a judgment based on the information gathered in various specialized studies: “In general, systems that rely on greater contact of persons deprived of liberty with the outside world, with their families and with a larger one Possibility of deprivation of liberty.” By being reintegrated into society, they have a greater ability to deter people from committing crime.”
Tamayo explains that the prison system stirs feelings in people based on fears of crime, insecurity and violence, which are felt in many Latin American cities. “The big problem with this is that these projects have not shown that they are really effective in combating insecurity,” he says. And he adds that many of these models are proving effective in the short term, as they very soon report positive figures on convictions, incarcerations, and an increase in prison inmates that convey a sense of greater security. However, he concludes: “Ultimately, they create more exclusion and greater social problems.”
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