Ten keys to understanding the bloody prison crisis in Ecuador which has already claimed more than 220 lives in a few months

The prison crisis in Ecuador getting worse by the day, with the increase in murders in prisons, what analysts consider a “reflection” of the streets, especially in the province of Guayas, and the struggle for the control of drug trafficking.

Among the most serious events a fight in February in four prisons left 80 people dead simultaneously; in July, there were about thirty in another; and Tuesday at least 116 killed and 80 injured. The net, however, is continuous week after week.

Expert in internal security, crime and drug trafficking, journalist Arturo Torres, author of the book Hostages (2019), analyzes for the agency EFE the situation.

1. How the crisis started

“It’s an accumulation of several years. An inappropriate state decision-making process and this new trend that has to do with the incursion of a new emerging cartel, Jalisco Nueva Generación, which disputes the territory of Sinaloa, which since 2015 or 2016 predominated here. These spaces also have a counterpart in prisons ”.

This struggle “generated Hired killers, crimes, crimes and pressure in justice to articulate everything around drug trafficking”. All this “deepens with the pandemic, with the release around March or April of drugs that had been repressed.”

2. Ecuador, on the drug trafficking map

“Ecuador is not just a transit country, it is a country where drugs are also collected and processed. We have countless problems that are manifested in what we now live in prisons, and which have one common denominator: drug trafficking, Ecuador as a key element, link, between Peru and Colombia, the producers of cocaine ”.

3. Guayaquil, epicenter of the conflict

“Since 2017, or even 2015, Guayaquil is the link for posters arriving from Europe: Montenegrins, Albanians, Greeks, Belgians, Dutch and, also, Spaniards. 80% of the cocaine that arrives in Europe leaves its port in cargo ships with raw materials. These cartels also sell and pay with drugs to the gangs that protect them and, in turn, they (undertake) micro-trafficking. Guayaquil is in the fight of the gangs because it is the territory where they sell small quantities ”.

4. Model of the prison system

“The model in Ecuador begins in 2014 with the reform of the Integral Organic Penal Code (COIP), in which micro-trafficking is criminalized. Now, 40% of detainees are micro-traffickers, people who could traffic in the street ”.

This leads to the creation of “large prisons in Cotopaxi, Latacunga and Guayaquil, which become veritable warehouses for human beings”.

The COIP it also sends to prison, for example, parents who do not pay their children’s pensions, which increases overcrowding.

5. Overpopulation

“In prisons, there is a fluctuating population of 90,000 inmates each year, of which 42,000 come in and out and the rest remain.“For different periods.

“Now we have 30% overcrowded, that is to say with a capacity of 30,000, we are at 40,000. There are 1,500 “guides” (jailers), when 4,000 are needed. Who controls? Groups. There are 25,000 detainees who are part of it, 20,000 from Los Choneros and Los Lobos, the megabandas ”.

6. Distribution of prisoners

There are absolute lack of coordination between political, judicial and security organizations, and this is “a key issue” because, for example, “decisions about the location of the most dangerous prisoners rest with the judges. Then, due to the pressure they receive from lawyers, they assign these detainees to different centers which do not enter into the planning of the SNAI ”, the penitentiary system.

“There is no articulation to put (in different places) the leaders and intelligence has no mapping to decide.” Besides, the inmate entering for a minor offense must seek the “affiliation” or “protection” of one of the “mega gangs” or he will be more vulnerable in prison.

7. How do guns enter prisons?

“Corruption. The system is completely corrupted. They put in heavy weapons, rifles, machine guns, grenades. They are a battleground with drug trafficking weapons. Most of them come from Peru ”and are funded by drug trafficking and“ internal drug sales ”.

“It brings in $ 300,000 a week for a gang leader, it’s a good deal” with which everything can be corrupted inside and outside the prison.

8. State of emergency

President Guillermo Lasso’s declaration of the state of emergency It is “A failure of state policy in the face of the systemic crisis we have been experiencing for a long time” due to “the growth of gangs and the accumulated power of drug trafficking.”

This power “has permeated the entire penitentiary and judicial system” and “it is very difficult to cope with all this apparatus with an exceptional state which is a very precise measure: a towel of lukewarm water for a terminally ill patient with a poorly diagnosed metastasis in order to be able to mate (for problem) from a preventive, operational and prospective point of view. There have already been six states of emergency and nothing has happened ”.

9. What does the state do?

“The current approach is punitive, police and military, and it is a much more complex phenomenon which requires a much more transversal vision. There is no long term strategy. Seeking confinement to resolve a social conflict is a diagram that leads us directly to it ”.

Corn “There is a structural problem that needs to be resolved. Controlled by gangs, the system also regenerates itself, because “the person who enters for 1, 2 or 5 months” for minor offenses, “They also enter a vicious circle from which it is very difficult to come out” and “they fall prey to the exorbitant and perverse system”.

10. Impact on the streets

“The problem is a two-way street. What happens in prisons is transferred to the streets as contract killers, violent crimes as we have seen in Guayas, and this exposes us to a very serious scenario in terms of citizen security. This year, we will achieve double-digit (violent) deaths per 100,000 inhabitants, and the next year at 15. It is a problem that goes much further (than prisons), which has ramifications ”.

(With information from EFE)

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