HONDURAS-PRISONS: Crisis Heats Up with Fifth Riot

By Thelma Mejía Reprint | | Print |

Thelma Mejia

TEGUCIGALPA, Aug 13 1997 (IPS) - The fifth riot in two months heated up the crisis racking the Honduran prison system, which is characterised by over-crowded rundown houses adapted for use as penitentiaries.

More than 300 inmates of a prison in the eastern Honduran city of Danli, on the Nicaraguan border, rioted Wednesday, protesting overcrowded conditions, bad food and inhumane treproblem Honduras shares with many other Latin American coate 1996, the government issued a decree that provided for the release of unsentenced detainees charged with midemeanours. Although the decree began to be applied early this year, only slightly over 100 inmates have been freed.

Interior Minister Efrain Moncada admitted thding of the penitentiaries.

The current wave of riots first broke out twilable space, the prisoners had been sleeping in the courtyard at night and were squeezed almost one on top of another into small rooms during the daytime.

ty of whom were recaptured.

And on Monday, 216 inmates of the Trujillo pts Commissioner Leo Valladares blamed the current crisis on the “slow and unjust” judicial systeml, has been expanded and refurbished, a project that suffered stops and starts since 1993 due to administrative irregularities. The inmates of the Central Penitentiary are soon to be transferred there.

The roughly 2,800 inmates of the Central Penration enters office.

Deputy Jorge Madariaga of the governing Libe The Reina administration did yield recently to pressure from public employees, teachers and doctors, agreeing to wage rises to go into effect in 1998. It is also under pressureTXACK rises to go into effect in 1998. It is also under pres