The Attorney General of the Dominican Republic, Jean Alain Rodriguez, announced late last week that with some government funding as well as the cash from payments received from Odebrecht and Embraer as compensation in government bribery cases, the Justice Department would build a new prison to replace La Victoria in Guerra together with the facility in San Luis used for preventive custody.
According to Rodriguez this is only part of a program to provide more humane treatment throughout the penitentiary system. The jails have a budget of around US$170 million, says the Attorney General. Odebrecht has agreed to pay the Dominican government US$184 million after admitting in a New York City court that the company paid US$92 million in bribes in order to obtain some very lucrative contracts for public works in the Dominican Republic. Embraer, the company that manufactured and sold the Super Tucanos aircraft to the Dominican Air Force, reimbursed the government to the tune of US$7.0 million in order to be excluded from the judicial case unfolding over corruption in the purchase of these aircraft.
The Attorney General reported that the projects should be completed by April 2020, a month before the 2020 general election.
La Victoria prison was designed to hold 1,200 inmates but currently has a prison population of over 9,000. The new prison complex will be built in the area of Las Parras in Guerra, in East Santo Domingo and will have a capacity for 8592 men and 665 women. Construction companies will use the prison labor to build the jail. The new facility will have its own hospital, the first one of its kind in the Dominican Republic.
The Attorney General also announced the construction of juvenile detention centers in Barahona and La Romana.
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Diario Libre
15 October 2018
