President Danilo Medina was at La Nueva Victoria for the inauguration of the first facilities at the jail that is planned for 8,000 inmates. The jail is to replace the La Victoria jail, the largest in the country, with upwards of 9,000 inmates
The Attorney General Office built the jail using funds from Odebrecht. In 2017, the Attorney General negotiated a deal not to prosecute Odebrecht officials in the country after the Brazilian construction company had admitted paying US$92 million in bribes in the Dominican Republic to expedite contract work. A first payment of US$30 million on the deal was recieved in 2017. It is not clear whether other payments of the US$184 million deal have been received.
Roberto Santana, former director of the New Model National Penitentiary Program, and a well known Latin American consultant on jails, lamented that despite having more than enough money, the right correctional facilities were not built. “They could have done it right, but the ambitions for profits led them to build the same that the country already has in La Victoria, “ he said. He said the jail was built violating all the recommendations of the United Nations for modern jails.
He said he had submitted a plan for the construction of four small jails in four locations – north, eastern, western, and central Santo Domingo to serve a population of around 4 million people.
He said the original budget for the 8,000+ inmate jail project was RD$4 billion. In the inauguration speech, the Attorney General announced that the facility was built for RD$6.9 billion.
Santana explained that when you have a mutiny or an epidemic in a large jail, you have a big big problem. He said for this reason and others all around the world large jails are being closed. “Here they simply did the contrary of all the recommendations they received,” he complained.
He estimated the new jail still needs at least six months for it to enter into operation, despite the mega inauguration by President Danilo Medina and his attorney General Jean Alain Rodriguez.
Santana suggested that to save the project, the jail be subdivided into eight jails with capacity for 1,100 inmates each. The smaller jails would have their individual gateways and be equipped as independent operations. He said right now there is just one entrance for all the jails. He said the security fencing is just storm netting.
“There was a rush to inaugurate and close certain processes,” speculated Santana. “I don’t know why,” he said. Santana was director of Prisons when the new penitentiary model was implemented. The new model calls for the construction for small correctional centers with libraries, educational modules and equal treatment for all the inmates.
The government announced that the first 225 inmates would be relocated to the Nueva Victoria correctional facility.
Speaking on El Despertador, the morning news show of Noticias SIN, Santana called the new correctional facility “a triple corrupt business deal.” He called it a “chicken pen.”
He said the next government would decide the use of the facilities. Nevertheless, he expects that the facility will be redesigned at an additional cost to the state.
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10 August 2020