Recently, the Prisons Agency had issued a press note indicating that 12 Starlink satellites had been seized at the La Victoria Jail in northern Santo Domingo. In the past convicted criminals have confessed that they were hired by Internet by inmates at La Victoria jail.
Now, news analyst Freddy Ortiz on his Felicitaciones con Freddy Ortiz weekly commentary gives a plausible explanation to the permissiveness at the La Victoria Jail.
For a long time there has not been a mutiny at that jail that is overpopulated. The offering of Internet service and other pluses to the inmates seems to be one of the reasons why.
A former police officer at the La Victoria jail explained that the service is used to keep the peace among the around 10,000 crammed in the jail. The informant said that the inmates are kept entertained with drugs, access to cell phones, internet service and the allowing in of women for sex on two days a week.
The informant said that the police officers stationed at the jail celebrate when there are raids to remove the cell phones because they get a new round of pay to allow these to be reinstalled.
Freddy Ortiz says the jail is a separate world, but there are so many people stuffed there that removing the distractions would result in chaos.
The official position is that the government is investigating the finding of the Starlink devices, but time after time, scandals erupt indicating that the internet service and other benefits that have been previously removed are later reinstalled in the jail.
The past Medina government spent upwards of RD$5 billion to build a new jail for the La Victoria inmates, but despite its advanced state, the La Victoria inmates were never relocated as the construction is part of a major corruption judicial case.
Read more in Spanish:
Diario Libre
Diario Libre
Listin Diario
El Informe con Alicia Ortega
DR1 News
19 February 2024