The Las Parras Correction and Rehabilitation Center was inaugurated in August 2020, days before the change of government by then President Danilo Medina. It was built to replace the La Victoria Jail. As reported, the Dominican government has already spent RD$6.96 billion on the construction.
The jail was built under the leadership of then Attorney General Jean Alain Rodríguez, using primarily funds from the compensation fund Odebrecht paid to the Attorney General Office for reaching an agreement not to prosecute the Brazilian construction company in the Dominican Republic.
Not long after Miriam German Brito was appointed Attorney General, she requested that the mega jail be moved from her jurisdiction to that of the new Ministry of Housing, Habitat and Buildings (Mived). Listin Diario interviewed spokespeople for the Ministry of Housing who said that they are still evaluating the work plan for the project.
Mived was assigned the reconstruction and adaptation of the Las Parras Correction and Rehabilitation Center in 2021. Listin Diario reports that to date, the progress looks nil.
“We are already carrying out preliminary work on the project such as evaluation of the activities to be executed, conditioning of the accesses for the evaluations and identifying the needs for the beginning of the execution. Once this has been identified, we would be initiating the required activities”, Housing and Buildings Minister Carlos Bonilla told Listin Diario reporters.
The work was entrusted to Mived when the Attorney General of the Republic, Miriam Germán Brito, favored that the completion of the prison should be the responsibility of another state institution.
The Attorney General’s Office (PGR) and Mived later signed an agreement, so that the latter would be in charge of the completion and construction of prisons in the Dominican Republic, including the Las Parras (La Nueva Victoria).
The Ministry of Housing says it has identified “innumerable deficiencies and weaknesses in the construction processes.”
Bonilla said that proposals have been made by the Attorney General Office to optimize the operation of the Las Parras Correction and Rehabilitation Center at the level of security, technical and complementary areas.
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Listin Diario
29 March 2023