The footage is dark and grainy, but the view of the prison courtyard is clear enough. It appears to be empty, until suddenly three men are sprinting towards the far corner. A brief fight ensues, before two of those involved flee from the scene. The third – Daniel Martínez – tries to follow, but collapses after just a few paces, never to get up again.
The 27 year-old was stabbed fatally with a faca, a homemade knife ubiquitous in Argentine prisons. The brutal assault, which took place in the early hours of 13th February, was captured by CCTV cameras in the Unit 1 detention facility in Paraná, the provincial capital of Entre Ríos. After the event, prison prefect José Luis Mondragón told local press that the fight broke out “at a time of relative calm, when nothing would suggest an outcome like this was possible”.
Unit 35, inspection on August 15, 2006, courtesy of Comité Contra la Tortura
Yet this outcome is all too common in Argentina’s prisons. According to the NGO Coordinators against Institutional and Police Repression (CORREPI), Martínez was one of four detainee deaths that week, and the ninth so far in 2010. In the province of Buenos Aires – where approximately half of the country’s 60,000 prisoners are held – 112 inmates died in 2008. With another 39 fatalities in federal prisons and dozens more from other provinces, deaths in state custody are occurring approximately once every two days.
Bursting At The Seams
Around half of these deaths are attributed to fights between inmates by the human rights groups that compile annual reviews of the federal and provincial penitentiary services. As prisons become more and more crowded, this type of friction seems unavoidable. According to Ministry of Justice data, the nationwide prison population swelled by over 45% between 2000 and 2005, overwhelming institutions that were, in many cases, already struggling to cope. Increasingly, prisoners are held indefinitely in the temporary cells found at the back of police stations, where conditions are generally even worse.
Mar de Plata Police Station, inspection on September 29, 2006, courtesy of Comité Contra la Tortura
“Detention centres are saturated,” says Roberto Cipriano García, director of the Anti-Torture Committee (CCT), which monitors prisons and police stations in the Buenos Aires province. “We have cases of police stations holding three or four times the number of prisoners that should be allowed, while some prisons are running at 60% above capacity. Many units don’t have running water or ventilation, there’s lots of hunger, and hygiene is abysmal because they are not cleaned properly.”
The situation is even worse when official capacity figures are scrutinised, adds García. “If a prison was built to confine 800 people in individual cells, and later you add another bed in each, the building capacity does not suddenly become 1,600 because the bathrooms, the sewers, the kitchens were all designed for 800.”
Added to this is the alarming statistic that over two thirds of this overcrowded prison population is made up of procesados, or those still awaiting trial. Some remain in this state, unaware how their case is progressing in the clogged up judicial system, for months or years.
This confluence of factors often reaches breaking point, sparking riots with disastrous consequences. In October 2005, 33 inmates died after a fire broke out after a riot in a pavilion of the unit 28 prison in Magdalena, Greater Buenos Aires. Two years later, another fire in a jail in Santiago del Estero claimed another 34 lives. In both cases, serious questions were raised about the lack of water and personnel to fight the fire, and the use of highly flammable material in mattresses.
A System Of Cruelty
When such tragedies occur, the headlines reverberate around mainstream media, with an unflattering spotlight briefly placed on Argentine jails. However, the day-to-day violations of human rights go largely unreported.
There was no major riot in the unit 1 prison in Olmos in 2008, yet 15 inmates died according to the CCT, more than in any other prison in Buenos Aires province. According to Garcia the prison employs a shift of just 27 guards to watch over 1,800 inmates. “The guards delegate control of the prison to a group of influential prisoners,” explains García, adding that this system of governance leads to serious problems: “if the rest of the unit rebels against the dominant group, we see lots of fights and violent incidents.”
However, it is arguably other common system of governance in Argentine prisons – where order and discipline is maintained through brutal repression by guards – that is more shocking.
“Torture and ill treatments are everyday facts in jails today,” claims Gabriela Boada, interim executive director of Amnesty International’s Argentine office. In 2008, the global NGO listed Argentina as one of 81 states where torture is still practised. The report stated that the prison services use “the pretext of fighting insecurity [to] attempt to justify the unjustifiable: the use of torture”.
Unit 35, inspection on August 15, 2006, courtesy of Comité Contra la Tortura
The CCT’s latest annual review revealed that 72% of the detainees questioned suffered physical abuse by guards. According to the report, entitled ‘The System of Cruelty’, torture methods currently used in jails through the Buenos Aires province include “suffocation [by placing a plastic bag over inmates’ head], regular beatings, electric shocks, constant transfers, prolonged ice-cold showers or hosedowns, and isolation.”
And these practices are not confined to the Buenos Aires province. In a comprehensive investigation into conduct in federal prisons, the independent National Penitentiary Procurator (PPN) found widespread evidence of torture and ill treatment of detainees. Aside from physical aggression, which affected 70% of those surveyed, inmates reported suffering almost constant verbal and psychological abuse, and a lack of proper medical attention. Meanwhile, the penitentiary service in Mendoza province has faced repeated criticism from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.
According to Dr Marta Monclús, coordinator of the prison observatory at the PPN, inmates are most likely to be subjected to torture or ill treatment at three key moments: when they first enter the prison – and receive the infamous ‘bienvenida’ (welcome) – during cell inspections and when they are sent to the buzones (solitary confinement).
The culture of violence is so ingrained that even the prison guards themselves are sometimes given a bienvenida. In September last year, Carlos Maidana reported three of his fellow guards for the brutal welcome he received a La Plata prison. The handcuffed the new recruit to railings, where they beat him, stripped him, doused him in alcohol and threatened to set him on fire. “If that’s what they do to their colleagues,” says Ana Cacopardo, “just imagine what happens to the prisoners.”
What The Eyes Don’t See…
Cacopardo has first-hand experience of some of the country’s worst jails through her work with the Commission For Memory, to which the CCT pertains, and as a documentary filmmaker.
Photo courtesy of 'Ojos Que No Ven'
Her recent film ‘Ojos Que No Ven’ (What The Eyes Don’t See), which took the best film award at last year’s human rights film festival in Buenos Aires, takes an unflinching look at prison life through the testimonies of four protagonists. Between interview segments, the camera scuttles though dark and damp holding cells, where anonymous inmates talk frankly about prison violence and police brutality above the prison din.
“I wanted to show the jail as it really is, and put names and faces to the stories that go inside. Often, the life or death of an inmate depends on the whim of the prison guard. And the way the system works, it’s so easy to eliminate a witness. There’s so much impunity.”
It is this impunity and corruption that lie at the heart of the problem. When official statistics are supplied by the prison service itself, and the only contradictory voice is that of an inmate – a criminal in the eyes of society and the judiciary – it becomes almost impossible to prove cases of torture and ill treatment. Sometimes, prison guards ‘employ’ certain detainees to do their dirty work. These so-called ‘car bombs’ are forced to eliminate a nuisance fellow prisoner. “They simulate a brawling between prisoners, it goes down as a death due to infighting, and is never investigated,” explains Cacopardo.
The matter is complicated further when you consider that those who report prison guards for brutality will remain under their custody while an investigation is carried out. Fears of reprisals were enough to prevent 517 out of 601 detainees from lodging an official complaint after suffering physical abuse, according to the PPN report.
Even when reports of abuse are made, are verified by witnesses and independent medical staff, and sometimes include photographic evidence, only 1% of complaints reach court, says García. And most cases are not classified as torture, but as more moderate offences, or at worst homicide, which implicates the individual agents rather than the state. “Of 11,000 reports of abuse between 2000 and 2008, only 14 were classed as torture [by the judiciary],” laments García.
‘Torture Doesn’t Exist’
This culture of denial exists in the political orbit too. “When the PPN presented the report, the politicians responsible [for the prison service] adopted a very negative stance”, recalls Dr Monclús. “Instead of taking control and debating how to improve the situation, they simply argued that it wasn’t true that systematic torture existed in the prison service”.
This lack of urgency can also been seen in the failure to comply with Argentina’s international commitments to combat the use of torture. In 2004, the country signed the UN’s Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture, thereby pledging to establish transparent and independent organisms to monitor prisons and prevent torture. Even though the deadline for implementing the protocol was June 2007, to date only the province of Chaco has sanctioned the creation of a monitoring agency.
Unit 35, inspection on August 15, 2006, courtesy of Comité Contra la Tortura
The UN protocol is considered a key tool in bringing an unchecked system back into line. But would it really make a difference, if independent bodies like the PPN and CCT are already revealing shocking statistics about torture and ill treatment, only to be ignored by the government and a large part of society?
“It will serve a purpose in the sense that the more actors involved in controlling the jails, the more pressure there will be to do it right,” responds Dr. Monclús.
Cacopardo agrees: “If there were more controls, if more eyes saw what goes on inside the prisons, the judicial power, which plays the key role, would have to be more present.”
But Cacopardo says greater control will be largely pointless without long-term social and economic policies to tackle the high levels of social exclusion and marginalisation that lie behind rising crime rates. “Society has to rise against the simplistic slogans of opportunistic politicians. More prisons are not the solution … they end up violating rights and recycling violence.”
Unit 9, inspection from May 2005, courtesy of Comité Contra la Tortura
This is easier said than done. It is a brave politician that attempts to channel more public money and effort towards improving the plight of prisoners when crime and insecurity are such concerns for the electorate. The ‘eye for an eye’ instinct of those who have fallen victim to a violent robbery, or have suffered the murder of a friend or relative is understandable; a similar attitude from those governing the country is not.
And what about the procesados – a significant number of whom are eventually released after being found not guilty? Are they not victims too? Article 18 of the national constitution expressly states that people are innocent until proven guilty – does this no longer apply in today’s society?
“If someone breaks the law it’s right that they go to jail and serve a fair sentence,” concludes Boada. “But these should not be instruments of torture but an organism of social rehabilitation. At the moment it is like saying that if someone violates the rights of another person, that gives the state permission to systematically violate their rights. [That person] will then leave prison even more enraged. It’s not fair on them, and it’s not fair on society.”
Cristian López Toledo: A Case Study
In May, 2005, Cristian López Toledo was the unfortunate victim of electrical shock torture in the medical area of La Plata’s Unit 9 prison. His was the first case to be proven judicially since the country’s return to democracy.
While human rights lawyers battled against bureaucracy and a wall of silence to bring the case the justice, Toledo was transferred repeatedly to different prisons in Buenos Aires province, each time receiving a bienvenida and more threats for having reported the guards. In one unit he was attacked with a faca by another inmate, who later told Toledo that he had been ordered to eliminate Toledo by the guards.
Toledo remains in prison while his case remains stalled in the judicial system. Since then, the CCT has reported several other instances of electric shock torture in prisons throughout the province of Buenos Aires.
