Undressing to Expose the Prisons' Problems

Walking naked down Ave. Septima to uncover the state of the prisons.

Wives of prison inmates undressed and paraded down Ave. Septima today protesting several things, principally overcrowding and poor conditions in Colombia's prisons.

'No to conspiracy as a justification for extradition.'

While major tragedies haven't taken place here recently, overcrowding has contributed to  the deaths of hundreds of prisoners in a honduras prison, and violent prison riots in Venezuela. And it's probably only a matter of time before a Colombian prison explodes: Medellin's Bellavista prison was built for 2,200 inmates but holds more than 7,000.

And the situation is only getting worse, as the prison population expands at a rate of over 14% annually. In January of 2011, the director of the Colombian prison system said, 2,740 people were imprisoned and only 700 released.

Colombia is building more prisons - at a huge cost in money which could otherwise build schools, homes and hospitals. Worse, locking up a huge number of young people ruins lives and costs the country workers, artists, even potential scientists.

Colombia should consider alternative punishments like social work for non-violent crimes and programs to prevent youths from committing crimes in the first place. I've read about a novel program in Chicago, Illinois which employs ex-gang members who defuse gang conflicts before they turn violent.

And, of course, reforming drug laws could drastically reduce the prison population. Several bills in Colombia's Congress, including one to decriminalize the growing of drug crops, would move the country in that direction - if they're approved.

'Colombia is the only nation which
extradites its children.'

The protesters also criticized the practice of extraditing Colombian criminals to be tried and punished in foreign courts, usually in the United States, and usually for narcotrafficking. Extradition has always  generated opposition on  nationalistic grounds - it's more than a bit humiliating not to be able to try and punish Colombians at home for crimes committed here.

But, there are also human rights and justice issues. Recently, some Colombian narcos have gotten light sentences in the U.S. by spilling the beans on other narcotraffickers. Some have gotten such light sentences that the joke goes that, in Pablo Escobar's time, narcos preferred a tomb in Colombia to a prison cell in the U.S., but today they race to be extradited and receive a light sentence.

 More seriously, many narcotraffickers have also committed grave human rights violations, including mass murders and displacing civilians from their homes and land. But, since U.S. courts care only about international drug trafficking, they face no punishment there for these crimes. In theory, the extradited criminals should be punished for such crimes on their return to Colombia, but this evidently does not always happen. In some cases, Colombian criminals are reportedly living peacefully in the U.S. under new identities. Others are returned to Colombia without Colombian officials even being alerted to their arrival.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours