Murder rate in Venezuelan jails 22 times higher than in the streets
Venezuelan dissenters called for the resignation of the minister of penitentiary affairs on the basis that 700 inmates have been killed since she took office in 2011
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The opposition leaders pointed out that some 5,500 prisoners have been killed since President Hugo Chávez took office in 1999. They added that the current government has failed to build new penitentiaries, and, therefore, overcrowding in prisons exceeds 300%.
They estimated that 15,000 people have been injured in the same period.
In 2004, a state of emergency was declared and the construction of some new 25 prisons was announced, yet none has been built.
Dissenters have also claimed that the murder rate inside prisons is 22 times higher than that in the streets.
Since Minister Valera was appointed, three penitentiaries have been shut down, but none of the eight jails the Government promised to build has been completed.
In Venezuela, there are 31 prisons with a capacity to hold 11,200 inmates, but the inmate population amounts to 45,000.
Translated by Jhean Cabrera
Dossier
Chapo's drug traffic network
Luis Jiménez Alfaro seems to have hidden under the rocks. The last time he was seen was on April 2006 walking calmly around Simón Bolívar International Airport of Maiquetía, located nearby Caracas. At that time, more than five tons of cocaine arrived in Mexico in an airplane which took off from Venezuela, and his name featured as a missing piece of the puzzle of one of the most massive drug shipments that has been witnessed in the Western Hemisphere.
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