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Article Excerpt
Yet another chapter in the history of deplorable prison conditions and mishandling of the gang problem in the region opened in the Dominican Republic March 7 when a prison fire claimed the lives of at least 134 prisoners. No fewer than 26 suffered serious burns and respiratory damage or were otherwise injured. The fire broke out early in the morning in the prison, called "hell on earth" by Domingo Porfirio Rojas Nina of the Dominican Comision Nacional de los Derechos Humanos (CONADEH). Rojas said the place was "unfit for human beings," thus standing out even in this country, which, according to UN records, has the most overcrowded jails in the Western Hemisphere.
The cellblock where the fire broke out was so crowded that prisoners slept on top of toilets or pressed against doors, walls, and windows. It was called the Vietnam block, a cloistered chaos where inmates were armed with guns and knives and guards did not venture. It had a maximum capacity of 25. At the time of the fire, about 178 prisoners lived there. The jam was not unique to Vietnam; the...
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