The crisis in the Medellín prison system reached a critical point this Tuesday, January 27. The inmates of the El Pedregal prison, located in the town of San Cristóbal, declared themselves in a state of civil disobedience to protest against what they consider a “degrading” diet and an alleged corruption scheme that would involve Inpec officials.
According to the complaints, families would be required to pay payments of up to $500,000 pesos to allow the entry of homemade food, a benefit that previously functioned as a relief from the precarious official diet.
Human rights organizations, led by activist Jorge Carmona, indicated that the situation affects nearly 1,300 inmates, both men and women.
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The annoyance is that, despite there being authorization from the General Directorate of Inpec for the monthly income of household food and a “humanitarian kit” (bread, cookies and sweets), the measure would have become an illicit business inside the prison.
Carmona revealed an alarming figure: currently the budget for feeding an inmate in Colombia is barely 2,400 pesos a day to cover four meals a day, which condemns the prison population to malnutrition.
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Added to this problem is the poor health care, which has led the inmates of the El Pedregal prison to demand the immediate presence of control entities to verify the conditions of confinement and stop the alleged abuses of authority at the prison doors.
Given the seriousness of the events, it is expected that an urgent dialogue table will be established during the course of this week.
The Medellín Ombudsman, the Ombudsman’s Office, the Attorney General’s Office and regional directors of Inpec would participate in this meeting to seek a negotiated solution to the protest.
For now, the inmates maintain their position of not receiving official food until transparency is guaranteed in the receipt of humanitarian kits and extortionate charges to their loved ones are stopped.
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