Quito, Oct 4 (EFE).- The president of Ecuador, Daniel Noboa, supervised this Friday the progress of a maximum security prison being built in the coastal province of Santa Elena (southwest), with a design similar to the one he has applied in El Salvador its president Nayib Bukele.
The prison, which will be called ‘El Encuentro Prison’ As announced this Friday by the Noboa Government, construction began on June 21 and the physical work has progressed by 12%, reported the General Secretariat of Communication of the Presidency.
“We seek to have a more advanced prison system, with the necessary isolation in maximum security for people deprived of liberty” who pose a greater risk, Noboa assured during the tour.
The prison center, which is designed to classify and isolate prisoners according to their level of danger, is built in an area of 37 hectares, with 14,000 square meters of physical construction and will be equipped with cutting-edge security technology devices, the Secretariat added. of Communication.
The Noboa Administration added that video surveillance systems with artificial intelligence technology will be located in that prison center to observe the behavior of the imprisoned people in real time.
The construction of this prison is intended to “give a break” to Ecuadorian society, which in recent years has witnessed an escalation of violence in the country’s penitentiary centers, said the president.
“We are improving the (security) situation and the detention centers will no longer be centers of crime, but will serve to ensure that sentences are carried out and there is true rehabilitation” of the prisoners, assured the head of state.
Noboa thanked the population of the sector where the prison is being built “for being a fundamental part of this work” in which, according to him, nearly $54 million has been invested and is a strategic point of the Government’s security line.
For his part, the general director of the National Service for Comprehensive Attention to Persons Deprived of Liberty (SNAI), the State penitentiary unit, Luis Zaldumbide, said that this prison will be built in “record time”, since it is estimated that it will be ready in 300 days.
“For now the physical progress of the work is at 12%,” added the source after indicating that at the moment the pavilions, the platforms that will house the control towers and the reinforcement of walls for the walls, among other works, are being built. technicians.
The project is located in the ‘Puntas del Pacífico’ sector and will have, in parallel, a medical center, an ambulance will be acquired, a multi-use sports field will be built and an educational unit will be rebuilt, the official said.
Between 2021 and 2023, more than 500 prisoners were murdered in Ecuadorian prisons, many of them in a series of massacres between gangs that sought to displace their rivals to gain a foothold in internal control of the prisons.
At the beginning of his mandate, President Noboa had offered to build two prisons similar to those in El Salvador, such as the Terrorism Confinement Center (Cecot), built by Bukele to lock up gang members, up to nearly 40,000, according to official figures.
So far, the construction of only one of these two prisons has begun, and the date on which the works could begin, initially contemplated in the Amazonian province of Pastaza, is not yet known.
The prison under construction will be significantly smaller in size than the famous Bukele prison, since according to official figures it is expected to have a capacity for 736 inmates.
#president #Ecuador #supervises #progress #Bukelestyle #maximum #security #prison
2024-10-07 10:01:07
