Harvard Evaluates Condition of Panama’s Prison System
Through an academic assessment of Panama’s prison system, the International Human Rights Clinic of the Faculty of Law at Harvard University found that overcrowding, corruption, violence and squalor persist.
“We consider the recommendations the International Clinic will make essential to improving the prison system crisis,” said clinic director James Cavallaro, who also noted that there is more political will than in the past to improve prison conditions.
The clinic based their evaluation on October visits of the La Joyita, La Joya, La Chorrera, Tinajitas and Female Rehabilitation Center prison facilities and submitted their recommendations to Minister of the Interior Roxana Mendez on Monday.
The Harvard group also visited Panama three times in 2007 to talk with prison system stakeholders and visit prisons throughout the country to observe conditions and interview detainees.
In March 2008, the group published a report which was distributed to Panamanian authorities, media and public, and then to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights at the Organization of American States and the United Nations Human Rights Committee.
There are over 11,000 detainees in Panama’s 22 prisons.
In Panama, its not just the prisons that suffer from overcrowding, corruption, violence and squalor.