Sleeping Out

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...
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A fire devoured 11 homes and a communal house Tuesday night in the Kuna Yala Island’s Urgandi community. Although no one was injured, 72 people are now shelterless and the villagers also lost their power plant. The fire is believed to have been sparked by a fuel transfer near a kerosene lamp.  There will...
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Government minister Roxana Mendez says the Panamanian penitentiary system is short 700 guards. In an effort to address this issue, the government is recruiting and training 150 guards and has approved a $100 a month pay raise for prison custodians. Mendez said that the shortage of guards is the reason inmate hearings and medical...
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William Dathan Holbert, who confessed to killing Bocas del Toro residents for their property, claims that the conditions of his confinement in a Panama prison violate the Geneva Convention. Holbert, also known as “Wild Bill,” says that he has been imprisoned in a 10 by 10 foot cell for the last two weeks without...
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Jesus Velez Loor told a panel of Interamerican Human Rights Court judges how he was tortured during his detainment in Panama seven years ago. The trial which pits the Ecuadorian citizen against the Panamanian state began Wednesday at the Court’s headquarters in San Jose, Costa Rica. Velez Loor says the story began when he...
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