65
mandate to conduct monitoring visits to penitentiaries. Thus, the IACHR has voiced its
concern at situations such as the following, described in the Bolivia Country Report for
2007:
Within the prison, the men deprived of liberty, their wives or partners
and their children are left to their own fate. The prison authorities
recognized, and the delegation of the Commission confirmed, that
prisoners sell or rent individual cells. This means that an inmate does not
have the right to a cell, and that he has to pay to have a place to sleep; or
else he will sleep in a corridor or out in the courtyard, exposed to the
elements of the weather. In the Chonchocorro prison, the Commission
was informed that the sports gymnasium belonged to an inmate, who
220
charged a membership fee of B. 20 a month for its use.
In the Report on its mission to Mexico, the Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture wrote:
Members of the delegation observed during their visits to prisons that […
] in many of these facilities, all manner of commercial transactions take
place, including payment for certain spaces or sleeping areas, and a
whole system of privileges to which not all persons deprived of their
liberty are entitled. Some of the people interviewed explained to the
delegation how payments are required in order to maintain certain rights
in the prison. 221
For his part, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture had the following to say
regarding a similar situation in Paraguay:
Corruption is endemic. […] It is a common practice that prisoners have to
pay bribes in order to secure the supply of necessary articles to which
they are entitled and which the State is obligated to provide. Some
inmates enjoy spacious and clean cells equipped with a TV set, radio and
books, while others are locked up in filthy and overcrowded ones. The
lack of transparency in the allocation of quarters adds to the suspicion
that better‐off inmates bribe prison authorities to receive better
treatment. Furthermore, the payment of a bribe of 1,000 guaraní for the
most everyday and normally available goods and activities, i.e. sitting
under a tree, appears to be so widespread that it virtually constitutes an
independent, grey economy within the prison walls, run by gangs of
inmates and facilitated by the active or passive participation of some of
the prison authorities. This leads to further marginalization of the poor.
The Special Rapporteur also received allegations of sexual harassment by
220
IACHR, Access to Justice and Social Inclusion: The Road Towards Strengthening Democracy in Bolivia,
Ch. III, para. 201.
221
United Nations, CAT/OP/MEX/1, Report on the visit of the Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture
and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment to Mexico, May 27, 2009, para. 167.
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