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URUGUAY: Prison Without Bars Offers True
Rehabilitation
By Pablo Alfano
MONTEVIDEO - Fabián Rodríguez has two years
to go on a long sentence for robbery. After
spending time in three overcrowded maximum
security prisons in Uruguay, he finally
landed in a rehabilitation centre where work
and respect are central pillars. Now he runs
a bakery which supplies 200 inmates as well
as the guards.
The National Rehabilitation Centre (CNR),
which operates in an old psychiatric
hospital, is a model prison practically
without bars that has an extremely low
recidivism rate among its former inmates.
Rodríguez spent time in the prison named
Libertad – which paradoxically means
"Freedom" – located 50 km from Montevideo,
where the 1973-1985 military dictatorship
kept hundreds of political prisoners. He was
also held in the Santiago Vázquez
Penitentiary Complex, the country's largest
prison, and in La Tablada, both of which are
located on the outskirts of the Uruguayan
capital.
"If I can teach others, that's even better"
The National Rehabilitation Centre (CNR) was
able to set up a bakery thanks to donations
from the government's National Drug Board (JND)
and the state insurance and telecoms
companies.
Besides baking bread and biscuits for the
CNR, Fabián Rodríguez has taught a baking
course for 13 fellow inmates, three of whom
now work with him every night, from midnight
to 7:00 AM. "After that we get some sleep,
and after lunch I play a little football or
I do other things…there are always things to
do," he told IPS.
The bakery also makes pizzas, cakes,
pastries and other baked goods, and will
soon make sandwiches as well. The members of
the cooperative are anxious for the
paperwork to be completed so they can start
selling their products outside the walls of
the CNR. But in the meantime, they have
already started filling orders for catering
services at birthdays and weddings,
Rodríguez says with evident pride. They also
made a huge cake for National Police Day,
and another one, weighing nearly 100 kg, for
the inmates to celebrate Children's Day with
their families.
With what he has earned working in prison,
Rodríguez has already begun to purchase
equipment to open his own bakery when he
regains his freedom.
He said the JND had also mentioned to him
the possibility of teaching baking and
pastry-making skills at the Santiago Vázquez
prison, once he gets out. "I said yes
immediately. The only thing I know for sure
is that when I get out of here, I'll never
steal again. I like what I'm doing, and if I
can teach other people, that's even better,"
he said.
The poor conditions in Uruguay's prisons
have come under scrutiny from international
human rights organisations.
In La Tablada, nevertheless, Rodríguez was
able to learn professional baking skills -
"by watching and earning my stripes" - and
he later formed part of a group of prisoners
who founded a baking cooperative, the
Cooperativa Panificadora de Apoyo Social.
It was then, he told IPS, that he applied
for a transfer.
After he made it to the CNR, he and his
fellow inmates established a new branch of
the La Tablada cooperative, which opened in
late July. But they hope to eventually have
their own independent cooperative.
In this small South American country of 3.3
million people sandwiched between Argentina
and Brazil, the prison population has grown
nearly threefold since 1995, largely due to
the stiffening of sentences for minor
crimes, as well as a rise in drug abuse.
The latest report by the congressional
commissioner for the penitentiary system,
Álvaro Garcé, says the number of prisoners
climbed from 2,791 in 1990 to 8,100 in March
2008 – one of the highest rates in Latin
America in proportion to the population.
Garcé underscored that Uruguay's prisons do
not prepare inmates – who have high rates of
drug and alcohol abuse and low levels of
schooling - for reinsertion in society.
Prisoners are held in overcrowded
conditions, with 8,100 inmates housed in
facilities built to hold 6,164, and nearly
100 new intakes a month.
After a short-lived respite provided by the
early release of 800 prisoners under a
special "prison emergency" law passed by the
governing left-wing Broad Front coalition
shortly after it took office in 2005, the
system is once again overwhelmed, to the
point that it earned a sharp rebuke this
year from Manfred Nowak, United Nations
special rapporteur on torture.
To ease pressure on the penitentiary system,
the administration of socialist President
Tabaré Vázquez designed a series of
measures, including legal reforms, to expand
prisons and open new facilities, in a
process still in its early stages.
The recidivism rate in Uruguay is around 60
percent, which makes the CNR a kind of
island, with only 10 to 12 percent of former
inmates becoming repeat offenders since
2002, the assistant director of the
institution, police commissioner Enrique
Mesa, told IPS.
He explained that in Uruguay the recidivism
rate is measured by the proportion of
inmates who are arrested again within five
years of release.
True rehabilitation
"We found the bakery project very
interesting from the moment it was
proposed," police inspector Gustavo Belarra,
director of the CNR, told IPS in an
interview.
"It's really important for the prisoners,
most of whom have children, to be able to
take training courses and work alongside
their fellow inmates, because it not only
prepares them for better reinsertion in the
labour market, but tremendously strengthens
the bonds among them and between them and
society and their families, while boosting
their self-esteem," he said.
Second chance
The first thing you notice when you enter
the enormous grounds of the CNR is young men
energetically hoeing the soil and pushing
wheelbarrows full of dirt.
"They're burning off energy; they have to
eat well and move around a lot so their
bodies get used to being off 'pasta base'
(cocaine sulfate)," explained an inmate
showing IPS around.
The young men are taking part in a programme
for first-time offenders, created a year ago
for inmates up to the age of 29 without
previous criminal records, who are in prison
for minor or moderate drug-related crimes,
which usually involve cocaine sulfate, a
highly addictive and destructive drug.
Cocaine sulfate is obtained by macerating
coca leaves, which are mixed with water and
sulfuric acid, or a solvent like benzene,
ether or kerosene. The drug, which is
smoked, is known in Uruguay and neighbouring
Argentina as "pasta base" or "paco".
The idea behind the first-time offenders
programme is to rehabilitate young drug
users while keeping them away from the
hard-core prison population, said CNR
director Belarra.
To identify potential new participants,
psychologists and psychiatrists interview
young prisoners with drug problems, who are
invited to join the programme of their own
free will.
The first six months are focused on detox
and rehabilitation, a process that involves
the prisoner facing up to the fact that he
landed in jail because of his drug problem.
After that, the CNR staff and experts work
with the first-time offenders using the same
strategies as with the rest of the inmates,
offering them the chance to pick up their
studies again or learn a skill, with a view
to reinsertion in the labour market – and
society.
The CNR opened on Jul. 31, 2002 in what used
to be the Musto psychiatric hospital in the
north of the province of Montevideo, close
to the border with the neighbouring province
of Canelones.
"The centre is like a halfway house in which
inmates are gradually integrated into
society, as they acquire different skills to
facilitate social inclusion when they leave
the prison system," said Belarra, who has
worked in different positions in the CNR
since it began to function.
There are currently 192 inmates, seven of
whom have daytime study release privileges.
The only rooms with bars are the ones
assigned to the new intakes. The newcomers
are later moved to the second floor, where
they share rooms with other inmates and are
subject to few security measures and have
greater independence and the chance to
continue their primary or secondary school
studies where they had left off.
The centre has classrooms and teachers
thanks to an agreement with the National
Administration of Public Education.
"Most of the prisoners who are transferred
here are functionally illiterate or
extremely rusty - that is, it has been so
long since they have sat in front of a
textbook or a math equation that they forgot
how to do it," said Belarra. The idea is for
the inmates to study, without feeling
obligated to do so, because they understand
the benefits that schooling represents, he
added.
The centre also has a cybercafé donated by
the state telecoms company and run by the
inmates themselves.
From football to work
During the tour of the installation by IPS,
in the company of just a few inmates, the
climate of respect and civility stood out.
"There is no punishment or beatings here.
It's clear and simple: you have to study,
work or be involved in some activity, and in
your free time you can do whatever you
like," says one of the inmates, pointing to
a tidy gym where several young men are
working out, lifting weights and punching
boxing bags.
The basic rules in the CNR are: no drugs or
alcohol, take care of the facility, and no
fighting.
Some of the inmates are playing football,
while a few metres away others are working
the soil with a hoe and shovel, and filling
up wheelbarrows. They are first-time
offenders, in for minor drug-related crimes.
(See sidebar.)
After walking around the place for a while,
it's easy to forget you are in a prison,
surrounded by people who have committed
crimes, including violent ones. The only
reminder is the occasional uniformed police
officer.
The entire building, inside and out, is
painted a shiny white, the smells coming
from the kitchen are enticing, and the
bathrooms are in excellent shape. "That's
what public bathrooms in bars and
restaurants and schools should look like," a
passing police officer remarks.
Besides the bakery, there is a carpentry
workshop and a smithy, where benches and
desks are repaired and furniture is made for
public schools in the area – "a good way to
improve ties with the community," said
Belarra.
The workshops have made, for example, the
post office's letter trays, as well as more
than 100 basketball hoops specially produced
for a drug rehabilitation programme launched
by the president's office, which were set up
in public sports facilities around the
country.
Several inmates are also studying to become
plumbers, electricians, mechanics, gardeners
and brick-layers, at the Universidad del
Trabajo del Uruguay, the country's main
technical vocational institute.
In addition, the CNR has work agreements
with Catholic Church institutions, private
companies, and public enterprises like the
Ancap state-owned oil company, the water
utility, the Montevideo port service, public
hospitals and Congress.
Fabián Rodríguez knows that the temptation
to go back to his old ways will always be
there, and he still has a couple years to go
in the CNR, although he may be granted day
leave or be released on parole before that,
depending on what the judge decides.
But this time, he says, instead of holding a
gun to get his hands on some dough, he will
keep his hands on the real dough – making
bread for a living, to stay out of prison
for good. |
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