192 prisoners lost their lives for various causes in Venezuela’s makeshift prisons according to the local NGO Una Ventana a la Libertad -A window for freedom-
In it’s 2019 report, the ONG also said 49 of them died for HIV, cancer and high blood pressure in a country without medicines even for free people.
Others 42 died from violence between inmates, 35 for unknown reasons and another 16 for police abuse, torture including, declared lawyer Carlos Nieto Palma, chief from a Window for freedom.
These makeshift prisons are located in precincts and sometimes even in apartment buildings. Normal prisons are overcrowded. Also during 2019, some 358 prisoners escaped with only 109 being reported as recaptured.
You must read: Venezuela is the most murderous country in Latin America: Insight Crime
The first semester of 2019 was the deadliest with 139 prisoners dying, while the remaining 53 lost their lives during the other half of the year.
There are currently 6,515 prisoners in the 15 Venezuelan states, say the Nieto Palma organization. Those dungeons can fit -at best- 1,176 inmates.
The dungeons are not fit for handicapped detainees, minors or women, and medical attention is described as spotty at best. Prisoners have to sleep on their feet, or in improvised hammocks made with bedsheets. A prisoner fell from one of these and broke his hip late last year.
