9
c)
“they continue conducting search procedures in order to disarm the inmate
population, where officers of the National Guard continue having an abusive
behavior. According to the representatives, “the main cause of the extreme violence
existing in the Venezuelan prisons, is the entry of firearms […] [coming from what
they called] prison mafia, composed of officers of the National Guard as well as of
the Ministry of the Interior and Justice, who have the capacity to trade and traffic […]
weapons [with] the inmates that are inside the prisons”;
d)
“[e]ven though the number of security guards has increased in proportion to
the guards that existed at the time of iss[uance] of the [orders] for provisional
measures [...], [the number] is still not enough". Moreover, they repeated that
“since the issuance of the orders of this Court up to the present, the number of
security guards informed by the State has never coincided with the guards [the
representatives] may observe” during the visits to the prisons”;
e)
the inmates usually eat the food provided by their relatives, therefore only
those inmates without a family support eat the food of the prison center. Hence, the
inmates express “their disagreement with the little amount and bad quality of the
food”;
f)
there is "lack of doctors and supplies necessary to provide adequate health
care to the prison population. The population of the four confinement centers amount
to 4.000 inmates, and there are only approximately six doctors in all the centers and
lack of supplies”.
g)
Even though they “recogniz[e] the efforts made by the State in order to deal
with the serious problems of infrastructure, “there is a continuing overcrowding,
coupled with deteriorated infrastructures”, despite the “efforts of the State to build
15 penitentiary centers”. “There is no bathroom” in the confinement centers, “the
use of water is usually restricted and the population takes a bath in a common
space, which is not private, affecting the dignity of inmates”. Along the same line of
reasoning, “there is no effective process of recollection of garbage”, which
determines the “accumula[tion] of excrement, creating a permanent unhealthy
environment,
h)
The inmates are not separated based on their level of dangerousness, age,
status of the proceedings, whether the inmate has been sentenced, or if it is his first
offense or whether the inmate is a recidivist, “a limited classification is made when
the inmate arrives at the prevention area and the officers [ask] him where he would
like to go and [the inmates chooses the place in which he believes] he could be more
safe”;
i)
“there is no information on disciplinary or administrative procedures against
the authorities and officers responsible for the penitentiary centers, or on [c]riminal
charges brought against the alleged responsible for the violent acts committed inside
the prisons, let alone [...] on a sole [...] final conviction in these cases"; therefore,
they concluded that there exists "a generalized impunity that fosters and protects
the violent acts".
j)
the educational and labor missions implemented by the State must be
"massive" "since the percentage of participants is low in relation to the existing
prison population”. In this regard, they indicated that the percentage of participants