This report was written by Joanne Mariner, associate counsel at Human Rights Watch, and Michael Bochenek, former Leonard H. Sandler Fellow with Human Rights Watch/Americas. It is based primarily on information that the authors gathered during visits to eleven Venezuelan prisons in March 1996. David E. Nachman, vice-chair of Human Rights Watch/Americas, joined the authors in a portion of this research. Cynthia Brown, program director at Human Rights Watch, and José Miguel Vivanco, executive director of Human Rights Watch/Americas, edited the report.

We wish to express our deep appreciation to the many Venezuelan lawyers, academics and human rights advocates who assisted us in our work. We are particularly grateful for the help of the staff of the Comité de Familiares de Víctimas de los Sucesos de febrero-marzo de 1989 (COFAVIC), the Programa Venezolano de Educación y Acción en Derechos Humanos (PROVEA), and the Comisión de Solidaridad, Justicia y Paz de Petare. We also wish to express our thanks to the Venezuelan officials who facilitated our access to the country's prisons, and who were consistently cordial and responsive to our numerous queries and requests. Most of all, we wish to acknowledge the critical contribution made by the numerous prisoners whom we interviewed.

We are grateful to the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation for its generous support of our work monitoring prison conditions and the treatment of prisoners.

This report is one of a series of reports published by Human Rights Watch that describe conditions in prisons worldwide. Our organization has conducted specialized prison research and worked on behalf of prisoners' rights since 1987, striving to focus international attention on the treatment of prisoners. To date, we have investigated and reported on prison conditions in Brazil, Czechoslovakia (prior to its division into two states), Egypt, India, Indonesia, Israel and the Occupied Territories, Jamaica, Japan, Mexico, Poland, Romania, South Africa, the former Soviet Union, Spain, Turkey, the United Kingdom, the United States (including a separate short report published on Puerto Rico), Venezuela, and Zaire. In this report, as in our past reports, we assess the government's practices according to the guidelines set forth in the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, as well as the relevant provisions of international human rights treaties to which the country is a party.

This report describes and evaluates the treatment of prisoners confined in the Venezuelan prison system, which according to Venezuelan law is under the authority of the Ministry of Justice. It does not cover conditions in police lockups, where prisoners are generally held after arrest and often for several months prior to transfer into the prison system.

Although where directly relevant this report touches on other deficiencies in the criminal justice system, it does not purport to be a comprehensive evaluation of the administration of justice in Venezuela.1 Nonetheless, the reader might usefully keep in mind that the Venezuelan prison system as described here is simply one element of a larger whole. The decisions of, among others, Venezuela's police, judges, public defenders, and prosecutors also directly affect the lives of persons incarcerated in Venezuela's prisons. Moreover, many of the problems described in this report-physical abuse, impunity, corruption, an overburdened system-are not limited to the prisons but afflict other parts of the justice system as well. Thus, while it is imperative that the prison system be reformed, any serious effort to improve the situation of Venezuelan prisoners will eventually have to reach beyond prisons to remedy some of the country's larger problems.

Context

Underlying Venezuela's prison crisis are other serious issues, including a stagnating economy, a violent crime epidemic and, more broadly, a lack of public confidence in government. While these factors in no way excuse the atrocious conditions found in the country's prisons, they do indicate that reforming the situation is no facile matter.

For decades, while so many other countries in Latin America struggled with guerrilla wars, authoritarian governments, rampant human rights abuses, and, in the 1980s, a strangling debt burden, Venezuela stood out as an exception. Distinguished as the region's oldest uninterrupted constitutional democracy, it enjoyed political stability, democratic governments and relative social tranquility. Buffering it from the economic crises that struck elsewhere in region were vast, nationalized oil reserves.2

During the 1980s oil wealth and foreign investment allowed Venezuela, despite economic stagnation, to avoid the painful economic choices faced in other Latin American countries, but the bubble finally burst at the end of the decade. In 1989, with the presidency of Carlos Andrés Pérez, stringent structural adjustment policies were instituted, the burden of which fell disproportionately on the poor. Public subsidies-particularly for food, education, transportation, and energy-were slashed, poverty increased, and unemployment reached new highs, inspiring social unrest. On February 27, 1989, even before the full impact of the new policies was felt, the poor of Caracas erupted in protest. The week of rioting and brutal military repression that followed became known as the "Caracazo," the most notable of a continuing series of street protests.

For several years now, Venezuela has been struggling with economic stagnation and its all too visible consequences. The gap between rich and poor is enormous, and the middle class has all but disappeared, swallowed up by poverty. Financial scandals have resulted in the collapse of several major banks, whose administrators have avoided prosecution by fleeing abroad. As problems mount, doubts continue to arise regarding the capacity of Venezuela's leaders and public institutions to respond adequately. At present, the economy is weak and public confidence in government is low. Although Venezuela's gross national productgrew slightly in 1995, it shrank 1 percent during 1996,3 while the inflation rate reached the record figure of 103 percent.4 Numerous public ministries claim to be underfunded;5 the Justice Ministry, in particular, has stated repeatedly that the main obstacle to prison reform is a lack of resources.

Even Venezuela's claim to democratic stability has been challenged. In February 1992, the country was shaken by an attempted military coup, and then, nine months later, by another. In mid-1994, the government suspended several basic constitutional guarantees, raising further questions about the strength of the country's democratic tradition.

But the crime epidemic, leading to public pressure to incarcerate people, is the issue most directly relevant to the prison crisis.6 During the late 1980s and early 1990s, declining incomes and deteriorating living conditions led to an explosion in the crime rate. The problem of "insecurity," as it is labeled, earned a prominent place in the public debate. Indeed, opinion polls consistently single out crime as Venezuelans' primary concern, even above their concern for declining living standards. As in previous years, in 1996 the crime rate continued to worsen.7

The breakdown of law and order in Caracas is palpable. Robbery, often accompanied by violence, is a frequent event, as is murder. With four millioninhabitants, Caracas averages thirty killings every weekend.8A 1995 Gallup poll found that approximately one-third of Caracas residents had been victims of crime over the course of the year.9 The situation has gotten so out of hand, and public confidence in the criminal justice system has ebbed to such a degree, that citizens sometimes resort to lynching. Mobs of people, particularly in poorer areas of the city where inhabitants feel most unprotected by police, have attacked and killed suspected criminals with sticks, stones and other rudimentary weapons.10 The lynchings reportedly began with a couple of isolated incidents in 1994 but quickly multiplied. Despite the brutal character of these acts of vigilante justice, opinion polls show that they have broad public support.11

Such punitive sentiments bode poorly for the cause of prison reform. As in other countries where crime reduction is perceived to be a pressing national priority, many Venezuelans are more concerned with keeping prisoners locked up than with ensuring that they are locked up in humane conditions. Criticism of Pope Jean Paul II's early 1996 visit to Catia prison was indicative of harsh public attitudes toward prisoners. As one magazine article asserted, "People believe that it would have been more fitting for the Pope to meet with all the people mistreated by the prisoners, than with the prisoners."12

Methodology

In conducting its prison investigations, Human Rights Watch follows a self-imposed set of rules: investigators undertake visits only when they, not the authorities, can choose the institutions to be visited; when the investigators can beconfident that they will be allowed to talk privately with inmates of their choice; and when the investigators can gain access to the entire facility to be examined. Prior to our March 1996 visit to Venezuela, we requested permission to conduct a study of the country's prison system and informed the Venezuelan authorities of the conditions under which we wished to conduct the visits. Their response, both in granting our request and in their subsequent reception of our mission, was entirely positive.

Venezuelan government officials and, in particular, officials of the Ministry of Justice, made no attempt to obstruct or delay our investigation. On the contrary, they granted us full and free access to each of the prisons we wished to visit, provided us with helpful documentary information, and made themselves available for extended meetings. Unfortunately, a few individuals were difficult or uncooperative. Some lawyers in the Public Ministry, for example, were reluctant to speak to us, and ended up flatly denying our requests for an interview. In one prison, members of the National Guard tried to bar us from interviewing prisoners in private, but after some discussion this situation was resolved. On the whole, we should emphasize, our mission was noteworthy for the cooperation, assistance and responsiveness of the Venezuelan authorities.

During our three-week mission, we spoke with a wide variety of government officials, including prison directors, prison staff, prosecutors, judges, the president of the Subcommission on Human Rights and Constitutional Guarantees of the Chamber of Deputies, and the governor of the state of Bolívar; as well as with numerous academics, representatives of nongovernmental organizations and religious groups. We also met with several ministers, including the minister of justice, the minister of defense, and the president's chief of staff (Ministro de la Secretaría de la Presidencia); the state prosecutor; and the U.S. ambassador to Venezuela.

The bulk of the information contained in this report, however, was gathered during our inspections of eleven of Venezuela's thirty-two prisons-including the country's only women's facility-and our extensive interviews with prisoners. We spent a day or more at nearly every prison we visited, viewing the entire facility, including punishment cells and other segregation areas, the infirmary, the kitchen, the recreation areas, the bathrooms, and, of course, the prisoners' living quarters. In each prison, we measured cells, smelled bathrooms, checked faucets, scrutinized bugs, tasted food, and looked behind closed doors, among other things. Some of our interviews with prisoners were conducted informally, as we walked with them through the cell blocks; some were in groups, when we asked, for example, how many unsentenced prisoners hadbeen confined for three, four, or five years; but many of them were one-on-one interviews conducted outside of anyone else's hearing.

Although we discovered a range of official abuses against prisoners, Venezuelan prisons are not characterized by the oppressive atmosphere Human Rights Watch has encountered in certain other prison systems where prisoners have been afraid to speak to investigators, even privately, because of the threat of serious retaliation.13 Indeed, prisoners were clearly less reticent in recounting official abuses than they were in describing inmate-on-inmate abuse.

International Human Rights Standards Governing the Treatment of Prisoners

The chief international and regional human rights documents binding on Venezuela clearly affirm that human rights extend to persons who are incarcerated. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, and the American Convention on Human Rights, all of which Venezuela has ratified, prohibit torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment, without exception or derogation. Both the ICCPR and the American Convention require that "the reform and social readaptation of prisoners" be an "essential aim" of imprisonment.14 They also mandate that "[a]ll persons deprived of their liberty shall be treated with respect for the inherent dignity of the human person."15

Several additional international documents flesh out the human rights of persons deprived of liberty, give guidance as to how governments may comply with their obligations under international law, and provide authoritative interpretations of the norms binding on governments. The most comprehensive such guidelines are the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, adopted by the Economic and Social Council in 1957. Other relevant documents include the Body of Principles for the Protection of All Persons Under Any Form of Detention or Imprisonment, adopted by the General Assembly in1988, and the Basic Principles for the Treatment of Prisoners, adopted by the General Assembly in 1990. It is worth noting that although these instruments are not treaties, their most important norms are nevertheless binding on governments because they have achieved the status of customary international law.

These documents reaffirm the tenet that prisoners retain fundamental human rights. As the most recent of these documents, the Basic Principles, declares:

Except for those limitations that are demonstrably necessitated by the fact of incarceration, all prisoners shall retain the human rights and fundamental freedoms set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and, where the State concerned is a party, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Optional Protocol thereto, as well as such other rights as are set out in other United Nations covenants.16

Endorsing this philosophy in 1992, the United Nations Human Rights Committee explained that states have "a positive obligation toward persons who are particularly vulnerable because of their status as persons deprived of liberty" and stated:

[N]ot only may persons deprived of their liberty not be subjected to [torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment], including medical or scientific experimentation, but neither may they be subjected to any hardship or constraint other than that resulting from the deprivation of liberty; respect for the dignity of such persons must be guaranteed under the same conditions as for that of free persons. Persons deprived of their liberty enjoy all the rights set forth in the [ICCPR], subject to the restrictions that are unavoidable in a closed environment.17

Significantly, the Human Rights Committee also stressed that the obligation to treat persons deprived of their liberty with dignity and humanity is a fundamental and universally applicable rule, not dependent on the material resources available to the state party.18

Overcrowded, understaffed, physically deteriorated, and rife with weapons, drugs and gangs, Venezuela's prisons have a deservedly poor reputation. Although their notoriety largely springs from a few brutal outbursts of violence-including the 1994 massacre of over one hundred inmates at Sabaneta prison and the 1996 killing of twenty-five inmates at La Planta prison-these are simply the most newsworthy among countless violent incidents. The prisons' appalling violence, moreover, emerges from a host of other chronic problems.

By the mid-1980s, prisons in Venezuela were already in a state of crisis, and by 1994 the crisis had worsened to such an extent that the Venezuelan Public Ministry warned that it "threaten[ed] democratic stability." In 1996, the prison system's defects drew international scrutiny, as delegations from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the European Parliament, Human Rights Watch/Americas and Amnesty International visited Venezuela and urged the government to institute reforms.

Expressing increased concern over the prison situation in recent years, the government has tried new strategies such as posting the National Guard within the prisons and delegating administrative power over the prisons to state governments. But such measures have neither substantially reduced prison violence nor relieved their other serious problems. Progress has at best been incremental. Notably, however, as part of a declared effort to "humanize" the prison system, the Ministry of Justice did succeed in closing Catia prison in Caracas, this past January, replacing it with two modern prison annexes.

Besides benefiting the prisoners who were confined there, the closing of Catia prison was a symbolically important step. As much or more than any other prison in the country, Catia epitomized the worst aspects of the Venezuelan prison system. One of the country's most violent and overcrowded facilities and the site of a brutal 1992 prisoner massacre, it had been slated for closure for years. In March 1996, when a Human Rights Watch/Americas delegation visited Venezuela, several expert observers, voicing general skepticism over the prospects for prison reform, told us that they believed the facility would never close. Catia's recent closure is, of course, only one step in the direction of alleviating the enormous systemic problems of the Venezuelan prison system, but it is hopefully a first step. Having eliminated a potent symbol of the system's defects, the Venezuelan authorities still face the real test of eradicating them in substance.

Human Rights Watch/Americas visited eleven Venezuelan prisons during a three-week mission to the country in March 1996. Our inspections of these facilities, in addition to our discussions with numerous government officials, academics, representatives of nongovernmental organizations and prison inmates,convinced us that a thorough reform of the Venezuelan prison system is urgently required. The government initiatives undertaken since our visit, although some of them are encouraging, are insufficient to remedy the system's massive defects. Moreover, the inauspicious history of prison reform in Venezuela counsels against an incremental, piecemeal approach. Given the seriousness of the problems at issue and the need to resolve them without delay, we urge the government to formulate a national emergency plan for the amelioration of the prison system.

The conditions of Venezuela's prisons violate both Venezuelan law and international human rights standards binding on Venezuela. One fundamental problem is that the country's prisons are dangerously overcrowded, housing over 24,000 inmates in facilities designed for just over 15,000. Some facilities, including Sabaneta and Ciudad Bolívar, among others, contain several times the number of prisoners they were built to house. Because space is at such a premium, inmates routinely sleep two or three to a bed, or even on passageway floors. The overcrowding at Sabaneta is so acute, in fact, that a number of prisoners are forced to sleep in hammocks strung up in the air in narrow pipe-access passageways between corridors of cells. Further exacerbating the situation at Sabaneta and other prisons is the fact that available space is unevenly distributed: prisoners with power or money generally obtain roomier quarters for themselves while their poorer, weaker fellows share what remains.

Compounding the overcrowding crisis is the fact that nearly three-quarters of Venezuelan prisoners have not been convicted of any crime and should not, in principle, even be detained. There are two basic reasons why Venezuelan prisons hold such disproportionate and unjustifiable numbers of unsentenced prisoners. First, most criminal defendants are incarcerated rather than granted provisional liberty while their prosecutions are pending, violating binding international standards that require that pretrial release generally be granted. Second-because the justice system is inefficient, overwhelmed, and politicized; because criminal proceeding are conducted under an antiquated procedural code; and because prisoners lack access to effective legal counsel and, frequently, even lack physical access to the courts-criminal cases in Venezuela typically drag out for years. Particularly when defendants are detained, this undue delay violates binding international standards requiring that criminal proceeding be completed in a reasonable time. Although reform of the judicial system and of the code of criminal procedure is currently under discussion-and will hopefully lead to important improvements-the existing situation is terribly abusive.

Venezuela's prison overcrowding, in conjunction with other ills, exacts an intolerable individual cost. Most fundamental is the cost in lives. According to official statistics, 207 prisoners were killed and 1,133 prisoners were injured inVenezuelan prisons in 1996-in other words, an weekly average of four prisoners killed and more than twenty injured. Facilitating this epidemic of violence are weapons of all types, including knives, machetes, and pistols; even grenades are occasionally found in the prisons. In one facility that Human Rights Watch/Americas visited, prisoners displayed weapons openly: they walked around the prison grounds with long machetes in their hands or home-made firearms stuck in their waistbands. In other prisons where inmates' weapons were hidden, their numerous wounds and scars remained visible, attesting to the constant violence.

In this harsh environment, many inmates profit from exploiting and abusing others. A constant refrain among prisoners we met was "only the strong survive." The strongest and most powerful prisoners eat well, live in more comfortable surroundings, make money off others and have others do their bidding. In contrast, the weakest and least powerful prisoners suffer all of the worst deprivations of prison life. They sleep on the floor in crowded passageways; they clean other prisoners' cells; their belongings are stolen; they are mistreated, beaten, and raped. Often this violence and extortion is gang-related. The traffic in arms, as well as the prisons' substantial drug traffic, is generally controlled by gangs; the large amounts of money at stake encourage violent gang clashes.

Abetting this prisoner-on-prisoner violence and exploitation is the absence of a rational system of prisoner classification. Venezuelan prisons mix unsentenced prisoners with sentenced ones, healthy prisoners with sick ones, and first-time petty offenders with murderers and rapists. Indeed, in one of the most glaring violations of classification norms, juvenile prisoners mix with adults at La Planta prison in Caracas. Representatives from Human Rights Watch/Americas spoke to one young inmate who, when he was seventeen years old, was viciously raped at La Planta prison by a group of older prisoners.

Rather than continually risk their safety, some prisoners try to retreat from the dangerous prison environment. Nearly every facility we visited had one or more groups of "refugees": prisoners who are weak, old, or otherwise unable to live with the general prison population. Such prisoners abandon the regular cellblocks to live in ad hoc areas of refuge-often converted classrooms, administrative rooms, and disciplinary cells-and often mixed together with prisoners in disciplinary segregation. For such prisoners, greater security comes at the cost of much greater overcrowding, worse conditions, and little or no access to recreation and other activities.

The prisons' lack of safety is the direct result of their lack of security staff. At several prisons that Human Rights Watch/Americas visited, there was only one guard on duty for every 150 or more prisoners. Given these proportions, meaningful control of the prison population is sporadic at best. Guards, moreover,are untrained, low-paid, and, in consequence, too often corrupt. Their interest in profiting from their contacts with prisoners-by facilitating cell transfers, permitting visits, turning a blind eye to contraband-severely interferes with their ability to manage their formal responsibilities.

The Ministry of Justice, recognizing the inability of its existing civilian staff to maintain adequate control over the prison population, has lately increased the military's presence in the prisons. In December 1994, after a year of appalling prison violence, the ministry called in the National Guard to ensure the internal security of seven Venezuelan prisons. (The National Guard, a branch of the armed forces within the Ministry of Defense, is normally responsible only for ensuring the prisons' external security.) Although since then the extent of military intervention has varied over time and among prisons, the existence of any military control over the prisons is extremely worrisome.

In the course of our prison inspections, Human Rights Watch/Americas discovered rampant physical abuse of prisoners by the members of the National Guard. Prisoners described how members of the Guard beat them, kicked them, or hit them with sabers on little or no provocation. Not only did countless prisoners report such abuses, their complaints were corroborated by abundant physical evidence. We saw scores of prisoners with bruised and bleeding buttocks, attesting to the wholesale nature of the punishment meted out by members of the National Guard. In the infirmaries of several prisons, moreover, we met prisoners who had been badly beaten or shot by members of the Guard.

Overall, the National Guard's approach to its expanded prison duties reflects its status as a military force. In military fashion, it has "occupied" the prisons, intimidated the prison population, and imposed its authority through the frequent application of brute force. The most deadly recent proof of its unsuitability for work in the prisons was provided in October 1996, when a fire caused by members of the Guard killed twenty-five trapped inmates in La Planta prison.

Venezuela's prison law recognizes the military's inherent unfitness for prison duties by requiring that the prisons remain under civilian authority and by permitting military intervention only in "exceptional" circumstances. Were there any doubts about the wisdom of this general rule, the National Guard's shameful record of abusing prisoners should have eliminated them. As numerous persons interviewed by Human Rights Watch/Americas emphasized, the job of prison guard is simply not an appropriate military function.

Rather than look to the National Guard for support that it is ill-equipped to provide, the Ministry of Justice should respond to Venezuela's epidemic of prison violence by hiring more civilian guards. Although the ministry isundoubtedly prompted to rely on the services of the military as a means to conserve scarce fiscal resources, it has an overriding obligation to restore order to the prisons without violating prisoners' basic right to be free of physical violence.

On this point, it should be noted that the Public Ministry (Fiscalía General de la República) is also responsible for protecting prisoners from physical abuse. Employing fifteen prison prosecutors who monitor prison conditions and, in principle, receive prisoners' complaints of abuse, the ministry has the power to initiate the criminal prosecution of public officials who violate prisoners' rights. The extent to which it exercises this power, however, is open to question. In discussions with representatives of Human Rights Watch/Americas, officials within the Public Ministry claimed that many such prosecutions were pending, but they were unable to name a single specific case of a public official successfully prosecuted for abuses committed against a prisoner. Notably, the most deadly of Venezuelan prison abuses-including the 1992 Catia prison massacre and the 1994 Sabaneta prison massacre-have not resulted in a single criminal conviction, although criminal proceedings are still formally pending in those cases. As Human Rights Watch/Americas and others have previously described, procedural aspects of Venezuelan law, particularly the nudo hecho proceeding, often delay prosecutions enormously and thus contribute to impunity for official abuses. Also, as in the Sabaneta case, the use of military tribunals in cases involving abuses against prisoners greatly increases the likelihood of impunity, given that such tribunals lack judicial independence and impartiality. For that reason, Human Rights Watch/Americas welcomes the Supreme Court's recent ruling in the La Planta fire prosecution, which resolved a jurisdictional conflict between military and civilian courts in favor of the latter.

To their credit, officials within the Public Ministry have been significantly more diligent in monitoring and reporting on the poor physical condition of many prisons, and have conducted numerous prison inspections. As Human Rights Watch/Americas observed during its March 1996 mission, many prison facilities are physically deteriorated, unsanitary, and in need of repair, although a few remodeled facilities have markedly better conditions. Sporadic running water, broken toilets, clogged drains, dangerous webs of electrical wiring, crumbling walls, unlit interior corridors, and unhygienic kitchens were among the common problems we found. Areas within some facilities lacked functioning toilets and running water, forcing inmates to defecate in buckets or on newspaper and then to throw their waste out the window. Moreover, the prison authorities' failure to maintain the physical infrastructure of their facilities was matched by their failure to supply prisoners with necessary material goods. Left to provide their own mattresses, bedding, clothing, and, to a lesser extent, food, Venezuelan prisonersmust rely on their families for financial assistance. Prisoners lacking outside support, known as fritos, are often forced to work for other prisoners, in what can amount to a degrading form of servitude.

The lack of provision of basic goods and services in the prisons extends to medical care, which is rudimentary at best. The Ministry of Justice, in a 1995 study, characterized the state of medical care in the prisons as deficient to the point of collapse. Similarly, the Subcommission on Prison Matters, in a 1996 summary of the previous year's conditions, stated that provisions for medical assistance were "notably absent" from Venezuelan prisons. Consistent with these reports, Human Rights Watch/Americas representatives received numerous complaints about deficiencies in medical attention, most frequently that infirmaries lacked even the most basic medical supplies and that guards did not permit access to medical staff. At some prisons, inmates displayed exposed intestines or festering wounds for our inspection while describing the difficulty of obtaining treatment. At all of the prisons we visited, medical staff was exceedingly scarce. Even large facilities typically had only one or two nurses on duty, with doctors available part-time, sometimes only a few hours each week. Finally, conditions for mentally ill prisoners at the facilities visited by Human Rights Watch/Americas were appalling, and psychological treatment appeared to be nonexistent.

These deficiencies violate Venezuelan law, which requires that prisoners be provided basic medical care, and contravene international standards calling for daily medical supervision of prisoners who are sick or who complain of illnesses. As with the prisons' other failings, the lack of medical attention forces inmates to depend on family members and friends to provide them with medical supplies.

Given the importance of outside support, the liberal visiting policies of Venezuelan prisons are of great benefit to the prison population. Most prisons have two visiting days per week, one of which is reserved for conjugal visits. Although friends and family members must sometimes wait in long lines before entering the facilities, once inside they generally enjoy extended visits with prisoners. Notably, all visits are contact visits, with no barriers to prevent physical contact between prisoners and visitors.

Unfortunately, guard mistreatment of visitors, in the form of physical abuse, disrespect, and financial extortion, is a serious problem. The strongest complaints we received on this topic involved searches of visitors, especially vaginal and strip searches. Prisoners described how their family members were subjected to extremely intrusive searches as the cost of a visit, asserting that the purpose of such searches-and their inevitable effect-is to humiliate the visitor. Despite the fact that searches of women visitors are conducted by female staff, and that prison authorities have legitimate security concerns to motivate such searches,the wide discretion permitted authorities in conducting such searches is inconsistent with international standards protecting personal privacy and barring degrading treatment. As the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has ruled, intrusive searches of prison visitors have a high potential for causing shame and distress and therefore merit a correspondingly stringent degree of oversight and control.

A final problem affecting almost the entire Venezuelan prison population is idleness. The bouts of violence that characterize Venezuelan prisons break up what is otherwise unrelenting boredom. In general, prisoners have few constructive ways to occupy their time. Work and study opportunities are extremely scarce and, in some prisons, even recreational activities are limited. Not only does the lack of such opportunities frustrate prisoners' attempts at rehabilitation, it bars them from gaining early release. Under the "two for one" law (Ley de Redención de la Pena por el Trabajo y el Estudio), prisoners are able to reduce their sentences by one day for every two days of work or study. Without access to work or study opportunities, however, many prisoners are unable to satisfy the terms of the law.

Women prisoners, who make up only 4.5 percent of the Venezuelan prison population, are subject to most of the deficiencies affecting men prisoners, though to a lesser degree. On the whole, women's facilities tend to be cleaner, less overcrowded and better maintained than the men's facilities, with proportionally larger staffs, little violence, and greater work and recreational opportunities. Civilian staff at the women's facilities have friendlier relations with prisoners than do staff at any of the men's prisons. At several facilities, for example, we saw staff and prisoners talking and laughing together.

On the other hand, women prisoners face particular difficulties in their relationships with their families. Because tremendous stigma still attaches to women's incarceration, the families of women prisoners are likely to find it hard to accept the fact of their imprisonment. As a result, women prisoners tend to receive fewer visits than do men. Many women prisoners receive no family support; indeed, they often support children living both inside and outside of the prison. Under Venezuelan law, women can keep their infants with them in prison until age three.

Relevant to maintaining family ties is the issue of conjugal visits. In contrast to the permissive conjugal visiting policy extended male prisoners, women were until recently wholly denied such visits. In mid-1995, after extensive debate on the issue, the women's prison in Caracas began conducting a pilot program of allowing women prisoners strictly regulated conjugal visits. The visitor must be the woman's spouse or legally registered common-law husband; the woman musthave an excellent conduct record while incarcerated; both partners must undergo an initial battery of tests, including HIV tests and psychiatric evaluations, as well as periodic testing for venereal disease; and the woman must agree to use birth control. The effect of these controls is to bar all but a handful of women from benefiting from the new policy. In the view of Human Rights Watch/Americas, such dramatically different treatment of women compared to men with regard to the granting of conjugal visits constitutes discrimination on the basis of sex, prohibited by several international human rights instruments whose provisions are binding on Venezuela.

Such is the general state of Venezuelan prisons. Within this overall picture, of course, a few facilities merit special mention. Representing one extreme is the Ciudad Bolívar prison, located in southeastern Venezuela. This extremely overcrowded facility was a beehive of construction when the Human Rights Watch/Americas delegation visited it. Prisoners had taken over all control of the facility's physical infrastructure and, using cinder blocks that they paid guards to allow in, they were erecting makeshift shelters in formerly open areas. Open sewage canals cut through various parts of the facility, and webs of electric wires ran haphazardly through prisoners' living quarters, a clear fire hazard. The prison was essentially being transformed into a crowded shantytown, with "ranchitos," as the prison warden described these shelters, scattered about the prison grounds. Even the exterior hallways of certain cellblocks were being divided up in small cells. Despite this construction, overcrowding was such that many prisoners were still forced to sleep in hammocks or on the floor in open areas such as hallways.

The original facility consisted of two two-story cellblocks for men, plus a one-story women's annex a short distance away. Approximately four years ago, however, inmates destroyed the wall separating the women from the men, and the women's annex was incorporated into the larger men's facility. Some forty women prisoners, some with babies, mingled with a men's population of over 1,000. Not a guard was to be seen within the prison. Men carrying weapons fought over buckets of food. A prisoner lay by the gate of the facility paralyzed, with a bullet lodged in his spine from a recent shooting. What was finally most striking about the facility was the absolute abandonment of control by the prison authorities: the root cause of its other symptoms.

In contrast to this picture of disorder and neglect, the women's annex of Sabaneta prison in Maracaibo was notable for its excellent state of repair, cleanliness, and safety. Built in 1989, parts of the annex seem more like an apartment complex than a prison. Many women lived in single rooms with wooden doors, rather than in barred cells. Rooms, many of which boasted fresh paint, were clean and orderly. The facility had a spacious library with an amply supply ofbooks, an attractive visiting area filled with plants and big park benches, several classrooms, and a church. There was no overcrowding and no reports of violence. Women were busy working in the facility's several workshops, taking classes, exercising in the large recreation yard, and caring for their children. The only serious problem that the Human Rights Watch/Americas delegation found at the facility was a severe lack of medical supplies.

The gap between these two facilities is enormous, and it will obviously not be easy for the Venezuelan authorities to bring conditions at Ciudad Bolívar and other prisons closer to those existing at the Sabaneta women's annex, or to consistency with the mandates of Venezuelan and international law. Most critically, the project will require a greater allocation of financial resources. But Venezuela's prison crisis cannot be ascribed simply to insufficient funding. The lack of political will and the failure of each government organ to shoulder its share of the burden of improving the system are also to blame. As this report describes, a number of government organs besides the Ministry of Justice bear some responsibility for the predicament of Venezuelan prisoners. The judiciary, and the much-criticized judicial system, are largely at fault for the slow pace of criminal prosecutions and the large proportion of unsentenced prisoners. The National Guard is guilty of physically abusing prisoners and of harassing their family members. The feeble efforts of the Public Ministry in prosecuting such abuses allow them to continue. State governments have largely failed to contribute to reforms.

Faced with scarce financial resources, mounting public concern over crime, and an uneasy political landscape, the Venezuelan authorities responsible for reforming the prison system have a daunting task ahead of them. But no set of constraints-neither fiscal nor political nor organizational-could justify the disastrous conditions of the Venezuelan prison system. As this report describes, the prison situation requires urgent attention. Its current problems are the result of many years of neglect, during which other national priorities were accorded precedence in the allocation of resources. This record of deliberate indifference must end. While the current government has articulated a strong desire for prison reform, and has taken certain concrete steps in the direction of reform, it is time for it to demonstrate the necessary political will to formulate and implement the measures required.

Human Rights Watch/Americas welcomes the steps being taken by the Caldera administration to create a more humane prison system, but urges that more aggressive measures be implemented. To establish a firm foundation for such measures, we urge the government to formulate a national emergency plan for the amelioration of the prison system. The following are our most pressing recommendations for reform, which we believe merit inclusion in such a plan:

Overcrowding and the Detention of Unsentenced Prisoners

* The Judicial Counsel, the executive, and the National Congress should take steps to remedy the serious defects of the criminal justice system and, in particular, to speed up the pace of criminal proceedings. As part of this effort, the National Congress should seriously consider the current proposal to rewrite the code of criminal procedure. Although Human Rights Watch/Americas has not reviewed the Organic Code of Criminal Procedure proposed by the Legislative Commission of the Congress, we are encouraged by the general outlines of the proposal. In particular, we view the substitution of oral, public trial proceedings for the current time-consuming exchange of written documents as a step forward.

* The National Congress should amend pretrial release legislation to expand the possibilities of such release. In addition, judges should apply existing pretrial release laws with greater frequency.

* Judges should consider alternatives to prison for offenders who pose a limited risk to society, such as women convicted of non-violent crimes.

Prisoner-on-Prisoner Abuses

* The Ministry of Justice should regain effective and consistent control of all of the prisons under its administration. In order to do so, it should hire the necessary quota of additional security staff. Sabaneta prison, Ciudad Bolívar prison, and Tocorón prison are in particular need of more staff.

* Prisoners should never be assigned internal security responsibilities or be placed in positions of power over each other.

Guard Abuses

* In accordance with the Venezuelan prison code, the prisons should be returned to the control of civilian guards. The National Guard should be restricted to ensuring the external security of facilities and should have no contact with prisoners, except in emergencies. If National Guard intervention is required because of exigent circumstances such as a prison riot, members of the National Guard should treat prisoners in accordance with international standards prohibiting torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. The training provided members of the National Guard should specifically explain that they are prohibited from opening fire on escaping prisoners, and that the so-called ley de fuga ("flight law") does not exist in Venezuela.

* Prosecutors in the Public Ministry should thoroughly investigate all allegations of physical abuse of prisoners by members of the National Guard or by civilian guards and, where the allegations are found to have merit, should vigorously prosecute them. To facilitate effective prosecutions, the legislature should review and reform all procedures-such as the procedure known as the averiguación de nudo hecho-that unnecessarily delay the prosecution of public officials.

* As in the case of the deadly fire at La Planta prison, members of the National Guard charged with abusing prisoners should be prosecuted in civilian courts. As a matter of law, military court jurisdiction over crimes involving civilian defendants or victims should be abolished, in recognition of the inherent difficulty of securing impartial justice in such cases.

* The Ministry of Justice should train its staff of civilian guards regarding Venezuelan and international norms mandating the humane treatment of prisoners, and should caution them that guards engaging in unauthorized disciplinary sanctions, corrupt practices, or other abuses will be punished accordingly.

Physical Conditions and Provision of Care

* The Ministry of Justice should renovate the physical infrastructure of those prisons that have fallen into severe disrepair. In particular, it should begin to rebuild Sabaneta prison, Ciudad Bolívar prison, and El Dorado prison.

* The Ministry of Justice should ensure that all prisoners are provided basic necessities including mattresses and bedding, food, potable drinking water, and sanitary supplies.

* The Ministry of Justice should take immediate steps to correct the severe deficiencies in the provision of medical care in the prisons, by hiring more doctors and providing each prison with the necessary stock of basic medical supplies.

* Prisoners with contagious diseases should be segregated from healthy prisoners and given appropriate medical treatment.

Classification

* As a first step toward the rational classification of the prison population, the Ministry of Justice's welcome efforts to computerize the prison system, and to record the relevant data of all incoming and existing prisoners, should be expanded.

* The Ministry of Justice should remove all juvenile prisoners from La Planta prison in Caracas and place them into secure juvenile detention centers.

* The Ministry of Justice should separate sentenced prisoners from unsentenced prisoners.

* The Ministry of Justice should open a separate annex for women prisoners at the prison of Ciudad Bolívar and remove the women from the men's prison.

* As it did with regard to the recently-inaugurated Yare prison annex, the Ministry of Justice should separate nonviolent offenders from more dangerous prisoners and place them in appropriate minimum security facilities. It should also consider expanding the use of alternatives to incarceration for nonviolent prisoners.

Rehabilitation and the Reduction of Idleness

* The Ministry of Justice, in conjunction with the independent government agency on prison labor (Instituto Autónomo Caja de Trabajo Penitenciario), should try to expand prisoners' work and educationalopportunities. In particular, it should strive to create jobs, training courses, and study programs for prisoners that would help facilitate their reintegration into society upon release.

* All prisoners should be permitted at least one hour of outdoor exercise per day. In general, the amount of time prisoners in restrictive facilities spend locked inside their cells should be decreased.

Contacts with the Outside World

* To encourage visits by prisoners' family and friends, prison officials and members of the National Guard should treat prison visitors with respect. Verbal and physical harassment, extortion, and other abuses against visitors should be punished.

* The Ministry of Justice should formulate a uniform national policy covering intrusive searches of visitors, particularly strip searches and vaginal searches. Such a policy, which should balance the need for prison security against visitors' rights to privacy and humane treatment, should include appropriate safeguards against arbitrary or discriminatory searches. Wherever possible, less intrusive methods such as metal detectors should be employed for such searches.

* The Ministry of Justice should make an effort to place sentenced prisoners in facilities as close as possible to their places of residence in order to facilitate family visits. In particular, it should not transfer prisoners to isolated El Dorado prison from other facilities all over the country as a disciplinary sanction. To the extent that El Dorado is used at all, free regular bus service should be provided to prisoners' family members traveling from Ciudad Bolívar to the facility.

Treatment of Women Prisoners

* The Ministry of Justice should institute a uniform conjugal visit policy, one that does not discriminate against women prisoners, and should institute that policy in every facility in which women are held.

* Members of the National Guard should be barred from all contact with women prisoners.

Monitoring of Conditions

* The Public Ministry should bolster its program of prison inspections by considering taking legal action where conditions are abusive.

* In accordance with Venezuelan law, judges should visit prisons regularly to interview prisoners and monitor their treatment. The Ministry of Justice should take steps to ensure the safety of such judges.

* The Ministry of Justice should promulgate a uniform national policy guaranteeing representatives of nongovernmental organizations regular access to the prisons.

Venezuela's prisons held a combined inmate population of 24,765 at the end of 1996, of whom 1,155 were women. With a total national population of just over twenty-one million, Venezuela has an incarceration rate of roughly 117 prisoners per 100,000 inhabitants, not including persons held in local police lockups or other more short-term places of detention. While the country thus has one of the highest rates of incarceration in South America, its rate is still much lower than that of many other countries.19

Venezuela's prison system is distressingly overcrowded. Built to hold just over 15,000 inmates, the system is now at more than 160 percent of capacity. Moreover, this level of overcrowding is nothing new: indeed, the inmate population first reached its present size in 1984.20 Prisoner numbers increased steadily during the 1980s, more than doubling over the course of the decade and peaking at over 30,000 in 1991.21 In contrast, during the 1970s, the prison population only fluctuated between 13,000 and 15,750 inmates, and it had fallen to 12,600 by 1980.22

While the prison population expanded rapidly, available prison space did not. The combined design capacity of all prisons opened during the 1980s was 4,820 inmates, not nearly sufficient to cover the increased demand over that sameperiod.23 No new prisons were built from 1988 until 1996. Only a few months ago, the first new facilities in almost a decade opened as annexes to Yare and El Rodeo prisons.24 Minister of Justice Henrique Meier has stated that fifteen additional prisons are needed to ease overcrowding and that, given the resources, they could be built in a year and a half.25 But constructing fifteen prisons would cost approximately one hundred billion bolívares (approximately US $214 million), far more than the two billion bolívares (approximately US $ 4.2 million) found in the national prison construction fund.26

Three of Venezuela's thirty-two prisons are located in the Caracas area and six in neighboring Miranda state; together, these nine facilities hold approximately one-third of the country's total prison population. Human Rights Watch/Americas visited four prisons in this region: the Retén de Catia, a facility notorious for its high level of violence, which was closed in January 1997; the National Institute of Women (Instituto Nacional de Orientación Femenina, INOF); the Internado Judicial Capital (known as El Rodeo); and the El Paraíso Reeducation Center (known as La Planta), designed as an experimental facility and the site of Venezuela's first prison administration training institute. Six prisons are located in Venezuela's central region, which includes the states of Aragua, Carabobo, and Guárico; of these, Human Rights Watch/Americas inspected the Aragua prison (known as Tocorón); the Carabobo maximum security prison (known as the Carabobo Máxima); the Venezuelan General Penitentiary, located in San Juan de los Morros; and the Valencia National Penal Center (known as Tocuyito) together with its women's annex. The Andean states have a total of five prisons; western Venezuela has four; and eight are located in the eastern portion of the country, a broad area extending from the Isla de Margarita in the Caribbean Sea to the Gran Sabana on the Brazilian and Guyanese borders. Human Rights Watch/Americas inspected three prisons from these areas: Maracaibo prison (known as Sabaneta) and its women's annex, located in the western state of Zulia; Ciudad Bolívar prison, in southeastern Venezuela; and the Guayana Penal Center (known as El Dorado), an isolated prison complex outside of the mining town of El Dorado, 200 miles southeast of Ciudad Bolívar and forty miles from the Guyanese border.

Types of Prisons

Venezuelan law theoretically distinguishes between facilities designed for sentenced prisoners and those for persons detained awaiting trial. The Venezuelan Penal Code mandates that sentenced prisoners serve out their terms in a penitentiary, a national prison, or a local penal center, depending on the type of sentence they receive.27 Other facilities, called internados judiciales or retenes, are designated primarily for unsentenced detainees.28

There is usually little relation between the formal designation of a facility and the type of inmates it holds. Most prisons, whatever their designation, accept both sentenced and unsentenced prisoners in apparently haphazard proportions. The usual pattern is illustrated by the three national prisons. At two of thesefacilities, the prisons of Ciudad Bolívar and Sabaneta, there are more detainees than sentenced prisoners; at the third, Trujillo National Prison, detainees constitute over 45 percent of the inmate population. In some facilities, nonetheless, the inmate population does to a certain extent reflect the official designation of the prison. At the Venezuelan General Penitentiary, for example, over 98 percent of the inmates have been sentenced.

As a disciplinary sanction, prisoners may be transferred to one of two facilities: the El Dorado prison and the Carabobo Máxima. The Carabobo Máxima was built in 1983 as the country's highest security prison; its conditions are extremely restrictive. El Dorado prison, a much older facility whose physical structure has fallen into severe disrepair, has lately been singled out as the destination of choice for the disciplinary transfer of "problem" prisoners, particularly leaders of protests and hunger strikes.29 Because of El Dorado's extreme isolation-it is located in a dense jungle on the southeastern edge of the country-prisoners are loath to be transferred there.

Responsible Authorities

Venezuela's prisons are administered by the Ministry of Justice, which manages the system's financial resources and employs prison staff.

Ministry of Justice officials concede that the prison system is inadequately funded.30 For all of its responsibilities-including prisons and the judicial police-the ministry receives less than 1 percent of the national budget. The bulk of this funding goes to the judicial police, which handle criminal investigations.31 In 1995, the government spent Bs. 4,579,200,000 (approximately US $27 million) on prison expenses, not including money spent on maintaining or repairing the physical infrastructure of the prisons. In 1996, because of Venezuela's high rateof inflation, this amount was increased to Bs. 5,880,800,00 (approximately US $20.3 million).32 The ministry's two largest prison expenses were food and personnel costs.

In June 1995 the government established a National Prison Fund (Fondo Nacional para Edificaciones Penitenciarias) to finance the construction and renovation of the prison infrastructure. This fund, administered independently from the Justice Ministry's budget, is severely underendowed: indeed, according to the Minister of Justice, it is fifty times smaller than needed.33

Besides bearing the costs of the prison system, the Justice Ministry is responsible for staffing the prisons. Instability and frequent job transfers are characteristic of every level of the ministry, from the minister himself down through the ranks.34 During our visit to Venezuela in March 1996, for example, the minister was replaced, leaving many ministry personnel uncertain about their job tenure. In addition, in the eleven prisons visited by Human Rights Watch/Americas, only one warden had occupied his position for more than a year; at several facilities, the wardens had been working in their jobs for less than a month.35 Frequent transfers and firings are viewed as a primary means of fighting the endemic corruption of prison authorities, but this constant turnover makes it difficult to sustain reform efforts.

The marked lack of continuity between people and responsibilities does mean, however, that new authorities were often frank and honest in their appraisals of the prison situation or of a given facility. It appeared that since they were not personally responsible for creating the conditions they are faced with, they felt less constrained in criticizing them. On the other hand, the lack of continuity means that structural reforms seem to hover on an ever-distant horizon. Every incomingminister of justice condemns the prison situation and calls for change, but the needed reforms never materialize. Instead, a new minister of justice arrives in due time, and the cycle begins anew.36

Besides this temporal shifting of responsibilities, another complicating factor is that a number of other public organisms bear a share of the blame for the predicament of Venezuelan prisoners. The judiciary, and the much-criticized judicial system, are at fault for the slow pace of criminal prosecutions, which have filled the prisons up with unsentenced detainees. The National Guard, as described below, is abusive to prisoners. The lack of effective prosecution of such abuses is due to the weak efforts of the Public Ministry. This list could be expanded, but the point is that while it is refreshing in Venezuela to find that almost everyone-from the president to the minister of justice to the state governors-acknowledges the disastrous state of the prisons, it is discouraging to find that no one is willing to shoulder the burden of reforming them.37

Indeed, rather than assert greater control over the prison system, in recent years the Justice Ministry has undertaken to hand off some of its prison responsibilities to other governmental entities. Beginning in 1994, a year of shattering prison violence, it has accorded increased powers with regard to prisons to state governments and to the national military.

Decentralization

The Ministry of Justice has been attempting to devolve administrative responsibility for the prisons on to state governments. To a skeptical observer, this recent effort to relinquish control of the prisons might appear opportunistic rather than responsible: the horrendous conditions of Brazilian prisons, among others, demonstrate that state government control over the prison system is no panacea.38 Yet many prisons experts regard the initiative hopefully. Elio Gómez Grillo, a noted Venezuelan penologist, argues that decentralization could encourage a healthy rivalry between state governments in maintaining their prisons, which would redound to the benefit of prisoners.39 A similar optimism is reflected in a 1996 report on the prison situation released by the Chamber of Deputies' Subcommission on Prison Matters (Sub-Comisión de Asuntos Penitenciarios de la Cámara de Diputados), which declares that the decentralization effort "could be the beginning of a real reform of the prison system."40

If prison decentralization is implemented as planned, one beneficial effect should be a reduction of prisoner transfers. Prisoners should largely remain in local facilities rather than being transferred to out-of-state prisons far from their families. Commenting on this aspect of the policy, Ministry of Justice officials asserted that if states are responsible only for local prisoners, state officials will feel a greater stake in creating safe and humane prisons.41

The decentralization process began by presidential decree in 1993.42 By March 1996, the Justice Ministry had signed prison decentralization accords with the governors of fifteen states. Out of the total of nineteen states with prisons, onlythe states of Aragua, Carabobo, Guárico and Miranda had not signed accords, though Aragua had signed a preliminary decentralization agreement.43

The accords set out a complicated system of shared responsibilities. Notably, states are charged with "the supervision, monitoring, and control of all activities that take place in the Penal Institution."44 The Ministry of Justice, however, remains primarily responsible for prison costs, including personnel costs, except that the agreements encourage states to pay prison staff additional salary premiums. For some tasks, such as the repair and maintenence of the prison infrastructure, the accords are vague: they say that state governments "will collaborate" with the Ministry of Justice to handle them. Particularly in light of the severe underendowment of the national prison construction fund, ministry officials are hopeful that states will bear a share of the cost burden.45

Notwithstanding the effort that has gone into negotiating the decentralization accords, their legal effect is unclear. Under the national prison law, the Ministry of Justice is responsible for "the organization and functioning" of the prison system.46 A high-level Ministry of Justice official acknowledged that the accords, which are essentially contracts between state governors and the ministry, could in no way supercede this law. Nonetheless, she said, the accords represent "a sort of moral obligation on the part of the states. They are a first step toward greater state control of the prisons."47 In that respect, she viewed them as an important innovation, regardless of their legal validity.

Militarization

The National Guard, a branch of the armed forces within the Ministry of Defense, is charged with providing the prisons' external security. (At Catia prison,Caracas's Metropolitan Police used to serve this function.) In late 1994, because of unceasing prison violence, seven Venezuelan prisons were "militarized" at the request of the Ministry of Justice. The affected facilities were Sabaneta prison, in Zulia state; Tocuyito prison and the Carabobo maximum security prison, both in Carabobo state; El Rodeo prison, just outside of Caracas; Tocorón prison, in Aragua state; the Metropolitan prison of Yare; and the Venezuelan General Penitentiary in San Juan de los Morros.48 Catia prison was also militarized for brief periods, but the Ministry of Defense showed a marked disinterest in maintaining permanent control over the troubled facility.

What militarization means in practice is that the National Guard assumes responsibility for ensuring the internal security of the facilities. That is, instead of remaining outside the prison walls, members of the National Guard maintain a presence within the prison, although the degree of that presence varies from prison to prison. Some prisons are only "lightly" militarized; others have been essentially taken over by the National Guard. In lightly militarized prisons such as Sabaneta the National Guard enters the prison at roughly ten-day intervals to conduct searches, but otherwise leaves daily management of the prison to civilian staff. In prisons subject to a more intrusive form of militarization, members of the National Guard are regularly stationed within the prison walls, and searches are much more frequent.

Particularly in the heavily militarized prisons, the relationship between the civilian prison administration and the National Guard is often uneasy. National Guardsmen are not subject to the direct control of the prison wardens, who may disagree with their actions but are powerless to restrain them. Among other things, National Guardsmen are allowed to enter militarized prisons and discipline prisoners without the permission of the prison warden. Questioned on the issue, prison wardens stressed that in their view militarization should only be employed as a provisional, emergency measure. Some wardens pointed out that National Guardsmen have a tendency to commit "excesses" and the warden's only option in such cases is to try to persuade the local Guard commander to restrain his men.49

Monitoring of Abuses

Within the Public Ministry, a group of public prosecutors called fiscales penitenciarios are specifically mandated to monitor the treatment of prisoners andto prosecute prison abuses. There is approximately one such prosecutor for each state housing prisoners: fifteen total, including two with national jurisdiction. They are supposed to make regular prison visits to monitor conditions and receive prisoners' complaints.50 One of the common complaints we heard, however, is that prosecutors exercise this element of their mandate to little effect. Prisoners assert that they rarely enter the prisons and, when they do, they take no concrete action to stop abuses.

As one part of this monitoring function, the prison prosecutors have conducted numerous prison inspections, after which they release reports detailing the substandard conditions found and recommending reforms.51 Moreover, in particular cases of abuse prosecutors are empowered to initiate criminal proceedings against prison staff and other public officials.

Finally, judges too have a formal role in monitoring prison abuses. According to the Code of Criminal Procedure, judges are supposed to visit local prisons every fifteen days to interview prisoners whose cases they are handling.52 In practice, however, judges have almost entirely abdicated this monitoring function. The one judge whom we did encounter in a prison, who was visiting Sabaneta, told us that he was one of nineteen criminal judges with cases in that prison but that the others never visit. According to him, judges do not feel safe in the prisons because they have suffered violent attacks there in the past.53

The Prison Population

The Venezuelan prison population is largely young, poor, and male. Approximately 70 percent of prison inmates are under twenty-five years old, and almost all inmates are from impoverished origins.54

Prisoner Classification

Venezuelan penal law requires prison officials to classify all prisoners sentenced to more than one year of imprisonment and strongly encourages the classification of other sentenced prisoners. The legislation provides that each inmate undergo a period of observation upon entry to the system and then be assigned to a section of the prison according to the crime for which he or she is sentenced, his or her previous criminal record, behavior exhibited during observation, state of health, and other characteristics.55 Pretrial detainees are supposed to be classified according to their age, prior detention record, level of education and "cultural development," state of physical and mental health, general personality characteristics, and profession or employment.56 Women must be held in special facilities or entirely separate sections of mixed prisons, and inmates aged twenty-one or younger must be placed in juvenile centers.57

International law echoes a number of these classification rules. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the American Convention on Human Rights require the separation of accused persons from convicted persons except in exceptional circumstances.58 Both of these treaties, aswell as the Convention on the Rights of the Child, require juveniles to be separated from adults, a basic requirement of juvenile justice reiterated in the U.N. Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners and the U.N. Standard Minimum Rules for the Administration of Juvenile Justice (known as the Beijing Rules).59 The U.N. Standard Minimum Rules call for the detention of men and women in separate institutions "so far as possible"; when men and women must be detained in the same institution, they provide that "the whole of the premises allocated to women shall be entirely separate."60 Finally, international standards call for the segregation of inmates suffering from infectious diseases to prevent the spread of those diseases to the general inmate population.61

Despite these national and international standards, however, the only classification actually practiced in Venezuelan prisons is the separation of men and women. Astonishingly, even this basic protection for women inmates does not exist at the prison in Ciudad Bolívar, where some forty women share living quarters with over 1,000 male prisoners.

In the course of our investigation, Human Rights Watch/Americas noted the following violations of Venezuelan and international law with respect to the classification of prisoners:

* Some forty juvenile inmates under the age of eighteen were held together with adults at the La Planta facility in Caracas. At all other facilities we visited, we found inmates between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one housed with the general prison population, a practice that violates Venezuelan law.

* Most prisons made no attempt to separate accused from sentenced prisoners. The prison at El Rodeo was a notable exception. At that facility, the warden assigns sentenced prisoners to one of two cell blocks and those awaiting sentence to the three other cell blocks. Separation of sentenced from accused prisoners at El Rodeo had only begun a few months before our visit. Similarly, Tocuyito prison in Valencia housed sentenced prisoners in two newly-renovated cell blocks some distance away from the cell blocks holding accused prisoners.

* The segregation of those with infectious diseases from the rest of the prison population is sporadic, since most prisons do not subject incoming prisoners to a medical examination. Even where some form of segregation on this basis is practiced, it may be insufficient to protect the health of inmates. At the Venezuelan General Penitentiary in San Juan de los Morros, for example, we were told that inmates with tuberculosis shared quarters in the infirmary with all other sick inmates. Similarly, at Aragua prison, known as Tocorón, we saw prisoners who were said to have tuberculosis mixed with other sick inmates in a one-room infirmary. Since no doctors were to be seen at either facility, we were unable to confirm these reports.

* Classification on all other grounds, such as criminal record or behavior, was virtually nonexistent. At many prisons, authorities leave the decision about where inmates live to the prisoners themselves, allowing the stronger and more violent prisoners to dictate to the weaker. As a result, inmates at many institutions seek refuge in the prison infirmary, punishment cells, or other areas of the prison rather than live in one of the regular cell blocks. The only exceptions to this rule of non-classification by behavior were the "good conduct" wings found in several of the women's facilities.

National statistics, though striking, do not give a full picture of the Venezuelan system's overcrowding, since many institutions are significantly more overburdened than the national average suggests.62 Indeed, while the system as a whole was at 160 percent of capacity, eleven of the country's prisons were up to 200 percent of capacity in March 1996, with the most overcrowded of these prisons holding between three and five times the number of inmates they were designed to house. Among the worst facilities were Sabaneta prison in Maracaibo, which was designed for 800 prisoners but held over 2,300; Mérida's Internado Judicial, which was designed for 150 prisoners but held nearly 600; the Retén de Catia prison in Caracas, which was designed for 750 prisoners but held over 1,800; the Internado Judicial in San Juan de los Morros, which was designed for 250 prisoners but heldover 1,000; and the Internado Judicial in Cumaná, which was designed for one hundred prisoners but held over 450.63

International human rights standards are vague regarding the permissible limits of prison overcrowding. Nonetheless, the number of people packed into the most crowded Venezuelan prisons clearly exceeds justifiable maximums, particularly given the violence and dilapidated conditions produced by overcrowding.64

Unsentenced Prisoners

Almost 75 percent of the prison population consists of unsentenced prisoners (procesados): people whose criminal cases are pending at some stage of Venezuela's slow criminal process. Like overcrowding, this too is a longstanding problem.65

Disproportionate numbers of unsentenced prisoners are held in Venezuelan prisons for two reasons. First, most defendants are incarcerated rather than granted provisional liberty while their prosecutions are pending. Although in 1992 a law was passed to facilitate the pretrial release of some prisoners, it has largely not been implemented. Second, criminal cases in Venezuela typically lastyears.66 By all reports, the judiciary is plagued by corruption, undertrained, understaffed and politicized, a combination of flaws that obviously hinders its effective functioning.67 Criminal proceedings in Venezuela, conducted under a law that is essentially unchanged since 1926, still follow the traditional inquisitorial model. They rely on written documents, rather than oral testimony, and are divided into discrete stages, some of which may be quite lengthy.

Another obstacle to the speedy provision of justice is the prison system's frequent failure to transport prisoners to court hearings, caused by severe shortages of vehicles and personnel and by rampant corruption.68 Similarly, because the prison system is so overwhelmed, and because of frequent inmate transfers among prisons, case files are often lost. An inmate may be transferred, for example, but his case file may stay behind at the original facility, stalling the proceedings. Finally, the Venezuelan courts are in a crisis of overwork: in 1996, for example, Caracas's forty-nine trial-level criminal courts issued rulings in some 16,500 cases. They received approximately 18,000 new cases, however, creating a deficit of at least 1,500 cases for the year, not including cases for which multiple rulings are necessary.69

The resulting lengthy detention of unsentenced prisoners violates international human rights standards.70 To begin with, defendants should normally be granted release pending trial. Consistent with the presumption of innocence that all defendants enjoy, Article 9(3) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) provides in relevant part that: "It shall not be the general rule that persons awaiting trial shall be detained in custody, but release may be subject to guarantees to appear for trial."71 In interpreting this provision, the Human Rights Committee of the United Nations has ruled that detention before trial should be used only to the extent it is lawful, reasonable, and necessary. Necessity is defined narrowly: "to prevent flight, interference with evidence or the recurrence of crime" or "where the person concerned constitutes a clear and seriousthreat to society which cannot be contained in any other manner."72 The weighing of the relevant criteria for a finding of necessity requires an individualized determination.

Venezuelan law, both as it is written and as it is applied, does not meet this test. Large categories of prisoners are entirely disqualified from obtaining relief under the terms of the 1992 pretrial release law. Specifically, detainees charged with any of a number of offenses, including drug crimes, car theft, armed robbery, and crimes under the Code of Military Justice, are barred.73 Recidivists-in particular, anyone who has been sentenced to prison time within the ten years preceding the commission of the crime that he is presently charged with-are also barred.74 The result is that the large majority of pretrial detainees are not eligible for provisional release. Moreover, many judges are said to be hostile to the ideaof pretrial release, leading them to refuse to apply the law even to eligible defendants.75

The long delays associated with criminal trials in Venezuela are also, at least in the more extreme instances, inconsistent with international due process norms. In particular, they violate two provisions of the ICCPR, Articles 9(3) and 14(3)(c), which prohibit unreasonably protracted criminal proceedings.76 Although the U.N. Human Rights Committee has emphasized that long criminal proceedings must be assessed on a case-by-case basis, in the absence of unusual circumstances it has found that trial proceedings of more than four years constitute a violation of these rights.77 Notably, in making this determination, the committee has stressedthat "[t]he lack of adequate budgetary appropriations for the administration of criminal justice . . . does not justify unreasonable delays in the adjudication of criminal cases."78

The effects of the system's inertia on individual lives is beyond measure. In one notorious case, a man was held twenty-seven years before being acquitted in 1995 of the charges against him; his case files had been archived while he was still incarcerated.79 More recently, almost all of the twenty-five inmates killed in the October 1996 fire at La Planta prison were unsentenced. One slain prisoner, Henry Rodríguez Briceño, was reportedly about to be released on bail but had not succeeded in obtaining transportation to court.80

During Human Rights Watch/Americas's prison visits, we spoke with numerous inmates who had been detained in terrible conditions for four, five and even six years pending decisions in their cases:

* At La Planta prison in Caracas we met J.S., a pretrial detainee who had spent four years at Catia awaiting a decision in his case. He was finally transferred to La Planta after being beaten so badly that he was taken to the hospital. When we saw him, his arm was in a sling and his abdomen was bandaged. He also showed us scars and wounds all over his body, illustrating every stage of the healing process; they had all been inflicted by inmates at Catia.81

* R.J., held at the Ciudad Bolívar prison, had been waiting five years, four months for a decision in his case. In that whole period, he only went to court three times, most recently a year and two months before our visit. The prison is so crowded that for the first year and eight months he had to sleep on the floor in a hallway. In late 1992, he built himself a room, which cost him nearly Bs. 15,000 (approximately US$ 52). As was common, he said, his wife had found another husband.

* V.L., a twenty-two-year-old at Ciudad Bolívar, had been waiting two years, three months for a decision in his case when we met him. He was paralyzed, having been shot in the spine a month previously, and was lying by the gate of the prison on a dirty foam pad with his x-rays lying by his head. He said that the prison warden was trying to obtain a special release to allow him to return home so that his mother could take care of him. Unfortunately, he explained, the release must be processed by a judge, which was delaying it.

* An older woman at the Sabaneta women's annex, who had been waiting four years, two months for her case to be decided, said she had nine children ranging in age from four to nineteen years old. She said that three of her children had come to visit her the previous weekend and the Guardia National had barred them because the older girl was wearing a short-sleeved shirt. Even when the children were allowed in, it often took hours because of the long line of people waiting. She said that her two adult children took care of her younger children, but that she was still financially responsible for them.

Sentenced Prisoners

Sentenced prisoners currently make up about a quarter of the prison population. Another means of obtaining the necessary reduction in prison overcrowding is, therefore, to cut their numbers. A couple of laws are designed to do this, the most important of which reduces prisoners' sentences by one day for every two days of work or study (it is thus commonly referred to as the "two for one" law).82 While this law could potentially reduce prisoners' sentences by one-third, and thus reduce the population of sentenced prisoners by one-third, it has been conservatively applied. The obvious problem-and one of the primary complaints of prisoners we met-is the lack of work or study opportunities in the prisons. With no means of fulfilling the prerequisites of the law, prisoners have little hope for gaining early release under it.

Venezuelan law also contemplates alternative sanctions to prison-essentially like parole-most of which are granted at the discretion of the Ministry of Justice.83 These options have been exercised to some extent, but they could be further exploited in order to reduce the prison population.84 Finally, a few prisoners are granted pardons each year, most notably in February 1996 on the occasion of Pope Jean Paul II's visit to Venezuela.85

Judicial Reform

Efforts to reform the judicial system have been ongoing for several years and have progressed in recent months. In December 1993, the government signed an agreement with the World Bank to modernize and improve the justice system; the Bank had conducted a study of the system's problems and was concerned, among other things, that Venezuela's judicial instability deterred foreign investment.86 Although progress on the project was initially quite slow, by late1996 several governmental entities, including the Judicial Council and the Legislative Commission of the National Congress, were engaged in developing a reform plan. Despite significant disputes among the parties in negotiations over the plan, the effort has garnered substantial recent attention.87 Unfortunately, as Venezuelan nongovernmental organizations have signaled, negotiations over the reforms have gone on behind closed doors, without the participation of representatives of civil society.88

The proposed reforms entail the modernization of the system of judicial administration, the strengthening and improvement of the Judicial School, and the construction and repair of court buildings.89 On the legislative side, there has been discussion of reforming the basic laws of the Supreme Court, the judicial power, the Judicial Council and other judicial bodies, and of establishing a body empowered to maintain judicial discipline.90

But perhaps the key reform being contemplated-which observers agree is urgently needed-is the Legislative Commission's revision of the code of criminal procedure.91 The proposed Organic Code of Penal Procedure (Código Orgánico de Procedimiento Penal), which would entirely replace the existing procedural code, would change the character of the system from essentially inquisitorial to essentially accusatorial. In other words, it would institute oral, public trial proceedings; it would use juries or lay judges for fact-finding; it would limit the power to press charges to the public prosecutors; and it would abolish thetraditional sumario, the closed investigative stage of the inquisitorial process.92 The desired effect of these changes would be to establish a speedy, public trial process in place of the slow, secretive process currently employed.

Several different versions on the new code have been circulated, and preparations for the new system, including training judges and lawyers in the use of oral trial procedures, have already begun.93 The new code is expected to enter into effect in approximately April 1998.94

The majority of Venezuela's prisoners are forced to endure appalling daily living conditions. Crowded into a system filled far beyond its capacity, inmates routinely sleep two or three to a bed, or even on passageway floors, wherever they find space. Most prison complexes are physically deteriorated, although the Ministry of Justice began remodelling six facilities in 1995. Forced to provide their own mattresses, bedding, clothing, and, to a lesser extent, food, prisoners are dependent on the support of their families or others outside the prison.

The Impact of Overcrowding

Many prisoners live in communal cells that are two to four times as crowded as they were designed to be. Some prisoners cannot even lay claim to a cell: in Sabaneta prison, one of the country's most spectacularly overcrowded and decaying facilities, inmates sleep in hammocks strung in narrow pipe-access passageways, and in many other facilities prisoners sleep in the corridors. Living space distribution is largely unregulated-in some prisons, completely unregulated-and the burden of overcrowding falls disproportionately on certain prisoners. Within each prison, some cells overflow with inmates while others are much more sparsely populated. In general, prisoners who are poorer, weaker, and less powerful tend to live in correspondingly more cramped and uncomfortable accommodations.

At some facilities, the effects of the prison sytem's pervasive overcrowding are lessened by the degree of mobility allowed inmates. In prisons such as Sabaneta and Ciudad Bolívar, for example, the authorities have virtually ceded internal control of the facility to the inmates, and thus there are no official restrictions placed on inmates' movements within the prison walls. At other prisons, for example Tocuyito, inmates may leave their cellblocks at will and spend the day outdoors, exercising or getting sun.95

At more restrictive prisons, inmates are confined to cramped indoor corridors (generally known as letras for the letter designations given them) lined with cells. Inmates in such prisons, which include El Rodeo, Tocorón, the Venezuelan General Penitenciary and the Máxima de Carabobo, are allowed to move freely between cells along the common corridor, but the space available in these areas is extremely limited. Moreover, inmates are generally locked into their cells from late afternoon until early morning.

In all prisons, the most cramped and uncomfortable areas are the disciplinary cells, which are as likely to hold prisoners needing protection from other prisoners as they are to hold those being punished.

Cell Conditions

Except for a limited number of individual cells in the INOF and the women's annexes, communal cells are the rule in Venezuelan prisons. The newer prisons, such as La Planta, El Rodeo, and Tocorón, have small- and medium-sized communal cells designed to hold four or ten inmates, although in the case of La Planta and Tocorón the cells actually held far more than this number. Other facilities, notably Sabaneta, Ciudad Bolívar, and the Casa Amarilla at El Dorado, have larger dormitories.

Where they are allowed to do so, inmates partition off communal cells to create smaller living spaces, generally by stretching sheets over wooden frames or ropes. These partitions, which the inmates call bugalús, afford them a measure of privacy. One of the few prisons where we did not find such bugalús was El Rodeo, where the National Guard reportedly tears them up. In some prisons, notably Sabaneta and the prison of Ciudad Bolívar, prisoners have built more permanent structures using cinder blocks and sheets of plywood.

Cell overcrowding generates filth, bad smells, and vermin, which in turn exascerbate the tensions caused by overcrowding. Inmates are responsible for keeping their living quarters clean and, obviously, some do a better job than others: the more crowded the cell, the more difficult the task. The walls and floors of most cells are of dark, dingy concrete whose paint wore off long ago, except for the rehabilitated sections of El Rodeo and Tocuyito, which are a freshly painted blue and white.

Cells are generally extremely cluttered, often decorated with numerous objects, photos, and religious mementos; a few even have elaborate murals. Webs of electric wires run about the cells seemingly at random, except in renovated facilities.

Since Venezuela enjoys a warm climate, its prisons are not sealed; instead the cells or corridors have barred window that allow in light and air. Ventilation is good in some areas, although some cells lack windows, and when these cells are overcrowded they become noxious with a lack of air and an abundance of vile smells. Interior hallways and stairs in some facilities are particularly dank. Lack of lighting is a also problem in some facilities, particularly the Carabobo Máxima and Catia, whose interior regions have only scattered artificial illumination and little natural light.

The Ministry of Justice began renovating six facilities in 1995, including El Rodeo and Tocuyito, which Human Rights Watch/Americas visited. The physical improvement of those facilities was impressive.96 Unfortunately, the prison system's chronic problems of extreme overcrowding and insufficient staffing bode poorly for the maintenance of these improvements.

Bedding and Clothing

Venezuelan legislation draws directly upon the U.N. Standard Minimum Rules in requiring that each inmate be assigned an "individual bed" and be provided with "sufficient bedding to change the bed periodically and maintain it in a proper state of cleanliness."97 Although international standards allow variation "in accordance with local or national standards" in the type of bedding provided by each prison, they unequivocally call upon prison authorities to make available to each prisoner "a separate bed" and "separate and sufficient bedding which shall be clean when issued."98 Venezuela's men's prisons are, almost without exception, not in compliance with these requirements.

Several prisons supply metal bed frames for inmates, although in most such facilities the inmate population far exceeds the number of beds available. Only El Rodeo and Tocorón prisons provide mattresses for the inmate population. In the vast majority of men's facilities, inmates sleep on the cement floor on foam mattresses provided by family members or purchased from other inmates. Two inmates frequently share a mattress. Those without family members or money-known as fritos-sleep on the bare floor in passageways, bathrooms, or wherever they can find space.

Prisoners in Venezuela wear their own clothing. There is no provision for government-issued clothing, even when prisoners need it. Most prisoners are adequately clothed, and most wore serviceable though worn shoes, but in theCarabobo Máxima we saw a few prisoners who possessed no clothing but their underwear.99

The failure to provide items such as bedding and clothing encourages a form of prison servitude. Prisoners who lack money and family support work for other prisoners in exchange for these articles.

Food

In March 1996, the Ministry of Justice alloted Bs. 303 (approximately US $1.05) per prisoner per day for meals. (The amount has since increased to Bs. 451 (approximately US $0.96, using the exchange rate of January 1997), but the increase was insufficient to keep pace with Venezuela's high inflation rate.) With so little money available, it is not surprising that we heard many complaints about the amount and quality of food. The main meal at most prisons, served late in the morning or in the early afternoon, consisted mostly of starch with some vegetables.100 "Not enough, and not the right kind of food," stated an inmate at LaPlanta.101 Based on our observations, numerous inmate complaints, and the frank admission of at least one prison official, Human Rights Watch believes that the food served at some prisons fails to meet the requirements of Venezuelan law, which provides that "inmates shall be offered a nutritious diet sufficient for the maintenance of their health," and the similar requirements of the U.N. Standard Minimum Rules.102 Prisoners in these institutions, which include the prisons of Ciudad Bolívar and Tocuyito, depend on their families or on other prisoners for food. In most prisons, nonetheless, inmates are given minimally adequate food rations, though hardly generous ones.

Most prisons lack trays and other serving utensils. Prisoners serve themselves using their own plastic food containers or even their hands. The only prison we saw which supplied trays was El Rodeo, and even there the chef complained that he only had eighty trays and needed some 500 more.

Kitchen facilities, like the rest of the physical plant, were generally old and in disrepair; and prison authorities did not appear to enforce standards of cleanliness. Before we entered the kitchen in La Planta, the warden stopped us, warning, "We know that this is in terrible shape." Once inside the sweltering, windowless facility, we observed inmates preparing food on tables covered with grime.

The areas where food was stored were often dirty and, according to prisoners' reports, infested with vermin. Many prisons did not have adequate refrigeration facilities. In La Planta, for example, we saw large cuts of meat lying on the filthy cement floor of an unrefrigerated storeroom. But in contrast to these clearly unhygienic conditions, the facilities we were shown at Catia and El Rodeo prisons were modern and clean, with food stored in sealed containers or wrapped in plastic.

Many inmates rely on family members to bring them nearly all their food or to give them money to buy food. In Catia's "worker's ward," for example, only about thirty of 240 prisoners regularly ate prison food; everyone else ate their own. Prisoners normally use makeshift stoves, sometimes no more than a heating element on the cement floor, to prepare food in their living areas. At some prisons, including El Dorado and Catia, we saw inmates cooking over fires in filthy bathrooms, burning wood, paper, and plastic in areas that were often poorly ventilated.

Prisoners who can afford it supplement their diets by buying food from prisoner-run canteens. In Catia, there was one canteen on each floor. These inmate-run canteens stock a wide range of items, including soft drinks and bottled water, corn meal, cooking oil, matches, and chocolate. Some prisons had more elaborate prisoner-run facilities. In the common area of one of the pavilions in La Planta, inmates sat on stools along a bar, where they bought soft drinks and snacks from another inmate standing behind the counter. In El Rodeo prison, two prisoners operated a bakery, making bread and cakes to sell to other inmates. At Sabaneta, where inmates have considerable freedom to move within the prison complex, food stalls were set up in the courtyards outside of each pavilion. The inmates who run these canteens and other operations usually must pay the prison for the right to do so. The director of the Sabaneta women's annex told us, for example, that the the inmate who runs the canteen there rents the space from the prison for Bs. 5,000 (approximately US $17) per month.

The distribution of food at some prisons raised serious concerns. In Ciudad Bolívar prison, we saw inmates scuffle as they attempted to reach the buckets of food carried to different areas of the compound. Prison guards stood outside of the locked gate at the entrance, watching while some inmates brandished knives and demanded that others hand over the food they had just received. One inmate told a Human Rights Watch representative, "There's no control over who gets the food; it's complete chaos. Some eat, some go without."103

In Sabaneta prison, the leaders of the four inmate evangelical churches reportedly run the food distribution system. According to one inmate, the prisoners settled on this arrangement to avoid the kinds of conflicts we saw at Ciudad Bolívar.

Human Rights Watch/Americas heard numerous allegations of corruption affecting food supplies. "The kitchen is a business," explained an inmate who had worked in the Ciudad Bolívar prison kitchen for several years. He stated that the workers took the best food for themselves and sold most of the rest to those who could pay for it. This first-hand account lends credence to inmates' widespread suspicions of corruption, typified by this statement by one prisoner in theVenezuelan General Penitentiary: "At the gate we see delivery trucks pull up with all kinds of food-chicken, cheese, milk, vegetables. Where does this food go?"104

For security reasons, the service of meals in most prisons is staggered, with prisoners from each living area being served together. The acting director of Catia prison said that guards must take care to ensure that prisoners from certain living areas never come into contact with each other as they get their meals, explaining: "They hate each other, and fights would break out."105 Inmates from each ward have between fifteen and twenty minutes to get their meals and return to their cells. We observed similar procedures in operation at other prisons, including El Rodeo and Tocorón. "We have to eat fast," an inmate at El Rodeo reported. "Then we run back up to our cells. We don't even have half an hour to eat; maybe we get ten minutes." Another prisoner at the same institution told us, "We have to go running to get our food, eat fast, and come back running."

We observed guards harassing prisoners as they were taken from their cellblocks to get meals. At Catia, as inmates run down the stairs to reach the prison cafeteria, the guards accompanying them shout at them to move quickly while banging poles against the metal bars of the pavilion doorway. Although we never saw guards actually hitting inmates during these trips, we heard repeated complaints of such abuse. One inmate at Tocorón stated, "The guardia whack us with their sabers if we're not fast enough."106

Water and Hygiene

The sanitary facilities in most men's prisons violate international standards.107 Areas within some facilities lack functioning toilets and runningwater. Inmates in these areas are forced to defecate in buckets or on newspaper and then to throw their waste out the window, although a number of inmates reported that they were punished by guards for disposing of their waste in this manner. No prison visited by Human Rights Watch/Americas provided soap or other hygienic supplies to inmates.108

Most men's prisons have one or two bathrooms per floor. Although each bathroom has a number of showers and toilets, many do not work. At Catia, this meant that some 250 prisoners in the workers' ward shared two showers and two toilets. Many bathrooms have only sporadic running water or lack it altogether. In the majority of the facilities visited by Human Rights Watch/Americas, inmates bathed with water hauled up to the bathrooms in buckets. Drains and toilets were often blocked up, giving bathrooms an appalling stench. Many bathrooms had standing water mixed with human waste on the floors, which inmates walked through barefoot or in open sandals to reach the toilets. Compounding the sanitary problems arising from such conditions, inmates sometimes prepared food in these bathrooms.

The sanitary facilities at El Dorado prison merit special attention for their extreme state of disrepair. When Human Rights Watch/Americas visited, the concrete walls of the bathrooms within the Casa Amarilla, the prison's main structure, were crumbling. The only water available was a dark yellowish-brown, clearly unfit for drinking.109 Flies were everywhere. Prisoners held in the facility's former kitchen had no bathroom; they had to throw their feces over the wall.

Prisoners kill each other for 50 Bs; they fight over cigarettes. The scariest part is that some of them kill just to make a name for themselves, to get a tough reputation.

-José Luis C., a prisoner at La Planta prison, speaking of Catia.

Respect for the right to life? You'll find it if you're as well-armed as the other guy.

- Joel F., a prisoner at Tocuyito.

Although known for their overcrowding, physical decay, and corruption, Venezuela's prisons are most notorious for their extreme violence. Over the past decade, thousands of prisoners have died violent deaths at the hands of their fellows. Some prisoners have been killed in headline-grabbing spasms of violence, such the 1994 massacre at Sabaneta prison, but many others have died practically unnoticed, losers in the daily fight for survival in Venezuelan prisons.

During our visit to the country, we saw compelling evidence of the prison system's chronic violence. We entered Tocuyito prison, the third facility on our visiting list, just after a stabbed prisoner had been dragged out to the gate, blood pouring from his stomach. At Ciudad Bolívar we saw another prisoner lying by the prison's gate with a bullet lodged in his spine; he was paralyzed. A day prior to our arrival, in the same prison, two inmates had been killed. In other facilities, prisoners showed off festering wounds as well as deep and jagged scars, and recounted war stories, most of which led inevitably to the formula, "It's the survival of the fittest here"; they also displayed weapons ranging from sharpened nails to home-made guns.

Lack of Guards

In the prison system as a whole, the internal personnel consist of just over 5,000 administrative staff, technical staff (doctors, psychologists), and guards. Ministry of Justice officials acknowledged that this figure is skewed toward administrative staff, leaving a dangerous shortage of civilian guards.110 Exacerbating this problem, prison wardens have been caught putting people on a prison's payroll as "guards" but assigning them administrative tasks.

In prison after prison, we found handfuls of guards responsible for maintaining control of impossibly disproportionate numbers of prisoners. Sabaneta prison, for example, had a total of thirty-six guards on staff to supervise more than 2,300 prisoners. Because this staff was divided among two shifts, and because guards must often accompany prisoners off the facility's premises, the actual number of guards on duty at any given time was a fraction of this number. Indeed, on the day of our visit, there were only thirteen guards on duty (a prisoner-to-guard ratio of 180 to one). Moreover, the warden of Sabaneta admitted that occasionally he has had only four guards available to supervise the entire prison population (a prisoner-to-guard ratio of 575 to one).111

Although Sabaneta prison is an extreme case, a few other facilities that we visited had similarly disproportionate numbers of guards, while others were nearly as extreme. The other most notable facilities in terms of understaffing were the prisons of Ciudad Bolívar, which had eight guards on duty to monitor 1,180 prisoners (a prisoner-to-guard ratio of 148 to one), Tocorón, which had four guards on duty to monitor 1,042 prisoners (a prisoner-to-guard ratio of 260 to one), and Catia, which had thirteen guards on duty to monitor 1,840 prisoners (a prisoner-to-guard ratio of 142 to one). But even facilities that were better in terms of prisoner supervision were still inadequately staffed (when we visited La Planta prison, the men's prison with the largest proportionate staff, it had twenty-nine guards on duty to supervise 1,979 prisoners, a prisoner-to-guard ratio of sixty-four to one).

As most prison wardens acknowledged, such small numbers of guards are incapable of maintaining control over the prison populations assigned them. The warden of Catia prison, for example, stated that instead of thirty guards divided among two shifts, which was the staff that he then had, he needed a minimum of 150 guards (and thus seventy-five per shift) to keep any effective control over the prison.112 The warden of Tocuyito admitted that he had only 10 percent the number of guards that he should have. At Ciudad Bolívar, the warden simply stated that with the few guards he had at his disposal, "We watch from the gates."113

The result is that prisoners are unsupervised most of the time. Indeed, the guards have almost entirely abdicated internal control of prisons such as Sabaneta and Ciudad Bolívar: they mostly remain in the outside administrative areas, leaving the prisoners to govern themselves. (When we visited both of those facilities, none of the guards entered with us.) In other prisons, particularly those such as El Rodeo and the Venezuelan General Penitentiary, where inmates are confined to their cellblocks, guards patrol outside the cellblocks but still rarely enter the prisoners' living areas, where abuses occur unhindered.

Moreover, the prisoner hierarchy that effectively governs a facility in the absence of adequate guard supervision is in some instances ratified by the prison authorities. When guards at La Planta prison, for example, were asked how they could possibly keep control of the prison population given their small numbers, they stated that control was maintained "via the dominant prisoners."114 They explained that there were about fifty such prisoners, who managed the other prisoners and reported serious problems back to the guards.115 At Catia prison, similarly, a number of prisoners who known as polipresos did the work of guards.

Availability of Weapons

Weapons of all types are plentiful in the prisons. We saw numerous knives, known as chuzos, and, in one prison, home-made firearms, known as chopos. Other weapons, including pistols and grenades, are also reportedly available there. A periodic search of Sabaneta prison in March 1996, for example, led to the discovery of the following weapons: one hundred knives, six machetes and twelve projectiles; while a search two weeks earlier had turned up a .38 revolver and a grenade.116 In total, during 1996, guards confiscated at least 2,689 knives, 528 firearms, and 2,155 other dangerous objects from the prisons; in 1995,the comparable figures were 2,206 knives, 112 firearms and 1,889 dangerous objects.117

The glut of weapons has fed a prison arms race. There is some debate over the source of the weapons-whether they are smuggled in by guards or by visitors-but, given the high number of weapons at issue, and the meticulous body searches that visitors may be subject to, it is evident that many of the weapons can only have entered with the guards' complicity. Indeed, the director of Tocorón readily acknowledged that weapons inside his facility had entered with the help of guards; he knew of several civilian guards and National Guardsmen who had lost their jobs for this.118 In addition to weapons that are smuggled in, many weapons are made. Showing a scary ingenuity, prisoners craft sharp implements out of every piece of metal available to them. At some of the older, decaying prisons, for example the unrenovated cellblocks at Tocuyito, we saw that numerous iron bars had been sawed off the cells to be made into weapons. As a result, although frequent searches are conducted to remove weapons, they have no perceptible effect in disarming the prison population. As one National Guardsman stated, "Today we'll take out fifty knives and tomorrow one hundred more will appear."119

The most shocking facility we saw in terms of weapons was the prison of Ciudad Bolívar. While in other facilities prisoners kept their weapons hidden, in Ciudad Bolívar prisoners walked around with their weapons openly displayed: in their hands or stuck into their waistbands. In the course of a day there, we saw countless knives and machetes, some quite large, and some forty home-made firearms.

Violence

Given these circumstances, is not surprising that violence-often deadly violence-is a daily reality in the lives of Venezuelan prisoners. According to official statistics, 207 prisoners were killed and 1,133 prisoners were injured in Venezuelan prisons in 1996, most by their fellow prisoners.120 In other words, an average of four prisoners were killed each week and over twenty injured.

Although shocking, these numbers represent a decrease compared to past years. In 1995, at least 239 inmates were killed,121 while in 1994, a particularly violent year in the prisons, at least 345 inmates were killed.122

The year 1994, of course, witnessed Venezuela's worst prison tragedy: the massacre at Sabaneta prison that left at least 108 prisoners dead and scores injured.123 For about two hours on January 3, as civilian guards and members of the National Guard watched, a group of inmates from one section of the prison setfire to cellblocks in another section and shot, stabbed, and even decapitated inmates who managed to escape the inferno. A number of sources interviewed by Human Rights Watch/Americas in the wake of the violence indicated that the authorities' delay in intervening to stop the violence was deliberate, reflecting an intentional decision to let prisoners kill each other.124 Whether purposeful or grossly negligent, the official failure to act violated prisoners' right to life as protected under international human rights law.

The Sabaneta massacre was unique in its level of violence, but the authorities' response to it is in many ways emblematic of the overall situation of Venezuela's prisons. Each year the death toll in the prisons greatly exceeds the number of people killed in the Sabaneta tragedy, with smaller-scale prison massacres occurring at frequent intervals.125 Nonetheless, the responsible authorities still fail to take adequate measures to put a stop to the killings. Unfortunately, given the prisons' conditions, these violent deaths are all too predictable.

In the harsh environment of Venezuelan prisons, inmates often profit from exploiting and abusing others. As inmate after inmate repeated to us, "only the strong survive." The strongest and most powerful prisoners, known as caçiques or huacamacacos, eat well, live in less crowded and more comfortable cells, make money off others and have others do their bidding. In contrast, the weakest andleast powerful prisoners suffer all of the worst deprivations of prison life. They sleep on the floor in crowded passageways; they clean other prisoners' cells; their belongings are stolen; they are mistreated, beaten, and raped.

Overcrowding is a significant factor in prison violence, as prisoners struggle with other prisoners to obtain minimal living space for themselves. In most prisons, inmates are not assigned particular cells; instead they are placed into cellblocks where they must either find friends willing to share space with them, or rent it, buy it, or hold it by force. Dominant prisoners control cell spaces; prisoners with money pay them to obtain a cell.

Gangs and other Groupings

Much prison violence is gang-related. The traffic in arms, as well as the prisons' substantial drug traffic, is generally controlled by gangs; the large amounts of money at stake lead to violent clashes between rival groups.

Many gangs coalesce around prisoners from the same city or region. In addition, violent rivalries sometimes develop between prisoners who live in different cellblocks in the same prison. At the Venezuela National Penitentiary, for example, cellblocks 4 and 5 are in conflict with cellblocks 1 and 2; at Tocuyito, prisoners from cellblock 2 cannot venture near cellblock 3, and vice-versa, for fear of being killed. Some gangs distinguish themselves by dress. At El Rodeo prison, we spoke to members of the barrio bronx gang, who favor white headbands, and who profess a deadly hatred of members of the neighboring barrio chino gang.

Rape

Although it is difficult to estimate the frequency of prisoner-on-prisoner rape-since most prisoners are reluctant to discuss the topic and since the scars that rape leaves are psychological rather than visible to the eye-prison experts and advocates believe that it is a constant threat, particularly for younger, smaller, and more vulnerable prisoners. The director of Tocuyito, who has twenty-five years of experience in the prisons, has concluded that youthful prisoners are overwhelmingly singled out for sexual abuse; he told us that alternatives to prison should be made available to them. Prison expert Elio Gómez Grillo explained that prison caçiques "break in" vulnerable prisoners, raping them for the first time and then selling them to other prisoners or renting out their sexual services.126 Prisoners subject to such abuse end up a