Honduran President Announces New Max Security Prison Run by Military

Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez, or JOH as he’s commonly called within the country, says the nation’s prison system is insufficient for the number of criminals and more prisons should be built in “remote” areas where there’s no satellite communication.

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During a speech this week regarding national security, JOH called the country’s prison system “insufficient.” The head of state added that “more high-security prisons should be built in remote areas where there isn’t even satellite communication.”

At the moment there are at least two high security, military-run prisons in operation in Honduras and another in Naco, a rural town in northern Honduras, is under construction.

The president said that this third, army-administered maximum security prison “will be a relief” to the current overcrowded system.

It’s unclear, however, how much a new prison will bring real relief.

A United States Department of State Country Report on Human Rights Practices for 2017 on Honduras found that the country’s prison system is neglected and violates a slew of basic human rights standards. “Prison conditions were … sometimes life-threatening due to pervasive gang-related violence and the government’s failure to control criminal activity within the prisons,” reads the human rights report.

Prisoners suffered not only from overcrowding but weren’t provided with even basic needs.

There is “insufficient access to food and water (and prisoners suffer from) malnutrition, lack of adequate sanitation and medical care, and, in some prisons, lack of adequate ventilation and lighting,” said the U.S. investigators. “Prisoners suffer from violence and abuse by prison officials.”

Prison deaths result from these circumstances. Within the first nine months of 2017, “23 male inmates had died in prison, 16 from natural causes, and seven from violence.”

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It’s not just conditions inside the prisons that are grim, but the rate of arrests that create overcrowding.

Arrest rates went up by 10 percent between 2016 and 2017, reads the state department report. The JOH administration arrested nearly 900 people in the weeks following his fraudulent presidential win in November 2017, according to the Committee of Relatives of the Detained and Disappeared in Honduras (Cofadeh). Two of the political prisoners swept up in the security force arrests, rights activists Edwin Espinal and Raul Alvarez remain jailed in a Honduran high-security prison.

During his speech, Hernandez said his government is trying to remove some prisoners who pose a lesser threat to society, such as those who are elderly, sick or who have committed minor crimes, but that gangs inside the prisons coerce them to stay through bribes or death threats.

"Many of the (gang leaders inside prisons) offer (inmates) money and threaten to kill their family, but we continue to work to counteract that," said Hernandez, who himself is under investigation by state authorities for being part of a political ring that allegedly stole nearly US$12 million in state funds for their electoral campaigns in 2015.