QUITO, Ecuador — Nearly a sixth of the inmates in Ecuador’s prisons have not been sentenced, a national census showed Monday, as President Guillermo Lasso urged the judicial system to be quicker to help ease the burden on prisons. overcrowded
Lasso, who will leave office at the end of this year after early elections, told reporters that the current prison population is 31,321 and that most of the inmates were arrested for drug trafficking, robbery or homicide.
That number is above the capacity of 30,134 inmates that prison agency SNAI said the 36-prison system had in December 2022.
Overcrowding was 12.9%, the SNAI said in June, but authorities did not give an updated figure on overcrowding on Monday.
Ecuador’s prison system has faced structural problems for decades, amid overcrowding and poor living conditions for inmates, but riots have become increasingly common, killing more than 400 inmates since late 2020.
The census showed that more than 5,000 people, or 16% of all prisoners, have been convicted of crimes but have not yet been sentenced or are being held in prison awaiting trial, Lasso said, adding that the figure should be reason of concern among the judiciary.
“Our policy is not to have more prisoners or build more jails, our policy is to release those who deserve that freedom because they have served their sentences,” Lasso said during an event about the census results.
The government has attributed prison violence to fights between criminal groups for control of prisons and drug trafficking routes.
However, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights said that the violence is also due to high rates of overpopulation and reduced budgets for rehabilitation, among other causes.
Prisoners have complained about the quality of basic services and food supplies, the census also showed.
