The president and vice president of the Constitutional Court gave a whole message about the rulings they have taken to address the serious humanitarian crisis in the country’s prisons. and in the department of La Guajira, which would not be having any solution or execution by the National Government.
“So that those concerned with carrying out these sentences understand that the Court is vigilant and that we are even thinking about contempt, that is, the Court is taking this matter seriously. We cannot continue that the boys and girls of La Guajira die of physical hunger or due to health issues; “The same goes for the prisons, in the sentence peremptory terms have been given so that there are no people sentenced in the Transitional Centers (CTP), and many months have passed in which we have no certain and effective news that this has been fulfilled,” said Judge José Fernando Reyes, president of the Court.
One of these sentences, explained the Constitutional Court, forces “public authorities to redesign a public policy to guarantee resocialization processes with the main emphasis on work. Another sentence that mainly aims to guarantee the rights of the population deprived of liberty in prison and temporary detention centers. With this latest ruling, the Court has verified that despite the orders issued by the Court that extended the declaration of the Unconstitutional State of Affairs to a temporary detention center, a humanitarian tragedy still persists,” said Judge Jorge Enrique Ibáñez, vice president of the high court, who pointed out that “there is no political will” on the part of the Government to address this situation.
From the Constitutional Court They warned that there is a “massive and systematic rape” of the entire population held in transitional centerswhich were created for a maximum detention of 36 hours and that experience has shown that in these places there is overcrowding that in some cases can exceed up to four thousand percent.
Judge Ibáñez also criticized the idea of eliminating some crimes that would help decongest prisons, but to date few have been convicted, such as the illegal transfer of checks, the violation of religious freedom, the disturbance of religious freedom, incest, lack of food assistance and disrespect for the corpse.
And although the Constitutional Court overturned the decree of the Government of Gustavo Petro of Economic and Social Emergency of La Guajira, Since 2018, it has declared an Unconstitutional State of Affairs in the department due to the lack of food, health and drinking water. in the minors of the population with the Wayúu.
In fact, the Army itself has recognized that the efforts to address the crisis in La Guajira have been “dispersed,” and according to the attorney for territorial governance, “there is no strategy. There are a number of important but dispersed actions, in which the relevant actors do not speak frequently enough and they do not agree on the prioritization of the strategy.”
The attention to the department of La Guajira has been so uncertain that even the former director of the National Unit for Risk Management, Olmedo López, had to leave office due to the alleged corruption that occurred in the purchase of 40 tank trucks that were supposedly going to distribute water in the department, but they ended up stranded for several weeks because they did not have transit policies.
