One of the most important issues for citizenship is security, how to face organized crime and feel safe in the streets of the country. Therefore, this issue will mark this year’s presidential elections.
The prison system and its shortcomings are part of the concerns, but how to solve it? More prisons? High security prisons? In the desert? There is no clear answer, but every presidential candidate has its idea.
In the case of Franco Parisi, the candidate of the people’s party proposes a solution: ship-ships with Bukele’s style. How does it work? Is it profitable for our country? Radio Bío Bío talked with Parisi and agreed to details about how these ships would be, their cost, how many inmates could house and in which other countries this modality has been used.
International
The overpopulation in Chilean prisons is evident, and although it sounds strange, Parisi’s idea has already been applied in other countries. The United States is one of them: from 1992 to the end of 2023, in the Bronx, New York, the “prison ship” that housed Vernon C. Bain Correctional Center was tied. This was closed by a political decision to create smaller prison centers, although many people argue that it was due to the pressures of different NGOs for bad internal conditions.
In the United Kingdom there was also something similar. Although it was not called jail, it was a center called Bibby Stockholm, a barge of almost 100 meters that was enabled in 2023 to house migrants asylum seekers. It was in the port of the Portland Islands and, as in the American case, the criticisms of organizations and the death of a person inside led the government to close it.
In Ecuador, President Daniel Noboa promised floating prisons. To date, the idea has not been realized.
In Chile
Parisi’s proposal is clear: they will be barges with capacity for between 300 and 500 inmates, located 80 miles from the mainland.
At first they will be leased, Parisi commented on the radio. “Prices range from 5 million to 8 million dollars annually, and lease deadlines are between 8 and 10 years.”
The useful life of these vessels is 25 to 30 years, and one of the important points for Parisi is that they could quickly reach Chile. “Building a prison in Chile at this time takes 14 years, and with what we are living and the need to have the most dangerous criminals outside, this alternative becomes necessary,” he said.
Small spaces
Inside floating prisons, the spaces will be very small. “Internal accommodations are very small spaces, smaller than a supermarket car parking for two prisoners,” Parisi added.
In addition, he will take ideas from the president of the Savior, Nayib Bukele. Since the inmates will have “the possibility of having communications with the courts by calling for satellite phones. They will not go to the ground. They have the possibility of communicating with their relatives once a month for an hour,” he said.
It will be an extremely strict regime. For Parisi “the idea is to have a bad time and very bad. We see that the prisoners being on the mainland, we see what happens periodically with the tennis balls that both drugs and the chips have. And they continue to commit crimes, organizing robberies and also making telephone fraud.”
Then, said Parisi, that “the ones who most oppose this are the UN and organizations of that style. Thing that catches my attention that they are worried more about criminals than about the solution.”
Internal control
Another change will be that the same inmates will worry about everything inside the enclosure. The gendarmes will ensure that no one escapes and that there are no assaults on the ships. But he clarifies “they have to worry about all their things, not our gendarmes.”
Being at sea, the control will be shared. “Everything that is perimeter attack, maritime police, armed, and interior, Gendarmerie,” he said.
Inmates will also be charged for being in prison. “Each criminal costs us at least one million pesos. We are going to collect one by one. OA a relative endorsement, but we will charge it through this general treasury of the Republic.”
Idea behind
According to Parisi, “in the United States there are 17 of this type of vessels, England already has one ready to operate, especially for those who are asking for political asylum, they are crossing the La Mancha channel. That is quite beautiful, ours is going to be extremely basic.”
The idea is that it is the closest thing to Bukele’s prisons. “It will be very similar to Bukele’s prisons, the Cecot, but by boat. And the more dangerous the criminal is, further and in a much more stormy sea the criminal will be. We are going to apply the Bukele model, for these 10 ships they will be the most dangerous. Between 3,000 and 5,000 most dangerous prisoners in Chile they will be there.”
What interests them is that “criminals, the worst, those of the Aragua train, who do not want to be repatriated to Venezuela, we are going to give them a deal, but the minimum.”
Radio Bío Bío approached Gendarmerie to know his thinking against the possibility of floating prisons, but did not want to refer to the issue.
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