In the last days of February, prisons in the region demonstrated the nature of the crisis in which they are submerged. In Ecuador, on the 23rd, a series of riots ended in at least 79 deaths. A few days before, in Paraguay, prisoners had taken control of the Tacumbu prison, the largest in the country, where 8 people died and hundreds were injured in an apparent struggle for control of the drug market between organized criminal groups. And in Haiti, on 25 February, 8 people, including the prison director, died in a prison on the outskirts of Puerto Príncipe in an escape attempt. All this in a single week!
And it is not during killings that the high percentage of the inmates have strapped themselves.
Fifty-one per cent of non-homicides, the report said, involved weapons, while 63 per cent of homicides involved weapons. The study said a total of 56 per cent of all crimes committed by inmates involved a weapon.
The IDB estimates that eight out of every 100 civilians living in Jamaica has a firearm, the fourth highest in the Caribbean, yet it surpasses all other countries studied for presence of weapons in non-homicidal crimes.
The study probed where inmates obtained their first firearm. Fifty-five per cent said it was provided by a family or friend. The reported revealed, too, that 36 per cent obtained their first gun between ages 14 and 17.
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