- Published: Wednesday, February 12, 2020-
$188,000-plus invested to allow video calls
for foreign prisoners
By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The Ministry of Justice announced Tuesday a $188,943 investment to install a modern video call system in some prisons to allow foreign prisoners to talk with their families and friends.
According to the ministry, in order to carry out this project, the company Connectivity was contracted. The resources come from the social migration fund, provided by the General Directorate of Migration.
This video calling service is available to prisoners in jails with the largest foreign population, including the Nelson Mandela prison in San Carlos, in the northern zone of the country, the Antonio Bastida de Paz prison in Pérez Zeledón in the southern zone of the country, the Jorge Arturo Montero facility in San Rafael in Alajuela, the Gerardo Rodríguez facility also in San Rafael in Alajuela and the women's prison, Vilma Curling, in Desamparados in San José Province.
“The goal of this system is the integration of migrants in Costa Rica in conflict with the criminal law. But at the same time it facilitates the fulfillment of humanitarian interests, such as the approach to their families who, although they have had nothing to do with the prisoner's sentence, they also suffer the consequences,” said Walter Corea-Quirós from the ministry.
According to the ministry, since October 2019, its workers begun communicating with each of the foreign diplomatic representations in the country to determine the contact points through which those prisoners can communicate abroad.
“Through a formal request, the prisoner gives us the telephone number and email address of the person to be contacted, then we request the embassy to contact that person,” said Corea.
Through the embassy, the person receives a link with an invitation to the video call with the information of the date and time the call will be made from jail. Once the conversation is over, the link expires. The system has its own optical fiber. This increases the security level and call quality, said the ministry.
Currently, there are three points of contact already confirmed with the embassies of Korea, Ecuador and Brazil, so only prisoners of these nationalities can access the video call service.
However, the Ministry has sent applications to some 35 embassies, including those of the United States, Venezuela, Sudan, Romania, China, Peru, Colombia, Lebanon and Russia.
According to statistics from the ministry, there are 2,479 foreign prisoners in the country.
In addition, the video calling system will be used to make easier communication between jails to allow online training, said the ministry.
Another use of the video call system is allowing a prisoner to make statements to a court when the prison is located away from the capital.
According to the ministry, each prison has a staffer in charge of the video calls equipment.
In January the ministry announced that the construction of new modules or rooms within the current prisons had reduced the overcrowding rate 8.8% between November 2019 and January 2020. The rate went from 39.6% to 30.8%.
According to the ministry, this reduction is due to the construction of 2,051 modules, or rooms in the prisons of Alajuela, San José, Limón, Guanacaste, Puntarenas and Heredia.
"The reduction is important if you take into account that between May 2018 and December 2019 the prison population grew by almost 2,000 people: 13%," said the ministry in its statement. "Currently, more than 16,000 people are jailed."
The constructions were made in response to orders issued by judicial authorities and the Ministry of Health ordering conditions that respect the human rights of the prisoners, said the ministry.
According to the ministry, the goal was to build 3,000 new rooms or modules during the four years of the current government.
According to the ministry, 2,214 new modules are scheduled to be built this year. These modules are part of the new building that will be constructed in the facility known as La Reforma in Alajuela.
To these modules, 1,248 prisoners of La Reforma will be transferred. New areas for the attention of prisoners with drug addiction problems will be built, said the ministry.
Three buildings to house women prisoners are planned in Pococí, Pérez Zeledón and Puntarenas. More modules also are planned for the prisons of San Carlos, Liberia and Puntarenas.
The ministry officials are now in the analysis of requesting an $80 million loan from the Central American Bank for Economic Integration to build a new prison in San Ramón in Alajuela with a capacity for 1,100 prisoners. Part of the loans would be used for the construction of more modules in the prisons of Liberia and Limón, according to the ministry.
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