The prison crisis in Ecuador is a threat against the State, according to the director of SNAI

To address the prison crisis, the director of the National Service for Comprehensive Attention to Persons Deprived of Liberty (SNAI), Fausto Cobo, went to the Attorney General on Wednesday, August 25.

In the official’s opinion, the problem of the prison system is not exclusively the responsibility of the SNAI, but rather a matter of the State, because long ago the issue of being an issue of citizen security was transferred and it became a “threat against the State.” .

All the institutions related to the Justice system, the Prosecutor’s Office, the Assembly and the government itself are involved in this matter, Cobo stressed, who believes that the social axis has a lot to do with rehabilitation. “We need to coordinate, the solution is not only prison,” he said.

He proposed coordination so that there is no opposition in administrative matters, custody of persons deprived of liberty, where the Prosecutor’s Office has a lot to do with it. He recalled that many do not have a sentence or have precautionary measures, such as preventive detention, which are related to justice.

There will be the necessary coordination and a direct channel has been created to have the exchange of strategic intelligence, which has to do with the State, the official announced.

Intelligence work carried out by the Police, this Wednesday, allowed the confiscation of firearms, knives, drugs and other objects of prohibited entry to prisons. They were buried in courtyards, camouflaged in prefabricated structures accessed with grinders and chisels.

At the El Inca Provisional Detention Center, in Quito, weapons and other items were voluntarily handed over. Early this Wednesday, in the El Rodeo prison in Manabí an attempt to enter weapons, ammunition and drugs was thwarted. A joint operation between the Police and the Armed Forces made it possible to find the weapons in a vacant lot, near the prison.

In the riots registered in the country’s prisons, more than 130 inmates have been murdered so far this year, the majority in the prisons of Guayaquil and Cotopaxi.

Fausto Cobo assumed the leadership of SNAI in replacement of retired General Edmundo Moncayo, almost a month ago. He has led control actions in the Guayaquil and Cotopaxi prisons and has visited others such as Babahoyo.

Only between prison number 1 in Guayas and the Cotopaxi Regional Center there are almost 20,000 people deprived of liberty, of the 39,000 inmates in more than 35 prisons in the country.