The situation arises at a time when Peru is experiencing a major security problem due to the rise of organized crime in the form of extortion and its correlate of murders by hired killers, prompting parliament to increase prison sentences.
The Constitutional Court’s (TC) deadline will expire next May and was raised following a complaint from a sick prisoner who claimed that he was sleeping on the floor of a prison corridor in the southern city of Tacna, which was worsening his condition.
According to a report in the newspaper El Comercio, at the time of the ruling, the six most overcrowded prisons were Chanchamayo (553 percent over capacity), Jaén (522 percent), Callao (471 percent), Camaná (453 percent), Abancay (398 percent), and Miguel Castro Castro (375 percent), which would be the first to be closed.
According to recent figures from the National Penitentiary Institute (INPE), the most overcrowded prison is Sarita Colonia in the port province of Callao, built with a capacity for 572 inmates and now crammed with 3,363 inmates, representing a 488 percent overcrowding rate.
In official terms, there are 68 prisons in Peru with 94,911 inmates, more than double the capacity of just 41,019 inmates, representing a nearly 54 percent overcrowding rate.
The 2020 Constitutional Court ruling found the prison infrastructure “in an unconstitutional state regarding the permanent and critical overcrowding of penitentiary facilities and the severe deficiencies in housing capacity.” He warned that if the problem is not resolved, the prison must be temporarily closed to admit new inmates and the inmates must be transferred to other, less overcrowded prisons, among other measures.
Jurist Marianella Ledesma, who chaired the Constitutional Court that ordered the solution to prison overcrowding, told El Comercio that “sentences exist to be carried out, not as window dressing,” and the person who must comply with the rulings regarding prisons is the Minister of Justice, Eduardo Arana.
She warned that Arana “would bear criminal liability for failing to fulfill his duties, which, by court order, have been assigned to his department.”
Another of the judges who signed the ruling, Ernesto Bluma, noted that if the ruling is not complied with by the expiration of the five-year period, the corresponding administrative authority must close overcrowded prisons, which affect 49 of the 68 prisons.
The head of the National Institute of Penitentiary and Penitentiary (INPE), Luis Llaque, declared: The newspaper reported that when the Constitutional Court’s ruling was issued in 2020, no prison had been built since 2015, and under its administration, three pavilions have been built and the foundation stone of a new one has been laid, in all four cases inside the building.
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