More than 2,000 prisoners went from the cold bars of the prison to serve their sentences outside, in a semi-institutional program.
These data are for the period from January 1st to August 31st this year.
According to the Ministry of Justice and Peace, from that amount, about 1,226 transfers were due to regulatory assessments made by the National Institute of Criminology (INC).
In order to reduce prison over-crowing, 781 prisoners were transferred to the out-of-prison regime.
Between September and December 2015, due to the extraordinary circulars (05 and 08), the INC moved to 888 people. Then, between September 2015 and June 2016, there have been 1,669 relocations to reduce over-crowding,”
said the ministry.
According to data from the Ministry of Justice, about 5 of those who were benefited by the extraordinary circular, have committed new crimes.
This year the INC returned 65 people to prison.
In short, of the 1,669 people who were relocated by the circulars, only 65 lost benefit for committing new crimes, equivalent to 3.8%,”
explained the institution.
Cecilia Sánchez, Minister of Justice and Marco Feoli, Deputy Minister of Corrections, have repeatedly defended their position to dignify prisoners.
I will never give up this fight for human rights. I have the backing of President of the Republic. I think I’m doing the right thing,”
said the official in mid-August.
Prison over-crowding in Costa Rica is a serious matter. There are only 13 prisons with a capacity for 9,000 people, but there are 14,000 inmates inside them.