FILE - Inmates stand inside a corridor during time they are allowed to be outside of their cells at Najayo jail in San Cristobal, west of Santo Domingo, May 30, 2007. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa, File)

SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic (AP) — They’re known as “frog men,” inmates who are forced to sleep on prison floors across the Dominican Republic, often next to overflowing toilets or holes in the ground that serve as one.

Thousands of them are crammed into the country’s severely overcrowded prisons, some operating at seven times their capacity. A majority languish there without ever having been charged with a crime, and activists warn they face inhuman conditions and a lack of medical care.

Despite promises to improve the system, critics say the Dominican Republic continues to push for and allow pretrial detentions in nearly all criminal cases where no charges have been filed and has made few changes as problems within prisons keep mounting.

“Prisons have become no man’s land,” said Rodolfo Valentín Santos, director of the Dominican Republic’s National Public Defense Office.

Over 60% of the country’s roughly 26,000 inmates are being held under preventive detention, without any charges, according to the National Public Defense Office. Proponents argue the measure aims to protect society and allows authorities time to collect evidence in a case.

But some detainees have spent up to 20 years in prison without ever being found guilty of a crime, Valentín said.

He noted that the country’s Constitution and penal code dictate that preventive detention is an “exceptional” measure. There are six other measures that don’t involve prison time, including bail, but Valentín said they are rarely used.

‘We have a situation’

On a recent afternoon, Darwin Lugo and Yason Guzmán walked out of La Victoria National Penitentiary, in the northeast corner of the sprawling capital, Santo Domingo.

The prison was built for a maximum of 2,100 inmates but holds more than 7,000 of them, with more than 3,300 under pretrial detention, according to the National Public Defense Office.

It is the country’s oldest and most populated prison.

“You have to watch out for your life,” said Lugo, who with Guzmán visited several friends held there, some under pretrial detention.

“There are a lot of them who are not doing well,” Guzmán said of inmates there. “There’s extreme poverty.”

They said their friends, who have spent more than five years incarcerated there, are well-connected and only occasionally request money or ask that their cell phone’s SIM card be recharged.

Last year, at least 11 inmates died at La Victoria following a short circuit in a cell that sparked a fire and an explosion. It was one of the country’s deadliest prison fires since 2005, when at least 134 inmates were killed in the eastern town of Higüey after rival gangs set their bedding ablaze.

After last year’s fire at La Victoria, Dominican President Luis Abinader appointed former prisons director Roberto Santana as head of a commission tasked with overhauling and improving the country’s more than 40 prisons.

“We must admit, gentlemen, that we have a situation in all of the country’s prisons,” Abinader said when he announced the appointment last March. He also announced that money recovered from corruption cases would help fund construction of new prisons.

Santana has long called for the closure of La Victoria and the 15 de Azua prison, located in the country’s western region. The commission he leads is working on those and other monumental tasks, free from outside interference, he said.

“We don’t take orders from politicians or anyone else,” said Santana, who previously trained staff for the new prisons built in the early 2000s.

Santana, who once served as president of the Federation of Dominican Students in the 1970s, was arrested multiple times under President Joaquín Balaguer, known for having political opponents and dissidents jailed and sometimes killed.

Santana knows first-hand the conditions of La Victoria — he spent two years in solitary confinement there.

‘On the brink of collapse’

In the early 2000s, the Dominican Republic began building 21 new prisons to improve conditions. They were staffed by trained personnel, not police and soldiers, which oversee the country's other 19 prisons.

But conditions in the new prisons have deteriorated, according to the Dominican Republic's National Commission of Human Rights.

“The Dominican Republic’s prison system is on the brink of collapse,” the commission said in its 2023 report, the latest one available.

In prisons across the country, overcrowding is rampant. Cells lack bathrooms, natural light and ventilation, leading to worsening health conditions. Some 5,000 inmates are ill with conditions ranging from heart problems to cancer to HIV, but they receive only the most basic medication, if that, and some prisons have no medical staff, according to Valentín, whose office issues a yearly in-depth report on the conditions of all prisons.

In its 2023 report, the latest year available, his office called for the closure of prisons including one in the north coastal city of Nagua.

“The level of overcrowding…makes it impossible to achieve true rehabilitation for the inmates since they have been forgotten by the state,” the report read. “In the conditions they are in, it is obvious that they are treated as objects and not as human beings endowed with rights.”

Another prison was so overcrowded that the government held inmates outdoors in trucks with metal roofs that broiled under the sun, sparking lawsuits, Valentín said.

A spokesperson for Col. Roberto Hernández Basilio, director of prisons, did not respond to requests for an interview. Hernández has previously said his office is taking measures to improve conditions.

Meanwhile, Dominican Attorney General Miriam Germán Brito has repeatedly spoken out against pretrial detention but noted that the decision lies in the hands of judges. A spokesperson for Germán said she is not granting media interviews.

Both Santana and Valentín said they believe government corruption is one reason the country has dragged its feet in overhauling the system, accusing soldiers and police who run prisons of benefiting from illegal activities.

Public corruption also prompted authorities to halt construction of a much-touted prison in recent years that was expected to ease overcrowding.

Even as that half-built prison wastes away, Santana said he expects that 25 new prisons capable of holding more than 20,000 inmates will be built by 2028.

While those are expected to help ease overcrowding, concerns remain. Activists note that inmates are not freed even when a judge has legally released them.

The National Commission of Human Rights noted that roughly 2,700 inmates are still in prison because their paperwork is paralyzed in backlogged courts. Meanwhile, hundreds of others remain incarcerated despite being officially freed because they owe the government money and are unable to pay fines ordered by a judge.

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