Prison Reform al estilo Chavez

Last week Presidente Hugo Chavez appointed Iris Varela, a PSUV diputado known as La Comandante Fosforito (Commander Firecracker), to be his new prisons minister. This follows the month-long stand-off between Venezuelan security forces and inmates at the wretched El Rodeo I and II prisons. Reports from independent media and watchdog groups claim that between 30-60 prisoners and guards were killed in the unrest. For its part, the Chavez government countered through its interior minister that, "Fortunately, the massacres they talked about in headlines occurred only in the minds of these people who look down on the masses and hate the inmates." So utterly constructive Señor Ministro.

The Miami Herald reported back in July about Venezuela's prison system:

"The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has issued “provisional measures” against seven of Venezuela’s 33 prisons, including Rodeo II, citing the government for dangerous overcrowding and failing to set up controls to keep weapons and drugs out. A penal system designed for 14,000 inmates is crammed with almost 50,000. About 80 percent are awaiting trial.

Venezuela has one of the highest murder rates in the hemisphere. But being in jail is particularly deadly. In 2010 there were 466 prison murders and almost 1,000 assaults, according to the IACHR. And more than 4,500 inmates have been killed in the last decade. By comparison, the U.S. Bureau of Prisons reported 15 homicides in 2010 — that in a prisoner population four-times larger than Venezuela’s."

Varela announced today that she plans to release up 40% of Venezuela's inmates, over 20,00 of them. Fine. Overcrowding is an obvious problem and has contributed to an institution rife with human rights violations and deadly violence. But like everything else in Chavez' Venezuela, this will be accomplished through the prerogative of the claudillo and that of his circle of appointed compadres. The rough and tumble Varela threatened, "Si un juez me pone una traba, le digo a la presidenta del TSJ que lo saque del cargo," (if a judge gets in my way, I'll tell the president of the Supreme Court to strip them of their office).

What a wonderful endorsement of the rule of law and the balance of powers.

And why isn't Varela the one in prison herself? She has a record of bloodying up opposition diputados and intimidating journalists. Witness her inexcusable harassment of the journalist and politician Gustavo Azócar, a former prisoner of conscience from the state of Tachira and a man still under threat from the capricious justice system of Venezuela.