Johis Alarcón

Ecuador has an overpopulation of 40% in prisons, with a total of 41,000 prisoners in conditions of overcrowding and violation of human rights. The Public Defender’s declared the penitentiary system in a state of emergency to generate a plan of containment in the face of alarming prison growth.

With the approval of the new Penal Code in Ecuador, a new penitentiary system with maximum-security policies was established. The hardening of penalties for drug trafficking resulted in an increase from 11 279 prisoners in 2009 to 41 000 in 2019 the 30% due to the possession or sale of drugs. One in every three Ecuadorians is imprisoned due to this crime. In the Provisional Detention Center in Quito are 2 000 prisoners and only has capacity for 800, in a Guayas Regional Rehabilitation Center, are 10 000 prisoners and only was designed for 4 000. Commonly, jails are located in remote areas, far from the center of the city; for inmate families, distance represents a big problem in terms of time and money. This system, along with unfavorable social and economic conditions, and extreme isolation policies such as the prohibition of written letters or photographs, call restrictions, extreme body search for visitors, create a hostile and emotionally fragile environment, where both, prisoners and family members, endure the sentence without a rehabilitation and social reintegration process.

This is a series that portrays the prison life in the jail and the prisoner's ́s families out the jail, focusing to show that this problem is for the families and communities too; increasing the impact of this social issue.

I am a relative of a person deprived of liberty. I have worked in jails for 7 years with Hip-Hop and arts projects. These experiences allowed me to create this story and live with my friends the consequences of criminalization in Latin America.