For more than 10 years it has been common in Republic Dominican the announcement of measures or any plan by the authorities to block the telephone signals in prisons, which has included the execution, in 2014, of the first pilot project and that failed after a few months.
The intentions expressed and the actions implemented for more than a decade have not only been limited to several directors of the Institute Dominican Telecommunications (Indotel) and from the attorney general’s office, also by the president of the Republic and congressmen who have submitted bills that finally pass in the chambers.
One of those measures, a 2011 decree by the then president Leonel Fernandez, declared “emergency” the acquisition and installation of equipment that prevented the reception and sending of calls and data from the prisons.
The presidential provision, number 564-11, assigns the Indotel the responsibility of managing the acquisition of the devices.
They have not reached prisons, but they have reached justice
Although none of the widely publicized signal jamming projects have succeeded in limiting or ending the crimes and crimes who continue to commit prisoners from the prisons of the country, the irregularities in the purchasing processes and purposes given to these teams have reached the courts.
One of the accusations facing the former attorney general of the Republic, Jean Alan Rodriguezis to buy three telephone and data signal blockers at a cost of RD$6,698,472, one of which, according to the Public Ministry, was used in a villa he owned in Casa de Campo.
They were purchased in 2019 and in 2020 “with the supposed purpose of being used in the company itself.” Attorney’s Office General of the Republic and in the different Penitentiary Centers and Prisons of the country, devices that were never intended, and therefore were not used, in the function for which they were acquired,” details the accusation against the former attorney general in “Operation Medusa.”
The other two inhibitors telephone signals They were used in the Corps Security Presidential (Cusep) for the security of former president Danilo Medina and for the Address of Intelligence of the Ministry of Defense.
Failed bills
The former attorney Jean Alan RodrÃguez also presented the Congress Nationalin September 2019, a draft law so that “telecommunication companies assume the responsibility of placing signal blockers for all signals that allow access to telephone or data” in prisons.
Another initiative in the Legislative Branch had been debated two years before and expired, and again in 2020. The last time the legislative piece was reintroduced was in February of this year 2024, by the Perremeist senator Cristóbal Venerado Castillo, representative from Hato Mayor.
Pilot plan announced by Guido Gomez
Before completing his first month as president of the Board of Directors of the Institute Dominican of Telecommunications (Indotel), Guido Gomez Mazara, announced last week the implementation of the pilot plan of blockade of telephone signals in the different detention centers, which would begin at the El Pinito Detention and Rehabilitation Center, in La Vega.
The violence and deaths of prisoners in the El Pinito center forced the authorities to intervene in February, when a “protocol of security” in that center. At the beginning of 2024, a person convicted of drug trafficking was poisoned and another inmate, who was transferred for killing a woman who visited him in another prison, from which he was transferred, was found hanged.
Of the pilot plan to reduce or eliminate crimes and crimes cyber that reported Gomez Mazara, no details have been offered.
In a press release from the Attorney’s Office General of the Republicthe director of Prisons, Roberto Hernández, says that the cost will be assumed by the Statethrough Indoteland that will have cameras securitya constant, internal and external monitoring system to guarantee the success of the project.
The one that was executed in 2014 was carried out in the prison of Kilometer 15 of Azua and it was the first system of blockade that was applied in the country. The then attorney general, Francis Dominguez Britosummoned all the media to publicize the project for which the company was hired HM Consulting, from the engineer Hiddekel Morrisonwhich would install it and which would extend to all the other venues in the country.
Interviewed by Free Diary five years after the failed plan, Morrison He said that although it was only maintained “for several months”, it operated “successfully.” According to their statements, it failed because the inmates themselves carried out “sabotage processes” against the functionality of the equipment.
The “approximate amount of project was one million two hundred thousand pesos” and, according to him, it was made at cost and represented a “million-dollar savings State dominicansince equivalent projects had been valued at more than US$12 million.”
Crimes and prisoners even with Internet satellite
The reports of scams and even planned murders since the prisons They are common. Coincidentally, on the same days in February of this year 2024 that a person accused of killing lawyer Santiago Reyes revealed that he was hired by an inmate, the authorities reported that he occupied 12 parables of Internet satellite to the prisoners in the La Victoria penitentiary.
According to the Address General of Prisonswith technological equipment, prisoners they committed scams and others crimes virtual.
