Abstract

PONTON, Daniel. The new prisons in Ecuador: an ecosystem for the complex crime reproduction. Universitas [online]. 2022, n.37, pp.173-199. ISSN 1390-8634.  https://doi.org/10.17163/uni.n37.2022.07.

The current crisis of the penitentiary system in Ecuador based on the massacres recorded in recent years has generated a great concern of the national and international community. Despite this is a multicausal problem, it is necessary to point out that prisons in Ecuador have been created in a dangerous “ecosystem” for the reproduction of complex criminality. In this sense, through a combination of qualitative and qualitative techniques, this research seeks to analyze the contributing factors that have allowed the infrastructure of Ecuadorian super-prisons to become an adaptive and dangerous criminal ecosystem that currently shows new and alarming forms of violence between 2019 and 2021. It is argued that the onslaught of drug trafficking, criminal policy, self-government and the social dynamics of the prison system have turned it into an ecosystem with the capacity to reproduce the complex crime. Reversing this scenario, then, requires a comprehensive and holistic perspective of the problem that combines transformations of internal and external factors of the Ecuadorian prison system in general.

Keywords : Gangs; prisons; crime; corruption; ecosystem; government; drug trafficking; violence.

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