Prisoners
The National Penitentiary and Prison Institute (Instituto Nacional Penitenciario y Carcelario—INPEC) is in charge of the prison system. Many of INPEC's 8,756 prison guards are poorly trained or corrupt. Police, prison guards, and military forces routinely mistreat detainees. Conditions in the severely overcrowded and under-funded prisons are harsh, especially for prisoners without significant outside support, and prisoners frequently rely on bribes for favorable treatment. The government does not hold political prisoners, although in 2003 it held approximately 6,800 prisoners accused of terrorism, rebellion, or aiding and abetting insurgency.
Read more about this topic: U.S. Department Of State 2003 Human Rights Report For Colombia
Famous quotes containing the word prisoners:
“We are the prisoners of ideas. They catch us up for moments into their heaven, and so fully engage us, that we take no thought for the morrow, gaze like children, without an effort to make them our own.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I never saw a man who looked
With such a wistful eye
Upon that little tent of blue
Which prisoners call the sky.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“Your notions of friendship are new to me; I believe every man is born with his quantum, and he cannot give to one without robbing another. I very well know to whom I would give the first place in my friendship, but they are not in the way, I am condemned to another scene, and therefore I distribute it in pennyworths to those about me, and who displease me least, and should do the same to my fellow prisoners if I were condemned to a jail.”
—Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)