A non-government organization said 37 inmates died and 39 were injured in November as a result of violence inside the country's prisons.
As is his usual custom at the start of every week, Venezuelan Prisons Observatory director Humberto Prado held a news conference to announce the latest death figures at the jails. From Dec. 5 to Dec. 11, the NGO reported 11 deaths and 26 injured. The weekly death toll underscores the seemingly methodical violence behind bars.
In one particularly gruesome case of violence last week, three inmates at La Pica in Monagas state were dismembered during a fight for power.
Rather than using the quicker and more effective firearm, the killers used homemade knives and machetes to hack their victims to death. The head of convicted robber Raúl de Jesús Vera Mendoza, 26, was thrown into the main entrance of the jail. The two other inmates where similarly chopped apart.
The deaths bring the number of dismemberments at the jail to 53 so far this year.
La Pica warden Wilmer Canache said the violence was a result of a “change of government.”
The deaths recalls a similar massacre on Aug. 8 when nine inmates were killed, dismembered and stacked for the press to see.
Those deaths and others sparked the Venezuelan Prisons Observatory to hold an inter-institutional meeting lead by the Catholic Church to try to bring an end to the violence at La Pica. The organization said La Pica is the most violent in the country.
Elsewhere, the National Guard (GN) stopped inmates escaping from the Uribana penitentiary in Lara state. The GN discovered two tunnels leading from the jail to freedom. Three inmates did, however, manage to escape from other prisons – two of them fled while on work release.
Also last week, the National Guard Rapid Reaction Force (Eric) undertook searches at three prisons.
The NGO said the country's prison population is 18,787, nearly half are on remand.