FIRE IN OVERCROWDED PRISON RESULTS IN FATALITIES

Prison overcrowding not only takes away from successful rehabilitation and quality of life, but it also drastically reduces the safety of prisoners. Three years ago in Higuey, Dominican Republic the harsh reality of the danger of an overpopulated prison was seen firsthand. “A battle broke out in a cell known as Vietnam, the authorities said. Shots were fired and punches flew. Mattresses, machetes and other objects sailed through the air before a burst of flame came, then torrents of black, choking smoke” (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/09/international/americas/09dominican.html). This melee occurred in a severely overcrowded cell and took the lives of 136 prisoners. The cell was built to house no more than 40 prisoners. “Human rights workers here and abroad say prison overcrowding in the Dominican Republic is among the worst in the hemisphere” (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/09/international/americas/09dominican.html).
The prison was first constructed to hold 80 prisoners but on the day of the tragic fire there were at least 426 prisoners in captivity.

Tragic events such as this should be a forewarning of how ghastly it can be on the inside of an overcrowded prison. One person’s actions can start a chain of events that can abruptly get very dangerous. In this case the situation became dangerous because rival gangs who were waging war over the drug trade set their bedding ablaze. One survivor stated that “some died in a stampede to escape the flames and some died of smoke inhalation” (http://chinadaily.com/cn/english/doc/2005-03/08/ ). “The fire burned everything fast in a matter of seconds or minutes,” said Pedro Rojas Morillo, the governor of La Altagracia Province. “There was no hope” (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/09/international/americas/09dominican.html). Events such as this display the danger of overcrowded prisons and the importance of relieving prisons of overcrowding. In addition to the lack of rehabilitation and job training opportunities, overcrowded prisons make conditions extremely dangerous. Fights, and riots are more likely to occur in congested prisons because in an overcrowded, frightening and stressful situation people trend to become exceedingly irritable and are always “watching their back.” This stress and irritability can cause paranoia, which can lead to confrontations. These confrontations can ultimately become deadly and out of control. Another downfall to an overpopulated prison is that criminals feel they need to join a gang in order to survive. You are not likely to survive in a hostile situation if you are a loner. Gangs ultimately battle each other, which can end in tragedy as was exhibited by the skirmish in the Dominican Republic. All of these conditions escalate in overcrowded prisons because people cannot stay to themselves and have to adapt to gang life.

Prisoners are detained to pay their debt to society for their wrongdoings, but being put in an overcrowded and potentially deadly environment is not fair or equal punishment. If the prison in the Dominican Republic held the amount of inmates it was built to accommodate, hundreds of lives would have been saved. Instead, this crowded prison was a death trap for at least 136 prisoners who were caught in a fiery blaze with no chance to survive, rehabilitate, and rejoin society as productive individuals.