SANTIAGO, CHILE- The President of Chile, Gabriel Boric, announced this Thursday the project to build a new prison maximum security facility intended to house the leaders of organized gangs arrested by the authorities, all at a time when the South American country was experiencing a wave of homicides.
“In Chile we will not allow what is happening in other countries where organized crime took over the prisons without state control. In Chile that will not happen,” said the Chilean president,
He also stressed that this prison will allow “effective control of criminals,” reported the news portal T13.
The president explained that this new “special high and maximum security facility” would cost around 90 billion Chilean pesos and would be located in the Metropolitan region, the scene of the latest wave of violence that claimed the lives of almost 20 people in just a few days.
Boric said that, in order to speed up the construction process of the prison, he would send a bill to Parliament to exempt these works from various “procedures and permits that usually delay the execution of these projects,” thus giving priority to the matter.
On the other hand, the Chilean head of state announced the creation of “a special Gendarmerie force that is capable of facing these threats with the full support of the Government and the best of international experience.” These would be agents who would work in prisons.
“The battle against organized crime and delinquency is a task that falls to all of us, but primarily to those of us who lead the destiny of our country by your sovereign mandate,” stressed Boric, who appealed to the responsibility of Parliament to work on this issue.
Hours earlier, Boric himself acknowledged that he was not ruling out the use of any kind of “constitutional tool” to deal with the escalation of violence that has been taking place for days in the Metropolitan region. There are deputies who are even calling for a state of siege to be imposed in the area.
Source: With information from Europa Press
