CHAPTER 10: TURNING PRISONS INTO TRUE EDUCATION AND HUMAN IMPROVEMENT CENTERS

As part of the United States’ aggressive policy on Cuba, the U.S. government has deemed as legitimate every weapon, from the most cruel, aggressive and genocidal to the propagation of the most abject lies about and misrepresentations of the Cuban reality.

One of targets of this policy of deceit has been the Cuban correctional system, for which the U.S. government pursues to instill the belief that the correctional centers in our country do not meet the minimum standards agreed internationally, as well as to defame and distort Cuba’s neat policy and performance in correctional matters.

In the media and political manipulation campaigns and policy against Cuba, false stories and messages are spread and re-created, fabricating and describing a nonexistent prison régime, allegedly repressive and inhuman, in which the most fundamental human rights would be violated.

False allegations about abuses and cruelties never committed by the Cuban prison authorities are repeated over and over again for the purpose of strengthening the perception that there is a systematic and mass practice of abuses and tortures on prisoners. In a fraudulent manner, images of terrible conditions in the premises and of a diet with subhuman characteristics and sham shortages are invented, and restrictions and even denials of medical care to prisoners requiring or requesting it are alleged.

The aim of this chapter is to contribute to the knowledge of the Cuban Revolution’s humanistic policy in this area and the transformation undergone by the correctional system in our country, as compared to the one that existed in pre-revolutionary Cuba.

The pre-revolutionary correctional system –in which hundreds of brave Cuban youths that fought against the Washington-sustained tyranny on the Island were tortured and extrajudicially executed— was characterized by promiscuity and overcrowding, judicial and administrative corruption, merciless crime, physical abuse and torture, disappearances, racial and social discrimination and the brutal treatment of convicts, to the detriment of their integrity and human dignity. Such a system –if it can be so described— also featured a total lack of social rehabilitation programs. Jails were actual warehouses of people repressed by the dictatorship and marginalized by a deeply unjust society. In a nutshell, it was a merciless and brutal prison regime, which spoiled men and created criminals.

The Revolution had to destroy the prison regime that it inherited from the Batista tyranny and has been building, over the years, a revolutionary and deeply human correctional system, based on the respect and rigorous control of laws and regulations, as well as the implementation of policies inspired by the principle of re-educating and rehabilitating each confined person with a view to their social reintegration.

Old prisons, inherited from capitalism, lacking the minimum conditions for human life were disabled. New (closed- and open-regime) prisons were built, based on humanistic concepts and abiding by the codes and principles developed by global penology, grounded on the best practices for the treatment of prisoners.

The Revolutionary government repealed obsolete laws and regulations in the correctional area, many of which had remained since colonial times. The personnel that served in the correctional centers was also replaced, on the basis of the high standards of humanism and respect to dignity that started to be and still is required of the citizens that perform such an important social role.

Among the pillars of the transformation undertaken toward the construction of a new correctional system in the country after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution, the following are noteworthy:

These actions of the Revolution enable the rehabilitation of prisoners and their reincorporation to the society, promoting respect for their condition of legitimate offspring of the Cuban nation, regardless of the committed crime.

Legal and juridical foundation underpinning the transformations in Cuba’s current correctional system

The foundation of Cuba’s current correctional system has been clearly enshrined in the correctional regulations implemented as well as in the country’s main laws.

The Ministry of the Interior, Popular Courts, the Attorney General’s Office and the Prevention and Social Care Commissions participate in the protection and assurance of lawfulness. The Public Service Bodies, Departments or Offices within the above-mentioned organizations channel, process and respond to any reports submitted by anybody on alleged violations of constitutionality and prisoners’ rights in the Cuban correctional system.

Through the supervision and control of the Attorney General's Office, an authority with the capacity to report the outcome of its inquiries and investigations directly to the Council of State, additional guarantees are sought for the protection of the prisoners and their relatives’ rights and to preserve compliance with legality.

The Cuban correctional system complies with the 95 rules adopted in the United Nations system as “International Minimum Standards for the Treatment of Prisoners.”

Contrary to what happens in many other places of the world and, in particular, in the part of the Cuban territory illegally occupied by the U.S. Naval Base in Guantánamo, the Cuban correctional system ensures respect for the physical and psychic integrity as well as the human dignity of persons deprived of their liberty. These people are accorded fair treatment during as they serve out their sanctions and have the assurances of support to their process of reincorporation into society, once the sanctions imposed upon them have been completed or when receiving the benefit of liberty earlier.

The Cuban correctional system seeks to ensure protection and safety for the prison population while it carries out a number of actions that help improve the human condition and social behavior. In the approach designed and developed by the Revolution, the correctional system intends to rescue the human being in addition to providing it utility and virtue amid the prison conditions.

Correctional treatment is applied with a progressive approach, allowing for the prison population to enjoy the benefit of a sanction reduction of up to 2 months a year for good conduct, the transition from more severe to less severe régimes, and the modification from deprivation of liberty sanctions to non-deprivation ones.

On average, 40% of all convicts are in open establishments, with no fences or other means of security, not wearing prison uniforms and working under conditions similar to those of the civilian population. They get special leaves or permits for good conduct.

Eighty-two percent of the prisoners that leave prison behind do so without serving their sanction completely. Early release may be granted halfway across the imprisonment term for one-time prisoners, which may be reduced up to one third in the case of youths and increased up to two thirds for reoffenders and habitual offenders.

Over 90% of the prisoners are serving a final award. Of the total Cuban prison population, only a small percent ranging between 8 and 10% involves detainees whose judicial process has not been carried out or completed. This percentage contrasts with the average figures reported in Latin America, which range from 50 to 95%, with some exceptions. It has been informed, also, that in some of those countries the delay time for trials may be 2 to 10 years.

Penalties under 5 years of deprivation of liberty may be replaced by non-deprivation of liberty terms after one third of the sentence term has been served.

Discipline standards and their application rules expressly prohibit the application of corporal punishment; cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or sentences, or the reduction of the food diet. No chains, shackles, or straitjackets, whatsoever, are applied to prisoners.

Violence and abuse, both physical and spiritual, are completely forbidden and constitute a crime under the Law, which imposes the obligation of sanctioning anybody that commits such acts in the exercise of their functions in correctional centers. Only the strictly indispensable force to overpower those that have violently altered it is authorized. Notably, the use of firearms by the forces acting inside prisons is forbidden, being limited to the external cords of enclosed prisons, with severe restrictions on their use.

Prisoners receive from the management of the correctional center in which they are serving a sentence, appropriate food, with a nutritional value not less than 2,400 kilocalories a day and they consume safe drinking water. They can, also, receive from their relatives up to 40 pounds of food and other essential supplies in each visit.

Diseased prisoners receive a food diet, on doctor’s orders, depending on their illness. All prisoners receive hygiene kits, linen and uniform free of charge.

The women prisoners are placed in correctional centers exclusively for women, which are attended directly by duly trained female personnel.

Young prisoners also receive a differentiated treatment. They are put in correctional establishments only for young prisoners or in areas separated from adult prisons and are attended by selected personnel.

The prisoners maintain regular communication with their relatives by means of visits, the use of marital rooms (a benefit extended to prisoners of both sexes), phone calls and mail. Convicts can also be benefited with special leaves or visits to their homes without custody, as an incentive for their good conduct. They are entitled to be taken to hospitals, funeral parlors or graveyards, in cases of close relatives' severe illness or death.

The visits are carried out without wire netting, bars, glass walls or any other obstacles for the prisoner's direct contact with their relatives.

The correctional system, on request from families, social workers or prisoners, promotes the granting of financial aid to the prisoners’ families as needed, which is provided through the country’s social security and assistance system.

As part of the comprehensive treatment provided to the prison population and with a view to minimizing the negative effects of social isolation, guarded demonstrative visits to cultural, sport, historical and economic centers are carried out as a good conduct incentive. The prisoners’ enjoyment of mass media, particularly television, which may be watched until broadcasts sign off, is favored. Prisoners also have the opportunity to share with outstanding personalities of the arts, culture and sports that visit the correctional centers.

In detailing the prisoners’ broad facilities to communicate with the external world, the importance of marital rooms and visits must be highlighted. This benefit has been ensured to any prison population that requests it, from the early years of the Cuban Revolution, thus complying with one of the recommendations included in the Minimum Rules adopted by the United Nations.

The Cuban correctional system allows religious service for the prisoners that request it, and respects the freedom of not professing any religion.

The correctional personnel is appropriately selected and trained for the exercise of its work. These forces include physicians, educators, jurists, psychologists, and other professionals in sciences relating to human behavior.

The foreign prisoners are put in separate confinement centers and areas and they are ensured consular assistance, respect for their cultural traditions and are given facilities for the acquisition of food, hygiene and personal supplies. Some data evidence the heterogeneity of the penal population confined in the penal center “La Condesa” and their conditions of confinement:

The defendants held in preventive detention, are put in confinement centers or areas separated from the rest of the prison population. In coordination with Attorney-General’s Office and People’s Courts bodies, the policy to apply this measure only when indispensable is promoted and intensive work is underway to minimize the period of prosecution and sentence, with the objective of ensuring strict compliance with the due process requirements. The detainees’ legal counsel on both civil and criminal law is guaranteed, and personal contacts with their legal representatives are facilitated.

Cuba applies different severity regimes for the treatment of convicts, some of which do not involve imprisonment in enclosed centers, namely:

The whole prison population is guaranteed primary and specialized health and dentistry care free of charge.

The National Correctional System has hospitals, assistance centers and medical units, and all provinces have convict wards in the assistance network hospitals, providing prisoners with full access to our country’s achievements in the area of health.

Prisoners are entitled to be admitted in any service of the country’s hospital network. They are also provided with specialized care, by means of periodic visits to the correctional centers performed by teams made up of different experts.

Tertiary care in the country’s various institutes is another right the prison population is entitled to.

There is a physician for every 200 prisoners, a dentist for every 900 prisoners for preventative, clinical and specialized care, and a nurse for every 100.

In Cuban correctional centers, pregnant prisoners receive a reinforced food diet during their pregnancy and until the child is one year old. During this period the prisoner remains next to her infant ensuring its nursing. After this period, she can give the baby to her relatives or put it in a Day-care Center, free of charge. Pregnant prisoners, like all Cuban pregnant women, receive a highly specialized health care and permanent control, including consultation in the country’s gyneco-obstetric hospitals, as well as in the facilities existing in the correctional facilities.

School instruction, technical qualification in trades, civic and patriotic education, as well as artistic, sport and recreational activities, among other things, are part of the same socially useful work. This comprehensive and human approach to rehabilitation work is essentially geared to change behavioral habits, promote observance of the laws and prepare convicts for their reintegration to society.

Work is one of the supreme links of the chain of activities aimed at the prisoners’ rehabilitation, for their full re-insertion into society. It does not have an afflictive or punitive nature for the prisoners. Working is voluntary, and they are paid a salary in conformity with the legislation and regulations existing in the country for any other citizen.

The difficulties caused by the genocidal blockade that the country has been subjected to have impeded the creation of enough capacities to guarantee a job for the whole prison population. Nevertheless, a great effort is being made to expand employment possibilities for the prisoners that voluntarily opt for that right.

The creation, organization, and improvement of the Cuban correctional system has been and will always be inspired by the concept championed by the Commander-in-Chief that the Socialist State cannot ignore the fate of any man.

As part of the comprehensive process to deepen the changes and efforts designed to promote a more fair, educated, equal and sympathetic society, in which the current social programs have played a leading role, an actual revolution is taking place, as a priority, in the correctional system, based on the premise of turning prisons into schools.

Since the year 2000, the Cuban government has been impelling and implementing, through a number of actions and programs, the process geared to this improvement, with a special emphasis on the educational treatment of prisoners, for the purpose of achieving even more effective results in their rehabilitation and future reintegration to society.

This process, born in the heat of the battle the Cuban people are faced with in the field of ideas, has been named “Task 500.”

Task 500 is part of the Revolution’s programs and started right from the moment in which the social workers movement was born in the year 2000. It was impelled not only to virtually turn prisons into schools, but to promote the recovery and guidance of youths and minors prone to commit crimes in our society.

A major part of the social programs being executed by the Revolution in the last few years has been aimed at prioritizing care for the youths that are not studying or working.

The Cuban government, decided to multiply the actions, measures and programs designed to prevent crime by supporting and guiding those who are in a social status that makes them more inclined to offend. The work of the social workers is part of the expression of this process.

Those youths that at some point in time found the doors of universities and even of their own professional education closed, and that perhaps looked forward to certain jobs that they did not have access to because of their inadequate qualification, have seen the Integrated Training Course as a new opportunity for their comprehensive development as human beings.

In this social prevention work –to which social workers have made such a major contribution–, teachers, family doctors, the members of the Federation of Cuban Women and the other Cuban social and community institutions have also played an important role.

In terms of concrete actions and programs conducted with the prison population in pursuance of “Task 500,” it should be mentioned that training courses for prisoners exist and function in 100% of the country’s correctional establishments, and over 90% of those serving terms in prisons are currently enrolled voluntarily.

The so-called Audiovisual Program has been set up, begun experimentally in October of 2001 and organized today in every correctional center nationwide. Through this program, courses are taught with the use of such techniques as video, closed-circuit television, tabloids and supplementary didactic materials. They have the counseling of Ministry of Education teachers placed in the correctional centers and the active participation of monitors selected among the prisoners, who are duly prepared.

The Adult Education subsystem, in coordination with the Ministry of Education and other bodies of the State’s Central Administration, is still developing free school instruction up to 12th grade and technical qualification in such occupations as masonry, carpentry, plumbing, electricity, craft, welding and hairstyling. Computer courses have been added to the above mentioned.

With the active participation of the National Institute of Sports, Recreation and Physical Culture (INDER), physical education teacher-training courses are taught in correctional centers in each province of the country. Once the students graduate, they render remunerated services in correctional centers. They can also sign up for Bachelor’s Degree studies in Physical Culture, in accordance with their attitude, discipline and academic results.

Sport and cultural activities are other areas that continue to develop, taking into account their positive impact on discipline, moods and on the formation of such positive values as collectivism, good-fellowship and their impact on the prison population's health. This is accompanied by the organization, in coordination with INDER, of provincial, regional and national sporting events. In coordination with the Ministry of Culture, numerous cultural events, festivals and literary contests have been carried out. Notably, the development of libraries in prisons has offered prisoners the possibility to expand their knowledge, learn and be able to relax in a healthy way. These libraries have been enriched by hundreds of titles from the best in domestic and world literature. Prisoners have also been trained as library science technicians and now work in the prisons’ library facilities.

The promotion of libraries has been an important factor that supports the Audiovisual Program, school instruction and technical training, and it has been gradually empowering the reading habit in the prison population, expanding its cultural wealth.

Prisoners and their families have participated in all sports and cultural activities, both as actors and as guests, with a very positive balance.

The basic programs for the conversion of prisons into schools have had a very strong impact on the prison population. They have led to better relations and communication between prisoners and officials by facilitating a closer approach from the prisoners to the people that guard and rehabilitate them, and vice versa. Likewise, they have created a learning and human betterment environment in prisons. They have contributed, also, to the development of habits and values within the prison population and to the enhancement of their self-esteem. They have even led to increasing orderliness and improving discipline in prisons. There has been a remarkable reduction of indiscipline and disorder.

The differentiated treatment of young prisoners continues to be a clear precedence in accomplishing “Task 500.” Major programs benefit youths confined in correctional centers.

A novel initiative in the area of reeducation named “Along New Roads” started to be applied in September of 2002. It involves 84 penal centers and included the installation of 1,076 televisions and 195 video players which, by closed circuit, allow to enjoy the various educational, cultural and recreational materials in areas fitted out for it.

The above and other actions underway are intended to bring hope to those who erred one day. Culture, participation and education become an antidote against the hate that is usually bottled up over years of rigors and confinement.

Another very important program under the umbrella of “Task 500” is the food program. It is designed to improve the food supply for the prisoners and also for the combatants that carry out the work of securing and guarding correctional facilities. This plan is enabling the prisons’ capacity to develop the production of food. It should be taken into account that Cuban penitentiaries are hit by same hardships and shortages in the area of food supply as the rest of the Cuban society, as a result of the prolonged and strengthened blockade imposed on Cuba by the United States.

Overcoming the blockade’s effects on prisons has been an additional reason for the development of all the above programs, particularly the latter. The Cuban government maintains and doubles its effort to ensure the logistic support of prisons and to improve the living and working conditions of prisoners and of the people that attend them.

Based on the revolutionary programs that are being developed in the country as part of the Battle of Ideas, work is underway on the so-called “Task 500-2,” whose main objective is the reincorporation of most of the prison population to the society with a better cultural and educational level and, by and large, with an occupation learned.

The beneficial programs carried out within the Cuban correctional system contrast very favorably with the operation of the more and more numerous, big, repressive and dehumanizing U.S. prisons.

U.S. jails are overpopulated; prisoners are mistreated and violence is and every-day phenomenon. What distinguishes the U.S. prison system is punishment.

U.S. jails are home to 25 percent of all the prisoners of the world, in spite of the fact that the total population of the United States is only 5 percent of the total population of the planet. The United States today has seven times as many convicts behind bars as all the nations of Western Europe together.

The prison system is so brutal that, contrary to the standards of international law, under current U.S. law it is not forbidden to put chains and shackles onto the prisoners.

The United States is one of the six countries in the world that have executed minors after 1990.

In the world’s richest country, with a government that seeks to assume the role of global champion of freedom and democracy, according to well founded accusations, there are more than 3,500 children confined in high-security prisons together with adult prisoners. Twenty of the 50 States of the Union allow the confinement of children in prisons together with adults.

In many U.S. penitentiaries, prisoners are deprived of the elementary right to have marital visits. In a good part of U.S. federal prisons, marital blocks are completely forbidden, as a gross breach of this natural right of all human beings, whether in prison or not. In such jails, rapes and other sexual abuses are frequent, taking place before the authorities’ deliberate indifference. Renowned U.S. sociologists estimate that 1 out of every 5 U.S. prisoners has been raped and that, as a result of this reality, HIV-AIDS had spread to worrying levels. According to the same sources, 29% of the prisoners that die in U.S. jails do so as a consequence of AIDS, not only due to the development of the disease, but also because of the lack of treatment.
According to experts in the situation of the U.S. correctional system, the jails in that country are becoming real concentration camps, where the unemployed, drug addicts, the homeless, people suffering from mental disorders and other excluded minorities end up in confinement.

More than 60% of U.S. prisoners belong to racial and ethnic minorities. People of African descent, 12 % of the total population, account for half of the prison population and receive disproportionate sentences.

The treatment received by those imprisoned in the United States is aimed at degrading the human being, rather than getting those people back on their feet.

Out of an estimated two million prisoners confined in U.S. jails, more than 120,000 are part of the Industrial Prison Complex. It is about private jails, a “good business” where what they are least interested in is the prisoners’ rehabilitation and respect for their dignity.

This type of private jails, whose executives strive to make the exploitation of captive labor more and more profitable every day, has proliferated in the United States. There have been such absurdities as that of selling shares of these private jails on the stock market.

Some analysts believe that the second-most important industrial complex in the United States is the one engaged in the construction of prisons. More workers work in building prisons in the U.S. than in giant transnational corporations like General Motors. Powerful financial emporia like Merril Lynch or Goldsman Sachs get between 2 billion and 3 billion dollars a year in bonds for the construction of prisons.

What is most regrettable about all this is that the prison companies’ shares are rising in Wall Street, whereas the fundamental rights of prisoners –food supplies, sanitary services and habitability— which are cut back to reduce costs, are plummeting.

Add to this embarrassing picture ample information corroborating the fact that CIA has illegally arrested and tortured in foreign countries presumed terrorists, some of which would have been confined in secret centers in Eastern European countries.

The United States continues to abuse detainees overseas and in its secret prisons in Afghanistan and other countries. In correctional centers led by countries allied to Washington, the CIA keeps dozens of defendants outside of any legal process, even without the detainees’ relatives knowing their whereabouts.

Well known are the details of the systematic humiliation and physical abuse of prisoners applied by the military police and intelligence officers in prisons commanded by the occupation forces in Iraq.

Some of the National Guard personnel and “private contractors” that are being inquired for scandalous cases of torture to Iraqi prisoners were trained in U.S. jails.

The Cuban penitentiaries’ reality has nothing to do with the inferno that prevails in the jails of the superpower that promotes an unjust exercise of political manipulation for the purpose of imposing a condemnation on Cuba in Geneva.

In the Cuban prisons there are no concessions to impunity and promising avenues open up for the human betterment. Jails are gradually becoming schools; sports and culture open possibilities to the personal realization of prisoners; quality health care is guaranteed in every establishment and, amid the difficulties imposed by the economic blockade, there is a quest to increasingly improve living conditions in the correctional establishments.

The Cuban government and society are driven by Martí’s precept that “teaching virtues is nobler than the useless scrutiny of the deep social wounds”.

Foreign citizens who are sanctioned in our country by the competent popular tribunals, on account of criminal acts prescribed in the Cuban Penal Code, serve their sanction in the Penitentiary Centre for Foreigners “La Condesa”.