But the progress of this prison project is not the only question that many people ask themselves, there is also the question of whether this equipment will be used, since one of the proposals of the current national government, in what would be the prison reform that will be presented to the Congress, is practically to get people who are deprived of their liberty out of prison for committing crimes such as simple theft. The proposal is that they leave during the day to do some work that is imposed on them and return at night to spend the night in the penitentiary center.
It must be taken into account that the prison that is being built in El Pílamo would have the capacity to house more than 1,500 inmates, which would mitigate the prison overcrowding that is registered in the La 40 prison, the UPPV and other places such as police stations. .
In the new penitentiary center that will be located in the rural sector of Pereira, the investment amounts to $195,000 million and it is a work that Risaraldenses have been waiting for several years.
Controversy
Despite the proposal to release criminals, which has generated a strong controversy between the Minister of Justice and the mayoress of Bogotá, in Risaralda they consider that it is necessary to have the new prison. This was stated in an interview with El Diario, the departmental government secretary, Israel Londoño, who also added that the construction of the 11.7-kilometre-long aqueduct network that will carry the drinking water service from the Industrial Park to the place where the new penitentiary center is being built in the vicinity of the village of La Honda.
Regarding the controversial proposal, lawyer James Ariel Velásquez stated that “fortunately it is just a proposal. From the outset I consider it a populist proposal. The way in which the State, through INPEC, a very limited entity in its human talent (custody and surveillance personnel), is going to monitor compliance with the return to the country’s prisons of all those people deprived of their liberty is worrying. that they would leave during the day and that they would return to the detention center at night. For example, in the case of Pereira, there are only dragnets who fulfill the function of watching over the detainees in their residences (those who are under house arrest), whom I know, in a year, they cannot turn around to verify that, in fact, they are in their place of detention (house or apartment) complying with that judicial measure, what will it be like when they have to monitor a larger population outside the prisons. As the blind man said, it will dawn and we will see!