Prison Traffic: Migrants and New Cases
Virgilio Murillo
C.E.O. at the Kolbe Foundation Virgilio Murillo told the media today that there have been a lot of new inmates coming to the prison. But annually, approximately four hundred or so inmates are actually migrants. Murillo spoke about this, as well as prison traffic, in terms of persons remanded for firearm-related offenses.
Virgilio Murillo, C.E.O., Kolbe Foundation
“I can tell you that what I see coming to prison is quite a lot of new cases. So I don’t see a backlog issue that we would be in crisis mode about. I was even looking at the issue of firearms. There is this impression that people are being sent to prison for firearm offenses and they are left to stay here for ninety days before they can get bail. I don’t ascribe to that and I don’t share that same sentiment. To put it into perspective, I saw one particular year, in 2017 where a hundred and forty-seven persons were charged for firearm offenses, by year’s end, only thirteen of those persons were left in prison not having gotten bail by then. And I am almost certain that those thirteen people were people may just have been arrested for firearm related offenses in probably the same month in December, I would say because that count that I gave you would have been the thirty-first of December. So it is not like the prison is stacking up with hundreds of inmates for firearm related offenses. Let’s look at September. By September we had, I think, ninety-something arrested for firearm related offenses, but by the end of September, only twelve were still awaiting to get bail. So it’s not that bad.
Migrants – we do have a high number of migrants once we don’t have a pandemic. I want to make that clear because the only time I saw low numbers for the migrants is when we had the COVID-19 pandemic. But to the best of my recollection, when there is not a pandemic, you are looking at almost four hundred persons being sent to prison for immigration offenses, yearly.”
Reporter
“Out of the one thousand two hundred population?”
Virgilio Murillo
“Right. That’s when we don’t have a pandemic. Right now we are definitely around three hundred thus far and we still have a few more months to go.”
