An attempted break-out, a riot, uprising...or a massacre?

     A prisoner with no power, no influence and no social status is a sort of non-person in the eyes of most of the mass media and a considerable part of public opinion.

    More often than not in a case of violence within a prison, the finger is pointed at the detainee and his or her violent action is considered a threat to society.

    Yet very little attention is placed on the conditions in the prisons, overcrowding, physical abuse and mistreatment of detainee's relatives, the turtle pace of judicial processes.

     Last Sunday 33 prisoners were killed at the "Cárcel de Varones" in Santiago del Estero province, in what the press almost universally described as an attempted break-out or riot. But 33 victims is a very high number of fatalities and would suggest the use of another term: massacre.

    What happened at the provincial jail certainly demands an immediate investigation by the mass media, but also by judicial and legislative authorities not only in that impoverished province, but around the entire country.

    In an interview with Página 12, Gladys Sosa, an aunt of one of the prisoners killed, declared: "There was no uprising, nothing prepared, no attempted prison break. They (the detainees) had to react because the infamous gang (the prison guards) were beating them. And that is not to mention the treatment that we relatives received when they checked us before visiting hours. They made us lie down on a bed and open our legs to see if we carried drugs inside. There were drugs in the prison, but drugs which they (the guards) were selling to the prisoners. Where are our human rights, tell me, where?"

     Most of the detainees involved were being held without sentence and awaiting trial. Should not those who express justified concern about the unending wave of criminal violence in the country not take time to consider the situations in the country's jails? Should not judicial and legislative authorities pay more attention to the deplorable conditions in overcrowded jails populated with prisoners awaiting sentence, the humiliating treatment given relatives of prisoners...