RNDDH investigation into the prison escape of 22 October 2016

One hundred and seventy-four detainees escaped from the Arcahaie civil prison on 22 October 2016 and at least two people died, a prison officer of the Direction de l'Administration Pénitentiaire and a prisoner. The network, which has monitored Haiti's prisons for years, investigated from 24 October to 4 November, going to Arcahaie to interview police, judicial authorities, local figures and residents, and to the Port-au-Prince civil prison and the Inspection Générale of the police to interview the inspectorate, the prison officers posted to Arcahaie at the time of the escape and detainees who were held there. The report reconstructs the events and sets the police, prison service, detainee and resident accounts side by side, gives the identification sheets of two named escapees, the toll of the escape, the profile of the prisoners who got out, and what followed. What the network finds is a failure of administration.

Prison records are not computerised or interconnected, biometric data are not collected, and police, prison and judicial authorities do not share their data with one another, so the escapees may never be re-arrested and it is Haitian society that will bear the cost of dangerous individuals being at large. The network asks for the complete file on the escape to be transferred to the courts so that the officers implicated can be prosecuted, for the escaped detainees to be pursued, arrested and tried, for the assassination of the named prison officer to be dealt with and its authors judged, for the state to computerise prison records, collect biometric data and interconnect the components of the penal chain, for the Conseil Supérieur de la Police Nationale to give formal instructions ending the systematic rights violations by BOID officers, and for the inspectorate to lift the conservatory measures on prison officers who were not involved.