Written by :
Published on :
Peru prisons are among the world's worse. There is no denying that. Joran van der Sloot, who confessed to the murder of a young Peruvian student Stephany Flores while attending the Latin American Poker Tour nearly two weekends ago, is currently awaiting trial in solitary lockup. There is high fear that the Dutchman will be murdered if assimilated into the rest of the prison population at Peru's Castro Castro facility. That fear is well grounded.
In some ways van der Sloot lucked out. Many pundits expected him to be locked away in the more notorious Lurigancho Prison.
Then again, he didn't catch much of a break.
"It's not any better than Lurigancho," Michael Griffith, senior partner at the International Legal Defense Counsel, tells AOL News. "It's pretty much the same conditions. The prisoners run the prison, and the guards are an afterthought."
Van der Sloot, a primary suspect in the disappearance of Natalee Holloway in Aruba, faces up to 35 years in prison.
Most of that time, Griffith said, likely would be spent in the "tourist section," where inmates from foreign countries are held.
"They try to keep the tourist section cordoned off so other prisoners can't get in, but during the course of your stay, you'll have to leave your dormitory and interact with other inmates," Griffith said. "You're going to have to go to the administration center, you're going to have guys coming in who shine shoes, bring drugs into a section, come in to prepare food, etc. Any one of these guys, for a $100 bill, will slit your throat. The prisoners would be lining up for the opportunity."
A number of lawsuits have been brought against guards for alleged physical abuse of prisoners. Recently a new warden took over and was murdered the first day on the job.
"If they got to the warden the first day, can you imagine what could happen to van der Sloot? It's insane."
Prisons in Peru rank among the "worst of the worst," said Griffith, who has visited more than two dozen foreign prisons.
Jagajeet Chiba, Gambling911.com
