WOMEN IN THE CONTEXT OF CONFINEMENT: IMPACT OF PRISONREFORM IN FEMALE CORRECTIONAL CENTERS OF THE
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
Sandra Fernández *I.

CONCEPTUAL AND REGULATORY FRAMEWORKA. From Vengeful Justice to Restorative Justice
Elio Gómez Grillo, in his presentation entitled “HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF JAIL”,
indicated that: “The Prison institution appears in history of humanity as a formula of exploitationof captive labor and nothing else (House of work).” Nowadays we are not looking to make theinmate an exploited worker but a repenting sinner (House of correction)”. On the other hand
Tony Marshall talks about the transition, focusing on “Restorative justice is a process throughwhich parties or individuals who have been involved and / or have an interest in a particularcrime, solve collectively how to deal with the immediate consequences of this and its
implications of the future.”
B. Impact of the International Community
A tally of existing national and international instruments is presented from the Standard
Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, adopted by the First United Nations Congress on
the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders in 1955 and approved by the United
Nations Economic and Social Council in 1957, passing the Beijing Rules in 1985 by the Body ofPrinciples for the protection of all persons under any form of detention or imprisonment of 1988,
the Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1989, the Basic Principles for the Treatment ofPrisoners of 1990, the Tokyo Rules of 1990, the Riad guidelines in early 1990, Vienna
Declaration on Crime and Justice in 2000, up to the Bangkok Rules “RULES OF THE
UNITED NATIONS FOR THE TREATMENT OF WOMEN PRISONERS AND NONCUSTODIAL MEASURES FOR WOMEN OFFENDERS” and its adoption in 2010. The
Bangkok Rules represent an important tool for equitable treatment of women in conflict with thelaw. For the applicability of the 70 rules, special programs have been designed obtaining
excellent results.
II. DOMINICAN REPUBLIC PRISON MANAGEMENT MODEL
The Management Model's main purpose focuses on reintegration as the main purpose ofprison treatment. As a multidisciplinary team, the treatment area is comprised of professionals in
the fields of education, psychology, medicine, psychiatry, sport, culture, social production andwork together to achieve behavior modification and reduce recidivism through labor integrationand social reintegration in a condition to meet the standards and laws.
*Academic Director, Regional Penitentiary Academy, Office of the Attorney General, Dominican Republic.

- 77 -All prison staff are educated by the National Penitentiary School, before entering the systemthey have to go through rigorous recruitment and selection procedures. After passing theselection process they are included in training programs, established accordingly to the area ofinterest and targeted to the area of performance, automatically entering programs of continuing
education and refreshing school education.
In our country, there are currently 18 CCRs of which 11 are run by women. Themanagement team of the Model Prison Management is 60% women with a performance ofregional dimensions.
III. PRISON TREATMENT PROGRAMS
A. Education: Main Aspect of Treatment
The Model Prison Management facilitates the promotion and development of educational
activities in Corrections and Rehabilitation Centers (RACs) at various levels and modalities. In
this sense an education policy is supported by the Ministry of Education and supplemented byconducting technical and training courses provided by local institutions of vocational andtechnical training. Necessary institutional relations develop, both at the national and local levels(a private, government and civil society level), to achieve the support for technical assistance,logistical and financial support.
In order for detainees to access similar educational offer as to what’s available in a freeenvironment, in order to contribute effectively to their correction, rehabilitation and reintegration
into society, the Model Prison Management provides, in RACs, an educational diversity that
includes: formal education, technical, languages, computers, artistic, cultural, physical,
recreation and sports and education in values.
Literacy training as a compulsory activity, formal education that includes basic, middle andhigh school levels, college education offered on site and virtual classroom modality, technicaleducation currently offering 60 courses at this level, six different languages, computing isoffered in a virtual room present at each center, special education for inmates with special
conditions for learning, education in values that are keystones of the area of education:
1.

Mental Health offers psychological and psychiatric consultations, individual therapies,group therapy, programs for reducing aggression, behavior modification, suicideprevention, hunger strike, psychiatric care program, anger management, stressmanagement, grief therapy, traumatic stress therapies, drug addiction therapy,
psychometric testing, qualification of conduct program and inside publication.

2.

Welfare with the aim of bringing and strengthen the family unit with the following
programs: family therapy, special rooms suitable for children's visits, adult visiting
room, virtual visit room, reconciliation with the environment, community outreach,labor activities, activities in coordination with the Prison Ministry, assignment room toaccompany their children to do their homework, home to family visits. It also has
adequate space for conjugal or intimate visits and its procedure regulations, taking- 78 -consideration of the right of the inmate to have intimate contact with another person of
their choice, within relationships available for life in confinement within the frameworkof dignity and respect.
3.

Productivity to provide them tools with which they can earn a decent living when
steping out onto the free medium. Currently our centers have: chicken farms,
greenhouses, crop in the open, pig farms, crafting of clothing items where all
professional, service and security staff uniforms are made, electronics repair, crafting
workshops where beds that are installed in facilities under construction are made,cabinetmaking workshop where school seats are built and repaired for the communityand penitentiary centers, etc.

4.

Physical Education, Sports and Recreation as relief therapy promoting intra- andextramural sports such as: volleyball tournaments, domino tournaments, basketball
tournaments, physical education, recreation games.

5.

Art and Culture as a mechanism of “0” leisure developing activities such as: creatingtheater groups, dance groups, choir, soloist, music classes, paintwork, artistic andcultural festival held every year. 2015 will be the seventh season.

6.

Physical Health providing care to them through the programs: Healthy Life Style,
Personal Hygiene Workshop, General Medicine and Specialty, Dentistry, Chronic
Patients Program, Disease Control Program, Primary Care Unit, Program for foodhandling.

7.

Legal Aid accompanying them in their legal process with a single file management
subsystem, comprehensive information system, tracking cases, reports of Conduct forsentence execution Judges, control transfers, control inputs and outputs, as well asrelapse control.

B. Special Programs
1. Conduct Qualification Program. Good Practices for Rehabilitation
The Multidisciplinary team of professionals in the Corrections and Rehabilitations Centers
perform three evaluations per year providing individualized and comparative data on the results
provided by the women prisoners in each of the areas of treatment, also the monitoring of theirbehavior. The program objective is to induce permanent improvement of individual andcollective behavior of persons deprived of liberty in the MGP. The results of these evaluations
are publicly presented within accommodations and pavilions where the interns spend the night.
2.

Free Environment and Family. Preparing for Reintegration
Once put in place and matured, the stages of observation and treatment the system
introduces the concept “Free Medium” which enters into the stage of testing as part of goodpractice for reintegration. The aim of the Free Medium is to ensure execution of sentence in theframework of social and educational actions in accordance with the rights of persons deprived ofliberty, oriented to an effective rehabilitation and social reinsertion. The Free Medium Unit is- 79 -

responsible for regulating, monitoring and evaluating the implementation of plans in cases of:
Pre-release period, Probation and Management Alternate measurements in prison.
3.

Artistic and Cultural Festival
This activity was born in May 2009, allowing the development of artistic and culturalexpressions of detainees that are inmates in the Corrections and Rehabilitation Centers of theDominican Republic in the scheme of the New Model of Jail Management and part of incentives
by the exhibition of good behavior, and also promotes healthy competition between them. Desdesu nacimiento, ha sido celebrada cada año, exhibiendo grandes avances y llegando a niveles
profesionales de presentaciones que han sido presentadas en los escenarios más solemnes denuestro país.
4.

Productive and Craft Fair
This activity takes place annually at the RACs in different settings nationwide. All RACs
have in their execution Matrix to comply with annual participation fairs held locally with therecurrent date fixed for the anniversary of the center and national fairs that are held in the capitalcity, as the book fair, the agro-industrial fair, etc. In these shows, schools have the opportunity to
showcase the products harvested and / or manufactured with the particularity that are the same
inmates, which in turn serves as an opportunity for social reintegration.
5.

Food Handling
They learn to establish the health requirements to be met by performers in food handling
operations, while obtaining, receipt of raw materials, processing, packaging, storage,transportation and even marketing. All food handlers receive basic training in food hygiene todevelop these functions and other training courses according to the schedule established by thehealth authorities. In addition a special medical examination before admission to any area offood processing must be performed, and every six months, among other requirements.
6.

Healthy Lifestyles
It refers to a set of program activities for inmates in order to create healthy habits and toteach them to live with health conditions or situations that afflict. This program is developedwith activities focused for inmates that have controlled or catastrophic illness and to protect
healthy inmates from contagion, eliminating vectors and other actions.
7.

Virtual Tours Program. An Equity Rehabilitation
Rehabilitation and Correction Centers currently hold approximately 5% of foreign inmates,
also adding Dominican inmates with family members living in other countries or other areas
outside of the site location. Prisoners in these conditions tend to suffer the ravages of lonelinessand hopelessness on a larger scale, so, motivated to to offer all the same opportunities, we create
for them spaces where they can share with their immediate surroundings so that it can become anelement to strengthen programs to receive treatment and rehabilitation, family support throughthe tour. This program is being implemented.
8.

Suggestions Mailbox. An Observatory for Continuous Improvement
As a way to detect and resolve situations in a transparent way to the collective but importantfor individuals, suggestions mailboxes have been installed, for both inmates and MGP staff,- 80 -

allowing to express opportunities for improvement at any level. The objective is to analyze,
empower and resolve, according to the possibilities, complaints or suggestions to the satisfactionof needs and expectations as a means of consolidating quality.
9.

Infrastructure. A Distinguishing Element
Understanding that this issue is of central importance when trying to implement a model
where equity plays its role, the Bureau of Prison Architecture where differentiating elements
between women and men are discussed was implemented before construction of a CCR. This has
allowed different factors involved in this issue such as universities, civil society and prison staff.
Achieving the building of structures which takes into account the chronological and genderdifference of inmates, creating wards for men, women and children with their particularities inline with the minimum requirements accepted by international organizations. The
implementation of a new prison model based on the philosophy of respect for the humancondition of persons deprived of liberty, rests on three fundamental pillars; Construction of new
physical plant or adequacy of the same, human talent and application of the new system of prison
management and security are tools to support the development of treatment for rehabilitation andsuccessful reintegration.

- 81 -