Governor Maximiliano Pullaro toured this week the works of the new prison wards being built in the Rosario Penitentiary Complex, as well as the new penitentiary unit in an area close to the current Penitentiary Unit N°11 of Piñero.
In Piñero, the Government of the Province of Santa Fe began construction of El Infierno (The Hell), the prison for high profile inmates, which will house the most dangerous drug traffickers and hitmen in the province, with an investment of more than $140,000 million. Meanwhile, in Rosario, Sub-unit 4 is being built in the Rosario Penitentiary Complex, with four pavilions that will house 320 inmates, with a budget of more than $7.7 billion.
During the tour, the governor remarked that "we are carrying out public works of great magnitude, as never before in the province of Santa Fe. In the case of the prison work that we are touring, it is part of a plan in which we are going to build in four years the same number of cells as were built in 100 years in the province. We are going to double the number of prison cells".
"El Infierno, as it is called in the Penitentiary Service, will be for prisoners who are not only serving a sentence, but who have ordered violent acts from prison. It will have a better security system, with greater control over each of them, and the possibility of committing crimes will be reduced to a minimum, basically having contact with the outside world," Pullaro explained, adding: "It will be unique in Argentina and one of the safest in Latin America, with a capacity for more than 1,100 inmates. And he emphasised that the programme that the Province of Santa Fe has in place in its entirety, contemplates penal units to house almost 7,000 prisoners.
Finally, regarding Sub-unit 4 of the Rosario Penitentiary Complex, he said: "We are close to finishing the cells for 320 places, to practically put an end to prisoners in police stations in the city, something that is tedious for the neighbours, but also allows the police, instead of taking care of prisoners, to go out to prevent, to take care of the neighbour, and that has a positive impact on public safety," he added.
Putting an end to prisoners in police stations
On the occasion, the Minister of Justice and Security, Pablo Cococcioni, explained that "in two weeks, we will be inaugurating a module in the Rosario Penitentiary Complex and emptying all the police stations in the Rosario Department. In the town of Piñero, we are seeing the progress of El Infierno, the first high profile prison that the province will have. In total, we will have almost 7,000 places in the entire Santa Fe system so that there will be no more prisoners in police stations and high-profile prisoners will no longer be able to commit crimes from inside the prison".
For her part, the Secretary of Criminal Affairs of the Ministry of Justice and Security, Lucía Masneri, remarked that "these works will allow us to fully recover the street operations of the Rosario police, taking all the prisoners to the place where they belong, which is the Penitentiary Service".
At the end, the secretary of the Infrastructure Executing Unit, Diego Leone, pointed out that "we are developing a Prison Infrastructure Plan for the Government of the Province of Santa Fe that the governor, from day one, entrusted to the Executing Unit". He then confirmed that Sub-unit 4 will be finished in the next few weeks and will be delivered with all the corresponding equipment and ready to start operating.
