Venezuela's Prisons: Contract John Carpenter

Inmates in Venezuela's El Rodeo prison surrendered last week after nearly a month of holing up in the prison living off "little more than rainwater and sweets", according to the Economist. In addition to a run down of the escalating violence overseen by Hugo Chavez, the British newsmagazine described a system of self-government devised by gang leaders.

The Economist reported under the 2002 agreement the gang bosses, or prans, determined where prison dwellers slept, what they ate and their life expectancies. Inmates keen on seeing the end of their sentences--5,000 prisoners have been reported killed since 1999--paid a tax to the head men, amounting to an estimated $2.5 million a year.

With unrestricted cell phone usage--used to broker deals outside the prison--, drug trafficking and gun violence rampant within the penal system, policing the quagmire may cost more than containing it.

Instead of quashing the prans self-government structure, the Venezuelan government should support it a.l.a. John Carpenter's Escape From New York. The action movie took place in a futuristic United States where the federal government had turned the five boroughs into a maximum security prison.

The South American country contains large swaths of uninhabited land. Forcing prisoners to build and manage their own cities will reduce government costs and produce a more controlled environment for the country's violent criminals.

Insisting the convicts build land-lines to communicate within the prison-city, and installing cell phone signal blocking equipment, severs the connection between upper management and street level employees. Training inmates in construction, road management and urban planning translates to skilled workers upon release. Developing agricultural practices and infrastructure within the prisons would lessen the drain on tax payers for inmates' meals.

Without drug deals to oversee and prisoners to watch, the security guards could monitor the farms--placed along the perimeter of the city--to ensure the inmates grow nutritious, not recreational, produce and act as a sort of border patrol.

Allowing drug dealing, prostitution and runaway gambling withing the prans city-state may keep some prisoners returning to the system and entice a sort of penal tourism, but that can be solved by sending those guilty of lesser infractions to traditional prisons.

Instead of separating gang bangers from crime, keep them in their natural habitat. Just don't let the president or anyone with access to privileged information fly too close to the urban prison. Escape From LA proved Snake Plissken fairs better on the East Coast.