Live the same

I once helped deliver all this “humanitarian aid” to the prison. I didn’t go inside — honestly, I didn’t really want to, haha ​​— but I was told how this prison was set up, and probably how all prisons in the Dominican Republic are set up. And here’s why it’s not a very nice place:

As far as I understood, this prison was guarded only along the perimeter. It looked like a small medieval fortress, but not that strong, and visually quite ugly. It was a fence with towers at the corners. There were guards around and inside this fence, and there was some kind of building, but inside everything was run by the prisoners themselves — even the store.

The bosses were respected criminals serving long sentences (over 20 years, which, as I heard, is the maximum sentence in the Dominican Republic). These “bosses” somehow managed the space and maintained order — but not for free. To live in a decent cell, you had to pay them.

The bad cells were designed for 8 (sometimes more) people in a space designed for 4. They slept in hammocks, one above the other, like in pirate movies. These cells were on the upper levels and were always very hot. If you didn't want to live like that, you needed money or something to trade.

As far as I know, our friend lived somewhere in the middle - not in the worst conditions. That's why his friends collected this "humanitarian aid" for him.

Otherwise, the prison was reportedly peaceful, and violence was rare - at least that's what I was told by those who interacted with this guy regularly.

Prison is bad — I think everyone already understands that. But here's one not-so-obvious yet significant downside of a Dominican prison that this guy had to experience firsthand. And it’s not even the prison itself — it’s the bureaucracy... more precisely, Dominican bureaucracy multiplied by Dominican carelessness and “tranquila + mañana.”

I mentioned earlier that the guy served almost 3 years instead of just 2. To be exact, it was 2 years and 7 months. Why? Because someone, somewhere, somehow messed up the paperwork — and then lost the documents! Can you imagine? You're not being released from prison just because some idiot didn’t do their job properly and then lost it.

I get it, mistakes happen. But wouldn’t it have been fair to release him under supervision, make him report to the police until the documents were found? But no — they just kept him in prison!

Luckily, this guy had friends who hired a lawyer and spent half a year calling—who knows where—but you get the idea, they did everything they could.

But what if he didn’t have anyone? He could’ve been released even later... In the end, he was finally freed and immediately deported. And that’s how the story ended.