San Pedro prison
Significantly different from most correctional facilities, inmates at San Pedro have jobs inside the community, buy or rent their accommodation, and often live with their families.
The prison is home to nearly 3,000 inmates (not including the women and children that live inside the walls with their convicted husbands).
[1][2] The book Marching Powder, written by Rusty Young and published in 2003, describes the experiences of the British inmate Thomas McFadden who became known for offering prison tours to tourists.
Another book El Choco, by Markus Lutteman, was published in 2007 and tells the story about Jonas Andersson, a Swedish inmate who offered prison tours to tourists from Posta, the richest area of San Pedro.
The names of the housing section are Posta, Pinos, Alamos, San Martin, Prefectura, Palmar, Guanay and Cancha.
The lower end communities are said to house the drug addicted inmates and are identified as the most dangerous at nighttime where most stabbings occur.
[3][4] The wealthiest area, "La Posta", provides inmates with private bathrooms, a kitchen, and cable television; such cells are sold for around 1,500-1,800 Bolivianos.
[1][2] One of the larger open areas doubles as a small football pitch, with teams representing each sector regularly competing.
As sociologist Christopher Birkbeck puts it, “Those who staff the penal bureaucracy are merely custodians for the judicial system and they generally know it.”[5] They don't carefully control what the inmates do within the prison because they have no legal authority to punish or reward their behavior.
Such lack of authority, coupled with the economic hardships of living in a poverty-stricken country, makes the guards especially vulnerable to bribery by inmates.
Bribery is so interwoven into the country's corrections that inmates must sometimes bribe officials to even receive a trial, in addition to paying any lawyer fees necessary to plead their case.
The reception committee, made up of volunteer inmates, protects newcomers by greeting them when they enter the prison and advises them of the rules they should respect.
This fee covers community maintenance, administration, cleaning, renovating and occasional social events such as Prisoner's Day.
They will often provide an important link with the outside and can bring items into the prison that are sold from the market stalls or directly from cells.
Embol, the Bolivian brewery which owns the exclusive rights to produce Coca-Cola in Bolivia, has a deal whereby their products are advertised and sold inside the prison and rival brands are banned and in return they provide cash, tables, chairs, and umbrellas for the grounds.
Many inside the prison work as tour guides or sell handmade crafts to the visitors, and tourism provides many of them with a source of income.
[2] Although tourism in the prison of San Pedro is illegal, prior to 2009, many entrants could gain access to a tour by bribing the guards at the perimeter.
[3][9][10] After turning a blind eye to the illegal tourism for many years, the Bolivian government finally put an end to the practice in 2009, after a video taken by a tourist inside the prison was uploaded on YouTube, and local TV networks reported on the issue.
