Nelson Mandela famously stated, “no one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails. A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but its lowest ones.” In honor of Nelson Mandela International Day, the Dominican Justice Initiative again shines a light on the dire human rights abuses in the Dominican Republic’s justice system.

The Public Ministry of the Dominican Republic presides over a justice system that has been called out or condemned by a broad spectrum of internation human rights monitors, including the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), the U.S. Department of State, and the UN Human Rights Council’s Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD).

In clear violation of basic due process, some 80% of those held in Dominican prisons are under preventive detention orders, often without charges or seeing the inside of a courtroom for months or years. That places the DR among the top countries in the world for use of preventive detention, alongside the Central African Republic and Gabon. The WGAD has condemned this practice in the DR, stating “preventive detention must be the exception and not the norm.”

The IACHR has identified preventive detention as the main driver of the overcrowding and inhuman conditions in the DR’s prison system. Due to this compulsion to use preventive detention, Dominican prison facilities built for 12,000 inmates now house 26,000, according to the latest report from the Dominican National Commission on Human Rights (CNDH-DR).  

The overcrowding has sparked an increasing number of deadly tragedies over the course of this year. Riots and fires have broken out in the prisons at Higüey, La Victoria, Samaná, and Barahona leading to deaths, and wider inhumane prison conditions have been widely reported, such as denial of medical care, physical abuse, and lack of basic necessities.

Dominican civil society organizations have joined the outcry. Recently, the CNDH-DR and other human rights advocates clashed with DR government officials at a hearing before the IACHR, where scathing evidence of severe human rights violations within Dominican prisons was presented, including photos of overcrowded cell blocks and injuries inflicted on preventively detained inmates.

This led the Institutionality and Justice Foundation (Finjus) to call for a national meeting to “rescue and humanize” the justice system with public policies addressing its severe human rights abuses.

Refusal to Accept Accountability

Last month, the Public Ministry threatened to retaliate against those criticizing the justice system’s human rights abuses. The government has actively sought to downplay accusations of poor prison conditions and discredit critics of the Public Ministry’s human rights violations. Supporters of the ruling party have publicly threatened human rights advocates, even demanding their expulsion from the country.

DJI commemorates Nelson Mandela’s legacy, including the United Nation’s adoption of the Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (commonly referred to as the “Mandela Rules”).  We again call on the Dominican Republic to rectify the systemic issues in its justice system and ensure respect for every individual’s rights.

Ongoing international advocacy and a firm commitment from the U.S. government to respond appropriately to the worsening human rights abuses in the Dominican Republic are essential for protecting human dignity and achieving justice.