At least 16 prisoners killed in Venezuelan jail violence

PanARMENIAN.Net - At least 16 prisoners have been killed in violence inside a jail in the western Venezuelan city of Maracaibo, BBC News reported.

Fifteen inmates died in fights between rival gangs, Prisons Minister Iris Varela said. The other victim was killed in a separate incident.

Some of the inmates were beheaded and others dismembered, pressure group Venezuelan Prison Observatory told AFP.

Prisons in the country are heavily overcrowded.

Varela said all the victims identified so far were "people with some kind of negative leadership in some part of the prison". She called for an end to the violence, which began on Monday night. "We don't want even one more death. Enough of violence," she said.

The Sabaneta jail houses nearly 4,000 people, five times more than its capacity. It is Venezuela's second-largest jail.

The Prison Observatory says more than 500 people die in jail violence every year in the country.

In 2010, Caracas became the deadliest capital in the world with the highest murder rate in the world, averaging one murder every hour.

According to the Venezuelan government, the murder rate in Caracas was 91.71 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2011.

More than 20,000 people were killed in 2012 in Venezuela, a murder rate higher than in some war zones.

Crime in Venezuela can be attributed to several factors: impunity from prosecution, a dysfunctional judicial system, poverty, retribution, politics, gangs and drugs. Caracas suffers from areas of extreme poverty, which provide gangs and criminal elements with an environment conducive to crime and is subsequently difficult to police. The majority of violent crimes in Venezuela take place in areas of extreme poverty; however, due to their proximity to affluent areas/neighborhoods and the extremely low cost of gasoline, it is relatively easy for gangs and criminal elements to infiltrate these areas as well. Police are unable to protect less affluent neighborhoods, and as a result, crime is quite common, and criminals operate with impunity, said Venezuela 2012 Crime and Safety Report.