In a wing reserved for Rosario's most violent gang members, Monos, Insight Crime looks at a “pigeon” moving between the cells. Composed of torn sheets, plastic bottles and everything that is at hand, the pigeons are improvised messaging devices used to communicate during locking of Piñero prison, located just outside Rosario, one of the hot spots of Argentina's crime.
Everyone in this wing was locked up in her cells after a woman linked to the gang was surprised in the process of passing a smartwatch to a prisoner during a visit.
And while technology continues to move forward, organized crime continues to adapt and the government continues to catch up. With the advent of ever more cumulative aircraft, the authorities have installed scanners for visitors to prison similar to those of airports. People have tried to launch smart watches through the roof bars, so the government has put a narrower metallic mesh to prevent them. The signal blockers to make this type of technology useless have been set up, but some messages are still going.
But morale in the monos wing seems high. The pigeons are thrown from the balcony while the prisoners look at the FIFA club World Cup. Boca juniors are up to an Nile in the city of Auckland. One of the detainees shouts “selfie, selfie” and poses for a photo with his cell companion.
The atmosphere is less jovial in the wing for the Alvarado clan – The fiercest rival of the monos, also on locking, but because of a fight between prisoners. The garbage is scattered on the ground, and a thin layer of white dust covers everything after the guards used a fire extinguisher to extinguish a fire that the prisoners have started.
See also: The head of the Argentine gang monos accumulates 160 years in sentences
A goalkeeper nervously fingers his hunting rifle and ensures that the crime of insight throats before entering the wing. Starting, a blow starts throughout the module.
The Government of Santa Fe, the province in which Rosario lives, launched a new push against the crime organized in December 2023, investing massively in the police and prisons. So far, it seems to work. Exterior homicides fell to a ten year old hollow, and prisons like these are more closely controlled. But while more and more people are gathered and thrown into prison in the context of punitive attempts to maintain low crime, the population behind the continuous bars of ball. Can authorities follow?
Rotating doors
Many Piñero detainees come from the outskirts of Rosario, where organized crime has its registered office. While the government continues to build more penitentiary cells, ecosystems that tend to channel people in the ranks of the little one and organized crimes that land them in prison are ignored.
See also: Why mega-prison having tens of thousands will not make a difference
For those who are currently locked in Piñero, there is a little promise of rehabilitation. Some 90% of prisoners have never finished secondary school, according to the last report. About 95% are currently not in any type of education program. And more than two thirds of the Piñero detainees did not have a full -time job when they were arrested, according to the last census of the prison, produced in 2024.
“Resources for (work and education) will be always rarer than resources for security – at least at a time when the emphasis is placed on the decline in levels of violence in the street,” said Santa Fe criminal affairs secretary, Lucía Masneri.
She estimates that around 90% of people who leave Piñero will be back in prison.
In other efforts to take control, the local government is trying to silence communication and inhibit cooperation between members of criminal groups in prison and beyond.
The leaders were placed in separate cells and are not allowed to contact physical during visits, separated from relatives and lawyers by plexiglass and concrete blocks. Rosario high -level leaders were all transferred to federal penitentiaries.
The number of prisoners in Santa Fe has long increased before the security reforms of the current administration, but the increase in arrests now accelerates overcrowding.
It is common for three or four people to be held in one of the cells of two people from Piñero.
The solution? A new installation, nicknamed “Hell“By the government, is already in preparation not far from Piñero. Four companies were initiated simultaneously on the new installation, in the hope of finishing it in record time.
With arrests and such a high recurrence, the new prison is likely to fill up quickly. When asked if there was a solution to overcrowding, Masneri was frank: “Yes. Build more prisons. “
Featured image: the broken glass of a window in Piñero B module in Rosario. Credit: Christopher Newton / Insight Crime
