Prisons

There are few set criteria governing how transgender inmates should be handled by Costa Rican prisons. Many men who identify as women are sent to men's prisons.

Located in San Rafael de Alajuela, La Reforma prison is the biggest in Costa Rica. The Tico Times recently visited the prison and took portraits of some of the inmates.

Inside cellblock A-2, simple wooden frame bunks line as much floor space as possible. Inmates, many shirtless in the heat, lounge on their bunks if they’re lucky enough to have a bunk. The cellblock is crowded – designed to hold 40 with 108 living inside – but people squeeze by each other like strangers on a crowded sidewalk. Anything that doesn’t fit on the floor hangs from the ceiling and the walls. “Just wait till nighttime,” says a toothless inmate doing a 30-year sentence who called himself Francisco, “that’s when it gets bad."

A Colombian prisoner given permission to undergo surgery to fix a breast implant took advantage of her trip to the operating room to get liposuction.

Costa Rica’s Supreme Court ordered prison officials to come up with a plan to relieve overcrowding in the San Sebastián prison within one month. The court said prisoners "are sleeping on pieces of mattresses or on the ground, putting up with the cold” and rats climbing out of the drains at night.

In 2005, the country’s prisons were 4 percent overcrowded. Today there are an additional 4,793 people behind bars, bringing the overcrowding rate to 54 percent. There are a total of 13,923 people in prison in Costa Rica.

If people get squeamish at the thought of sleeping in hotel beds, image this: Prisoners at La Reforma penitentiary sued for nicer mattresses for their conjugal visits.

Justices ordered Costa Rica's Prison System and the Judicial Investigation Police to open an investigation on the case.

MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay – Latin America's prisons are overcrowded, violent and sometimes lack even the most basic services, despite the fact that several of the region's current leaders themselves spent time behind bars.