Law enforcement agency
Law enforcement
in
Cuba
is the responsibility of the
National Revolutionary Police Force
(
Spanish
:
Policia Nacional Revolucionaria
,
PNR
) under the administration of the
Cuban
Ministry of the Interior
. Article 65 of the
Cuban Constitution
states that "defense of the
socialist
motherland
is every Cuban's greatest honor and highest duty".
[1]
Conscription into either the
armed forces
or the national
police force
is compulsory for those over the age of 16. Nevertheless, conscripts have no choice to which service they are assigned.
[2]
Crime rates in Cuba remain significantly lower than many other major nations worldwide, with Cuban police acting strongly against any crime, particularly in
Havana
.
Fidel Castro
commented in 1998 that "the war against crime is also a war against the
imperialist
enemy".
[3]
Information on murder and rape
crime statistics
for the country have never been released by the government, but theft was estimated to be 6,531 cases in 1988, or 62 per 100,000 population.
[4]
Prisons
[
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]
The
Cuban penal system
contained 19,000 inmates in 1990, approximately 190 per 100,000.
[4]
A major problem found within all of the different sources found about the Cuban jails is the sanitary part of the jails. It is difficult for the jails to keep things sanitary because running water in Cuba is limited. This makes the number of toilets and showers further restricted. The prisoners are given a towel, two bars of soap, and a tube of toothpaste that they must make last until the month is over in which they will then get a new set of everything to use.
[5]
List of known prisons in Cuba:
Administration of the PNR
[
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]
As with many countries, the PNR is under the control of the
Ministry of the Interior
, which in turn reports to the
Council of State
. The Ministry of the Interior is divided into three divisions: Security, Technical Operations, and Internal Order and Crime Prevention. The latter is further divided into corrections, fire protection, and policing.
[4]
The PNR reports to this subdirectorate, and is responsible for
uniform policing
,
criminal investigation
,
crime prevention
,
juvenile delinquency
, and
traffic control
. The PNR conducts these activities across the 14
provinces of Cuba
, each of which has its own
police chief
who reports to a central PNR command in Havana.
[4]
While the Internal Order and Crime Prevention controls the PNR, which is responsible for day-to-day policing, the Security division of the Ministry of the Interior is responsible for crimes such as
espionage
,
sabotage
and offenses against state security.
[4]
All these divisions of the Ministry of the Interior and the PNR have been closely associated with the
Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces
since 1959, thus the police uses the model those used by the
Police of Russia
with military ranks.
In addition, the PNR is supported by the
Committees for the Defense of the Revolution
(
CDR
), a
police intelligence
auxiliary police
organization using
la guardia
, a nightly
neighborhood watch
. The CDR also handle issues relating to
water
and
energy conservation
,
pet inoculation
, and
public health
.
[4]
Equipment
[
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]
The PNR have a wide range of
police cars
, the most common being the Soviet-made
Lada 2107
and the Chinese-made
Geely CK
, the latter of which was introduced in 2009 to replace the older Soviet cars.
Hyundai
and new
Lada Vestas
were put into service in recent years.
[6]
There are also a number of French-made Peugeot and Citroen cruisers, introduced in the late 1990s and early 2000s, but these are still vastly outnumbered by the Lada 2107s, which are ubiquitous throughout Cuba.
[7]
They have utilised radio communications as well as a computer dispatching system since the 1990s, made possible by the increased investment in the PNR to cope with rising crime during the
economic crisis
after the
fall of the Soviet Union
.
[4]
[7]
PNR officers are armed with a
semi-automatic handgun
(usually a
Makarov PM
or
CZ-75
) and a
baton
, and they "may use necessary force to apprehend suspects and to defend their person or that of any other citizen".
[4]
They are not issued any other type of weapon.
[4]
U.S. sanctions
[
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]
On 30 July 2021, the PNR (as an entity), its Director, Oscar Callejas Valcarce, and its Deputy Director, Eddy Sierra Arias, were added by the
U.S. Department of the Treasury
to its
Specially Designated Nationals (SDN)
list for the "violent repression of protestors in Cuba" during the
July protests
.
[8]
[9]
Notes
[
edit
]
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