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Alleging differences with Government and Justice Minister Héctor Alemán, José Calderón has resigned as director of the nation’s prison system. Vice Minister of Government and Justice Olga Gólcher will temporarily step in as his replacement, while keeping her regular post.

The change came on the heels of a couple of controversies, one of which has prompted a series of criminal investigations and the other which is the subject of a lot of criticism from several different directions but likely involves no serious violations of the law.

Prosecutors are investigating many allegations of beatings and other acts of brutality inflicted on at least 20 prisoners by members of the National Police who serve as guards at the La Joya and La Joyita penitentiaries. There are witnesses and there is medical evidence in many of these cases, and criminal charges are likely to result. Attorney General Ana Matilde Gómez is also calling for the closure of the “punishment cells” in which multiple inmates are crammed into small enclosures without much light or ventilation for committing real or alleged violations of prison rules.

On the heals of the brutality charges, an uproar was raised in the press about a long-standing set of practices by which prisoners are fed.

In general, prison food runs a gamut from merely starchy and lacking in vitamins and protein to inedible swill. It is expected that the families or friends of inmates will provide for the needs of their incarcerated loved ones, and the norm at this country’s places of incarceration is long lines several times a day in which people on the outside bring food.

This, however, works especially badly for foreign prisoners who have no relatives here, those locked up at a long distance from their families, those whose social mileaux are so impoverished that nobody can afford to bring food and those whose obnoxious demeanor has not only landed them behind bars, but also alienated their families. For some of these individuals, there has long been a system informally in place wherein private contractors bring in meals that can be bought by prisoners --- everything from rice and plantains for those who can afford only a few cents to lobster or filete for the upscale drug lord down on his luck.

The complaints have been about alleged favoritism or improprieties in the process of contracting people to bring in meals, allegations that some of the contractors prepare food in unsanitary conditions, outrage at the thought that someone who can afford it is allowed to eat well while in prison, and philosophical objections to a penal system in which wealth makes such a major difference in the ordeal an inmate must endure. But Calderón inherited the feeding system that aroused criticism as well as most of the contractors, and complained in a La Prensa interview that the budget he was given did not permit him to make the improvements that he admits ought to be made.

The Ministry of Government and Justice has announced that it will undertake a bidding process for new contractors to provide prison meals and that $2.5 million will be spent to expand the capacity of La Joyita (and thus theoretically reduce prison overcrowding) and to build a health clinic at that facility.