Effects Of The Administration Of The Penitentiary System In Colombia. Between Overcrowding And Institutional Weakness

Abstract

Postmodern and globalized criminality puts the penal and penitentiary system before a far-reaching challenge that forces the institution to rethink the force of penalties on such a high scale that it exceeds the scope of the offender and reestablishes the security space that was lost with the reorganization of crime into transnational structures.

Colombia is facing an accelerated increase in criminal forms and their organization in pyramidal structures, while the penal and penitentiary system as a mechanism of institutional force to confront crime is insufficient and the effect of its administration progressively weakens the capacity of the State to respond to a more robust criminality. On the one hand, the criminal prosecution system is saturated with a backlog of unsolved cases that exceed 90% of the criminal news processed by the Prosecutor's Office, while, on the other hand, the national prison system is saturated and many penitentiaries and prisons have to house inmates in the bathrooms and corridors of the different pavilions.  not to mention the crisis faced by temporary detention centers where overcrowding reaches 700%. This is because overcrowding levels in prisons and penitentiaries exceed 28.6% (INPEC, 2025).