HomeNewsBriefHomeless People Abused to Smuggle Cell Phones in Costa Rica Jails
BRIEF

Homeless People Abused to Smuggle Cell Phones in Costa Rica Jails

CONTRABAND / 8 OCT 2019 BY SUKANTI BHAVE EN

A group that used homeless people to smuggle cell phones and drugs into Costa Rican prisons is under investigation, the second time such a ring has been exposed in two months.

The group recruited homeless men and women off the streets of San José and then forced them to visit prisons with the items hidden in their rectums or vaginas, reported La Nación.

Behind the ring were a brother and sister, who were arrested along with two other people and charged with human trafficking after a September 20 police raid. The traffickers gave the homeless people baths, new clothes and food, and then sent them to the prisons.

SEE ALSO: Costa Rica News and Profile

It’s unclear how long the group was in operation, but in late August, police arrested two men and a woman who attacked a man outside the Luis Paulino Mora prison in Alajuela. The man told police that the assault occurred after he refused to smuggle a cell phone into the prison. He left the visitors line twice until finally alerting authorities to the scheme.

InSight Crime Analysis

Cell phone smuggling by gangs and their accomplices is rampant in Costa Rica's prisons, and the abuse suffered by the homeless men and women is another example of vulnerable populations being exploited in the service of organized crime. 

Criminal groups pay between $100 and $700 to obtain the smuggled phones, which can be sold to inmates for as much as $1,400, according to La Nación. The inmates then often use the cell phones to continue their extortion rackets and drug trafficking operations outside prison walls.

SEE ALSO: The Prison Dilemma: Latin America’s Incubators of Organized Crime

The black market trade “moves a lot of money,” Pablo Bertozzi, Costa Rica’s prison director, told La Nación in June of 2018. 

Some 10,014 phones were confiscated in Costa Rican prisons between 2015 and 2018, but that amount represents only a portion of the phones circulating in the jails, according to authorities.

Part of the problem is that punishments are minimal for cell phone smuggling, and most people caught only receive small fines or even just warnings. This only fuels the trade and may even give smugglers more of an incentive to take risks -- such as with abusing homeless men and women. 

What's more, criminal groups have long taken advantage of at-risk populations. Human traffickers target impoverished girls and women for sex trafficking or to act as drug mules; cartels in Mexico recruit adolescents; and Venezuelan migrants in Colombia are used to pick coca leaves and for work as prostitutes.

share icon icon icon

Was this content helpful?

We want to sustain Latin America’s largest organized crime database, but in order to do so, we need resources.

DONATE

What are your thoughts? Click here to send InSight Crime your comments.

We encourage readers to copy and distribute our work for non-commercial purposes, with attribution to InSight Crime in the byline and links to the original at both the top and bottom of the article. Check the Creative Commons website for more details of how to share our work, and please send us an email if you use an article.

Was this content helpful?

We want to sustain Latin America’s largest organized crime database, but in order to do so, we need resources.

DONATE

Related Content

COCAINE / 7 APR 2022

Following an accelerating trend in the region, self-described anti-establishment candidate, Rodrigo Chaves, won Costa Rica's runoff presidential election with nearly…

COCAINE / 18 MAY 2022

The jungle region known as La Mosquitia in northeast Honduras has been an ideal corridor for international drug trafficking. However,…

ARMS TRAFFICKING / 1 AUG 2023

An annual review of Brazil's security landscape paints a highly pessimistic outlook for the country's criminal woes.

About InSight Crime

THE ORGANIZATION

InSight Crime Cited in New Colombia Drug Policy Plan

15 SEP 2023

InSight Crime’s work on emerging coca cultivation in Honduras, Guatemala, and Venezuela was cited in the Colombian government’s…

THE ORGANIZATION

InSight Crime Discusses Honduran Women's Prison Investigation

8 SEP 2023

Investigators Victoria Dittmar and María Fernanda Ramírez discussed InSight Crime’s recent investigation of a massacre in Honduras’ only women’s prison in a Twitter Spaces event on…

THE ORGANIZATION

Human Trafficking Investigation Published in Leading Mexican Newspaper

1 SEP 2023

Leading Mexican media outlet El Universal featured our most recent investigation, “The Geography of Human Trafficking on the US-Mexico Border,” on the front page of its August 30…

THE ORGANIZATION

InSight Crime's Coverage of Ecuador Leads International Debate

25 AUG 2023

This week, Jeremy McDermott, co-director of InSight Crime, was interviewed by La Sexta, a Spanish television channel, about the situation of extreme violence and insecurity in Ecuador…

THE ORGANIZATION

Human Rights Watch Draws on InSight Crime's Haiti Coverage

18 AUG 2023

Non-governmental organization Human Rights Watch relied on InSight Crime's coverage this week, citing six articles and one of our criminal profiles in its latest report on the humanitarian…