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When the prison doors open, many prisoners face a devastating reality.
“Can you please take me back to prison?” one man pleaded with the execution judge after walking miles to sign for his early release.
He had spent 22 years behind bars. His life, his family, and his opportunities had disappeared. All he had left were the tattoos that, as he explained, condemned him even further beyond bars.
Desperate, he seeks to return to that place that, paradoxically, offered him more security than freedom.
Judges see it every day: men and women who, after years of confinement, emerge into a world that no longer accepts them.
The prison system in Honduras does not prepare them for life outside the prison walls. Without tools, without a reintegration plan, freedom becomes a sentence.
Another case
Another case is that of a young woman who, after obtaining her early release, found herself alone, without family or money.
The drama does not end there. A young man, imprisoned for 16 years for a crime he committed, was released but his mental problems were never addressed.
Without family, without a place to go, because even his mother did not accept him, he was sent to a psychiatric center.
“He did not understand what was happening around him,” explained human rights defenders. His life, inside and outside prison, was marked by neglect and abandonment.
Without rehabilitation
Every day, Honduran prisons receive more men and women, but they do little or nothing to rehabilitate them.
According to human rights defenders , only 5% of prisoners have some type of work activity that generates income in prison.
Most spend their days idle, disconnected from the reality that awaits them outside. “What we have in prisons are human warehouses,” said one defender.
Returning to the streets is not a triumph, it is a torture. Fathers who no longer recognize their children, wives who are no longer there, job opportunities that vanish due to social distrust.
“I don’t know how to live in freedom, society doesn’t accept me,” exclaimed the man who, after two decades, found no safer place than prison.
The prison system, with laws that only exist on paper, continues to fail those who need it most.
There is no individualized plan for reintegration, no financial or psychological support. Instead of preparing prisoners for life outside prison, they are condemned to an endless cycle of rejection and despair.
The world outside bars is unforgiving, and many prefer to return to the only reality they know: prison.
