Prison Fire in Honduras

I'm sure many of you have already heard about the horrifying prison fire in Honduras. Reports are now claiming that the fire started after an inmate set fire to his mattress. Hundreds are already confirmed dead, and many are still missing (presumed dead). You can read the LA Times coverage here, and the New York Times here. AP reports state that firefighters claim they could not let prisoners out of their cells because they could not locate the keys. Was this pure incompetence? I'm not sure if the ensuing investigation promised by the Honduran president will clear things up.

A friend passed along an amateur video of the blaze posted on youtube that I could not help but watch (I am a victim, like most people, of morbid curiosity). I don't really recommend you watch the video (it was not too graphic but was still disturbing). What was most interesting to me was the video linked to it. Well, not the video, really, but the comments to the video. In the amateur video of the fire, the man behind the camera keeps repeating "dios santo" and "pobrecitos" ("my god"--"poor things"). He laments what he sees as the late response of the firefighters and the obvious gunshots echoing in the neighborhood. Bystanders speculate that perhaps a bomb had exploded. But the comments to the AP report of the incident, which the first video I mention is a response to, tell another story of anger and resentment towards prisoners that I have heard in Guatemala and El Salvador as well. The comments section on youtube and other anonymous forums often attracts so-called trolls and other rancorous individuals who what to stir up trouble or vent their venom. But this does not mean that there are not people out there who honestly feel the same way as those who posted on this particular comments section. Posts demonized the victims of the blaze. One (in Spanish) dismissed the incident as justice, saying that the prisoners were going to burn in hell anyway. People wrote about how rape victims and family members of murder victims would be celebrating, and there is serious confusion as to whether this particular prison were high security or not (as if it would be less of a tragedy if the victims were murderers and more of a tragedy if they were only thieves). I wonder, does it matter what crimes these prisoners were convicted of? Is the thought of burning to death locked in a prison cell less horrifying when the victims are convicted rapists and murderers?

Are Disappearances Murder?

A fellow political scientist's blog post got me thinking about a subject I hadn't considered before, at least not in this context. The post discusses the alarming rate of disappearances in El Salvador and whether or not these disappearances should be considered gang violence, as the article by Hannah Stone that he cites suggests. The author of the blog rightly points out that it is difficult to determine what should be considered gang violence, not just as this applies to disappearances but to murders and other types of violence as well. It brings up the important question of not only how homicide statistics are gathered, but what definition of homicide is used (and what deaths are left off the list). Homicides are often used as indicators of the crime rate because, presumably, homicides do not often go unreported. Which, I think, is kind of a moot point when looking at disappearance rates or thinking of hidden graves. In some countries, criminal suspects killed by the police are not included in homicide reports even though many human rights defenders would argue that those killed are victims of murder. Some statistics include deaths due to car crashes as homicide, while others don't. It makes homicide statistics that much more murky. It also makes me curious as to what the disappearance rate is in Guatemala or Honduras, or, for that matter, Brazil or Argentina.