Venezuelan inmates have opened their own nightclub and hosted
friends and family at an inaugural bash complete with strippers and
a light and sound show, a newspaper reported Saturday.
The late-night party highlighted the plight of the crime-ridden
country's overcrowded penal system, where criminals often use
bribery and intimidation to exercise virtual control over the
facilities built to incarcerate them.
The so-called "Yacht Club" at a prison on Margarita Island in the
Caribbean boasts "professional sound, spectacular lights, air
conditioning, strippers, bad girls and all the toys," the inmates
wrote in an invitation to their opening night gig, according to the
El Universel newspaper.
The party was attended by friends and relatives of the detainees,
who publicized it through messages on social media, the newspaper
reported.
It quoted sources in the Ministry of Corrections -- which has not
yet commented publicly on the incident -- as saying the party
lasted from Thursday night until the early morning hours on
Friday.
Venezuela has one of the highest crime rates in the world, and its
prisons are plagued by overcrowding and violence that has claimed
the lives of nearly 600 inmates in 2012 alone.
A non-governmental agency, the Venezuelan Prison Observatory,
estimates the country's jails house 48,000 prisoners, nearly three
times the official capacity of around 16,500.
