There'd be nothing impressive about the scene if it weren't for the fact that the block factory is situated in a prison and that Bustamante, in combination with being a businessman, is on the last two years of a 21-year sentence for assault. The workforce, too, are inmates and the product will be sold beyond the walls, with part of the net profit going to a sort of bank run by the prisoners themselves.

 

Bustamante's factory is one among dozens of inmate businesses in the old Punta de Rieles prison, which has been turned into an uncommon experiment. Inmates form businesses, work for one another and offer products both to the world within the walls and to that without.

 

There are bakeries and barbershops, a candy store and carpenter shop down streets where inmates mix with prison officials and police. One inmate carries a begonia he bought from a prisoner-owned nursery to get for his mother when she visits. Not far away, a convict-baker carries a birthday cake to the prison entrance to hand off to a customer.

 

Of the 510 prisoners, who include thieves, assailants, kidnappers and killers, 382 work and 246 are getting education — and many do both. Only some dozen have shunned those opportunities, and if two years pass, they will be displaced to a traditional prison. To get chosen for Punta de Rieles, prisoners have to have at least a six-month period of good behavior elsewhere.

 

The prison director is almost as different as the institution itself. Luis Parodi was a member of the Tupamaro guerrilla movement that was defeated in 1972. He later spent around a decade in exile, both in Europe and Latin America. Asked if there are other prisons in the world of this type, he said, 'I don't think so, I'm afraid to say. This is the synthesis of 30 years of work, reading, experiences and failures.'

 

The Punta de Rieles project began in late 2012, with Parodi as deputy director, and he took over as chief of the prison in 2015. The bet is that prisoners who work, study, learn a craft or start a business will likely have a better life and be less likely to return to crime. 'It's been demonstrated everywhere that confinement doesn't change people. Here the idea is to play at reality,' Parodi said. 'If something fails, it fails. Just like in the real world.'

 

Money to get started on businesses comes from inmates' families or from a quasi-bank greatly administered by inmates themselves. 'It's a fund so that entrepreneurs can get started, that you have the hope of change. Many of us have taken advantage of the opportunity and we're getting ahead,' Bustamante remarked.

 

Ten percent of the profits get back on that fund, another 10 percent goes to the government for use of the facilities and 10% goes to an association of victims of crime. The rest goes into accounts for the inmates, though they can't totally access it until they are released.

 

Bustamante said he was skeptical when he was relocated from another prison and was dumped off at Punta de Rieles by a police van almost five years ago. 'I saw stores, businesses, and I thought, 'Where am I?' Later it clicked in my head,' he said. 'In common prisons, you continue in a world of violence, thinking about who is going to attack you and how to survive. You can't do anything. A 2-by-2 cell, and locked up all day,' he said.

 

He showed off the shed where he started out making blocks from an old mold and a secondhand shovel. Now he was getting ready to enlarge his business by hiring a 10th employee thanks to a loan from outside the walls.

 

Even more rewarding is a bakery started off by two prisoners who have kept it going irrespective of being released and now hire 50 to 70 people. They come back to the prison almost daily and sometimes even sleep there, voluntarily this time.

 

The experiment has its problems. One inmate complained that the prison mixes people sentenced for reasonably minor offenses with those who've committed more major crimes. Parodi said that's part of the idea — trying to save those considered unrecoverable.

 

Prison police also commonly have an arduous time managing prisoners as businessmen. Bustamante said guards sometimes impede the arrival of trucks carrying his supplies. 'In the end, you call Parodi. He's the only one who can solve the problems,' Bustamante said.

 

The prisoners enjoy major freedom within their confinement: They can largely say what they want, form groups, unions or cooperatives, have a telephone, use the internet and communicate with the outside world, even own a dog. Parodi recognized some have taken advantage of that freedom to commit crimes, but he insisted they are few.

 

Near Bustamante's block factory is the fiberglass workshop of Wilson Resio, a 45-year-old convicted of involvement in a murder who has been locked up for 11 years. He makes kayaks and other sport equipment. 'All the boats of the Uruguayan Rowing Federation are made here,' he said. 'This is also a school workshop because we train others in the craft.'

 

Uruguayan prison change activist Denisse Legrand sees Punta de Rieles as 'an oasis' in a deeply troubled correctional system. The small country has 11,000 inmates in crowded prisons, and it locks up more individuals per capita than nations such as Mexico, Colombia or Argentina, based upon a research prepared for congress.

 

Legrand, who directs a non-governmental organization that focuses on prisons, said that in combination with its educational and labor value, Punta de Rieles 'is one of the prisons with the highest levels of security because the humane treatment and coexistence replace the violence characteristic of confinement.' She said the weakness of the project is usually that so much depends on Parodi.

 

Juan Miguel Petit, who supervises prison affairs for Uruguay's congress, said he knows dozens of prisons in the Americas and Europe and has never seen anything like Punta de Rieles. 'The more we can manage to reproduce the life of a neighborhood, the more we can foresee that the people who leave are going to behave in harmony with others.'

 

Mauro Rodríguez is a good example of how the system is likely to work. He's in prison — but merely for a visit this time. He came to repair a machine to make cement blocks that he'd created while spending a few years as an inmate. He now has a blacksmith's shop on the outskirts of Montevideo, where he works with his brother.

 

He'd been part of a band of drug dealers when he was arrested, and said four of his former friends are now dead. 'If it wasn't for Punta de Rieles,' he said, 'I would be, too.'

 

This article is originally posted on tronserve.com