Due to aging facilities and high inmate populations at the original La Joya and La Joyita prisons, Panamanian Government officials opened a tender for the construction of a new and larger penitentiary in Pacora, Panama. The bid was awarded to the consortium UM Panamá, S.A., which in turn subcontracted the services of AMV International Development, S.A. With the idea of safety and security of the inmates, employees, and visitors as the main objective, AMV International Development, S.A. considered Pelco by Schneider Electric video surveillance systems, for the quality and reliability needed for this mission-critical installation.
The new prison “La Gran Joya”,was opened on April 1, 2014, and it is estimated that normal operations will begin at the end of 2014 at which time the process of moving more than 5,500 inmates to the facility will begin as well. According to Angel Maria Contreras Rey, Director of Special Projects for AMV, “Additionally, the system needs to be flexible and scalable for on-going changes and expansion, and the system must be easy for the end-user to use. For all of this, we chose to work with Pelco video products.”
