Kiko Gómez is serving a 55-year sentence in Bogotá’s La Picota maximum-security prison for ordering the 2012 murder of a former mayor in Colombia’s department of La Guajira. Between 2011 and 2013, Gómez was the governor of La Guajira which, because it’s on the Caribbean and borders Venezuela, is hugely strategic for smugglers.

Kiko Gómez was a close ally of Marquitos Figueroa, a major drug trafficker currently imprisoned in Colombia. He and Figueroa repeatedly threatened the lives of journalists and NGO investigators, including some whom I consider friends.

So it’s really frustrating that a video circulating on Twitter shows Kiko Gómez ringing in the New Year with a whisky and beer party in his prison cell, while video-chatting with a noted vallenato musician on his mobile phone.

Kiko Gomez el ex gobernador de la Guajira condenado por asesinato y quien según @JulianFMartinez, "sacaba cocaína con ayuda del DAS, pertenece a organización Ñeñe Hernández y compró votos con clan Gnecco"

Estuvo de fiesta en la Picota tomando whisky con saludo de Poncho Zuleta. pic.twitter.com/fsLZuacwqv

— Martha Peralta Epieyú (@marthaperaltae) January 3, 2022

Colombia’s prisons have been notoriously gentle on wealthy or powerful inmates. Unlike poorer, more vulnerable prisoners, their incarceration conditions are far from austere. This is sometimes a matter of policy, but it’s often the result of endemic corruption in the prison system.

The classic example is El Catedral, the luxurious one-man prison compound overlooking Medellín where Pablo Escobar was briefly held in 1991-92. Even captured guerrilla leaders tend to have large spaces with access to communications and entertainment. I once interviewed some who had phones (in part because they were serving as intermediaries), video games, hundreds of books, pet cats, a pool table, even a maid to clean up.

The U.S. government has spent millions assisting Colombia’s prison system. The U.S. Embassy website describes the State Department International Narcotics Control and Law Enforcement “corrections reform program” as “aiding prisons to operate in a safe, secure, humane, and transparent fashion. The primary focus of INL’s assistance includes basic training, international accreditation, and implementation of systems and processes to improve operations.”

Kiko Gómez’s little New Year’s fest shows that this U.S. program has failed even to make a dent in some very key areas, like among high-profile prisoners in one of Bogotá’s most important prisons.