'We have always made suggestions to the government to properly relocate the prison population according to (each inmate's) type of crime and level of dangerousness,' he added.

Separately, Venezuelan media reported that the prisoners at the Tocoron jail in the central state of Aragua Tuesday began a hunger strike to protest the death of one of the prisoners there.

Venezuela's prison system, considered to be one of the most violent in the region, consists of 29 prisons and 16 penitentiaries which house a total of 20,000 inmates, according to government figures.

The Venezuelan Prison Observatory tallied 320 murders of prisoners between January and October 2008, compared to 498 in all of 2007.