The Defense and Security Council of Honduras announced Monday that it would reinforce security in the country's prisons.

Troops would be deployed in prisons for a 90-day period, council chief Arturo Corrales told a press conference.

The decision came after a clash over the weekend between inmates at the Tamara National Penitentiary, north of the capital of Tegucigalpa, in which at least three inmates died and 12 people were injured.

The security measures also included recording every phone call made from the prisons, and surrounding the facilities with police officers and prison staff for protection and for monitoring of visits, Corrales said.

The measures would be initially applied at the Tamara National Penitentiary, and later extended to the San Pedro Sula Penitentiary Center, he said.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the human rights arm of the Organization of American States, last Friday presented a report on the state of Honduras' penal system, calling it "inhuman, extremely poor and corrupt."

It also pointed out that inmates controlled the prisons because the state had abandoned its role in rehabilitating people convicted of crimes.

The fact that prisons are run by inmates had resulted in widespread abuses, and allowed criminals to plan kidnappings and other crimes from within prisons, the report said.

Honduras'24 prisons house over 12,000 inmates against their total designed capacity of about 8,000, according to the government.