El Salvador has opened one of the world’s largest prisons, which will house 40,000 inmates as arrests mount in a government crackdown on violent crime.
The “Terrorism Confinement Center” in Tecoluca was completed in seven months to relieve some of the country’s overcrowded prisons.
President Nayib Bukele described the maximum security prison as “a fundamental piece to completely win the war against the gangs.”
The prison has seven security ‘rings’ within the perimeter wall that include patrol areas, electric fences and 19 watchtowers.
Since El Salvador declared a state of emergency for gang violence in March 2022, the police and military arrested more than 62,000 suspected gang members and their associates.
The president posted a video on Twitter of corrections officers giving him a guided tour of the new facility.
He was shown its seven “rings” of security, from the heavily guarded, reinforced solid steel inmate cells to the prison’s perimeter wall, including patrol areas, electric fences and 19 watchtowers, making it ” impossible to escape.”
Bukele said that inmates in other prisons have previously had access to “prostitutes, computers, TV screens, PlayStation and mobile phones,” which he described as “upside down.”
The rioters will be transferred to isolation cells where “they will not see the light of day,” he was told.
“El Salvador has managed to go from being the most insecure country in the world to the safest country in the Americas,” the president tweeted.
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President Nayib Bukele conducted a guided tour of the prison with a capacity for 40,000
With nearly 2% of its adult population behind bars, The Savior it has the highest incarceration rate in the world.
Low the repressionSome constitutional rights have been suspended, such as allowing authorities to make arrests without a warrant and giving the government access to citizen communication.
Police search for gang members in Soyapango, El Salvador
The increase in the prison population as a result of the anti-gang crackdown, which is supported by the vast majority of the population, has strained the country’s already overwhelmed prison system.
La Esperanza, the country’s largest prison, houses 33,000 people despite having a capacity of 10,000.
Around 600 troops and 250 police officers will guard the new prison where the inmates will be “subjected to a severe regime,” El Salvador’s prison director Osiris Luna told state television.
