El Salvador has doubled its prison capacity after opening a 40,000-person facility this week in an effort to further combat the country’s gang violence problem.
“All those home boys, those terrorists from the organization that made our beloved Salvadoran people suffer, will be housed and subjected to a severe regime,” El Salvador’s director of prisons, Osiris Luna, told state television.
El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele said the country’s “Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo” mega-prison, now one of the largest in Latin America, will have 37 watchtowers and eight cell blocks from which it will be “impossible to escape.” ” reported The Times of England.
Approximately 600 soldiers and 250 police officers will help secure the prison, which will sit on some 410 acres.
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The Terrorism Containment Center in Tecoluca, El Salvador, on February 1, 2023.
(Press Secretary of the Presidency / Brochure via Reuters)
The prison will serve as a powerful new tool in the country’s “war on gangs,” which has proven popular with the beleaguered population.
Bukele declared a state of emergency in March 2022 when he authorized his government to crack down on gang members by relaxing the country’s arrest rules, such as stopping requiring an arrest warrant and giving the government access to citizens’ communications.
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El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele takes part in a tour of the Terrorism Containment Center in Tecoluca on February 1, 2023.
(Press Secretary of the Presidency / Brochure via Reuters)
El Salvador’s congress extended the state of emergency several times, resulting in more than 46,000 arrests of suspected gang members. That number rose to more than 62,000 by the end of the year, including suspected collaborators.
A Cid Gallup poll last year found that 91% of respondents supported the most aggressive crackdown, Bloomberg reported.
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President Nayib Bukele in an observation tower with Minister of Public Works Romeo Rodríguez during a national television broadcast to present the Terrorism Containment Center on February 1, 2023.
(Press Secretary of the Presidency / Brochure via Reuters)
But that crackdown led to roughly 2% of the country’s adult population ending up behind bars, further straining the country’s already stretched prison system. El Salvador had 20 prisons with 35,976 prisoners in a space with a capacity for 30,000 as of 2021.
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Non-governmental organizations have accounted for several thousand human rights violations and at least 80 deaths in custody of people detained during the state of emergency. Rights activists say young men are frequently arrested just because of their age, appearance or if they live in a gang-dominated slum.
Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
