Caribbean & Central America - November 2022

The state of exception ordered by the government led by President Nayib Bukele back in March to address gang violence [SSR-22-05] has passed the six-month mark. The impact of this on the country’s prison system is attracting growing concern from rights groups and think tanks.

On 14 October El Salvador’s 84-member unicameral legislature, which is controlled by the ruling Nuevas Ideas (NI), approved an extension of the state of exception for a seventh consecutive time and for a further 30 days. According to a press release by the legislature, under the state of exception, 54,518 gang members have been arrested while 214 homicide-free days have been registered since Bukele took office in June 2019, most of them under the state of exception.

A report released on 4 October by Brussels-based think-tank International Crisis Group (ICG) on El Salvador’s prison system noted that the country now has the highest incarceration rate in the world, at around 2% of the adult population. According to the latest figures from World Prison Brief (WPB), published by the UK-based Institute for Criminal Policy Research, El Salvador’s prison population rate is 605 per 100,000 of national population.

The ICG report also highlights that the state of exception marks a U-turn by the Bukele government in its prison policy; having endeavoured to reduce the total number of prisoners from almost 40,000 to less than 37,000 between 2018 and early 2021, the government has now reportedly more than doubled the size of the prison population within a few months, with the number of inmates continuing to rise. This apparent U-turn was also highlighted in the latest (April 2022) US State Department report on human rights in El Salvador which cites El Salvador’s director of prisons, Osiris Luna, as saying that one of the objectives of the government’s main security strategy, Plan Control Territorial (TCP), was to reduce the number of prisons from 23 to 10. That the government has turned its back on its original plan was suggested in a bill approved in late April by the legislature to build new jails and, which ICG noted, curtailed oversight of public procurement. This was followed by President Bukele’s announcement in mid-June that construction would begin on a huge prison facility able to house around 40,000 inmates, in Tecoluca municipality, some 70km east of San Salvador.

El Salvador’s prison system also came under scrutiny in relation to the state of exception in a 12 September hearing convened by the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission of the US House of Representatives. Those giving testimony included Noah Bullock, executive director of local human rights NGO Cristosal, who cited accounts from former prisoners that “the tens of thousands of people detained during the state of emergency find themselves in overcrowded and unsanitary conditions, suffering deprivation or restriction of food, water and medicines or other necessities. Specific complaints have been received about collective torture against persons held in the Izalco and La Esperanza (Mariona) prisons through constant beatings, threats, the application of pepper spray and standing positions for hours.”

•  Gang leadership affected?

Also testifying at the 12 September hearing, Héctor Silva Ávalos, a Salvadorean journalist, said that the leadership of gangs has not been affected by the state of exception. He cites as the best example of this, the refusal of the Salvadorean government, including the attorney general’s office (FGR) and supreme court, to endorse the extradition of gang leaders wanted by the US. “In other words, while imprisoning thousands of youths, mostly from the country’s poorest neighbourhoods, and in most cases without solid evidence, the Bukele government keeps the gangs command structures intact, so their operational capacity is not really affected,” he said.

• Hardening punishments

As well as the state of exception, rights groups point out that El Salvador’s legislature has amended the penal code, hardening jail sentences for gang-related crimes. The changes, which were introduced soon after the state of exception was invoked for the first time, increase prison sentences for gang members from a maximum of five years to a maximum of 45 years and lower the age of criminal responsibility to 12 years of age. The legislative changes also establish penalties of 10 to 15 years in prison for those who “reproduce and transmit messages or communications” attributed to criminal groups, or gangs. This has prompted fears that reporters or outlets covering gang issues could face prosecution or possibly also political harassment.