Highlights
− El Salvador’s prisons continue to face overcrowding
− Inter- and intra-gang related violence on the rise
− Gang membership likely to continue to grow, thereby perpetuating the ailing prison system
Serious problems plague El Salvador’s prison system. Severe overcrowding and the lack of rehabilitation programs have caused the state to effectively lose control in the jails, resulting in a dangerous environment for the prisoners within. The consistent murder rate in the nation’s penitentiaries on a yearly basis, to include the recent killing of eight prisoners in March 2008, underscore the severe lack of prisoner safety.
Inter- and Intra-Gang Violence
Increasingly, the prison system is not a setting for retribution and rehabilitation, but instead is a breeding ground for gangs and the scene of deadly turf wars. Most prisons pit the nation’s two most violent gangs, the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) youth gang and their chief rival the Mara 18 gang, against each other, but often factions or splinters, known as “cliques” in the same gang will fight for territory or pride within a prison. All eight of the recently murdered, for example, were MS-13 members and killed because of internal power struggles between different “cliques” in the group.
The fact that intra-gang violence is the cause of a good portion of the prison deaths is exceedingly destabilizing to the system. Not only do specific gangs need to be separated, but also guards and officials must be in tune with the intricacies of each faction of the individual gangs in order to fully secure the facility. It is to this end that prison officials and security officers have failed. The recently murdered men were held at the Chalatenango and Cuidad Barrios prisons at the time of their deaths. As stated above all eight were members of MS-13 and, interestingly, both prisons are populated with MS-13 members only. Neither prison holds Mara 18 members, stressing the inability of members of the same gang to cohabitate.
Prison Reforms
Still, El Salvadorian prison officials portend that the killings occurred “basically because of the overcrowding,” the “lack of rehabilitation programs” for prisoners, and the deplorable conditions in the country’s jails, not solely because of inter- or intra-gang violent tendencies. According to Nelson Flores, coordinator of the Penal Studies Centre (CEPES) in the Foundation for the Study of the Application of the Law (FESPAD), preventing insolent behavior is secondary to the need for prison reform and solutions to overcrowding. Some of the prisons are so congested and poorly maintained that often prisoners will sleep on the floor next to each other, producing what she calls the “human rug” effect.
Four new prisons are set to open in the next few months, which should ease overcrowding. However, the prison system will continue to suffer due to a marked lack of effective controls. Additionally, corrupt, recalcitrant prison guards undermine the system by turning their backs to the influx of illegal drugs and weapons into the facilities. Complicit guards also allow communication to and from prisons to go unmonitored, permitting crimes such as extortion and murder to be planned and ordered from within the prison’s walls.
The Double-Edged Sword
The flood of inmates since 2004 is a direct result of the strong-armed policies currently mandated by El Salvadorian leadership to fight crime. There are presently 207 prisoners per 100,000 people in El Salvador and the skyrocketing prison population has jumped from just over 12,000 in 2004 to roughly 18,300 in 2008. The crime rate in the nation, however, remains remarkably high. Hence, the hard-nosed stance against crime has boosted the incarceration of criminals but failed to lower crime rates and reintegrate rehabilitated criminals into society.
Approximations put gang membership at 16,000 in El Salvador, a number that will likely continue to grow due to their deep entrenchment in society, and economic and political instability in the Central American nation. The growth of gangs in conjunction with the prolonged use of hard-lined tactics will likely continue to increase the prison population. Thus, despite the construction of new prisons, the steady stream of inmates will likely overload the system in the near to mid-term. In order to achieve long-term stability, reforms must be made to the system as a whole and include more than just the building of new space. Rehabilitation programs must be overhauled and implemented, and internal corruption rooted out.
El Salvador, similar to numerous other Latin American nations, will continue to fight a high level of gang-related violence over the long-term. The stabilization of the nation, both economically and politically, as well as a reformed prison system, are paramount to successfully combating the incidences of crime and gang membership. Until then, the nation will be faced with severe prison overcrowding and thus, intra- and inter-gang related violence inside the jails.
