El Salvador is a Central American country with a population of 6.3 million. They have had a gang problem for multiple decades which has made the country very dangerous. However, the recent president Nayib Bukele has cracked down on the gangs, sending over 75,000 people to jail due to gang affiliation. This has been effective in reducing the danger in El Salvador with gang violence greatly reducing since his election in 2019. However, many human rights organizations have heavily criticized these actions stating that they are an infringement on the rights of the accused gang members. This is because of how many prisoners are kept in each cell, with little space and commodities for the prisoners. Also, El Salvador has the highest incarceration rate in the world, which is because they will arrest anyone they assume has gang affiliation, which leads to a lot of innocent people going to jail. Organizations have stated that these mass prisons are “ black holes of human rights” and that they do not follow international guidelines. Bukele does not seem to care about their opinions on the matter, continuing to send people to these mass prisons. The prisons themselves are very heavily guarded and are hard to get into or escape. Last year they opened a new prison in January. Since its opening, the News company BBC has requested access to the prison to report on it. Just recently they were approved and sent a reporter a few days ago. When the reporter arrived, the director let them look at the cells. The reporter saw that the cells were packed with prisoners, with very little space. The director stated, “Where you can fit 10, you can fit 20.” explaining why the cells were so packed. After taking a tour of the cells, the reporter left, but not before taking multiple pictures and videos of the prison which show the small size and massive population of the prison. This is only one of multiple very similar prisons, so maybe in time, we will take a look into another similar one.
