Opinion The scale of El Salvador's new prison is difficult to comprehend

[Judi Lynn]

By León Krauze
Global Opinions contributing columnist
February 26, 2023 at 6:30 a.m. EST



Members of the "Mara 18" and "MS-13" gangs are seen in custody at a maximum security prison in Izalco, Sonsonate, El Salvador, on Sept. 4, 2020. (YURI CORTEZ/AFP via Getty Images)

Earlier this month, Nayib Bukele, president of El Salvador, unveiled his latest infrastructure project: a massive, “first-world” jail that could well become the largest penitentiary in the world, with an alleged capacity to hold 40,000 inmates. This weekend, he announced the transfer of the first 2,000 prisoners to the new facility.

“A common-sense project,” Bukele called it.

The reality is that the scale of the project defies common sense — and easy comprehension. And the social implications of the endeavor are no less striking. The citizens of El Salvador have tacitly accepted Bukele’s unprecedented crackdown on crime, and, for the time anyway, are ignoring its broader ramifications.

The unveiling of the prison came in typical Bukelian fashion. He took over the country’s airwaves to share a 35-minute video of himself touring the facilities (it was soon posted on his popular Twitter feed, the presidency’s de facto press office). He can be seen arriving at the jail in a caravan of black SUVs. “Welcome to the Center for the Confinement of Terrorism, a key part in our battle against the gangs,” Osiris Luna Meza, director of El Salvador’s penitentiary system, said.

. . .

Bukele is then shown X-ray machines, surveillance towers and a fully staffed security perimeter. A “riot intervention squad,” armed to the teeth, salutes him. The tour then goes to the cells, meant to hold groups of “terrorists,” and the extreme solitary confinement area, where inmates will be kept completely in the dark — a widely condemned practice.



Spanning about 410 acres in an isolated region of El Salvador, the jail is the latest example of Bukele’s punitive state. And it is slated to become the largest, and most overcrowded, prison in the world.

Inmate population and density

El Salvador’s new prison is as large as some of the most notorious prisons in the world, but inmates will be even more packed.



More:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/02/26/el-salvador-prison-nayib-bukele-gangs-crime/

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I seriously thought the purpose of building a huge prison was to remove the pressure from the inhumanly crowded situation they had created years ago in El Salvador, which was sadistic and totally unhealthy:

[Chainfire]

1. Oh, how we treat each other on this planet.

We are the only species that advanced to the point that we could afford the luxury of hate. Regardless of the cause, all of those young men have been thrown away by their societies even before they were penned up. All of them were, not too long ago, someone's beloved child. Treat them like animals, cage them like animals and they will behave like animals.

A nation of six million building a prison planned to grow to serve 60,000. You have to wonder what percentage that is of the all of the men between 16 and 30.

[Dan]

2. This will be a prison

That at some point, some group will take control of and have a ready made army.

This prison is truly an army in training., once you put them in this place you really can’t afford to let them out.