Prisons in Honduras house an estimated 12,000 prisoners in Honduras, with a general population of 8 million. [1] There have been a number of massacres, including 69 people killed in a rural prison outside La Ceiba called La Granja (The Farm) in April 2003. [2] On April 26, 2008, 9 people were massacred in a prison located in the center of San Pedro Sula. [3] On May 3, 2008, 18 prisoners were massacred in a prison to the north of Tegucigalpa, the capital city of Honduras. [4] Due to problems with street gangs, prisoners are divided into 3 groups: Maras (active gang members), Pesetas (former gang members) and paisas (those who have never been in a gang before their incarceration).
| Penitentiary | Construction materials | Construction year | Population 2013 | Design capacity | Occupancy rates |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Centro Penal de Yoro | Adobe, wood and tile | 1870 | 191 | 150 | 127% |
| Centro Penal de Trujillo | Adobe, brick and lamina | 1890 | 309 | 120 | 258% |
| Centro Penal de La Ceiba | Adobe, wood and tile | 1906 | 284 | 100 | 284% |
| Centro Penal La Esperanza, Intibucá | Adobe, wood, tile | 1937 | 301 | 100 | 301% |
| Centro Penal de Santa Bárbara | Adobe, wood and tile | 1940 | 195 | 70 | 279% |
| Centro Penal de Puerto Cortés | Block, brick and tile | 1950 | 153 | 50 | 306% |
| Penitencieria Nacional de San Pedro Sula | Adobe. brick and lamina | 1953 | 2,216 | 800 | 277% |
| Centro Penal de Olanchito | Block, brick and lamina | 1961 | 144 | 60 | 240% |
| Centro Penal de Puerto Lempira | Block, wood and lamina | 1967 | 61 | 20 | 305% |
| P.N. Femenina | Block, concrete, lamina, brick | 1974 | 164 | 200 | 82% |
| Centro Penal de Marcala | Block, brick and lamina | 1975 | 123 | 120 | 102% |
| Centro Penal de Tela | Block, brick and lamina | 1975 | 123 | 160 | 77% |
| Centro Penal de El Progreso | Block, brick and lamina | 1976 | 402 | 120 | 335% |
| Centro Penal de Comayagua | Block, concrete, lamina, brick | 1978 | 471 | 240 | 196% |
| Centro Penal de Nacaome | Block. concrete, lamina and brick | 1978 | 220 | 120 | 183% |
| Centro Penal de Danlí | Block, concrete, lamina, brick | 1980 | 482 | 240 | 201% |
| Centro Penal de Santa Rosa de Copán | Block, brick and tile | 1980 | 602 | 240 | 251% |
| P. N. de El Porvenir, La Ceiba | Block, concrete, lamina and brick | 1980 | 445 | 240 | 185% |
| P.N. de La Paz | Block, concrete, lamina and brick | 1984 | 208 | 120 | 173% |
| P.N. Marco Aurelio Soto | Block, concrete, lamina and brick | 1998 | 2,844 | 2,500 | 114% |
| P.N. de Choluteca | Block, concrete, lamina and brick | 2001 | 562 | 800 | 70% |
| Centro Penal de Ocotepeque | Block, concrete and brick | 2001 | 158 | 153 | 103% |
| P.N. de Gracias, Lempira | Block, concrete, lamina, brick | 2002 | 561 | 600 | 94% |
| P.N. de Juticalpa | Block, concrete and lamina | 2007 | 454 | 800 | 57% |
| Cárcel de El Pozo | Block, concrete, lamina | 2016 | 2,000 | ||
| Total / average / median | 1967 average 1976 median | 11,673 total 486 average 293 median | 8,123 total 338 average 152 median | 192% | |
The Armed Forces of El Salvador are the official governmental military forces of El Salvador. The Forces have three branches: the Salvadoran Army, the Salvadoran Air Force and the Navy of El Salvador.
Politics of Honduras takes place in a framework of a multi-party system presidential representative democratic republic. The President of Honduras is both head of state and head of government. Executive power is exercised by the government. Legislative power is vested in the National Congress of Honduras. The party system is dominated by the conservative National Party of Honduras, the Liberal Party of Honduras, and Liberty and Refoundation.
The 18th Street Gang, also known as Eighteen St, Barrio 18, Mara 18, or simply 18 in North America, is a multi-ethnic transnational criminal organization that started as a street gang in Los Angeles. It is one of the largest transnational criminal gangs in Los Angeles, with 30,000-50,000 members between the United States, Mexico, and Central America and is also allied with the Mexican Mafia, another US-based crime organization. A United States Department of Justice report featured the following statement regarding 18th Street and rival gang MS-13, "These two gangs have turned the Central American northern triangle into the area with the highest homicide rate in the world."
The Mexican Mafia, also known as La eMe, is a Mexican American criminal organization in the United States. Despite its name, the Mexican Mafia has no origins in Mexico, and is entirely a U.S. criminal prison organization. Law enforcement officials report that the Mexican Mafia is the deadliest and most powerful gang within the California prison system.
The Crips are a primarily African-American alliance of street gangs that are based in the coastal regions of Southern California. Founded in Los Angeles, California, in 1969, mainly by Raymond Washington and Stanley Williams, the Crips began as an alliance between two autonomous gangs, and developed into a loosely connected network of individual "sets", often engaged in open warfare with one another. Its members have traditionally worn blue clothing since around 1973.
The Carandiru massacre occurred on 2 October 1992, in Carandiru Penitentiary in São Paulo, Brazil, when military police stormed the penitentiary following a prison riot. The massacre, which left 111 prisoners dead, is considered by many people to be a major human rights violation.
Mara Salvatrucha, commonly known as MS-13, is an international criminal gang that originated in Los Angeles, California, in the 1980s. Originally, the gang was set up to protect Salvadoran immigrants from other gangs in the Los Angeles area. Over time, the gang grew into a more traditional criminal organization. MS-13 has a longtime rivalry with the 18th Street gang.
Sureños , also known as Southern United Raza, Sur 13 or Sureños X3, are groups of loosely affiliated gangs that pay tribute to the Mexican Mafia while in U.S. state and federal correctional facilities. Many Sureño gangs have rivalries with one another, and the only time this rivalry is set aside is when they enter the prison system. Thus, fighting is common among different Sureño gangs even though they share the same common identity. Sureños have emerged as a national gang in the United States.
La Línea is currently the leading faction of the Juárez Cartel originally designed to be one of the cartel's enforcer units set up by a number of former and active-duty policemen, heavily armed and extensively trained in urban warfare. Their corrupt "line" of policemen were set up to protect drug traffickers, but after forming an alliance with Barrio Azteca to fight off the forces of the Sinaloa Cartel in 2008, they established a foothold in Ciudad Juárez as the enforcement wing of the Juárez cartel. La Línea has also been involved in extortions and kidnappings. As of 2021, La Línea has formed an alliance with the Jalisco New Generation Cartel in Ciudad Juárez to fight off influence and incursions from the Sinaloa Cartel.
Barrio Azteca, or Los Aztecas, is a Mexican-American street and prison gang originally based in El Paso, Texas, USA and Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico. The gang was formed in the Coffield Unit, located near Tennessee Colony, Texas by Jose "Raulio" Rivera, a prisoner from El Paso, in the early 1980s. It expanded into a transnational criminal organization that traded mainly across the US-Mexico border. Currently one of the most violent gangs in the United States, they are said to have over 3,000 members across the country in locations such as New Mexico, Texas, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania as well as at least 5,000 members in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.
Crime in El Salvador has been historically extremely high due to the presence of various gangs. As of 2011, there were an estimated 25000 gang members at large in El Salvador; with another 43500 in prison. The best-known gangs, called maras in colloquial Salvadoran Spanish, are Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and their rivals 18th Street; maras are hunted by death squads, including Sombra Negra. Newer rivals include the rising mara, The Rebels 13. El Salvador is one of the three countries of the Northern Triangle of Central America, along with neighboring Guatemala and Honduras, which are all afflicted with high levels of violence.
A deadly fire occurred on 14–15 February 2012 at the National Penitentiary in Comayagua, Honduras, killing 361 people. Prisoners trapped in their cells died by burning or suffocation; dozens were burned beyond recognition. The fire started late in the evening of 14 February. According to one prisoner, calls for help went out almost immediately and "for a while, nobody listened. But after a few minutes, which seemed like an eternity, a guard appeared with keys and let us out." Rescue forces did not arrive until about 40 minutes later.
The Apodaca prison riot occurred on 19 February 2012 at a prison in Apodaca, Nuevo León, Mexico. Mexico City officials stated that at least 44 people were killed, with another twelve injured. The Blog del Narco, a blog that documents events and people of the Mexican Drug War anonymously, reported that the actual (unofficial) death toll may be more than 70 people. The fight was between Los Zetas and the Gulf Cartel, two drug cartels that operate in northeastern Mexico. The governor of Nuevo León, Rodrigo Medina, mentioned on 20 February 2012 that 30 inmates escaped from the prison during the riot. Four days later, however, the new figures of the fugitives went down to 29. On 16 March 2012, the Attorney General's Office of Nuevo León confirmed that 37 prisoners had actually escaped on the day of the massacre. One of the fugitives, Óscar Manuel Bernal alias La Araña, is considered by the Mexican authorities to be "extremely dangerous," and is believed to be the leader of Los Zetas in the municipality of Monterrey. Some other fugitives were also leaders in the organization.
The Altamira prison brawl was a deadly fight that occurred on 4 January 2012 in Altamira, Tamaulipas, Mexico. Officials from the state of Tamaulipas confirmed that 31 people were killed, with another thirteen injured. The fight started after a drug gang burst into a section of the prison where they were banned from, attacking their rival gang housed there, triggering the fight. During the altercation, the inmates used several kinds of cold weapons (non-firearms) to kill their opponents. The prisoners also used sticks and knives to massacre the members of the rival gang.
On August 23, 2013, a prison riot broke out at Palmasola, a maximum-security prison in Santa Cruz, Bolivia. The riot started when members of one cell block attacked a rival gang in another, using propane tanks as flame throwers. Thirty-one people were killed, including an 18-month-old child who was living at the prison. Thirty-seven others were seriously injured. The riot led to calls for reform in the Bolivian prison system, which is plagued by overcrowding and long delays in the trial system.
The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted prisons globally. There have been outbreaks of COVID-19 reported in prisons and jails around the world, with the housing density and population turnover of many prisons contributing to an increased risk of contracting the virus compared to the general population. Prison crowding and lack of sanitation measures contribute to the risk of contracting diseases in prisons and jails. As a mitigation measure, several jurisdictions have released prisoners to reduce density and attempt to reduce the spread of the illness. There have also been protests among prisoners, riots and prison breaks in multiple countries in response to prisoner anger over their risk of contracting illness in prison conditions. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, health services within prisons had issues providing adequate care for incarcerated people, and this has only been exacerbated by the impacts of COVID-19. Minority groups within the prison system have been disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Guanare prison riot, also known as the Guanaremassacre, occurred in the Los Llanos prison in Guanare, Portuguesa state, Venezuela, on 1 May 2020. The events caused around 47 deaths, and 75 people were injured.
The Salvadoran gang crackdown, referred to in El Salvador as the régimen de excepción and the guerra contra las pandillas, began in March 2022 in response to a crime spike between 25 and 27 March 2022, when 87 people were killed in El Salvador. The Salvadoran government blamed the spike in murders on criminal gangs in the country, resulting in the country's legislature approving a state of emergency that suspended the rights of association and legal counsel, and increased the time spent in detention without charge, among other measures that expanded the powers of law enforcement in the country.
The Honduran gang crackdown, referred to in Honduras as the Régimen de Excepción, began in December 2022 after parts of the constitution were suspended to fight criminal gangs in the country.
On 20 June 2023, a prison riot broke out in the Women's Center for Social Adaptation, a women's prison located in Támara, Honduras, about 29 km (18 mi) northwest from Tegucigalpa, the nation's capital. The riot is suspected to be the result of a conflict between female members of the MS-13 and 18th Street gangs. Forty-six people were killed, with most from a fire that began amid the chaos. The precise circumstances surrounding the incident are currently being investigated.
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