Americas Americas | In Latin America, Guards Don’t Control Prisons, Gangs Do Share full article Log in

In Latin America, Guards Don’t

Control Prisons, Gangs Do
Intended to fightcrime, Latin American prisons have instead
become safe havens and recruitment centers for gangs, fueling a
surge in violence.

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Gang members at a prison in El Salvador. Over the last two decades, prisons have become recruitment centers for Latin America’s
cartels and gangs, experts say, strengthening their grip on society. Meridith Kohut for The New York Times

By Maria Abi-Habib , Annie Correal and Jack Nicas

Maria Abi-Habib reported from Mexico City, Annie Correal from Bogotá, Colombia, and Jack
Nicas from Rio de Janeiro.
Feb. 21, 2024, 5:02 a.m. ET

Leer en español

Ecuador’s military was sent in to seize control of the country’s

prisons last month after two major gang leaders escaped and
criminal groups quickly set off a nationwide revolt that paralyzed
the country.
In Brazil last week, two inmates with connections to a major gang
became the first to escape from one of the nation’s five maximum-
federal prisons, officials said.
Officials in Colombia have declared an emergency in its prisons
after two guards were killed and several more targeted in what the
government said was retaliation for its crackdown on major
criminal groups.
Inside prisons across Latin America, criminal groups exercise
unchallenged authority over prisoners, extracting money from
them to buy protection or basic necessities, like food.
The prisons also act as a safe haven of sorts for incarcerated
criminal leaders to remotely run their criminal enterprises on the
outside, ordering killings, orchestrating the smuggling of drugs to
the United States and Europe and directing kidnappings and
extortion of local businesses.
When officials attempt to curtail the power criminal groups
exercise from behind bars, their leaders often deploy members on
the outside to push back.
“The principal center of gravity, the nexus of control of organized
crime, lies within the prison compounds,” said Mario Pazmiño, a
retired colonel and former director of intelligence for Ecuador’s
Army, and an analyst on security matters.
“That’s where let’s say the management positions are, the
command positions,” he added. “It is where they give the orders
and dispensations for gangs to terrorize the country.”
Latin America’s prison population has exploded over the last two
decades, driven by stricter crime measures like pretrial detentions,
but governments across the region have not spent enough to
handle the surge and instead have often relinquished control to
inmates, experts on penal systems say.
Those sent to prison are often left with one choice: join a gang or
face their wrath.
As a result, prisons have become crucial recruitment centers for
Latin America’s largest and most violent cartels and gangs,
strengthening their grip on society instead of weakening it.
Prison officials, who are underfunded, outnumbered, overwhelmed
and frequently paid off, have largely given in to gang leaders in
many prisons in exchange for a fragile peace.

A soldier standing guard over inmates at a prison during a press tour organized in February by the military
in Guayaquil, Ecuador. Cesar Munoz/Associated Press

Criminal groups fully or partly control well over half of Mexico’s

285 prisons, according to experts, while in Brazil the government
often divides up penitentiaries based on gang affiliation in a bid to
avoid unrest. In Ecuador, experts say most of the country’s 36
prisons are under some degree of gang control.
“The gang is solving a problem for the government,’’ said Benjamin
Lessing, a University of Chicago political science professor who
studies Latin American gangs and prisons. “This gives the gang a
kind of power that’s really hard to measure, but is also hard to
overestimate.”
Latin America’s prison population surged by 76 percent from 2010
to 2020 according to the Inter-American Development Bank, far
,

exceeding the region’s 10 percent population increase during the

same period.

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Many countries have imposed tougher law and order policies,

including longer sentences and more convictions for low-level drug
offenses pushing most of the region’s penitentiaries beyond
,

maximum capacity.
At the same time, governments have prioritized investing in their
security forces as a way to clamp down on crime and flex their
muscles to the public, rather than spend on prisons, which are less
visible.
Brazil and Mexico, Latin America’s largest countries with the
region’s biggest inmate populations, invest little on prisons:
Brazil’s government spends roughly $14 per prisoner per day, while
Mexico spends about $20. The United States spent about $117 per
prisoner per day in 2022. Prison guards in Latin America also earn
meager salaries, making them susceptible to bribes from gangs to
smuggle in contraband or help high-profile detainees escape.
Federal officials in Brazil and Ecuador did not respond to requests
for comment, while federal officials in Mexico declined. In general,
Mexico and Brazil’s federal prisons have better financing and
conditions than their state prisons.
The state of Rio de Janeiro, which runs some of Brazil’s most
notorious prisons, said in a statement that it has separated inmates
by their gang affiliation for decades “to ensure their physical
safety,” and that the practice is allowed under Brazilian law.
Underscoring the power of prison gangs, some leaders of criminal
groups live relatively comfortably behind bars, running
supermarkets, cockfighting rings and nightclubs, and sometimes
smuggling their families inside to live with them.

The Brazilian drug trafficker Jarvis Chimenes Pavao’s luxurious cell at Tacumbu prison in Asunción,
Paraguay, in 2016. Norberto Duarte/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Ecuador’s prisons are a textbook example, experts say, of the

problems afflicting penal systems in Latin America and how
difficult they can be to address.
The riots in January erupted after Ecuador’s recently-elected
president moved to tighten security in the prisons after an
investigation by the attorney general showed how an imprisoned
gang leader, enriched by cocaine trafficking, had corrupted judges,
police officers, prison guards and even the former head of the
prison system.
The president, Daniel Noboa, planned to transfer several gang
leaders to a maximum-security facility, making it harder for them
to operate their illicit businesses.

But those plans were leaked to gang leaders and one of them went
missing from a sprawling prison compound.
A search for the leader inside the prison set off riots across the
country’s jails, with dozens of inmates escaping, including the head
of another powerful gang.

Gangs also ordered members to attack on the outside, experts said.

They kidnapped police officers, burned cars, set off explosives and
briefly seized a major television station.
Mr. Noboa responded by declaring an internal armed conflict,
authorizing the military to target gangs on the streets and storm
prisons. Inmates in at least one prison were stripped to their
underwear and had their possessions confiscated and burned,
according to the military and videos on social media.

President Daniel Noboa of Ecuador authorized the military to target gangs on the street, after gangs set of
riots in prisons and launched attacks outside the prisons. John Moore/Getty Images

The scenes were reminiscent of some in El Salvador, where

President Nayib Bukele declared a state of emergency in 2022 to
tackle gang violence. About 75,000 people have been jailed, many
without due process, according to human rights groups.
Two percent of Salvadorans are incarcerated, the highest
proportion of any country in the world, according to the World
Prison Brief, a database compiled by Birkbeck, University of
London.
Mr. Bukele’s tactics have decimated the Central American
country’s street gangs, reversed years of horrific violence and
helped propel him to a second term.
But experts say thousands of innocent people have been
incarcerated.
“What consequences does this have?” said Carlos Ponce, an expert
on El Salvador and an assistant professor at the University of the
Fraser Valley in Canada. “This will scar them and their families for
life.”

A protest last month to demand the release of relatives detained during the state of emergency in San
Salvador, El Salvador. Fred Ramos for The New York Times

The frequent use of pretrial detentions across the region to combat

crime has left many people languishing in jail for months and even
years waiting to be tried, human rights groups say. The practice
has fallen particularly hard on the poorest, who cannot afford
lawyers and face a tortoise-like judicial system with cases backed
up for years.
In the first seven months of El Salvador’s state of emergency, 84
percent of all those arrested were in pretrial detention and nearly
half of Mexico’s prison population is still waiting trial.

“Prisons can be defined as exploitation centers for poor people,”

said Elena Azaola, a scholar in Mexico who has studied the
country’s prison system for 30 years.
“Some have been imprisoned for 10 or 20 years without trial,’’ she
added. “Many go out worse than when they came in.”
In fact,prisons in some Latin American countries are to some
extent a revolving door.
About 40 percent of prisoners in Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, and
Chile are released only to be incarcerated again. While the
recidivism rate is much higher in the United States, in Latin
America many people locked up for minor, sometimes nonviolent
offenses go on to commit more serious crimes, experts say, largely
because petty criminals share prison cells with more serious
offenders.
Both of Brazil’s largest gangs — the Red Command and the First
Capital Command — actually began in prisons, which remain their
centers of power.

Prisoners during a riot at the Alcacuz Penitentiary Center in Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil, in 2017. Andressa
Anholete/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Jefferson Quirino, a former gang member who completed five

separate detentions in Rio’s prisons, said gangs controlled every
prison he was in. In some, inmates often focused on running gang
business outside the prison using the numerous cellphones they
sneaked in, often with the help of guards who were bought off.
The gangs have such sway in Brazil’s prisons, where the
authorities themselves often divide prisons by gang affiliation, that
officials force new prisoners to pick a side, to limit violence.
“The question they ask you is: ‘What gang do you belong to?’”
first
said Mr. Quirino, who runs a program that helps keep poor children
out of gangs. “In other words, they need to understand where to
place you within the system, because otherwise you’ll die.”
That has helped criminal groups grow their ranks.
“Jail functions as a space for labor recruitment,” said Jacqueline
Muniz, a former security chief for Rio de Janeiro.
“And for building loyalty among your criminal work force.”
Reporting was contributed by Emiliano Rodríguez Mega from Mexico City; José María
León Cabrera from Quito, Ecuador; Thalíe Ponce from Guayaquil, Ecuador; Genevieve
Glatsky from Bogotá, Colombia; and Laurence Blair from Asunción, Paraguay.

Maria Abi-Habib is an investigative correspondent based in Mexico City, covering Latin

America. She previously reported from Afghanistan, across the Middle East and in India,
where she covered South Asia. More about Maria Abi-Habib
Annie Correal reports from the U.S. and Latin America for The Times. More about Annie
Correal
Jack Nicas is the Brazil bureau chief for The Times, based in Rio de Janeiro, where he
leads coverage of much of South America. More about Jack Nicas

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