Prisons in El Salvador form the largest per-capita incarceration system in the world, holding more than 109,000 people at a rate of roughly 1,659 prisoners per 100,000 residents as of early 2024.1World Prison Brief. El Salvador The system runs on a rolling state of emergency that has suspended core constitutional protections since March 2022, a purpose-built mega-prison called CECOT, and a network of older facilities operating at double or triple their designed capacity. Roughly 1.7% of the entire population is behind bars.
The State of Exception That Built the System
Every feature of the current system traces back to Legislative Decree 333, which the Legislative Assembly approved on March 26, 2022. The decree declared a nationwide state of emergency, citing “serious disturbances to public order by criminal structures.”2United Nations Treaty Collection. International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights – El Salvador Notification under Article 4 (3) Originally set for 30 days, it has been renewed continuously, at least 35 times by early 2025.3Congress.gov. El Salvador’s State of Exception and U.S. Interests
Four constitutional rights are suspended under the decree:2United Nations Treaty Collection. International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights – El Salvador Notification under Article 4 (3) freedom of association; the right to be informed of the reason for arrest and to have a lawyer during initial proceedings; the 72-hour limit on detention without a judge, which has been extended to 15 days;4U.S. Department of State. 2022 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices: El Salvador and the privacy of correspondence and telecommunications, which can now be intercepted without a court order.
In practice, police can arrest anyone suspected of gang ties without explaining the basis, hold them for two weeks before a judge sees them, and monitor all their communications. Pretrial detention stretches into years in some cases.
CECOT: The Terrorism Confinement Center
The Terrorism Confinement Center, known as CECOT, is the facility most people picture when they think of Salvadoran prisons. It opened in early 2023 in Tecoluca, about 45 miles east of San Salvador, and was built specifically to warehouse tens of thousands of alleged gang members at maximum security. Eight pavilions give it a stated capacity of 40,000 inmates.1World Prison Brief. El Salvador The perimeter has two electrified fences, two reinforced concrete walls, and 19 guard towers.
Inmates spend 23.5 hours a day inside group cells. The half hour they get outside is spent on bodyweight exercises in a corridor under the watch of armed, hooded guards. There is no talking, no recreation, and no programming. Food is rice, beans, and hard-boiled eggs eaten by hand because utensils are banned as potential weapons. When moved, inmates are shackled at the wrists and ankles and made to crouch facing the wall in silence. CECOT prisoners receive no visitors, are never allowed outdoors, and have no telephone or digital contact with anyone.
Zacatecoluca, Izalco, and the Older Facilities
Before CECOT existed, the Zacatecoluca maximum-security prison, nicknamed Zacatraz, held the most senior gang leaders. Its tighter controls over phones and visitation disrupted leaders’ ability to direct street operations, which was the original strategic purpose of concentrating them there. Zacatecoluca still functions as a high-security facility.
The Izalco complex operates as a secondary tier spanning several phases at varying security levels. Former detainees have described some of the worst conditions in the system there, including cells holding 100 people in space designed for 50. Daily rations at Izalco and the La Esperanza complex in San Salvador have been described as two tortillas, a spoonful of beans, and a single glass of water.5U.S. Department of State. 2023 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices: El Salvador Families supplement these rations through the package delivery system described below.
Scale and Overcrowding
Before the state of exception, El Salvador’s entire prison system had a design capacity of about 30,000 and was already overcrowded.5U.S. Department of State. 2023 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices: El Salvador CECOT added 40,000 beds. The arrest surge has outpaced even that: more than 85,000 people have been detained since March 2022, pushing total incarceration past 109,000.1World Prison Brief. El Salvador
Older facilities bear the worst of the overcrowding. CECOT has absorbed a large share of new detainees, but the pre-existing network was never designed to hold the current population, and families bringing supplies to Izalco or La Esperanza encounter a very different system than the one shown in government footage from CECOT.
Daily Life, Visits, and Communication
The Directorate General of Penal Centers runs every facility, backed by the National Civil Police and the Armed Forces. Inside the cell blocks, gang imagery, tattoos, and any display of rank or affiliation have been systematically erased. Inmates wear identical white clothing and are stripped of personal belongings. The government describes this as reclaiming total state authority over spaces that MS-13 and Barrio 18 once effectively ran as their own territory.
Contact with the outside world has been almost completely severed. Physical visits are suspended across most of the system, and at CECOT they were never permitted at all. Access to lawyers is severely limited, a direct consequence of the suspended defense rights. Phone calls and any digital communication are prohibited. The only remaining lifeline is a package delivery system: relatives bring approved white clothing, hygiene products, and supplemental food to designated collection points, where guards inspect everything before distribution. There is no face-to-face handoff. For many families, those packages and the occasional account from a released detainee are the only confirmation that a relative is still alive.
Mass Trials and Life Sentences
Legal consequences have escalated alongside the arrests. Legislative reforms allow collective trials of up to 900 defendants in a single proceeding. In April 2026, a court began a mass trial of 486 alleged MS-13 members. These hearings often rely on shared evidence or group affiliation rather than individualized proof, and a confession from one defendant can be used to implicate others in the same proceeding.
Sentencing has climbed in waves. The previous adult maximum was 60 years. In April 2026, President Bukele signed constitutional reforms introducing life imprisonment for homicide, femicide, rape, or gang membership, applicable to defendants as young as 12. The reforms create new criminal courts for these cases and require mandatory review of life sentences after a set number of decades, depending on the convict’s age and the severity of the crime.
Children in the System
More than 3,000 minors have been detained since the state of exception began. As of February 2024, over 1,000 of those children had been convicted, often on the broad charge of “unlawful association.” In February 2025, Bukele signed a law ordering the transfer of children detained for organized crime offenses into separate pavilions inside adult prisons, run by the same DGCP that manages the rest of the system.6Human Rights Watch. El Salvador: Children to Be Moved to Adult Prisons The April 2026 constitutional reform then removed previous caps on how long minors could be detained for certain crimes, opening the door to life sentences for children as young as 12.
Deaths, Torture Allegations, and Arbitrary Arrests
Salvadoran human rights organizations have documented more than 500 deaths in custody since March 2022, with the majority of those cases never investigated. Roughly a third of documented deaths involved violent causes or suspected torture. Another third were attributed to medical negligence. The government classified about a third of all cases as having “undetermined” causes. Fewer than 5% were attributed to documented terminal illness. Overcrowding, poor ventilation, and limited healthcare create conditions where tuberculosis and other infectious diseases spread easily, and released detainees describe requests for treatment going unanswered for weeks.
Arbitrary detention is widely documented. In the first half of 2023 alone, El Salvador’s national human rights office received 738 complaints of arbitrary arrest, nearly triple the total for the same period in 2022. Civil society groups reported that many pretrial detainees had been swept up without evidence of gang affiliation, simply for having tattoos or living in a gang-controlled neighborhood.5U.S. Department of State. 2023 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices: El Salvador
A coalition of human rights organizations told the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights that after interviewing more than 100 released detainees, many described systematic beatings by guards and the use of electric shocks, treatment the coalition said amounted to torture. One former Izalco prisoner described guards beating a cellmate to death with batons and rifle butts, and activating stun guns against wet cell floors to shock everyone inside.5U.S. Department of State. 2023 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices: El Salvador With the suspension of the right to be informed of the reason for arrest and limited access to lawyers, people caught in mass sweeps have few immediate legal tools to challenge their detention, and the mass-trial format makes individualized defense effectively impossible.