Assessing the Effects of COVID-19 in Prisons in the Northern Triangle of Central America

ABSTRACT

This article examines the impact of COVID-19 on penitentiary systems in the Central American countries of Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala (the Northern Triangle). Despite similar conditions in terms of crowding, lack of personal protective equipment, and infrastructure deficiencies, the neighboring countries have implemented distinctly different approaches to managing their incarcerated populations. In Honduras, in recognition of the elevated risks to certain inmates, nearly 2,000 prisoners were released in the early stages of the contagion. In El Salvador, President Bukele capitalized on the COVID crisis to implement curfews and national lockdowns to ensure conditions approaching martial law, declaring extreme security steps to address gang violence, while claiming incarcerated gang leaders were behind the increased violence. In Guatemala, the President Giammattei, a medical doctor, recognized prisons as epicenters of focus for reducing transmission rates and quickly advanced plans to contain a much larger outbreak. Using data collected from public media sources and in-depth qualitative interviews with prison administrators and staff, we provide a descriptive overview of the COVID impacts in these countries and consider possible longer-term prison policy implications.

KEYWORDS:

• Prisons
• international
• cross-national
• Covid-19
• Pandemic
• Alternatives to incarceration
• Early release mechanisms
• Prison reform

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. See the UNODC 2019 Global Study on Homicide for a comprehensive exploration of this complex phenomenon and an updated dataset of cross-national data. Available at https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/data-and-analysis/global-study-on-homicide.html [Accessed on 18 September 2020].

2. Details on the number of facilities, inmate population, and the distribution by status fluctuate frequently. Updated monthly, the University of London, Institute for Crime & Justice Policy Research maintains the World Prison Brief (2020) database. See http://www.prisonstudies.org/world-prison-brief.

3. On April 29, The BBC World News released shocking images of some of the especially harsh treatment of prisoners in El Salvador. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqcPD2pmxJw.

4. Sources regarding the number of physicians are conflicting and range between 13–16 individuals. Based on personal conversations, the discrepancy seems to be rooted in whether some physicians are currently available to treat patients. Five prison doctors are reportedly in high-risk categories, presumably because of their ages and/or preexisting medical conditions.

5. Known in Spanish as the Organismo Judicial (OJ). This video conferencing equipment was donated to Guatemala through the Security and Justice Program, coordinated by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID and the Department of State, Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement (INL); These are available in El Preventivo, Cantel in Quetzaltenango, El Boquerón in Santa Rosa, El Infiernito in Escuintla and Fraijanes II in Guatemala.

6. These are available in El Preventivo, Cantel in Quetzaltenango, El Boquerón in Santa Rosa, El Infiernito in Escuintla and Fraijanes II in Guatemala.

7. In Spanish this refers to the, Fuerza de Seguridad Interinstitucional (Fusina). This measure was taken on December 17, 2019 after the murder of the former director of the prison known as “El Pozo,” who had been suspended from his post after an inmate was murdered inside that prison.

8. This pandemic call to action is not novel. See Maruschak et al. (2009).