Honduras to build 20,000-capacity ‘megaprison’ in crackdown on gangs
- Escalated police raids have driven up the inmate population to 19,500, crammed into a system designed for 13,000
The president of Honduras has announced the creation of a new 20,000-capacity “megaprison”, part of the government’s larger crackdown on gang violence and efforts to overhaul its long-troubled prison system.
President Xiomara Castro unveiled a series of emergency measures in a nationally televised address early Saturday, including plans to strengthen the military’s role in fighting organised crime, prosecute drug traffickers as terrorists and build new facilities to ease overcrowding as narcoviolence and other crimes mount in the nation of 10 million.
Left-wing Castro’s “megaprison” ambitions mirror those of President Nayib Bukele in neighbouring El Salvador, who has built the largest prison in Latin America – a 40,000-capacity facility to house a surging number of detainees swept up in the president’s campaign of mass arrests.
Honduran security forces must “urgently carry out interventions” in all parts of the country now witnessing “the highest rates of gang violence, drug trafficking, money laundering” and other crimes, Castro said in her midnight address.
Authorities plan to immediately construct and send dangerous gangsters to a 20,000-capacity prison near the rural province of Olancho, in the country’s east, said Major Gen. Roosevelt Hernandez, the army chief of staff.
Escalated police raids have driven up the Honduran prison population to 19,500 inmates, crammed into a system designed for 13,000, the Honduran national committee against torture, or CONAPREV, reported last year.
