Punishment Report: El Salvador
Key Takeaways
Salwa Usmani explains that El Salvador's rise in mass incarceration is driven by policies such as Mano Dura and the State of Exception, which prioritize rapid arrests and harsh punishment. She argues that the government uses punitive justice and mass incarceration not only to respond to gang violence, but also to project strength, gain public trust, and maintain social order despite underlying state fragility.
Overview of Punishment
The Central American country of El Salvador is going through a historic peak never seen before in terms of punishment. In our report on punishment we explained in detail how El Salvador has reached an incarceration rate of 1,086 prisoners per 100,000 inhabitants, a new world record. An already very high population of prisoners is growing every day in El Salvador. In March 2022 the government declared a State of Exception in response to rising gang violence and, as a result, thousands of suspected gang members have been arrested on a daily basis ever since. In El Salvador, capital punishment is also practiced. The country’s latest official crime figures, which correspond to 2017, reveal that El Salvador continues to count among the countries with the highest police homicide rates worldwide (17.0 police killings per 100,000 inhabitants). Finally, in El Salvador, as well as in other regions of the Americas, as seen in the report on Pre-trial Detention, a significant portion of prisoners are detained prior to receiving a sentence. Indeed, one quarter of all prisoners in El Salvador, that is to say 23.1%, are awaiting their trial. It is often said of such cases that “the process is the punishment”.
Explaining Punishment
An intra-systemic explanation of El Salvador’s carceral system: Mano Dura and Procedural Suspension
Mano Dura, which consists of a whole set of policies that affect the militarisation of policing and violence exercised by police officers, longer prison sentences, and anti-gang laws, has had a huge impact on El Salvador’s internal justice system. The State of Exception has modified investigations, prosecutions, and sentencing in order to ensure that criminal proceedings are carried out in a rapid manner and guarantee the continuous arrest of those suspected of committing crimes. Under the guise of protecting the national justice system, the State has entrusted the police and armed forces with the internal security and counter-insurgent mission that prioritises the immediate and severe incarceration of citizens and the exercise of lethal control over the streets. This has resulted in a sharp increase in arrests and police killings.
Extra-systemic explanation: Statelessness and the Politics of Insecurity
Punishment outside of the criminal justice system. El Salvador is one of the most violent countries in the world and is characterised by state fragility, which the author terms “statelessness”. The powerful gang networks that dominate parts of El Salvador undermine the state, bringing not only crime and violence to the people of El Salvador, but also hopelessness. When El Salvador was in the midst of an unrelenting war of social violence and was suffering from some of the highest murder rates in the world, the politicians of the time exploited the fears of the population. They explained the high levels of violence as a product of the penal and criminal justice system's excessive leniency and the liberal ways in which society treats crime, while at the same time attempting to manage the “enemy” created by the politicians by dehumanising the gangs. This was done in order to justify the strong authoritarian government they sought to establish and to satisfy the demands of the population for a “government of iron fist” using punitive justice and, in particular, mass incarceration. The state therefore uses punitive justice and mass incarceration as a tool to appear strong, to obtain the trust of the population, and to secure the social order.