If you googled El Salvador a month ago, it would have been a long list of homicides with some horrific images. Today, you google El Salvador and it’s been horrific images – perhaps meant to deter? – of human beings being bundled like sardines as they arrive at El Salvador’s new mega-prison. Is this the successful outcome they are after?
No, I do not have an answer or “the” answer to the problems El Salvador have faced over the years, but how long before some of the prison guards begin selling drugs and shanks etc to these supposed gang members?
Building a 60,000 capacity prison and banging up tens of thousands of heavily tattooed gang members in it is as much a solution as Puncho Villa printing Mexican money in an endless supply and thinking it will be worth the paper it’s printed on!
The cost of this mega jail and staffing it, maintaining it, would perhaps be much less than the cost of building schools, hospitals, creating jobs, giving hope to the poor, while tackling some of the social issues that drive people to join gangs. But hey! too simple!
But the images that have now circulated around the world, of human beings being packed up like sardines, can only surely paint a picture of hopelessness! How can this be a sustainable outcome? Yes, you may immediately get an impact in reducing crime for a couple of weeks or months, but then, you are brewing up a calamity! Several kids without their parents – some will say that perhaps this absence gives those kids a chance, as they would have been destined for the same gangs as their missing parents – but this will only ever be positive, if the El Salvador government has the Next Steps ready, following the mass incarceration. What’s next? Will the families of these incarcerated folks get some support, to help them exit this vicious cycle? will the incarcerated men we see packed like sardines suddenly have a change of heart in a mega-Jail in punitive conditions that do not seek to rehabilitate (and how successful has the rehabilitation of gang members been to date?)? You can’t lock them up indefinitely.
What happens when the popularity of the El Salvador president wanes (which is inevitable as I doubt the families of 60,000 incarcerated people will be rushing out to vote for him at the next election – if they ever have one…)?
Those images depict a human tragedy of epic proportion! The world must find a way to sort these situations out. Such a sad, sad period for El Salvador and that region.What can they do to turn things around? (the wave of crime that led to their president taking these drastic action was equally dreadful)
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