The president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, indicated that he could release in an early and conditional manner about half of the prisoners who are in the prison system on suspicion of ties to the country’s gangs.
The leader spoke on the topic on last Tuesday (the 13th) and mentioned that those who would benefit do not cease to be guilty, but they lived under the control of factions.
“We are evaluating the cases to offer conditional early release to a large number of prisoners,” said the president, who participated in a press conference at the Presidential House in San Salvador. Bukele took the opportunity to differentiate prisoners according to their degree of cooperation.
From the perspective of the Salvadoran president, it would not be possible to place in a single level of danger a prisoner who “buried a corpse” with the one who was operating by warning local gangs about the arrival of the police.
Bukele did not provide details about when the releases would take effect, nor did he point out the criteria that will define the beneficiaries.
Bukele Model
The Salvadoran model is one of the inspirations for the public security agenda proposed by Flávio Bolsonaro (PL) in his presidential bid this year. In the last month of August, the PL candidate received in São Paulo the Minister of Justice and Public Security of El Salvador, Gustavo Villatoro, saying that Bukele’s policy inspires his plan for the area. Flávio has already promised to create more than 500,000 prison places in Brazil if elected.
In effect since March 2022, the state of exception suspends constitutional guarantees and has led to the imprisonment of more than 91,000 people, according to Vice President Félix Ulloa. Since then, homicides in the country have fallen to historically low levels.
One of the main criticisms of the Bukele model, however, concerns the methods applied. Organizations such as Humanitarian Legal Aid have already pointed out that, of the total detainees, 30,000 would be innocent. In addition, local reports indicate that around 500 detainees were killed inside the prison facilities.
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) has indicated in a report that crimes against humanity may be committed in the country. Bukele, for his part, says the measure would be a kind of “chemotherapy against the gang cancer.” The president acknowledges that he would like to suspend the plan at some point, but there is not yet a transition policy planned in El Salvador.
On the political front, Bukele will run for a third consecutive term in 2027. The undertaking became possible after the president secured a constitutional reform approved in July of last year, in a single session. The new rules allow extending the term from five to six years and eliminated the second round in the country.
James Whitmore