Mass Incarceration in El Salvador: State of Exception, State of Repression

In March 2022 the Nayib Bukele administration in El Salvador invoked an emergency measure called a “state of exception” in reaction to a spike in gang violence.

Under the pretext of protecting public order, this measure suspends freedoms of assembly, association, and expression, as well as fundamental rights surrounding arrest and detention. These include the right of habeas corpus, the right to be informed of the reasons for detention, access to legal assistance, and numerous guarantees of due process.

Though the Constitution allows for such exceptional measures on a temporary basis, the state of exception has been renewed continuously on a monthly basis, making it a permanent security policy. It is also wielded as a tool of repression against environmental defenders, human rights workers, lawyers, journalists, political opposition members, and others.

Over 91,000 people have been imprisoned under the emergency regime, making El Salvador’s incarceration rate the highest in the world at 2% of the population.

There has been a dramatic drop in gang-perpetrated murders, but at the cost of a human rights catastrophe. National and international organizations have documented dismaying patterns such as arrests for alleged gang membership with no evidence, often in poor communities, persecution and arrest of courageous defenders of human rights, environment, and democracy, severe mistreatment in detention amounting to torture, and preposterous and cruel collective trials of hundreds at a time on gang-related charges. According to the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) there have been 483 deaths in custody.

0:00 Introduction with Jordan House
7:33 Ingrid Escobar, human rights defender, and Director of Socorro Juridico Humanitario (Humanitarian Legal Aid).
28:35 Samuel Ramirez, activist with the Movement for the Victims of the Regime in El Salvador (MOVIR).
48:11 Leslie Schuld, Co-founder and Director of Centre for Exchange and Solidarity (CIS).
1:03:54 Lisa Kowalchuk, associate professor of Sociology, University of Guelph.
1:13:54 Pedro Cabezas, coordinator of Central American Alliance Against Mining.
1:29:25 Q+A

Recorded 10 August 2026, Toronto, Canada – Prisoners’ Justice Day.