Honduras' prison crisis has been thrust back into the international spotlight this weekend after a riot broke out in the National Penitentiary, the country's main prison located north of the capital of Tegucigalpa. The incident, sparked by a disagreement between gang members and other prisoners, left three dead and 15 injured. In response, Honduran President Porfirio Lobo ordered in the military to reestablish control of the prison from the gangs which run it. BBC News reported that when authorities executed what they said was a "cell-by-cell review" of the country's main prison, which holds some 3,300 inmates, they found hand grenades and firearms.
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A report from the Washington-based Inter-American Commission on Human Rights delivered to President Lobo on Friday concluded that Honduras' prison system has "totally collapsed". It highlighted a host of problems which included severe overcrowding - many of them held two or three times as many prisoners as they were designed to support - lack of separation by gender, and lack of appropriate funding and manpower. It also called criminal policy in the country "heavy-handed" and "based on an eminently repressive approach" even as policies are inconsistently carried out. In essence, the commission said, these failures by the state contributed to a current situation in which gangs like MS-13 and 18th Street run the place, setting the rules and meting out physical punishments to those who break them.
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At the end of July, a Washington Post profile of a San Pedro Sula prison showed gang members held in separate, spacious cell blocks in which wives and girlfriends were free to come and go but guards could only come in with the gangs' permission.
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That same prison is mentioned in the Inter-American Commission's report, which describes a "large market or bazaar" in the prison yard comprised of "barbers' shops, cafeterias, bakeries, sales of fruit and food of all kinds, sales of medications and cloth; tailoring workshops, a cobbler's shop, a leather workshop, carpentry, a cabinetmaker's workshop, crafts, manufacture of mirrors, billiard tables, games tables, and many soft drink dispensing machines", all of which pay duties to the prison's authorities despite the lack of any legal code regulating this sort of trade.
So what is the Honduran government doing to take it back?
The tenure of Lobo, a member of the conservative National Party who won the presidency in 2009 in a controversial election held after a military coup ousted leftist president Manuel Zelaya from power, saw some 435 inmates killed in the country's 24 national prisons over the last 30 months. 360 died in a single incident - a 2012 fire in Comayagua. This March, his administration pardoned about 70 prisoners this March in order to alleviate overcrowding, and he has said he will move to improve conditions in the country's prisons, but his call for the military to assert control over the National Prison marks the first concrete step on the issue.
In a statement, Lobo said he hopes to "end the reign of criminals in our prison system, which has done so much damage to our society."
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