The World Briefly

July 20, 2023

The Old Ways

Honduras

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Honduras is planning to build the only island prison colony in the Western Hemisphere, as the government seeks to address rising crime and gang violence that are rocking the Central American nation, the Associated Press reported.

President Xioamara Castro proposed plans to build an isolated detention facility on the Islas del Cisne archipelago 155 miles off the Honduran coast.

The prison will house around 2,000 gang leaders, with authorities saying the facility’s location would effectively prevent inmates from escaping or running operations from the inside.

The plan comes as the country grapples with a wave of gang-related violence, including last month’s killing of 46 women, who died during a fight between gangs in one prison.

Castro had previously pledged to address the issue through systemic reforms of the criminal justice system. But after last month’s prison massacre, she said she would “take drastic measures” against Barrio 18 and Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13), gangs that have terrorized the nation for years.

Authorities have launched a major crackdown on criminal groups, which observers say mirror efforts from neighboring El Salvador. Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele has imprisoned one in every 100 people in the country, despite warnings from human rights groups that only 30 percent of prisoners have clear ties to gangs.

Island prisons were once common across Latin America, but the last such facility closed in Mexico in 2019.

Honduran officials believe a return to the old ways will curb the wave of violence, but skeptics caution that such attempts do not address the root causes of endemic violence.

Meanwhile, biologists worry that the prison’s construction could impact the island’s ecosystem and biodiversity. They noted that the prison’s suggested location has been designated as an environmentally protected territory for more than three decades.

But Lucky Medina, the country’s secretary of natural resources and the environment, countered that the maximum security penitentiary will be built “in harmony with nature.”

This story originally appeared in the July 20, 2023 newsletter, Winning Minds, Losing Hearts.