Where is honduran prison

The facility houses more than 1, inmates, according to authorities. Prisons in Honduras that have been under military control since the end of They are the site of frequent violence between the country's two largest street gangs as well as organized crime gangs.

In December , 18 inmates died during a gang dispute at a prison in the tourist city of Tela on the country's Atlantic coast. Before the coronavirus, family visitors would sell goods the men had made - hammocks, fishing nets, toy cars - to raise money for soap, coffee and cigarettes.

They brought empanadas, fried chicken, and tamales as a relief from the meager prison diet staples of rice and beans. Inmates lucky enough to have beds, and especially beds with curtains, would rent them out to prisoners with female visitors. Each of the windowless rooms is a dark labyrinth of improvised wood-and-plywood beds, with limbs protruding at every turn. Illiteracy is high; alcoholism pervasive. The most common crimes are domestic violence, drug possession and homicide.

Another part of the prison holds female inmates. Under a rusty tin roof in an attached building, the women are sectioned off behind a chain link fence.

The one cell for six women has four beds and space for three people to stand. To make matters even worse, security is generally very lax. Prisoners essentially police themselves.

The four detention facilities the country has set up for juvenile delinquents are particularly tragic. The most notorious is the Renaciendo juvenile detention center for boys, just northwest of the capital, Tegucigalpa, where violence and deplorable living conditions are the norm.

Last December, four juveniles were killed and eight injured in a riot there. The lack of services in these detention centers create conditions in which juveniles are essentially lost to society and run the risk of being repeat offenders over their lifetimes.

I have seen these problems firsthand on visits to jails in Honduras in the past two years. Each prison population functions within a precarious power structure that can erupt with the slightest provocation and unleash horrific violence.

In most cases, there are no prison guards to maintain order. That is why it is correct to say that gangs effectively control the prisons. These may not be commonly known gangs like MS, but gangs inevitably form within the prison as a survival tactic.

Guards are merely there to ensure the prisoners do not escape, and to control the entry and exit of prisoners. WPR: What has the Honduran government done in recent years to reform the prison system and ease overcrowding? What does the recent wave of violence say about the effectiveness of those efforts?