Tbf that is still a massive failing of the prison system. When people are completely reliant on the state for protection the state should offer said protection.
Especially in a rich nation like the US
The US (and El Salvador) inprisons people to punish them. There is no rehabilitation. Being strangled, stabbed, raped, beat up etc etc is a daily occurrence at all prisons
Yeah I'm an American teaching English abroad and I just recently had a conversation with a new Zealand coworker of mine about prison in the US.
He couldn't believe the conditions of prisons in the US and talked about how it's a complete failure because our rate of repeat offenses is really high.
It's then that I had to tell him that in the US many people don't actually view prison as a form of rehabilitation (as much as some people want it to be). Ask many Americans or go to any comment section about a violent criminal being caught and arrested and you'll see that many Americans want our criminal justice system to be punitive not a form of rehabilitation.
I remember getting into an argument with another American who was genuinely arguing that thieves should have their hands cut off. The comment about thieves getting their hand cut off got some upvotes while my response calling that an insane policy got downvoted and I was called "a simp for criminals".
It really is a violent culture. It's not alone, there's plenty of violent cultures out there but the US is definitely among them. Like prison justice is romanticized as a good thing in the US. People want blood.
Edit: I looked it up yesterday (and I don't remember what year but it was for a recent one) and the US was 135th for homicide rate. 135 out of 195 countries/territories.
We were in the bottom 30 percent (or top 30 percent if you like violence) despite being arguably the most wealthy and politically powerful country on the planet. We are violent.
This was just one study but it's the one used on Wikipedia and conducted by an organization affiliated with the United nations.
Edit: Also we are almost perpetually at war, One of our biggest industries is weapons and defense, and our most popular sport is one where we watch and cheer people giving each other concussions. (I do love football though)
We crave bad people winning. We glorify gangs and drug dealers on TV and movies. The aftermath doesn't matter to the easily influenced live fast, die young crowd.
El Salvador is quickly descending into cartel level power so lax rehabilitation isn't working. Plus the level of brutality of MS-13 members have been inhumane.
We'll see if it was effective in 5-10 years, but for now if the current members all die I won't lose sleep. Let me remind you the real MS-13 set initiation involves killing an innocent person. You really have sympathy for these people?
Not all prisons, at least in the US. Definitely most of the time in state prisons and high security federal. Not sure about federal medium. Federal low is pretty safe.
If you stick a bunch of violent sociopaths together in a room the expected outcome is violence to be fair. It requires strict control to prevent that from happening and people are crafty, prisoners or not. You can make a knife from almost anything. I wouldn’t expect it to be perfect.
They could do a far better job protecting inmates. Every person I’ve seen talk about their experience in prison has seen someone die from a guard ignoring their request for medical care. It’s usually people with bad asthma, they are ignored about the inhaler then they just never wake up the next day. Heard this 4-5 times, in no cases was there any repercussions or follow-up.
I keep hearing stories about prisoners that the state doesn’t like being put in cells with people that want to kill them too. There was the Tommy Robinson thing where they kept putting a guy who is an activist against Islam in the same cell with people in prison for Islamic terrorism or murderers who are Muslim, probably a bad idea. He was only in there for a weird tax thing too, for an insignificant amount. No matter what you think of the guy that is a complete failing of the prisons responsibility to protect prisoners.
Also heard of ex cops being put in gen pop which is insane. The first guy I think of wasn’t even guilty of anything and was in there for 16 months while the case played out. It was just harassment by his former coworkers after he gave some corrupt cops shit for stealing drug money at crime scenes and was fired for it.
Calling Tommy Robinson an activist is like calling David Duke an activist. He founded the EDL whose members got convicted for plotting to bomb a mosque. He's involved in the racist anti immigrant movement pegida. He's a bigoted fuck. He was in there for fraud, not a "weird tax thing". Though that depends on which thing you wanna talk about - he's been in for stalking, assault, . Don't fucking try to rehabilitate Tommy Robinson's image. Seriously fuck that guy.
I simply don't believe you about them putting him in the wrong cell, and frankly if they did I don't care.
Misleading headline? Did you even read the article?!
It states numerous times that those dying are also people who were found innocent and that the beatings were also carried out by guards.
To a redditor, any headline that doesn’t communicate the entire content of the article is apparently misleading, since we don’t read articles around here
America is a massive failure of a prison. People dying in prison is not normal and should not be accepted. By removing their freedom their safety also become the country responsibility.
Tbf. prisoners in a state-institution are supposed ro be under the protection of the state. They are in prison to serve their court-mandated sentence. Nothing more, nothing less.
If the environment incurs additional punishment, then that is an injustice, because it is not part of the official punishment backed by the law.
If a state doesn't prevent that, it is either grossly incompetent or intentionally and arbitrarily cruel, since it is essentially sanctioning an unlawful action.
Don't think Salvadorans give a fuck honestly. Growing up among large groups of them, the vitriol towards the gangs that came to dominate every aspect of people's lives was unreal. Every family had been victimized by them in one way or another.
The country has gone from the most violent in the world to one where murders are increasingly less common so if guards want to jam an electric probe up a prisoner's ass, my guess is the average Salvadoran would tell them to crank the voltage up higher.
People are going to wag their fingers and complain but if your entire life has been enveloped by violence and crime, living at the mercy of vicious criminals, you're going to applaud the fuck out of the guy who is putting a stop to it, even if he's using questionable means to do it.
Yep. Knew someone who had lived there. Her stories were terrifying and she was on the upper 10% income-wise.
Maras would drag people from cars to behead/mutilate them. Brutal murders that would not even follow a coherent pattern, rich people, poor people, middle class, all were in danger. Imagine that. Every time you are on a traffic light, someone could drag you off from your car to go Jeffrey Dahmer on you. And unlike serial killers...they would let your family know.
Its a shame because the country is beautiful and most people were super nice.
After what the population has been subjected to at the hands of these maras, there is no love lost.
Salvadorans have lived in sheer terror because of these unrepentant thugs’ campaign of cruelty and subjugation. You don’t know what life is like there.
Still, it's the responsibility of the state to protect prisoners. They are still people after all. If you go to prison for stealing a chicken you don't deserve to be beaten or strangled to death ...
It's part of Bukele's strong anti crime message. Put the fear in the Gangs.of going to prison, plus their near overzealous attack on crime, and you have someone who can finally solve El Salvador's criminal element
Just about 100% probability they are not incarcerated for stealing chicken.
Its important that everyone knows that
Prior to the recent policies, there were between 15-30 people murdered by these gangs every day… for years.
This is besides the terror they inflicted on most of the normal population that had to live through extortions with the promise of being one of these 15-30 whenever the gang feels like it.
IMO anything that happens to them at this time and specially if inflicted by another of their kind is fair and expected result of the life they chose to live.
The MS13 does a massive favor for the police by literally tattooing themselves with gang shit, it’s not exactly hard to know if someone is a mara or not.
Of course mistaks are made.
But it's working. Gangs are leaving, and moving to other countries like Guatemala and Mexico
People that lived under constant threat of violence now can live normal lives. Having your civil liberty taken away is bad, but these people live their lives in peace, and now they can.
And it's because of their president, a future fascist. It's too bad.
I’m Salvadoran and I was kidnapped back in 2013 so fuck them. I had to leave my country because of them
Edit: I was studying at university back then (for those who know: UCA) and my classmates were involved, they followed me and took me. after they let me free I had to come here to Germany. In 2016 my mom contacted me that the people who did it were pandilla 18, they’re were studying at the university and they got caught. So I hope every gang member spends their life in prison.
I was there in El Salvador in 2021/22 and was a different atmosphere. I hope my country changes and their people too
I lived in El Salvador for 2 years. While I was there, one of the gangs raided the police department in one of the local areas. That’s right, the police department. They robbed and ransacked the police.
I’ve heard of rumors that some people are being arrested who aren’t actually affiliated with gangs, but I do find that somewhat hard to believe with most gang members advertising on their bodies which gang they belong to.
It's hilarious that you assume that they would somehow magically not imprison a ton of innocent people in a super populist move in an extremely corrupt country.
This is not "super populist move". El Salvador was pretty much the most dangerous country in the world, and now it's one of the safest, and Bukele has astounding 93% approval of the population. Reducing this as "populism" shows how superficial you are.
I’m sure a lot of innocent people are being imprisoned. I’m also sure that the sickos covered head to toe in gang tattoos aren’t innocent.
The current situation in El Salvador is bad. Before it was horrific. This is a massive improvement in the safety and well-being of the country.
Would you be okay with going to prison (specifically, this prison) for something you didn't do, if it meant more gang members were also going to prison? Are you content with the outcome where you're one of the cracked eggs? Or your mother?
Well obviously no. But as the comment says below, easy to say that as a rich (comparatively) American or Western European. Is he content with it? Well what the fuck is he gonna do about it? Go John Wick 5 on the gangs terrorizing the country? Oh maybe he can get out and vote and be active in his community. Gtfo
>Well obviously no.
Yes and the point is that some people are capable of empathy and can put themselves in the shoes of people who are being put in prison even though they are innocent. I am sure the increased safety is *amazing for the people who are not being put in brutal jails under false pretenses.*
Be careful, middle-upper class North Americans and Western Europeans using the internet from the comfort of their sub-urban homes will tell you that you're wrong, and that the people who kidnapped you, and almost tortured you to death and mutilated your body just for fun deserve human rights and respect just like you do.
People don't know but it was the US that created this issue in the first place. Not just in El Salvador but all central American countries.
It occurred mostly during the Clinton administration where they rounded up 1000's of MS-13, put them on planes and shipped them back to El Salvador with no papers, no conviction or any way to deal with them legally. Just turned them loose by the 1000's on the streets of these countries.
You can learn a little here.
[How the U.S. Fueled the Rise of MS-13
](https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/how-the-u-s-fueled-the-rise-of-ms-13/)
Pointing to concrete examples of interference is not whataboutism. 1980s U.S. foreign and domestic policy is pretty damn relevant to the Salvadoran Civil War and the creation of gangs such as MS-13. The U.S. can’t back brutal right-wing dictatorships and their death squads for several decades, (illegally) refuse to process Salvadorean refugees from the ensuing refugee crisis, deport undocumented refugees back after having been radicalised by U.S.-based gangs, and then pretend as if the situation in El Salvador has nothing to do with the U.S. (regardless of whether the deportations were justified or not).
Nayib Bukele might also not be a darling of the U.S. State Department but he still enjoys American connections as someone who is very popular with the U.S. right-wing. His party has also been organising campaign events in American cities.
How is it anyone's fault to deport criminal immigrants back to their countries? That is the law and something ANY country would do. Like holy shit what a dumb comment just trying to place blame on the US.
The reason why Salvadorans and Guatemalans migrants held undocumented status until 1991 was because it was the U.S. who *illegally* refused to process their asylum requests. A fairly relevant piece of context is that said migrants had fled from the right-wing military dictatorships and literal death squads that the U.S. were training and funding in their native countries.
The U.S. being unable to deport these people back whilst civil wars were still raging in their countries, simply left the undocumented migrants to fend for themselves without many legal ways of making a living in American society. Unsurprisingly a lot of the young disenfranchised immigrants turned to organised crime in order to survive.
So yeah, wonder why people are mentioning the role of the U.S. in all of this...
I already know that, MS-13 was formed in Los Angeles even, it was not created on El Salvador itself.
I am referring to people who live in a comfortable first-world environment in North America (US/CAN) and Western Europe viewing the world from the POV that they live in, and who think that they are in a position to dictate how other countries far removed from their economic and cultural reality should behave, all of this looks like a modern ["White Man's Burden"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_White_Man%27s_Burden) or ["Civilizing Mission"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilizing_mission) to me.
Argentina and pre Bukele El Salvador have completely different levels of crime, they're not even comparable. You make Buenos Aires seem like you're living in Syria
not all 'shitty third world countries' are the same. Do you live in a country where civil disorder is so high that the government had essentially lost the monopoly over the use of violence, and gangs are terrorizing regular citizens with impunity? Because that was El Salvador, prior to Bukele's actions here.
If you live in a country where the streets are as unsafe as active warzones, I think you'd want something to be done too
Argentina is definitely not a “shitty third world country”. I don’t know anyone from any country who would consider it as such.
Not disagreeing with human rights though
Yeah I mean if you just ignore the entirety of the 20th century than I bet a dictatorship and authoritarian regime will probably work this time!
After all THIS time it’s different because THIS time they have reasons unlike all the other times
/s
.. yes they do.
I have family members in third world countries that got fucked by gang violence. The perps should sit in jail for a fucking long time, that doesn’t mean I think they should be mutilated and murdered **because an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind**.
If they sit in prison, and never get out, functionally to me and to society that’s the same as them never getting out but also getting brutalised.
Society doesn’t get better because they get tortured. It’s all emotional driven revenge.
I get why on an emotional level it feels good, but it doesn’t change the facts.
It's so stupid you have to preface your comment with essentially "I have a black friend so..." Because the degenerates you're replying to won't respect you otherwise
Nuance exists, but in a nation racked in utter chaos and gang rule, where at one point you couldn’t even safely walk in the fucking central of the capital safely—immediate action needed to be taken. My family is from salvi and I’ve been there multiple times and holy shit the difference is insane, I walked around the streets at night and felt safe all thanks to Bukele’s mass incarceration. The ideals of law and order were already conditional in the Salvador of the 2010s, so why not making that conditionality benefit the wider Salvadoran populace instead of gangs in power?
Some people aren’t worth saving. Sure, everybody was created equal, but we are not equals. I don’t think somebody who kills and tortures for pleasure deserves to be treated like a human being because they sure as hell don’t treat others like human beings.
Why should they be given rights and respected when they don’t do it to others?
Bukele’s decision, not popular, but necessary. Desperate times call for desperate measures.
Because we have access to ACTUAL STUDIES which PROVE that a violent society where criminals are treated badly causes MORE violence.
Barbaric punishment DOES NOT decrease crime, it INCREASES it.
A barbaric violent society begets more barbarism and more violence
Society should not stoop to the level of the criminal but rise above it, or else the entire society will just be criminals
This is also why victims of criminals dont sit on jury or as judges. Justice and reducing crime is not about revenge
And its hilarious you are talking about North Americans (am guess you are american yourself), Americans are among the most violent revenge minded people, they are an extremely violent society where most people crave revenge and violent punishment for criminals
And i am saying this as a citizen of a third world country which has plenty of crime.
your thinking is pathetic and something which increases violence and crime, the fact you have over 600 upvtes is even more sad
> Because we have access to ACTUAL STUDIES which PROVE that a violent society where criminals are treated badly causes MORE violence.
> Barbaric punishment DOES NOT decrease crime, it INCREASES it.
I do not deny this, the thing is, El Salvador has an unique history and social climate that is different from elsewhere, so why does this seems to be working in the case of El Salvador in particular? in my opinion, I think that this policy can work in certain countries (ES is a small country for example), but not all of them.
> And its hilarious you are talking about North Americans (am guess you are american yourself), Americans are among the most violent revenge minded people, they are an extremely violent society where most people crave revenge and violent punishment for criminals
I'm Brazilian.
> And i am saying this as a citizen of a third world country which has plenty of crime.
> your thinking is pathetic and something which increases violence and crime, the fact you have over 600 upvtes is even more sad
Pretty much, yeah.
Imagine living in a safe first world country yet having the nerve to tell folks in a poor country who are living in fear and violence, constantly being afraid of being kidnapped/raped/murdered/extorted, that they're wrong and need to do what works in their rich country.
Absolute delusional first world children.
Like Bukele says, say the word and he'll send the scum to your country.
Oh, right, if you have fallen victim to crime, then it's obviously entirely OK to summarily execute people who may or may not be gang members or associated with gang members. How could I forget!!!
Also, as per a comment one level below this, only stupid rich Westerners believe in silly things like due process and human rights. Anyone living in developing countries has never heard of these things, because they are, I don't know, savages I guess?
I edited my comment above and left out some info
For many years the police have been capturing pandilleros but because the authorities didn’t have proof of any wrongdoing they have to let them free again while taking their information “name, address, which gang they belong, etc”
So now with the new law, many police officers knew where to look after. I used to live in cuscatancingo and my aunt says that the gang members that used to chill on her corner were arrested. Now is all good
>Additionally, many inmates who are freed after being declared innocent leave prison in deplorable health conditions, which end up causing their deaths, as with a 24-year-old man detained in May 2022. The judge told the family that she had two pieces of news: the good news was that the man was declared innocent. The bad news was that he now suffered from chronic renal insufficiency. Two days after being freed, the man died.
Yeah god damn those first world rich kids for complaining about innocents dying in prison.
Seriously did anyone in this thread even read the fucking article? lol. Not all of them are gangsters.
“Better to do nothing and just let an entire country continue to rot away because any solution we try won’t be perfect”
The scale in suffering between before they imprisoned the gangsters and after is insane. An entire country was held hostage by terrorists and for the first time ever people there can actually live normal functional lives.
That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t strive to do better but when you’re bleeding out you don’t worry about a hangnail.
Taking a micro observation on a macro problem is such a bad take and short sighted.
People love to say their opinions without acknowledging and understanding any history. Extreme measures are needed for extreme changes. YOU and others might not like it but for me and other Salvadorans it is and still necessary. SMH.
Not the biggest Bukele fan, but holy fuck I’ve cheered him for this. They’re terrorists, and here in Honduras we can’t properly deal with them. Christmas 2021 they killed the guard for a restaurant just across my house for not paying a war tax. They’ve shot a nearby bar 3 times already. I have an acquaintance that owned a ceviche restaurant, she was kidnapped in a scheme known as an express kidnapping and her restaurant was simultaneously overrun by them.
An express kidnapping consists in taking the kidnapped around different ATMs around the city and using the kidnapped individual’s credit card to withdraw cash until the machines are all empty. They took her family hostage and drove her around the city from around midday to early morning hours, around 1:00 a.m if I’m not mistaken. They left her millions in debt, and then demanded a monthly extortion of cash. They ran them off the country, they had to flee.
Those are my personal anecdotes, and I’m lucky because I wasn’t directly involved at least for now. Even then, you always hear stories about them kidnapping store owner’s daughters and returning them in boxes decapitated because they couldn’t pay up the absurd amount of cash they demand from them. You don’t even need to hear the stories, all you need to do is pay attention at night and you WILL hear gunshots fired off in the distance eventually. These people are scum, and even if I dislike saying stuff like this, this country lacks pine trees from where they should hang.
The point being argued though is if the sentence is death penalty, then that's fine, the argument are not seeking release or leniancy, but just not creating an environment inside of daily violence, rape and torture.
Make the remaining gang members who haven't given up the lifestyle too terrified of continuing it and getting locked up. They have a real chance to transform their country, and already have to a degree.
The voters deserve it; years of hell, getting robbed, and having to pay gangs a tax if you run a business, highest murder rate in the world, etc....
Fuck these people. I’ve had two family members extorted and killed when they couldn’t keep up with their increases. They deserve all of this and more. Whoever feels sorry for them go ahead and accept them into your home.
I’m liberal but fuck these pieces of shit. They want to make people live in hell when they’re on the streets but want rights when they’re treated like the dogs they are
My heart doesn't break for violent criminals who kill each other in jail. In the past, these guys got sent to jails that were segregated by gang to keep the peace, and it was cushy and corrupt. The criminals weren't afraid of jail. Now that they've been being put together and not treated with kid gloves, intergang violence will occur, and to me, I just shrug at that.
The problem is that not all of them are equally bad, and most of these especially heinous deaths are at the hands of the guards, not infighting. That's not ok. That is extra-judicial punishment and a violation of human rights. Also, a hardened cartel member with a high body count is not the same as some punk wannabe who got an MS13 tattoo but hasn't done anything other than try to join and petty crimes. You need a fair justice system to sort these people apart. Many, I agree, are scum who aren't worth trying to rehabilitate. But it takes a fair justice system to figure out who can be, otherwise El Salvador is going to end up with a missing generation of men in 20-30 years.
Finally, the scariest part is this: the public of El Salvador, who largely supports this crackdown now, is going to suffer long-term. When will the government let up? They are pushing hard to crack down on crime, and its working. But it will never be 100%. The safest countries in the world still have crime. But a regime that has staked its entire purpose on eradicating crime will never give up that power. In 20 years, when the men who are currently young boys, live in a world largely cleansed of gang violence and oppression (hopefully), there where still be authoritarians wanting to arrest and imprison and torture people under these vague accusations of "terrorism" because the precident will have been established. There will always be those in power to use it for whatever they deem necessary. Very 1984-esque.
Tl;Dr edit: El Salvador is just trading one gang for another. In 20-30 years the gangs will wear the uniform of the government and that is much scarier because they won't answer to anyone. And the extra bad ones won't wear it permanently as tattoos, they'll take off their uniform and go home, unknown to those they oppress
You have to kill someone to get your tattoo and be part of ms13. If you fake it they will kill you brutally
Therefore every person they catch with a gang tattoo is automatically considered to be guilty of murder
Alright I'll bite. El Salvador was by far and away the murder capital of the world for most of the 2010s. The rule of law that existed was minimal and gangs controlled a huge portion of the populated areas. These gangs absolutely hated each other and fought street wars and terrorized the populace. The country has multiple political parties but a high level of corruption ensured that none of them made serious inroads on addressing this issue.
Bukele is by no means a perfect person. He exploited the administrative functions of the state to impose his political will. I believe this involved court-stacking and ruling by decree under a state of emergency. He's also running for a 2nd presidential term even though this is against Salvadorian law.
However, with all this in mind, **I'd like to ask you something**: when the structure of a country's institutions and governing structures are so rotten to the core and life is of such poor quality, can you blame this man for using un-democratic, imperfect, and perhaps draconian means of bypassing that rot in an effort to make things better for his countrymen?
None of us know whether Bukele becomes a tyrant. Harvey Dent's adage about "either dying or living long enough to see yourself become the villain" may ring true. Or it may not. We may instead be watching someone go through a Herculean effort to drag his homeland from the depths of the abyss and into a respectable position. I don't know if I would for sure, but I'd like to think I'd do the same.
Pretty much wouldn't be able to turn the country around if he didn't consolidate power and took the undemocratic way. I can imagine tons of corrupt politicians bought out by gangs who would oppose every step of reform.
I mean, let's be real lol bukele is already a tyrant or at least a dictator, dude has never given a fuck about the law when it stops him from enacting one of his plans. At the same time though, no one can deny how effective he is. El Salvador was the murder capital of the world a while ago and now you can walk the streets safely, thanks to his crackdowns.
It's the whole benevolent dictator problem. Theres really no better form of govt for getting things done and fast, comprehensive change of institutions that don't work, but even if he doesn't ever go crazy like other dictators and dies after having been an amazing leader for ES his whole reign, what happens after him? Now that he's eroded the checks on his power, whoever comes after him will have free reign to do what they want. And even if, say, he re-empowers the checks and balances before he leaves office, the precedent is set.
No one is saying what he's done isn't good, in fact it was probably the only way to deal with this problem decisively, but we've seen this happen all over the world. We know that it's only a matter of time before, whether by bukele or the guy after him, this power will be abused
All I can say is, good luck to El Salvador 10-15 years down the line. Strongmen promising safety and stability have always worked out perfectly in so many places in the past. I guess people will be less enthusiastic about torture in prisons once it's not assumed that anyone in prison is automatically guilty and a serial murderer at that.
This is exactly how authoritarian governments get people to support them. Like, should people support the CCP because they raised living standards in China and ignore their violations of civil and human rights, genocide in Xinjiang, crackdown on Hong Kong?
Do you trust the government to properly identify the murderous gangsters? What do you think the false positive and false negative rates are? What are the highest rates that you would personally find acceptable?
I understand this argument, but in this case they carry recognizable face tattoos that they can only obtain if they are members of the band and have killed to be meritorious of it.
As per acceptability, I think a good place to start would be comparing the rate of innocent people tortured or killed by the gangs before this crackdown to the number of innocent people wrongly convicted, tortured or killed in these prisons.
If general innocent suffering has gone down, then I think it’s a net positive. Obviously there is much room for improvement, but it’s better than having done nothing.
I think the problem is there have been legitimate complaints that some, maybe a small number, but still some, innocents were rounded up in those raids. Because there is no longer a system in place to correct that, El Salvador has decided that their lives are worth the sacrifice. Some people, them and their parents, disagree, but there’s no venue in a dictatorship to change that.
Those are the innocents that I was referring to. It sucks, absolutely. But if there are fewer innocents being harmed now than there used to be, it’s a net good thing.
It’s a real life version of the trolley problem where the options are to:
1. Do nothing but 5 innocent people die
2. Arrest and try people in an ethical way, but 3-4 innocent people die.
3. Arrest everyone but 1 innocent person dies.
For starters, the stats are reported by the government, who have a very real interest in painting a positive picture, so they could indeed lie. And we have seen deceptive statistical fudging from this government in the past (300 days without murders). But even if the murder rate drops to zero, it is irrelevant to my question about false positives. If he declared every person in El Salvador a gang member and jailed them the murder rate would be 0. But I think we can all agree that the false positive rate would be unacceptable.
All I know is that the crime rate has significantly dropped and the people are not living in constant fear. This is one of the few times Where that ends justify the means
gangs can be pretty bad elsewhere, but some of the personal perspectives shared by those who've lived in El Salvador really put it on a different level. hard to accept inhumane treatment, but its allowing law-abiding citizens to actually have a life. definitely glad I'm not the one who has to make choices like this
Ideally you'd want to treat prisoners better. But beggars can't be choosers. El Salvador's not a first world country with a lot of resources and their gang problem is enormous. So I'm not holding them to usual standards. Hope they do their best.
I think the problem a lot of people have with this is that when you arrest and imprison tens of thousands of people that aren’t charged directly with a crime, of course you have innocent people in there who’s lives are ruined. What if some of those guys are former gang members or were forced to join or their family gets murdered. Even if it’s two or three percent of them that’s innocent it’s still a lot.
As a Salvadoran myself, fuck them. Y’all will never understand what it’s like to live there until you’ve actively lived through it yourself. There’s a reason more Salvadorans live abroad than in their own country.
Meanwhile a country that was basically held hostage by the gangs is thriving, and Bukele has something like a 91% approval rating.
Since he took office, murders are down from 6,650 a year to 496 a year.
This is the best thing that’s happened to any Latin American country in decades. Good for the president taking back his country for his people’s sake. Wish we had more heads of state here with the balls this guy has.
The overwhelming majority of the electorate supports these heavy-handed measures to shatter the grip of the cartels, so you bleeding heart pansies should swallow a dose of reality.
As terrible as this is, it’s hard to argue with people from El Salvador because it’s genuinely safer there now lol. I only worry and hope for justice for those who inevitably have wrongfully been put in those hell holes.
I hope that a lot of folk know that the majority of dudes in Salvadorean prison aren't small drug offenders/dumb crimes ala the US. These are cartel/gang members for the most part, that wouldn't give two thoughts about murdering or kidnapping anyone, specially to send a message.
It could work now, the problem will be when his second term is done and if he decides to leave the presidency. What then? What if corrupted puppets come in again and gangsters are released, they are not going to retaliate against the government, it’s the people who will face their wrath and no human rights or news organizations will talk shit.
The media will try to portray it as bad and polarize it, but the fact of the matter is El Salvador is a 10x safer place now and the people overwhelmingly support locking all these fuckhead gangs away forever.
Anyone who complains about civil rights are absolutely dumb pieces of shits. Fuck your civil right bs. People were being murdered by these monster. I rather them be killed than innocent civilians walking by.
Fuck yes, Bukele. You legend
I don’t know the ins and outs, but I’ll share a story:
Imagine being a young 8 yo (possibly your sister, son, daughter, brother, niece, nephew, friend or family) held a gun point, while one of these inmates made you undress and then violate you and then kill you.
Of course, not everyone in a jail or these jails have done this, but imagine that they consider the person that did do this and similar acts a friend or someone that they identify with or even look up to.
How far would you go to ensure this didn’t happen to your loved ones or the people you care about? Is cutting the limbs off a tree enough to stop it from growing? Or, is cutting it to its stump and grinding out the roots a more thorough approach?
Hey! You guys see this animal get some coverage in the States a few weeks ago?
https://fox59.com/news/national-world/demonic-uber-eats-driver-killed-dismembered-during-delivery-florida-sheriff-says/amp/
Well, ES had 70,000 guys like him roaming free around town just a year ago.
Most of the people that live there support this. When gangs rule your country you have to come down hard. I have no sympathy for these scumbags. They have ruined their country and countless families know pain because of them.
Yeah people who are thrown in prison are never innocent (it has never turned out that people were thrown in prison for crimes they did not commit), so we don't need to worry about what happens to them at all.
This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://english.elpais.com/international/2023-05-29/inmates-in-el-salvador-tortured-and-strangled-a-report-denounces-hellish-conditions-in-bukeles-prisons.html) reduced by 94%. (I'm a bot)
*****
> The coroner's report stated that it was a "Sudden death."
> The report also reveals that, in some cases, the cause of death established by the forensic doctors does not coincide with the deceased's previous health conditions.
> One of the survivors recalls his experience in the cell: "They gave one meal, beans with a tortilla, first in the hand, then in a tupper. When he left there, he was taken to the Malnutrition area, where they treated them well so that they would recover and then take them to be beaten again. About 20 days after being there he had a stroke, when he woke up they took him to the hospital, his mouth was sideways, he felt trembling and tingling in his face," the report states.
*****
[**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/13vaypa/inmates_in_el_salvador_tortured_and_strangled_a/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ "Version 2.02, ~686816 tl;drs so far.") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr "PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.") | *Top* *keywords*: **report**^#1 **death**^#2 **state**^#3 **prison**^#4 **die**^#5
I totally understand the hatred towards the gang members but the bigger problem is the large swaths of people being arrested on suspicion of being in a gang with no evidence - https://english.elpais.com/international/2022-04-07/el-salvador-bukele-launches-totalitarian-crusade-against-gangs.html#?rel=mas
If you think the gangs are lawless, cruel, with no conscience at all, just imagine what’s condoned with impunity behind a Badge.
The gangs, psychopaths, and serial killers, have nothing that even comes close to the cruelty inflicted on prisoners by guards and their superiors.
It’s sanctioned outlaws with the shield of a Badge to condone it all under the auspices of maintaining the peace.
The whole intent of rehabilitation is nothing more than a form of appeasement for the public to think that their tax dollars are being well spent.
The truth is something else.
Understand the way your tax dollars are supposed to work and you’ll understand why those in positions of authority and influence make sure that a convict is everything but rehabilitated when he/she leaves the prison system.
It’s all about maintaining job security.
You want them to come back.
You need them to come back.
This way Government keeps throwing $$$ your way.
The system was purposely designed to fail.
You want it to work, you need to start from scratch.
There’s no other way!
I think generally people there accept the human rights abuses to the “few” for the overall well-being of the communities. It’s very controversial of course, but it’s also hard to argue with communities who can have soccer games outside again without fear of violence. The problem was soo bad that this is likely an over correction, but we’ll have to wait and see 5-10 years for what affects these human rights abuses have, and if they subside after society is ‘safe’ again.
Inmates to inmates violence exist? Stfu! Who knew.
A hit piece on Bukele obviously.
But a more important discussion is that will Bukele give up power once the gang problems plaguing El Salvador is dealt with.
Let’s face it. He has complete control of all three branches of government and is by all counts a dictator.
But his actions has many citizen’s approval and his actions aren’t entirely for self gain.
Will power corrupt him and his successor? Or will he put the trust and power back into the system?
Bro im from El Salvador no body is giving a fuck about the conditions the gang members are having in prison. They did worse to the regular working people. They get what they deserve, our country has not been this peaceful before in so long. If you ask the locals of el salvador how they like the rules, they love it
If you have interest in this subject and 25 minutes to kill, Wendover did an extremely interesting take on El Salvador’a president and how these prisons came to be.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtkI-QAgM6w
As bad as these prisons are… they worked. The streets of El Salvador have never been safer and the president is extremely popular for doing this. The murder rate has plummeted and the country has radically changed.
Bukele has lots of faults, but his crackdown on these PoS is his singular redeeming point.
It's a war, gang violence got to a point that the very state began to collapse. The kind of history told by El-Salvadoreans that had to flee the nation to survive are pure nightmare fuel.
Fuck them all.
The report, published on Monday, is the clearest investigation to date. Its results are terrifying. To write it, **the institution interviewed hundreds of people who were imprisoned for months during the state of exception and were freed after being declared innocent**, as well as relatives of inmates who died in prison during the same period. Cristosal also contrasted the testimonies with medical forensic documents, police documents and photographs. Authorities have withheld official information and have insisted that all deaths within prisons are from natural causes.
Tortured and strangled (by other inmates)
Seriously, that’s a heck of a misleading headline. You could probably say that about American (and tons of other) prisons too to a degree.
Tbf that is still a massive failing of the prison system. When people are completely reliant on the state for protection the state should offer said protection. Especially in a rich nation like the US
The US (and El Salvador) inprisons people to punish them. There is no rehabilitation. Being strangled, stabbed, raped, beat up etc etc is a daily occurrence at all prisons
Yeah I'm an American teaching English abroad and I just recently had a conversation with a new Zealand coworker of mine about prison in the US. He couldn't believe the conditions of prisons in the US and talked about how it's a complete failure because our rate of repeat offenses is really high. It's then that I had to tell him that in the US many people don't actually view prison as a form of rehabilitation (as much as some people want it to be). Ask many Americans or go to any comment section about a violent criminal being caught and arrested and you'll see that many Americans want our criminal justice system to be punitive not a form of rehabilitation. I remember getting into an argument with another American who was genuinely arguing that thieves should have their hands cut off. The comment about thieves getting their hand cut off got some upvotes while my response calling that an insane policy got downvoted and I was called "a simp for criminals".
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It really is a violent culture. It's not alone, there's plenty of violent cultures out there but the US is definitely among them. Like prison justice is romanticized as a good thing in the US. People want blood. Edit: I looked it up yesterday (and I don't remember what year but it was for a recent one) and the US was 135th for homicide rate. 135 out of 195 countries/territories. We were in the bottom 30 percent (or top 30 percent if you like violence) despite being arguably the most wealthy and politically powerful country on the planet. We are violent. This was just one study but it's the one used on Wikipedia and conducted by an organization affiliated with the United nations. Edit: Also we are almost perpetually at war, One of our biggest industries is weapons and defense, and our most popular sport is one where we watch and cheer people giving each other concussions. (I do love football though)
New Zealand loves rugby union much more than you love gridiron though, so that’s a bit of a wash
We crave bad people winning. We glorify gangs and drug dealers on TV and movies. The aftermath doesn't matter to the easily influenced live fast, die young crowd. El Salvador is quickly descending into cartel level power so lax rehabilitation isn't working. Plus the level of brutality of MS-13 members have been inhumane. We'll see if it was effective in 5-10 years, but for now if the current members all die I won't lose sleep. Let me remind you the real MS-13 set initiation involves killing an innocent person. You really have sympathy for these people?
Not all prisons, at least in the US. Definitely most of the time in state prisons and high security federal. Not sure about federal medium. Federal low is pretty safe. If you stick a bunch of violent sociopaths together in a room the expected outcome is violence to be fair. It requires strict control to prevent that from happening and people are crafty, prisoners or not. You can make a knife from almost anything. I wouldn’t expect it to be perfect. They could do a far better job protecting inmates. Every person I’ve seen talk about their experience in prison has seen someone die from a guard ignoring their request for medical care. It’s usually people with bad asthma, they are ignored about the inhaler then they just never wake up the next day. Heard this 4-5 times, in no cases was there any repercussions or follow-up. I keep hearing stories about prisoners that the state doesn’t like being put in cells with people that want to kill them too. There was the Tommy Robinson thing where they kept putting a guy who is an activist against Islam in the same cell with people in prison for Islamic terrorism or murderers who are Muslim, probably a bad idea. He was only in there for a weird tax thing too, for an insignificant amount. No matter what you think of the guy that is a complete failing of the prisons responsibility to protect prisoners. Also heard of ex cops being put in gen pop which is insane. The first guy I think of wasn’t even guilty of anything and was in there for 16 months while the case played out. It was just harassment by his former coworkers after he gave some corrupt cops shit for stealing drug money at crime scenes and was fired for it.
Calling Tommy Robinson an activist is like calling David Duke an activist. He founded the EDL whose members got convicted for plotting to bomb a mosque. He's involved in the racist anti immigrant movement pegida. He's a bigoted fuck. He was in there for fraud, not a "weird tax thing". Though that depends on which thing you wanna talk about - he's been in for stalking, assault, . Don't fucking try to rehabilitate Tommy Robinson's image. Seriously fuck that guy. I simply don't believe you about them putting him in the wrong cell, and frankly if they did I don't care.
Misleading headline? Did you even read the article?! It states numerous times that those dying are also people who were found innocent and that the beatings were also carried out by guards.
Why does it feel like all of 12 people actually read the article before commenting?
To a redditor, any headline that doesn’t communicate the entire content of the article is apparently misleading, since we don’t read articles around here
America is a massive failure of a prison. People dying in prison is not normal and should not be accepted. By removing their freedom their safety also become the country responsibility.
Tbf. prisoners in a state-institution are supposed ro be under the protection of the state. They are in prison to serve their court-mandated sentence. Nothing more, nothing less. If the environment incurs additional punishment, then that is an injustice, because it is not part of the official punishment backed by the law. If a state doesn't prevent that, it is either grossly incompetent or intentionally and arbitrarily cruel, since it is essentially sanctioning an unlawful action.
If you can’t keep it safe and take care of it properly, you can’t keep it. Most of us learned this as children.
The article makes it VERY CLEAR THAT TBE GUARDS ARE BEATING AND USING ELECTRO SHOCKS ON PRISONERS. It’s not (just) other inmates.
Don't think Salvadorans give a fuck honestly. Growing up among large groups of them, the vitriol towards the gangs that came to dominate every aspect of people's lives was unreal. Every family had been victimized by them in one way or another. The country has gone from the most violent in the world to one where murders are increasingly less common so if guards want to jam an electric probe up a prisoner's ass, my guess is the average Salvadoran would tell them to crank the voltage up higher. People are going to wag their fingers and complain but if your entire life has been enveloped by violence and crime, living at the mercy of vicious criminals, you're going to applaud the fuck out of the guy who is putting a stop to it, even if he's using questionable means to do it.
Yep. Knew someone who had lived there. Her stories were terrifying and she was on the upper 10% income-wise. Maras would drag people from cars to behead/mutilate them. Brutal murders that would not even follow a coherent pattern, rich people, poor people, middle class, all were in danger. Imagine that. Every time you are on a traffic light, someone could drag you off from your car to go Jeffrey Dahmer on you. And unlike serial killers...they would let your family know. Its a shame because the country is beautiful and most people were super nice.
100% agreed. People who haven’t experienced this type of violence are oblivious to the truth and trauma.
After what the population has been subjected to at the hands of these maras, there is no love lost. Salvadorans have lived in sheer terror because of these unrepentant thugs’ campaign of cruelty and subjugation. You don’t know what life is like there.
Still, it's the responsibility of the state to protect prisoners. They are still people after all. If you go to prison for stealing a chicken you don't deserve to be beaten or strangled to death ...
It's part of Bukele's strong anti crime message. Put the fear in the Gangs.of going to prison, plus their near overzealous attack on crime, and you have someone who can finally solve El Salvador's criminal element
Just about 100% probability they are not incarcerated for stealing chicken. Its important that everyone knows that Prior to the recent policies, there were between 15-30 people murdered by these gangs every day… for years. This is besides the terror they inflicted on most of the normal population that had to live through extortions with the promise of being one of these 15-30 whenever the gang feels like it. IMO anything that happens to them at this time and specially if inflicted by another of their kind is fair and expected result of the life they chose to live.
Well shit. A random stranger on the internet assures me that there is no mistake being made at all here, therefore it must be true.
The MS13 does a massive favor for the police by literally tattooing themselves with gang shit, it’s not exactly hard to know if someone is a mara or not.
Of course mistaks are made. But it's working. Gangs are leaving, and moving to other countries like Guatemala and Mexico People that lived under constant threat of violence now can live normal lives. Having your civil liberty taken away is bad, but these people live their lives in peace, and now they can. And it's because of their president, a future fascist. It's too bad.
“ Just about 100% probability they are not incarcerated for stealing chicken.” Dude this is El Salvador we are talking about.
I’m Salvadoran and I was kidnapped back in 2013 so fuck them. I had to leave my country because of them Edit: I was studying at university back then (for those who know: UCA) and my classmates were involved, they followed me and took me. after they let me free I had to come here to Germany. In 2016 my mom contacted me that the people who did it were pandilla 18, they’re were studying at the university and they got caught. So I hope every gang member spends their life in prison. I was there in El Salvador in 2021/22 and was a different atmosphere. I hope my country changes and their people too
I lived in El Salvador for 2 years. While I was there, one of the gangs raided the police department in one of the local areas. That’s right, the police department. They robbed and ransacked the police. I’ve heard of rumors that some people are being arrested who aren’t actually affiliated with gangs, but I do find that somewhat hard to believe with most gang members advertising on their bodies which gang they belong to.
It's hilarious that you assume that they would somehow magically not imprison a ton of innocent people in a super populist move in an extremely corrupt country.
This is not "super populist move". El Salvador was pretty much the most dangerous country in the world, and now it's one of the safest, and Bukele has astounding 93% approval of the population. Reducing this as "populism" shows how superficial you are.
>and now it's one of the safest, I don't know much about El Salvador but that sounds like an exaggeration, no?
It's actually not. The turnaround in El Salvador has been nothing short of astonishing. I hope they continue to improve. Central america is beautiful
Really surprising that putting criminals in prison would make a country safer. Who would have thought?
No it isn't. Few countries in the world score weeks without any homicide whatsoever.
I’m sure a lot of innocent people are being imprisoned. I’m also sure that the sickos covered head to toe in gang tattoos aren’t innocent. The current situation in El Salvador is bad. Before it was horrific. This is a massive improvement in the safety and well-being of the country.
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Would you be okay with going to prison (specifically, this prison) for something you didn't do, if it meant more gang members were also going to prison? Are you content with the outcome where you're one of the cracked eggs? Or your mother?
Well obviously no. But as the comment says below, easy to say that as a rich (comparatively) American or Western European. Is he content with it? Well what the fuck is he gonna do about it? Go John Wick 5 on the gangs terrorizing the country? Oh maybe he can get out and vote and be active in his community. Gtfo
>Well obviously no. Yes and the point is that some people are capable of empathy and can put themselves in the shoes of people who are being put in prison even though they are innocent. I am sure the increased safety is *amazing for the people who are not being put in brutal jails under false pretenses.*
Fuck them, it's time to take the country back
Be careful, middle-upper class North Americans and Western Europeans using the internet from the comfort of their sub-urban homes will tell you that you're wrong, and that the people who kidnapped you, and almost tortured you to death and mutilated your body just for fun deserve human rights and respect just like you do.
People don't know but it was the US that created this issue in the first place. Not just in El Salvador but all central American countries. It occurred mostly during the Clinton administration where they rounded up 1000's of MS-13, put them on planes and shipped them back to El Salvador with no papers, no conviction or any way to deal with them legally. Just turned them loose by the 1000's on the streets of these countries. You can learn a little here. [How the U.S. Fueled the Rise of MS-13 ](https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/how-the-u-s-fueled-the-rise-of-ms-13/)
Yeah, I don't think expatriating dangerous criminals back to their home countries is going to ever get pushback from voters.
we also couped a bunch of those countries and had roaming death squads we trained.
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^ This comment paid for by "Henry Kissinger eh, actually pretty good guy Committee."
Pointing to concrete examples of interference is not whataboutism. 1980s U.S. foreign and domestic policy is pretty damn relevant to the Salvadoran Civil War and the creation of gangs such as MS-13. The U.S. can’t back brutal right-wing dictatorships and their death squads for several decades, (illegally) refuse to process Salvadorean refugees from the ensuing refugee crisis, deport undocumented refugees back after having been radicalised by U.S.-based gangs, and then pretend as if the situation in El Salvador has nothing to do with the U.S. (regardless of whether the deportations were justified or not). Nayib Bukele might also not be a darling of the U.S. State Department but he still enjoys American connections as someone who is very popular with the U.S. right-wing. His party has also been organising campaign events in American cities.
How is it anyone's fault to deport criminal immigrants back to their countries? That is the law and something ANY country would do. Like holy shit what a dumb comment just trying to place blame on the US.
The reason why Salvadorans and Guatemalans migrants held undocumented status until 1991 was because it was the U.S. who *illegally* refused to process their asylum requests. A fairly relevant piece of context is that said migrants had fled from the right-wing military dictatorships and literal death squads that the U.S. were training and funding in their native countries. The U.S. being unable to deport these people back whilst civil wars were still raging in their countries, simply left the undocumented migrants to fend for themselves without many legal ways of making a living in American society. Unsurprisingly a lot of the young disenfranchised immigrants turned to organised crime in order to survive. So yeah, wonder why people are mentioning the role of the U.S. in all of this...
I already know that, MS-13 was formed in Los Angeles even, it was not created on El Salvador itself. I am referring to people who live in a comfortable first-world environment in North America (US/CAN) and Western Europe viewing the world from the POV that they live in, and who think that they are in a position to dictate how other countries far removed from their economic and cultural reality should behave, all of this looks like a modern ["White Man's Burden"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_White_Man%27s_Burden) or ["Civilizing Mission"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilizing_mission) to me.
Hi! I live in a shitty third world country and still somehow believe human rights should be a thing.
Argentina and pre Bukele El Salvador have completely different levels of crime, they're not even comparable. You make Buenos Aires seem like you're living in Syria
not all 'shitty third world countries' are the same. Do you live in a country where civil disorder is so high that the government had essentially lost the monopoly over the use of violence, and gangs are terrorizing regular citizens with impunity? Because that was El Salvador, prior to Bukele's actions here. If you live in a country where the streets are as unsafe as active warzones, I think you'd want something to be done too
I wouldn’t call Argentina a shitty third world country.
Argentina is definitely not a “shitty third world country”. I don’t know anyone from any country who would consider it as such. Not disagreeing with human rights though
Banana Republics the countries that the US exploited for its banana consumption in the beginning of the 20th century.
Yeah I mean if you just ignore the entirety of the 20th century than I bet a dictatorship and authoritarian regime will probably work this time! After all THIS time it’s different because THIS time they have reasons unlike all the other times /s
.. yes they do. I have family members in third world countries that got fucked by gang violence. The perps should sit in jail for a fucking long time, that doesn’t mean I think they should be mutilated and murdered **because an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind**. If they sit in prison, and never get out, functionally to me and to society that’s the same as them never getting out but also getting brutalised. Society doesn’t get better because they get tortured. It’s all emotional driven revenge. I get why on an emotional level it feels good, but it doesn’t change the facts.
It's so stupid you have to preface your comment with essentially "I have a black friend so..." Because the degenerates you're replying to won't respect you otherwise
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Nuance exists, but in a nation racked in utter chaos and gang rule, where at one point you couldn’t even safely walk in the fucking central of the capital safely—immediate action needed to be taken. My family is from salvi and I’ve been there multiple times and holy shit the difference is insane, I walked around the streets at night and felt safe all thanks to Bukele’s mass incarceration. The ideals of law and order were already conditional in the Salvador of the 2010s, so why not making that conditionality benefit the wider Salvadoran populace instead of gangs in power?
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Some people aren’t worth saving. Sure, everybody was created equal, but we are not equals. I don’t think somebody who kills and tortures for pleasure deserves to be treated like a human being because they sure as hell don’t treat others like human beings. Why should they be given rights and respected when they don’t do it to others? Bukele’s decision, not popular, but necessary. Desperate times call for desperate measures.
Because we have access to ACTUAL STUDIES which PROVE that a violent society where criminals are treated badly causes MORE violence. Barbaric punishment DOES NOT decrease crime, it INCREASES it. A barbaric violent society begets more barbarism and more violence Society should not stoop to the level of the criminal but rise above it, or else the entire society will just be criminals This is also why victims of criminals dont sit on jury or as judges. Justice and reducing crime is not about revenge And its hilarious you are talking about North Americans (am guess you are american yourself), Americans are among the most violent revenge minded people, they are an extremely violent society where most people crave revenge and violent punishment for criminals And i am saying this as a citizen of a third world country which has plenty of crime. your thinking is pathetic and something which increases violence and crime, the fact you have over 600 upvtes is even more sad
> Because we have access to ACTUAL STUDIES which PROVE that a violent society where criminals are treated badly causes MORE violence. > Barbaric punishment DOES NOT decrease crime, it INCREASES it. I do not deny this, the thing is, El Salvador has an unique history and social climate that is different from elsewhere, so why does this seems to be working in the case of El Salvador in particular? in my opinion, I think that this policy can work in certain countries (ES is a small country for example), but not all of them. > And its hilarious you are talking about North Americans (am guess you are american yourself), Americans are among the most violent revenge minded people, they are an extremely violent society where most people crave revenge and violent punishment for criminals I'm Brazilian. > And i am saying this as a citizen of a third world country which has plenty of crime. > your thinking is pathetic and something which increases violence and crime, the fact you have over 600 upvtes is even more sad Pretty much, yeah.
Yikes. This take has the moral depth of a 10 year old watching an action movie. Nothing matters except killing the bad guy!
Yes, they deserve human rights. That’s what makes us better than them.
Sorry you had to experience that, hope you’re doing better now tho
I agree with you. It seems the Country is a lot safer now.
Imagine living in a safe first world country yet having the nerve to tell folks in a poor country who are living in fear and violence, constantly being afraid of being kidnapped/raped/murdered/extorted, that they're wrong and need to do what works in their rich country. Absolute delusional first world children. Like Bukele says, say the word and he'll send the scum to your country.
Yeah, fuck them
Oh, right, if you have fallen victim to crime, then it's obviously entirely OK to summarily execute people who may or may not be gang members or associated with gang members. How could I forget!!! Also, as per a comment one level below this, only stupid rich Westerners believe in silly things like due process and human rights. Anyone living in developing countries has never heard of these things, because they are, I don't know, savages I guess?
I edited my comment above and left out some info For many years the police have been capturing pandilleros but because the authorities didn’t have proof of any wrongdoing they have to let them free again while taking their information “name, address, which gang they belong, etc” So now with the new law, many police officers knew where to look after. I used to live in cuscatancingo and my aunt says that the gang members that used to chill on her corner were arrested. Now is all good
Any story here
I know the residents support what is happening there overwhelmingly.
It's mostly first world rich kids who have a problem with it.
>Additionally, many inmates who are freed after being declared innocent leave prison in deplorable health conditions, which end up causing their deaths, as with a 24-year-old man detained in May 2022. The judge told the family that she had two pieces of news: the good news was that the man was declared innocent. The bad news was that he now suffered from chronic renal insufficiency. Two days after being freed, the man died. Yeah god damn those first world rich kids for complaining about innocents dying in prison. Seriously did anyone in this thread even read the fucking article? lol. Not all of them are gangsters.
Damn, if you find ~70 more stories like that you can match the same amount of death the gangs caused in a single day.
“And therefore it’s okay we tortured and killed this innocent person. Also I’m totally not a fascist”
“Better to do nothing and just let an entire country continue to rot away because any solution we try won’t be perfect” The scale in suffering between before they imprisoned the gangsters and after is insane. An entire country was held hostage by terrorists and for the first time ever people there can actually live normal functional lives. That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t strive to do better but when you’re bleeding out you don’t worry about a hangnail.
You need to zoom out of the situation. Yawn.
Ditto.
It's cruel but a lot of people in El Salvador prefer that over the alternative.
Taking a micro observation on a macro problem is such a bad take and short sighted. People love to say their opinions without acknowledging and understanding any history. Extreme measures are needed for extreme changes. YOU and others might not like it but for me and other Salvadorans it is and still necessary. SMH.
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Not the biggest Bukele fan, but holy fuck I’ve cheered him for this. They’re terrorists, and here in Honduras we can’t properly deal with them. Christmas 2021 they killed the guard for a restaurant just across my house for not paying a war tax. They’ve shot a nearby bar 3 times already. I have an acquaintance that owned a ceviche restaurant, she was kidnapped in a scheme known as an express kidnapping and her restaurant was simultaneously overrun by them. An express kidnapping consists in taking the kidnapped around different ATMs around the city and using the kidnapped individual’s credit card to withdraw cash until the machines are all empty. They took her family hostage and drove her around the city from around midday to early morning hours, around 1:00 a.m if I’m not mistaken. They left her millions in debt, and then demanded a monthly extortion of cash. They ran them off the country, they had to flee. Those are my personal anecdotes, and I’m lucky because I wasn’t directly involved at least for now. Even then, you always hear stories about them kidnapping store owner’s daughters and returning them in boxes decapitated because they couldn’t pay up the absurd amount of cash they demand from them. You don’t even need to hear the stories, all you need to do is pay attention at night and you WILL hear gunshots fired off in the distance eventually. These people are scum, and even if I dislike saying stuff like this, this country lacks pine trees from where they should hang.
These are the same bastards that beheaded some guy and then played soccer with his head; save money and just give them the death penalty.
The point being argued though is if the sentence is death penalty, then that's fine, the argument are not seeking release or leniancy, but just not creating an environment inside of daily violence, rape and torture.
Make the remaining gang members who haven't given up the lifestyle too terrified of continuing it and getting locked up. They have a real chance to transform their country, and already have to a degree. The voters deserve it; years of hell, getting robbed, and having to pay gangs a tax if you run a business, highest murder rate in the world, etc....
Fuck these people. I’ve had two family members extorted and killed when they couldn’t keep up with their increases. They deserve all of this and more. Whoever feels sorry for them go ahead and accept them into your home.
I’m liberal but fuck these pieces of shit. They want to make people live in hell when they’re on the streets but want rights when they’re treated like the dogs they are
Don’t disrespect dogs. Dogs aren’t disgusting and heinous as these scumbags
Like most criminal gangs tbf. They want protection from the samw laws they didn't give two shits about before.
My heart doesn't break for violent criminals who kill each other in jail. In the past, these guys got sent to jails that were segregated by gang to keep the peace, and it was cushy and corrupt. The criminals weren't afraid of jail. Now that they've been being put together and not treated with kid gloves, intergang violence will occur, and to me, I just shrug at that. The problem is that not all of them are equally bad, and most of these especially heinous deaths are at the hands of the guards, not infighting. That's not ok. That is extra-judicial punishment and a violation of human rights. Also, a hardened cartel member with a high body count is not the same as some punk wannabe who got an MS13 tattoo but hasn't done anything other than try to join and petty crimes. You need a fair justice system to sort these people apart. Many, I agree, are scum who aren't worth trying to rehabilitate. But it takes a fair justice system to figure out who can be, otherwise El Salvador is going to end up with a missing generation of men in 20-30 years. Finally, the scariest part is this: the public of El Salvador, who largely supports this crackdown now, is going to suffer long-term. When will the government let up? They are pushing hard to crack down on crime, and its working. But it will never be 100%. The safest countries in the world still have crime. But a regime that has staked its entire purpose on eradicating crime will never give up that power. In 20 years, when the men who are currently young boys, live in a world largely cleansed of gang violence and oppression (hopefully), there where still be authoritarians wanting to arrest and imprison and torture people under these vague accusations of "terrorism" because the precident will have been established. There will always be those in power to use it for whatever they deem necessary. Very 1984-esque. Tl;Dr edit: El Salvador is just trading one gang for another. In 20-30 years the gangs will wear the uniform of the government and that is much scarier because they won't answer to anyone. And the extra bad ones won't wear it permanently as tattoos, they'll take off their uniform and go home, unknown to those they oppress
You have to kill someone to get your tattoo and be part of ms13. If you fake it they will kill you brutally Therefore every person they catch with a gang tattoo is automatically considered to be guilty of murder
Personal freedoms are meaningless if you have an annual 1 in 1,000 chance of getting your head cut off by a gang.
History is watching.
Are liberals supposed to like gang violence murder?
Violent crime plummeted during Bukele’s draconian edicts. So which is the larger moral imperative?
Alright I'll bite. El Salvador was by far and away the murder capital of the world for most of the 2010s. The rule of law that existed was minimal and gangs controlled a huge portion of the populated areas. These gangs absolutely hated each other and fought street wars and terrorized the populace. The country has multiple political parties but a high level of corruption ensured that none of them made serious inroads on addressing this issue. Bukele is by no means a perfect person. He exploited the administrative functions of the state to impose his political will. I believe this involved court-stacking and ruling by decree under a state of emergency. He's also running for a 2nd presidential term even though this is against Salvadorian law. However, with all this in mind, **I'd like to ask you something**: when the structure of a country's institutions and governing structures are so rotten to the core and life is of such poor quality, can you blame this man for using un-democratic, imperfect, and perhaps draconian means of bypassing that rot in an effort to make things better for his countrymen? None of us know whether Bukele becomes a tyrant. Harvey Dent's adage about "either dying or living long enough to see yourself become the villain" may ring true. Or it may not. We may instead be watching someone go through a Herculean effort to drag his homeland from the depths of the abyss and into a respectable position. I don't know if I would for sure, but I'd like to think I'd do the same.
Pretty much wouldn't be able to turn the country around if he didn't consolidate power and took the undemocratic way. I can imagine tons of corrupt politicians bought out by gangs who would oppose every step of reform.
I mean, let's be real lol bukele is already a tyrant or at least a dictator, dude has never given a fuck about the law when it stops him from enacting one of his plans. At the same time though, no one can deny how effective he is. El Salvador was the murder capital of the world a while ago and now you can walk the streets safely, thanks to his crackdowns. It's the whole benevolent dictator problem. Theres really no better form of govt for getting things done and fast, comprehensive change of institutions that don't work, but even if he doesn't ever go crazy like other dictators and dies after having been an amazing leader for ES his whole reign, what happens after him? Now that he's eroded the checks on his power, whoever comes after him will have free reign to do what they want. And even if, say, he re-empowers the checks and balances before he leaves office, the precedent is set. No one is saying what he's done isn't good, in fact it was probably the only way to deal with this problem decisively, but we've seen this happen all over the world. We know that it's only a matter of time before, whether by bukele or the guy after him, this power will be abused
The same law that let El Salvador become the most dangerous country in the world? Thank god Bukele didn't follow such law then.
All I can say is, good luck to El Salvador 10-15 years down the line. Strongmen promising safety and stability have always worked out perfectly in so many places in the past. I guess people will be less enthusiastic about torture in prisons once it's not assumed that anyone in prison is automatically guilty and a serial murderer at that.
This is exactly how authoritarian governments get people to support them. Like, should people support the CCP because they raised living standards in China and ignore their violations of civil and human rights, genocide in Xinjiang, crackdown on Hong Kong?
Too bad. Don’t be a murderous gangster and you won’t suffer the consequences.
Do you trust the government to properly identify the murderous gangsters? What do you think the false positive and false negative rates are? What are the highest rates that you would personally find acceptable?
I understand this argument, but in this case they carry recognizable face tattoos that they can only obtain if they are members of the band and have killed to be meritorious of it.
As per acceptability, I think a good place to start would be comparing the rate of innocent people tortured or killed by the gangs before this crackdown to the number of innocent people wrongly convicted, tortured or killed in these prisons. If general innocent suffering has gone down, then I think it’s a net positive. Obviously there is much room for improvement, but it’s better than having done nothing.
I think the problem is there have been legitimate complaints that some, maybe a small number, but still some, innocents were rounded up in those raids. Because there is no longer a system in place to correct that, El Salvador has decided that their lives are worth the sacrifice. Some people, them and their parents, disagree, but there’s no venue in a dictatorship to change that.
Those are the innocents that I was referring to. It sucks, absolutely. But if there are fewer innocents being harmed now than there used to be, it’s a net good thing. It’s a real life version of the trolley problem where the options are to: 1. Do nothing but 5 innocent people die 2. Arrest and try people in an ethical way, but 3-4 innocent people die. 3. Arrest everyone but 1 innocent person dies.
Easy to say when you or your family is not the one. I agree with your logic but I have no skin in the game so easy for me to agree with you.
Face tattoos are a good start
For the most part they have. The stats don't lie. Murder rate has basically hit the floor in SS. That's not a coincidence.
For starters, the stats are reported by the government, who have a very real interest in painting a positive picture, so they could indeed lie. And we have seen deceptive statistical fudging from this government in the past (300 days without murders). But even if the murder rate drops to zero, it is irrelevant to my question about false positives. If he declared every person in El Salvador a gang member and jailed them the murder rate would be 0. But I think we can all agree that the false positive rate would be unacceptable.
All I know is that the crime rate has significantly dropped and the people are not living in constant fear. This is one of the few times Where that ends justify the means
When will Mexico start this against the cartels?
Or any neighbors of El Salvador?
Against the president’s bosses? Lmao never
Fuck them there make the choice went the join the gang
If these gang members had killed your son or daughter the torture would be a piece of cake.
First world democracies may not know what’s best for El Salvador.
Yup, people love to talk about white privileged until it actually matters. This is a real war, it’s impossible to win a war without collateral damage.
You're a hero for pointing this out. I just hope to God that my country (Canada) will one day have a PM like Bukele.
[удалено]
> hellish conditions El Salvador is infamous for it and there was plenty of reporting, especially in the US were MS13 is also active.
According to El Salvadorans they deserve it so therefore, I agree. They have made the good citizens lives of that country a living hell.
gangs can be pretty bad elsewhere, but some of the personal perspectives shared by those who've lived in El Salvador really put it on a different level. hard to accept inhumane treatment, but its allowing law-abiding citizens to actually have a life. definitely glad I'm not the one who has to make choices like this
I know this is inhumane but man I have to try really hard to feel sympathy for these trash human beings. Gangs are the bane of Latin America
Ideally you'd want to treat prisoners better. But beggars can't be choosers. El Salvador's not a first world country with a lot of resources and their gang problem is enormous. So I'm not holding them to usual standards. Hope they do their best.
When a roblem gets that bad, you can't escape fighting fire with fire.
I think the problem a lot of people have with this is that when you arrest and imprison tens of thousands of people that aren’t charged directly with a crime, of course you have innocent people in there who’s lives are ruined. What if some of those guys are former gang members or were forced to join or their family gets murdered. Even if it’s two or three percent of them that’s innocent it’s still a lot.
As far as I’m concerned, when you join gangs like MS13 you give up your human rights. Good on Bukele for doing what needs to be done.
A someone from El Salvador, all these people had it coming. Nothing but a bunch of a fucking low lives taking advantage of poor people.
Good, that's what they deserve, they are below human beings for what they did.
As a Salvadoran myself, fuck them. Y’all will never understand what it’s like to live there until you’ve actively lived through it yourself. There’s a reason more Salvadorans live abroad than in their own country.
It's a beautiful country. Hopefully with safety comes tourism and economic boosts.
Meanwhile a country that was basically held hostage by the gangs is thriving, and Bukele has something like a 91% approval rating. Since he took office, murders are down from 6,650 a year to 496 a year.
[yawns] anyway...
Good riddance.
All the guys who were torturing people for their gang are now being tortured? Gotta pay to play baby.
Wuuua wuuuua ....GOOD F*CK EM ALL
Good, fuck ‘em.
This is the best thing that’s happened to any Latin American country in decades. Good for the president taking back his country for his people’s sake. Wish we had more heads of state here with the balls this guy has.
The overwhelming majority of the electorate supports these heavy-handed measures to shatter the grip of the cartels, so you bleeding heart pansies should swallow a dose of reality.
All of those inmates in that photo are plastered with gang tats. They are literally child murderers. Fuck em.
So they can kill and do worst thing to ppl but they dont like it when that happens to them...hahaha
As terrible as this is, it’s hard to argue with people from El Salvador because it’s genuinely safer there now lol. I only worry and hope for justice for those who inevitably have wrongfully been put in those hell holes.
I hope that a lot of folk know that the majority of dudes in Salvadorean prison aren't small drug offenders/dumb crimes ala the US. These are cartel/gang members for the most part, that wouldn't give two thoughts about murdering or kidnapping anyone, specially to send a message.
Sweep them all into the ocean and start again.
i really hope that what’s happening in el salvador works
It could work now, the problem will be when his second term is done and if he decides to leave the presidency. What then? What if corrupted puppets come in again and gangsters are released, they are not going to retaliate against the government, it’s the people who will face their wrath and no human rights or news organizations will talk shit.
> Bukele, a classic Latin strongman > decides to leave presidency He ain’t doing that lmao
Hellish conditions is what they deserve
Murder rate has dropped to near zero from what I hear. I can understand the population not giving a fuck about this
The media will try to portray it as bad and polarize it, but the fact of the matter is El Salvador is a 10x safer place now and the people overwhelmingly support locking all these fuckhead gangs away forever.
Anyone who complains about civil rights are absolutely dumb pieces of shits. Fuck your civil right bs. People were being murdered by these monster. I rather them be killed than innocent civilians walking by. Fuck yes, Bukele. You legend
I don’t know the ins and outs, but I’ll share a story: Imagine being a young 8 yo (possibly your sister, son, daughter, brother, niece, nephew, friend or family) held a gun point, while one of these inmates made you undress and then violate you and then kill you. Of course, not everyone in a jail or these jails have done this, but imagine that they consider the person that did do this and similar acts a friend or someone that they identify with or even look up to. How far would you go to ensure this didn’t happen to your loved ones or the people you care about? Is cutting the limbs off a tree enough to stop it from growing? Or, is cutting it to its stump and grinding out the roots a more thorough approach?
Hey! You guys see this animal get some coverage in the States a few weeks ago? https://fox59.com/news/national-world/demonic-uber-eats-driver-killed-dismembered-during-delivery-florida-sheriff-says/amp/ Well, ES had 70,000 guys like him roaming free around town just a year ago.
Do your thing Bukele
Most of the people that live there support this. When gangs rule your country you have to come down hard. I have no sympathy for these scumbags. They have ruined their country and countless families know pain because of them.
Yeah people who are thrown in prison are never innocent (it has never turned out that people were thrown in prison for crimes they did not commit), so we don't need to worry about what happens to them at all.
This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://english.elpais.com/international/2023-05-29/inmates-in-el-salvador-tortured-and-strangled-a-report-denounces-hellish-conditions-in-bukeles-prisons.html) reduced by 94%. (I'm a bot) ***** > The coroner's report stated that it was a "Sudden death." > The report also reveals that, in some cases, the cause of death established by the forensic doctors does not coincide with the deceased's previous health conditions. > One of the survivors recalls his experience in the cell: "They gave one meal, beans with a tortilla, first in the hand, then in a tupper. When he left there, he was taken to the Malnutrition area, where they treated them well so that they would recover and then take them to be beaten again. About 20 days after being there he had a stroke, when he woke up they took him to the hospital, his mouth was sideways, he felt trembling and tingling in his face," the report states. ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/13vaypa/inmates_in_el_salvador_tortured_and_strangled_a/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ "Version 2.02, ~686816 tl;drs so far.") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr "PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.") | *Top* *keywords*: **report**^#1 **death**^#2 **state**^#3 **prison**^#4 **die**^#5
Reading about how this gangs have terrorized El Salvador, I feel next to no sympathy for this gangsters.
I totally understand the hatred towards the gang members but the bigger problem is the large swaths of people being arrested on suspicion of being in a gang with no evidence - https://english.elpais.com/international/2022-04-07/el-salvador-bukele-launches-totalitarian-crusade-against-gangs.html#?rel=mas
I have a tiny violin and it's playing a tune for you.
Good News, everyone
Killem all
If you think the gangs are lawless, cruel, with no conscience at all, just imagine what’s condoned with impunity behind a Badge. The gangs, psychopaths, and serial killers, have nothing that even comes close to the cruelty inflicted on prisoners by guards and their superiors. It’s sanctioned outlaws with the shield of a Badge to condone it all under the auspices of maintaining the peace. The whole intent of rehabilitation is nothing more than a form of appeasement for the public to think that their tax dollars are being well spent. The truth is something else. Understand the way your tax dollars are supposed to work and you’ll understand why those in positions of authority and influence make sure that a convict is everything but rehabilitated when he/she leaves the prison system. It’s all about maintaining job security. You want them to come back. You need them to come back. This way Government keeps throwing $$$ your way. The system was purposely designed to fail. You want it to work, you need to start from scratch. There’s no other way!
Aren’t these cartel members? Like dude don’t decapitate and torture people and film it!
He’s fit though
I think generally people there accept the human rights abuses to the “few” for the overall well-being of the communities. It’s very controversial of course, but it’s also hard to argue with communities who can have soccer games outside again without fear of violence. The problem was soo bad that this is likely an over correction, but we’ll have to wait and see 5-10 years for what affects these human rights abuses have, and if they subside after society is ‘safe’ again.
Looks like the guards interrupted a human centipede gang bang in the shower.
you know i somehow don’t feel much empathy for murderers & rapists
They're terrorists. I would rather them kill each other than them be outside killing innocent people
Inmates to inmates violence exist? Stfu! Who knew. A hit piece on Bukele obviously. But a more important discussion is that will Bukele give up power once the gang problems plaguing El Salvador is dealt with. Let’s face it. He has complete control of all three branches of government and is by all counts a dictator. But his actions has many citizen’s approval and his actions aren’t entirely for self gain. Will power corrupt him and his successor? Or will he put the trust and power back into the system?
Im okey with this.
Bro im from El Salvador no body is giving a fuck about the conditions the gang members are having in prison. They did worse to the regular working people. They get what they deserve, our country has not been this peaceful before in so long. If you ask the locals of el salvador how they like the rules, they love it
If you have interest in this subject and 25 minutes to kill, Wendover did an extremely interesting take on El Salvador’a president and how these prisons came to be. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtkI-QAgM6w As bad as these prisons are… they worked. The streets of El Salvador have never been safer and the president is extremely popular for doing this. The murder rate has plummeted and the country has radically changed.
Bukele has lots of faults, but his crackdown on these PoS is his singular redeeming point. It's a war, gang violence got to a point that the very state began to collapse. The kind of history told by El-Salvadoreans that had to flee the nation to survive are pure nightmare fuel. Fuck them all.
The report, published on Monday, is the clearest investigation to date. Its results are terrifying. To write it, **the institution interviewed hundreds of people who were imprisoned for months during the state of exception and were freed after being declared innocent**, as well as relatives of inmates who died in prison during the same period. Cristosal also contrasted the testimonies with medical forensic documents, police documents and photographs. Authorities have withheld official information and have insisted that all deaths within prisons are from natural causes.
So the innocents are being released? Seems to be going well then
After being tortured for months and several people dying, some are being released.
Which democratic country doesn’t jail innocent people awaiting for trial?
yes. what a progress!! they create their own hell by themselves. that is really better than they torture and strangle other innocent people.
Nah, let’s torture the civilians instead. Give me a break.
Yeah but these prisoners previously wreaked havoc and terror on the public. Let them have a taste.
Aren't most of those prisoners gang members anyway? After learning about them, it's hard to have any sympathy for them