source: Cristosal
IRTF composed this article with excerpts from Cristosals anual report
Since March 2022, El Salvador has lived under a state of exception, renewed month after month, now more than 39 times. What was initially justified as an emergency measure to combat gangs has turned into the normality of the country. With tens of thousands of arrests carried out in a matter of months, the penitentiary system has been overwhelmed. Cells are overcrowded, medical attention is scarce, and detainees depend almost entirely on their families for basic needs. In this environment, corruption has flourished. Families are not simply visiting loved ones; they are navigating a marketplace of abuse where every act of contact, every possibility of communication, and even every shred of information about a detainee’s condition has a price.
The mechanism is simple yet devastating: the creation of “donations.” Under this logic, visits to detainees are made conditional upon the delivery of goods and services that the state should be providing. These so-called donations range from office supplies, food, and medicine, to large-scale contributions like construction materials and trucks of water. They are demanded not as an exception but as part of a routine system of irregular payments. Families are pressured into compliance because the alternative is complete silence: no visits, no news, no proof of life.
The case of Fidel Zavala illustrates the cruelty of this hidden business. After he was detained, his family soon learned that visits were impossible without making contributions to the penitentiary. One delivery consisted of nearly $400 worth of supplies: disinfectants, cleaning products, office materials, and medicines. In exchange, they were granted only a brief meeting that lasted less than half an hour. Already struggling with financial hardship, the family faced the unbearable weight of sacrificing their limited resources for the faint chance of seeing him alive. The cruelty did not stop there. Even after Zavala’s death in custody, prison staff continued to demand packages, pretending that he was still alive and exploiting the family’s desperate hope for news.
This pattern repeats across multiple detention centers. Families report being asked for medicine and medical equipment despite the fact that it is the state’s duty to guarantee healthcare in prison. Others are required to purchase reams of paper, pens, folders, and office tools allegedly destined for the prison administration. Some have been asked for gravel, sand, cement, or entire truckloads of water. In other cases, money is demanded directly, labeled as “collaboration” or “support” to mask the nature of the transaction. Whatever the form, the principle remains the same: the basic right to see a detained relative is turned into a commodity, and families must buy their way into contact.
The effects of this parallel economy are profound. On the most immediate level, it imposes unbearable sacrifices. Families that have already lost a breadwinner to detention must now decide between paying for survival at home or paying for the chance of a short prison visit. On another level, the uncertainty multiplies the suffering. Not knowing whether a detainee is alive or dead makes families vulnerable to manipulation, as in the case of Zavala’s relatives who were tricked into delivering packages long after his death. The emotional toll of this uncertainty is impossible to measure, yet it is systematically exploited.
Far from being isolated cases of misconduct, Cristosal’s documentation shows that this is a systemic practice. It is the direct result of a penitentiary system that fails to meet the most basic obligations. By leaving detainees without food, medicine, clothing, or adequate sanitary conditions, the state has opened the door to a market of extortion. The normalization of “donations” institutionalizes corruption, building an economy where profit is extracted from suffering and from the desperation of those left outside the prison walls.
The broader implications are grave. The state of exception is presented as a measure of security, but within the prisons it has created spaces where abuse is not only tolerated but structured into daily governance. The regime claims to be fighting crime, yet its prisons operate according to the same criminal logic of extortion it claims to dismantle. This contradiction undermines any claim to legitimacy. What exists today is a model of governance based on opacity, fear, and impunity.
The hidden business of El Salvador’s prisons is not just about irregular payments. It is about the transformation of basic human rights into privileges available only to those who can afford them. It is about the manipulation of grief and hope to maintain a flow of resources into a corrupt system. And it is about the institutionalization of practices that degrade families, strip detainees of dignity, and corrode the rule of law itself.
As long as this system remains in place, the families of detainees will continue to carry a double burden: on one side, the arbitrary loss of loved ones to indefinite imprisonment, and on the other, the extortionate demands of a state that has turned their suffering into an opportunity for profit.
Cristosal full length report: here
