source: nacla
On Tuesday, March 17, the Salvadoran Legislative Assembly changed the constitution to allow life sentences for “murderers, rapists, and terrorists.” Two days later, Ramona* considered the consequences for her family. The police had arrested her son and brother in 2022 under the State of Exception, President Nayib Bukele’s gang crackdown. Like thousands of other worried family members, she had heard nothing about their wellbeing for four years. The police accused Ramona’s loved ones of asociación ilícita (illegal association), a crime that alleges gang membership. Under Salvadoran law, gang members can be considered terrorists, making them eligible for life sentences under the new reform.
“They’re making our loved ones out to be terrorists without even investigating them,” said Ramona. For the first four years of the State of Exception, the vast majority of detainees remained in prolonged pretrial detention without trial. In 2026, mass trials of groups of over 400 people began. Through news coverage, family members like Ramona identified loved ones who they say have no relationship with gangs. In addition to allowing life sentences, the March 17 reforms included the creation of new Criminal Courts. These courts would try alleged gang members and non-gang members grouped together, making it possible for judges to sentence hundreds of people at a time to life in prison.
In justifying the constitutional changes, the Legislative Assembly argued that life sentences would “bring justice to victims.” Yet far from providing justice, by permitting harsher sentences and group trials these reforms only make it more likely for innocent people to become collateral damage in an increasingly authoritarian state. They also drastically widen the swath of the population now vulnerable to a lifelong disappearance into the country’s violent penal system.
While Bukele’s administration initially targeted individuals with allegedly gang ties, the March 17 reforms now threaten women and girls accused of abortion and children as young as 12 years old with life in prison. With these changes, far-right Bukele has expanded his definition of the “enemy” or “the Other” that must be removed from public life. His popularity is now charging an even higher cost from society’s most vulnerable.
A Dark Outlook for Women
Notably, people who are pregnant are now at an elevated risk of life imprisonment. The combination of El Salvador’s 1998 abortion ban and the March 17 decision to make aggravated homicide a crime worthy of life sentences is an escalation in the country’s war on women. Prior to the State of Exception, the courts had already convicted dozens of women of aggravated homicide for miscarriages, stillbirths, and abortions; now, as a result of the reforms, a woman could be sentenced to life in prison if authorities label pregnancy complications as an intentional abortion.
The constitutional reforms are part of a broader rollback of women’s rights under the Bukele administration.
The constitutional reforms are part of a broader rollback of women’s rights under the Bukele administration. Bukele has cut services for women and girls in violence prevention and reproductive health and education. At the same time, First Lady Gabriela Bukele has promoted an initiative—Nacer Con Cariño, To be Born with Care—to support women’s health throughout pregnancy. However, this policy supports women and girls only in their capacity to become mothers. Advocates for women’s rights in El Salvador have argued that gender equality requires strengthening women’s labor rights, guaranteeing the right to live free from violence, expanding access to education, and recognizing women’s lives beyond their reproductive capacity.
Beyond these policy changes, the government has also targeted women who organize around gender equality, women’s rights, and other community issues. Feminist activists have gone into exile. Ruth López, a human rights lawyer who investigated corruption, has been held in prison for over a year without trial. In this context, the constitutional changes provide yet another mechanism to punish women rather than expanding services and protections for victims of violence. Rather than protecting victims, the reform further victimizes women whom the government has failed to serve.
Targeting Youth
The March 17 constitutional reforms make no exceptions for age. Indeed, the Legislative Assembly intentionally altered the Juvenile Criminal Law (Ley Penal Juvenil) to allow children as young as 12 years old to receive life sentences. The severity of the punishment runs counter to a growing body of research and policy recommending youth decarceration and rehabilitation to better address the needs of youth involved in crime.
When a child is involved in homicide, rape, or terrorism, they are often not experiencing violence for the first time. There is ample evidence that adolescents involved in gangs experienced abuse, abandonment, and social exclusion. These are overlapping, compounding forms of interpersonal and structural violence. Yet treating teens and preteens as criminal deviants allows the government to avoid treating them as citizens for whom the state is responsible.
To argue that these children’s rights should be respected and restored is not to suggest that they, or anyone else, should be exempt from accountability for their actions. Rather, it is to argue that the state must answer to young people for allowing the conditions in which gangs and violence can flourish, and even become appealing. Sentencing a young person to life in prison, before their adult life has even begun, is not justice. While the government announcement takes pains to emphasize that many other countries, including the United States, allow life sentences, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that mandatory life-without-parole sentences for people under 18 convicted of homicide are unconstitutional.
If we layer these two groups together, a chilling possibility emerges. Effectively, if a man rapes a 12-year-old girl—there were 496 pregnancies of girls aged 10-14 in 2022— and she is accused of having an abortion, which can be charged as an aggravated homicide, she could spend the rest of her life in prison. Even in the unlikely case that her rapist goes to trial and is convicted, when we analyze life sentences in the current social, cultural, and legal context, it quickly becomes clear that this is not about justice for victims.
Prison Labor
With nearly 2 percent of its population in prison—most arrested on alleged gang-related charges since 2022— now eligible for life sentences, what will the Salvadoran government do with all of these people? In March, I spoke with the parents of Salvadorans who had been detained. Years into the imprisonment of their loved ones, mothers like Luisa told me that the government had begun using their sons for forced labor. Scrolling through Facebook, Luisa showed me a photo she had found of her son, a college student, in a yellow t-shirt and jeans—the prison work uniform. Luisa was still prohibited from visiting him in prison, but authorities could take him out to work.
The yellow t-shirt and jeans are the uniform of Yo Cambio (“I change”), a prison reintegration program that predates Bukele. Previously, the program allowed people in the fase de confianza (“trust phase”) of their sentences to leave prison to work on infrastructure and public works projects, such as beach clean-ups. At the time, this type of labor was justified as a form of rehabilitation to prepare incarcerated individuals for their return to society. Magali, an activist, noted that “Now, they’re making all of these innocent people who are in prison do slave labor. And their families need them, and their income, at home.” With life sentences now legalized, however, there is little expectation that many of these prisoners will ever be released. Regardless of the rehabilitative or punitive ends of prison labor, international advocates have argued that forced labor with no pay, regardless of context, is slavery.
Keeping so many people imprisoned, even in a public prison system, is a source of labor and other profits.
Keeping so many people imprisoned, even in a public prison system, is a source of labor and other profits. During the Bukele administration, prisons have provided a source of embezzlement and labor for corrupt politicians like Osiris Luna, who embezzled millions from the prison commissary and used prisoners to build a beach ranch for his mother’s business partner. The Salvadoran NGO Cristosal has identified other possible corruption schemes associated with prisons, including bribes in exchange for information or contact with family members, charges for unsanctioned visits, and links between lawyers and prison authorities to extort families in exchange for information or visits.
Astrid, whose mother and brother were both re-arrested during the State of Exception, confirmed that she paid $5-$10 bribes to prison guards for information or contact with her loved ones. Like other families, she also provides packages of food, hygiene products, and clothing that cost up to $200. With a monthly income of around $360 from selling pan dulce and pan francés, she can only afford these goods every three months. However, families have also reported that these packages are confiscated or re-sold to people inside. On both large and small scales, prisons have become a source of extra income for those willing to exploit them, and a serious expense for affected families.
Reclaiming Justice
Compounding years of punitive mano dura policy, the March 17 reforms approving life sentences are a step backwards for justice. While the Bukele administration has dismissed rights-based approaches to gang violence as ineffective and protective of “hardened criminals and terrorists,”—a stance that has contributed to his popularity—previous approaches at both the state and nonprofit levels attempted to address the structural causes of violence and promote long-term prevention.
Rights-based reintegration programs run by the prisons themselves and NGOs were driven by a commitment to victims. By working with perpetrators, whose own experiences included victimhood, these programs aimed to prevent future violence. Though imperfect, El Salvador’s prison system for youth, particularly, and in a limited way for adults, used to work towards this goal. When I interviewed an education specialist from the juvenile justice system in 2021, he referred constantly to dog-eared copies of treaties on children’s and youth rights. Today, “human rights” are no longer part of the vocabulary for working with incarcerated youth and adults. Prior to the State of Exception, El Salvador received multiple international delegations interested in its innovative prison rehabilitation programs. Article 27 of the Constitution still states that prisons have the objective of “reforming offenders, educating them, and teaching them work habits, seeing to their re-adaptation [into society] and the prevention of crime.”
When rehabilitation was the intention, there was an argument to be made for treating incarcerated individuals like citizens who would be reintegrated into their families and communities. Alone, these programs could not be the entire solution to pervasive gang violence, but they were a step in the right direction toward treating people with dignity, rights, and the potential for transformation—something that the young people who join gangs have experienced precious little in their lives. Life sentences doled out en masse make incarcerated Salvadorans—innocent and guilty alike—vulnerable to further mistreatment, torture, and exploitation.
Justice for victims of violence requires services, accountability, and prevention. Life sentences and the March 17 reforms do not deliver any of these to El Salvador’s most vulnerable. Accountability for gang violence is essential, but the debate over what justice looks like—and how to prevent future violence—must extend beyond what is presented as the “Bukele model.” Subjecting women and children to further state violence while exploiting prisons for financial gain has no place in any vision of security or justice.
