Latin American Law Review

Lat. Am. Law Rev. | eISSN 2619-4880

Set up to fail: The politics, mechanisms, and effects of mass incarceration

No. 7 (2021-08-01)
  • Adrian Bergmann
    Institute of Historical, Anthropological, and Archaeological Studies, University of El Salvador (El Salvador)
  • Rafael Gude
    Center for Social Change and Transgressive Studies, John Jay College of Criminal Justice (United States)
https://doi.org/10.29263/lar07.2021.03

Abstract

The rise of the citizen security paradigm has complemented, rather than curtailed, authoritarian legacies in Latin America and the Caribbean. Notably, criminal justice and law enforcement policies continue to feed a wave of mass incarceration, evidenced in a dataset on incarceration in 21 countries for 1995–2020. El Salvador stands out as a unique case study, with the second-highest incarceration rate in the world. We analyze four key mechanisms driving mass incarceration in the country—increasing discretionary arrests, diluting due process guarantees, escalating criminalization, and harshening of sentences—, and unpack its uses and effects. Mass incarceration has criminalized transgressive identities and the poor, strengthened gangs organizationally, made gangs’ criminal activity more complex, and turned them into significant actors in Salvadoran political life. These effects are hallmarks of El Salvador’s notoriously failed “mano dura” strategy and pose major obstacles for desistance from crime and violence, as well as reentry after incarceration.

Keywords: Prisons, mass incarceration, gangs, reentry, criminal justice, El Salvador

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