The Ciudad Barrios prison is a prison in

Ciudad Barrios Ciudad Barrios is a city in the San Miguel department of El Salvador. Ciudad Barrios is one of the most cultural places in El Salvador with a lot of attractions and it is the birthplace of Archbishop Óscar Romero Óscar Arnulfo Romero y G ...

, San Miguel, El Salvador. Between September 2004 and mid-2015, it exclusively housed members of the

Mara Salvatrucha Mara Salvatrucha, commonly known as MS-13, is an international criminal gang that originated in Los Angeles, California, in the 1970s and 1980s. Originally, the gang was set up to protect Salvadoran immigrants from other gangs in the Los Ange ...

gang. During this time, El Salvador had a policy of segregating gang members in its prisons; this policy has been reversed. The Ciudad Barrios prison has been militarized, with both soldiers and police officers serving as prison guards. As of 2012, the prison housed nearly 2,500 prisoners, despite a capacity of 800. Guards have relatively little control over the prison given a prisoner-to-guard ratio of 50 to one. It is one of the most violent prisons in the country.

References

{{coord missing, El Salvador Prisons in El Salvador