PANAMA CITY: Panamanian President Jose Raul Mulino said Wednesday he is ordering the construction of a maximum-security prison for gang leaders following a prisoner escape and a nationwide surge in violence.
Numerous Latin American countries have sought to replicate the prison-building model of Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, who is waging a nationwide campaign against street gangs in which some 92,000 people have been locked up since 2022.
Without mentioning Bukele's policies, Mulino said he will toughen prison rules to prevent inmates from continuing to run gangs from behind bars. He blamed such gangs for drug trafficking and most killings in Panama.
"We are going to construct a maximum- security prison and toughen the penitentiary rules for those who commit crimes inside prison," Mulino said in a speech to Congress.
"We will implement a plan with greater effort... totally isolating the leaders of (criminal) gangs," he added without giving details of the plan.
Mulino announced the measures amid outrage after a 10-year-old girl was killed when assailants attacked her father, and after almost 200 prisoners escaped from the La Joyita prison outside Panama City last month. Most were recaptured.
"I would rather they accuse me of overpopulating prisons if that means gangsters will not keep extorting, killing, robbing, and pushing drugs in the streets of our country," Mulino said.
Ecuador and Costa Rica are currently building prisons in the model of the El Salvador's notorious Center for Terrorism Confinement (CECOT).
There, prisoners are subjected to strict rules and NGOs denounce widespread human rights violations, including torture and sexual violence.
Prisoners will "no longer be guests in prisons that look more like resorts," Mulino said.
"I support the policy of human rights, but always those of the victims first," he added.
So far this year Panama has registered a nationwide homicide rate of six killings per 100,000 inhabitants, compared to 24 per 100,000 in its violent Central American neighbor Honduras.
But the violence in Panama is double in the Caribbean province of Colon and the capital city.
Although the feared Barrio 18 and MS-13 gangs entrenched in Honduras and Guatemala are not prominent in Panama, it does have over 150 crime groups concentrated in Colon and Panama City.
Panama has around 24,000 inmates housed in around 20 prisons that have a total capacity is for 14,700 people.
