WorldLatin America
Costa Rica opens a 5,100-bed mega-prison built with El Salvador's help
President Laura Fernández says the high-security jail marks a tough-on-crime turn after three years of record killings. Peru, Colombia and Brazil are eyeing similar plans.
Key points
- The new prison in Alajuela can hold 5,100 inmates, about a fifth of Costa Rica's prison population.
- It was built with the cooperation of Nayib Bukele's government in El Salvador.
- Costa Rica recorded 873 homicides in 2025, close to the record of 905 in 2023.
Costa Rica opened a high-security prison for up to 5,100 inmates on Wednesday, the latest Latin American country to borrow from the hardline approach of El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele.
President Laura Fernández inaugurated the High-Containment Centre Against Organised Crime, known by its Spanish initials CACCO, in Alajuela. The prison was built with the cooperation of Bukele’s government and will hold about a fifth of Costa Rica’s current prison population.
“The CACCO will force criminals to face a new model: a tough-on-crime model,” Fernández said. The first inmates will be moved in at the end of October. Justice Minister Gabriel Aguilar said the jail would help the government take back control of the prison system and cut organised crime’s reach inside it.
Costa Rica was long spared the violence of its neighbours, but killings have hit record levels in recent years: 905 in 2023, 876 in 2024 and 873 in 2025. Analysts blame much of the rise on fighting between criminal groups over lucrative drug routes.
Others in the region are following the same path. Peru’s President Keiko Fujimori plans to tour El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Centre, which can hold about 40,000 people, ahead of building one of her own. Colombia’s President Abelardo de la Espriella campaigned on a promise of 10 mega-prisons, and Brazil’s presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro, now in the final round, wants five.
Bukele’s “state of exception”, in place since 2022, is credited by his government with a sharp fall in murders. Rights groups say it has brought mass arrests, mass trials, detention without charge and alleged torture, and has been used against critics.