Countries Where The Number Of Prisoners Outways Capacity Of Prisons;- Ecuador’s recent jail massacres – the worst in the country’s history, with at least 119 people killed – have brought attention to the issue of overcrowding.
Many experts point out that the prison population in Ecuador, at 133%, was one of the main causes of the catastrophe. Ecuador’s 52 prisons hold more than 39,000 inmates, nearly 10,000 more than they can afford, according to official statistics about prison capacity.
Violence in Guayaquil was the third recorded in Ecuador’s prison in 2021, after the February and July deaths, which resulted in the deaths of 79 and 22, respectively.
Countries Where The Number Of Prisoners Outways Capacity Of Prisons
There are six states where the number of prisoners is two, three or four times more than the available capacity of detention. These countries are geographically located throughout the region:
Six countries with more prisoners than they can afford
- two in South America,
- two in Central America,
- and two in the Caribbean.
The worst is, Haiti, the poorest country in the United States, with 454.4% of prisoners.
It is followed by Guatemala, which increases the capacity of its prison system, with a population of 367.2%, and Bolivia, by 269.9%.
These three nations are among the ten most populous in the world.
- Grenada (233.8 percent),
- Peru (223.6 percent), and
- Honduras (204.5 percent) round out the list of Latin American and Caribbean countries that have doubled their jail population.
