|
El Salvador The Penal System
The 1983 Constitution reaffirms that the penal system shall
be designed to rehabilitate prisoners rather than solely to
punish them. Article 28 prescribes that "the state shall organize
the penitentiaries with the aim of reforming offenders, educating
them, and teaching them industrious habits, seeking their
rehabilitation and the prevention of crime." Overall direction
and administration of the prison system is under the jurisdiction
of the director general of penal and rehabilitation centers,
under the minister of justice.
As of the late 1980s, the prison system was composed of three
national penitentiaries and at least thirty jails or preventive
detention facilities distributed throughout the country. The
federal government operated the penitentiaries, located in
Ahuachapan, Santa Ana, and San Vicente. The penitentiaries were
the principal incarceration institutions, housing approximately
half of the total prison population. Other than the
penitentiaries, the prison system was loosely organized and
received little centralized guidance or control. The government
published few statistics on prisons. Local authorities supervised
subordinate facilities and had few restrictions on their
authority over methods and procedures. Each of the country's
departments had at least one jail or detention facility, with at
least one in every departmental capital, although San Salvador
had no facility for men. The two women's prisons were located at
the town of Ilopango and Santa Ana; their inmates consisted
mainly of prostitutes serving six-month terms. Prison facilities
ranged from simple frame enclosures with little security and few
amenities to well-built, professionally planned buildings with
good protection and adequate accommodations.
In late 1988, El Salvador's security situation worsened. The
FMLN, armed for the first time with some Soviet-made AK-47
assault rifles, actually had brought the war to its bloodiest
level in two or three years by launching another countrywide
guerrilla and terrorist offensive, which once again included
assassinating mayors. FMLN guerrillas inflicted
disproportionately high casualties on the army in attacks on
installations such as the Fourth Infantry Brigade garrison at El
Paraiso in Chalatenango Department and in a mortar barrage on a
GN facility in San Salvador. Other FMLN actions in San Salvador
included breaking criminals out of a jail and carrying out
nightly terrorist bombings. FMLN leaders, including Villalobos,
also opened an unusual diplomatic offensive by visiting several
Latin American capitals. The army, for its part, was widely
reported to have perpetrated a massacre, the first in three
years, of ten peasants in the hamlet of San Sebastian in San
Vicente Department, after accusing them of collaborating with the
guerrillas. Under increasing criticism for its conduct of the
war, the military underwent another orderly shakeup, with General
Blandon being replaced as armed forces chief of staff by Colonel
Ponce, a strong advocate of promoting economic development in the
areas affected by the war. Under Ponce's command, the military
was expected to become a more aggressive, offensive-minded force,
but one placing greater emphasis on the "hearts and minds"
campaign.
* * *
As of mid-1988, no book devoted exclusively to Salvadoran
national security topics was available. Relevant data can be
derived mainly from disparate publications other than books, such
as United States government or congressional reports, journal
articles, newsletters, and newspaper reports, as well as
Salvadoran legal documents. A few books proved to be useful. A
good source for historical information on the Salvadoran military
establishment, despite its strongly anti-United States policy
bias, is Michael McClintock's The American Connection.
Adrian J. English's Armed Forces of Latin America contains
other useful historical and military data on the Salvadoran armed
forces. More recent military data are provided in The Military
Balance, an annual published by the International Institute
for Strategic Studies. Informative 1988 reports prepared by the
United States Department of State include The Situation in El
Salvador. Discussions of El Salvador's human rights record
are found in the Department of State's Country Reports on
Human Rights Practices for 1987 and publications of Americas
Watch. The Committee on Foreign Affairs of the United States
Congress has published the transcripts of numerous hearings on El
Salvador since 1981, including Human Rights and Political
Developments in El Salvador, 1987. (For further information
Data as of November 1988
|
