SAN JUAN TALPA, El Salvador On a dusky evening last spring, Jorge Alberto Martínez Chávez was tossed into the hell that is El Salvadors prison system: a holding cell barely bigger than the bed of a pickup, where more than 50 prisoners were crammed together, some on the sweat-soaked floor and others spilling out of thin hammocks crisscrossed from ground to ceiling.
The air was hot and humid, and prisoners half-naked bodies reeked of urine and ulcers from a recent outbreak of bacteria, according to a guard. A few weeks later, Martínez collapsed, foaming at the mouth. He was the fifth inmate from that cell to die in four months.
He never should have been there in the first place. Police, prosecutors and a judge mistook him for a different Jorge Alberto Martínez Chávez, a man eight years younger with a gang tattoo across his chest and a criminal history that includes charges of extortion, illegal gun possession and murder.
According to the Institute for Criminal Policy Research, El Salvadors prisons are the most jam-packed in the Western Hemisphere except for Haitis. The populations began to swell in the mid-2000s as a result of President Francisco Floress Strong Hand policy, a series of tough-on-crime measures that included increased police raids and longer sentences. Now a prison system built for 10,000 inmates houses more than 37,000, not including about 5,000 held in police jails.
Last March, Hernández declared a state of emergency in seven prisons. Since then, thousands of prisoners have been barred from visits with relatives, doctors and judges. Human rights advocates have documented a spike in tuberculosis and other contagious diseases. We found prisoners who were literally rotting, said Gerardo Alegría of the human rights office, describing oozing ulcers, infected gunshot wounds and limbs that needed to be amputated.
El Salvadors Supreme Court found in an investigation that prisoners have as little as three square feet of space, lack adequate food, water and medical care, and could spend months or years locked up without trial.
