El Salvador’s President Bukele has imposed mandatory lockdown of prisons holding gang members in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, instead of increasing space or capacity in prisons, authorities have imposed an absolute lockdown. Statements made by the president and the deputy minister for justice have called for cells to be sealed off so that gang members cannot see the outside their cells, and they have no direct access to sunlight. The announcements come within days of controversial images prisoners stripped and tightly packed in prisons.

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