Ecuador's military was sent in last month to seize control of the country's prisons after two key gang leaders escaped, and criminal groups quickly launched a nationwide insurgency that paralyzed the country.
In Brazil last week, two inmates with links to a major gang made the first escape from one of the country's five maximum-security federal prisons, officials said.
Colombian officials declared a state of emergency in its prisons after two guards were killed and several others were targeted in what the government said was retaliation for its crackdown on major criminal groups.
Inside prisons across Latin America, criminal groups exert unchallenged power over inmates, extorting money from them to buy basic necessities like protection or food.
Prisons serve as a safe haven for incarcerated criminal leaders to remotely operate their criminal enterprises, order assassinations, organize drug smuggling to the US and Europe, and conduct kidnappings and extortions in local businesses.
As officials try to curtail the criminal groups' exercise of power from behind bars, their leaders often deploy members on the outside to push back.
"The main center of gravity, the nexus of controlling organized crime, is within the prisons," said Mario Pazmeo, a retired colonel in Ecuador's army and former director of intelligence and security analyst.
"Let's say management positions, command positions," he added. "This is where they order and distribute gangs to terrorize the country."
Latin America's prison population has exploded over the past two decades, driven by tougher criminal systems such as pretrial detention, but governments across the region have not spent enough to deal with the surge and instead have often relinquished control of inmates, penal system experts say.
Those sent to prison often have a choice: join a gang or face their wrath.
As a result, prisons have become important recruitment centers for Latin America's largest and most violent cartels and gangs, strengthening their grip on society rather than weakening it.
Prison officials, who are penniless, outnumbered, overwhelmed and often paid, have handed over many prisons to gang leaders in exchange for a fragile peace.
According to experts, criminal gangs fully or partially control over half of Mexico's 285 prisons, while in Brazil the government often segregates penitentiaries based on gang affiliation to avoid unrest. In Ecuador, experts say most of the country's 36 prisons are controlled by gangs.
"Gangs are solving a problem for the government," said University of Chicago political science professor Benjamin Lessing, who studies Latin American gangs and prisons. "It gives the gang a kind of power that's really hard to measure, but also hard to overestimate."
According to the Inter-American Development Bank, Latin America's prison population grew 76 percent from 2010 to 2020, far outstripping the region's 10 percent population growth during the same period.
Many countries have imposed harsher law enforcement policies, including longer sentences and more convictions for low-level drug offenses, pushing most sentencing in the region beyond the maximum capacity.
At the same time, governments have prioritized investing in their security forces as a way to fight crime and flex their muscle with the public, rather than spending on prisons, which are less visible.
Brazil and Mexico, Latin America's largest country with the region's largest prison population, invest very little in prisons: Brazil's government spends about $14 per day per prisoner, while Mexico spends about $20. The United States spent $117 per inmate in 2022. Latin American prison guards are also poorly paid, making them susceptible to drug smuggling or bribes from gangs to help high-profile prisoners escape.
Federal officials in Brazil and Ecuador did not respond to requests for comment, while federal officials in Mexico declined. In general, federal prisons in Mexico and Brazil have better funding and conditions than their state prisons.
Rio de Janeiro state, which runs some of Brazil's most notorious prisons, said in a statement that it had separated inmates by their gang affiliation "to ensure their physical safety" for decades, and that the practice was allowed under Brazilian law.
Underscoring the power of prison gangs, some gang leaders live relatively comfortably behind bars, running supermarkets, cockfighting rings and nightclubs, and sometimes smuggling their families in to live with them.
Ecuador's prisons are a textbook example of the problems Latin America's penal system faces and how difficult it can be to deal with them, experts say.
The attorney general's investigation showed how an incarcerated gang rich in cocaine trafficking had corrupted leaders, judges, police officers, prison guards and even the former, Ecuador's recently elected president, who sparked a riot in January to tighten prison security. Head of the prison system.
The president, Daniel Noboa, planned to transfer several gang leaders to maximum-security facilities, making it difficult for them to operate their illegal businesses.
But the plans were leaked to the gang leaders and one of them disappeared from the sprawling prison compound.
Riots broke out across the nation's prisons in search of the leader inside the prison, with dozens of inmates escaping, including the head of another powerful gang.
Experts said the gang ordered members to attack outside. They kidnapped police officers, burned cars, set off explosives and briefly seized a major television station.
Mr Noboa responded by declaring an internal armed conflict, allowing the military to target street gangs and storm prisons. According to videos from the military and social media, inmates in at least one prison were stripped to their underwear and their belongings confiscated and burned.
Jefferson Quirino, a former gang member who served five separate stints in prisons in Rio, said gangs control each of his prisons. In some cases, inmates often use their numerous hidden cellphones to focus on running gang businesses outside of prison, often with help. The guards who were bought.
Brazil's prisons are so dominated by gangs, with authorities themselves often dividing prisons by gang affiliation, that officials force new inmates to choose a side, to limit violence.
"The first question they ask you is: 'Which gang are you a member of?'" said Mr. Quirino, who runs a program that helps keep poor children out of gangs. "In other words, they have to understand where to put you in the system, because otherwise you die."
This has helped criminal groups rise in their ranks.
Jacqueline Muniz, a former security chief in Rio de Janeiro, said, "Prisons serve as places of labor recruitment."
"And to build loyalty among your criminal workforce."
