In just over two years, El Salvador’s government has sent 80,000 people to prison. With over 111,000 people incarcerated, the country has the world’s highest proportion of individuals behind bars—one inmate for each 56 people.
The current situation stems from a zero-tolerance policy toward the gangs that when proliferated within the country. Salvadoran gangs are considered transnational crime organizations liable for taking murder rates to levels only seen throughout the 1979–1992 civil war.
In March 2022, President Nayib Bukele decreed a régimen de excepción (state of exception), which suspends a major variety of civil rights and makes it easier to arrest and prosecute suspected gang members. Though the administration initially promised the decree would last for a month, it has since been renewed 27 times by the Salvadoran congress, lasting nearly two and a half years.
El Salvador has never had a major prison ministry presence. But for those few which have worked in prisons, the régimen de excepción has each presented a chance and revealed a set of problems.
On one hand, leaders say, there’s an actual probability for a considerable variety of inmates to show their lives around through the gospel. “Most of them know they need a physical transformation. Evangelism may show them they need a spiritual transformation too,” said Raúl Orellana, a regional ministry leader who has served in El Salvador’s prisons since 2008.
On the opposite hand, for quite a lot of reasons, few Christians have shown interest in prison ministry, work that has only change into tougher as the federal government has increased restrictions on civilian visits in prison.
All of El Salvador’s detention centers within the country, except the utmost security penitentiary, have historically been open to ministers. “The government may be very open to evangelical Christian churches that wish to preach in prisons,” said Orellana—however the recent strong-arm policy against the gangs has also toughened access for churches and pastors.
A dozen or so years ago, pastors could spend evenings sitting side by side with inmates, counseling them and sharing the gospel. When he visited the prison then, Orellena recalled, he knew in regards to the availability of medication and electronic devices for inmates, and sometimes saw questionable visitors.
Now, greater government oversight of prisons has increased restrictions on evangelizing to the incarcerated. Many prisons have banned face-to-face interactions between pastors and inmates. Instead, pastors can only speak to groups for a maximum of 1 hour.
“I understand the authorities’ perspective,” said Orellena. “The inmates had total control and it shouldn’t have been like that. Today, the authorities are on top of things.”
Prior to 2022, in some prisons, several ministries got here to evangelise every week. Today, prison authorities allow Christian groups to enter once every week on a set schedule, with some exceptions for evangelistic events. For example, for Mother’s Day this 12 months, Kenton Moody, an American missionary who leads Vida Libre, a rehabilitation center for juvenile offenders, threw a giant party within the Santa Ana women’s prison.
The ministry provided sodas, pan dulce, and Bibles for 10,000 people. Though authorities only allowed 2,800 women to attend, by the tip of the service, 295 raised their hands in answer to a conversion call.
Troubles with gangs and government
Although leaders like Orellena and Moody say they’ve seen God at work in Salvadoran prisons, many Christians they meet are reluctant to take part in prison ministry, afraid of encountering dangerous criminals. For years, large parts of the country lived under violence and bloodshed brought on by gangs like Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and Barrio 18 (known also as 18).
Historically, the country has had one in all the best homicide rates on this planet; at its peak in 1995, there have been 139 murders for each 100,000 inhabitants. Since the start of the 2000s, MS-13 and 18 have fought a long-lasting territorial battle with a massive death toll. In 2015, the gangs decreed a ban on all bus routes within the capital, San Salvador, and on the primary day of the ban, five bus drivers were killed. In 2016, some estimated that the groups had extorted about 70 percent of all businesses within the country, and the extortion rates were so high that they ultimately led to a rise in consumer prices.
Official numbers show a 70 percent decrease within the murder rate in 2023 compared to 2022, consequently of changes within the law and the appliance of the régimen de excepción. The government has edited the legal code to formally equate terrorism with local criminal associations, and a recent law has criminalized tattoos, street graffiti, and every other mark that resembles gang symbols.
But the decrease in homicide rates has also include a value. Human Rights Watch has described the changes as a “we are able to arrest anyone we wish” policy that enables detentions based on the looks and social background of detainees, anonymous calls, and even social media posts.
In this environment, nearly anyone with any relationship to a gang member is liable to being arrested and sent to prison. That includes former gang members which have served time and returned to civilian life, a few of whom have converted to Christianity. Even pastors who minister to current gang members could also be seen as collaborators or gang sympathizers and are liable to incarceration.
“My work with the inmates and former prisoners was once dangerous due to the gangs. Now it’s dangerous due to the federal government,” said Moody. “They can throw us in prison at any moment for allegedly helping the gangs.”
Local churches are afraid to risk stepping into trouble with each the gangs and the federal government in the event that they do ministry in prison, he said. “The pastors tell us, ‘How wonderful it’s what you might be doing,’ and ‘God bless you’—but they don’t participate.”
The continuing work of witness
Throughout Central America, evangelicals have nearly outpaced Catholics in numerical growth. In El Salvador, almost a 3rd (30.9%) of the population now identifies as evangelical.
The percentage of evangelicals is highest within the poorer strata of society—the very segments from which individuals join gangs and find yourself within the prison system, says Stephen Offutt, the writer of Blood Entanglements: Evangelicals and Gangs in El Salvador.
Between 50 and 70 percent of the people in El Salvador’s prisons come from evangelical families. “I might dare to say that everybody who’s in prison has heard of Jesus Christ,” says Orellana, but he adds that the variety of true converts might be small.
For gang members bored with violence, Christianity offers one pathway out.
“Gangs allow people to get out in the event that they show an actual conversion,” said Offutt. It’s not so simple as declaring oneself a Christian and being free. “Those gang members that allegedly convert to Christianity are kept under surveillance because there are also fake conversions and faux pastors who try to control the gangs.”
Under the régimen de excepción, some genuinely converted gang members are being dragged back to prison, opening a door for evangelism to happen where the institutional church cannot go.
“A disciple in prison can bring the gospel to many others,” says Lucas Suriano, Latin America coordinator at Prison Alliance, a North Carolina–based ministry that creates discipleship programs and distributes Bibles and Christian literature to inmates around the globe.
Although nobody sees what happens inside prisons just like the Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, the utmost security penal complex for 40,000 those who President Bukele opened last 12 months, Offutt is for certain that God continues to work there.
“Some years ago,” he recounts, “I had a pastor friend whose house was within the shadow of a jail in El Salvador. On Sunday evenings, we could hear Christian songs coming from the prison.”
“People are attempting to witness to the gospel in the very best ways available. They are finding ways to worship there—it’s inconceivable to me that it’s not happening.”
