Costa Rica locked up more than 120 inmates this week in a new $35million mega prison, built with the help of the Salvadoran government on the outskirts of San Jose.
The justice ministry shared images showing rows of prisoners dressed in orange jumpsuits, seated with shaved heads bowed and their hands behind their necks.
The scenes are reminiscent of El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Centre (CECOT), the mega prison where the polarising President Nayib Bukele’s government holds tens of thousands of gang members and suspected gang affiliates.
Bukele has managed to reduce numbers to a historic low in El Salvador but faces accusations of human rights abuses during the state of emergency that began in 2022 and has imprisoned more than 91,000 people.
Costa Rica’s maximum security prison, which it calls the High Containment Center against Organized Crime (CACCO), has been presented by the government of right-wing President Laura Fernandez as a symbol of a new ‘tough on crime’ approach.
The prison – built to incarcerate Costa Rica’s most dangerous criminals – has a capacity for 5,100 inmates, equivalent to 20 percent of the country’s prison population.
Costa Rica, long regarded as one of the safest countries in Latin America, has in recent years experienced a sharp rise in violence linked to drug trafficking and organized crime.
The country recorded a record number of homicides in 2023. Authorities attribute most killings to disputes between criminal groups over drug trafficking routes and markets.
Inmates sit on the floor with their hands on their heads after being transferred to the Center for High Containment of Organized Crime (CACCO), a new maximum-security prison built in cooperation with the government of El Salvador President Nayib Bukele, in Alajuela, Costa Rica
The justice ministry shared images showing rows of prisoners dressed in orange jumpsuits with their heads shaved
Costa Rica’s maximum security prison has been presented by the government as a symbol of a new ‘tough on crime’ approach
The prison has a capacity for 5,100 inmates
A prison guard checks an inmate’s tattoos following his transfer to the Center for High Containment of Organized Crime in Costa Rica
‘Costa Rica is writing a new chapter in its penitentiary history,’ Justice Minister Gabriel Aguilar said in a statement.
‘CACCO is a monument to national security, a forceful response to organized crime, and a guarantee that the state will exercise its authority without hesitation.’
Aguilar has said the new facility will also help reduce overcrowding in the prison system.
For decades, Costa Rica was a ‘passive’ transit zone for drugs from South America, according to the organization Insight Crime.
But without an army, and with extensive jungle and ports on both coasts, it began to attract Mexican and Colombian cartels.
At the end of the last decade, a new cargo terminal transformed the Caribbean port of Limón into a storage and transshipment point for cocaine destined for Europe, according to the US State Department, which, in a 2025 report, also detected fentanyl distribution in the Central American country.
Now, the two major Mexican cartels, Sinaloa and Jalisco, are present in the country, as are the Colombian Clan del Golfo, the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua — all considered terrorist organizations by the United States — and Italian mafias, while local cartels proliferate, explained Vanda Felbab-Brown, an organized crime researcher at the Brookings Institution.
The cartels’ interest in new routes and the rivalry between the two major Mexican cartels ‘pushed local proxies to fight with each other and then drove homicides up’ in Costa Rica, Felbab-Brown noted.
Payments to these gangs in drugs developed local markets that further increased the violence, and the authorities felt overwhelmed.
Exterior view of the High-Security Center for Organized Crime Containment (CACCO) in Alajuela, Costa Rica
A cell, including the clothing to be worn by inmates, is seen at the High-Security Center for the Containment of Organized Crime (CACCO) during its inauguration in Alajuela, Costa Rica
Costa Rica has in recent years experienced a sharp rise in violence linked to drug trafficking and organized crime
A view inside the Center for High Containment of Organized Crime
The alarm was raised in 2023 when the country registered a record 907 homicides — a figure that has decreased, but only slightly — and the government acknowledged that they were mostly due to organized crime.
Insecurity, although far from that of Ecuador or Mexico, became the biggest concern for Costa Ricans and was a key factor in Fernández’s election.
It was then that Fernández’s predecessor, Rodrigo Chaves, sought out Bukele, whose success in cutting down killings led his counterparts in the region to turn to him for inspiration on security policy.
Chaves bestowed him with a diplomatic honour, and sent his security minister to visit the CECOT.
The Salvadoran president, in turn, donated the design for the prison to the Costa Rican government.
The CECOT has become a symbol of Bukele’s security policy and is increasingly being imitated. Ecuador’s Daniel Noboa opened a similar prison last year.
Honduras planned something similar on an island, though it has not yet been built.
And Peru’s Keiko Fujimori has just announced a trip to El Salvador in response to the rise in homicides and extortion.
The measures tend to be popular, and a large portion of the Costa Rican population supports the new mega-prison.
El Salvador’s maximum-security mega-prison first gained international attention when the Trump administration sent more than 250 Venezuelan deportees with alleged ties to Tren de Aragua, without providing evidence.
El Salvador has imprisoned more than 90,000 people under a state of exception, an emergency measure that began in March 2022 and suspends certain constitutional rights to fight gangs.
El Salvador now has the highest incarceration rate per capita, with about 1.5 per cent of its population behind bars, and Bukele has defended the mass arrests as necessary to improve public safety.
Homicides reached a peak of 103 per 100,000 residents in 2015 and were at 53 per 100,000 in 2018, the year before Bukele took office.
Scenes in Costa Rica are reminiscent of El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Centre, the mega prison where President Nayib Bukele’s government holds tens of thousands of inmates. Pictured: Prisoners sit inside cells at the prison known as the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) in Tecoluca, El Salvador
Salvadoran inmates perform exercises during a tour of the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) on October 16, 2026 in Tecoluca, El Salvador
El Salvador has imprisoned more than 90,000 people under a state of exception, an emergency measure that began in March 2022. Pictured: Prison agents observe gang members as they get off a bus at their arrival after 2000 gang members were transferred to the Terrorism Confinement Centre on February 24, 2023
Inmates belonging to the MS-13 and 18 gangs to the CECOT in Tecoluca, 74 km southeast of San Salvador, on March 15, 2023
El Salvador now has the highest incarceration rate per capita, with about 1.5 per cent of its population behind bars
Alleged members of the Barrio 18 gang are presented to the media after being arrested on charges of the disappearance or murder of several people, including two fast food delivery drivers, in Colon, El Salvador March 3, 2022
El Salvador’s security measures have come under scrutiny by human rights groups, which have documented thousands of cases of arbitrary arrests
At least 564 people have died in state custody, according to the Salvadoran human rights groups
That number drastically decreased to 1.3 per 100,000 in 2025, though experts say the numbers could be skewed because the government has narrowed its definition of homicide.
The measure has come under scrutiny by human rights groups, which have documented thousands of cases of arbitrary arrests.
The rushed speed of the mass arrests and a quota system for authorities meant that some people who had nothing to do with gangs were wrongfully imprisoned, they say.
Rights that remain suspended include the right to be informed of the reasons for detention, access to legal counsel, and visitation.
Many families have had no contact with their relatives, leaving them to wonder if they are alive.
At least 564 people have died in state custody, according to the Salvadoran human rights group Socorro Jurídico Humanitario, or Humanitarian Legal Aid.
Meanwhile, inmates who have since been released alleged they were beaten and tortured.
