World Prisons
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El Salvador

Ciudad Barrios prison

Low
Verified
Aging · 5mo ago
Sources last reviewed on

Data is aggregated from public sources and may be incomplete or out of date. Always verify with primary sources before acting on any figure. See data sources.

For families

How to send mail, money, and visit Ciudad Barrios prison

Step-by-step guidance using the El Salvador system — addresses, money services, visit booking, what to bring on your first visit.

Open toolkit

Background

The Ciudad Barrios prison is a prison in Ciudad Barrios, San Miguel, El Salvador. Between September 2004 and mid-2015, it exclusively housed members of the MS-13 gang. During this time, El Salvador had a policy of segregating gang members in its prisons; this policy has been reversed. The Ciudad Barrios prison has been militarized, with both soldiers and police officers serving as prison guards. As of 2012, the prison housed nearly 2,500 prisoners, despite a capacity of 800.

Source: Wikipedia article lead, CC-BY-SA.

Capacity

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Current population

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Occupancy

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Year opened

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Operational

Figures from official sources · verified 22 May 2026 · methodology

Facility profile

Operator

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Population held

Mixed/unknown

Opened

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Region

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Security level

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Death-row facility

No

Conditions

No conditions summary available yet.

Visiting

No visiting information available.

Mailing

No mailing information available.

Practical info

Contact the operator's website for inmate-specific procedures.

Known issues

No major issues documented in our database.

Contact & address

No public contact details available.

Conditions Risk Score

Derived signal — not a judgement. How it's calculated

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Insufficient data
We don't have enough public data on this facility to score it. Have something to add? Send us a correction.

Related facilities

All in El Salvador →

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Data completeness

16%

How many of our profile fields are populated. We surface this so families and researchers know the limits.

Sources

Cite this page

Under CC-BY-4.0. Include the URL and access date; the site is a living reference and entries can change.

APA
World Prisons. (2026). Ciudad Barrios prison. Retrieved October 23, 2026, from https://worldprisons.com/prisons/ciudad-barrios-prison
Chicago
"Ciudad Barrios prison." World Prisons. Accessed October 23, 2026. https://worldprisons.com/prisons/ciudad-barrios-prison.
BibTeX
@misc{worldprisons-ciudad-barrios-prison,
  author = {{World Prisons}},
  title = {Ciudad Barrios prison},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://worldprisons.com/prisons/ciudad-barrios-prison},
  urldate = {2026-10-23}
}