[imagesource: Tariq Zaidi / BBC]

Jails and penitentiaries have faced unique difficulties since the pandemic took hold, forcing countries around the world to implement extreme physical distancing measures and lockdowns.

The United Nations has stepped in to urge governments to take steps to protect inmates as far as possible, because the infection is likely to spread faster in a contained environment where people live in close proximity to one another.

This is easier said than done in many countries where the conditions in prisons are akin to human rights violations.

The BBC looked into the extraordinary work of photographer Tariq Zaidi, who has spent the last two years documenting these conditions in El Salvador’s jails before the COVID-19 outbreak.

He gained access to six prisons as well as two police holding cells for a rare look inside the Central American nation’s penal institutions.

Photo: Tariq Zaidi / BBC

As well as one of the largest per capita prison populations, El Salvador has one of the highest per capita murder rates in the world.

Photo: Tariq Zaidi / BBC

But that rate has been going down from its height of 17.6 murders per day in 2015 to an average of 3.6 homicides a day in October 2019 and again to 2.1 in March 2020.

Photo: Tariq Zaidi / BBC

Thought has been given to relocating some prisoners to house arrest, but concerns have been raised that their release will escalate gang violence.

Prisons with their mass overcrowding could also become hot spots for coronavirus infections.

Photo: Tariq Zaidi / BBC

Respiratory diseases already have a higher incidence in the country’s prisons. The rate of tuberculosis infection in El Salvador’s prisons has been more than 50 times as large as that in the general population, according to the Pan American Journal of Public Health Study.

Photo: Tariq Zaidi / BBC

Given that coronavirus and tuberculosis spread in similar ways, authorities are scrambling to prepare for what infectologist Jorge Panameño has called a “time bomb” waiting to explode.

Photo: Tariq Zaidi / BBC

Head here for more photos from Tariq Zaidi.

The dilemma faced by the government, headed by President Nayib Bukele, is a complex one. He credits himself for lowering the murder rates in the prisons by using certain emergency measures and strict protocols.

To stem the spread of the virus, many of these will need to be rolled back.

[source:bbc]