El Salvador Cracks Down on Gangs as It Becomes Murder Capital

El Salvador is set to discuss new plans on Wednesday to ramp up the fight against unrestrained gang violence in the Central American country, where in the first two months of this year, a daily average of 23 people have been killed, local media reported.

As part of a program of "exceptional measures" to crack down on organized crime and tighten security to block kingpins from running gangs from within jails, authorities ordered seven prisons to be put on lockdown.

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According to January and February 2016 figures, homicides have increased by 118 percent compared to the same months in 2015 in El Salvador, which has a population of 6.4 million. In 2015, according to The Washington Post, over 6,600 homicides were reported in the country, increasing the murder rate to 104 per 100,0000, making it one of the world's most dangerous countries, including Honduras.

Authorities announced the prison state of emergency Tuesday, transferring 299 top gang heads to a maximum-security jail in Quezaltepeque, just over 12 miles (20 kilometers) from the country's capital San Salvador. The seven penal centers will bar family visits for half a month as part of measures to tackle organized crime activity, including murders, massacres, and extortion, driven from jail.

Prisoners have also been segregated according to their gang membership to avoid conflicts, security officials reported. But Security Minister Mauricio Ramirez, appointed in January, assured that the measure will be temporary and criticized former administrations’ failures to pursue comprehensive strategies to tackle gang violence, El Salvador’s Prensa Grafica reported.

El Salvador’s military will also step up security presence outside of prisons. Such security measures follow in the footsteps of a militarized response to a brutal spike in gang violence last summer that saw violence and murder skyrocket to levels not seen since the end of the country’s over decade-long civil war in 1992. Over 900 people were killed in the month of August alone.

Officials have reiterated that the government is not willing to negotiate with gangs, maintaining President Salvador Sanchez’s longstanding rejection of the idea of offering lighter sentences for organized crime in exchange for a gang truce.

The Sanchez administration, which has advocated for punishment with rehabilitation while raising fear about strictly tough-on-crime policies since entering office in 2014, rejected an offer from powerful gangs last weekend to ease up on violence in exchange for the government dropping the impending exceptional measures to combat gangs and crack down on their leaders.

In 2012, a truce between rival gangs Barrio 18 and Mara Salvatrucha, also known as MS-13, resulted in a temporary drop in violence. Sanchez’s predecessor Mauricio Funes, also of the leftist FMLN party, played an unknown role in the gang negotiations.

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The 15-month truce cut the country’s murder rate in half, but once the deal began to unravel in 2013, violence level creeped back up and even surpassed pre-truce levels, catapulting El Salvador into a notorious spotlight as the murder capital of the world last year.

Earlier this month, a Salvadoran journalist who had previously suffered death threats was killed, allegedly by gang members, after airing a radio program about violence prevention.

El Salvador's rival gangs Barrio 18 and Mara Salvatrucha, now deemed terrorist organizations, both have roots in the street gangs of Los Angeles and tens of thousands of current members in the United States.