Bukele signs reforms allowing life sentences for gang-related crimes in El Salvador

El Salvador has taken another hard step in Nayib Bukele’s anti-gang offensive, signing reforms that allow life sentences for crimes tied to homicide, femicide, rape and gang membership, including cases involving minors. The changes were published in the official gazette on April 15 and are set to take effect on April 26, sharpening debate over how far the country’s security model can go before it collides with juvenile justice norms and basic due-process protections.

The reforms followed a constitutional amendment approved in March by the Bukele-controlled Legislative Assembly, where Nuevas Ideas has the votes to move the president’s agenda with little resistance. According to the Associated Press, the package would also create new criminal courts to handle these cases. Before the overhaul, El Salvador’s maximum sentence was 60 years for adults, with lower penalties for youths.

Bukele has cast the crackdown as a response to gang violence and the fear that shaped daily life in many Salvadoran neighborhoods for years. His government has built that case around a state of emergency that began in March 2022 and has been renewed repeatedly, giving police sweeping arrest powers and helping fill prisons to extraordinary levels. Reuters and Al Jazeera have reported that more than 90,000 people have been imprisoned under the emergency regime, while Human Rights Watch estimates that nearly 1.9% of the population is behind bars.

Rights groups say the new sentencing rules deepen an already brutal system. Amnesty International says the emergency framework has led to more than 84,000 detentions, many of them arbitrary, along with hundreds of reports of torture, forced disappearances and deaths in state custody. The group has also said the measures undermine the presumption of innocence and the right to defense.

International child-rights bodies warned in March that extending life imprisonment to children under 18 would violate core protections. In a joint statement, the Committee on the Rights of the Child and UNICEF said they were deeply concerned by reforms to the juvenile criminal law and urged El Salvador to strengthen juvenile justice instead.

Opposition lawmaker Francisco Lira said “thousands” of Salvadorans were still waiting for a fair trial and warned that innocent people were paying for crimes they did not commit. His criticism echoed a broader concern that Bukele’s popularity on security may be masking a justice system increasingly defined by mass arrests, crowded prisons and fewer safeguards for the accused.

With the new rules now on the books, El Salvador has put its penal system on a more severe path, one that places children, defendants and the region’s legal norms under growing strain.