Thanks to a series of construction projects during the past three years, costing $10 million, Costa Rica’s prison population is now contained in a prison system that can fit it.
According to the daily La Nación, overpopulation in Costa Rican prisons is at zero for the first time in history, and is actually under capacity by 409 spaces. This, after official statistics from 2003 showed an overpopulation of 11% in the nation’s prisons.
As of this month, 7,731 people are held in Costa Rican prisons, the daily reported, but the system now has a capacity for 8,140 prisoners.
Cindy Sánchez, one of two judges who verified the drop in overcrowding, said that, “this helps the prisoners feel that there are institutions that are concerned for them, that in some way they are respected,” La Nación reported.
