Costa Rica's $35m Mega-Prison Receives First Inmates as Government Embraces Bukele-Style Crackdown

The images the Costa Rican Justice Ministry released on Tuesday were of 123 men in orange, seated in rows with their heads shaved and bowed and their hands clasped behind their necks. They were the first inmates to arrive at a new maximum-security prison on the outskirts of San Jose, the capital.

The facility is called the High-Containment Center Against Organized Crime, known by its Spanish acronym, CACCO. It was built at a cost of $35m, with help from the Salvadoran government, and is designed to hold up to 5,100 inmates. President Laura Fernandez inaugurated it on October 15, and the arrival of the first prisoners followed.

Justice Minister Gabriel Aguilar framed the opening as a turning point. "Costa Rica is writing a new chapter in its penitentiary history," he said in a statement. The same statement called CACCO "a monument to national security, a forceful response to organized crime, and a guarantee that the state will exercise its authority without hesitation."

The prison is the clearest symbol so far of the tough-on-crime approach championed by Fernandez's administration. Its capacity is equivalent to 20 percent of the country's current prison population, and Aguilar said it will also help reduce overcrowding in the wider prison system.

The push comes after a change in how Costa Rica sees itself. The country has long been regarded as one of the safest in Latin America, but violence tied to drug trafficking and organized crime has risen sharply in recent years. Homicides reached a record 905 in 2023, then 876 in 2024 and 873 in 2025. Authorities attribute most of the killings to disputes between criminal groups over drug trafficking routes and markets.

The Salvadoran help is notable because the mega-prison model is associated with El Salvador's government under Nayib Bukele, and the project's framing as a Bukele-style crackdown reflects that lineage. Right-wing leaders in other Latin American countries have also sought to replicate the approach, so Costa Rica is part of a wider regional pattern rather than an isolated case.

What the reporting does not yet show is how the prison will be filled beyond the first 123 inmates, or whether it will change the homicide figures, which have slipped only slightly over the past two years. The next signals to watch are the pace of transfers into CACCO, whether overcrowding in the older prisons eases as Aguilar has promised, and whether other governments in the region follow with facilities of their own.