Peru is expanding its strategy to prevent criminal organizations from continuing to operate from prisons, where they coordinate extortion, contract killings, drug trafficking, and other illicit activities carried out beyond prison walls. Measures adopted and announced throughout 2026 combine prison reform, Armed Forces participation in perimeter security, control technologies, and cooperation with the United States to strengthen state control over correctional facilities.
The strategy seeks to disrupt the communications, resources, and connections that allow criminal networks to continue operating from behind bars.
Prison control and overcrowding
Prime Minister Luis Galarreta announced plans to build new prisons and take steps to reduce overcrowding, including the possible transfer of low-risk inmates to unused military facilities, in coordination with the Ministry of Defense. Galarreta also reaffirmed the government’s goal of restoring order in prisons and dismantling organized criminal groups operating from within them.
President Keiko Fujimori also announced plans to expand specialized fast-track units (unidades de flagrancia) and pursue reforms aimed at strengthening prison control. These specialized judicial units expedite criminal proceedings for certain offenses in which suspects are caught in the act and, in some cases, can deliver sentences in less than 72 hours.
For Pedro Yaranga, a Peruvian security expert, the challenge, however, extends beyond infrastructure to internal control. “The current problem in Peru’s prisons is the loss of authority and rampant institutional corruption, particularly among employees of the National Penitentiary Institute [INPE],” Yaranga told Diálogo. “To reduce gang activity from inside prisons, the Peruvian state must bear the political cost of implementing strict regimes that comply with international human rights standards while eliminating privileges for inmates.”
The scale of the operational challenge is considerable. INPE data from 2026 puts overcrowding in Peru’s prison system at approximately 150 percent. These conditions make facilities more difficult to control and can facilitate recruitment and the development of criminal networks.
The latest measures build on efforts already underway at INPE. During 2026, the agency conducted electronic sweeps around correctional facilities to detect illegal antennas that could facilitate communications from inside prisons, along with searches and transfers of high-risk inmates.
Perimeter security and communications control
The government began deploying Armed Forces personnel outside high-security prisons in early September, putting into effect a plan to reinforce external security at correctional facilities. By September 7, military personnel had been deployed outside three of the five prisons placed under a state of emergency as part of the government’s prison reform efforts.
Under the security framework, the Armed Forces reinforce access and perimeter security, while the Peruvian National Police (PNP) conducts intensive searches and INPE remains responsible for prison administration. The layered security approach is intended to prevent cell phones, SIM cards, weapons, and other items that allow criminal organizations to maintain operations from inside prisons from entering the facilities.
The plan also calls for screening checkpoints equipped with scanners and metal detectors, surveillance drones, and technology to detect and disrupt cellular signals inside prisons. The latter targets one of the system’s key vulnerabilities: the ability of criminal leaders to communicate with their organizations on the outside.
“To eliminate the control that criminal leaders exercise from inside prisons, the government should implement a strategy of logistical, technological, and financial isolation,” Yaranga said. “It is not enough to lock up the criminal; it is necessary to [neutralize] their ability to communicate with the outside world.”
The extent of the problem became apparent in May with the killing of Víctor Hugo Febre, mayor of the Veintiséis de Octubre district in Piura. The investigation led authorities to conduct a large-scale operation at Piura prison, formerly known as Río Seco, involving more than 400 PNP and INPE personnel, along with representatives of the Public Prosecutor’s Office. Three of the alleged suspects had met while incarcerated at the prison, according to investigations cited by Peru’s Correo newspaper.
Biometrics and transnational intelligence
Strengthening control inside prisons also involves identifying foreign inmates and determining whether they have links to criminal networks operating beyond Peru’s borders. That effort has become another area of security cooperation between Peru and the United States.
In January 2026, Peruvian authorities conducted a biometric identification operation involving foreign inmates at Lurigancho prison. The Ministry of the Interior, PNP, and INPE coordinated the operation with support from U.S. Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
The operation allowed authorities to cross-check the information of more than 240 foreign inmates against international databases. The results produced biometric matches with criminal records in the United States and records in other countries in the region, in some cases associated with different identities.
The technology is part of the Biometric Identification Transnational Migration Alert Program (BITMAP), which HSI uses in cooperation with partner nations to compare biometric and biographical information and identify individuals linked to transnational crime and other security threats.
The system can record photographs and identifying marks, such as tattoos, and use biometric recognition tools to compare information against international databases.
Beyond establishing an inmate’s identity, this type of information sharing allows data collected inside a Peruvian prison to contribute to investigations into identities, criminal histories, and potential criminal connections in other countries, increasing the value of correctional facilities as a source of intelligence on transnational networks.
“The Department of Homeland Security and HSI are committed to protecting the United States and the region by working with our partners in Peru,” said Paul Salamon, DHS and HSI attaché in Peru. “By sharing technology, training, and information, we strengthen Peru’s security capabilities, enhance regional cooperation, and together build a safer hemisphere.”
Prison security and organized crime
For Peruvian authorities, regaining control of prisons is part of a broader response to criminal organizations that retain operational capabilities even when their members are incarcerated. “Countries in the region that have managed to mitigate this problem demonstrate that prison control is an essential first step toward restoring security on the streets,” Yaranga said.
The challenge goes beyond preventing a cell phone from entering a prison. It requires maintaining control over access points, detecting and blocking illicit communications, combating internal corruption, and using information gathered inside prisons to identify connections to criminal organizations both within Peru and abroad.
“Crime is not what it was years ago, or even last year,” Yaranga said. “It increasingly makes use of science and technology and therefore requires unconventional mechanisms and joint assistance from other countries.”
