Costa Rica prison system faces severe overcrowding and high preventive detention rates

Costa Rica’s closed‑regime prison network, comprising 13 facilities, held about 19,453 inmates in February 2026, according to the National Mechanism for the Prevention of Torture. Overall overcrowding reached 46.4%, with some centers operating at up to 134% of capacity. The Vilma Curling prison recorded a 40.37% overcrowding level, the highest reported.

One quarter of the incarcerated population is held under preventive detention without a final conviction, despite legal requirements that such measures be exceptional and based on flight‑risk or obstruction concerns. Human‑rights advocates warn that this practice conflicts with Inter‑American Court of Human Rights jurisprudence, which stresses that preventive detention must not serve punitive purposes. The situation raises alarms about potential regressions in detainees’ human‑rights protections.