Photos tell ongoing story of Salvadoran prisons

There have been many stories on this blog about the horrendous overcrowding and deplorable conditions in El Salvador's prisons.    (Just choose the "prisons" tag in the column at the right to see those posts).   But sometimes a set of pictures can make the point more forcefully.   This is the case for a set of photos taken by photographer Giles Clark which appeared in the August issue of Vice magazine.  The photos show the conditions of prisoners housed in "cages" behind an unidentified police station.   Many had been there for more than a year.  

The photo essay was quickly picked up by many other online sites, showing the power of the images.  There are more of Giles Clark's photos of the prison conditions here.

The images are jarring, and yet not that much different from many which have been shown before.   If anything, the images document the fact that little is improving in El Salvador's jails.