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Costa Rica has opened a new mega-prison modeled on El Salvador’s notorious CECOT as the country, long one of Latin America’s safest, battles a surge in drug-related killings.

Getting into it: President Laura Fernández inaugurated the High-Containment Center Against Organized Crime, or CACCO, near the capital San José on Wednesday. The $35 million facility can hold 5,100 inmates, about 20% of the country’s prison population, and was built using designs provided by Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s government.

Officials say it will house the most dangerous criminals, with the first transfers set for the end of October. Killings peaked at 905 in 2023 and have barely come down since, with 873 last year, and authorities blame most of them on rival gangs fighting over trafficking routes. Mexico’s Sinaloa and Jalisco cartels, Colombia’s Clan del Golfo, Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua and Italian mafias now all operate in the country, which abolished its army in 1948 and has become a key transit point for cocaine headed to Europe.

Fernández, who took office in May after campaigning on a tough-on-crime platform, is set to visit CECOT in El Salvador on Friday.

“The CACCO will force criminals to face a new model, a tough-on-crime model,” Fernández said. “Costa Rica will become a global benchmark for prison security.”

Critics say the prison won’t fix the problem. Costa Rica already has one of the world’s 20 highest incarceration rates, with prisons more than 50% overcrowded, and former Justice Minister Marco Feoli, now on a UN anti-torture panel, called it “a staged show” that applies El Salvador’s gang solution “to a problem that does not exist here.”

The country’s ombudsman asked that no inmates be moved there until clear rules are set, while prosecutors have opened an abuse-of-authority investigation into Justice Minister Gabriel Aguilar, who oversees the prison, over alleged beatings during prison searches. Aguilar said he won’t follow the ombudsman’s guidance, adding that his treatment of inmates is “my way of being.”

This all comes as leaders across Latin America copy Bukele’s crackdown, with Ecuador opening a similar prison last year, Colombia’s new president pledging 10 mega-prisons and Brazilian presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro promising five.