La Roca Prison Converting to Women’s Facility in One Month; 15,000-Bed Megaprison Breaks Ground in March

Ecuador is making its biggest move yet to overhaul a prison system that has been ground zero for the country’s security crisis.

La Roca Goes Female-Only

Ecuador’s Interior Minister announced that the La Roca maximum-security prison in Guayaquil will be converted into an exclusive detention facility for women within the next four weeks.

The decision responds to a growing crisis in Ecuador’s women’s prisons, where:

• Security is inadequate for high-risk female inmates who have been directing criminal operations from inside detention centers
• Current facilities lack the communications-blocking technology needed to prevent inmates from coordinating with criminal networks on the outside
• Overcrowding in mixed-gender prison complexes has created dangerous conditions

The minister stated that “dangerous women in penitentiary centers have access to communicate and direct operations” and that La Roca’s existing infrastructure — designed for maximum security — makes it the ideal facility for housing the country’s most dangerous female inmates.

La Roca is located within the Penitenciaría del Litoral complex in Guayaquil and has housed some of Ecuador’s most notorious criminals, including gang leaders and former government officials facing corruption charges.

The Megaprison

Simultaneously, the government announced that construction will begin on a new megaprison with a capacity of 15,000 inmates between late March and early April 2026.

The project was announced by Interior Minister Felipe Reimberg and represents Ecuador’s most ambitious prison infrastructure investment in decades. The facility is designed to:

• Reduce catastrophic overcrowding in existing prisons (Ecuador’s system currently holds approximately 31,000 inmates in facilities designed for roughly 12,000)
• Separate gang members from the general prison population
• Install advanced communications-jamming technology to prevent inmates from running criminal enterprises from behind bars

Why This Matters

Ecuador’s prison system has been the epicenter of the country’s violence crisis since 2021, when a series of coordinated prison massacres killed over 400 inmates in just two years. The violence was driven by battles between rival gangs — Los Choneros, Los Lobos, Los Tiguerones, and others — fighting for territorial control of the drug trade.

President Noboa declared the country’s first internal armed conflict in January 2024 and has since invested heavily in military operations against gangs. But experts have consistently argued that without fixing the prisons, the cycle of violence will continue.

What This Means for Expats

• Prison reform is the foundation of security improvement. The gang violence that affects daily life in Ecuador — extortion, shootings, kidnappings — is coordinated from inside prisons. Cutting off those communications could reduce street-level violence
• Guayaquil expats should note the location. La Roca is in the Litoral complex on the outskirts of Guayaquil. The conversion won’t change daily life in the city, but it’s part of a broader security investment in the Guayaquil metropolitan area
• The 15,000-bed megaprison is a long-term play. Construction will take years, but the commitment signals that the government is planning beyond the current crisis
• Budget implications. Prison construction is expensive. The investment will need to be funded through Ecuador’s already strained budget, which could affect spending in other areas like healthcare and infrastructure

Sources: Primicias, Expreso