Faced with the inability to stop organized crime from operating in land-based prisons, the government of Abelardo de la Espriella is seeking to do so at sea. The ministries of Defense and Justice, together with the National Penitentiary and Prison Institute (INPEC), are working on a plan to convert a Colombian Navy ship into a prison to transfer the major extortion kingpins who carry out their crimes from behind bars. The measure, similar to a proposal by Daniel Noboa in Ecuador that has not been implemented, aims to isolate criminals to prevent them from continuing to offend via cellphone networks. “It will be a reality in a few months,” sources within the prison system told the newspaper El Tiemplo.

The proposal adds to the construction of mega-prisons that De la Espriella promised on the campaign trail but which has yet to advance, and aligns with his tough-on-crime and security-strengthening policies. The possibility of using ships as prisons had already been considered under the previous government led by Gustavo Petro, but it did not materialize. The left-wing administration, which had identified the same problem, focused on what it called the “Domino Plan,” under which it rotated about 30 inmates classified as highly dangerous among different maximum-security prisons.

From taking part in planning homicides — as happened, for example, in the assassination of Senator Miguel Uribe — to extorting shopkeepers and organizing drug distribution networks, Colombian prisons have become places where convicts, rather than serving their sentences, continue committing crimes. In March 2023 several videos revealed that Ober Ricardo Martínez Gutiérrez, “El Negro Ober,” leader of the criminal gang Los Rastrojos, made extortion calls from the public phones in Palogordo prison in Santander; he threatened merchants with death if they did not pay. Three years later, another incident exposed the level of breakdown in the prison system. An 11-year-old boy, the son of the warden of the Neiva prison, died on January 13, 2026 in a hired-gun attack that was directed at the prison’s officials.

Prison ships — a practice more common in earlier centuries — were used in Colombia two decades ago by then-president Álvaro Uribe. In 2007 the right-wing leader moved the the country’s most-wanted drug trafficker, Diego Fernández Montoya, alias “Don Diego,” who had ties to paramilitaries, to a prison ship in the Pacific Ocean after it was determined he had bribed officials to obtain favors and protection. The ship was guarded from sea and air amid U.S. interest in his extradition; he is currently serving a 45-year sentence in that country.

That same year, former paramilitary commander Carlos Mario Jiménez, alias “Macaco,” who had violated the peace agreement with the government and continued to commit crimes from Itagüí prison in Antioquia, was transferred to a Navy frigate in the Caribbean. Jiménez was the first of the demobilized paramilitary commanders to be extradited to the United States; he returned to Colombia in 2019 after serving his sentence.

Despite the ideological distance between De la Espriella and his presidential predecessor, which led to the handover between the two administrations being suspended, the prison issue promises to be more fluid. Amid a sweeping overhaul of the entire military leadership, INPEC will remain under Colonel Diego Fernando Gutiérrez Rojas, the only official in a key post to be confirmed. During his campaign, De la Espriella had questioned the agency’s operation and even proposed eliminating it. Gutiérrez’s continued tenure, however, points to some continuity in prison policies.

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