President Daniel Noboa sounded the “chicharra” to begin work on the Santa Elena prison amid shouts of “We don’t want prison.” The prison will have an area of 12.2 hectares, five pavilions and capacity for 736 people.

President Daniel Noboa, the General Director of the SNAI, in the province of Santa Elena. June 21, 2024.
The President of the Republic, Daniel Noboa, pressed a button and a siren sounded. With that symbolic act he began the construction work of the new Santa Elena detention center, on the morning of June 21, 2024.
The groundbreaking ceremony took place on a soccer field in the Juntas del Pacífico commune, Simón Bolívar parish, in the province of Santa Elena. The event took place about five kilometers from the internal point in the mountain, where the prison will be built.
Previously, Noboa said that he and his wife are going through a difficult time, referring to the death of his father-in-law, Furio Valbonesi, for whom he asked for a minute of silence.
“However, from the moment I decided to serve our country, I understood that my commitment to you and to our mission must prevail, despite the difficult circumstances that arise,” he said.
The event was marked by the protest of community members, 500 meters away, who followed the ceremony from the top of a hill carrying banners shouting: “We don’t want jail.”
During his speech, Noboa ratified his fight against corruption and organized crime.
In a defiant tone, he responded to critics of him who have supposedly questioned his mental capacity:
“I am crazy for wanting to serve my country, I am crazy for preventing corruption from continuing in Ecuador. I am crazy because I want to give opportunity to our young people who are unemployed and who have no opportunity to study.”
Daniel Noboa.
And he insisted: “They say I’m crazy too because I risk my life every day.” In a direct attack on what he called the “old Ecuador”, Noboa denounced corruption and the alleged involvement of political leaders with drug trafficking.
The new prison
The president emphasized that the construction of the new prison, called “La Cárcel del Encuentro,” is a milestone in the fight against terrorism and the mafias that controlled and held hostage the penitentiary system.
“Today we have order with the military, with the police and also with a commander in chief who has the courage to confront them head on,” declared Noboa.
The general director of the National Service for Attention to Prisoners of Liberty (SNAI), Luis Zaldumbide, said that this is a project that promises to improve detention conditions and facilitate the social reintegration of prisoners.
The new facility will have five pavilions, four patios and three security fences, distributed over an area of 12.2 hectares of construction.
Zaldumbide highlighted that the strategic location of the prison, located five kilometers from Juntas del Pacífico, in an internal agricultural area, will facilitate security management.
According to the process documentation, in addition to the construction of the physical infrastructure, the project includes “highly complex equipment” that must be installed during the execution of the infrastructure. Among this equipment, SNAI includes:
- Access control system
- Communications
- X-ray tunnels
- Metal detector arches
- Cavity detectors
- Signal blocking.
The investment is USD 52.1 million. The capacity of the new prison will be for 736 people, distributed equally among the five pavilions, he explained. Each pavilion, in the shape of a heptagon (seven sides), will house about 150 inmates.
Regarding construction time, it is estimated that the work will be ready in approximately 10 months. The choice of Santa Elena as the headquarters of this new prison responds to security aspects.
The contract for the construction of the work was awarded with resolution SNAI-SNAI-2024-0316-R, on June 20, 2024 – one day before the start of the work – to the company Puentes y Calzadas Infraestructuras SL, a subsidiary of the state-owned company “China Road And Bridge Corporation” (CRBC).