Keiko Fujimori puts five Peruvian prisons under a 60-day emergency

President Keiko Fujimori’s government declared a 60-day state of emergency in five high-security prisons on 5 September, a measure that was still defining Peru’s security debate on 8 September as police and soldiers moved onto the perimeters. Supreme Decree 128-2026-PCM names Challapalca in Tacna, Cochamarca in Pasco, Trujillo Varones in La Libertad, and Miguel Castro Castro and Ancón I in Lima.

The five houses hold about half of the inmates the state classifies as leaders or members of criminal organisations. The decree lets the National Police keep internal order with Armed Forces support. It extends 200 metres beyond the walls. Inside that ring the rights of movement, assembly and personal liberty are suspended. Officers are authorised to watch the airspace and the local electromagnetic spectrum, the official phrase for hunting unauthorised phones.

The presidency said the prisons have become offices for extortion, contract killing and drug traffic run with smuggled handsets. Riots, fights and escapes are listed as routine. INPE, the prison service, keeps administration and custody. GOES, its special group, is to lead searches for phones, SIM cards and weapons. Luis Galarreta, the president of the Council of Ministers, framed the decree as a step the executive can take while it waits on Congress for a 120-day package that would let the government label criminal groups as terrorists. The opposition has already said it will fight that label.

Fujimori took office in late July. The homicide rate last year was 10.7 per 100,000, up from 10.1 in 2024. Days before the decree, gunmen dressed as police killed four people and kidnapped a mining businessman in the north. He was freed after a ransom. That crime is the political weather around the prisons order, not the legal trigger. The trigger is the claim that orders for street crime are written inside the five named yards.

Emergency rule in a prison is a familiar Peruvian tool. It puts soldiers at the gate and gives prosecutors a window to seize phones. It does not, by itself, cut the number of extortion calls leaving a wing. That depends on whether GOES finds the handsets and whether the groups can replace them in a week. Sixty days is long enough to produce a pile of confiscated electronics and a press conference. It is short enough that the same five roofs will still be there in November.

Watch the perimeter first. If soldiers stay at 200 metres and the phone searches are logged, the decree is being used as written. If the government returns to Congress for the terrorist designation before the 60 days end, the prisons order was a prelude. Either way the five names on the decree are now the map of Fujimori’s first security test.