It's hard to say if it's even effective but my bets are on that it being the opposite. How you say? Well for one we're trusting their own 0 homicides figures to make assumptions about effectiveness. And second, it's well known that Bukele's government has been discretely liberating big MS-13 capos who quickly hide on other latinamerican countries which has all the markings of a pact between gang leaders and the government. In essence, government heads have become the defacto capos and are doing gang shit, the police is now part of the maras muscle and the arbitrary arrests prove it. The rest of the prison stuff is just for show. Even if this was not true, jails are known hotpots of potential criminality. It's where new gangs like CJNG were formed, so it's just delaying an inevitable problem. From wherever you look, it's a temporary band-aid.