SEE THE FACES OF THE GANG MEMBERS INSIDE THE PRISON THAT IS SO DANGEROUS EVEN THE GUARDS WON'T GO IN

Their faces and bodies are covered in ink, telling the stories of the crimes they have committed and in honour of who they have done so all over their bodies.

They are drug pushers, murderers and weapons dealers - members of the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13), a gang so feared in El Salvador that they have been left to run their own prison.

In Penas Ciudad Barrios, the Mara Salvatrucha control their own miniature society of some 2,500 incarcerated members, complete with a bakery, workshops, a hospital and rehab.

The prison guards and the El Salvadorian army remain on the outside, ensuring that the prisoners stay behind bars, but doing very little to meddle in affairs on the other side of the gates.

Penas Ciudad Barrios is a maximum security prison exclusively housing Mara Salvatrucha gang members, located in the capital San Salvador.
In 2013, photographer Adam Hinton, from London, was granted access to the squalid gangland prison, originally built to house some 800 inmates, but now home to around 2,500 Mara Salvatrucha members, and the area of San Salvador populated by their families - Las Victorias.

‘The men stand around aimless with nothing to do except kill what seem like an infinity of minutes, hours and days,' Mr Hinton says.

'The vast majority of the inmates from the Barrios or slums. In El Salvador this is a place without hope or opportunity and the gang is the only real option. If the authorities catch you this is the place they literally dump you and forget about you - every inmate is made to feel just like that.’

Culled from Mailonline