Ecuador's President Guillermo Lasso has announced a general amnesty for some 5,000 prisoners to avoid overcrowding in the country's prisons.
"I hope that at least 5,000 people deprived of their freedom will be released," the president told reporters on Tuesday.
In 2021, more than 320 inmates were left dead in prisons riots.
He said he aimed "to end overcrowding by the end of the year and to ensure a much more favourable environment for security and for social rehabilitation inside the prisons."
Ecuador's 65 prisons have capacity for 30,000 inmates but house some 39,000, equivalent to 30 per cent overcrowding.
Some 15,000 of the prisoners have not been sentenced.
More than 320 inmates were killed in 2021 in a surge of violence blamed on fighting between rival drug groups in Ecuador, nestled between the world's biggest cocaine producers, Colombia and Peru.
Lasso signed a decree Monday to establish the conditions and system for pardons.
The effort will target prisoners charged with theft, fraud or breach of trust, local media reported.
