SANTA CRUZ, Bolivia — Pope Francis is wrapping up his pilgrimage to Bolivia with a visit today to its notoriously violent and overcrowded Palmasola prison, where inmates have the run of the place, drugs are cheaper than on the street and money buys survival.

Francis has frequently spoken out about the plight of prisoners, denouncing the widespread abuse of pretrial detention and calling life sentences a “hidden death penalty.” He has met with prisoners to offer them words of encouragement, and even as pope continued to regularly call a group of Argentine inmates he ministered to when he was archbishop of Buenos Aires.

Palmasola is the most notorious of Bolivia’s 32 prisons, built to detain some 800 people but housing 5,000, more than four in five still awaiting trial. Two years ago, 36 people died in a fierce battle between rival gangs using machetes and homemade flamethrowers. One of the victims was a 1-year-old.

U.S. businessman Jacob Ostreicher spent 18 months in Palmasola after being arrested for suspected money laundering. Ostreicher, who was released in 2012 when it was revealed that he had been extorted by a ring of prosecutors, judges and government lawyers, said he doubted Francis would see the real Palmasola.

“It’s the lifers who control the prison,” he said. “The police officers who guard the outside of the prison push you inside the prison and you’re on your friggin’ own.”

Francis is likely to urge the prisoners to not despair, while also acknowledging the wretched conditions they face.

It’s a message of solidarity with the downtrodden that Francis has championed as pope and in particular on his three-nation South American pilgrimage.

In his most important speech of the trip, Francis on Thursday apologized for the sins and crimes of the Catholic Church against the continent’s indigenous peoples during the colonial conquest of the Americas.

Francis’ final event before leaving for Paraguay would bring him up close with the reality of the continent’s most ostracized and vulnerable.

Inside Palmasola, everything has its price.

“Here corruption rules and he who has money can live well while the rest suffer jammed into huts with dirt floors,” said Sirley Maria Vargas, the mother of a 21-year-old inmate accused of homicide. “With money you can have your own room, cleaning service, cable TV, air conditioning and Internet.”

Inmates pay $1,000 for the right to a cell and $300 a month for individual cells, she said. Cellphones can be bought, and food and drugs are routinely smuggled in.