SAN PEDRO SULA, Honduras — Inside one of Honduras’ most dangerous and overcrowded prisons, inmates operate a free-market bazaar, selling everything from iPhones to prostitutes.

It’s more like a fenced-in town than a conventional prison, where raccoons, chickens and pigs wander freely among food stalls and in troughs of open sewage. But guards do not dare cross the painted, yellow “linea de la muerte” (line of death) into the inner sanctum run by prisoners, and prisoners do not breach the perimeter controlled by guards.

“The prisoners rule,” assistant prison director Carlos Polanco said. “We only handle external security. They know if they cross the line, we can shoot.”

The unofficial division of power at the San Pedro Sula Central Corrections Facility is mimicked throughout the country, where a Lord-of-the-Flies system allows inmates to run a business behind bars, while officials turn a blind eye in exchange for a cut of the profits they say is spent on prison needs.

This culture virtually guarantees that even in the glare of international scrutiny over a fire that killed 361 prisoners at another Honduran prison three months ago, little stands to change.

Just one month after the fire at Comayagua prison, convicts at San Pedro Sula turned on their leader, killing 14 people and taking over the prison for three weeks before officials could get inside. Less than two weeks ago another inmate was killed and 11 wounded in a brawl.

The AP this month toured the prison in San Pedro Sula, where 2,137 inmates live in a space built for 800. Journalists gained access not through the prison director but with permission from the head inmate, Noe Betancourt, who provided a team of eight prisoners as security.

No guards went inside the bustling, autonomous town, where women and children mill about the stalls selling Coca-Cola, fruit, T-shirts, hammocks, shoes and rugs. Some 30 people enter from outside every day to work the market.

The guards typically keep to an area between two sets of locked doors. The first set is locked against entry to the outside world. Between those doors, and the doors to prison cells, lies the yellow line. Prisoners keep to their side of it so religiously that the doors to the indoor market and the cells are unlocked during the day.

At night, guards do venture in to lock the cells, inmate Betancourt said, but inmates have keys and crowbars, because in case of fire, “the police would run away and leave us in here.”