Politics: The Fight for the Lost World of Mexican Prisons
The recent riot in Topo Chico prison, in which 49 inmates were killed and another 12 seriously injured, is just the latest in a long history of official neglect and abject conditions prevailing in many correctional facilities throughout Mexico. The specific diagnostic for the Topo Chico facility reveals deficient conditions on the level of equipment, services, personnel, norms and their application, social reinsertion efforts, etc., characteristics it shares with many other prisons in Mexico.
Many prisons are governed by drug trafficking organizations. In one illustrative case, in 2010, inmates affiliated with the Pacific Cartel recurrently left the prison in Gómez Palacio, Durango, at night to murder members of the Zetas, a rival cartel with whom they were battling for control over the region and especially the neighboring city of Torreon, Coahuila; during these deadly nocturnal excursions the prisoners employed the prison guards’ vehicles, protective armor and weapons. Although examples of prison corruption abound, the most recent prison escape by Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán from a “maximum security” prison last July provides one of the better known examples.
The bloodletting at Topo Chico poses the first major challenge that Nuevo León’s “independent” governor has had to face as it brought to light the lack of attention and low priority officials had given to the troubled prison, which was also largely under the control of criminal gangs. But because the problem is much more generalized and is in no way confined to the state of Nuevo León, the administration of President Enrique Peña Nieto and state governors are on notice to come up with solutions to the country’s depressingly deficient penitentiary system. It is a problem that can no longer be left off the list of policy and budgetary priorities. Now that Congress is to debate the issue of reforming the police corps’ and departments’ operations – a matter that cannot be reduced to the question of forming unified commands on the state level, which has dominated the debate so far – it would be desirable for the administration or lawmakers to offer proposals designed to improve prisons.
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