Mexico s Prison System Yet Another Blemish for Fox

2 May 2006

Council On Hemispheric Affairs

Monitoring Political,Economic and Diplomatic Issues Affecting the WesternHemisphere

COHA Report 06.07

Word Count: 2650

COHA sReport on Mexico s Prison System: Yet Another BlemishedAspect of Fox s Failed Presidency

Analysis preparedby COHA Research Associate Sabrina Starke Monday, May 1,2006

The following is an executive summary of a COHAreport on the Mexican prison system. For the completedocument, please click the link at the bottom of thispage.

Mexico s prison system has reached a breaking point,and the Fox administration s continued "band-aid response"has set the country on a path towards crisis. With thecountry s level of violent crime reaching explosive levels,the failings of the criminal justice system can no longer beoverlooked. If Fox, and his eventual successor, are ever tosucceed in checking an expanding crime wave, they will firstneed to confront a penal system that currently isconfronting a crisis of unprecedented proportions.

Likeother Latin American countries, Mexico, for good reason,prefers to keep its prison system hidden from public view.With 191 inmates per 100,000 members of the generalpopulation, Mexico s penal facilities are running at over125% of capacity. These tenebrous statistics suggest thatjustice in the country is not only often skewed, but thatpoor and marginalized Mexicans bear the brunt of thesystem s excesses. Literally bursting at the seams with whatshould be five-person cells, today each of these unitsactually house more than 20 inmates. As a result, Mexicanprisons are natural breeding grounds for civic abuses,ranging from sexual outrages to ethnic discrimination.Clearly President Fox has not looked at this problem withany sense of urgency, projecting his prison strategy asmerely one more aspect of his failed presidency.

Not allinmates suffer, however: narcos have effectively takencontrol at maximum security facilities, caricaturing therole of governance. The government has practically givennarco leaders a de facto office from which they can conducttheir business, allowing them to be equipped with anytechnology or device they desire to expedite theirclandestine activities. Prison administrators, usuallycomplicit in this outright system of corruption, claim ithelps maintain order, yet in reality it only ensuresimpunity and offers no solution to the country s epic crimecontainment problems.

In the face of this widening crisis,Mexican officials have only given lip service to the problemwith empty reports and meaningless reforms. As a whole, thegovernment s approach to the crime problem has largely beenviewed as a failure, and it is in the realm of the penalsystem where Fox has displayed a marked lack of politicalcourage and constant vision in the face of a dauntingchallenge.

Fullarticle...

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