Mexican Prisons, Already Crowded, Could Get Worse
December 17th, 2007 Posted by: Dr. Cox
A proposed U.S.-funded antidrug plan for Mexico could exacerbate an already dire prison overcrowding problem south of the border, USA Today reported Dec. 6.
Currently, Mexico’s prisons hold about 217,000 inmates in facilities designed for no more than 164,000. But beefing up Mexico’s justice system and sending more drug offenders to prison is a big part of the $1.4-billion Merida Initiative, a pending proposal for greater U.S.-Mexico cooperation in fighting drug trafficking.
Little of the money would go toward building new Mexican prisons, where activists say overcrowding has contributed to rampant corruption, drug dealing, and violence. Already, an antidrug crackdown by the Mexican government has resulted in a surge of convictions
“If they detain more people because of the Mérida Initiative, the effect will be tremendous,” said Elena Azaola of Mexico’s Center for Advanced Studies in Social Anthropology. “The prison system will crash.”
The Mexican government plans to make prison space by paroling lower-level offenders and speeding up trials. “We still should be able to receive more inmates in the maximum-security prisons,” said José Luis Lagunes López, a spokesman for the federal Public Safety Secretariat.