Mexico’s prison system could be described as an abyss on the point of collapsing in on itself and its population of 250,000 inmates.
More than half of Mexico’s prisons (54%) are effectively run by powerful drugs cartels, according to a report by the country’s National Human Rights Commission.
“Inmates exercise control over the rest of the prisoners through violence,” reads the study, which blames cartel members for the Topo Chico riot in Monterrey in February in which 49 men were killed, some of them decapitated.
The government has repeatedly backtracked on promises of reform, while a draft bill to protect prisoners’ rights and improve conditions has been stalled for the last three years in Congress.
Infectious diseases, mental illness, the absence of “programs to prevent addiction and voluntary detoxification,” along with “deficiencies in facilities’ physical conditions and hygiene” all reveal the Mexican authorities’ chronic indifference, particularly in the states of Nayarit, Quintana Roo, Guerrero, Hidalgo and Tabasco, says the report.
Fuente: http://elpais.com/elpais/2016/04/14/inenglish/1460640287_474129.html
