Justice - or lack thereof: Mexico Federal Prosecutor Fails to Investigate 95% Drug Murders

From 'InSight Crime,' more on the dysfunction of the Mexican justice system

Mexico Federal Prosecutor Fails to Investigate 95% Drug Murders: "Official statistics suggest that the surge in drug violence in Mexico is overwhelming the nation’s institutions, with the justice system struggling to keep up with the ever-growing number of criminals, and victims.

One manifestation of this, as Contralinea reports, is the inability of the nation’s justice department, known as the PGR, to investigate the growing number of murders linked to the drug trade and organized crime. Out of roughly 40,000 such killings since the start of the Calderon administration in 2006, the PGR has opened investigations into just 1,778 -- less than 5 percent.

The government defends itself by saying it has a legal obligation to investigate only those murders that fall within federal jurisdiction, which is limited to killings of journalists and government officials. However, critics say that the PGR should investigate all murders linked to organized crime, as this constitutes a federal offense.

The argument over responsibility masks a larger problem of capacity: even if the PGR accepted the obligation to investigate all murders linked to organized crime and the drug trade, it clearly could not increase the number of investigations by a factor of 20 and still conduct effective inquiries. For the PGR to increase its capacity to not only open perfunctory investigations but bring them to a satisfactory close, it needs far more funding and manpower than it has today, something no one is seriously proposing.

This is reflective of a broader dysfunction of the criminal justice system at all levels. Despite the fact that the federal authorities enjoy a better reputation than their state and local counterparts, the PGR says that just 28 percent of all arrests on federal crimes in 2010 resulted in trials, to say nothing of convictions, with the remainder dismissed because of a lack of evidence or procedural errors in the investigation."