Rule of Law: How to Fix Mexico's Broken Prisons

InSight Crime- "An incident earlier this week at the prison in Apodaca, in the tumultuous northern state of Nuevo Leon, resulted in the escape of 30 inmates and the massacre of 44. The dead, who succumbed to beatings and stab wounds, were members of the Gulf Cartel, while the perpetrators and the escapees belonged to the Zetas, a rival group. While the incident was widely described as a riot,·it seems to have been a carefully planned assault rather than a spontaneous eruption of violence, as with the mass killing in a Juarez jail last summer.

Such incidents of mass violence have become common in Mexico’s prison system. While the Apodaca killing was the worst on record, several comparable massacres have been documented in recent years: 19 prisoners were killed in a Gomez Palacio, Durango facility in 2009; 20 died in a Juarez facility in 2009, and another 17 were killed last year; 23 inmates wound up dead·in an incident in Durango in 2010; in Mazatlan, 28 prisoners were killed in 2010; and just last month, 31 inmates were killed in a Tamaulipas prison." read more