Why crimes are rarely reported in Mexico

El Daily Post: Don’t bother. Over at Vice News, Andrea Noel tells a horrifying story about getting mugged in Mexico and then trying to report the crime. Here’s a taste: “Back in Mexico, I went into my nearest prosecutor's office last Monday, hoping to file a new police report and lodge a complaint against the attendant who had pressed me into lying on official documents. When I got to where I needed to be, the official behind the counter told me I would have to go to a different district to try to file a complaint. I was informed that the process would take at least 20 days, and I would likely face charges for signing erroneous documents. I jumped into another cab and made my way to the next prosecutor's office, conveniently located in an area far sketchier than the one I was originally mugged in. "What you are admitting to is a very serious offense," one officer said, nodding for me to follow him toward the curb. "If you file that complaint you'll be in pretty real trouble. It is cause for automatic arrest." He then lowered his voice, adding: "I would go home if I were you."… I decided to call it quits.”

Explaining complexity. Why is it so darn difficult to file a crime report in Mexico? Two reasons:

1. Design: in most countries, to report a crime, you just walk to the nearest police station, fill out a simple form, answer a few questions, and off you go. You won’t be bothered again unless a suspect is caught. Not so in Mexico. First, you don’t go to a police station, but to the Agencia del Ministerio Público, i.e., a branch of the state Attorney General’s Office that corresponds to the location where the crime took place. Second, you have to go through an hours-long grilling, while someone transcribes your every word. Third, a few days later, you have to return to ratify the initial report. Otherwise, the Ministerio Público (MP) will not open an averiguación previa (preliminary investigation) or a carpeta de investigación (investigation folder), i.e., no one will lift a finger. Some states (and the Federal District) have tried to make the process simpler by allowing victims to file the initial report online, but even in those cases, the aggrieved party needs to ratify the report in person at the Agencia.

2. Policy: as Andrea Noel describes very well in her piece, pretty much everyone in the system will try to deter you from filing a crime report. Why? Because politicians and law enforcement officials, abetted by part of the media and some NGOs, use crime reports as a performance metric. From their perspective, fewer crime reports means success, even if the underlying crime rate is going up. And that attitude seeps down the system. Employees at the Agencias del Ministerio Público know they will be judged negatively (and maybe even fired) if they let too many reports in. So they create all sorts of artificial obstacles. Read more.

As Mexicans Lose Faith In President, Peña Nieto Proposes Changes To Justice System Amid Civil Unrest

International Business Times: The Mexican government said it will propose sweeping changes to the country's justice system this week, as students in the street protest widespread corruption and outrage grows over continued violence and political impunity under President Enrique Peña Nieto's administration. "You have to fix what's not working," Secretary of the Interior Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong said in a Monday radio interview about the proposal, which will be unveiled Thursday.

When Peña Nieto took office nearly two years ago, he promised to stem the bloodshed and instability that plagued his predecessor, Felipe Calderón. During his 2012 campaign, the then-governor of the state of Mexico pledged to "undertake a more effective security policy to reduce violence: no more homicides, no more kidnappings, no more extortions." He gave the speech in Tamaulipas state, where two former governors are accused of aiding drug cartels.  Read more. 

Certification prison: new onslaught of American interventionism?

Latin America Info: Last August 50 Women’s Social Rehabilitation Center of Atlacholoaya, Morelos, went on a hunger strike to protest mistreatment and tighter security measures in that prison, in the context of the certification process that promotes American Correctional Association (ACA, for its acronym in English).

The protest action, which just led to a small note in local newspapers, was a call of attention to a broader process that is taking place across the country: the importation of a punitive American prison model, on behalf security and governance.  Read more.

Arson Suspected in Deadly Fire at Mexican Preschool

Latin American Herald Tribune: The June 2009 fire at a daycare facility in the northern Mexican city of Hermosillo that left 49 children dead might have been deliberately set, Reporte Indigo newspaper said Monday, citing documents from the investigation.

The federal Attorney General’s Office has had in its hands for several months the statements of three people who implicate the senior aide to the then-governor of Sonora state, Eduardo Bours, the daily said.  Read more. 

Mexican Court Frees Woman Imprisoned in Kidnapping

The NY Times

By Elisabeth Malkin

Published: January 23, 2013

MEXICO CITY — A Supreme Court panel in Mexico voted Wednesday to free a French woman serving a 60-year sentence for kidnapping, ending a case that has become emblematic of problems in the country’s opaque justice system and that has strained relations with France.

In voting 3-2 to free the woman, Florence Cassez, 38, the magistrates did not address whether she was guilty or innocent. What was clear, they said, was that her rights had been violated by a televised broadcast of what appeared to be her arrest and the liberation of three kidnapping victims at a ranch outside Mexico City in December 2005.

Authorities later acknowledged that the raid was staged, and that Ms. Cassez and her boyfriend at the time, Israel Vallarta, had been arrested the day before on a highway. They were held while the police set up the supposed raid, which was broadcast on national television.  Read more. 

Mexico's Senate approves bill to fight money-laundering epidemic

LA Times: October 11. By Richard Fausset and Cecilia Sanchez. 

MEXICO CITY -- Mexico’s Senate on Thursday unanimously approved an anti-money laundering bill in hope of stemming a multibillion-dollar tide of illicit cash that flows from the nation’s powerful drug cartels and has seeped into nearly every corner of the Mexican economy.

The bill, which was approved this year by the lower chamber, has been under consideration for more than two years in the Mexican Congress and could help the struggling nation in its fight against the narco gangs. Although the outgoing administration of Felipe Calderon has managed to kill or capture more than two-thirds of the country’s most-wanted drug capos, it has struggled to hit them in their bank accounts.

Calderon, who leaves office in December, has long supported a stronger anti-laundering statute, and on Thursday -- a day when Amnesty International was criticizing him for failing to have taken more effective action to stem human-rights abuses committed in his six-year fight against the narcos -- the president sent a tweet congratulating the legislators. Read more.

Torture cases rise sharply in Mexico, Amnesty International says

LA Times: The human rights group says the Mexican government has 'effectively turned a blind eye' to brutality amid its crackdown on drug cartels.

By Richard Fausset. Oct. 10. MEXICO CITY — A leading human rights group contends that the Mexican government under outgoing President Felipe Calderon has "effectively turned a blind eye" to a dramatic increase in reported instances of torture and abuse by police and the military in recent years, as those forces have been pressured to come down hard on the powerful drug cartels threatening large chunks of the country.

In a report issued Thursday, Amnesty International noted that Mexico's National Human Rights Commission received 1,669 reports of torture and abuse by police and the military in 2011. That number has grown each year since 2008, when the commission received 564 complaints. Many observers believe that those numbers represent a fraction of the actual abuse cases because many victims are afraid to report them. Read more.

In Mexico, Rehearsing to Inject Drama Into the Courtroom

NY Times: Karla Zabludovsky. MEXICO CITY — The witness’s testimony was beginning to show cracks. He grew visibly tense, his knuckles turning white as he gripped the table harder.

Catalina León, the defense lawyer cross-examining the witness in a triple murder case, had zeroed in on his inconsistencies. Indeed, the witness had witnessed little at all, having been standing at an angle that made it impossible for him to identify one of the men arrested in the crime.

“We were having a fit of laughter because they didn’t expect it and were very angry,” said Ms. León of the opposing counsel during a break.

Such tough questioning may seem the bedrock of courtroom justice in the United States, but here in Mexico, where trials are decided by judges and rely almost entirely on written briefs, the lively exchange was a rare sight. Rare enough, in fact, that it was still just a rehearsal, part of a training session conducted by American and Mexican prosecutors as this country revamps its justice system. Read more.

Colonel in Cover-up Case to Be Tried in Mexico Civilian Court

NY Times: Elisabeth Malkin. Mexico City — In May 2011, Jethro Sánchez, a 27-year-old engineer, was detained by the Mexican Army, and found tortured and killed. An army colonel was accused of ordering soldiers to hide the body to cover up the crime, and the case vanished in the country’s maze of military justice.

But Mexico’s Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that the colonel should be tried in civilian courts, a decision that human rights groups say could upend the way Mexico deals with rights abuses committed by the military in the course of fighting the country’s pervasive drug war. Read more.

Official: Mexico seizes property of ex-governor

Mexican federal authorities have seized property of the former governor of Tamaulipas Eugenio Hernandez Flores, the successor to Tomas Yarrington, who has been accused of receiving bribes from drug cartels. 

Associated Press: MEXICO CITY—Mexican federal prosecutors have seized a ranch and the offices of former Tamaulipas state Gov. Eugenio Hernandez Flores. 

A state official says soldiers and federal agents with the organized crime branch of the Attorney General's Office raided Flores' properties Tuesday. The official who deployed agents to guard the area spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to talk to the press. 

U.S. authorities allege a previous ex-governor of the northern border state, Tomas Yarrington, took money from the Gulf and the Zetas cartel. That charge is made in several civil and criminal cases filed against other defendants tied to Yarrington. The cases cite testimony of witnesses who spoke to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. Read more. 

Study: 80 percent of murders unpunished in Mexico

Associated Press: "Four out of five homicides go unpunished in Mexico, in part because prosecutors and police focus on less serious cases that are easier to solve, a Mexican think tank's report said Monday.

That leads to extreme situations like the northern border state of Chihuahua, where researchers found 96.4 percent of killings go unpunished, based on comparisons of the annual rates for murders and convictions in 2010. That compares to what the study calls an unenviably high nationwide average of around 80 percent." read more

Human Rights Abuses: Robbery motive rejected by supporters of Agnes Torres

Proceso: "Members of the Front for Diverse Sexuality of Tehuacan (FDXST) rejected the robbery of her car as the motive for the crime against activist Agnes Torres Hernandez, which occurred on Saturday, March 10. The state attorney general (PGJ), Victor Carrancá Bourget, presented four subjects, and named five suspects, among them a minor, as the alleged perpetrators of the murder. On Monday, FCSXT spokesman, Victor Rodriguez Lezama, said it should not be assumed that Torres Hernández was murdered by a group of youth because they wanted to steal her car, because there are elements that suggest that this was a hate crime.

... He mentioned that the main indicator is signs of torture of the activist's body, specifically cigarette burns on various parts of the body, especially in the face. He added that another source of doubts about robbery as a motive for the crime is that accused did not even try to sell the VW Golf car that that they took away from Agnes, but, instead, set it on fire.

Another contradiction that activist's friends have noted is that the PGJ insists that one of the alleged perpetrators of the murder, Zechinelli Jorge Flores, 18 years old, was the boyfriend of Agnes for a few days, but her friends and people close to her were unaware of her having a relationship or a partner. "We believe this is being invented to justify it as a crime of passion, so as not to declare that it was a hate murder, as it appears to be from the facts," said Rodriguez Ledezma.

Meanwhile, the Citizens' Watch on Sexual and Reproductive Rights called on the prosecutor´s office to promptly clarify the case, and warned that it should not overlook features of the crime as one of homophobia.

"We see the motivation of the crime a clear case of transphobia. We think that the choice of the victim was due to her high state of vulnerability, due to her own condition as a transsexual. In a country and a state that do not legally recognize transgendered identity, where there is a high level of discrimination and stigma towards the lives and occupations of trans people, they are easy victims of criminals," the organization said in a statement. It added: "Based on studies of hate crimes, we speak of a hate crime when a person who is socially devalued and hated is the victim of a crime, especially one that takes her life."" Spanish original

Mexico Justice: Case of convicted French kidnapper roils Mexico -- again

latimes.com: "Six years after French national Florence Cassez was sent off to serve decades in a Mexican prison for her alleged role in a kidnapping ring, her case is once again stirring heated debate here and abroad.

A member of the Mexican Supreme Court has recommended Cassez be freed because of irregularities in the handling of her prosecution, most notably the fact that federal police staged a replay of her arrest for TV cameras. The court’s five-member “first chamber” must now debate and vote on the recommendation, a process expected to begin Wednesday.

The case has long strained relations between Mexico, where a kidnapping epidemic has left little room for sympathy for an alleged abductor, and France, where Cassez is seen as someone whose rights were trampled.
It is also airing the dirty side of how justice frequently works in Mexico, where politics sometimes trumps proper procedures and where true guilt or innocence is often beside the point. “Cassez merely holds up a mirror to our system,” Ana Laura Magaloni, a law expert, said at a forum held to discuss the case." read more

Rule of Law: In Mexico, a Kidnapping Ignored as Gang Crimes Go Unpunished

NYTimes.com: "They have spotted their stolen vehicles at stoplights, driven by the same gunmen who used them to take their entire family captive last July. They have reported the brazen abduction to every branch of Mexican law enforcement, only to be ignored, or directed someplace else.

For the women of the Cazares family who were kidnapped with their families for ransom — and who are still searching for five missing relatives — the official response to their horrific ordeal has been even more excruciating than the crime itself. " read more

Mexico Rule of Law: Experts ask that penal reforms proposed by Calderon not be approved

President Caldeon has submitted to the Mexican Congress a legislative proposal that would make  acts "chained" or linked to criminal organizations and/or their acts into criminal acts. Such "chains" would apparently include an individual being determined to be a member of a criminal group, without evidence that the person had actually committed any crime. Such "chained crimes" raise serious human rights issues. This article presents a debate during a congressional hearing on the legislation.   

La Jornada: "Experts and members of the Mexican Academy of Criminal Science, the Center for Criminal Policy Research and the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), participating in the "Criminal Chains Forum", organized by the Mexican Senate, stated that the proposal by President Felipe Calderon to reform the Federal Penal Code and Criminal Procedure in order to punish acts linked to commited crimes should not be approved as filed, because it represents a danger, as it makes it possible to convict a person who has committed no crime.

The deputy attorney general for Legal and International Affairs of the Attorney General's Office (PGR), Alejandro Ramos Flores, told the senators: "The initiative is submitted by the executive branch in order to make an effective attack against organized crime ... in order to undermine the activities that favor criminal organizations through linked acts that make up the criminal networks affecting society as a whole."

After listening to the experts and academics who spoke against passing these reforms because of the risks they pose to society, Ramos Flores empahsized: "It is very important for the executive branch to include in our legal framework criminal responsibility for those acts which, by themselves, do not constitute a crime, but which contribute to the objectives of organized crime. "

... Among such acts, Ramos Flores mentioned roadblocks in support of drug gangs, officials who shut down airports luggage monitors that check for drugs and weapons, or bank employees who fail to report money laundering operations. In his view, all occur in support of organized crime and should be tried for criminal conspiracy or facilitation, the new offenses proposed in the president's initiative.

Regarding this, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Alejandro González Alcocer (PAN), in closing the forum, said that the initiative as it stands, "in the hands of our existing police and investigative bodies, could be a very dangerous weapon, because you could blame anyone for committing crimes they didn't commit, or committed under threat, or even without knowing it."

The question that this forum attempts to answer, said the legislator, "is whether it is possible to give a sharp knife to those whom we know will use it badly, because you can blame anyone. For example, there is the case of those who are forced to use a truck to block a busy avenue so that organized crime can commit a crime. That is what may happen and those who were forced will be accused. This is controversial. I personally disagree with that idea because it breaks with traditional criminal law, which seeks to punish someone who commits a crime intentionally." Spanish original

Human Rights: Mexican government has failed to protect journalists: Committee to Protect Journalists in America

La Jornada: "Carlos Lauria, head of the Committee to Protect Journalists in America, demanded that President Felipe Calderon and senators "unthaw" the initiative he proposed that would make attacks on journalists a federal crime. He also asked the presidential candidates and political parties to include in their electoral agenda the issue of journalists.

He noted that the president has failed in his objective of providing security to the profession of journalism, since the Special Prosecutor for the Prevention of Crimes against Freedom of Expression does not have sufficient structure and the manner in which it works is not adequate to dispense justice. "It is clear that the Calderon administration has failed. It knows, it is aware of what happens, but the response has been as ineffective as it is inefficient." Spanish original

Mexican prisons: Forgotten by government and society

CNN Mexico: "The Mexican penitentiary model is obsolete; it fails to punish and deter criminals and also leaves the rehabilitation of prisoners in oblivion, said a panel held by Mexico Voices, a program broadcast by CNN.

"Society has spent 47 years forgetting prisoners, because they are our 'monsters', our forgotten children," said Jose Luis Musi, prison affairs specialist. According to the analyst, the prison crisis is due to the little attention that the three levels of government have given to this issue for several years. He noted that without reform, the prisons will continue to have riots and corruption.

"There is a lot of money for law enforcement: crime prevention, training of federal police, the war on drugs (...) but for this, no one spends money."

Of the 230,943 prisoners that are in the prison system throughout the country, 47,816 are under federal jurisdiction, but only 38% of these are in federal prisons. The remainder live in state prisons, according to the federal Public Security Secretariat (SSP).

For the journalist Nadia Sanders a major problem is that faced by families of prisoners. "Those who visit their realtives are mothers, wives and children. They suffer abuses and violations of their human rights, the environment is negative." She noted that torture and ill-treatment have been documented for years, as well as the impunity that exists within the prisons, "but neither society nor the government pay attention until riots or prison breaks occur."

In February, 44 people were killed and 30 prisoners escaped from the Social Rehabilitation Center (Cereso) in Apodaca, Nuevo Leon. Since the beginning of President Felipe Calderon's term, similar tragedies have occurred  in prisons in the states of Baja California, Tamaulipas, Durango and Chihuahua.

Musi regretted that the legislature does not study the effectiveness of penalties or new strategies to be implemented in rehabilitation centers. ... Musi said that if the prison crisis is not given attention, the problem will become uncontrolable. "Corruption will persist if the prisons directors are not prepared, if they don't think about clear objectives to reintegrate prisoners into society."" Spanish original 

Rule of Law: Pre-Trial Detention Brews Crisis in Latin America Prisons

InSight Crime: "Recent prison disasters, with a deadly fire in Honduras and a massacre in Mexico, point to the misuse of pre-trial detention in those countries' justice systems, stuffing penal facilities with people who haven't been charged with a crime.

... Both prisons were severely overcrowded, and filled with inmates who had not yet been convicted or charged. The Mexican prison ... was at 180 percent capacity. In Honduras, two-thirds of the inmate population were being held without a charge, or were awaiting trial. The prison, designed to hold 400 inmates, housed twice that number.

Both Mexico and Honduras have employed pre-trial detention as a core part of the national strategy against organized crime. In a functioning justice system, only those deemed to be high-risk or likely to flee the country are held in prison before trial. Instead, in these countries, suspected first-offense muggers and drug dealers are locked up alongside more serious offenders, with no chance of bail.

Not only has this filled prisons beyond capacity, but it has helped to foster corruption among prison guards, who are unable to exert control over the huge inmate population. The lack of a strong government penal authority further strengthens the networks of corruption and bribery found within the system." read more

Rule of Law: Grave situation in prisions is responsibility of states: Mexico Interior Secretary

La Jornada: "The head of the Ministry of the Interior, Alejandro Poiré Romero, acknowledged that about 70 percent of federal inmates are currently in state prisons.

Two days after the escape and death of inmates at the prison in Apodaca, Nuevo Leon, the official stressed the responsibility of state governments in such prison incidents. While he implicitly recognized that the federal government is lagging on the issue, he said that, regarding the states' prison issue, the Calderon administration has already done its part.

"Throughout the Calderon administration, there has not been one of these incidents in any of the federal prisons, not one," he said. He also emphasized that there are very dangerous inmates in federal prisons, such as kidnappers. "We are assuming our responsibility to reverse the historical pattern. We are doing it very quickly and without incident in federal prisons," he said.

He noted that at the end of his term (within nine months) eight new prisons will be ready, which will solve the problem of having thousands of inmates prosecuted for federal crimes being held in state prisons. However, he immediatley admitted that the building of more prisons "does not remove the problem of corruption in prisons."

Poiré also stated that the federal government provides resources to states for the maintenance of federal prisoners and for prison infrastructure development.

"Today, the total number of prisoners under federal jurisdiction is 47 thousand and, of these, more than 18,000 are in federal facilities, i.e., we have thirty-something percent of all federal inmates in federal custody," he said.

... In 2006, he claimed, there were six federal facilities and, in December 2011, there were 12 functioning. That is, at the beginning of this administration were only 3,164 inmates in prisons under federal jurisdiction and currently there are 18,283, up almost five times." Spanish original

Rule of Law: Lynching in Mexico highlights mistrust of institutions, advancements in oral trials

Justice in Mexico: "A mob lynching in the State of Mexico (Estado de México, aka "Edomex") last week has exposed some of the strengths and weaknesses in Mexico’s public security and criminal justice system. The lynching took place on the night of Friday, February 10, when over 20 people from the town of Chalco, which is about 15 miles from Mexico City, rallied around a youth who was threatened to be kidnapped the day before, and subsequently killed the three alleged kidnappers.

... On the one hand, citizens turning to privatized justice and settling matters on their own highlights the mistrust and lack of confidence many Mexicans have in their police forces and judicial system to adequately handle the problem. ... this is not necessarily a surprise when one considers that the failure to report a crime is very common in Mexico, as the readily accepted figures show that only 25% of crimes are reported, and that only one out of every 1,000 crimes is sentenced.

... Yet at the same time, the legal action that has actually followed from the lynching is a testament to the work being done in Mexico to strengthen the criminal justice and judicial system. Not six days after the lynching, Edomex state police had already arrested the alleged leader of the mob... read more