The many, many grey areas of the Mexican penitentiary system

Prison Bars by Michael Coghlan (2011) / Flickr / CC BY-SA 2.0

This week, the UN Special Rapporteur on torture Juan E. Méndez, made an official visit to Mexico in order to assess the challenges regarding torture and other cruel and inhuman treatment in the country.

While his visit was made the subject of headlines in the past weeks, what is striking is that media have focused their attention exclusively on Méndez’s visit and exposing the endemic violation of human rights in the penitentiary system, failing to highlight that this is a country where basic data about the penitentiary population is jealously guarded.

The Rapporteur’s mission included visits to the penitentiary systems of Mexico City, Chiapas, and Baja California, but also to the state of Nuevo León. Home to the industrial capital of the country, this state borders the U.S. and has a population of approximately four million people.

In the context of the “war on drugs” declared in 2006 by former president Felipe Calderón, this state –and more specifically the city of Monterrey- has become a hotbed of violence as rival drug cartels have fought for control of the lucrative plaza (or turf) that this city came to represent. [1] Arguably, (and I say ‘arguably’ for reasons that will become evident further on), a significant number of inmates who have suffered abuses at the hands of the authorities have been detained for crimes related to the drug trade [2], which increased by 121% in the period from 2004 to 2009.

While on his mission in the state of Nuevo León, a reputable journal reported that the Rapporteur was denied access to the Agencia Estatal de Investigaciones (state investigation agency – AEI [3]). Once again, the bigger issue that deserves attention (such as why he was denied access in the first place), failed to be adequately addressed. This ultimately leads back to the main problem that is being discussed –the lack of transparency in the information made available.

In terms of the penitentiary population, this is a pressing concern because at the most basic level, we do not even know the characteristics of the inmates accused of crime in the first place.

The information on Mexico’s penitentiary system available for public access contains data on the size of the penitentiary population (at the national level, by state and individual penitentiary centres), the gender distribution of inmates, and their status (whether they have been processed or not). As of 2013, we know that there were more than 242,000 inmates in the country; 95.2% of this population was male, only 4.8% female.

In terms of other socio-demographic characteristics of this population, we know nothing more about these individuals. [4] What is the predominant age group of perpetrators? What is their education level? What is the distribution of crimes that they have been sentenced for? [5] These are only some of the initial questions that come to mind when one begins to dig into the very, very grey area that is the Mexican penitentiary system.

Unfortunately, the information that we can draw on to make assumptions (and in all likelihood, flawed assumptions) about the characteristics of perpetrators of crime, and therefore the prison population, is derived from victimization surveys [6] carried out by the national statistics institute. Nevertheless, the information provided by this survey originates from the information that victims of several types of crime [7] can recall about their aggressors. [8]

To add to this unreliability, the rate of victimization does not even reflect official statistics on crime. According to the victimization survey for 2012 there were approximately 21 million victims [9] in Mexico of the different types of crime considered in the survey. [10] This number is 8 to 10 times larger than that which appears in official statistics.

The reason for this discrepancy is that victims don’t report crime. In fact, according to the victimization survey, 87.5% of victims did not file an official reportwith the public ministry in 2012. [11] The main reasons for this were because individuals believe it is “a waste of time” (33.6%) and because they “do not trust the authorities” (14.7%).

Viewed in isolation, the experience of the Rapporteur and his findings can make headlines, but given the context, they should come as no surprise. In a country where basic information about characteristics of the penitentiary population are only available in limited form, where also, victims of crime refuse to report crime to officials, and where there is a serious lack of transparency (that is arguably increasing), restrictions of access to international human rights advocates and human rights abuses are not the only concerns that demand attention.