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Prisons, Covid-19 and Mexico’s permanent war

In the case of Ángeles Mónica Tirado, the repercussions have fallen on her. Her husband, resident of CEVASEP I in Mexico City, is diabetic. Following his transfer to CEVASEP I in 2016, Tirado observed that he was not receiving medical attention. She started to write complaints to the Director. “The Director told me that I was causing a lot of problems, so they suspended my right to visitation,” Tirado recounts.

By 2018, they agreed to take him to be treated monthly by the National Health System. “Any little thing that I saw that affected my husband’s health, I fought. They call it fighting, I say that I demanded my rights.” Last June, the Prison Authority illegally transferred her husband to a center in Michoacan, approximately 4 hours from Mexico City. Tirado believes it was in punishment for her demands. In little over two months, she succeeded in bringing her husband back to CEVASEP I.

For other families, the pandemic has reinforced another barrier to advocate for the rights of their family deprived of liberty: distance.

In Mexico, accused civilians are allowed to serve their sentences close to their place of origin, but chaotic internal organization often prevents this right. The situation is complicated by the fact that 89,067 of the people currently held in prisons do not have a sentence, nearly 40% of the prison population.

Cases are moved around for years, and centers are generally assigned according to crime; A phenomenon compounded by excessive charges primarily for sequestration, robbery, offenses against public health, and organized crime, charges too often invented to fulfill mass incarceration within the context of the War on Drugs. Many of those who have been accused of these crimes are placed in high-security private prisons. One of them is CEFERESO 14, located in Gómez Palacio, Durango.

Prior to March, Elia Gomez traveled more than 16 hours from Mexico City once a month to visit her husband, a trip that cost over 7,000 pesos ($330). It’s been 7 months since she’s been able to visit.

In September, Gomez tried to send her husband face masks, but the administration denied the reception of the package. “The very administrators don’t wear them,” she says, “the residents are not allowed to have them.” At CEFERESO 14, visits are starting to commence, but they’re restricted to 40 minutes. “For us, traveling 16 hours for 40 minutes?,” Gomez reiterates, “It’s too much.”

Privatized prisons like CEFERESO 14 were imagined as part of the Merida Initiative, a marathon policy structure between the U.S. and Mexico which was originally signed in 2008 as part of a bilateral effort to halt drug-related crime. The Ley de Asociaciones Públicas-Privadas (APP), signed into law in 2012, created a mechanism for the State to construct more prisons using private investment. Both Centro Varonil de Seguridad Penitenciaria I and II (CEVASEP I and II) were built with private contracts. Since 2012, an additional 8 federal prisons have been constructed through APPs in which state intervention is minimal.

One of the objectives outlined in the Merida Initiative was direct support for the international accreditation by the American Correctional Association (ACA) of prisons in Mexico. To obtain ACA accreditation, penitentiary institutions must comply with 137 standards in safety, security, order, nutritional and health care, reinsertion programs and activities, administration and management, and justice throughout a three-year accreditation period.

CEVASEP I and CEFERESO 14 are both ACA certified as of January 2020. CEFERESO 14 received the worst rating of 17 Federal prisons nationwide observed by the CNDH in 2019.

Earlier this year, President López Obrador introduced an Amnesty Law thought to depressurize prisons at a time in which overpopulation presented an increased risk of infection. In April, Amnesty entered into law, albeit for few people. Since the beginning of the pandemic, the Commission responsible for its implementation has held one session, and recent news reports that just over 600 persons deprived of liberty have successfully solicited amnesty.

“As a mother, it has been very painful, seeing all the news and the relatives who are outside and worried about their families,” says Beatriz Maldonado. “We thought with the Amnesty Law that some could be liberated, but no. It’s a half-hearted process.”

Mexico’s governing Ley de Ejecución Penal is one of the strongest protective measures for persons deprived of liberty in the world. What is an effective mechanism for the right to medical attention has failed before the very circumstance most likely to test it: a pandemic preventing external intervention. Evidently, a new domain for injustice within a system of abuse that has been widely documented both outside and inside the penitentiary system.

Maldonado, herself a liberated civilian, understands the deception with rich perspective. “The state provides the box but the ones who pay for the gift are the families, in everything.”

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