Peacocks, drugs and prostitutes: inside a Mexico jail

Police found televisions, alcohol and knives during the operation to search the prison in the early hours of Monday morning in Mexico.

Prison experts are unlikely to be surprised by the loot uncovered. The Prisons and Prison Systems encyclopaedia, by Mitchel P Roth, suggests that Mexico’s prison system has “a well-earned reputation for corruption”, with poorly paid guards and wardens susceptible to bribery.

Conditions in the country’s federal prisons have also been criticised after the Mexican state’s war on drugs resulted in the number of inmates more than doubling since 1997. The Mexican government plans 15 new modern federal prisons by 2012 to ease overcrowding in its jails.

Some prisons are so overcrowded that reports suggest prisoners in Mexico City are forced to sleep on the floor or create makeshift hammocks from sheets. However, in contrast, Mr Roth reports in his book that a number of former drug kingpins “live in relative luxury”.

Mexico’s jails have also been criticised for the system of “self-rule” that has developed, with notorious gangs and drugs cartels fighting for prominence. In February 2009, rival gangs attacked each other in a prison courtyard in Tamaulipas, resulting in the death of two inmates and injury to more than 30 other people.

This led Mexico’s former national human rights commissioner José Luis Soberanes to denounce the nation’s jails as “schools of crime”.

Mexico’s unruly jails
This week’s discovery is the latest in a long line of embarrassments for Mexico’s prisons.

2001: Mexico’s top drug trafficker escapes from a maximum security prison hidden in a laundry van. More than 70 guards were investigated for taking part in the escape by Joaquin “Shorty” Guzman.
2005: A sweep through the Nuevo laredo Penitentiary found cell phones, a pool table, a disco sound system and firearms including an AK-47.
2009: CCTV footage showed 53 inmates released from a Mexican prison by gang members posing as policemen, with little opposition from prison guards.
2011: Inmate Sandra Avila Beltran is reported to have received an unauthorised Botox injection while serving time at a Mexico City prison.