Prison Has its Perks

DEPT. OF MEXICAN JUSTICE

Under a shaded portico, women chat with their husbands at picnic tables, eating snacks and drinking sodas as children run around the courtyard. Some children play video games. At a prison restaurant called "The Dwarf" (after the proprietor), I order a plate of beef flautas and a Coke. The owner and his wife prepare the food while their five-year-old daughter runs in and out of the kitchen. A TV on top of the refrigerator drones with a popular soap opera.It's visitors day at the state jail in Juarez. The first tip-off that something is amiss is the sight of a young woman in black hot pants quickly being ushered inside. She's escorted by prison guards past a line of family members patiently waiting in the broiling mid-day sun. Turns out she's a prostitute ordered up by an inmate.After lunch I tour the carpentry workshop. The barn-like room is stocked with wood and tools for furniture making. An older Mennonite man, serving time for transporting marijuana, plays dominoes at a card table with his wife and kids. I say "good afternoon" to a short, hunched man holding a broom and he nods back. Fm later told that he killed 20 women.Criminals run the Juarez jail and money can get you anything you want The nicest part of the prison is run by the Sinaloa Cartel. Inside the white stucco fortress are two restaurants, ahair salon, a store, carpentry workshops and even a cockfighting ring. The Sinaloa wing of the prison is overseen by a man the prisoners refer to as 'The Assassin," alleged to have killed at least 200 people.In Mexico, prisons run by criminals, often referred to as self-rule prisons, are on the rise. In a recent report by the National Human Rights Commission, the agency found self-rule in 37 percent of the country's prisons- up from 30 percent in 2009. With so many jails being run by inmates, it's not unusual for convicts to walk out the front door. Last year, in Mexico's largest jail break in history, 153 men filed out of a Nuevo Laredo prison, boarded a yellow school bus and othet vehicals in a cartel convoy and drove away. At the prison in Juarez, an inmate escaped after being carried out the front door in a piece of furniture. The guards never looked inside. -MELISSA DEL BOSQUE

In Mexico, prisons run by criminals, often referred to as self-rule prisons, are on the rise. In a recent report by the National Human Rights Commission, the agency found self-rule in 37 percent of the country's prisons- up from 30 percent in 2009. With so many jails being run by inmates, it's not unusual for convicts to walk out the front door. Last year, in Mexico's largest jail break in history, 153 men filed out of a Nuevo Laredo prison, boarded a yellow school bus and othet vehicals in a cartel convoy and drove away. At the prison in Juarez, an inmate escaped after being carried out the front door in a piece of furniture. The guards never looked inside. -MELISSA DEL BOSQUE