Thursday, March 17, 2011

Texas prison problems pale beside Nuevo Laredo lockup

Grits tried for awhile to track what's going on related to law enforcement and drug cartels in Mexico, since it relates directly, if not always obviously, to what happens here. But I ceased regular coverage of the topic a couple of years back because the mainstream media to some extent finally awoke to the issue and the subject is too vast and opaque to cover from afar. At this distance, commentary on such tragedies resembles that from uninformed passer-byes gawking at a car wreck and speculating about causes. However, the issues remain so persistent and devastatingly awful that they draw the attention back, like a car wreck, as this SA Express-News story does regarding a Nuevo Laredo prison that makes our problems in Texas prisons seem modest indeed:
The director of a troubled correctional facility in the Mexican border city of Nuevo Laredo has been killed inside the prison, according to the state of Tamaulipas.

Rebeca Nicasio Vázquez, who took over administration of the prison after more than 140 inmates escaped in December and the previous director went missing, was killed by an inmate while touring the prison Monday, according to a news release from the state. ...

The prison, Centro de Ejecución de Sentencias No. 2, known by its acronym CEDES, is controlled by the Zetas drug trafficking organization.

Since 2009, at least two high-profile members of rival cartels have been killed there along with a Zeta sicario, or hit man, who had fallen out of favor with his bosses; and several accused kidnappers who police said were masquerading as Zetas.

In December, more than 140 inmates — accounts of the exact number vary — slipped out a service door. At the time, a current U.S. law enforcement official and a former one said the escape was masterminded by Orlando Monsivais Treviño, an inmate at the time and a nephew of a high-ranking Zeta.
Texas has had its share of escapes and inmates have occasionally killed correctional officers. But the vast majority of Texas escapes end up with the prisoner in custody, usually looking a little worse for wear. They don't walk out the door 140 at a time. Also, wardens generally can walk through their domains without being murdered by an inmate in front of their own guards, and for that matter seldom go mysteriously missing. What's happening in Mexican towns along the US border amounts to a war for control of civil society between law enforcement and violent criminal gangs, and increasingly it seems like law enforcement has all but conceded, falling victim, one way or another, to the cartel creed: Plata o plomo. Silver or lead, take a payoff or die.

Mexico's problems go beyond just drug trafficking. Large portions of their economy operate in the black market to avoid taxes, leaving the government vulunerable to being undermined by criminal thugs even in areas seemingly unrelated to drugs. Black markets are inherently corrosive, subject to corruption, and in that environment, the cartels have evolved into wide ranging smuggling and extortion rackets with tentacles into thousands of everyday businesses across Mexico. If their drug income vanished tomorrow, they'd be weakened but not vanquished. I don't know what it would take to fix things in that dysfunctional state, and I'm pretty confident Mexican President Felipe Calderon doesn't either.

In any event, our economy is far too integrated with Mexico's and the volume of legitimate traffic is so great, that calls to "seal off the border" make sense only as campaign rhetoric. By many accounts, much of the cartel leadership is already living on the US side. El Paso is the safest city in the United States not because their police are better than everybody else's but because of informal rules among cartels about the appropriate turf where their battles play out. Indeed, the much-touted "spillover" of violence across the border mostly occurs in the other direction, with Texas prison gangs traveling to Mexico from El Paso to carry out hundreds of contract killings. Given US gang involvement, we should not imagine that similar violence couldn't happen on US soil, nor that when it does it will be confined to the border or stopped with a wall.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

And in related news, the Obama administration announced this week that the 1000 National Guard troops that he sent to help "secure" the border are about to be withdrawn. Bless his heart!

MaxM said...

This has some relation to your earlier posts about turn over and possible corruption of low level CO's in the Texas Prison system. There is surely a potential for wide-spread corruption as TDCJ keeps open too many units with not enough qualified and well paid staff.

Anonymous said...

I wouldn't worry too much about the 140 inmates who escaped from the Mexican prison. They are probably over on this side of the border where they can live anonymously in comfort, carry on their lawless lifestyles, and be well taken care of by our generous taxpayers.

gravyrug said...

As long as the drug cartels have a product that is both illegal and highly profitable, they will have both the silver AND the bullets to keep the corruption going, and no incentive to work within the law. The War On Drugs has too much collateral damage.

Anonymous said...

What happens in Mexico eventually crosses the border. The differences become smaller every year.

Anonymous said...

gravyrug, you are right on. Can't we just decriminalize the dang drugs?

Anonymous said...

The level of violence you see in Mexico today is the future of the U.S. within 5 years. U.S. law enforcement is training for this by supplementing their units with personnel trained as a combat medics exactly like the military does.

Robert Langham said...

We can't get the Feds to be serious about the border, nor will they back off on drug laws. BATFE has been shipping guns over to the cartels, for goodness sakes and nothing is going to be done. Not one head will roll....except those killed by our shortsighted policies and bureaucracies we put in place.

Anonymous said...

One thing that's happening in Texas prisons is the conversion of inmates to Islam. Recruiting the most violent inmates, they are outfitting their own crash force.