He Government of Mexico Federal jail number 9 North of the border closed this Sunday Juarez City (Chihuahua), in which he was imprisoned on drug trafficker Joaquín “el Chapo” Guzmán, after years of poor treatment of inmates.
“Disincorporation from the Federal Penitentiary System on Federal Center for Social Readaptation number 9 North“, announced in the Official Gazette of the Federation the Secretariat of Public Security and Citizen Protection of Mexico.
The agency established that all the inmates of said prison were “transferred to the federal centers for social rehabilitation determined by the Commissioner for Prevention and Social Readaptation.”
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It was also decided that the prison workers, whose labor rights “will be respected in accordance with the law,” should be “relocated to other federal prisons,” the government assured.
Faced with the surprise closure of the prison, which had functioned as a federal prison since 2011, several families of inmates gathered at the gates of the compound to demand to know their new whereabouts.
This prison, criticized for years for the conditions of the prisoners, was the last Mexican penitentiary center that he stepped on El Chapo before being extradited in January 2017 to the United States, where he was sentenced to life imprisonment.
El Chapo was sent to this prison on the border with U.S in May 2016 from Altiplano maximum security prison, where he had been locked up after being recaptured a second time.
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According to the prison report of the National Commission for Human Rights (CNDH), the federal prison in Ciudad Juárez had a population of 541 inmates in 2019 with a capacity of 1,216 inmates.
The prison obtained a score of 7.42 points, occupying the 12th place of the 17 federal prisons in Mexico, according to the body for the defense of human rights.
The CNDH detected deficiencies in the health services and hygienic conditions of the prison, as well as insufficient custodial personnel and a lack of educational, sports and addiction prevention activities.
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In his report, he detected deficiencies in health services, poor hygiene conditions, insufficient custodial personnel, educational and sports activities, poor care for LGBT personnel, and insufficient addiction prevention programs.
In the agreement on the closure of the prison, the Government argued that “it is necessary to generate actions for the modernization and reengineering of penitentiary matters” and that the prisons must have “sufficient infrastructure, human and material resources to serve the prison population.”
“The Ministry of Security and Citizen Protection will determine in due course the final destination of the real estate that occupies the Federal Center for Social Readaptation number 9 North,” he concluded.
In Mexico there are about 17,000 inmates in federal prisons and 17,000 in state prisons, many of whom are in overcrowded conditions.
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