At a conference on Wednesday, President Calderón asked prosecutors and judges turned the tables on those used to asking the questions. Why were so few of those arrested for violent crimes in Mexico being punished? Documents obtained by the Associated Press indicate that only about 15 percent of those arrested between December 2006 and September 2009 were either convicted or acquitted. Guillermo Ortiz, the chief justice of Mexico’s Supreme Court, gives a conflicting account. He says while some cases have been dismissed for lack of evidence, 85% of those “formally” held over for crimes were convicted of charges.
Calderón has called for a series of panels and conferences in Mexico to come up with crime fighting strategies. In recent weeks two inklings point to a reassessment of the Mexican government’s strategy against drug trafficking. High-profile killings of members of the Sinaloa gang in fire fights with law enforcement points toward the relative lack of progress made against Mexico’s most powerful drug syndicate. A second problem has been the paltry rate of judicial prosecutions in Mexico. To me, this new willingness to reassess and re-target the government’s efforts to combat drug-related crime in Mexico holds promise. Time will tell how much.
