Crime in Latin America

Prisons for a long time have been a gateway to try to save society, when the only thing that it’s doing is hurting the social order because it’s creating more problems that are not being treated from the beginning. Crime has become a big problem during these hard times with the poor economy, but it has especially affected Latin America because of all the problems that overcrowded prisons have brought forward. In Latin America Brazil and Mexico are the two largest countries that have been affected with having the highest percentage of crimes, inmates in prisons, and concerns with overcrowded prisons. And these increase with the high crime rates in Latin America that are rising due to drug trafficking wars in Brazil and Mexico. "The country with the largest prison is Brazil, with 194,074 prisoners followed by México, with 144, 261 prisoners" (Pinzon 1). These numbers are only rising because of the lack of poorly trained officials and the limits amount of money for programs to help them integrate back into society (Dammert and Zuniga 9). As citizens we have learned to think of prisons as the last resort to put criminals, not being aware of the consequences that it will bring in the long run for society. Prison systems fail in Latin American because they are overcrowded up to three times more of the capacity they’re built for (Pinzon 1). And this problem has caused higher crimes rates as well as the spread of infectious diseases within the prisons particularly in Brazil and Mexico because their countries with higher prevalence of injecting drug users (IDUs) and because they go unseen (Dolan 36).

Prisons systems are difficult to support especially in countries like Brazil and Mexico where crime is rising like there’s no tomorrow an...

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... an issue now because the government is trying to fight crime as well as a war with drug cartels and during the last three years they have arrested more than 67,000 criminals. The inmates that are incarcerated are from different gangs and once there inside the same walls it creates these riots, which means another war inside the prisons (Ellingwood). And in 2009, there was another riot in which 20 died and 15 were wounded was due to drug cartels in Juarez (CNN). This is happening a lot and it will continue to happen as long as the drug war keeps being a problem in Mexico. The more criminals that are taken in from different gang the more riots it will cause inside the prisons. Beside all the riots and deaths that are caused from overcrowded prisons another alerting issue that needs to be look into is the spread of infectious diseases like tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS.