Word: drugged
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...country's penitentiary system has been flooded by new inmates locked up in President Felipe Calderon's war on drug cartels. Calderon boasts his military offensive has netted more than 45,000 cartel operatives from smugglers to gun-toting hitmen to diamond-clad capos. But, now, where does he put them all? A few dozen of the top dogs have been extradited to the United States and some other ranking members have been put in a specially built 800-prisoner capacity top security penitentiary in Mexico State. But tens of thousands of more convicts are shunted into state and city...
...face of the challenge, U.S. officials have earmarked $4 million to help bolster Mexican prisons, part of an aid package to support the fight against the drug armies. Calderon has also promised to build more pens to cope with the burgeoning numbers. But some working in the prison system say the difficulties in the controlling the inmates will not be solved by raising more jail houses; the crisis, they say, also stems from profound problems in Mexico's justice apparatus. More than 41% of the nation's total prison population of 220,000 has not even been convicted and sentenced...
...closed circuit video showed guards sitting and watching as the escapees marched out of the cells into the waiting convoy. The warden and several guards have since been arrested, though they have yet to be charged. Many of the escapees were members of the Zetas, a feared drug paramilitary based over the border from Texas. The gang is alleged to organize inmates inside several penitentiaries especially in northern Mexico. A fight between alleged Zeta prisoners and a rival gang left 21 dead in a deadly fight in October in a prison in Reynosa, across the bridge from McAllen, Texas...
...Drug gangs also peddle their narcotics to the bored and frustrated inmates, many of whom were already addicted on the outside. Convicted car thief Jair Lopez says crack cocaine is easily available in the Eastern Prison helping him fuel his addiction. "It is tough in here any way. But when you're walking round high on drugs it just gets you in more trouble," Lopez says, resting in a sun scorched prison yard after doing chin ups on a rusty metal...
However, such programs are scarce in Mexico's many provincial prisons, where inmates have almost no help to kick the habits. Most of the 43 riots and 22 escapes this year were in prisons in the arid north of Mexico where the drug trade is concentrated. With thousands more cartel soldiers flooding into these same jails, pundits fear the worst may be yet to come. "Mexico's prisons are a powder keg," wrote syndicated Mexican columnist Hugo Sanchez Gudino. "Sooner or later they are going to explode...