Mexico City, Mexico – With an overwhelming majority, members of Mexico’s ruling MORENA party in the lower house of Congress voted to expand the list of offenses classified as grounds for automatic detention.
By a vote of 335 to 108, MORENA’s House representatives and allies pushed through a bill that adds crimes such as extortion, trafficking in fentanyl and its precursors, and crimes of sexual violence to the list of those that apply. for detention.
The judicial mechanism allows a suspect to be jailed for up to two years, however, in practice, suspects are jailed for much longer and an estimated 40% of the country’s prison population – or around 90,000 people – remain incarcerated without a conviction.
As of today, Mexican law recognizes crimes such as intentional homicide, rape, kidnapping, crimes committed with violent means such as guns and explosives, those that threaten national security, the free development of personality and public health, as well as those that related to organized crime in relation to detention.
The reform will include automatic detention in cases of extortion, illegal activities related to fentanyl and other synthetic drugs, as well as in serious crimes such as smuggling and any activity related to false tax invoices.
However, human rights groups have warned that this latest ratification of the detention law is further endangering the human rights of the Mexican people.
“The reform approved in the lower house for detention is harmful and regressive. The automatic detention of individuals violates human rights, discourages the ability to investigate crimes and disregards international decisions and recommendations,” the UN human rights body wrote in X.
The bill was inherited from the previous administration of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who pushed through a package of 20 constitutional reforms earlier this year while still in office.
With an overwhelming majority in both houses of Congress that it won after June’s general election, López Obrador’s MORENA party has been able to fast-track 20 reforms promised by the former president, including joining the National Guard in the military, elections Supreme Court justices by popular vote, and now, perhaps, detention reform.
The initiative passed by lawmakers in the lower house will move to the Senate next week, where MORENA and her allies have the 87 votes needed to fast-track the reform and enshrine it in the Constitution.
With marked levels of impunity, detentions have been described as a violation of human rights, such was the decision of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR).
Additionally, international human rights watchdogs such as the World Justice Project, which analyzes the strength of justice systems globally, reported that Mexico’s criminal justice system ranks 132nd out of 142 countries.
