Putting a new spin on prisoner job skill development, Mexican officials have revealed that prisoners at a northern Mexico jail were
regularly allowed out to perform nighttime murders for hire. From the New York Times:
“The prisoners carried out three massacres this year in the city of Torreón in which 35 people were killed … Among them, the authorities said, was last week’s attack on birthday revelers at a party hall. A gang shot randomly into the crowd, they said, killing 17 people.”
The bullets were matched with those from jail guards’ firearms. And while it seems like something out of Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill series, this is just a particularly egregious example of state-sanctioned barbarity in prisons.
Our own prisons suffer not merely because of poor conditions but because those who finish serving time for a first offense frequently return having committed a worse crime. Meanwhile, gang culture is just a casual fact of prison life. So those who leave can’t help but take with them gang instincts.
The difference between our system and Mexico’s seems to be that our guards don’t loan out their weapons.
