An official announced Friday a plan to replace all federal prison guards with an elite unit following a month-long battle for control of high-security prisons from the corrupting influence of drug traffickers. Public Safety Secretary Ramón Martín Huerta said the first group of elite guards will be ready to work in three months, and will be a division of the Federal Preventative Police (PFP). He added the government's goal is to replace 100 percent of the current prison guards.
Part of the effort to create a police force immune to corruption will be a program to standardize the hiring of new guards, with all new hires fulfilling standardized background requirements.
He added that federal forces have established firm control of the nation's maximum-security prisons located in Jalisco, Tamaulipas and the State of Mexico after the assassination of an inmate last December. The killing, along with intelligence indicating that drug lords continued to run their cartels from behind bars by passing orders through their lawyers, prompted federal authorities to send the military in to conduct cell-by-cell sweeps of the jails.
"This is a permanent and ongoing process," Huerta said.
Moisés Moreno Hernández, a security analyst, said improving the training of police and prison guards is a top priority for the nation.
"The crisis that we are going through can be attributed to personnel and their lack of training," he said.
In addition to the military crackdown in January, the federal comptroller's office has initiated an investigation into the nation's former top prison official, Carlos Tornero Díaz, for possible negligence on the job.
