The Pros and Cons of Outsourcing Latin America's Justice to the United States The Economist
go to original November 20, 2015

No sooner had Mexican security forces captured Joaquín “El Chapo” (Shorty) Guzmán, the country’s most wanted drug trafficker, in February 2014 than the United States began preparing the papers to request his extradition. He faced numerous charges north of the border and presented an obvious flight risk, having already escaped from prison in 2001.

However, Enrique Peña Nieto, Mexico’s president, saw the incarceration of his trophy inmate as a matter of national dignity. He had already curbed collaboration between his justice officials and their American counterparts by halving the number of extraditions and requiring security dealings to pass through a “single window” at the interior ministry. When asked in January this year about extraditing Mr Guzmán (the model for the masks above), Jesús Murillo Karam, then the attorney-general, quipped that “Chapo must stay here to complete his sentence, and then I will extradite him. So in about 300 or 400 years.”

Just six months on, Mr Murillo had reason to rue his sarcasm. In an escape worthy of his legend, Mr Guzmán snuck out of prison through a mile-long tunnel. In September Mr Peña implicitly admitted that the Americans had a point by approving the extradition of 13 prisoners to the United States, including Edgar “La Barbie” Valdez Villarreal, a bloodthirsty Texan drug lord.

Mexico’s U-turn is the most striking recent example of a Latin American government turning to outsiders to help enforce its laws. In 2012 Honduras ended its 30-year ban on extraditions. The next year El Salvador sent a citizen to the United States to face organised-crime charges for the first time. In April this year the UN’s independent prosecutor in Guatemala revealed a bribery scandal that led to the resignation and arrest of the president.

Extradition is widely seen as a double-edged sword, compensating for institutional weaknesses in the short run but perpetuating them as the years go on. In many countries courts and prisons are no match for drug lords who can bribe or intimidate judges and witnesses, and run their empires from jail cells using mobile phones.

Read the rest at The Economist

Related: Why Kidnapping, Extortion Boomed in Mexico (InSight Crime)

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