Mexico: Reducing the Excessive Use of Pretrial Detention

Mexico emerged from over seven decades of one-party rule in 2000, and is in the midst of a major transition to democratic governance. One essential element of a successful transition is the ability of law enforcement agencies to align their practices to conform to international standards and to the demands of a democratic system. The present administration has created an opening—the first major opportunity in Mexico in over seven decades—for non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and governmental institutions to collaborate on criminal justice reform issues.

In response to this opening the Open Society Justice Initiative has launched a three-year project to reduce and rationalize the use of, and promote alternatives to, pretrial detention practices in a demonstration project in the northern Mexican city of Monterrey. The project is being developed in cooperation with a Mexican partner NGO, Renace-Abp that has been providing a bail supervision-type program, bail assistance and counseling to arrested defendants for many years. Renace’s unique approach to bail supervision and counseling has yielded a decrease in the number of defendants who fail to appear at trial and, a dramatic decrease in recidivism rates. The project’s involvement will bolster Renace’s efforts to enhance and document both its operating model and, its impact on pretrial detention practices and the presumption of innocence – for possible replication in other parts of Mexico.

The project is also undertaking a cost-benefit analysis of Mexican pretrial detention practices and alternative models to pretrial detention. The project intends to use the results of such an analysis, and the practical pretrial detention-reducing ‘good practices’ it hopes to generate through collaboration with Renace, to influence public opinion and official practices vis-à-vis pretrial detention and pretrial detainees, and to raise awareness of the financial cost of the excessive use of pretrial detention.

Finally, the Justice Initiative will seek to raise public awareness of the social costs of pretrial detention on the lives, and life chances, of innocent persons who have been incarcerated awaiting trial. This will be achieved through the collection and compilation of personal histories of a wide variety of individuals who have been detained awaiting trial, but were not convicted of any crime. The collected case studies of personal experiences, plus a general background chapter on the (mis)use of, and alternatives to, pretrial detention in Mexico will be published and disseminated in book form.

Through its cooperation with Renace, the cost-benefit analysis and the book, this project envisions alternatives to pretrial detention as one mechanism that advances the presumption of innocence and the rule of law in Mexico.