Chihuahua— Five of the nine state prisons—the Aquiles Serdán Ceresos, the Juárez men’s and women’s prisons, the Parral prison and the Cuauhtémoc prison—have overcrowding problems ranging from one to 42.18 percent, a situation that has worsened compared to records from six years ago.
The main prisons with overcrowding are Cereso 3 on the border, which went from 8.27 percent overcrowding to 42.18 percent in that period; and the Aquiles Serdán prison, which had up to 55 percent overcrowding, although it is now at 32.52 percent.
The state’s total prison population is 8,688 people, while the installed capacity is 7,386 spaces in nine state prisons, of which two are for women and four are in small populations, outside the main ones in Chihuahua and Juárez.
Following the fight that took place at Cereso 3 in Ciudad Juárez last Sunday, the State Public Security Secretariat (SSPE) transferred 60 inmates from the border prison to the Aquiles Serdán prison on Monday night, and 16 more to prison number 4, located in Parral.
With this move, the Juarez prison barely reduced its overcrowding from 44.85 to 42.18 percent, with more than four thousand inmates detained in the facility with a capacity for less than three thousand, while the Cereso located on the outskirts of the capital increased its saturation from 29.36 to 32.52 percent.
This is the most recent variation in the comparison of prison occupancy reported up to June of this year in the country’s Monthly Notebooks of Penitentiary Statistical Information and the SSPE transfer report.
Growing prison population
Prison population records show an increase of more than six percent in the number of inmates between 2019 and the current year, although there is a period with a greater number of people deprived of their liberty in state prisons.
In 2019, there were 8,179 inmates in prisons, which represented an overcrowding of 11.81 percent, in relation to the 7,386 spaces available; by 2020, saturation reached 14.71 percent, with 8,391 inmates.
In 2021, the population grew to 8,748 inmates in the seven male and two female prisons in the state, so saturation reached a level of 19.59 percent, one of the highest records.
By 2022, overcrowding reached its highest point, 21.41 percent, that is, 8,967 inmates in the 7,386 spaces available in prisons throughout the state, and by 2023 the indicator dropped to 19.29 percent, with 8,811 people deprived of their liberty.
By June of this year, the prison population had decreased to 8,688 people, so the overcrowding rate was reduced to 17.63 percent.
The state’s prisons, on average, register between 600 and 700 admissions and discharges each month, so the variation each period is slight. One of the factors for the decrease in the population is due to the transfers of inmates to the Federal Social Readaptation Centers, carried out in recent years.
Saturation in Juarez and low in Achilles
The Ceresos with the greatest saturation problems are the Aquiles Serdán and the third in Ciudad Juárez, which have had, in recent years, a downward and an upward trend, respectively.
In 2019, Cereso 3 on the border had an overcrowding rate of just 8.27 percent, in relation to its 2,806 available spaces. By 2020, this figure had grown to 10.44 percent and then increased to 27.16 percent in 2021.
The upward trend continued in the following years: in 2022, there were 37.97% more inmates than the prison had capacity for; in 2023, 41.83 percent, and the estimate up to August of this year, despite two transfers between January and the current month, shows a 42.18 percent overcrowding rate.
In recent years, the border prison has expanded to 2,852 spaces, 46 more than it had in 2019, but this has not been enough to address the saturation problem it is suffering from.
On the other hand, the Aquiles Serdán Cereso, with 1,894 spaces, had an overpopulation of 49.21 percent in 2019, which grew to 55.97 percent in 2020.
In 2021, the prison located on the borders of the neighboring municipality of the capital, reduced its overcrowding to 49.74 percent, which began a process of de-escalation; in 2022 it dropped again to 45.46 percent; in 2023 its capacity was exceeded by 39.07 percent; even, with the recent transfers from Juárez to Aquiles Serdán that added 60 prisoners, its overcrowding was at 32.52 percent.
The other prisons with problems are the Women’s 2 prison, located in Juárez, which in 2019 did not present overcrowding problems and in 2024 is reported to have 11.92 percent; the Parral prison, which went from having overcrowding of up to 1.37 percent, to currently having 0.68 percent overoccupancy; and the Cuauhtémoc prison, which also had almost five percent of available spaces and currently suffers from 15.16 percent overcrowding.
Cereso 2 in Chihuahua, known as the Low Risk Unit or the former state penitentiary on 20 de Noviembre Avenue; Cereso 5 in Nuevo Casas Grandes; Cereso 8 in Guachochi and the Aquiles Serdán Women’s Cereso, annexed to the men’s one, do not have overcrowding problems, as they have an exceeded capacity of between 19.05 and 40.31 percent.
With this installed capacity for the confinement of suspected criminals and convicted offenders, there is an absolute overpopulation of 1,302 people, that is, 17.63 percent more inmates than available spaces in prisons.
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