On March 19, 2023, at 10:00 p.m., the women in module C of federal prison 16 began shouting for help: “Don't stain, he's going to hang, don't do something stupid, don't do it. Aid!”. One of her companions had tied the sheets to the bars of her cell to take her life. It took 20 minutes for the security guards to arrive. They did not bring tools to tear the fabric. They took out one of the inmates who had hidden some scissors. They managed to get her down, but the doctor took another seven minutes. She only carried a stethoscope and an oximeter. The woman died. She was the first of the 11 inmates who have died inside Cefereso 16 in the last year. Two others took their own lives in 2021 and 2022. The National Human Rights Commission now sends a harsh recommendation to the prison authorities and the Morelos Prosecutor's Office for violating the right to health, physical integrity, life and justice for the 13 victims. The wave of suicides has put the only federal prison for women in Mexico in its sights.
Cefereso 16 is a cement mass located in Coatlán del Río, in Morelos, about 70 kilometers from Cuernavaca. This federal prison has gone from housing 783 inmates in October 2021 to 1,220 two years later. Within 41% there is no sentence. In total there are 512 women imprisoned in a maximum security prison without any judge having found them guilty of anything. “222 have been waiting for a sentence for more than nine years,” María Ana del Valle, CEA-Justicia community interaction coordinator, told EL PAÍS. Many are under the figure of controversial informal preventive detention, which forces the accused to wait in jail for their judicial process, and for which Mexico has been sanctioned by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.
The conditions inside the 16 are no secret. Relatives have constantly warned of the lack of water, neither for drinking nor for cleaning, the poor state of the food, which in 2022 caused mass poisoning of 400 women, the practically total isolation, the lack of activities, of the absence of medical care. Ángela Guerrero, director of the CEA-Justicia organization, defines the prison as “a cemetery for the living.” What their families and human rights organizations previously knew has now come into the public spotlight.
The National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) presented this Tuesday a recommendation of more than 200 pages, based on an intense investigation into these deaths. From their information it is clear that some prisoners even wrote signs in front of the cameras so that the guards would intervene to save their companions and they did not do so; who do not receive prescribed medications for depression or schizophrenia; that women who had months left to get out of prison due to the impossibility of working and contributing money to their family are taking their lives; that they are being mistreated by security personnel and also by other colleagues without anyone intervening. The CNDH affirms that the psychological care received by six of the 13 women whose cases are being investigated was clearly insufficient. The other seven did not even have that first access.
Chronology of deaths
On July 24, the second woman of 2023 died. She had been in prison for just a year. Although she had had no problems at her home center in Ciudad Juárez, in '16 she had been diagnosed with depression. She had already self-harmed in July due to a romantic breakup. She was only given one restraint: active listening. She suffocated. On August 2 at 11 in the morning, the third inmate of the year committed suicide, 18 months after she had arrived from a prison in Ecatepec, State of Mexico. A family member informed the CNDH that she was a victim of physical attacks by custody personnel. In February she had developed the first anxious symptoms. One day before her death, she reported feeling unwell, with loss of appetite, self-harm and a sudden change in mood, for which she was diagnosed with a probable anxiety disorder and an urgent psychiatric evaluation was required. She didn't arrive on time.
The fourth victim died on August 14, she worked in the industrial area within the prison and had a relationship with another inmate, but they had been separated for three months. They tried to revive her without success. She had been transferred from the Aquiles Serdán prison in Chihuahua a little over a year ago. The woman who died on September 3 was originally from Mexico City and had served part of her sentence in the Tepic federal prison, in Nayarit, since 2015. She was calm and did not get into trouble, according to other inmates. Her family still doubts that it was a suicide, because the mechanics of death were never specified to them and the images of the cell they were shown do not match.
On September 21, when she had been at Cefereso 16 for just a month, another woman died. The authorities told the CNDH that “she was not on the suicide risk list and was extremely calm, but that on the day of the event she received a call from her public defender, who told her that 'he couldn't do anything for her and he already knew what what awaited him.” However, on September 2, medical documents state that she already suffered syncope and that she had an antisocial disorder for which she did not receive help.
The seventh woman who died in federal prison had been in federal prison since March 8. She went on October 24th. On November 4 and 8, two other inmates died. The next one, on November 29. Her last death was recorded on December 6. Almost nothing is known about these last five women. There is not even evidence of suicide. The CNDH reports that it has requested the documents from the prison authorities, who refuse to provide the information.
“They were leading them to deprive themselves of their lives”
The Commission's diagnosis of the situation in the federal prison is devastating: security personnel are insufficient, addiction prevention programs are insufficient, they do not have therapeutic tools, they do not implement detection protocols, and there are irregularities “that can lead to in the commission of suicide as a domino effect.” The investigation states: “The lack of attention to mental and physical health, prolonged confinement, obstruction in communication with the outside, lack of productive, creative and sporting activities, isolation and fragmentation of ties deeply fracture their identity, which has caused an emotional climate of hopelessness, disability and insignificance as people to be generated.”
In short, the CNDH identifies omissions by the authority and points out that “the responsibility cannot be lost sight of” of the people who were in charge of Cefereso 16 when these women died, because they have “failed to comply with their state obligations to safeguard their psychophysical integrity and his life”. The entity points out that there were common factors “that were leading women to deprive themselves of their lives” and the authorities did nothing. The Federal Public Defender's Office has also filed a complaint for these alleged omissions.
The CNDH also makes the recommendation to the Morelos Prosecutor's Office, since it records “multiple evidence that fundamental issues regarding the human right of access to justice and the truth were not fulfilled,” since they did not even investigate the majority of cases of How other people were involved in the deaths of the inmates. “With the little evidence available, it is also not possible to warn about taking actions to rule out acts of physical and psychological abuse,” he points out.
Given this situation, the Commission orders the 13 women to be included in the National Registry of Victims, and 18 family members as indirect victims, so that they can receive free p
sychological care and also compensation. In addition, it requires that a group of specialists carry out a diagnosis of “all possible factors that are leading to suicide events in Cefereso 16.” Also that a mental health care day be organized within the federal prison and emotion management workshops, and that a short, medium and long-term strategy be designed. This must necessarily include psychological personnel on a permanent basis, 24 hours a day inside the prison.
In addition, it instructs prison authorities to incorporate more “recreational, artistic and occupational activities at least every month” and to look for companies that can offer paid employment to inmates. The CNDH emphasizes expanding the minimum communication that these women have, who until now only had the right to a 10-minute call each week and a visit every 11 days. “The frequency with which they can make telephone calls be updated, including an increase in duration,” says the Commission, which thinks about women who were transferred from other prisons and, therefore, from other States, and demands that “they can access video calls.” The commission ends its report by remembering that these women, who have become the forgotten ones of the system, also deserve a dignified life.
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