Silvia is going through a very difficult time. Three of her children are living behind bars. Her two eldest sons are in an adult’s prison in the state of Chihuahua, and her youngest boy, Miguel, is in a juvenile detention facility in that same state. Silvia lives very far from both prisons, in a neighboring […]
This year we are starting a new project in Mexico City. We haven’t worked in the Mexico City juvenile detention centers for three years. Today was the first time that I have returned to the pretrial detention center in Mexico City. In 2013, on any given day there were 250 teens in the pretrial detention center, designed for 160. Today, there were 44! Of the six dormitories in the facility, only four have teens. There are over a hundred empty beds. We passed out school supplies to every single one teen. It was overwhelming to see so few children.
In 2013, after a year of working with the Superior Court of Justice in Mexico City, we presented a study recommending that they implement a “Pretrial Services Unit”. It would be only the second such unit for juveniles in all of Mexico. Last year, Mexico City’s juvenile pretrial detention services unit was fully operational. In addition, a new law that was passed means that juveniles no longer have to wait up to a month for a bail hearing but are guaranteed a bail hearing within two days of arrest. As a result, hundreds of children will never spend a single day in detention and hundreds more will be released at their bail hearing.
In 2013, we shone the light on the problems of excessive pretrial detention in Mexico City. This incredible transformation is due to leadership in the Superior Court, an acknowledgement that pretrial detention was excessive, and numerous nonprofit organizations contributing, training and advocating. Now, hundreds of children will avoid detention and as a result will have a chance at a better future. It felt good to come back and see the detention center that was nearly empty in part because of our work.
I will never see the faces of the children who did not get sent to pretrial detention. They will never know that our efforts helped to keep them out of detention. But today, it felt very good to not see them in detention.
Part 3: Normalizing the Trauma and Dehumanizing Kids Our Family Reunification Project and the “Every Child Has a Story” documentary heads out this weekend to Chihuahua state. The goal is to help families who cannot afford to visit their children in prison get transportation to the facilities. We are documenting the stories and taking photographs […]
Alejandra smiled when I sat down at her table to talk with her. I met her for the first time two months ago. Today she was reading in the common area of the girl‘s cell block. It was a book of poems. Alejandra likes poetry and sometimes writes her own poems. We spoke for a […]
[:en]The teacher was preparing her lesson when we entered the empty classroom at 9:15 A.M. She had written a few math problems written on the chalkboard. We had brought a group of experts from the United States and we were on an official tour of the juvenile detention center in Chihuahua, Mexico. We started at […]
[:en]By Tamara Thompson Let me tell you about Gabriel, a 16-year-old boy from Chihuahua City I met recently during a visit to the juvenile detention center there. The first thing I saw was the back of Gabriel’s head, because he and all of the other boys in the cell block were ordered to turn with […]
[:en]Juvenile Justice Advocates International’s first ever summer legal intern started this week! We are welcoming Russel Payne to our team for the summer. Russell is a second year law student at the University of Minnesota law school in Minneapolis. This summer he will be interviewing detained children in Chihuahua, Mexico to help us learn more about […]
[:en] Just finished washing, drying and folding 15 towels. Why? Tomorrow we bring our second batch of Care Packages to the 15 girls at the Chihuahua juvenile prison. So today I am packing them all up, which includes washing all of the new towels that were donated. Learn More and consider sponsoring a Care Package[:]
Thursday I brought two suit cases full of toiletries for boys in prison in Chihuahua, Mexico. The prison director brought us into a dining hall and we handed out 20 packages of shampoo, soap, deodorant, toothbrushes, toothpaste, towels and underwear. These boys were all from the sierra, or mountains. They come from extreme poverty. Most […]
We drove from Ciudad Juarez on the border with the United States, to the city of Chihuahua, the capital city of the state, in order to continue our Vision Trip. We meet with court officials, non-profits working with teens, and visited the detention center there. (Source: https://www.youtube.com/)
