When I was a young man, Mexican jails were considered abominable places – there were often stories of young Americans arrested in border towns on trumped-up charges and thrown into prison in a sort of quasi-state-sponsored kidnapping. Once there, they (their families) had to pay for everything they got from blankets to meals.
Mexican prisons are probably still pretty awful, but a story this morning shows that, with a little initiative, that can change.
The BBC reports — A surprise search at a Mexican prison netted two peacocks, 100 fighting cocks, 19 prostitutes, 100 plasma TVs and two sacks filled with marijuana.
The discovery in the prison in Acapulco came as police prepared to transfer the inmates to a maximum security jail. Police also found six female inmates living in the male part of the prison, which was also the section where the peacocks were found.
Authorities also confiscated several bottles of alcohol and a variety of knives.
Guerrero state spokesman Arturo Martinez says federal and state police searched the prison before dawn Monday.
Martinez didn't say how the women, birds and the other banned objects got into the prison. He referred to the peacocks as "pets."
In July, prisoners in the northern state of Sonora were found to be raffling off a luxury cell fitted out with an air conditioner, refrigerator and DVD player, according to the BBC.
An inspector from the State Commission for the Defense of Human Rights, Hipolito Lugo Cortes, recently denounced conditions in five prisons in Guerrero state, among them the one in Acapulco.
He said inmates were running affairs at these penitentiaries according to their own laws and customs, with little or no control by prison authorities.
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