Mexican legislators are expected today to overhaul the country's famously ineffective justice system, implementing public trials nationwide while turning up the heat on organized crime.
The long-awaited "justice reform" bill — the result of several years of fierce debate among security experts, academics and human rights activists — would amend the constitution to include the presumption of innocence and other guarantees. It would also provide alternatives to jail for minor crimes, in an attempt to reduce overcrowding in Mexican prisons.
Many of the new rights, however, would not apply to suspected members of the criminal mafias, who could be held for up to 40 days without charges. The bill would also insert in the constitution a liberal definition of "organized crime" as "a group of three or more people formed with the intention of repeatedly breaking the law."
The bill's supporters say such tough measures are needed to combat the narcotics gangs, whose bloody feuds killed more than 2,000 people last year, including dozens of police and soldiers.
"In this moment when organized crime is tearing Mexico apart, we can't protect the criminals," said Juan Francisco Rivera, a legislator from northern Nuevo Leon state, one of the cartels' bloodiest battlegrounds. "We have to give the police and security agents tools so they can take immediate action."
Importance: So Mexico is changing their justice system to one similar to the U.S. which will operate under innocent until proven guilty, as opposed to its current system which runs more as guilty until proven innocent. The question is whether the proposed reform will help cut down on organized crime, as many hope it will, or push Mexico closer to becoming a police state with the amount of leeway it is giving police and military in times of "imminent danger."
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