3 Former Mexican Convicts Share Thoughts on Struggles and Successes After Prison Global Press Journal
go to original November 24, 2016

Crime journalist Paul Connolly is in Mexico, where he enters Baja's El Hongo maximum-security prison, a concrete fortress of discipline and punishment from which no one has ever escaped. (Orange)

About 185,000 people are released from Mexico's prisons each year. For many of them, discrimination becomes a part of life shortly after their release.

Finding work is one of the biggest challenges, says Maria Sirvent Bravo Ahuja, the institutional coordinator of Documenta, a legal organization focused on the criminal and penitentiary system.

Because of a lack of follow-up, it's difficult to know how many of these former prisoners are currently unemployed, says Sergio Palacios Trejo, general director of the Instituto de Reinsercion Social del Distrito Federal, a city government organization that supports former prisoners in their social reintegration.

Between September 2012 and October 2016, the institute has supported 11,278 former prisoners or those on early release. About 90 percent of them were seeking employment, Palacios Trejo says.

Mexican law does not explicitly prohibit employers from requesting evidence of a clean record. But the Comision Nacional de los Derechos Humanos (CNDH), a government agency charged with protecting human rights, has said that requesting that information jeopardizes job applicants' privacy.

Sirvent agrees.

"From society, from companies, it's as if there's no commitment to reintegrating these people into society and workplaces," she says. "And the stigma-it's like, 'How could I hire a person who committed a crime?'"

There are some success stories, Sirvent says.

But most prisoners struggle to find their way.

Global Press Journal interviewed three former prisoners about their experiences.

Check it out at Mexico Star

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