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Essay about Crime in Latin America

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Prisons for a long time have been a gateway to try to save society, when the only thing that it’s doing is hurting the social order because it’s creating more problems that are not being treated from the beginning. Crime has become a big problem during these hard times with the poor economy, but it has especially affected Latin America because of all the problems that overcrowded prisons have brought forward. In Latin America Brazil and Mexico are the two largest countries that have been affected with having the highest percentage of crimes, inmates in prisons, and concerns with overcrowded prisons. And these increase with the high crime rates in Latin America that are rising due to drug trafficking wars in Brazil and Mexico. "The …show more content…

But this tends to not be possible because Brazil and Mexico are having troubles trying to sustain their facilities. For example, in Brazil President Fernando Henrique Cardoso secured that he would increase federal funding from $4.5 million to $33 million by 2001 so that Brazilian prisons can use it to build more facilities. No matter what was promised many still doubt that this money for prisons will solve them 2 main concerns that Brazil faces which is overcrowded prisons and corruption. As in now, there are about 200,000 inmates in a system built to hold fewer than half that number. This is a clear example of that issues that they have to work with in the country (BBC News).
Moreover, there are not details about a budget or the funding they receive in the Mexican prisons. The only information available is that they spend about 130 pesos per day to care for 1 of the 210,000 inmates. This converts to 27 million pesos spent daily and about 9.93 billion pesos per year (Suverza 1). Plus, it’s about 6.56 million pesos per day just to make sure they get fed and clothed. And the documents say this misuse of funds directly affects by authorities to fight crime. “The lack of security is due to a lack of resources for the anticipation and prevention of acts by criminal organizations, and poor funding for investigation and efficiently processing the most serious of crimes” (Suverza

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