A group of armed men entered a prison in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero last Sunday, killing two guards and wounding another while setting nine prisoners free in a daring jailbreak. For the southwestern coastal state, it was the latest in a string of incidents.
State officials told the Los Angeles Times that the jailbreak was the work of the Knights Templar, a local gang and drug cartel. Operating out of Guerrero as well as the neighboring state of Michoacan, the Knights have been identified by the United States Government as one of the top smugglers of crystal meth to America.
According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 500 metric tons of amphetamine-type stimulants are produced per year. The office also claims some 24.7 million people are abusing crystal meth, and that 1.2 million Americans have tried crystal meth at some point in the last year.
Last month, President Barack Obama added the Knights Templar to the government's list of drug "kingpins," thereby designating it for sanctions and more focused Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) attention.
The Mexican prison system, meanwhile, is overcrowded, corrupt, and porous.
Last September, the "Diagnóstico Nacional de Supervisión Penitenciaria,", the Mexican governmental National Human Rights Commission on the state of prisons, found that six out of 10 prisons in the country were co-governed by criminal organizations like the Knights Templar.
The report specifically focused on ten problematic prisons in Mexico's 31 states. Between 2010 and 2012 alone, a total of 521 prisoners escaped in 14 separate attempts and 350 people were killed in two riots and 75 fights.
According to Catholic Online, prisons are running 22% above capacity; that's 40,000 prisoners that state can't handle. Four out of ten prisoners are still awaiting sentencing, and convicted inmates live side-by-side with those still standing trial.
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