MEXICO VIOLENCE: JUDICIAL SYSTEM NEEDS DRASTIC REFORM

Figures such as those leap to mind when the Mexican government
trumpets the arrest of a drug-cartel figure. Such is the case with the
recent arrest of Luis Carlos Vasquez Barragan.

Mexican federal police say that Vasquez headed up cartel operations in
northwestern Chihuahua, where he ran a group of at least 30 people and
took his orders from alleged cartel boss Vicente Carrillo Fuentes.

That's a high-level take-down that should be cause for
celebration.

But with the judicial system's long-standing reputation of corruption,
there's no assurance that Vasquez will ever be prosecuted, much less
remain in prison.

Even Mexican President Felipe Calderon noted on the presidential
website, "It (the court system) fosters injustice, impunity and
corruption. We need a profound change and that's why we have begun an
unprecedented effort to modernize and redesign our legal system."

While this effort is just getting under way, there's little reason to
believe it will work.

Calderon also launched a war on the drug cartels and that has done
little more than increase the bloodshed throughout Mexico. It
certainly hasn't dampened the zeal or activities of the drug cartels
and other gangs of opportunity.

As long as drug cartels can count on a spineless and even
collaborative judicial system, they can carry on their activities with
little fear.

The Associated Press story notes, "In Ciudad Juarez, where a war
between two cartels over trafficking routes killed a record 2,600
people in 2009, prosecutors filed 93 homicide cases that year and got
19 convictions. ... Only five were for first-degree murder, court
records show, and none came under federal statutes with higher
penalties designed to prosecute the drug war."

Mexico's government has a long way to go before it is in any shape to
clean up the drug mess. The judicial system isn't the least of the
problems.