Denisse Rentería. Cefereso No. 16 receives women from all over the country. As a maximum security prison, the facility is intended – in theory – for people accused or sentenced for high-impact crimes like kidnapping, organised crime or illegally carrying weapons reserved exclusively for the military.

However, this is not the only criterion for the population profile. The prison also holds women charged with crimes under state jurisdiction¹ who have been sent from state prisons experiencing serious overcrowding.

This has created circumstances in which women with vastly different trajectories in the justice system are coexisting without clearly distinguished statuses within said system and subsequently without differentiated treatment based on their legal situations. The prevailing logic is more focused on managing the system’s overpopulation than responding to the specific needs of the incarcerated women.

In recent years, heavier use of mandatory pretrial detention (prisión preventiva oficiosa) — a measure that requires automatic detention during criminal proceedings — has increased the number of women deprived of their liberty for long periods of time while awaiting trial. This has overwhelmed the country’s prisons, and as a result, Cefereso No. 16 has repeatedly been used as a place to transfer women from overcrowded state-level prisons.

DR. One of the most important factors is mass transfers. Many women are sent far from their home communities and the people they are close to. In practice, it is the families that sustain their lives while in prison, support them emotionally, give them contact with the outside world, and meet their basic needs. Breaking those connections causes a profound psychosocial impact. At Cefereso No. 16, transfers are a recurring theme in complaints and legal proceedings due to their direct connection with deaths in custody.

Furthermore, isolation within the prison itself is a considerable burden. Cefereso No. 16 is organised into modules, which are closed-off confinement spaces that have no contact with each other. The women are confined in their module, and contact with other people deprived of their liberty is practically non-existent. Under these circumstances, a change from one module to another means yet another rupture. We have observed that even these internal transfers could provoke significant mental health deterioration, with prolonged insomnia, anxiety and thoughts of self-harm.

The living conditions of the incarcerated women are part of a system that causes deaths. These deaths are often labelled by the authorities as suicides.

However, we at Algaraza question this term and instead prefer to use “deaths in custody” because the women are under complete government control. The prison is responsible for safeguarding their lives, their wellness and their health. Using this term shifts the responsibility from the individual sphere to that of the government and its obligations.

DR. Various complaints have been filed and legal procedures initiated to demand that the government assume its responsibility in the deaths reported at Cefereso No. 16. These actions have been led not only by public institutions responsible for the incarcerated women’s legal defence but also organisations supporting the families of the women who have died.

So far, prison system authorities have not publicly acknowledged their responsibility. And, although they have implemented some changes like a greater focus on mental health care, these initiatives are clearly insufficient given the magnitude of the problem.

In light of these limited results, support and advocacy activities are underway. When it comes to Algaraza’s efforts, in addition to the work it does with women deprived of their liberty at Cefereso No. 16, it has produced a collectively created psychological first aid guide. The guide’s creators based it on workshops conducted inside the prison, and its goal is to provide basic emotional support when crisis situations stemming from incarceration occur.

Concurrently, legal support services have made it possible to challenge arbitrary transfers and request, on an individual basis, the return of women to prisons closer to their home communities. The situation has also been brought before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, thus helping to spread awareness about a prison system that – far from protecting lives and supporting reintegration – operates mainly as a punitive space with an approach lacking in person-centred policies focused on human rights.