Translated by Eleanor Crossley
The Attorney General, Jesús Murillo Karam, presented to the Chamber of Senators his proposal for completely restructuring the PGR [equivalent to U.S. Department of Justice], which is facing serious problems in terms of functioning, organization and control – problems which he claims prevent him from working efficiently and effectively.
In this work plan, which is being analysed by members of the Justice Committee, he talks of finding that
"the information in the department's systems to be widely dispersed and the distribution of jobs to be haphazard, the only order being that imposed by the demands of circumstances."Under previous administrations, he observes,
"a perverse cycle developed by which the institution´s operational problems were tackled using structures aiming to improve the existing ones, but which were ineffective and were simply distrusted."Units, district attorney offices and general coordinators have been replicated without following any kind of organizational model. The problem reoccurs lower down in the structure, where large numbers of employees report back to branches which come under the direct control of the Attorney General. There are no institutional capacities to create effective collaborative links between different sections.
"The Attorney General´s Office always seems to be swamped by problems which need to be resolved, trapped in a mess of structures and intra-institutional relationships, in which those running the different branches act independently of each other."Murillo Karam points out that within the PGR there is
"a marked tendency towards political clientelism [provision of services in exchange for political loyalty]. Internal organization is slow and to this can be added the problems of wide dispersal within the information systems, which fail to communicate with each other and operate within islands of control."Furthermore, the PGR information systems are
"isolated from other information systems developed by the federal government and the Judiciary, which seriously limits one of the key tools for ensuring the attainment of justice."In the document, Murillo Karam notes that a series of strategic actions will have to be undertaken in order to give pre-eminence to constitutional rules on human rights, regain the trust of the Mexican people and develop a security policy that has the citizen’s interests at heart.
He proposes to professionalize PGR human resources within three specialized groups: prosecutors, detectives and [investigation] specialists, and to establish the foundations that will ensure the development of scientific criminal investigations, as under the last government investigations were usually reliant on protected witnesses.
The Justice Committee arranged to meet with the Attorney General again next week to discuss the plan for reforms. Spanish original