MEXICO CITY — The northern Mexico prison where authorities suddenly transferred convicted drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman is rated as the worst in the federal penitentiary system for inmate conditions and other factors, according to the government’s own reporting.
The Cefereso No. 9 facility on the outskirts of Ciudad Juarez, which borders El Paso, Texas, did score well on “conditions of governability,” perhaps an indication that authorities believe they can control Guzman’s environment there and limit the risk of him pulling off a third brazen jailbreak.
A 2015 report by the governmental National Human Rights Commission gave the Juarez prison an overall 6.63 rating on a scale of 0 to 10, the lowest for any of Mexico’s 21 federal prisons. By comparison, the maximum-security Altiplano facility near Mexico City, where Guzman was confined before, was 10th-best with a rating of 7.32.
