WASHINGTON, Feb. 4 (UPI) -- The failure of Mexican prisons to prevent inmate escapes stems from a lack of planning by the government when it began its war on drugs, experts said.
Dangerous inmates -- including cartel leaders and killers -- have escaped from penitentiaries in recent months, some in mass breaks and others by walking through the doors, The Washington Post reported.
When the Mexican government began its offensive against drug cartels, it failed to develop a prison system able to jail cartel members. As a result, tens of thousands of prisoners are being held in overcrowded, underfunded and poorly guarded facilities, the experts said.
In one mass escape, 153 inmates walked out of a penitentiary in Nuevo Laredo, just across the border from Laredo, Texas, in November and rode away in a caravan. All remain at large.
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Prison expert Elena Azaola Garrido, a researcher at Mexico's Center for Advanced Studies in Social Anthropology, told the Post the Nuevo Laredo escape was the predictable result of a persistently neglected penal system cracking under pressure.
"It seems like an extreme, shocking incident, but to a lesser extent it's happening all around the country," she said.
Mexican media report about 350 inmates escaped from prisons in 2010; so far, one has been caught.
"I lock them up, and they let them out," Mexican President Felipe Calderon said, referring to local officials.
The Nuevo Laredo prison's interim director, Rebeca Nicasio, told the Post all 43 guards and supervisors on duty during the escape were in jail awaiting trial.
Mexican and U.S. officials said the Calderon government is working to build federal penitentiaries, increasing the current eight facilities to as many as 20 by the end of next year, said Patricio Patino Arias, the federal prison system's second in command.
