Criminal investigation and prosecution in Mexico City: A case study of Miguel Hidalgo County and its ministerio publico.

摘要

This thesis provides a descriptive analysis of Mexico City's ministerio publico, examining the development, organization and operations of the institution and of the personnel who make it function. The objectives are first to explain how criminal procedure laws are applied, or fail to be applied, in practice; and second, to explain why reform efforts have failed to improve the system's inefficiencies in the areas of prosecutions and encouraging citizens to report crimes.;The operation of Mexico's criminal justice system begins at the ministerio publico agencies when police, having witnessed a crime, detain a person and bring him or her to the agency, or when a victim comes forward and reports a crime to a ministerio publico agent. The ministerio publico is the gate through which crime victims and alleged criminals enter the Mexican criminal justice system, and the ministerio publico's agents and police set the criminal justice machinery in motion. However, these agencies are not only the place where Mexico's criminal justice system initiates its interaction with crime victims and alleged criminals---it is also the first place where that system breaks down. As this thesis shows, the agencies are the place that initial procedural violations to defendants' rights occur, where victims are denied the opportunity to report a crime, and where over 75% of reports of crimes get stranded.;The information presented here was obtained from a variety of sources but is based primarily on participant observations conducted at ministerio publico agencies MH3 and MH5 in Miguel Hidalgo County in Mexico City from June 25, 2004, to August 5, 2004, where it was found that many of the victims who arrived at the agencies observed were denied access to the legal system, often turned away for not having certain requisites, like ID's or photocopies, supposedly needed to report crime. At the agencies observed very little or no investigation took place, which was the result of multiple factors described in detail throughout the thesis.