Mexico · Baja California · Tijuana
Centro de Reinserción Social La Mesa (Tijuana)
Data is aggregated from public sources and may be incomplete or out of date. Always verify with primary sources before acting on any figure. See data sources.
For families
How to send mail, money, and visit Centro de Reinserción Social La Mesa (Tijuana)
Step-by-step guidance using the Mexico system — addresses, money services, visit booking, what to bring on your first visit.
Tijuana's main prison. Holds U.S. nationals among others; subject of multiple State Department travel advisories.
Background
La Mesa State Penitentiary is a prison in the La Mesa borough of Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico. It is considered "one of the most notorious prisons in Latin America". The prison was built for 2,000 inmates and had 2,500 inmates in the 1990s, but the number increased to over 7,000 by the 2010s. Prisoners have committed offenses ranging from theft to murder. Some prison guards were reported to have taken bribes in exchange for releasing prisoners or offering better conditions.
Source: Wikipedia article lead, CC-BY-SA.
Capacity
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Current population
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Occupancy
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Year opened
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Operational
Facility profile
Operator
Secretaría de Seguridad — Baja California
Population held
mixed
Opened
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Region
Baja California
Security level
Mixed
Death-row facility
No
Conditions
No conditions summary available yet.
Visiting
No visiting information available.
Mailing
No mailing information available.
Practical info
Contact the operator's website for inmate-specific procedures.
Known issues
No major issues documented in our database.
Contact & address
Conditions Risk Score
Derived signal — not a judgement. How it's calculated
Data completeness
62%How many of our profile fields are populated. We surface this so families and researchers know the limits.
Sources
- Baja California — La Mesa
- Sistema Penitenciario Federal y estatales — México (consolidated) — Órgano Administrativo Desconcentrado de Prevención y Readaptación Social + state penitentiary agencies
- Wikipedia — Wikimedia Foundation
- See /data-sources for our overall methodology.