Can prison change a person for the better?

First of all, the penitentiary system in Mexico is liable, as well as in most countries in the
world. “... there is an enormous gap between the semantics and the reality,” . “The rule of
law in Mexico is weak. There is indifference toward compliance with the law, and one of
its effects is impunity and the other is corruption.” Said the president of CNDH. This
matters to us because one can enter the prison system being innocent, it doesn’t matter
until you have proven it and this can be a long wait inside a federal prison.

Being inside a prison can worsen your mental state, the penitentiary system is so bad that
human rights are not a thing inside, we can find stuff so bad as rape, robbery of personal
belongings, poor diet and commonly rotten food and worse since “accidents” when the
death of an inmate happens are very common and since the culprits are already inside
prison who can say that someone hasn’t gotten away with blaming a murder on other
inmate and has received no consequences. When the pandemic hit everything went worse
"If before COVID-19 there were major human rights violations, lack of medical attention,
spoiled food, and no balanced diet, with COVID-19 everything worsened," said Perez
Espinoza, head of the organization Presumption of Innocence and Human Rights (PIDH).
The inmates that have been detained and found guilty of minor crimes can be affected
negatively by a stay in prison, is very common in the system that someone who entered
prison with minor charges started to learn how to get away with other crimes and begins
to take action in big crimes that were not in their mind to begin with.
Finally I can say that this negative learning can be certain if we consider that prisons in
Mexico are overcrowded, making the socialization of people with very minor charges and
inmates that are in because of very serious crimes very common, we also have to consider
that a lot of Mexican jails are governed by the Mafia, which also causes that interactions
to happen and to be more serious, considering that people could have made a small
robbery due to have been in need to enter the Narco due to be in need of that money.
So, no, a prison cannot change a person for the better but the other way, being in a prison
can change a good person for the worse.

References:
Copeland, C. (2019, 8 noviembre). Self-government, lack of personnel among

prison problems. Mexico News Daily. https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/self-

government-lack-of-personnel-among-prison-problems/

Heredia, M., Tomé, J., Sturgeon, L. & Coyoli, J. S. (s. f.). Covid-19 in Mexico:

Magnifying the Unresolved Agenda in the Penitentiary System. ReVista.

https://revista.drclas.harvard.edu/covid-19-in-mexico-magnifying-the-unresolved-agenda-

in-the-penitentiary-system/

Mexico’s federal prisons a «five-star» hell. (s. f.).

https://www.aa.com.tr/en/americas/mexicos-federal-prisons-a-five-star-hell/2135358