The conquest of Mexico by Spain brought the introduction of Spanish penal law as the replacement for pre-Columbian tribal law. The new system was discriminatory, favoring the Spanish, and keeping corporal and capital punishment as the norm. Since in 1871, Mexico has unsuccessfully tried to reform its prisons into a more humane system with a focus on rehabilitation. In 1966, it began to apply the United Nations' minimum standards for the prevention of crime and the treatment of offenders on the Federal level. However, by 1979 only 35 percent of the country's prisons had implemented these objectives. The economic crisis has set back reform efforts, and the current prison system is extremely overcrowded. Facilities are dilapidated, and correctional staff are poorly trained and underpaid. Official corruption is open and is the norm including skimming, employee theft, payoffs, and collusion between inmates and correctional officials. In addition, Mexico's efforts to cooperate with international drug law enforcement has substantially increased the overcrowding. Photographs and 15 footnotes