New Database

The Secretariat of Public Security is completing a registry of the 230,000 Mexicans in federal and local prisons, at a cost of about $8 million. The database will be up and running next week. It would seem that such a database should have been up and running years ago (indeed, an SSP official said the first attempts to complete a prisoner registry date back to the days of Porfirio Díaz), but kudos to the SSP for catching up. There's been a fair number of little improvements like this over the course of Calderón's tenure, which have been understandably obscured by the years-long wave of violence. Nonetheless, taken together they will leave Mexico in a better position to defend itself from criminals for years to come.