by Denise Tomasini-Joshi, Miami Herald, USA - In Honduras people can spend years detained without conviction. According to the latest government figures, around 50 percent of the entire prison population is awaiting trial. In Peru the figure is around 60 percent, while it takes an average of 46 months — almost four years — for a case to come to trial. In Mexico the figure is a still dismal 42 percent (in the United States, around 20 percent of the prison population is in pretrial detention).