Last island jail closing

MEXICO will close its infamous Isla Marias prison, the last island penal colony in a hemisphere once dotted with remote offshore jails.

President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said Mexico would relocate about 400 of the 600 inmates and free about 200 others from the jail on Maria Madre, the biggest of the four islands, 110km off the Pacific coast of Nayarit.

The islands will become a cultural and environmental education centre. The prison is estimated to have held about 30,000 inmates over 114 years.