The Britain-based 24 hours multi-media-news operation Sky News is reporting that they have gained access to an illegal prison high in the mountains of Mexico's Sierra Madre where hitmen for Mexico's drug cartels have been jailed by vigilantes who have simply plucked them off from the streets.

According to a piece by Stuart Ramsay, Sky’s Chief Correspondent in Mexico, the prison is considered by the vigilantes as a prize and a mark of the success in their "revolution" against organized crime, and the drug thugs and low-level gunmen who have for decades terrorized them.

The captured inmates stay behind the barred windows of a converted municipal building where they are patrolled by men in matching green T-shirts and trousers who are brandishing shotguns.

One of the interviewed prisoners kept in a cell made up of men in their twenties is a 22-year old man named Leonardo who has killed 19 people in the past three years.

Leonardo claims that he tried to run away from the cartel but was tracked down and planted with marijuana before being taken in by the community police.

Leonardo states that he was under the control of the drug cartel and could do nothing to avoid their demands to carry out murder, which he readily admits to, but declines to offer too many details about to Sky News, stating that his life was in danger.

Not all of the inmates in this vigilante jail are connected to the cartel. Some of the prisoners have been identified as merely anti-social troublemakers.

The illegal prison represents an injustice where murderers are held on floor mats, and the only law observed is the law of the gun.

As reported by Sky News, the vigilantes are unrepentant and want the message of what can happen to criminals in their jail to get out.