* Marisela Morales named as new attorney general
* Mexico needs reform of justice system to fight crime
* Morales would be first woman to hold the post (Rewrites with naming of president's new candidate)
By Miguel Angel Gutierrez and Anahi Rama
MEXICO CITY, March 31 (Reuters) - Mexican President Felipe Calderon named a senior anti-narcotics investigator praised by Washington as attorney general on Thursday in the government's latest drive to contain drug violence across the country.
Calderon nominated Marisela Morales, who heads the attorney general's investigative division on organized crime, to take on the task of modernizing Mexico's decrepit justice system. Morales, 41, would be the first woman to hold the post.
Her nomination comes at a time of widespread public anger over the impunity of gunmen who kill rivals and escape prosecution in the world's biggest Spanish-speaking nation.
Mexico's prosecutors and courts are under scrutiny as the army has rounded up thousands of suspected criminals in Calderon's war on drug cartels that has claimed more than 36,000 lives since late 2006. But some 90 percent of those crimes go unpunished, international rights groups say.
An expert in criminal law who has spent her career in Mexican justice, Morales was awarded a prize by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton earlier this month and upheld as a brave woman fighting organized crime.
Morales, whose appointment still needs to be ratified by the Senate, takes over from Arturo Chavez, who resigned for personal reasons on Thursday but who faced sharp criticism for his professional record even as he took the job 18 months ago.
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Factbox on political risks in Mexico [ID:nRISKMX]
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Chavez was a former prosecutor in Chihuahua, now Mexico's most violent drug war state. Calderon hoped his experience in the north would help stop murders and jail breaks that are scarring the region and frightening off some investors.
But even at his ratification in September 2009, lawmakers harangued Chavez over the deaths and disappearances of hundreds of young women in Chihuahua in the late 1990s when he was state attorney general.
In one of the biggest embarrassments for the president, the attorney general's office was unable to prosecute more than two dozen officials accused of corruption in 2009 in Michoacan, Calderon's home state. One of the biggest crackdowns on politicians in the drug war, it ended in failure.
Despite the government's success in capturing and killing a string of top drug lords, Calderon's efforts to clean up endemic police corruption have also struggled, even with training and advice from the United States.
Investors and businesses are concerned that attacks are hurting Mexico's attractiveness for capital and tourists. Violence has engulfed Monterrey, Mexico's business capital, and recently reached Guadalajara, the country's second city. [ID:nN09167340] (Additional reporting by Mica Rosenberg; writing by Robin Emmott; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
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