Gang Breakdown Coincides with Kidnapping Rise in Western Mexico States Patrick Corcoran - InSight Crime
go to original June 21, 2016

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A sudden spike in kidnapping in Guerrero and Baja California has coincided with the ongoing deterioration of the organized crime structures that dominate the two west Mexico states.

According to statistics published by the NGO Observatorio Virtual, the kidnapping rate in Baja California and Guerrero ticked upward in the first three months of 2016 even as the national rate has continued the decline it began in 2013.

In Guerrero, (pdf) the registered figure of 2.34 kidnappings per 100,000 residents is only a slight bump from the 2.27 registered last year, but it bucks a long-term trend, as Guerrero registered substantial declines in 2014 and 2015. The figure is the third-highest of any Mexican state this year, and nearly three times the national average of 0.80 per 100,000 residents.

The kidnappings reported by Observatorio Virtual are concentrated in a relatively small number of Guerrero's municipalities, largely along the coast and in several small inland towns. Over the past 12 months, General Canuto A. Neri and Pedro Ascencio Alquisiras, both inland towns with populations under 7,000, saw kidnapping rates of 16.03 and 14.17 per 100,000 residents, respectively. Cualac, a comparably sized town near the state's border with Oaxaca, registered a rate of 13.99. The figure for Chilpancingo, the state's capital, was 7.49.

While the prevalence of the crime in these hotspots was more than enough to make Guerrero one of the nation's most dangerous states for abductions, 48 of the state's 81 municipalities reported no kidnappings at all.

In Baja California, (pdf) Observatorio Virtual's data indicates circumstances that are largely better than in Guerrero. The border state's kidnapping rate for 2016 is 0.68 per 100,000 residents, just below the national average and 10th among the 32 Mexican states. This would seem to indicate a situation that is under control. However, the recent trend is more alarming. Baja California's kidnapping rate has more than doubled in 2016, driven by a rash of abductions in Tijuana, the state's largest city. The kidnapping rate in Tijuana (pdf) over the first three months of 2016 has more than doubled compared to 2015.

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InSight Crime is a foundation dedicated to the study of the principal threat to national and citizen security in Latin America and the Caribbean: organized crime. We seek to deepen and inform the debate about organized crime in the Americas by providing the general public with regular reporting, analysis and investigation on the subject and on state efforts to combat it.

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