Over Half of Mexico's Homicides Are Perpetrated by Organized Crime: Report Tristan Clavel - InSight Crime
go to original October 28, 2016

For the first half of 2016, Mexico’s murder rate rose over 15 percent compared to last year. This has prompted concern that the country’s recent gains in quelling the drug war might be slowing down. (CCTV America)

A study linking a percentage of Mexico's homicides to organized crime offers a different view of the rising violence depicted through government homicide figures, which do not discriminate between all killings and those related to criminal groups.

From January to September 2016, organized crime was responsible for 8,815 homicides, which amounts to 58 percent of all homicides during that period and a 47 percent increase in comparison to the same period the previous year, according to the study by Semáforo Delictivo and Lantia Consultores. The data was obtained through the monitoring of media reports, according to Animal Politico, and comparing the killing count with official homicide statistics.

According to Mexico's National System for Public Security (Sistema Nacional de Seguridad Pública - SNSP), the total number of homicides during the first three quarters of 2016 reached 15,201, a more than 20 percent increase in comparison to the 12,660 homicides registered over the same period in 2015 (pdf). In September, 1,974 homicides were registered, ranking it as the most violent month since President Enrique Peña Nieto took office in 2012.

Using the official data, the most violent states in 2016 were Colima, Guerrero, Sinaloa, Baja California and Morelos. But after applying their methodology, Semáforo Delictivo produced a different ranking - states with the highest number of organized crime-related homicides - in which the rundown changes to Guerrero first, followed by the states of Mexico, Michoácan, Chihuahua and Sinaloa.

The combination of both the official data and Semáforo Delictivo's also provides the percentage of a state's registered homicides committed by organized crime. And in those terms, Baja California Sur, Quintana Roo, Tamaulipas, Aguascalientes and Michoácan are the worst offenders. According to the study, at least 90 percent of all murders in those states during the first nine months of 2016 were perpetrated by organized crime.



Read the rest at InSight Crime

Related: Ciudad Juárez Trembles Again: A Mexican Security Success Story Faces a New Test (The Economist)

Related: Rising Violence in Juárez, Mexico May Signal Return of Cartel War (Insight Crime)

Related: Homicides Reach a New High in Mexico, and an Alarming Trend Is Developing (Business Insider)

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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