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News > Latin America

Mexico Ranks First on 2017 'Global Impunity Index' Out of Latin American Nations

  • The list is calculated on security, justice, and human rights data.

    The list is calculated on security, justice, and human rights data. | Photo: Reuters

Published 29 August 2017
Opinion

Only seven out of every 100 crimes committed are reported in the country.

Mexico has been ranked at top of the 19 Latin American countries surveyed in this year's Global Impunity Index.

RELATED:

30,942 People Reported Missing in Mexico: Report

The 2017 report by the Center for Studies on Impunity and Justice and the University of the Americas Puebla shows crimes often go unpunished throughout the region.

69 nations were surveyed in total - Mexico came fourth from the bottom, with the Philippines occupying the last place.

While Barbados had the lowest impunity score out of Latin America and the Caribbean.

The list is calculated on security, justice, and human rights data, as well as the structural capacity of the countries' justice systems 

Mexico scored a rate of 92.8 percent impunity since 2013, taking into account that only seven out of every 100 crimes committed are reported in the country. 

The survey also said the conviction rate of the total crimes reported is just 4.46 percent.  

In 2016, nearly 98.5 percent of crimes committed - over seven million - went unpunished, according to the Technological Institute of Higher Studies of Monterrey.   

Courtesy: Center for Studies on Impunity and Justice & the University of the Americas Puebla

The report pointed out that Mexico's ratio of police per capita was significantly higher than the global average (355 per 100,000 inhabitants). But, the country had only 4.2 judges per 100,000 inhabitants, which is well below the average. 

Nearly, 43 percent of the country's prison population in detention hasn't been tried yet, which the report indicates is a measure of the low functionality and inefficiency of the judicial system. 

According to the latest government statistics, there has been a stark rise in homicides in 2017 compared to last year. There were 2,186 murder probes in May, the highest recorded for any month since 1997. 

Nearly 30,000 people have disappeared in Mexico since President Enrique Pena Nieto took office in December 2012 and 83,210 people have been murdered.

A recent report by Bloomberg’s Marc Champion also revealed that Mexico surpassed Iraq and Afghanistan to become the world’s second-most deadly conflict zone after Syria. A major factor contributing to rising violence, according to the report, is the U.S.-backed drug war. 

Online monitoring and surveillance in the country have also gained momentum under the current president's leadership. 
R3D, a Mexican organization committed to defending citizens' digital rights, said such intimidation had increased under Enrique Pena Nieto's administration. 

According to the organization, several regional governments in Mexico have bought programs from Hacking Team, an Italian cyber security firm, whose services include providing surveillance capabilities to governments and companies' websites, among others.  

In 2015, however, the Global Impunity Index researched 59 countries and put Mexico as the second to last on the index. The report states that "Mexico does not need to devote ever more resources to increase the number of police, but rather to the processes that would guarantee the efficacy of their actions."  

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