Daily Murders in Mexico Decline Over a Third Under Claudia Sheinbaum, Per Government Statistics

The mean figure of daily murders per month in the country has dropped by 37% since Head of State Claudia Sheinbaum took office, as stated by new official data. Nevertheless, public safety analysts have cautioned that murder numbers might not indicate enhanced national security.

Notable Reduction in Per-Day Averages

Officials reported an mean of nearly 55 murders a day in November compared with roughly 87 when Sheinbaum began the presidential office in September. This announcement was delivered by the director of the nation's national safety system, Marcela Figueroa Franco, during the leader's daily news conference on Tuesday.

“The result in homicides that have been recorded over these months is remarkably important,” the President stated, noting that the previous month the least number of homicides were registered for any November in the past 10 years.

Recent Context and Government Plan

Intense drug cartel rivalries, coupled with the government’s heavily militarised operations to take on the drug gangs, have caused Mexico’s homicide rate soar in recent times. The rate hit a maximum of 36,773 homicides in 2020, as reported by the country’s official data office.

That meant Mexico a homicide figure over 4x greater than that of the United States. From that point, murders have been on the decrease, declining to 33,550 the previous year. Sheinbaum has credited her public safety plan for an seemingly sharper reduction in killings in the current year.

At a news briefing in August, the head of state said: “We have a plan, there is monitoring of the strategy, and there is specific tracking municipality by municipality in certain cases. The plan is effective. And we have to continue working at it each day.”

The central pillars of Sheinbaum’s safety strategy include:

• Bolstering Mexico’s federal guard.
• Enhancing information gathering and investigation work.
• Increased coordination between various departments.

Analyst Caution and Data Concerns

Nevertheless, public safety analysts cautioned that relying on murder statistics to draw a conclusion of peace was flawed. This is especially true considering the uptick in different crimes such as people going missing.

“It would be very good news if this were a drop, but I think we shouldn't just focus on the homicide numbers and say: ‘Oh well, excellent,’” stated Cecilia Farfán-Méndez, an authority on Mexico's criminal organizations. “I would be tentatively hopeful.”

Per the policy analysis organization Mexico Evalúa, murders overall dropped by more than 20% in the first 10 months of this year compared with the identical period last year. Yet, disappearances have gone up by 15% and in certain states have surged by as much as 200%.

“Data on murders is not valid for assessing the context of public insecurity,” said Armando Vargas, a safety analyst at Mexico Evalúa. “First, we have police and investigators who do not have the ability or the inclination to correctly identify and categorize corpses. Secondly, organized [criminals] … have the capability to conceal violence through disappearances.”

Vargas added that using month-to-month means of daily killings was additionally problematic because it could obscure days when there were especially high levels of killings.

“Using the daily average makes high peaks of violence unseen,” he said.

Arrests and Confiscations as Measures of Progress

An area where the government can point to the success of its security strategy is on arrests and seizures. Nearly 40,000 suspects were arrested between October 2024 and this past November for major offenses, per government data. More than 20,000 firearms were confiscated and 311 tons of drugs confiscated.

“Donald Trump can't accuse President Sheinbaum of not acting, because the reality is she is doing a lot with these thousands of arrests, many thousands of seizures, and all the operational degrading of criminal groups. It’s very politically advantageous,” stated Vargas.

Ongoing Unrest and Public Frustration

Yet in spite of these efforts, Mexico is still beset by high violence, with a number of states in the grip of cartel-driven violence. In the previous month there was a prominent assassination of a popular mayor in the state of Michoacan, among 10 mayors murdered in the last year.

Weeks after, many thousands of young people demonstrated in Mexico City and across the country to voice their outrage at graft and drug violence.

“The government frames [data] in a way to create a story of improvement. Politically it’s very effective, socially it’s extremely debatable,” Vargas concluded.