Politics: Nothing to Celebrate in Latest Crime Stats

MEXICO - Report 07 Dec 2016 by Guillermo Valdes and Esteban Manteca

The latest National Survey on Business Victimization for 2016 (ENVE 2016), the third installment in the series, indicates that an alarming 35.5% of economic units in the country were victims of at least one type of crime in 2015, up from 33.1% in 2013. (Note: Victimization surveys reflect the experience of those surveyed from the year prior to which the study was conducted). The victimization rate was the equivalent 1.6 million commercial or industrial establishments, with each victimized 2.5 times a year on average. The most common crime was assault or robbery of inputs or finished goods, with roughly two million such incidents last year.

Theft was followed by extortion, with almost 1.5 million cases, the vast majority (91%) being made by phone but the remainder conducted face to face, in which cases owners or managers paid up 66 percent of the time. Companies also suffered from widespread acts of corruption, with demands for bribes coming from all manner of government authorities.
Most crimes committed against companies go unreported. The so-called "dark" or hidden crime figure (the number or percentage of crimes that are unreported or for which the police fail to open a file) was 90.3% for 2015, up from 88.1% in 2013; the rate of impunity stands near 99.5%.

The rise in crime is taking a toll on people’s lives and on the economy, with businesses having to shoulder steeper direct costs related to crime (139 billion pesos or 0.73% of GDP) and staggering indirect ones.

In other developments on the security front, the main people in charge of security policy in Mexico have displayed a sense of optimism in past weeks and months. National Security Commissioner Renato Sales recently insisted that the rise in the number of murders has “not been substantial”. He later bragged that there had been a 6% reduction in the number of intentional murders during October compared to September. But that number appears to be an anomaly and certainly no reason to assume a change in the trend toward rising murder rates, which so far this year have risen sharply in most states, including triple-digit jumps in some states.

The full picture suggests that official optimism is not justified given that the security environment of Mexico is notoriously adverse, and so far it is moving in the wrong direction.

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