Breathe
By Sophia Huett
It seems obvious: to reduce violence, homicides and crime in general, it is necessary to arrest the criminals. But in practice, this has not been the case in the immediate past.
While the criminal organizations were looking for ways to expand in territory and activity, there were those who looked for the black thread and threw away everything they had built, not knowing that it would have been worth less frustration.
In 2018 the Federal Police (it did exist and it did work) with less than 40 thousand members arrested 21 thousand people including criminal leaders. In 2023, with 126 thousand members, the civilian institution that set out to achieve what has never been achieved by the past, detained and placed 2,616 people at the disposal of the Public Prosecutor's Office.
As if the 19,000 fewer detainees did not hurt the country's security, the number of crimes registered in the number of people brought before the Public Prosecutor's Office in 2023 also reached an all-time low: 2,717, of which only 22 correspond to organized crime (INEGI figures).
In 2019, when the transition from the Federal Police to the National Guard took place, with the agreement of all political parties, 51,666 crimes were recorded for 9,155 detainees.
What does it mean when a detainee is charged with several crimes? A detainee is arrested for robbery, is related to organized crime, committing weapons offenses and is accused of injuries. That gives us a total of four crimes for a single detainee; now let's think about investigative cases, how many crimes can be registered in a high impact arrest.
Another scenario is to arrest someone in flagrante delicto... and that's it.
In numerical terms, in 2023, 48 members of the National Guard were required to detain a person and bring him/her before the Public Prosecutor's Office, while up to 2018, 1.7 federal police officers were needed for each detainee.
In the last two years, the presence and dispute of large criminal organizations in Mexico has expanded: perceiving a vacuum, they have dedicated themselves to generating franchises and expanding the range of their criminal activities.
What is the challenge? More arrests of top-level criminal leaders, without flagrancy being the (almost) daily (almost) daily arrest, because they are replaceable when the criminal group maintains resources and criminal capabilities.
We must ensure that criminals spend more time hiding from authorities and less time expanding and generating violence.
The opinions expressed are the responsibility of the authors and are absolutely independent of the position and editorial line of the company. Opinion 51.
Comments ()