Politics: Impunity and objective merit in security

MEXICO - Report 17 Feb 2020 by Guillermo Valdes, Alejandro Hope Pinsón and Francisco González

The crisis of the criminal justice system that has steadily deepened since the federal government’s offensive against organized crime was launched almost 14 years ago is becoming even more visible. And now there is the aggravating factor that some of the most significant steps toward reform, especially that of 2008, which committed the government to introducing an accusatory trial system, may be facing new threats.

The lack of progress to date has been underscored by a series of high profile cases in which presumed criminals were caught by police or members of the armed forces only to see their cases quickly thrown out of court for lack of proper procedure or evidence. These have served as a reminder of how little the country has progressed from the many decades in which police and prosecutors relied almost entirely on confessions, most obtained under torture, to win a conviction or at least a very prolonged period of pretrial imprisonment.
A general state of impunity and the errors committed in such judicial processes constitute the two faces of the same problem the country has always suffered from: a system of law enforcement and administration of justice that is terribly inefficient and ineffective.

The rate of impunity for cases of intentional homicide is running near 90% and the percent of major crimes that go unreported or undiscovered is even higher. Tellingly, progress has been painfully slow in implementing the 2008 reform with officials allocating minuscule budget allocations to that end. Fortunately, a small number of states where the criminal justice system has been significantly reorganized have delivered positive results, and in this regard a report from NGO México Evaúla lists nine localities that have recorded a marked rise in levels of crime response and case solution.

But only nine states have a law on the professionalization of the personnel working under the federal and state attorneys general that have been seriously put into practice. This week we analyze the data in greater detail and explore a series of recommendations for how to effectively turn things around.

Now read on...

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