Mexico Murder Rate Highest in Decades, Govt Says

[Jeff Dunsavage]

Mexico posted its highest homicide rate in decades, with the government reporting Sunday there were 29,168 murders in 2017, a 27 percent increase over 2016.

The number is the highest since comparable records began being kept in 1997 and is also higher than the peak year of Mexico’s drug war in 2011, when there were 27,213 killings. The Interior Department, which posted the number, reported the country’s homicide rate was 20.5 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2017, compared to 19.4 in 2011.

But Mexico security analyst Alejandro Hope said Mexico’s murder rate is probably higher than the Interior Department statistics show, because the department does the per 100,000 count based on the number of murder investigations, not the number of victims, and a killing may result in more than one victim. Hope says the real homicide rate is probably around 24 per 100,000.

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