Mexico: Measuring Impunity through the 2020 Global Impunity Index

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The results of the Global Impunity Index (GII 2020) indicate, as did the reports for 2015 and 2017, that Mexico is characterized by very high levels of impunity. Although Mexico now ranks in 60th place out of 69 countries studied (in 2017 it was 66th), this simply reflects fluctuations between the cases studied. What is more important is to understand the degrees of impunity that characterize the Mexican case.

What is the Global Impunity Index and what does it measure?

Created in 2015, this index represents an academic effort to measure global impunity in a comparative way. This work emphasizes the structure and workings of countries’ justice and security systems. It also considers the degree to which human rights are respected as a way of understanding the scope of the phenomenon of impunity.

The GII takes as its starting point the definition of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights found in Diane Orentlicher’s report. In this sense, impunity implies “the absence, in law or in fact, of criminal responsibility on the part of the perpetrators of violations, as well as of civil, administrative or disciplinary responsibility, because they escape all investigation without being charged, arrested, or prosecuted and, if found guilty, without sentenced to appropriate penalties, including compensation for the damage caused to their victims.” This definition highlights the fact that impunity implies a phenomenon that goes beyond the mere absence of sanctions or punishments for the commission of crimes since it understands impunity as both a legal and a political-institutional problem whose consequences are multi-tiered and multi-causal in nature.

Based on this definition, the GII structure is an analytical proposal in the form of a sequence of events. It begins with the commission of a crime, the existence of a complaint, and investigation until the sentencing or the reparation of damages, which is defined as “chain of impunity.” In this sense, GII’s methodology emphasizes a chain of impunity that involves the different phases of the prosecution and justice processes. From this, it selects the potential variables for understanding performance problems in the structure (institutional design and installed capacity), functioning (effective operation and results) of the security and justice systems, as well as the existence of human rights violations.

The GII has used this methodology to measure impunity for 2015, 2017, and 2019. It was also used in the Global Impunity Index Mexico (GII-MEX) in its reports for 2016 and 2018, as well as in the GII Colombia in 2019. These studies interpret impunity as a problem that needs to be explained in terms of its own importance, as a factor that erodes the rule of law and the trust of citizens in institutions, as well as a phenomenon that multiplies and aggravates the consequences of insecurity, violence, or corruption.

GII 2020 analyses the situation in 86 countries. Only in 69 of them it is possible to analyze the degrees of impunity following our methodology. For the remaining 17, we highlight the existence of “statistical impunity.” This is because these countries present inconsistencies or significant gaps in the statistical information they report, either due to problems with the capacity to generate statistics or a lack of political will to report. The countries in a situation of statistical impunity represent cases that have been analyzed in the GII 2017 or that, as part of the G20, have no reason to justify their unwillingness to report data. Mexico ranks 60th among the 69 countries analyzed, with an index of 49.67, which represents impunity 10 points higher than the global average (39.9), although, at the same time, it is far from the worst evaluated country, Thailand (62.3). As has occurred in previous reports, Mexico stands out as one of the countries with the highest levels of impunity both globally and regionally. However, Latin America, as a whole, tends is characterized by high levels of impunity.

While in the GII 2015 Mexico ranked 58th out of 59 countries and in the GII 2017 it ranked 66th out of 69 countries, it now ranks 60th out of the 69 countries where it is possible to measure impunity. However, this is far from an advance, and should not be understood as such. The change in Mexico’s position is not necessarily explained by an improvement in the performance of levels of insecurity or more effective access to justice, but rather by variations in the performance of other countries, changes in the countries included in the study, or adjustments in the variables that make up the study as a result of the absence of data.

What the study reflects is the fragility of the justice institutions in Mexico, the lack of capacity, and its operational problems. In terms of the “justice system” dimension, Mexico is ranked 60th when assessing the capacities involved in the structure of the justice system and even comes to 63rd when analyzing its functionality. For example, Mexico has only 2.17 judges to serve every 100,000 inhabitants, while the global average is 17.83 judges per 100,000 inhabitants.

Beyond this, Mexico is repeatedly among the 10 countries with the highest level of impunity. This problem is also reflected in the measurement of the IGI-MEX (2016 and 2018), which specifically measures the levels of impunity for the 32 federal entities in Mexico based on 18 specific indicators related to access to security and justice. In these cases, indicators of human rights violations are not included due to the difficulties involved in accessing quality information generated from the states themselves.

What we must understand, first, is that not enough capacities are being generated to guarantee security and access to justice for Mexicans; and, second, that existing capacities are functioning poorly. In other words, we are not developing more capacities, nor are we making the ones we do have, work properly. The magnitude of the crisis of insecurity and violence that the country is facing aggravates the problems related to access to justice and the protection of the rights of victims, which results in new cycles of impunity.

To reduce the impunity that does so much damage to the public life in Mexico, it is necessary to strengthen the capacities of security and justice institutions and link them to processes of accountability. In fact, there is a dangerous tendency, both at the federal and state levels, to call for stronger sentences and informal pre-trial detention as a supposed solution to the security and violence crisis that the country is suffering.

 But, the GII’s accumulated experience allows that “punitive populism” will not reduce impunity in Mexico. On the contrary, this can generate new cycles and pacts of impunity, as well as processes of double victimization to the detriment of all Mexicans, and especially those who are vulnerable due to their socioeconomic situation.

The different studies and reports generated from academia and civil society organizations, regardless of their methodological differences, tend to agree on the importance of analyzing impunity in Mexico as a type of institutional dysfunction that erodes the functioning of the state and makes it difficult to guarantee a more effective response to the crisis of insecurity and violence. Among the commonalities that the studies tend to point out, the ones that stand out are: 1) under any methodology that measures impunity, the average performance of the states studied tends to be mediocre and with a tendency toward high levels of impunity; 2) in general most states tend to be in negative positions relative to the average national impunity; 3) very high levels of impunity tend to be related to the existence of extremely high “dark figures” (less than 10 percent of crimes are reported), as well as with very limited institutional and human capacities to ensure effective investigation of the few crimes or human rights violations that are reported; 4) the inability of the federal and state authorities to guarantee conditions of security and justice, which feeds back into the citizen’s distrust of their institutions, reinforcing the tendency of non-reporting; 5) conditions of widespread impunity and political pacts of impunity that feed back into cycles of insecurity and violence, complicating the capacity of institutions to guarantee access to justice and protection of victims.

What the study of impunity clearly indicates for the Mexican case is that there are no easy solutions, and that the way forward is to generate more capacity for the security and justice institutions, more respect for human rights, and increased accountability. The big question is whether a country in the grip of high levels of impunity can reform itself, or whether, such a situation requires some type of international mechanism.

Ranking GII 2020

Juan Antonio Le Clercq is a full-time professor and researcher, Department of International Relations and Political Science UDLAP, Director of the Center for Studies on Impunity and Justice (CESIJ). Member of the National System of Researchers (SNI), Level 1. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Juan_Le_Clercq2 https://udlap.academia.edu/juanleclercq