Comments on: Mexico Murder Rate Reality Check

By: Denise

Denise — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 19:15:04 +0000

I’ve been down to Juarez every year for the last 4 years to build houses for some poor families through my church. Despite being in the “most dangerous city of the world”, I’ve always felt safe. We’re not out at night, stay away from “bad” places, etc. In the areas we’re in, it’s a very normal experience…not the war zone shown on TV. In the last 2 years, we do see more of the military presence, some patrol vehicles driving around and such.
My question for you all is do you know or have any statistics that show what the murder rate is for Juarez when you take out the drug related murders? My experience has been that the majority of the violence is directed at competing cartels. I’d like to find some statistics that might help show it’s not a huge issue for us if we’re not out at night and aren’t involved in or around the drug/cartel stuff. It might be helpful when dealing with people who are scared to go down there.
Thanks.

By: MWDI

MWDI — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 23:05:12 +0000

Tijuana (and Rio) is substantially more dangerous than American cities. A scientific critique will show it doesn’t pass the giggle test.

Mexico’s murder rates’ come down almost evry year which is a surprise looking at the drug cartel violence from the mid-90’s. But it is down.

By: Kenn@CrossborderGroup

Kenn@CrossborderGroup — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 19:57:10 +0000

Haven’t visited here in awhile, and just seeing Bud’s comments. I disagree with his analysis — it’s not a mistake to compare smaller cities, as they tend (in the US) to be some of the poorest and most violent, unfortunately. Yet, they also continue to be ignored in the media. The data we use is CITY-LEVEL — not metro. Camden, New Jersey, is (as far as I know) still a separate city — so we keep Philadelphia stats (directly from the Philadelphia Police Department) separate. We don’t include “most or all outlying areas” — as this wouldn’t be a reliable comparison. For those that understand Mexico, a “city” like Tijuana is actually called a “municipio” — a combination of a city and county type of legal entity. So, we use this as our base of comparison. Bud also uses very outdated population stats for Tijuana (which has an official 2009 population estimate of over 1.6 million — the figure we use), and I can’t say where his 2008 murder data come from (it was around 843 for full-year 2008, but my comments clearly talk about 2009 data through October — numbers that we collect directly from police and security sources in Baja California).

I see that Bud is also using REGIONAL population data — St. Louis, MO, (a city) has a population just over 350,000 yet here Bud uses the much larger 2.8 million for the entire planning region (which then hides the more violent situation in the core city). Saying that there are “1.1 million residents” of “New Orleans” is frankly incredibly misleading when one then uses the CITY murder data – the CITY population is at best 360,000 (not even the State Government estimates it that high: http://www.louisiana.gov/Explore/Population_Projections/). Even in the case of Rio de Janiero, the estimates I provided were not for a vague “outlying areas”, but for what the local Government of Rio considers “the city” – and counts on 2009 statistics provided for the City by their government.

So, again, when doing comparisons, the analysis I provided focuses on city-level data (both for violent acts AND the population), and we try to get the most-accurate and updated information available. I don’t mind a good critique and challenge about data, but before talking about “common mistakes” being made…well, I’d double check my own data first.

By: michael

michael — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 07:32:22 +0000

I have had the opportunity to travel to Mexico City two times and very recently Buenos Aires. I think these statistics aren’t the big picture. For example, averaging crimes in my home city Los Angeles would be useless as the neighborhoods and crimes are so drastically different. I personally loved Mexico City and suffered no crime. I didn’t feel my Mexico City neighborhood was quite as “safe” as my area in LA, but, wasn’t near as scary as my trip to New Orleans a number of years ago, or some of the neighborhoods in Phoenix where I once lived. Buenos Aires “felt” safe but my mate was pick pocketed and received a counterfeit bill. I plan on being an ex pat one day in Mexico City. The art, culture, restaurants, architecture are spectacular. For some reason, I loved and resonated with the people. I think the word hear is mindfulness, and must be practiced anywhere.

By: Bud

Bud — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 07:01:14 +0000

I must take issue with Ken’s statistics. He makes the common mistake of using very small US core cities whilst excluding their suburbs yet including most or all outlying areas for non-American cities. This is an irresponsible use of data according to the FBI statistics department and American society of Criminology.

2008 data (listed by total murders):

Rio de Janeiro = 3,856 murders / 10,078,789 residents
Tijuana = 577 murders / 1,286,187 residents
Philadelphia (includes Camden) = 530 murders / 5,836,682 residents
Baltimore = 300 murders / 2,666,452 residents
New Orleans = 250 murders / 1,114,055 residents
St. Louis = 233 murders / 2,820,831 residents

1. Rio’s missing a couple of very large, rough suburbs which would add about 1.5m on it’s population, probably up it’s rate per capita and push the total close to 5,000.

2. Tijuana’s slightly inflated as the population’s for the city not municipality which the deaths correspond to. It’s missing about 200,000 people I believe.

3. Camden’s part of the Philadelphia area.

Rio and Tijuana are so much higher it shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who may initially be mislead by claims that American cities are more dangerous. This is the proper way of comparing, if at all.

As far as Mexico the latest I have is for 2008 and the murders jumped to 12,577 (12 per 100,000) from 10,291 (10 per 100,000) in 2007.

By: Willard

Willard — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 19:23:24 +0000

My company, Adventure Mexican Insurance, provides Mexican auto insurance for US and Canadian cars driving to Mexico.

Our reality is this:

We insure about 30,000 US and Candian cars each year that drive to Mexico. We have not seen one single murder or violent act against any of our customers since we started selling Mexican auto insurance in 2001.

We have seen auto theft insurance claims, but none of them have been armed thefts. All of the claims involved the vehicle being stolen while the owner was away from the vehicle.

So yes, there have been acts of violence against tourists and expats, but the percentages are very small. Every year there are a few stories of tourists being harrased at gunpoint – but have you ever read the policy reports section of a US newspaper?

So this is our reality – 30,000 tourists per year that we insurance for driving in Mexico – since 2001, we have not seen one murder – not even an attempted murder.

As long as you stay out of the bad neighborhoods (these are not toruists areas), don’t drive on the highways at night, and definitely do NOT park overnight on the side of the road…statistically, there is almost zero chance that you will have any problems while drivign in Mexico.

Hope these numbers put some things in perspective for tourists.

By: Chris Brown

Chris Brown — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 03:01:50 +0000

Ken,

Thanks for an authoritative reality check. Thanks for the good work your group is doing.

Chris

By: Kenn@CrossborderGroup

Kenn@CrossborderGroup — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 23:28:05 +0000

Chris: just came across this blog, and glad to have found that some reasonable people are out there putting things into context and looking at real numbers (not reacting to fear-mongering). A few weeks ago we analyzed the State Department data looking at the non-natural death locations and causes (something mentioned in a previous blog post), and found it interesting to note that there were more deaths of Americans in Mexico in auto and motorcycle accidents than by anything crime-related.

We also just updated the city-level murder rate data for Tijuana versus other major US cities, and can state that Tijuana’s murder rate this year (through October 2009) is (once again) almost equal to Baltimore, Maryland (TJ is at 28.9 per 100K, Baltimore is at 28.7 per 100k); almost on par with St. Louis, MO (27.1 per 100K), or Rio de Janiero (26.1 per 100k); and far under Camden, New Jersey (37.9) or New Orleans (44.2).

Going back to the comment from “Ronald” above, the NationMaster stats you cite actually are in agreement with the quote in the posting: the data on NationMaster is directly from a UN report using 1998-2000 year data — in other words, murder rates amongst the general population of Mexico were perhaps higher at that point in time…and have (according to the quote in the article) been declining. If you look up the UN data that NationMaster’s data uses, there are actually UPDATED stats from 2005-2006 that, indeed, show that Mexico’s murder rate is declining (down to 10.97 – not huge, but a decline) and the US rate actually increased (up to 5.62 per 100k). So…the comments in the article actually are backed up.

We’re a bit obsessed with looking for good sources of data when we do analyses related to the border and Mexico. Glad to see a site out there doing the same. Thanks.

By: Betsy McNair

Betsy McNair — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 21:50:57 +0000

Ronald, we feel safe because we don’t live in Ciudad Juárez and we don’t deal drugs.

By: Chris Brown

Chris Brown — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 20:49:28 +0000

I’m tempted to simply ask why I should tell you again why we “expats in Mexico feel so safe?” Your comment is explicit, we’ve already told you.

In fact, I think I’ll leave it at that. Read through the posts here.