On average, 25 people were murdered every 100,000 inhabitants in Mexico in 2022, down from 28 homicide cases per 100,000 people the previous year. Mexico's murder rate increased remarkably between 2015 and 2018. Between January and June of 2023, the homicide rate stood at 12 cases.

Crime and violence in Mexico

Street violence and crime are some of the most pressing problems affecting Mexican society today. A recent survey revealed that, on average, almost 76 percent of the adult population felt unsafe. The perceived level of insecurity in Mexico is more worrisome among women than men. In recent years, violence against women in Mexico has significantly worsened.

Violence against women in Mexico

The number of femicides registered in Mexico has more than doubled between 2015 and 2023. Up to 827 women were murdered in Mexico in 2023 solely on account of their gender. Over the past decade, Mexico adopted this federal criminal typification to address the increasing cases of homicide motivated by gender. Mexico State was the region with the largest number of femicides reported as such in 2023, whereas Colima stood out as the Mexican state with the highest prevalence of femicides, based on 100,000 women.

In the last four years, May has been the most violent month in Mexico in three of them, exception for 2023, when June was the most violent month of the year. The peak of violence happened in May 2021, when an average of 150 people were murdered every day. On the other hand, October 2023 was the least violent month in this period of time, with an average of 125 people murdered daily.

The number of people murdered in Mexico amounted to almost 33,300 in 2021, a slightly lower figure to the one registered one year earlier. Mexico ranked as the second Latin American country with the highest number of intentional homicides in 2022, only exceeded by Brazil.

This project provides a comprehensive dataset on intentional homicides in Mexico from 1990 to 2023, disaggregated by sex and state. It includes both raw data and tools for visualization, making it a valuable resource for researchers, policymakers, and analysts studying violence trends, gender disparities, and regional patterns.ContentsHomicide Data: Total number of male and female victims per state and year.Population Data: Corresponding male and female population estimates for each state and year.Homicide Rates: Per 100,000 inhabitants, calculated for both sexes.Choropleth Map Script: A Python script that generates homicide rate maps using a GeoJSON file.GeoJSON File: A spatial dataset defining Mexico's state boundaries, used for mapping.Sample Figure: A pre-generated homicide rate map for 2023 as an example.Requirements File: A requirements.txt file listing necessary dependencies for running the script.SourcesHomicide Data: INEGI - Vital Statistics MicrodataPopulation Data: Mexican Population Projections 2020-2070This dataset enables spatial analysis and data visualization, helping users explore homicide trends across Mexico in a structured and reproducible way.

In 2024, a total of ****** homicides were registered in Mexico, over 1.1** murder victims more than the death toll reported a year earlier. The number of homicides in Mexico, including intentional homicides and cases of manslaughter, grew between 2015 and 2018, before plateauing around ****** victims per year. Kidnapping in Mexico In Mexico, even with a ** percent reduction in the kidnapping rate, which amounted to *** reported cases in 2023, the region continues to witness the distressing reality of **** individuals being subjected to violent abduction daily. These heinous acts are chiefly perpetrated in various settings, including workplaces, residences, and public areas. Furthermore, the state with the highest recorded kidnapping incidence is Mexico State, marking a significant disparity in numbers. This dire situation positions the country as the third highest in terms of kidnapping occurrences throughout Latin America. The increasing cases of human trafficking Regarded as a grievous form of exploitation encompassing coerced labor or sexual servitude, the prevalence of human trafficking in the nation exhibits a disquieting escalation. This trend coincides with a decline in cases involving children, shifting the focus towards teens and adolescents, particularly females, who are now the primary target demographic. Perpetrators manipulate victims through deceitful practices and fraudulent schemes, effectively entrapping them in a web of organized criminal activities that deprive them of their freedom.

The number of organized-crime related homicides in Mexico amounted to 28,328 cases in 2020. This represents an increase of 21 percent in comparison to the previous year. However, 2019 recorded the largest rise of organized crime related violence in the last decade. In 2014, the quantity of murders stood below 8,000.

Mexico MX: Intentional Homicides: Male: per 100,000 Male data was reported at 34.248 Ratio in 2016. This records an increase from the previous number of 29.307 Ratio for 2015. Mexico MX: Intentional Homicides: Male: per 100,000 Male data is updated yearly, averaging 22.261 Ratio from Dec 2000 (Median) to 2016, with 17 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 41.322 Ratio in 2011 and a record low of 13.965 Ratio in 2007. Mexico MX: Intentional Homicides: Male: per 100,000 Male data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by World Bank. The data is categorized under Global Database’s Mexico – Table MX.World Bank.WDI: Health Statistics. Intentional homicides, male are estimates of unlawful male homicides purposely inflicted as a result of domestic disputes, interpersonal violence, violent conflicts over land resources, intergang violence over turf or control, and predatory violence and killing by armed groups. Intentional homicide does not include all intentional killing; the difference is usually in the organization of the killing. Individuals or small groups usually commit homicide, whereas killing in armed conflict is usually committed by fairly cohesive groups of up to several hundred members and is thus usually excluded.; ; UN Office on Drugs and Crime's International Homicide Statistics database.; ;

Intentional homicides (per 100,000 people) in Mexico was reported at 28.18 in 2021, according to the World Bank collection of development indicators, compiled from officially recognized sources. Mexico - Intentional homicides (per 100;000 people) - actual values, historical data, forecasts and projections were sourced from the World Bank on September of 2025.

Over ****** murders were reported in Mexico in 2023. Guanajuato was the federal entity with most intentional homicides that year, amounting to ***** cases. Mexico State registered the second highest number of murder cases, with *****. When it comes to number of homicides in general - including both murder and manslaughter - Guanajuato ranked second behind Mexico State.

Historical dataset showing Mexico murder/homicide rate per 100K population by year from 1990 to 2021.

Mexico MX: Intentional Homicides: Female: per 100,000 Female data was reported at 4.407 Ratio in 2016. This records an increase from the previous number of 3.785 Ratio for 2015. Mexico MX: Intentional Homicides: Female: per 100,000 Female data is updated yearly, averaging 2.510 Ratio from Dec 2000 (Median) to 2016, with 17 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 4.586 Ratio in 2012 and a record low of 1.951 Ratio in 2007. Mexico MX: Intentional Homicides: Female: per 100,000 Female data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by World Bank. The data is categorized under Global Database’s Mexico – Table MX.World Bank.WDI: Health Statistics. Intentional homicides, female are estimates of unlawful female homicides purposely inflicted as a result of domestic disputes, interpersonal violence, violent conflicts over land resources, intergang violence over turf or control, and predatory violence and killing by armed groups. Intentional homicide does not include all intentional killing; the difference is usually in the organization of the killing. Individuals or small groups usually commit homicide, whereas killing in armed conflict is usually committed by fairly cohesive groups of up to several hundred members and is thus usually excluded.; ; UN Office on Drugs and Crime's International Homicide Statistics database.; ;

Datasets are in a CSV format. Code is available for RStudio or R.

A total of *** persons were murdered in Mexico City in 2024. The highest number of intentional homicides was registered in March 2023, with ** victims.

The number of homicides registered in the term of former Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto amounted to 150,451 cases as of 2017, a considerable increase in comparison with Felipe Calderón's presidential term. At the end of his term, Andrés Manuel López Obrador recorded over 151,000 homicides.

This database adapts the Piccato, P., Hidalgo, S., & Lajous, A. (2008). Estadísticas del crimen en México: Series Históricas 1926—2008. for analysis in decades paired with Mexican National Statistics Institute Censuses (INEGI) by imputing the non-systematic absences of homicide rates with population growth rates. The database allows studying crime rates for homicide, rape, robbery, smuggling with socioeconomic data in Mexico through the second half of the XX Century.

Organized intergroup violence is almost universally modeled as a calculated act motivated by economic factors. In contrast, it is generally assumed that non-economic factors, such as an individual’s emotional state, play a role in many types of interpersonal violence, such as crimes of passion. We ask whether non-economic factors can also explain the well-established relationship between temperature and violence in a unique context where intergroup killings by drug-trafficking organizations (DTOs) and other interpersonal homicides are separately documented. A constellation of evidence, including the limited influence of a cash transfer program as well as comparisons with both other DTO crime and suicides, indicate that economic factors only partially mitigate the relationship between temperature and violence that we estimate in Mexico. We argue that non-economic psychological and physiological factors that are affected by temperature, modeled here as a “taste for violence,” likely play an important role in causing both interpersonal and intergroup violence.

This article explains a surprising wave of lethal attacks by drug cartels against hundreds of local elected officials and party candidates in Mexico, 2007-2012. These attacks are puzzling because criminal organizations prefer the secrecy of bribery over the publicity of political murder. Scholars suggest that war drives armed actors to attack state authorities in search of protection or rents. Using original data of high-profile attacks in Mexico, we show that war need arguments underexplain violence. Focusing on political opportunities, we suggest that cartels use attacks to establish criminal governance regimes and conquer local governments, populations, and territories. We present quantitative and qualitative evidence showing that cartels took advantage of Mexico's political polarization and targeted subnational authorities who were unprotected by their federal partisan rivals. Cartels intensified attacks during subnational election cycles to capture incoming governments and targeted geographically adjacent municipalities to establish controls over large territories. Our findings reveal how cartels take cues from the political environment to develop their own de facto political domains through high-profile violence. These results question the widely shared assumption that organized criminal groups are apolitical actors.

In the first half of 2023, 15.082 people were murdered in Mexico. The most common cause of death was being shot with unspecified firearms or other weapons, type of aggression that claimed 10,615 victims. Over 1,500 died by unspecified mean, whereas other 1,365 people were killed due to the injuries inflicted with a cutting object.

Mexico: Death rate, per 1000 people: The latest value from 2022 is 6.7 deaths per 1000 people, a decline from 9.41 deaths per 1000 people in 2021. In comparison, the world average is 8.37 deaths per 1000 people, based on data from 195 countries. Historically, the average for Mexico from 1960 to 2022 is 7.26 deaths per 1000 people. The minimum value, 4.95 deaths per 1000 people, was reached in 2002 while the maximum of 13.44 deaths per 1000 people was recorded in 1960.

Number of infant deaths in Mexico was reported at 22018 deaths in 2023, according to the World Bank collection of development indicators, compiled from officially recognized sources. Mexico - Number of infant deaths - actual values, historical data, forecasts and projections were sourced from the World Bank on July of 2025.