Everyday Murders in the nation Decline Thirty-Seven Percent In President Sheinbaum, According to Government Statistics

The typical figure of per-day killings per month in the country has dropped by thirty-seven percent since President Claudia Sheinbaum assumed power, according to new government statistics. However, security experts have advised that homicide figures could fail to indicate improved national security.

Marked Reduction in Daily Figures

Officials reported an mean of close to 55 murders a day in November versus almost 87 when Claudia Sheinbaum took the presidential office in the previous September. This data was provided by the head of the country’s federal public security system, Marcela Figueroa Franco, during the president’s daily press briefing on a recent Tuesday.

“The outcome in murders that we have seen in these months is remarkably significant,” the President stated, noting that the previous month the lowest amount of murders were recorded for any single November in the last 10 years.

Recent Background and Government Plan

Intense organized crime internal conflicts, coupled with the administration's highly militarised campaigns to combat the trafficking organizations, have caused Mexico’s homicide rate soar in the past few years. The figure hit a maximum of 36,773 killings in 2020, per the country’s national statistics agency.

That resulted in Mexico a murder figure over four times higher than the United States. Since then, killings have been on the decline, declining to 33,550 the previous year. Claudia Sheinbaum has linked her national security approach for an ostensibly more pronounced drop in homicides in the current year.

At a press conference in August, the head of state said: “We have a strategy, we have tracking of the strategy, and we have specific monitoring locality by locality in some cases. The plan functions. And we have to continue working at it every day.”

The central pillars of the President's safety plan include:

• Strengthening Mexico’s national guard.
• Enhancing intelligence and investigation work.
• Enhanced collaboration between various authorities.

Expert Skepticism and Statistical Limitations

Nevertheless, security experts warned that relying on homicide statistics to draw a conclusion of improved security was flawed. This is especially true considering the rise in different criminal activities such as abductions.

“This would be very good information if this was a drop, but I think we must not just concentrate on the homicide data and think: ‘Alright, excellent,’” stated Cecilia Farfán-Méndez, an authority on Mexico's cartels. “I would be cautiously optimistic.”

According to the policy analysis organization Mexico Evalúa, killings overall dropped by more than 20% in the first 10 months of the current year relative to the same timeframe the previous year. But, missing persons cases have gone up by 15% and in certain regions have surged by up to 200%.

“Data on murders is not useful for estimating the reality of insecurity,” said Armando Vargas, a safety analyst at Mexico Evalúa. “First, we have law enforcement and investigators who lack the resources or the will to correctly recognize and categorize bodies. Second, organised [criminals] … have the capability to mask violence through abductions.”

Vargas noted that using month-to-month means of everyday killings was additionally an issue because it could hide days when there were particularly spiking numbers of murders.

“Using the daily average renders spikes of violent crime less visible,” he said.

Detentions and Confiscations as Metrics of Progress

An area where the administration can point to the success of its safety plan is on arrests and confiscations. Nearly 40,000 individuals were apprehended between October 2024 and November 2025 for high-impact offenses, according to government figures. More than 20,000 guns were taken and 311 tonnes of drugs intercepted.

“The former US president cannot accuse President Sheinbaum of not acting, because the reality is she is accomplishing a lot with these many thousands of detentions, many thousands of confiscations, and all the operational weakening of organised crime. It’s extremely in political terms advantageous,” commented Vargas.

Ongoing Unrest and Societal Anger

Yet notwithstanding these measures, Mexico continues to be plagued by severe violence, with multiple regions in the midst of cartel-fueled violence. In the previous month there was a notable killing of a well-liked local official in the state of Michoacan, among 10 local leaders assassinated in the last 12 months.

Weeks later, thousands of young people demonstrated in Mexico City and across the nation to express their anger at graft and drug violence.

“The government presents [data] in a way to build a story of security. From a political standpoint it’s highly potent, socially it’s extremely questionable,” Vargas concluded.