The percentage of Mexicans who believe the city they live in is unsafe fell to its second-lowest level on record in the second quarter of 2024, according to a recent survey.
But with nearly six in 10 survey respondents saying they don’t think their city is safe, authorities still have a lot of work to do.
59.4% of Mexican adults are concerned about the safety of the city they live in. (Mexico State Police)
The latest National Urban Security Survey (ENSU), conducted by the national statistics institute INEGI between May 24 and June 14, found that 59.4% of adults are concerned about security in the city where they live.
A year ago, 62.3% of people surveyed said their city was unsafe, but in the first quarter of 2024, that figure was 61%.
The second quarter’s rate is just 0.3 percentage points higher than the all-time low of 59.1% in the fourth quarter of 2023. INEGI first conducted ENSU in 2013.
Perceptions of insecurity in Mexico’s cities reached almost 80% in 2017 and 2018, the final years of former President Enrique Peña Nieto’s government.
The latest survey found that 65.1% of women and 52.4% of men believe their city is unsafe.
For the latest ENSU, INEGI surveyed adult residents of 27,850 households in 91 metropolitan areas across Mexico, including 16 districts of Mexico City.
Five municipalities in Mexico City reported a deterioration in security, with the municipalities of Benito Juarez and Azcapotzalco reporting the worst. (Archive)
At a press conference on Wednesday, President-elect Claudia Scheinbaum stressed that ENSU’s data shows that “Mexicans living in urban areas feel safer today than they did in 2018.”
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador was inaugurated on December 1, 2018, and Sheinbaum became mayor of Mexico City four days later.
The president-elect told reporters that Mexico had made progress in reducing insecurity under Lopez Obrador’s term, and promised to make “further progress” during his 2024-2030 term.
Which cities have the highest and lowest percentage of residents concerned about their personal safety?
The city of Fresnillo in Zacatecas state once again had the highest percentage of residents who told INEGI that their city is a dangerous place to live in. In the latest ENSU survey, 94.7% of Fresnillo residents consider their city dangerous, a decrease of 0.7 percentage points compared to the previous survey.
Over the past few years, Fresnillo in Zacatecas has had the highest local perception of urban insecurity of any city in Mexico. (Adolfo Vladimir/Cuartoscuro)
Fresnillo, located about 60 kilometers north of the city of Zacatecas, has been plagued by violent crime in recent years, and the results of four ENSU surveys conducted in 2023 showed that the city of about 240,000 people is considered unsafe by more than 90 percent of its residents.
The cities with the next highest percentage of residents concerned about their personal safety were:
Naucalpan de Juarez is a Mexican municipality adjacent to Mexico City. Just under nine in ten residents (89.2%) consider the municipality to be a dangerous place to live. Uruapan, Michoacan: 86.8% of those surveyed consider it unsafe. Irapuato, Guanajuato: 84.8%. Tapachula, Chiapas: 84.7%. Zacatecas: 84.7%.
The cities with the lowest percentage of residents concerned about their personal safety were:
San Pedro Garza García, a wealthy municipality in the Monterrey metropolitan area, Nuevo Leon. Just over one in ten residents surveyed (11.7%) said the municipality is an unsafe place to live. Piedras Negras, Coahuila: 14.3%. Los Cabos, Baja California Sur: 16.7%. Los Mochis, Sinaloa: 18.7%. Benito Juárez municipality, Mexico City: 18.9%. Saltillo, Coahuila: 21.4%.
Perceptions of insecurity dropped significantly in 10 cities, increased in five
INEGI said 15 cities saw a statistically significant change in perceptions of insecurity compared to the first quarter of 2024. Ten of those cities (including five boroughs of Mexico City) saw a significant decrease in the percentage of residents with security concerns, while five saw a significant increase.
In Los Cabos, Baja California Sur, residents’ perception of insecurity has decreased significantly. (Shutterstock)
Cities that saw significant declines include:
Los Cabos, Baja California Sur: 24.8% in the first quarter and 16.7% in the second quarter. Chihuahua City: 59.3% to 49.4%. Venustiano Carranza, Municipality of Mexico City: 53.5% to 42.8%. La Magdalena Contreras, Municipality of Mexico City: 59.4% to 49.1%. Tlalpan, Municipality of Mexico City: 58.5% to 42.2%. Iztapalapa, Municipality of Mexico City: 72% to 56.9%. Alvaro Obregon, Municipality of Mexico City: 65.5% to 55%. Nezahualcoyotl, State of Mexico: 69.2% to 61.1%. San Pedro Garza García, Nuevo Leon: 27.1% to 11.7%. Los Mochis, Sinaloa: 26.1%-18.7%.
The cities that saw the biggest increases are:
Manzanillo, Colima: 54.8% in the first quarter to 63.7% in the second quarter. Benito Juarez district, Mexico City: 11.1% to 18.9%. Azcapotzalco district, Mexico City: 55.3% to 67%. Chetumal, Quintana Roo: 56.2% to 73.3%. City of Tlaxcala: 46.8% to 56.3%.
Where Mexicans feel most dangerous
Just under 68% of ENSU respondents reported feeling unsafe when using ATMs on the street, and 62.7% expressed safety concerns about traveling on public transport.
More than 50% of respondents said they felt unsafe at banks, on roads they regularly travel, and on highways.
In all of these places, and in several others, including at home and at work, the figures for women were higher than for men.
Crime and anti-social behaviour
Of those who said they had seen or heard about crime or anti-social behaviour near their home in the second quarter of 2024, six in 10 said they had seen people drinking alcohol on the street.
Some 48 percent of respondents reported witnessing a robbery or burglary, and about four in 10 told INEGI they had witnessed their home or business being vandalized.
Just under 40% of those surveyed said they had seen people buying or taking drugs, and 36.4% reported frequently hearing gunfire.
Just under a quarter of respondents said they had witnessed some kind of gang activity in the city where they live.
Opinion on Mexican security forces
According to the results of the latest ENSU survey, Mexico’s Navy is the country’s most effective security force, with some 87 percent of respondents saying they believe the Navy is very or somewhat effective in preventing and combating crime.
Just under 83% of those surveyed said the same about the Army, while 82.4% and 74.1% said the same about the Air Force and National Guard, respectively.
About 57 percent of respondents said state police are very or somewhat effective at preventing and combating crime, while 48.7 percent said the same about city police.
Citizens’ expectations for safety
Nearly a third of survey respondents (32.4%) expected the security situation in their city to remain “as bad as ever” over the next 12 months, while 18.1% predicted it would worsen.
Nearly three in ten people surveyed (28.7%) expect security in their area to improve over the next 12 months, while 18.8% expect the situation to remain “as good as it is now”.
Report from Reforma
