Everyday Homicides in the nation Decline Thirty-Seven Percent Under Claudia Sheinbaum, As per Official Data

The average number of daily homicides each month in Mexico has decreased by 37% since President Claudia Sheinbaum took office, according to fresh government data. However, security specialists have cautioned that murder data could fail to indicate better national stability.

Significant Reduction in Per-Day Figures

Officials reported an mean of almost 55 killings a day in November as opposed to roughly 87 when Sheinbaum took the presidential office in September. This information was shared by the director of the country’s national safety system, Marcela Figueroa Franco, during the president’s regular news conference on a recent Tuesday.

“The result in killings that we have seen in these months is very significant,” Claudia Sheinbaum stated, noting that in November the lowest amount of murders were documented for any November in the past 10 years.

Historical Background and Government Plan

Violent cartel internal conflicts, combined with the government’s highly military campaigns to take on the drug gangs, have made Mexico’s murder rate escalate in recent times. The rate hit a peak of 36,773 killings in 2020, as reported by the nation's national statistics office.

That resulted in Mexico a murder rate over 4x higher than the US. However, murders have been on the decline, dropping to 33,550 in the last calendar year. Claudia Sheinbaum has credited her public safety approach for an apparently steeper decline in killings this year.

At a press conference in the summer, the President declared: “We have a plan, there is tracking of the plan, and we have detailed tracking municipality by municipality in certain cases. The strategy is effective. And we have to persist at it daily.”

The central pillars of Sheinbaum’s safety plan involve:

• Strengthening Mexico’s federal guard.
• Improving intelligence and investigative work.
• Greater coordination between various authorities.

Analyst Skepticism and Data Limitations

But, security researchers cautioned that focusing solely on homicide statistics to assess the situation of pacification was flawed. This is especially true given the uptick in different criminal activities such as forced disappearances.

“It would be excellent news if this was a decrease, but I think we must not just look at the murder data and think: ‘Well then, excellent,’” said Cecilia Farfán-Méndez, an authority on Mexican cartels. “I would be tentatively positive.”

Per the public policy analysis thinktank Mexico Evalúa, homicides overall fell by over 20% in the first 10 months of this year compared with the same timeframe last year. Yet, missing persons cases have gone up by 15% and in some regions have increased by as much as 200%.

“Statistics on homicides is not reliable for assessing the situation of public insecurity,” argued Armando Vargas, a security expert at Mexico Evalúa. “Firstly, we have law enforcement and investigators who lack the resources or the desire to correctly recognize and categorize corpses. Secondly, organised [criminals] … have the ability to conceal violence through abductions.”

Vargas added that relying on monthly means of daily homicides was also concerning because it could obscure days when there were especially elevated numbers of murders.

“Employing the per-day average makes spikes of violent crime less visible,” he said.

Detentions and Seizures as Measures of Success

An area where the government can point to the effectiveness of its safety strategy is on arrests and confiscations. Nearly 40,000 people were arrested between October 2024 and November 2025 for high-impact crimes, per government data. Over 20,000 weapons were confiscated and 311 tons of drugs seized.

“Trump cannot claim President Sheinbaum of not acting, because actually she is doing a lot with these thousands of detentions, many thousands of confiscations, and all the tactical weakening of organised crime. It’s highly politically advantageous,” said Vargas.

Persistent Unrest and Public Frustration

But in spite of these measures, Mexico remains grappling with extreme violence, with a number of regions in the midst of cartel-driven violence. Recently there was a prominent murder of a well-liked local official in the state of Michoacan, one of 10 local leaders killed in the past 12 months.

A short time after, many thousands of youth took to the streets in the capital and across the country to show their frustration at graft and narco-violence.

“The government presents [data] in a way to construct a picture of improvement. From a political standpoint it’s very potent, from a social perspective it’s extremely questionable,” Vargas said.