In his fifth ‘Informe’, Mexico’s equivalent of the State of the Union, President Calderón announced the creation of a new Social Attorney’s Office for Attention to Victims of Violence (Procuraduría Social de Atención a Víctimas de la Violencia). Amongst its tasks will be finding disappeared people and assisting the victim’s families.
This may sound like a good idea. Forced disappearance has become a scourge in Mexico since levels of violence, insecurity and impunity have increased dramatically during Calderón’s presidency. Last year alone an estimated 20.000 Central American migrants have disappeared on their way to the United States. Kidnapping has become big business for criminal groups in Mexico, often with brutal violence. Some gangs, such as the enigmatic La Mano con Ojos (‘The Hand with Eyes’) are almost exclusively focused on kidnapping and extortion. These are the kind of crimes that increase the perception of insecurity more than any other. The president is right to prioritize the issue.
However, it remains to be seen how founding yet another government institution can help. It is not the number of law enforcement institutions a country has, but the effectiveness of these institution that determine the success of law enforcement policy. And unfortunately Mexico is a star in the first and fails miserably in the second.
Take for example violence against journalists in Mexico. No country in the world has more institutions, offices and task forces that theoretically protect reporters than Mexico. And yet, no country in the Western Hemisphere (or arguably the world) is more dangerous to (domestic) journalists than Mexico.
Mexican citizens do not complain about not knowing who to call when a crime is committed. There are literally thousands of police forces, commissions, councils, institutions and organizations that focus on insecurity. The problem is that despite the existence of all these institutions impunity and insecurity are on the rise.
Victims of violence and crime complain that their cases aren’t dealt with the way they should be. Files are sent from one office to another, from municipal to state to federal level and often end up unattended somewhere in between offices, or disappear altogether. Different law enforcement agencies are enveloped in a constant power struggle over who controls what, who has what authority, et cetera. Those responsible for leading institutions often use their offices as a personal means of power and prefer fighting each other than collaborating.
It could even be said that the sheer number of institutions involved in law enforcement, security and the judiciary is partly to blame for the prevailing impunity in Mexico. Law enforcement and the judiciary in Mexico is fragmented, both between different levels of government and on the same level. It causes paper to pushed around without adequately solving cases and improving security.
One could ask why Mexico is in need of yet another Attorney’s office. President Calderón did not elaborate much on what this new office will do, what its authority will be and who it will collaborate with. Prioritizing the issue of kidnapping and forced disappearance by the administration should be encouraged, but one might wonder if it wouldn’t be better if the president were to focus more on increasing the effectiveness of existing institutions.