Crime in Mexico: The governor’s miraculous achievement | The Economist →

One worrying thing to take from this episode is that although the numbers of the SNSP and INEGI show broadly similar trends, they are radically different in gross terms. In Mexico state, for instance, Inegi registered 2,096 murders last year, whereas the SNSP (which gets its figures from state prosecutors’ offices) registered only 1,153. Nationwide, INEGI registered 24,374 murders, whereas the SNSP registered 20,585. That’s a difference of 3,789 missing victims—roughly five years’ worth of murders in Britain, for instance. As the election campaign heats up, expect plenty of arguments about which of these data sets is the more reliable.