MEXICO CITY — In proposing his controversial plan to overhaul the court system, Mexico’s outgoing president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, is right about one thing: for the majority of people, the country’s justice system isn’t working.
I’ve spent the past year interviewing over 100 people involved with the justice system in 10 states, including prosecutors, investigators, attorneys, judges, and victims’ advocates. One after the other, they expressed frustration about a system in crisis.
For victims of crime, seeking justice and remedy in Mexico can be time consuming, costly, and ultimately ineffective. Those accused of crimes often face abuse, corruption, and a lack of due process. Unsurprisingly, nearly half of Mexicans report having little or very little confidence in the country’s justice authorities. In about 90 percent of cases, people say they don’t even bother to report crimes.
As one lawyer I interviewed from a state victims’ commission said, “Some people are distrustful of authorities from the moment they walk in the door. Others start off hopeful, but then become disillusioned when the system fails them. Either way, the result is the same.”
President López Obrador blames judges, whom he frequently accuses of “favoring criminals” and being “corrupt,” often without supplying any evidence of wrongdoing. Earlier this year, he proposed a constitutional amendment that would significantly shorten judges’ terms, remove all currently serving judges from office, and replace the current judicial appointment process with popular elections, a proposal that many fear could severely undermine the judiciary’s role as an independent check on government power. López Obrador’s successor, President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum, has urged Congress, which is controlled by the president’s party, to approve the judicial amendment before she takes office on October 1.
Their focus on how judges are chosen is mistaken. Their proposal will do nothing to address the true bottleneck in Mexico’s justice system: prosecutors’ willingness and capacity to investigate.
Obstacles for prosecutors
Prosecutors in Mexico are responsible for both investigating and prosecuting crimes. They have astonishingly poor results. In 2022, they opened 2.2 million investigations, but only just over 238,000 cases made it before a judge, about 10 percent. Most investigations, even into murders, disappearances, and serious human rights violations, are closed or archived without being resolved. When cases do make it before a judge, they are often based on flimsy evidence, or statements obtained through threats or even torture.
Investigators and forensics technicians often lack the training and basic resources needed to do key parts of their jobs, like securing crime scenes, analyzing evidence, or identifying and storing human remains. Witnesses and victims are frequently terrified of retaliation for cooperating with investigations, and authorities are unable or unwilling to effectively protect them. Arbitrary hiring and promotion systems drive away qualified investigators and prosecutors. And oversight mechanisms, such as internal affairs units and state anti-corruption prosecutors, often lack the independence and resources necessary to stop abuses like torture and corruption. Prosecutors often feel pressured to focus only on the most high-profile or politically relevant cases.
In one city where I conducted interviews, lawyers from the local victims’ commission said prosecutors there often avoided ordering DNA tests on unidentified homicide victims because the ageing refrigerators at the local morgue could not preserve remains long enough to wait for the results to come back from the laboratory in the state capital.
In another city, prosecutors expressed frustration that their state’s witness protection law, passed nearly a decade ago, had never been implemented. “All we can do is ask the local police to stop by the victim’s home,” one prosecutor said. “People end up calling us to say ‘This isn’t helping. I don’t feel safe. I’m not going to testify anymore.’” Identifying details have been omitted to protect sources.
Many victims are forced to investigate and advocate for themselves with little help. One woman I interviewed said that after months of unanswered calls and emails asking why so little had been done to investigate her 76-year-old mother’s murder, she was finally able to speak with the prosecutor in charge, who told her the case would probably never be solved, since “there are a lot of criminals” in her mother’s neighborhood. “I realized our case isn’t a priority for them,” she told me. “We don’t have money. We don’t have a distinguished last name. This is what happens.”
The broader picture
Mexico faces a profound crisis of criminal violence, human rights abuses, and impunity. Over 100,000 people are missing. The homicide rate is one of the highest in the world. To address it, Mexico needs a fair and well-functioning justice system. That means ensuring judges can make decisions without undue interference. But it also means ensuring prosecutors conduct real, effective, rights-respecting investigations, aimed at determining the truth, holding those responsible accountable, and preventing perpetrators from committing further abuses.
That requires strengthening independent oversight and anti-corruption mechanisms, investing more in forensic training and resources, ensuring there are effective and well-funded programs to protect and support victims and witnesses, and establishing career tracks in prosecutors’ offices that reward investigators based on their skill and integrity, and remove and hold accountable those who commit abuses.
President López Obrador has often complained that Mexico’s justice institutions work only for the privileged few. If he and President-elect Sheinbaum want to ensure that the justice system works for everyone in Mexico, they should abandon their crusade against judges and commit to improving the weakest link in Mexico’s justice system: prosecutors’ offices. That would better serve the interest of all Mexicans.
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Mattiace is an Americas researcher covering Mexico at Human Rights Watch.
