16 years after the promulgation of the General Law of the National Public Security System, police, prosecutors and state prisons are in frank institutional deterioration, with serious lags in professionalization, discipline, social security and transparency. This is revealed by the report “An approach to the State that the state police, prosecutors and criminals have”, prepared by common cause, belongs and zero impunity.
Organizations also warned that the structural weakness of these institutions is one of the main factors that feed the insecurity, impunity and militarization in Mexico.
Based on the transparency indices of institutional development, the study evidenced that almost half of the state police lack a professional career system, and that their training areas operate with insufficient infrastructure. In addition, most do not carry out evaluations about their training needs and does not documented the planning of their academic programs.
“We observe a systematic opacity. Institutions behave as black boxes,” said Asael Nuche, project coordinator.
In addition, he informed that the document shows that 26 entities lack guidelines to regulate the promotion processes and that only 17 comply with the registry of professional career service instruments before the Executive Secretariat of the National Public Security System.
Prosecutors with opacity
In the case of the prosecutors, it was warned that the figure of autonomy is “a label without livelihood”, due to the mechanisms of appointment and removal of prosecutors that still allow the interference of state executives. Although training efforts are identified, worrying empty persists in initial training and staff update.
Catalina Kühne, executive director of Zero Impunity, mentioned that, in five states, prosecutors are still directly appointed by the State Executive, which “is totally against autonomy.” In contrast, Mexico City, Nuevo León and Sinaloa have mixed designation models, where external instances such as the National Anti -Corruption System or Academic Councils participate, considered good practices.
Also, it was denounced that the ministerial career system continues to be opaque: in entities such as the State of Mexico, the promotion of degrees is at the discretion of the controls; In Baja California, there are no performance certification processes for public ministries; And in Oaxaca, no agent or expert has confidence or competition control certificates.
Kühne explained that 11 prosecutors do not have clear guidelines for the promotion of their staff, and that in all 2024 only five calls for promotions were launched. In addition, expert staff practically does not have access to these processes.
Penalties without laws
The diagnosis of the prison centers made by the report revealed a serious lack of technical and budgetary autonomy, since most depends organically on the state security secretariats. As explained, in 22 entities there is no specialized law in prison and in 13 states no penalty has international certification.
Lizeth Montejano, Social Research Coordinator in belongs, reported that only five federative entities delivered a catalog of positions, so in most cases it is not possible to know the professional development routes of the penitentiary staff.
