The SSPC Sector Program 2025-2030 is no exception: it comes with luminous objectives, intergovernmental coordination, technology, police professionalization and social prevention. It’s all there, carefully worded, strategically articulated. It is, technically, an impeccable document.
The problem is that Mexico does not need impeccable plans: it needs to execute them in a country that operates from disorder.
The perfect document, the imperfect reality
The trap of the Sector Program is its own internal coherence. It reads well and sounds reasonable: strengthen institutions, improve intelligence, coordinate between the federation, states and municipalities. They are correct ideas. The point is that they assume something that does not exist in much of the national territory: a functional State.
In hundreds of municipalities, governance is captured by criminal networks. Local police do not pursue crimes; They work for those who pay more. The prosecutors do not investigate; They receive political pressure. Judges rule according to instructions that come from outside the legal system. There, in that context, the program is a dead letter.
The silent collapse of impunity
The diagnosis that the document omits is brutal: more than 92% of crimes are not reported, and of those that do reach the authorities, only 2% are resolved. That figure is not a statistical data; It is a functional collapse.
It means that there is no public security, there is security theatrics. It means that millions of Mexicans have chosen not to report because they trust more in resolving their issues on their own than in institutions that have systematically failed them.
The program promises justice, but justice does not depend on the SSPC: it depends on prosecutors who are bankrupt, on judges who act under pressure, on a penal system that has been deflating for decades.
Militarization that is not recognized
The National Guard is another elephant in the room.
The program mentions it as an axis of prevention and coordination, but the operational reality is that it works with military logic in territories that require police presence. Patrolling a town is not the same as occupying a territory.
A soldier applies combat doctrine; A police officer must apply proximity doctrine. They are incompatible mentalities. As long as public security remains de facto militarized, any rhetoric about professionalization is cosmetic.
The budget realism that does not exist
Then there is the money.
The program promises technological modernization, massive training, renewed infrastructure and territorial prevention. All that costs. In Mexico, historically, governments close their public security wallets when economic crises hit or when political priorities change.
There is nothing in the program that guarantees budget continuity beyond the six-year term. Without continuity, without real and consistent money, it is rhetoric.
What’s missing: the real solutions
What is needed then?
– First, a reconstruction of the justice system from the foundations. There is no security without justice. That means reforming prosecutors’ offices, giving judges real autonomy, training experts, and creating strong defenders.
– Second, dismantle the fragmented police structure. Mexico has dozens of police officers: federal, state, municipal, military. It needs a unitary, professional police architecture, responsible to civil authorities, politically shielded from corruption.
– Third, anti-corruption institutions with teethwith the capacity to supervise, sanction and control budgets.
– Fourth, accept that social prevention is not marketing: it is economy, formal employment, education, mental health, permanent state presence. That takes a decade, minimum.
What the program denies
The 2025-2030 Sector Program will not fail because of what it contains; He will fail because of what he denies.
He denies that the Mexican State is partially captured. He denies that thousands of police officers and officials receive orders from criminals, not from commanders. He denies that impunity is systemic, not administrative. He denies that professionalization is a decades-long cultural change, not a training course.
