The Public Security Contributions Fund to Municipalities: What Was Its Social Impact, 2019–2023?

Abstract

This text examines the evolution of public spending on justice administration and crime control in Mexico and its relationship to federal and state-level crime trends over 2015-2023, linking the period to Sustainable Development Goal 16 – effective institutions and peaceful societies. Using budgetary and public-security statistics, it discusses functional shifts in expenditure, highlighting the growing weight of “national security” allocations alongside real-term constraints on civilian justice and citizen-security institutions and on subnational governments’ resources. At the municipal level, it emphasizes the sector’s limited share of total security-related spending (1.37%) and a downward trend in allocations – with 2020 as a partial exception. Methodologically, the paper reports a mean-difference hypothesis test indicating that federal crimes against physical integrity were statistically higher on average in 2018-2023 than in 2015. For common-law crimes recorded in municipalities, it documents substantial growth in offences such as domestic violence, drug dealing, threats, fraud, and sexual abuse. The conclusions argue that rising criminality has not been matched by sufficient increases in civilian spending and institutional capacity-building, while high-impact violence persists or increases, including enforced disappearances.