Now, More Data

A day after I wrote this piece criticizing Calderón for hiding the data regarding drug-related murders, the PGR released the tally for the first nine months of 2010. (To avoid any unintended implications, let me make perfectly clear that the above sentence's first clause has virtually nothing to do with the second.) The total through September: 12,903, which puts Mexico on pace for some 17,200 murders linked to organized crime this year. The figure represents an increase of roughly 11 percent from 2010. Any increase is unfortunate, though the rate of increase appears to have slowed (something Alejandro Hope has been saying for months): in 2010, drug-related murders jumped by 70 percent, in 2009 by 63 percent, and in 2008 by 110 percent.