ENPOL, an opportunity to improve the criminal justice system in Mexico

The National Survey of the Population Deprived of Liberty (ENPOL) 2021 of the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI) is presented as a valuable data collection tool, due to their primary source of information are persons deprived of their liberty for an alleged commission of a crime. They express how have faced the whole process of the criminal justice system, for example the moment of arrest, judicial process, conditions of detention in prisons, expectations of reintegration, as well as demographic and socio-economic characteristics of this population.

Due to ENPOL, it is possible to know that 69.7% of the total number of persons deprived of their liberty (220,477) have only basic education; that the income of 48.9% prior to detention was less than 5,500 pesos per month (approximately 268 USD); also that the percentage of women without sentence is 46.1%, when in the case of men it is 26.7%; or the fact that more than 40% claimed to have been arbitrarily detained, besides 64.5% reported acts of psychological violence at the time of arrest.

Based on these figures and many more that ENPOL can provide, it is possible to identify areas of opportunity to design and implement plans, programs and policies with gender and intersectional perspective to improve the criminal justice system.

To learn more about this topic, we invite you to read our blog: ENPOL, an opportunity to improve the criminal justice system in Mexico.