Perceived insecurity fell to 58.1% in Mexico’s surveyed urban areas, but women reported greater fear and some cities saw conditions worsen.
The share of adults who consider their city unsafe fell in September across Mexico’s surveyed urban areas. President Claudia Sheinbaum and Security Secretary Omar García Harfuch called it the lowest level since the survey began 13 years ago. Even so, nearly six in ten adults still felt unsafe, with substantial differences between cities and between women and men.
INEGI’s National Urban Public Security Survey, known as ENSU, found that 58.1% of adults living in 91 urban areas considered their city unsafe, down from 59.8% in June and 63% in September 2025. Both declines were statistically significant, amounting to 1.7 percentage points over the quarter and 4.9 points over the year.
The overall improvement, however, did not extend evenly across the surveyed cities. Sixteen registered statistically significant changes from June: ten improved and six worsened. The largest increases were in Hermosillo, where perceived insecurity rose from 43.2% to 53.2%; Lázaro Cárdenas, from 33% to 42.3%; and Ciudad Victoria, from 47.5% to 56.5%. The largest decreases were in San Francisco de Campeche, Tlalnepantla de Baz and Ciudad Obregón.
In Sinaloa, the contrast was particularly clear. Perceived insecurity in Mazatlán increased from 78.4% to 85.8%, while in Culiacán it fell from 90.8% to 81.6%. Despite Culiacán’s improvement, more than eight in ten adults there still considered the city unsafe.
Women also continued to report substantially greater insecurity than men. In September, 64.2% of women considered their city unsafe, compared with 50.6% of men—a gap of 13.6 percentage points. Both groups recorded statistically significant improvements from June, but their assessments remained far apart.
Those concerns extended into everyday activities. Across the surveyed urban areas, 68.7% of adults felt unsafe at outdoor ATMs, 61.8% on streets, 61.1% on public transportation and 55.3% on highways. These figures describe how people felt in particular settings, rather than their probability of becoming a crime victim there.
Fear also shaped decisions about what to carry, when to walk outside and whether children could go out alone. During the third quarter, 40.7% reported changing their habits concerning carrying valuables because of crime concerns. Another 38.8% changed routines involving children going out unaccompanied, while 35.8% changed their habits concerning walking near home at night.
Presenting the results on October 23, Sheinbaum credited the security cabinet and the government’s prevention efforts. Harfuch separately highlighted improvements in 28 cities compared with September 2025. That annual comparison covers a different period from the ten cities showing statistically significant declines since June. The survey itself does not establish which policies caused the changes.
The findings document an improvement in how adults assess safety across the surveyed urban areas, while showing how deeply insecurity still affects daily life. They do not establish a corresponding decline in homicides, robberies, extortion or other crimes, and they do not represent every community in Mexico. The overall decline is meaningful, but the experience behind it still depends heavily on where people live and whom the survey asks.
