The number of women detained by the armed forces for organized crime offenses increased by 124 percent between 2012 and 2024, reveals a report from the Ministry of National Defense.
The document, available on the Transparency platform, indicates that for crimes against public health and other related offenses, 631 women were arrested in 2012, while in 2024 that number increased to 1,413.
The phenomenon is exacerbated by the fact that between January and the first half of August of this year, there have already been 1,737 arrests. That is, in eight and a half months, the total number of women apprehended for all of 2024 has been surpassed.
Experts attribute this phenomenon to the increase in criminal groups and, with it, the need for greater production, distribution, and labor.
Criminal groups, Saucedo explained, increasingly required more workers for secondary activities such as warehousing, courier services, logistics, drug cutting, managing distribution centers, and, in some cases, local leadership positions, which required a greater recruitment of women.
She also highlighted the fact that women began to occupy leadership positions, which “attracted” a high level of female recruitment to the criminal forces.
“They began to participate in this activity during the era of the Sinaloa Cartel, one of the country’s oldest cartels. (…) Their incorporation is due primarily to the cartel war, which led to the deaths of male members and forced an increase in recruitment, whether voluntary or forced.”
“Secondly, female members reached the cartels in senior management positions, which in turn began to recruit women for various tasks related to trafficking, smuggling, and drug dealing,” she explained.
