Cox proportional hazards regression analysis to assess delays in the criminal case filing in the justice system in Mexico City

Abstract

Criminal justice access is a pending issue in Mexico. According to the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI), in 2021, 93.2% of crimes were not reported. Of the remaining 6.8% reported crimes, only 67.3% were formally filed as part of the initial prosecution stage, equal to investigating only 4.5% of crimes in Mexico. Mexico not only has a considerable gap in improving its criminal justice system’s overall effectiveness, but also one of the most challenging issues that it faces is its lateness in processing criminal cases. Studying criminal justice delays is one of the first steps in enhancing a holistic comprehension of some of the main concerns key stakeholders must tackle to improve the system’s reliability, effectiveness, and resilience. To address this issue empirically, for the first time in the literature for the Mexican case, this study focused on studying the initial stage of the criminal justice chain: filling out the criminal case file. Therefore, this study aimed to analyze 11 of the most representative high-impact and not high-impact crimes in Mexico City to test whether the crime type or individual characteristics of the prosecutors’ offices account for explaining the delays in the criminal case filling. To that aim, this study estimates a cox proportional hazard model over a daily period from January 2016 to February 2022 for uncensored data using as covariates crime type and prosecutor´s office characteristics such as the number of personnel, kind of prosecutor, and geographic characteristics estimated by partial likelihood. The results suggested a significantly positive relationship between delays in criminal case filing and the type of crime and prosecutors’ characteristics.