Mexican Drug Cartels are 5th Largest Employer in Country: Study

The key to slash their ranks is to reduce recruitment, suggests intriguing research

Published 09/21/23 12:07 AM ET|Updated 2 hr ago

Mary Papenfuss

Drug cartels in Mexico involve as many as 175,000 people, making them the fifth largest "employer" in the nation, and an incredibly powerful danger, a new study reports.

Because of the cartels, the number of homicides in Mexico more than tripled between 2007 and 2021. Mexico tallied 34,000 victims in 2021 — nearly 27 victims for every 100,000 inhabitants – making it one of the deadliest nations in Latin America.

The optimal way to combat burgeoning "employment" in the deadly drug gangs is to reduce cartel recruitment, concluded the study published Thursday in the journal Science.

Mathematical models suggest that other methods, including increasing policing of the cartels, are ineffective, the study found.

Findings, based on a painstaking collection of data of people involved in cartels, as well as murder rates, and incarceration, suggest that strategies to reduce recruitment instead of increasing incarceration is a more effective policy to hurt the cartels — and reduce violence, the study argues.

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