Homicides drop by 5% across Latin America in 2025

The most recent annual figures compiled by Insight Crime show that homicides per capita declined by 5% across Latin America in 2025, driven by declines in large countries like Brazil and Mexico, although unprecedented spikes continue to be seen in smaller nations.

Brazil saw an 8.5% decline in per capita murders in 2025, part of a larger trend of improving figures since 2017, while Mexico’s numbers also dropped by 19.8%, the report said — a milder reduction than in the disputed official data, which has big question marks due to ignoring disappearances, yet remains significant.

Brazil and Mexico remain among the most dangerous countries in the world, with 19.2 and 15.4 murders per 100,000 inhabitants, respectively — rates that quadruple the global average and are 20 times as strong as in Europe. Their current rates are not far from the regional average, which stood at 17.6 in 2025, with 108,838 murder cases recorded last year.