After several turbulent years at the beginning of the decade, Ciudad Juarez violence is trending downward.

A Mexican think tank, the non-profit Citizens’ Council for Public Security and Criminal Justice, recently removed Mexico’s largest border town, Ciudad Juarez, from its listing of the fifty most violent cities in the world. Ciudad Juarez violence reached its apogee during the period 2008-2010, when it recorded an average of four hundred homicides per resident per annum. In 2014, the city recorded four hundred and thirty-eight homicides that were reported by the State of Chihuahua’s Attorney General, while Ciudad Juarez violence dropped even further in terms of reported homicides last year when three hundred and eleven were recorded.

In addition to an upgrade in the professionalization of the Ciudad police force, the Citizens’ Council for Public Security and Criminal Justice attributes the diminishing of Ciudad Juarez violence to a number of other factors. Among them are:

  • better coordination among government crime fighting entities;
  • a higher number of arrests;
  • tougher sentencing guidelines;
  • an upgrade in equipment and resources provided to law enforcement agencies;
  • greater citizen engagement in the reporting of criminal acts, as well as in efforts to rebuild the cities civil society.

According to the Citizens’ Council for Public Security and Criminal Justice, the cities which ranked in the top five worldwide in terms of number of homicides committed, as a percentage of population, were:

Caracas, Venezuela – 3,946 from a population of 3,291,830
San Pedro Sula, Honduras – 885 from a population of 797,065
San Salvador, El Salvador – 1,918 from a population of 1,767,102
Acapulco, Mexico – 903 from a population of 862,167
Maturin, Venezuela – 505 from a population of 584,166

For comparative purposes, the three US cities with the largest number of homicides relative to population in 2015 were:

St. Louis, Missouri – 188 from a population of 317,416
Baltimore, Maryland – 343 from a population of 623,911
Detroit, Michigan – 295 from a population of 672,193