Minors lost between bullets and organized crime

This time it was in Tabasco y Guerrerowhere they were detained in the last week two minors involved in activities related to racketeering.

The first, a Tabasco teenager of barely 14 yearsarrested for his alleged participation as a hitman within a criminal group. A young man who already knows violence from within, who has been the protagonist and at the same time a victim.

The second, detained in Chilpancingo and implicated in the murder of the priest Bertoldo Pantaleón Estrada and pointed out by the Guerrero Prosecutor’s Office as co-author for the crime of qualified homicide next to an adult.

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According to data from National Institute of Statistics and Geography (Inegi) the number of adolescents charged with the alleged commission of a crime increased significantly: 42.2 percent between 2021 and 2023until reaching 32 thousand 852 people, according to Statistics on Adolescents in Conflict with the Law, from two years ago, but published in this 2025.

Thousands of minors co-opted by organized crime

While civil organizations estimate that around 30 thousand minors are currently in the hands of criminal groups in Mexicoalthough figures of Reinsert They claim that they are 140 thousand, and up to 200 thousand who are at risk of being so.

The cases of juvenile offenders surprised the networks, but not Reinserta, which works with juvenile offenders recruited for crime.

It has documented that seven out of ten adolescents in detention who were recruited by criminal associations became hitmen and six out of ten grew up with a family member linked to crime.

Mario Alberto Santillana Zapatadeputy general director of National Surveys of Government, Public Security and Justice of the Inegihas pointed out that organized crime in some way takes advantage of the penal system “which is quite benevolent towards minor offenders”, since the sentences cannot be more than five years for those of 16 or 17 years oldand more than three years for those of 14 or 15 years oldregardless of the seriousness of the crimes.

He explained that they cannot be transferred to adult penitentiary centers either; “hence some organizations take advantage.”

According to the my refusalthe largest number of girls, boys and adolescents are recruited for falconeo (surveillance), drug dealing, extortion, collection of fees, contract killings (murders) and trafficking for sexual exploitation.

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Crime recruits 305 young people every week

The Network for Children’s RightsRedim, reports that the earliest ages they identified in the recruitment of boys, girls and adolescents by criminal groups and criminal organizations in Mexico They are between seven and nine years old, hooked on drugs and on drug trafficking lists with different ranks, including hitmen.

What for many seems like a life “choice”, for them it was a trap with no way out.
According to research carried out by Lorena Cortesauthor of the book The Children of Violence and Drug Trafficking in Michoacanorganized crime recruits around 350 young people a week in Mexico.

He narrated that during a talk with a young hitman of 14 years deprived of his liberty, he was kidnapped and taken to a hill in Uruapan, where he ended up dismembering more than 100 people, “so there is evidence that there is a recruitment phenomenon.”