Years of Life Lost in Pretrial Detention: Legal and Sociodemographic Decomposition in Mexico

Approximately 12 million people worldwide live in prisons, with one in three incarcerated without a sentence. Latin America stands out for having one of the highest proportions of unsentenced incarcerated populations, an indicator used by the United Nations to measure unequal access to justice. However, few studies have explored the factors that determine sentencing and its delays. Using the Mexican Survey of the Population Deprived of Liberty (ENPOL 2021), we examine the time spent in pretrial detention and its association with legal factors—such as type of crime and authority responsible for detention—and sociodemographic (extralegal) factors, such as gender and education level. We use event history models to assess the impact of these variables on the time (person-years) it takes for individuals to receive a sentence at the subnational level. Our findings highlight the importance of controlling for crime type to avoid biases when identifying significant disparities across Mexican states and sociodemographic subgroups. The study sheds light on the coexistence of inequality in access to justice and legal resilience in the face of expedited sentencing. These explanatory frameworks add complexity to the interpretation of quantitative indicators on pretrial detention.