The indicator should not be seen as a suggestion that more sentences should be handed down on the back poorly presented investigations that are thrown out during procedural stages of the court case, but simply as a measure how many cases reach a judge in the first instance.

The data is compiled in the database “Historical statistics. The judicial system and criminal cases,” and for the period from 2014-2016 data is taken from “Statistics on security and justice. The administration of justice in criminal cases.” Comparing these three sources of information must be a done with care due to the methodological differences between them since changes were introduced by the Specialized Technical Committee on Information related to the Administration of justice that was convened in 2014.

The impunity index is created by using the proportion of homicide or femicide cases end with a sentencing in the arraignment phase. This way, the indicator is defined as the percentage of total cases in which no verdict is handed down. This number is obtained by subtracting from 1 the ratio of sentences handed down over the total number of homicides/femicides recorded from 2010 to 2017 then multiplied by 100 (to turn it into a percentage).