This report summarizes the findings from the first New Mexico sexual violence crime victimization survey conducted in nearly two decades. Data were collected from September 2023 through June 2024, and a total of 1,272 completed surveys were obtained. The results found that crime directly impacted two out of every five adults in the state of New Mexico within the last 12 months. Almost one third (32%) of respondents who experienced at least one type of crime sought some kind of professional help, including help from a victim service organization, as a result of the crime. The report details how certain demographic groups were disproportionately victimized across each of the crimes explored in this study, resulting in even higher rates for these demographic groups.

The New Mexico sexual violence crime victimization survey was funded by the State of New Mexico Crime Victims Reparation Commission. This project came to fruition because the New Mexico Coalition of Sexual Assault Programs (NMCSAP) reached out to the Catherine Cutler Institute at the University Southern Maine (USM) to explore the possibility of crafting a crime victimization survey similar to one which the Catherine Cutler Institute conducted in Maine in 2022. The Maine survey was developed by the Institute’s Maine Statistical Analysis Center (SAC) and was patterned after the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), a national survey on criminal victimization and crime trends. The Maine SAC, along with several other state SACs, took this step because findings from the NCVS could not be reported on a state-level basis.