By Andre Mancha

I describe how monitoring and harsher law enforcement reduce the expected economic benefits of crime. I investigate the effect of shifts in legal authorities’ surveillance by focusing on junkyards, firms often associated with illegal markets and auto theft. Starting in 2014, many municipalities in Brazil increased the monitoring of spare parts sold by junkyards through new regulations at the state level.

I show that levels of auto theft dropped significantly after the introduction of the new law, and this decrease is more extensive in neighbourhoods containing junkyards. Municipalities that implemented the new regulation presented, on average, a 6.4 per cent drop in auto thefts by year compared to non-target ones. Other crimes do not show a similar decrease, and there is no evidence of a previous downward trend in vehicles stolen.

My results shed some light on the effect of harsher supervision over a market that criminals may exploit to convert stolen vehicles into cash.

Helsinki, Finland:  United Nations University, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER), 2022. 27p.

By Felipe Puerta, Héctor Silva and Steven Dudley 

On November 2, 2013, the Day of the Dead, the mayor of Apopa, José Elías Hernández, called Carlos Axume Arroyo to his office for a meeting that was unusual for an elected politician in one of El Salvador’s most important municipalities. Axume Arroyo, alias “Humilde,” or “Humble,” was the leader of a local “clica,” or cell, of the MS13 gang in Apopa. He was also an employee at the mayor’s office, and had been ever since Hernández was elected in March 2012. That same year, the MS13 and their rival gang, the Barrio 18, had made a pact with each other and with the federal government in which they pledged to not commit certain crimes. At a March 2013 event in Apopa celebrating the first year of what became known as “the gang truce,” a Barrio 18 spokesperson said the proscribed crimes included “robberies, extortions, lootings and theft.” The truce had been in force in Apopa before it spread to other parts of the country. The truce, as would later be discovered, consisted of imprisoned leaders of the MS13 and Barrio 18 ordering their subordinates on the streets to lower homicide rates in exchange for economic benefits and the freedom to communicate and reestablish control over their underlings. The problem was that not everybody was obeying the promises made by the imprisoned gang leaders. It was for this reason that Hernández had summoned Humilde to his office on that Day of the Dead in 2013. For Hernández, it was essential to lower crime levels in the municipality. He and several other Salvadoran mayors were part of an initiative by then-President Mauricio Funes that would permit them to receive federal funds to implement social and economic programs in their municipalities. Those resources, the mayor calculated, would not arrive if he did not fulfill his part of the deal: lowering homicide rates in Apopa. Humilde, according to judicial documents accessed by InSight Crime, was one of a few local gang leaders who had refused to follow the order from the MS13 leadership in prison to reduce homicides.  

Washington, DC: InSight Crime, 2017. 16p.

By The International Crisis Group   

What’s new? Violent gangs have taken the opportunity presented by Haiti’s prolonged political crisis to seize control of much of the country, bringing its economy to a halt. With cholera resurgent, Haiti’s government has called on the UN and foreign partners to deploy a public security force to push the gangs back. Why does it matter? Decades of foreign interventions in Haiti have instilled reluctance in the country and abroad to contemplate a public security mission. Operational risks and the country’s political divide have also cooled foreigners on a possible deployment, but interviews suggest that popular support for it, especially in gang-controlled areas, is rising. What should be done? The collapsing Haitian state and the severity of the humanitarian emergency justify preparations for a mission. But its deployment should hinge on adequate planning to operate in urban areas and support from Haiti’s main political forces, including their firm commitment to work together in creating a legitimate transitional government.   

Port-au-Prince/New York/Washington/Brussels: International Crisis Group, 2022. 20p.

By Simen Madslien

Has the increasing demand for Mexican avocados caused an escalation of violence between Mexican cartels? I theorize that the cartels enter growing licit industries to diversify their revenue stream from the drug trade. Increasing demand for legal commodities possibly leads to higher territorial competition between cartels and higher rates of violence. Recent media attention suggests that avocados are implicated in the bloody cartel business. However, earlier research found a negative relationship between cartel-related crimes and licit industries. Based on the negative relationship observed in recent studies, using an OLS and IV design, I test the hypothesis that the growth in the Mexican avocado industry leads to a decrease in cartel-related violence in Mexican municipalities. In contrast with earlier research, I find a significant increase in the total number of reported cartel-related crimes as a consequence of Mexican avocados' growing production rates. Given the growth rate of global avocado demand, leading to an explosion of Mexican avocado production in the last decade, I interpret the result as coming from intensified territorial competition between Mexican drug trafficking organizations' splintered landscape. With the necessity for cartels to diversify their revenue streams in the aftermath of the war on drugs initiated in 2006, the avocado industry's profitability is expected to draw numerous cartels to the business, increasing the likelihood of territorial contestation and rates of violence.

Bergen: Norwegian School of Economics, 2020. 77p.

By Megan Erickson and Lucas Owen

Has growing demand for licit goods caused an increase in violence among Mexican criminal organizations? We theorize that cartels enter licit markets to supplement and diversify revenues from the drug trade, and that the incentive to do so changes with revenues in licit markets. Given their comparative advantages in agricultural production and violence, we expect cartels to react to increasing demand in agricultural markets by fighting to maximize territorial control and monopolize production. Using a difference-in-differences design, we test the hypothesis that a positive shock in demand for avocados from municipalities in the states of Michoac´an and Jalisco led to an increase in cartel violence. We ultimately find the opposite of what we expect. The enactment of a U.S. phytosanitary policy in June of 2016, which extended U.S. demand for avocados to municipalities formerly unable to export to the United States, led to a significant decrease in cartel homicides compared to municipalities that were unaffected by this policy. Given that cartels were present in most areas of Michoac´an and Jalisco before the policy, we interpret this result as coming from cartels anticipating increased territorial contestation. Since cartels expect others to challenge their territory, they bolster their defenses, reducing incentives for territorial contestation.

Working Paper, Washington Political Economy Forum, 2020. 31p.

By Fernando Sobrino

The number of major Drug Trafficking Organizations (known as cartels) in Mexico increased from four to nine over the last two decades. This was accompanied by an increase in drug trade related violence. This paper examines the relationship between violence and competition for market share among cartels. To measure cartel presence, a difficult to measure phenomenon, I construct a novel data set of cartel presence across Mexican municipalities by scraping Google News and using natural language processing. To study how market size and structure interact with violence, I exploit two empirical strategies using within municipality variation. First, I interact heroin prices with agro-climatic conditions to grow opium poppy, using exogenous variation in demand for heroin from the 2010 OxyContin reformulation. This reformulation made OxyContin harder to abuse and led some opioid abusers to switch to heroin. Second, I exploit variation in the timing of cartel entry in a municipality. Cartel presence increases substantially after 2010 in municipalities well-suited to grow opium poppy. As more cartels enter a market, homicide rates increase. These results suggest that a substantial part of the increase in violence that Mexico experienced in the last fifteen years is due to criminal groups fighting for market share of heroin, not only due to changes in government enforcement.

Working Paper,  Department of Economics, Princeton University, 2020. 63p.

by Amanda R. Witwer, Lynn Langton, Michael J. D. Vermeer, Duren Banks, Dulani Woods, Brian A. Jackson

The proliferation of websites, social media platforms, and applications that enable users to interact virtually and often anonymously has given rise to new modes and methods of perpetrating harassment, abuse, and other criminal behaviors that compromise victims' privacy and safety. These types of acts, termed technology-facilitated abuse (TFA), can involve the use or distribution of the victim's personal information, which compromises the victim's privacy and poses a threat to their safety. Efforts to combat these profoundly harmful acts are limited by a lack of awareness among the general public and criminal justice practitioners, impediments to investigation and adjudication presented by digital spaces, and laws and policies that have not kept pace with advancements in digital technologies. To examine this issue, RTI International and the RAND Corporation convened an expert workshop. The participants discussed the challenges, opportunities, and complexities faced by law enforcement and criminal justice practitioners in TFA cases. Using these discussions, the panel members identified and ranked needs for the public, law enforcement, and criminal justice practitioners to successfully identify and prosecute TFA cases. This report provides the prioritized list of needs and accompanying context from the discussion that resulted from this effort.

Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation, 2020.   25p.

By Alanna Fulk 

This thesis examines research from the disciplines of political science and criminal justice to develop a theory that explains geographic variation in violence related to organized crime. Large-scale organized crime violence exhibits characteristics of both ordinary crime violence and political violence, but these subjects are generally analyzed separately. However, as large-scale organized crime has become more prevalent and violent in recent years, most notably in Latin America, studies, including this one, have attempted to cross disciplinary boundaries in order to better explain trends in organized crime onset, termination and violence. This thesis argues that although the overall goal of organized crime groups is not to take control of a country, both organized crime groups and insurgent groups confront the state’s monopoly on violence, leading to evident similarities in the way they use violence to attain their goals. They both use violence to maintain control over resources, take control from other groups and retaliate against the government. Previous literature has demonstrated that control is directly linked to geographic variation in political violence and through case studies of organized crime violence in Honduras and Brazil, as well as negative binomial regression analysis of organized crime violence in Mexico, this thesis finds that control is also directly linked to geographic variation in organized crime violence.   

Orlando, FL: University of Central Florida, 2019. 111p.

By The Washington Office on Latin America, Latin America Working Group Education Fund, Due Process of Law Foundation, and Guatemala Human Rights Commission/USA

Guatemala’s justice system has been co-opted by a network of corrupt political, economic, and military elites seeking to advance their own interests and to ensure that their acts of corruption and grave human rights violations from the armed conflict remain in impunity, while silencing voices from civil society organizations and independent media. Honest judges and prosecutors have been criminalized, threatened, removed, or transferred from their posts by the very institutions supposed to be advancing the rule of law and justice. Twenty-five judges and prosecutors, including the nation’s lead anti-corruption prosecutor, have fled the country into exile. The impacts of the co-optation of Guatemala’s justice system will set the country back decades. 

This report, produced by Washington Office on Latin America, Latin America Working Group Education Fund, Due Process of Law Foundation, and Guatemala Human Rights Commission/USA, provides analysis on the steps taken to undermine Guatemala’s justice system from the stacking of its highest courts with corrupt judges to the co-opting and dismantling of the Attorney General’s Office and specialized prosecutors’ offices. It explains the longer-term implications of the ousting of honest judges and prosecutors and a broken justice system for the rule of law, transitional justice and protecting freedom of expression and the rights of marginalized communities in Guatemala.

Washington, DC: The Authors, 2022. 10p.

By The Washington Office on Latin America, Latin America Working Group Education Fund, and Guatemala Human Rights Commission/USA

In Guatemala, human rights defenders, independent judges and prosecutors, journalists, and Indigenous leaders are under assault as part of a broader attack on democracy and path towards a kleptocracy. The criminalization and closing of civic space is one of the strategies being used by corrupt networks, the Attorney General’s Office, private actors, members of the military, and political elites to quell disruptions to their power, avoid historic responsibility for crimes committed during the internal armed conflict, and silence voices exposing corruption. It has resulted in severe democratic backsliding, creating a dangerous terrain in which human rights defenders, journalists, Indigenous community leaders, and justice operators receive no State protection and are instead persecuted and criminalized by their own government in complicity with private actors, often to the point of having to flee the country for their lives. The current situation in Guatemala creates serious challenges for U.S. policy and assistance and means that civil society organizations, human rights defenders, Indigenous communities, and journalists are more in need of international protection than ever.

Washington, DC: The Authors, 2022. 8p.

By The Washington Office on Latin America, Latin America Working Group, and Guatemala Human Rights

  With the support of the international community, Guatemala was making progress in strengthening the rule of law. Today, rule of law in Guatemala is on a dramatic downward spiral. A handful of corrupt political, military, and economic elites seeking to maintain their privileges at the expense of Guatemala’s Indigenous majority population have captured the state. They have systematically dismantled anti-corruption mechanisms such as UN-led CICIG and the special anti-corruption prosecutor’s office and infiltrated the justice system, starting at the top. Independent media, human rights defenders, and Indigenous leaders have been targeted and civic space restricted. Corruption is pervasive, depriving the population of access to basic public services, and few independent actors remain able to confront it. U.S. policy is also undermined. The United States needs to consider a range of policy tools to counter such a broad challenge to basic democratic values in Guatemala.   

Washington, DC: The Authors, 2022. 7p.

By Andres I Vecino-Ortiza & Deivis N Guzman-Tordecilla  

Objective: To assess the effect of a permanent gun-carrying restriction on gun-related mortality in Colombia between 2008 and 2014, and determine differences in the effect of the restriction by place of death and sex. Methods: In 2012, Bogotá and Medellín introduced a permanent gun-carrying restriction. We compared gun-related mortality rates in these cities (intervention cities) with the rates in all other Colombian cities with more than 500 000 inhabitants (control cities). We used data from the Colombian National Department of Statistics to calculate monthly gun-related mortality rates between 2008 and 2014 for intervention and control cities. We used a differences-in-differences method with fixed effects to assess differences in gun-related mortality in intervention and control cities before and after the introduction of the gun-carrying restriction. We stratified effects by place of death (public area or residence) and sex. We made robustness checks to test the assumptions of the models. Findings: Gun-related deaths in the control and intervention cities decreased between 2008 and 2014; however, the decrease was greater in the intervention cities (from 20.29 to 14.93 per 100 000 population; 26.4%) than in the control cities (from 37.88 to 34.56 per 100 000 population; 8.8%). The restriction led to a 22.3% reduction in the monthly gun-related mortality rate in Bogotá and Medellín. The reduction was greater in public areas and for males. Robustness checks supported the assumptions of the models. Conclusion_ The permanent restriction on carrying guns reduced gun-related deaths. This policy could be used to reduce gun-related injuries in urban centres of other countries with large numbers of gun-related deaths.

Bulletin of the World Health Organization, 98 (‎3)‎: 170 - 176

By Carolina Velez Ospina

The provision effects of local public goods on crime and education are not clear in the literature. While some argue that provision does not affect these outcomes, other find that effects depend on the benefits it offers to the community. This paper studies the effect of the construction of cultural centers in Medellín, Colombia on crime and test scores in mathematics and language. This policy is interesting since the communities participated in the design of these cultural centers. Using a dynamic difference-in-differences strategy, I find that schools near centers improve their test performance, especially for younger children. Regarding crime, I find that in neighborhoods near centers, there is a reduction in motorcycle and car theft crimes.

  Universidad del Rosario, Facultad de Economía, 2020. 51p.   

By Christopher Blattman, Donald Green, Daniel Ortega, Santiago Tobón

In 2016 the city of Bogotá doubled police patrols and intensified city services on high-crime streets. They did so based on a policy and criminological consensus that such place-based programs not only decrease crime, but also have positive spillovers to nearby streets. To test this, we worked with Bogotá to experiment on an unprecedented scale. They randomly assigned 1,919 streets to either 8 months of doubled police patrols, greater municipal services, both, or neither. Such scale brings econometric challenges. Spatial spillovers in dense networks introduce bias and complicate variance estimation through “fuzzy clustering.” But a design-based approach and randomization inference produce valid hypothesis tests in such settings. In contrast to the consensus, we find intensifying state presence in Bogotá had modest but imprecise direct effects and that such crime displaced nearby, especially property crimes. Confidence intervals suggest we can rule out total reductions in crime of more than 2–3% from the two policies. More promising, however, is suggestive evidence that more state presence led to an 5% fall in homicides and rape citywide. One interpretation is that state presence may more easily deter crimes of passion than calculation, and place-based interventions could be targeted against these incredibly costly and violent crimes.

Chicago: Becker Friedman Institute, University of Chicago, 2019. 80p.

Edited by Mangai Natarajan

International crime and justice is an emerging field that covers crime and justice from a global perspective. 'This book introduces the nature of internationaland transnational crimes; theoretical foundations to understanding the relationship between social change and the waxing and waning of the crime opportunity structure; globalization; migration; culture conflicts and the emerging legal frameworks for their prevention and control. tI presents the challenges involved in delivering justice and international cooperative efforts to deter, detect, and respond to international and transnational crimes, and the need for international research and data resources to go beyond anecdote and impres- sionistic accounts to testing and developing theories to build the discipline that bring tangible improvements to the peace, security, and well-being of the globalizing world. 'This books is a timely analysis of the complex subject ofinternational crime and justice for students, scholars, policy makers, and advocates who strive for the pursuit of justice for millions of victims.

Cambridge England and NY.. Cambridge University Press. 2019. 560p.

By Thomas Grisaffi

Bolivia is a centre for drug production and trafficking and yet it experiences far less drug-related violence than other countries in Latin America that form part of cocaine’s commodity chain. Drawing upon more than three years of ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2005 and 2019, this article presents evidence from the Chapare, a coca-growing and drug processing region in central Bolivia, to consider why this is the case. Building from the literature on embedded economies and the subsistence ethic of peasant communities, the article demonstrates that the drug trade is part of a local moral order that prioritizes kinship, reciprocal relations and community well-being, facilitated by the cultural significance of the coca leaf. This has served to limit possibilities for the violence that is often associated with drug production and trafficking. In addition, coca grower agricultural unions act as a parallel form of governance, providing a framework for the peaceful resolution of disputes and working actively to exclude the state and criminal actors.

Development and Change Volume53, Issue3: 576-599, 2022.

By Elizabeth Eggins, Lorelei Hine, Angela Higginson and Lorraine Mazerolle

Drawing on the Global Policing Database (GPD), this review assesses the impact of supplier arrests and seizures on drug crime, drug use, drug price, drug purity, and drug harm outcomes. Just 13 impact evaluation studies (reported in 18 documents) met inclusion criteria. An evidence and gap map was constructed, showing that research to date relates primarily to drug harms, followed by drug crime and drug price, and that there are significant gaps in the impact evaluation literature. The results of this review demonstrate the limited amount of high-quality scientific evidence that can be used to examine the impact of supplier arrest and seizure on a range of drug-related outcomes.

Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology, 2020. 16p.

By Lorraine Mazerolle, Elizabeth Eggins and Angela Higginson

The Global Policing Database is used to update a 2007 systematic review of the impact of street-level law enforcement interventions on drug crime and drug-related calls-for-service. A total of 26 studies (reported in 29 documents) were eligible for this updated review. Eighteen of the 26 studies reported sufficient data to calculate effect sizes.

We find that, overall, street-level policing approaches are effective in reducing drug crime, particularly those involving partnerships. We also find that geographically targeted law enforcement interventions are more effective in reducing drug crime than standard, unfocused approaches. Approaches that target larger problem areas for intervention are more effective for reducing drug crime (but not calls-for-service) than approaches that focus on micro problem places.

Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology, 2020. 20p.

By Beatriz Magaloni, Gustavo Robles, Aila M. Matanock, Alberto Díaz-Cayeros, Vidal Romero

Why do drug trafficking organizations (DTOs) sometimes prey on the communities in which they operate but sometimes provide assistance to these communities? What explains their strategies of extortion and cooptation toward civil society? Using new survey data from Mexico, including list experiments to elicit responses about potentially illegal behavior, this article measures the prevalence of extortion and assistance among DTOs. In support of our theory, these data show that territorial contestation among rival organizations produces more extortion and, in contrast, DTOs provide more assistance when they have monopoly control over a turf. The article uncovers other factors that also shape DTOs’ strategies toward the population, including the degree of collaboration with the state, leadership stability and DTO organization, and the value and logistics of the local criminal enterprise.

Comparative Political Studies 1–51 © The Author(s) 2019

By Itzel De Haro Lopez

The global increase in the demand for avocados has attracted the attention of rent-seeking criminal organizations in Mexico. As a result, farmers and packing houses have become the targets of drug trafficking organizations (DTOs). This paper aims to answer whether declining drug revenues have motivated cartels to target licit businesses, such as avocado farms, rather than continue specializing in the production and distribution of illicit drugs. To do this, I exploit exogenous variation in the demand for pure heroin in the U.S. between 2011 and 2019. In particular, I use the introduction of Fentanyl in the U.S. as a proxy for the reduction in the demand for pure heroin in Mexico to answer whether this led to an increase in homicides and cartel presence in avocado- and poppy-growing municipalities. Using municipal level data, I show that the decrease in the demand for heroin increased homicide rates (including those of agricultural workers) in avocado-growing municipalities. I find no evidence of higher cartel presence in these municipalities, suggesting that, while DTOs do not seem to be moving into these municipalities, they have become more violent toward civilians. Furthermore, I find that the fall in the demand for heroin led to a decrease in cartel presence and homicide rates in poppy-growing municipalities. Overall, this paper provides evidence of inter-sector spillovers resulting from drug demand changes.

Madison, WI: Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics, University of Wisconsin–Madison: 2022. 58p. Working Paper.