By Jeffrey A. Singer and Trevor Burrus

Fifty‐one years after President Richard M. Nixon declared a “war on drugs,” overdose deaths from illicit drug use have climbed to record levels. Last November, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported 100,000 overdose deaths for the 12‐month period ending in April 2021, a 28.5 percent increase over the year before. Nearly 76,000 of those deaths were opioid related, and 83 percent of opioid‐related deaths involved illicit fentanyl.

Fentanyl is a highly potent opioid—about 50 times stronger than heroin—that can easily cause overdoses, particularly if users don’t know if it is in their drug supply or how much. Over the past decade, drug traffickers have increasingly preferred fentanyl because of its compact size. The smuggler’s preference for higher potency drugs is a manifestation of the “iron law of prohibition,” and it is almost the entire reason fentanyl has poisoned the American drug supply. The iron law of prohibition states that, all things being equal, as enforcement ramps up, smugglers prefer higher potency forms of a drug for the same reason those who sneak alcohol into a football game prefer hard alcohol in flasks to 12‐packs of beer. The lethal logic of the iron law of prohibition means that we cannot enforce our way out of the opioid crisis. And if fentanyl smugglers bexcome somehow easy to catch, there’s always carfentanil, which is about 100 times more potent than fentanyl and has already been showing up in America’s drug supply.

Washington, DC: Cato Institute, 2022. 10p.

By Jeffrey A. Singer and Sophia Heimow 

  Every state except Alaska has laws that criminalize the possession and/or sale of paraphernalia for the consumption of illicit drugs. State-level drug paraphernalia laws prevent people who use those drugs from accessing the means to reduce the risk of infection or overdose. This makes nonmedical drug use even more dangerous because the laws often prevent access to clean needles and syringes along with products to test drugs for deadly contaminants. These laws are meant to discourage illicit drug use. Instead, they produce avoidable disease and death. Drug prohibition puts peaceful, voluntary drug users at risk of losing their liberty and often their lives. Paraphernalia laws similarly increase the risk that users will lose their lives. Some states have amended their laws to permit harmreduction programs and tools. For example, many states allow syringe services programs (also called SSPs or “needle exchange programs”) to operate within narrowly defined parameters. The goal of drug paraphernalia policy should be to save lives by reducing the risks of overdose and disease. This means removing government barriers to obtaining and distributing clean syringes and drug testing equipment. Because Alaska leaves residents free to purchase syringes and other paraphernalia in any quantity, anyone can operate an SSP and implement other harm-reduction measures. States should follow Alaska’s lead by repealing their drug paraphernalia laws so that programs aimed at reducing overdoses and disease can proliferate and succeed.

Washington, DC: Cato Institute, 2022. 24p.

By Trevor Burrus and Jeffrey A. Singer.

People have used opium and its derivatives both medically and recreationally since antiquity. However, since the early 20th century, law and society have viewed people who use opioids, cocaine, and certain other psychoactive substances as immoral and even criminal. For more than 100 years, this viewpoint has destructively intruded on the patient‐doctor relationship. Government and law enforcement increasingly surveil and influence the way doctors treat pain, psychoactive substance use, and substance use disorder. This change has happened in two discernible waves, which we call Drug War I and Drug War II.

Drug War I occurred after Congress enacted the Harrison Narcotics Act in 1914, which permitted doctors to prescribe opioids to treat their patients. A wave of arrests and prosecutions of thousands of doctors ensued as agents of the U.S. Treasury Department, empowered to enforce the act, took it upon themselves to define legitimate medical practice.

Drug War II began in the 1970s, with government‐funded education/indoctrination campaigns that caused both doctors and patients to fear opioids for their addictive and overdose potential. Later, as the scientific literature led medical specialty organizations and government health officials to overcome this apprehension and take the treatment of pain more seriously, opioid prescribing increased considerably.

By 2006, federal regulatory agencies perceived what they called an “opioid crisis” and mistakenly attributed it to doctors “overprescribing” opioids and generating a growing population of opioid addicts. This formed the basis for an even more massive intrusion of federal and state power into the privacy of medical records, patient‐doctor confidentiality, and the very way in which doctors are allowed to use scientific and professional knowledge to practice medicine. Medical decisionmaking came increasingly under the purview of law enforcement, sparking a new wave of arrests and prosecutions.

Patients who had their pain controlled with long‐term opioid treatment are being denied treatment or involuntarily tapered off their pain control, as doctors fear arrest and an end to their medical careers. A growing population of “pain refugees” has emerged, with some patients turning in desperation to the black market for opioids and some even turning to suicide. As prescribing rates continue to plunge, overdoses from the nonmedical use of opioids are skyrocketing, now largely caused by illicit fentanyl.

The medical mismanagement of pain, which causes harm to patients, is best addressed through the civil tort system. Additionally, states establish professional licensing boards specifically to enforce the “standard of care” rendered by the professionals they oversee. Law enforcement has no medical expertise and should have no say in classifying narcotics and psychoactive substances. Lawmakers should avoid passing or repeal any laws that cast in stone prescribing guidelines released by any state or federal public health agencies. Federal and state law enforcement should be required to get a warrant before perusing state prescription drug monitoring program databases. Law enforcement should be required to report any suspected standard‐of‐care deviations to state professional licensing boards for review and adjudication. Neither the practice of medicine nor the act of self‐medication belongs in the realm of the criminal legal system.

Washington, DC: Cato Institute, 2022. 37p.

United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC)

This report examines the emergence of new hubs for cocaine trafficking, noting that countries in Southeastern Europe and Africa – particularly those in West and Central Africa – are increasingly being used as key transit zones for the drug. Ports on the North Sea like Antwerp, Rotterdam, and Hamburg, meanwhile, have eclipsed traditional entry points in Spain and Portugal for cocaine arriving in Western Europe. Traffickers are also diversifying their routes in Central America by sending more and more cocaine to Europe, in addition to North America.

The modalities of cocaine traffickers are also examined in this report, with findings showing that the criminal landscape is fragmenting into a myriad of trafficking networks. The demobilization of fighters from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) - who had previously controlled many of Colombia’s coca-growing regions – created an opening for others to step in, such as new, local actors; ex-FARC guerillas; or even foreign groups from Mexico and Europe. Additionally, the report reveals that so-called “service providers”, i.e., specialized groups that lend their services at all stages of the supply chain for a fee, have proliferated.

Vienna: UNODC, 2023. 184p.

By Jeffrey A. Singer

Dr. Rahul Gupta, the White House director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, stated the Biden administration would be “prioritizing harm-reduction practices because these are proven, cost-effective and evidence-based methods that work to save lives.”1 Overdose prevention centers (OPCs) are a successful harm-reduction strategy that has been saving lives in 16 developed countries—including the United States, where such facilities operate in defiance of the law. OPCs, also known as safe consumption sites or drug consumption rooms, began in Europe in the mid-1980s.2 Governments and harm-reduction organizations now operate OPCs in much of Europe, Canada, Mexico, and Australia. Unfortunately, a federal law that prosecutors and harm reduction opponents call the “crack house” statute (21 U.S.C. Section 856) makes them illegal in the United States.3 Some OPCs in the United States operate in the shadows. Underground OPCs have been providing services since at least 2014. More recently, state and local officials have been approving OPCs in defiance of federal law. This policy brief reviews how OPCs are an effective, mainstream harm-reduction strategy. Congress should stop standing in the way of local harm-reduction organizations that seek to reduce overdose deaths by establishing OPCs.

Washington, DC: Cato Institute, 2023. 12p.

By Vera M. Kachnowski, Christine Kitchens, and Cassandra Syckes

The report entitled Weighing the Impact of Simple Possession of Marijuana: Trends and Sentencing in the Federal System updates a 2016 Commission study and examines sentences for simple possession of marijuana offenses in two respects. Part One of the report assesses trends in federal sentencings for simple possession of marijuana since fiscal year 2014. The report then describes the demographic characteristics, criminal history, and sentencing outcomes of federal offenders sentenced for marijuana possession in the last five fiscal years and compares them to federal offenders sentenced for possession of other drug types.

Part Two of the report examines how prior sentences for simple possession of marijuana (under both federal and state law) affect criminal history calculations under the federal sentencing guidelines for new federal offenses. The report identifies how many federal offenders sentenced in fiscal year 2021 — for any crime type — received criminal history points under Chapter Four of the Guidelines Manual for prior marijuana possession sentences. The report then assesses the impact of such points on those offenders’ criminal history category, one of the two components used to establish the sentencing guideline range.

Washington, DC: United States Sentencing Commission (USSC), 2023. 46p.

Edited by Graeme R. Newman

The assembled papers identify many serious shortcomings and failings of past comparative research on deviance and crime. In addition, they point to some crime correlates that appear to be found throughout the world, including broken homes, unemployment, urbanization, and industrialization. Individual papers examine the possibility of using international categories in international crime statistics, study cross-cultural perceptions of deviance, and note special problems that may arise for researchers studying crime in Marxist countries with particular emphasis on Cuba. Two approaches to comparative criminology are reviewed: the first consists of confirming universal data and constructs in different juridical, economical, and cultural systems; the second consists of using different cultures in a natural experimental design, or as quasi-clinical cases, in order to test general theories. Other papers explore the historical perspective concerning the role of subcultures in criminology, the informal social control of deviance, and some correlates of social deviance and their relationship to a recent theory of personality. In addition, aspects of comparative criminology involving such relatively recent phenomena as transnational terrorism and large-scale multinational economic crimes are considered. Tabular data, footnotes, and references are provided.

California. Sage. 1980. 385p.

By World Economic Forum

From the Preface: "The 2023 edition of the 'Global Risks Report' highlights the multiple areas where the world is at a critical inflection point. It is a call to action, to collectively prepare for the next crisis the world may face and, in doing so, shape a pathway to a more stable, resilient world."

World Economic Forum: www.weforum.org/. 2023. 98p.

By Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts & Chicago Council of Lawyers

  Police who lie, perjure themselves in court, and/or file false reports are pervasive throughout the United States. Perjury and false reporting prevents courts from operating as designed and poses enormous barriers to justice. While the issue of police perjury – or “testilying” – has been discussed as a broad phenomenon and in relation to specific cases, there have been few attempts to examine the issue within a single court system. For this report, Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts and the Chicago Council of Lawyers interviewed attorneys, researchers, journalists, community organizers, and directly impacted people to identify how false reports and police perjury impact the Circuit Court of Cook County and the people it serves. We have reviewed secondary data in order to understand the  scope and impact of police perjury and false reporting on Cook County community members, while paying particular attention to issues relating directly to the Chicago Police Department. Through this research, we have identified several themes that indicate that systemic factors allow police to lie, submit false reports, and perjure themselves. We have also identified the roles of court actors – including law enforcement, prosecutors, and judges – in allowing or encouraging false reporting to exist and go unaddressed in the Circuit Court of Cook County. Based on our findings, we provide nine recommendations to limit opportunities and enforce consequences for lying, better monitor officers in the field, improve transparency, and create long-term cultural change in an attempt to limit the police perjury and false reporting that harms communities.  

Chicago: Chicago Appleseed, 2023. 45p.

By Matt Herbert and Max Gallien

This report offers a sizing and analysis of the developing trends around drugs in the Maghreb. It begins by detailing the production of narcotics in the Maghreb, including both cannabis and poppies. Next, it focuses on the trafficking of these products, exploring the types of drugs that transit the region, the routes they take and the groups involved in their movement.

The report then looks at drug consumption trends in the Maghreb, before detailing the impacts of narcotics on state capacity, security and public health and ending with brief recommendations.

Geneva: The Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime. 2020. 65p

By Tien-Li Kuo  

  Environmental criminology concerns the role of opportunities (both people and objects) existing in the environment that make crimes more likely to occur. Research consistently shows that opportunity perspectives (particularly with regard to individuals’ lifestyles and routines) help in explaining the prevalence and concentration of crimes. However, there is a paucity of studies investigating crime patterns from an opportunity perspective both outside western countries and in relation to cybercrimes. Hence, it is not clear whether non-Western and online contexts exhibit similar patterns of crime as would be predicted by an opportunity perspective. This thesis is concerned with criminal victimisation in Taiwan – a less researched setting in the field of environmental criminology. It covers both offline victimisation (with a focus on burglary) and online victimisation from the aforementioned opportunity perspective. The goal of this thesis is to identify individual- and area-level characteristics that affect the patterns of victimisation in Taiwan. To achieve this, the thesis draws on a range of secondary datasets, including police recorded crime statistics, the Taiwan Area Victimisation Survey, and the Digital Opportunity Survey for Individuals and Households. With the application of quantitative modelling, the thesis suggests that the generalisability the lifestyle-routine activity approach in explaining crime patterns in Taiwan should be taken with caution. The findings provide partial support for its applicability in relation to burglary and cybercrime in Taiwan. Furthermore, the findings reported here in relation to patterns of repeat and near repeat victimisation depart from those observed in the western literature. The thesis concludes by discussing the implications of the findings for academic research and practice in crime prevention.  

London: University College London. UCL Department of Security and Crime Science, 2021. 400p.

By Vanda Felbab-Brown 

This report analyses the landscape of anti-crime militias and vigilante forces in Nigeria’s south over the past 20 years. It focuses on two vigilante groups, tracing their evolution and the anti-crime, security, and political impacts, before providing policy recommendations. The report explains the context of vigilante and anti-crime militia group formation in Nigeria, including the struggles, challenges, and deficiencies of the Nigeria Federal Police. It discusses the evolution of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), its own role in criminality, and the anti-SARS protests. It also provides a historic background of vigilantism in Nigeria and lays out the various sources from which vigilantism in Nigeria stems. It goes on to review the landscape of militia groups in southern Nigeria and outlines their different types, including in terms of formalization and official recognition. It then details the formation, effectiveness, evolution, and anticrime, security, and policy effects of the Bakassi Boys in Nigeria’s South East. It also analyzes 20 years of federal and state policy responses toward them. The following section provides the same analysis for the Oodua People’s Congress (OPC) in the South West.

New York: United Nations University, 2021. 67p.

By Francesco Marelli  

The scope of this report is to understand how technology can help to limit the threats posed by organized crime involvement in counterfeiting and food fraud, in particular in relation to the infiltration of counterfeit and fraudulent food into the legitimate supply chain.

The report has been prepared by the UNICRI Knowledge Centre Security through Research, Technology and Innovation (SIRIO). The scope of SIRIO is to analyse and understand the global impacts, opportunities and challenges of technological change, including in the areas of augmented and virtual reality (AR, VR), big data analytics, digital biology and biotech, nanotech and digital printing, networks and computing systems, supply chain security and decentralized technologies such as blockchain.

Torino, Italy: United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute (UNICRI), 202o.  195p.

By Ben Spevack

Shared Skies contains new research, carried out by C4ADS, exploring the overlap of methods and routes used in wildlife trafficking and other illicit smuggling crimes such as drugs and weapons. Using this analysis, it gives recommendations to aviation and enforcement agencies on how to strengthen mitigation of wildlife trafficking and the wider spectrum of transnational crime.

An assessment of the routes, networks and methods used for trafficking wildlife and other illicit goods such as drugs and weapons between 2015-2019 shows a high degree of interconnection, which if addressed could prove hugely beneficial to disrupting illicit activities.

Our previous report, Runway to Extinction, touched on the idea that non-wildlife trafficking operations exploit the same vulnerabilities in systems of communication, finance and transport as wildlife traffickers. By taking a closer look at the points of convergence between illicit trades, Shared Skies identifies five levels at which this convergence may occur: shipment, organization, route, hub (such as an airport or city) and jurisdiction, and advises on how this information can be leveraged to disrupt criminal activities across aviation.

The recommendations fall into three broad categories: improving collection and reporting of seizure data; increasing collaboration between aviation and enforcement stakeholders in addressing convergence; and refining mitigation activities to address all illicit commodity types.

Washington, DC: Center for Advanced Defense Studies, 2021. 21p.

By Sofie Kirt Strandbygaard

  The objective of this thesis is to explore passengers’ experience of fear of crime at S-train stations and the possible relation to the stations’ surrounding environments. The thesis consists of three articles each exploring different layers of the research with the aim of unfolding train passengers’ fear of crime in relation to the built environment. The analysis is based on case studies of 84 S-train stations and their neighbourhoods in the Copenhagen metropolitan area. The S-train is the local rail network in the regional development plan, the Finger Plan. The method of analysis is typomorphological, defining urban types based on their patterns and spatial characteristics. Because the focus is passengers’ experience of fear of crime in public space the spatial analysis is guided by Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design principles. The analysis outlines three main station neighbourhood types and several subcategories of combinations between the three. When compared with passenger surveys of fear of crime at the S-train train stations, the results exhibit a relationship between the types of station neighbourhood form and passengers’ fear of crime at the associated station. When comparing station neighbourhood form with income, the results show that fear of crime at stations is strongly correlated with low income in the station’s neighbourhood. However, a significant research result is that when adjusting for income, passengers’ experience of fear of crime still follows the same type of neighbourhood form. This result underlines the influence of urban spatial characteristics on passengers’ experience of fear of crime. An analysis of thirteen representative S-train stations and their vicinities according to international design guidelines for transit-oriented development (TOD) is performed to look at the urban space surrounding the stations. The analysis reveals that the Finger Plan is a regional public transport-oriented development, however, several of the stations’ surrounding urban areas show a prevailing tendency to neglect the pedestrian design scale and design dimensions related to safety. The thesis’ research results provide knowledge on passengers’ experience of stations. It contributes with perspectives on and insights into S-train stations and their neighbourhoods in Copenhagen and can assist the transport industry in improving passengers’ experience of train stations. Contributions from the research is a CPTED design analysis tool for public transport environments and recommendations for Danish TOD practice. The thesis contributes with novel research results to the existing international body of knowledge on passengers’ fear of crime at train stations.   

 Lyngby. Denmark: Department of Civil Engineering Technical University of Denmark. 2019. 206p.  

By Vania Ceccato · Nathan Gaudelet · Gabin Graf  

  This article reviews five decades of English and French literature on transit safety in several major databases, with the focus on Scopus and ScienceDirect. The review explores the nature and frequency of transit crime and passengers’ safety perceptions in transport nodes and along the trip using bibliometric analysis and a systematic review of the literature. The number of retrieved documents was 3137, and 245 were selected for in-depth analysis. Transit safety as a research area took off after the mid-1990s and peaked after the 2010s. The body of research is dominated by the English-language literature (mostly large cities), with a focus on the safety of rail-bound environments and examples of interventions to improve actual and perceived safety for public transportation (PT) users. Highlighting the importance of transit environments along the whole trip, the article also helps advocate for more inclusion of passengers’ safety needs and the involvement of multiple stakeholders in implementing PT policies.

Public Transport,  2022. Vol. 14, no 1, p. 105-153

By Daniel J. Flannery

In response to an extended, alarming increase in heroin-involved overdose deaths in the county, in 2013 the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner’s Office (CCMEO) and Regional Forensic Science Laboratory developed the Heroin Involved Death Investigation (HIDI) alert system and protocol. The HIDI protocol initiates and governs Heroin Early Alert (HEAT) emails sent by the CCMEO. These alerts give notice that the CCMEO has learned of 1) an active suspected opioid overdose via a death scene presenting physical evidence of opioid misuse or through evidence provided by family/friends or medical personnel regarding the victim’s history of drug misuse or a suspected opioid overdose death occurring at a hospital (what the alert identifies as “not an active scene”). Alerts are provided to professionals in the region’s public health and hospital systems and agencies that include the Cleveland Division of Police (CPD), County Sheriff’s Department, and other county and federal agencies that investigate and prosecute major drug traffickers. The HIDI protocol governs chain of custody and laboratory testing submissions of evidence items found on the body at the scene. The HIDI protocol is designed to support a safe, coordinated, and rapid response to an active scene by alerting investigators to potential dangers (lethal drugs) and facilitating the timely protection of the scene and collection of evidence. The primary goal of this protocol is to connect the victim (drug buyer) to the seller, with a focus on mid-level dealers and major traffickers. This report concludes with a discussion of the implications of this protocol for criminal justice practice and policy in investigative drug law enforcement, as well as the use of investigative evidence in the building of a case for prosecution.

Cleveland, OH: Begun Center for Violence Prevention Research and Education.  2022. 222p.

By Kyle Johnson

  Tumaco is a municipality in south-west Colombia, close to the border with Ecuador. The city, on Colombia’s Pacific coast, has become a vital hub for non-state armed groups, including transnational drug trafficking networks and former guerrillas, owing to its port and location. Several armed groups, including ex-FARC dissidents,1 have established a permanent presence in several low-income neighbourhoods, with significant consequences for the inhabitants and local governance. This case study examines criminal governance during the pandemic of three groups based in Tumaco: the Alfonso Cano Western Bloc (BOAC), the United Guerrillas of the Pacific (GUP) and the Contadores (Accountants). The BOAC actively adopted measures to respond to the pandemic, imposing curfews, restricting people’s movements and banning outsiders from entering areas under its control. Despite claims that it had yielded its role in governance issues to local community boards, the group continued to wield influence over the local population and provide services such as dispute resolution. By contrast, the GUP did not impose any pandemic-related restrictions, and some members expressed views that the virus was not real, directly contradicting the Colombian government’s stance. This resonated with many in Tumaco, who also believed the pandemic was not a serious threat. This lack of action may, however, also have been tied to leadership and discipline issues. The release of two prominent commanders from prison destabilized the group’s hierarchy, impacting governance patterns and gang organization. Members started to charge the community high prices for services such as dispute resolution, which the population could not afford, and were reported as being unpredictably violent. These two commanders then defected to the BOAC and the Contadores, along with their fighters. The Contadores then ‘inherited’ the GUP areas. Criminal governance also impacted people’s adherence to COVID-related restrictions. In the few areas where restrictions were imposed by crime groups, these rules were more widely respected than those imposed by the local or national governments, mainly due to the implied and sometimes explicit threats accompanying armed groups’ regulation and the authorities’ inability to enforce restrictions.   

Geneva: Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, 2021. 18p.

By Camilo Nieto-Matiz

  Modern states are selective and calculating in their decision to establish their rule throughout the territory. Within the same country, state officials may be willing and capable of making major efforts to deliver public goods and provide security to the population in some areas, while choosing to neglect others and delegate their control to different actors. This dissertation studies why and how political elites differentially build state capacity in peripheral and marginalized areas of a country and in the midst of violent conflicts. What drives incumbents to increase state capacity in peripheral and marginalized areas within a country? What type of state expansion is likely to take place in such areas? My central argument is that exogenous shocks that suddenly increase the political and economic value of peripheral areas may prompt incumbents to invest in state capacity, but whether this capacity increases or not depends on the preexisting configuration of violent actors and local rural elites. On the one hand, the type of violent actor—threatening and non-threatening—exerts a differential effect on state capacity by (i) shaping subnational politicians’ incentives to cooperate with the central state and (ii) establishing collusive agreements with violent actors. In addition, because greater state capacity tends to undermine rural elites’ economic and political power, they will have incentives to oppose greater state presence and—in contexts  of insecurity and violence—establish alliances with non-threatening groups. In short, state capacity is likely to be higher in municipalities with weak rural elites and facing threatening violent groups. In contrast, state capacity will be more difficult to attain in areas with stronger rural elites and where violent groups do not pose a major threat to state authority....

Notre Dame, Indiana : University of Notre Dame, 2020. 231p.

By 

• Elaine Okanyene Nsoesie, 

• Antonio S. Lima Neto, 

• Jonathan Jay, 

• Hailun Wang, 

• Kate Zinszer, 

• Sudipta Saha, 

• Adyasha Maharana, 

• Fatima Marinho & 

• Adauto Martins Soares Filho 

Homicides are a major problem in Brazil. Drugs and arms trafficking, and land conflicts are three of the many factors driving homicide rates in Brazil. Understanding long-term spatiotemporal trends and social structural factors associated with homicides in Brazil would be useful for designing policies aimed at reducing homicide rates.

Methods

We obtained data from 2000 to 2014 from the Brazil Ministry of Health (MOH) Mortality Information System and sociodemographic data from the Brazil Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE). First, we quantified the rate of change in homicides at the municipality and state levels. Second, we used principal component regression and k-medoids clustering to examine differences in temporal trends across municipalities. Lastly, we used Bayesian hierarchical space-time models to describe spatio-temporal patterns and to assess the contribution of structural factors.

Results

There were significant variations in homicide rates across states and municipalities. We noted the largest decrease in homicide rates in the western and southeastern states of Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Espirito Santo, which coincided with an increase in homicide rates in the northeastern states of Ceará, Alagoas, Paraiba, Rio Grande Norte, Sergipe and Bahia during the fifteen-year period. The decrease in homicides in municipalities with populations of at least 250,000 coincided with an increase in municipalities with 25,000 people or less. Structural factors that predicted municipality-level homicide rates included crude domestic product, urbanization, border with neighboring countries and proportion of population aged fifteen to twenty-nine.

Conclusions

Our findings support both a dissemination hypothesis and an interiorization hypothesis. These findings should be considered when designing interventions to curb homicide rates