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.

 Kalliroi S. Ziavroua , Stephen Noguerab , Vassiliki A. Boumba

Counterfeit, fake, adulterated or falsified drugs and pharmaceuticals, could be branded or generic drugs, excipients and active substances (in drugs and vaccines), medical supplies and devices, etc, intended to pass as the original. Counterfeits are always inferior in terms of quality, safety and efficacy compared to the original pharmaceuticals, and subsequently, they pose an unpredictable risk to public health and lead to loss of confidence in medicines, healthcare providers, and health systems. In the decades before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, a constant trend of increased trafficking was reported. However, the pandemic created a combination of public health emergency, economic distress, and misinformation-driven panic that made problematic the access and supply of high quality essential medicines and health products, and pushed consumers and vendors even more towards counterfeit pharmaceuticals. This contribution aims to review the trends in counterfeit drugs and pharmaceuticals trafficking, the health impact of their use, as well as, measures and actions implemented to restrict their proliferation, before and during COVID-19 pandemic; the relative recommendations, the expressed perspectives and the existing limitations are thoroughly discussed.   

  Forensic Science International 338 (2022) 111382

By The United Nations of Drugs and Crime (UNODC)

  Restrictions on movement imposed by govern- ments across the world due to the COVID-19 pandemic have had an impact on the trafficking of substandard and falsified medical products. Interpol and the World Customs Organization (WCO) reported that seizures of substandard and falsified medical products, including person- al protective equipment (PPE), increased for the first time in March 2020. The emergence of trafficking in PPE signals a significant shift in organized criminal group behaviour that is directly attributable to the COVID-19 pandemic, which has brought huge demand for medical products such as PPE over a relatively short period of time. It is foreseeable that, with the evolution of COVID-19 and developments in medicinal treatments and/or the repurposing of existing medicines, criminal behaviour will shift from trafficking in PPE to the development and delivery of a COVID-19 vaccine. Furthermore, cyberattacks on critical infrastructure involved in addressing the pandemic are likely to continue in the form of online scams aimed at health procurement authorities. Challenges in pandemic preparedness, ranging from weak regulatory and legal frameworks to the prevention of the manufacturing and trafficking of substandard and falsified products and cyber security shortcomings, were evident before COVID-19, but the pandemic has exacerbated them and it will be difficult to make significant improvements in the immediate short term. The report concludes that crime targeting COVID-19 medical products will become more focused with significantly greater risks to pub- lic health as the containment phase of the pan- demic passes to the treatment and prevention stages.  

Vienna: UNODC, 2020. 31p.

By Ben Brewster, Robinson, G., Brotherton, V., Silverman, B., & Walsh, D

The second briefing from ongoing research indicates that restrictions introduced in response to Covid-19 have forced adaptations in the methods used by County Lines drug supply networks and have impacted upon the ways law enforcement work to detect and dismantle County Lines activity, as well as safeguard those vulnerable to criminal exploitation.

Nottingham, UK: University of Nottingham, 2021. 3p. 

By The Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime

In the 21st century, so far thousands of criminal assassinations have been committed worldwide. Although all the victims are privately remembered, most are publicly forgotten. This project features the profiles of 50 individuals who lost their lives due to their role as journalists, activists, police officers, community leaders and other work that exposed illegal activity or disrupted the status quo. Through these stories, we can begin to paint a broader picture of the assassinations phenomenon and the wide-ranging impact it has on countries, communities and families.

Geneva: Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, 2020. 232p,

By Nina Kaysser and Ana Paula Oliveira

In July 2021, the assassination of Haitian president Jovenel Moïse made headlines. The media reported that a large number of foreign nationals had been involved in the murder, including 13 suspected Colombian contract killers, but the identity of those who ordered the killing remains unknown and is still the subject of investigation. Although the case received widespread international coverage, employing hitmen to carry out the assassination of prominent figures is not 2 a new phenomenon. All over the world, thousands of people are assassinated yearly, in silence. In many countries, assassinations have become a daily occurrence. Assassinations, or contract killings, are frequently used by criminal networks to achieve their political, economic and criminal interests. They enable criminal actors to maintain control over communities, allowing them to take over lucrative markets or infiltrate public institutions. They are also a way of silencing those who take a stand and threaten to challenge the status quo, or those who investigate and dismantle criminal activities. The negative impacts of this crime are severe, weakening society and the economy, and undermining democratic processes. Despite the harm they cause, assassinations are an understudied topic, and in particular how they link to organized crime. The GI-TOC has developed a unique and novel database on contract killings worldwide. The Global Assassination Monitor, a disaggregated data-collection project that is part of the GI-TOC’s Assassination Witness initiative, records hits and attempted hits. (To be classified as contract killings, the murders need to meet two criteria: they target specific individuals and they involve some form of contract, with the perpetrators receiving a reward for the killing.) The database draws on extensive research of international and national media sources, and the results of this analysis will be presented in the forthcoming report ‘Killing in silence: Monitoring the role of organized crime in contract killings’. The data indicates that assassinations are highly clustered in several ways. They are clustered geographically, with high concentrations in the Americas (accounting for 37% of all recorded cases) closely followed by Asia (which accounted for 33%). Africa accounted for 24% of cases while Europe accounted for only 6%. The data suggests that contract killings tend to flourish in environments where there is a strong presence of organized crime, power struggles, corruption and violence. Assassinations are also found to be deployed to target certain groups, especially activists, community leaders and politicians. And they cluster around specific motives or drivers, often related to political or economic interests. The findings point to the strength of the criminal groups who order these contract killings, and the way in which organized crime is often embedded in political and economic institutions. Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, with its restrictive measures in the form of lockdowns and border closures, contract killings continued unabated in 2020. In fact, the measures taken to contain the virus would appear to have created opportunities for assassinations to increase, at least in some areas. The findings highlighted in this research not only uncover the sheer magnitude of global organized-crime-related assassinations, but also help understand how this criminal phenomenon gravely impacts the social fabric of communities the world over. This initiative provides a first stepping stone in highlighting areas for further research and better responses to this crime, such as investigating links between the illicit firearms trade and how it relates to assassinations, strengthening investigatory and adjudicatory capacities, bolstering corporate responsibility, engaging with civil society and providing protection for activists.

Geneva: Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, 2021. 112p.

By Beatriz Magaloni, Krist´of Gosztonyi, and Sarah Thompson

The monopoly of violence in the hands of the state is conceived as the principal vehicle to generate order. A problem with this vision is that parts of the state and its law enforcement apparatus often become extensions of criminality rather than solutions to it. We argue that one solution to this dilemma is to “opt out from the state.” Using a multimethod strategy combining extensive qualitative research, quasi-experimental statistical analyses, and survey data, the paper demonstrates that indigenous communities in Mexico are better able to escape predatory criminal rule when they are legally allowed to carve a space of autonomy from the state through the institution of “usos y costumbres.” We demonstrate that these municipalities are more immune to violence than similar localities where regular police forces and local judiciaries are in charge of law enforcement and where mayors are elected through multiparty elections rather than customary practices.

Stanford, CA: Stanford University, Department of Political Science, 2021. 44p.

By Kristina Amerhauser ̵and Walter Kemp

As the space for civil society appears to be shrinking in the Western Balkans, with organizations being under pressure from governments and increasingly concerned about their security, this report looks at organized crime and corruption in the region from a civil society perspective. It aims to give an overview of how civil society organizations in the Western Balkans deal with issues related to organized crime and corruption and highlights their main activities and concerns.

Geneva: Global Initiative Against Organized Crime, 2021. 33p.

By Sebastian Dahlström,

In a world where drug use is on the rise and new variants are frequently discovered and produced, the need for effective prevention is stronger than ever. At the same time, preventive strategies and initiatives for battling the crisis are not in short supply. The challenge, however, is to choose the right initiatives.To strengthen collaboration within the research field and to present new research and new prevention initiatives, Nordic organisations and experts met in Oslo, Norway, on 28 September 2022, under the heading of Alcohol and drug prevention in the Nordic countries.The first half of the conference centred around the meaning of substance use today, and why prevention is needed. The latter half of the conference focused on the characteristics and practical implementations of evidence-based prevention initiatives. Both theory and practical examples were presented. This report summarises the main themes and ideas presented at the conference.

Helsinki: Nordic Welfare Centre, 2023. 25p.

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.

By John Walsh

More than half a century after the advent of a global drug prohibition regime and the launch of the U.S. “war on drugs,” the results have been disastrous for Latin America and the Caribbean, and for the United States itself. Even worse, prohibition’s consequences are exacerbating other grave problems—corruption and organized crime, violence perpetrated with impunity, forest loss and climate change, and displacement and migration—making solutions to these challenges even more difficult to achieve. The Biden administration’s historic embrace of harm reduction represents an enormous, lifesaving advance for U.S. drug policy. But even with harm reduction services, moves to decriminalize drug possession, and shifts underway to legally regulate recreational cannabis, the brunt of drug prohibition remains intact and the drug war rages on in the Americas. The principal victims of government repression in the name of drug control and of the predations of organized crime have always been and continue to be the most impoverished and marginalized communities. At the same time, the illegal drug trade constitutes an economic survival strategy for millions of people in Latin America and around the world—a de facto social safety net of the sort that national elites and governments themselves have proven unwilling or incapable of providing.   

Washington, DC: Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), 2022. 28p.