The sources of social violence in Latin America

Abstract

The study of social violence in Latin America has stood at the periphery of cross-national research despite the region being one of the most violent in the contemporary world. This article provides a comprehensive review of theories of crime and presents an empirical analysis of social violence in Latin America from 1980 to 2010. The literature often emphasizes one theoretical approach over others and existing explanations are seen as competitive rather than complementary. Yet, the empirical findings of this study support different explanations and illustrate how considering different theoretical approaches helps improve our knowledge on social violence phenomena. The results from different estimation methods reveal that youth bulges, female workforce, and post-conflict states are positively associated with social violence, as measured by homicide rates. The results also show that states’ efforts to strengthen judicial system capacity and increase school attendance can promote peace. Moreover, while drug producers and/or transit countries are not systematically related to social violence, money-laundering countries experience higher homicide rates, suggesting that not all dimensions of drug-markets increase violence. Whereas Latin America as a whole has experienced few episodes of civil wars in the past decades, the findings suggest that several factors affecting the onset of civil wars also influence other forms of non-political violence such as social violence. This echoes earlier calls in the literature on the necessity of bridging conflict and criminology research.

The contribution of age structure to the international homicide decline

“…Particularly in countries with the highest crime rates, the drug trade operates in combination with organized crime groups which constitute a major source of political instability, and which largely inhibit the ability of the state to manage the violence these groups generate. In many aspects, violence in Latin America often resembles armed conflicts, both in the level or organization of its perpetrators, which are frequently members of very large groups–often with political leverage–and in the scale of the lethality these groups generate [84]. Moments of peak violence in countries across the region often occurred when political instability was also at its highest, such as the Colombian Conflict, the drug wars in Honduras, the recent political and economic crises in Brazil, and the present-day instability in Venezuela.…”

“…Consequently, perceptions of police corruption are greater and the ability of police to control and provide security are lower in Latin America compared to Western countries [85], further incentivizing the use of violence for the resolution of private conflicts. In short, many Latin American countries are characterized by a preponderance of severe criminogenic factors including high rates of economic inequality, poverty, abundance of firearms, drug-trafficking, organized crime, government ineffectiveness, and others [74,75,84,85,87]. Accordingly, while demographic factors may be key in explaining many of the social changes in the region, population aging may be insufficient to produce a distinguishable change on homicide trends in the presence of multiple other criminogenic disadvantages.…”

Global Mortality From Firearms, 1990-2016

“…High levels of firearm homicide in a belt extending from Mexico to Brazil (and including the Caribbean) have been associated with drug cartels, 27 the manufacture and sale of firearms and their illegal trade from the United States, 28 and with postconflict movement of firearms into civilian populations in some countries. 29 The stock of legal firearms in many of these countries is comparatively small. A recent survey of gun ownership in Mexico identified only 3% of urban households reporting firearm ownership, and the majority (80%) of these reported owning just 1 firearm.…”

Peacekeepers against Criminal Violence—Unintended Effects of Peacekeeping Operations?

“…Intentional homicides, in particular, are defined as “death deliberately inflicted on a person by another person, including infanticide” (UN Statistical Division , 91). These data provide the best indicator for homicide rates and have already been used in cross‐national studies on crime (Neumayer , ; Ouimet ; Rivera ). For South Sudan, I use crime statistics reports published by the South Sudan National Police.…”