The next time you hear a candidate or ruler from Latin America or the Caribbean promise to deploy the army to patrol the streets or decapitate criminal groups, as a recipe for reducing murders, know that it doesn’t work. Even worse, instead of falling, they increase. It is scientifically proven. It is also confirmed that restricting the possession of firearms, limiting the sale of alcohol and having the police patrol neighborhoods with high homicide rates are effective steps in reducing violent deaths. These are the main conclusions of the report What works to reduce homicides in Latin America and the Caribbean? A systematic review of impact evaluationscarried out by the Violence Analysis Laboratory of the State University of Rio de Janeiro.
The starting point is the hundreds of thousands of Americans murdered each year. One fact: Brazil accounts for 10% of the world’s homicides with 3% of the population. As Latin American and Caribbean mothers know well, burying a victimized son or daughter is not something exceptional. It is more common than in any other corner of the planet because the homicide rate on the American continent is the highest on the globe.
The data, included in the aforementioned study, are eloquent. The American continent (from Canada to Tierra del Fuego) has a rate of 15 murders per 100,0000 inhabitants, and within it, in Latin America and the Caribbean it shoots up to 19.9. That is to say, from the Rio Grande to the south of the continent the homicide rate is four times the global average (5.8), ahead of Africa (12.7) and far from the tail group, the safest continents, Oceania (2 .9), Asia (2.3) and Europe (2.2).
The study has analyzed 65 evaluations of the impact of very diverse programs that were implemented in Latin America and the Caribbean in the last two decades with a specific purpose: to reduce murders. After analyzing the results of those public policies and the quality of the evaluations to which they were subjected, the researchers from the Brazilian university classified the measures into five categories: those that work, those with promising results, those that lack conclusive results, those that They do not work and are counterproductive.
“We do not want the conclusions to be read as recipes, we intend to provide evidence to cautiously approach the debate on public policies,” explains Ignacio Cano, co-author of the study in a telephone interview from Rio de Janeiro.
Reducing the hours of alcohol sales proved to be effective in experiments carried out in Cali and Bogotá (Colombia) and in São Paulo because excessive late-night drinking turned bars into epicenters of easy shooting. Banning weapons in public places worked in El Salvador, and in three Colombian cities. The deployment of the military also gave good results, but not widespread, but rather limited in the most lethal neighborhoods of Rio. Homicides fell, especially those of a specific type: those perpetrated by the police.
Counterproductive examples include the policy of President Felipe Calderón (2006-2012), which in Mexico placed the Army on the front line against drug trafficking. “It was catastrophic, the murders tripled and the rates never returned to the original level,” highlights Cano, a veteran student of violence. Getting rid of the Mexican drug lords also had the opposite effect than desired because it immediately opened power struggles that left enormous trails of blood. And in Cali (Colombia), deploying the military in very lethal neighborhoods increased murders in neighboring districts.
After three years of research, Cano has three recommendations: One, “work on risk factors such as alcohol and weapons.” Two, “work in a much more focused way in risk areas, with risk groups, involve the actors of violence so that they are less lethal.” And three, “continue investigating what works and ensure that each program has a budget for its evaluation.”
They describe as promising those steps that show positive results without the evidence being conclusive. Notable among these are laws that limit the sale of weapons or punish femicides, design strategies for police patrols, better investigate murders or combine police and social action in neighborhoods with the highest death rate.
Although toughening penalties is probably the most popular and repeated promise in the region (and half the planet) to stop murders, there is almost no scientific evidence on its performance. Its effects have only been evaluated in a program implemented in São Paulo. The authors of What works to reduce homicides in Latin America and the Caribbean? They consider that “given the scarcity of evaluations and the methodological limitations, it is not possible to reach a conclusion.” Neither positive nor negative. The same occurs with the opening of police stations specialized in gender violence or anonymous reporting channels… The results collected are not conclusive. On the other hand, the ineffectiveness of voluntary weapons delivery programs to stop violent deaths has been demonstrated.
With this report, Cano, Emiliano Rojido and Doriam Borges, authors of the report and researchers from the Violence Analysis Unit of the State University of Rio, have begun to clear a path in search of scientific evidence that supports or denies the effectiveness of the policies that seek to prevent murders, a path that they hope other Latin American and Caribbean colleagues will follow “because what works in Chicago does not have to work here,” Cano warns.
And back to the starting point. What is the reason for this abysmal difference between the rates of violence in Latin America and the Caribbean and the rest of the world? “There have been endless discussions for decades,” says Cano. Debates that have not led to unappealable conclusions, but do point to some factors: “Weapons are an important component, social inequality is another explanation, but also the weakness of institutions, with high rates of impunity, a postcolonial history with a very violent 19th century, machismo, with a very violent masculinity, organized crime….”
Those who trusted that the end of the civil wars and dictatorships of the second half of the 20th century in Central and South America would turn the continent into a peaceful region were contradicted by reality. It is striking because on the other side of the world, in Asia, other countries have managed to radically change their pace despite a recent past with gushing blood. This would be the case of Cambodia, where the Maoist dictatorship of the Khmer Rouge liquidated two million compatriots, or Vietnam, which waged a bloody guerrilla war in the jungle against a power like the United States.
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