Abstract
Crime and violence generate many distortions in the allocation of private and public resources and engender economic and social costs that hinder development. In Latin America and the Caribbean, which is the most violent region on earth, the costs of crime represent at least 3.5% of the regional gross domestic product, twice as much as in developed countries. Despite the magnitude of the security problem, the region is lagging in the production of rigorous research on crime and the application of evidence-based policies to fight and deter crime. This paper uses the crime economics framework to shed light on the main drivers of crime and proposes avenues for future research and action in the region to reduce crime and its social and economic costs.
Highlights
The Latin America and the Caribbean region has made progress in many socioeconomic areas
Crime and violence are a major concern in Latin America and the Caribbean, where one of every four citizens says that insecurity is the main problem in their lives, even worse than unemployment or the state of the economy
Their concerns are not without reason, as Latin America and the Caribbean is the most violent region on earth
Summary
The Latin America and the Caribbean region has made progress in many socioeconomic areas. With the uptake of growth in the past decade, poverty rates decreased, school attendance and health indicators improved, and many countries reported gains in terms of more inclusive growth In contrast to these positive developments, crime in the region has increased. Despite the magnitude of the security problem in Latin America and the Caribbean, crime and violence and the public policy response to it have received significantly less research attention than other development disciplines. The impact of changes in economic incentives in terms of the returns to committing crimes has not been developed in the literature This is very important because most crimes are acquisitive, and studying how illegal markets function can advance the understanding of criminal behavior and networks and how to fight them (see Galiani et al 2019 for recent extensions to the traditional Becker model).
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