Abstract
As the rate of crime decelerates in the developed world, the opposite phenomenon is being observed in the developing world, including Latin America and the Caribbean. Crime in Latin America and the Caribbean has been concentrated in urban settings, but the expertise for studying crime and providing guidance on policing remain heavily rooted in the developed world. A hindrance to studying crime in the developing world is the difficulty in obtaining official data, allowing for generalizations on where crime is concentrated to persist. This paper tackles two challenges facing crime analysis in the developing world: the availability of data and an examination of whether crime is concentrated in urban settings. We utilized newspaper archival data to study the spatial distribution of crime in Guyana, South America, across the landscape, and in relation to rural indigenous villages. Three spatial analysis tools, hotspot analysis, mean center, and standard deviation ellipse were used to examine the changing distribution of crime across 20 years. Based on 3900 reports of violent crime, our analyses suggest that the center of the gravity of crime changed over the years, spilling over to indigenous peoples’ landscapes. An examination of murder, where firearms and bladed weapons were the weapons of choice, suggests that these weapons moved beyond the coastal zone. The movement of weapons away from the coast raises concerns for the security of indigenous peoples and their associated wildlife. Our analysis suggests that policing measures should seek to extend towards Amerindian landscapes, and this is perhaps indicative of Latin American states with demographics similar to Guyana’s.
Highlights
Tell me how come there’s so much guns in the street an’ none a dem gun neva mek ya? —Morgan Heritage, Tell Me How Come.The question posed above by reggae musicians Morgan Heritage centers around why there are so many guns in Jamaica—a country that is not a recognized gun manufacturer—and the related crimes that come with their presence
Natarajan’s [3] observations on the contrasting treatment of crime in the developed versus developing world were contained in a publication among a series that used data from El Salvador [7,8], India [9], Colombia [10], Brazil [11,12], among other developing countries [13,14], and gave attention to crime studies and analysis in developing world settings
Our analysis provides the foundation for assessing crimes on the environment, and how crime may play a role in shaping processes within indigenous-influenced landscapes, areas of study that are currently neglected in the developing world
Summary
The question posed above by reggae musicians Morgan Heritage centers around why there are so many guns in Jamaica—a country that is not a recognized gun manufacturer—and the related crimes that come with their presence. Questions such as these are common in countries across Latin America and the Caribbean Sea, where the rates of violent crime have steadily increased [1,2].
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