Organized Crime Violence Research Articles

When Things Turn Sour: A Network Event Study of Organized Crime Violence

When Things Turn Sour: A Network Event Study of Organized Crime Violence

The killing fields. A Bayesian analysis of crop eradication and organized crime violence in Mexico

Both qualitative and quantitative approaches have been used to study the violence in Mexico during the “war on drugs” under Felipe Calderón’s government. In reference to the latter, although works now exist that analyze the problem via statistical models, there remain aspects yet to cover. In an effort to fill these gaps, the present article aspires to study the effects of eradicating illicit crops on generating violence. As a hypothesis, we propose that violence by organized crime does not occur randomly but rather in response to a spatial and temporal pattern, which is influenced by the eradication of illicit crops.With the object of testing this hypothesis, we undertook regional modeling and selected the most relevant array of covariates and developing parameters for a hierarchical Bayesian spatiotemporal model, with space and time effects being separable. The model captures different sources of variation through a hierarchy of parameters for considering predictive variables and random effects.The findings show a pattern of violence that correlates with the hectares of eradicated illicit crops, allowing us to see that as the measure of eradicated hectares rises, violent events are increasingly perpetuated by organized crime.

A longitudinal analysis of violence and healthcare service utilization in Mexico

ObjectivesWe analyze the degree to which community violence in Mexico, largely due to organized crime violence, affects health care service utilization.MethodsThis study exploits temporal and geographic variation in monthly county-level homicide rates, matching outpatient service utilization from individual longitudinal measures. Sensitivity analyses test for an age specific concentration of violence, respiratory conditions that are likely unrelated to violence, insurance status and health center availability per capita. We test for distributional responses to violence by urban and rural localities.ResultsThe likelihood of service utilization increases by 5.2% with each additional homicide per 100,000. When we include self-reported health conditions in the model, our main coefficient remains significant at 4.5%. We find no added effect to our results from interaction terms for age specific concentration of violence, respiratory conditions, insurance status, or health center availability. A substantial increase of 11.7% in the likelihood of service utilization occurs in localities with > = 100,000 inhabitants, suggesting that service utilization is sensitive to the location of violence.ConclusionsResults highlight the relationship between and increase in violence at the local level and an increase in health care service utilization. This study is among the first to examine this relationship empirically in Mexico. Future research is needed to shed more light on this relationship and its mechanisms.

The decentralisation of death? Local budgets and organised crime violence

AbstractFiscal decentralisation theory calls for enhanced local revenue and spending responsibilities to promote the efficiency of public service delivery. However, some have pointed to the danger of local capture cancelling out these effects. I examine the argument that organised crime violence (OCV) intensifies as mafias fight for access to local government resources, which they consider an attractive income source. I regress violence on local spending (LS) in Mexican municipalities over the period 1995–2015. I find a significant relationship between LS and the intensity of violence: higher levels of LS per capita are strongly related to higher homicide rates, conditional on them being positive. However, LS does not determine the probability of OCV taking place in the first place. The results suggest that caution should be exercised when initiating decentralisation reforms in the context of local capture and OCV.

Mourning our dead: The impact of Mexico’s war on drugs on citizens’ depressive symptoms

BackgroundResearch has shown the substantial impact on mental health for victims of drug-related crime in Mexico, especially individuals who have been heavily exposed to violence. However, the effect of drug-related violence in non-victims has been less studied because causal pathways via indirect violence are more ambiguous. We argue that drug-related violence does have an influence on the mental health of non-victims: For example, because of how violence is publicized by criminal groups, including their use of gruesome killing methods in executions, or via news about government confrontations with these criminal groups. MethodsWe estimate linear models of the effect of drug-related violence (CIDE-PPD database) on depression symptoms (MxFLS 2009–2012). We use lagged violence variables to match the time when individuals’ depression symptoms were reported, using different proxies of violence. FindingsOur findings suggest a negative effect of drug-related violence on the mental health of individuals, specifically in relation to communication used by criminal groups (narcomessages), the brutality of executions, and the confrontations between government forces (specifically local police) and criminal groups. ConclusionsOur findings suggest that the general population is a direct victim of the psychological violence imposed by the use of narcomessages. This additional effect of the war on drugs should be considered when deciding how to address the psychological effects of drug-related violence. The government should provide safer public spaces to improve perceptions about security, and more mental health services in communities that are most affected by organized crime violence. Mental health is also affected when police forces fight criminal groups. These findings corroborate the crisis of local institutions, the low confidence citizens have in police, and/or the infiltration of organized crime in local police corps. Mexico requires police reform, not only to avoid the involvement of the military in public security operations, but also to avoid social and psychological damage produced by weak police forces fighting organized crime.

Changing Minds: Understanding Collective Violence in the Southeastern US–Mexico Border from a Public Health Perspective

ABSTRACTOrganized crime is usually approached as a criminal issue. Today, however, a rising number of scholars, political leaders, and policymakers accept that this strategy has failed. This bi-national study suggests that collective violence, the study of organized crime-related homicide, should be treated as a public health issue. Can organized crime violence along the US–Mexico border be considered an “epidemic”? Can epidemiological approaches to organized crime violence increase knowledge about the root of the problems? This paper answers these issues by applying the first two steps—describing, monitoring, and tracking the problem; and identifying factors that trigger violence—of the (four-steps) public health approach to the violence that has affected the Southeastern US–Mexico border from 2005 to 2013. The authors argue that the northern states of Mexico—Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León, and Tamaulipas—experienced an epidemic of collective violence from 2008 to 2014. More specifically, they describe organized crime-related homicides, its patterns and trends in the four Mexican states mentioned above, plus Texas, through an analysis of homogeneity, incidence, predisposition, enabling and disabling factors, precipitating factors, and reinforcing factors. Public health methods allow researchers and policymakers to promote integrative leadership, identify best practices from learn-as-we-go approaches, and create policy evaluations for each agency meant to intervene on this issue. Consequently, further steps in this agenda call for expanding the study to the others phases of the public health approach: designing and evaluating prevention policies, and disseminating and executing prevention strategies.