Croci, Gonzalo;
Chainey, Spencer;
(2023)
An Institutional Perspective to Understand Latin America’s High Levels of Homicide.
The British Journal of Criminology
, 63
(5)
pp. 1199-1218.
10.1093/bjc/azac083.
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Abstract
Numerous studies have suggested that socio-economic structural factors offer the main reasons for international variations in homicide levels—where socio-economic conditions are better, lower levels of homicide are observed. In countries in Latin America, social and economic conditions have improved, yet high levels of homicide have remained. In this article, we examine a new line of reasoning, hypothesizing that the effectiveness of institutions (such as government justice agencies and the police) and poor controls for corruption are key factors for explaining the high levels of homicide in Latin America. We apply a random effects panel regression using a sample of 54 countries from Latin America and other parts of the world, and data for a 13-year period (2005–2017). We examine the relationships between homicide, government effectiveness, corruption and several structural variables to determine if the relationships between these variables are more apparent for countries in the Latin American region. We find that structural factors play less of a role in explaining the international variation in homicide levels, and that government effectiveness and corruption are significantly related to the high levels of homicide experienced in the Latin America region.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | An Institutional Perspective to Understand Latin America’s High Levels of Homicide |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1093/bjc/azac083 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1093/bjc/azac083 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © The Author(s) 2022. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies (ISTD). This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. For commercial re-use, please contact journals.permissions@oup.com |
| Keywords: | Homicide, government effectiveness, corruption, institutions |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science > Dept of Security and Crime Science |
| URI: | https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10159835 |
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