This study aims to examine how contextual factors influence the risk of burglary victimization, specifically investigating whether time and regional effects shape these relationships. By analyzing data from the Mexican system of cities between January 2018 and June 2022 while controlling for population characteristics, we detected significant decreases in burglary risk among urban dwellers living in apartments and using restricted access mechanisms, although these effects are limited...

This paper analyzes the impact of the pandemic (from 2020 to 2021) on levels of trust and legitimacy of the Chilean police (Carabineros) by the population in the metropolitan area of Santiago, Chile. Based on a pseudo-panel method and a cohort fixed-effects regression model that controlled for unobserved time invariant heterogeneity, we found a significant increase in police legitimacy during the pandemic (on average, 63%, among the adult residents of the region, based on the police legitimacy...

Do informal and formal mechanisms of guardianship work together to reduce residential burglary? In this article we argue that informal guardianship moderates the relationship between formal mechanisms of guardianship and residential burglary. Formal guardianship requires some level of social cohesion and trust to be effective against residential burglary. We test this argument with the use of robust panel quantile methods controlling for time effects, spatial effects, and alternative...

Objectives Police-monitored CCTV systems are supposed to reduce on-the-street crime. The purpose of this study is to determine whether the MiCalle CCTV systems program in Mexico City had local and spatial spillover effects on delivery robberies. Methods When data is clustered in space and time, random effects and errors can be autocorrelated in both dimensions. To test the effectiveness of the MiCalle program on delivery robbery crime rates, a...

From the start of the COVID-19 outbreak, government measures impacted citizens’ behavior, particularly regarding social distancing and confinement. Whether or not these measures influenced criminal behavior is an area of particular interest. Findings, mainly concerned with the routine activity theory, have correlated restrictions on movement and circulation with a general decrease in crime. In this analysis, we use the case of Mexico City to estimate the impact of the national health...

Previous empirical studies on the correlation between residential burglary and concentrated disadvantage (CD) in Latin America commonly omit the spatial elements of the relationship. Using Mexico City (CDMX) residential burglary data for the period 2016 to 2018, we examine the predictive capacity of concentrated disadvantage in relation to residential burglary patterns, using a Geographically Weighted Regression approach to check whether their correlation varies across CDMX police quadrants....

The argument that income inequality increases homicide rates has provoked scholarly debate, with some studies not supporting this position and providing evidence to the contrary. We identify several empirical issues with the current body of evidence, as well as their underlying problems. We challenge these issues by using more robust techniques than those typical of this literature. Based on the case of Mexican municipalities, we provide evidence that in fact, homicide rates correlated...

The definition of what constitutes a conflict, in terms of both time and events, has been consistently debated in the historical study of social phenomena. What has become increasingly clear, however, is that the methods used to define it are generally biased as they are highly dependent on the perceptions of the researchers who establish them. Using Mexico as a case study, we tested a data-driven method for periodizing long-term homicide trends. We found structural break analysis and...

This study explores the capacity of GST theory at the community level to explain differences in homicide rates across Mexico City neighborhoods. We find that higher levels of economic deprivation, population size, and organized crime activity, the latter being a source of strain leading to the deterioration of Mexican communities, are positively associated with homicide rates. However, neither crowding, residential mobility, nor Indian speaking population, the latter as a proxy of minority...

We analyze the interaction between Marijuana and Alcohol as correlates of property crimes among Mexican adolescents. Data were drawn from two waves of a Mexican national survey of public high school students in Mexico. A complementary log-log multilevel regression was fitted separately for each survey year, controlling for neighborhood, school, family, and demographic characteristics. We found that Marijuana users were more likely to self-report the commission of a property crime than alcohol...

This paper discusses the empirical strategy used to test which approximation to journey-to-crime theory is more appropriate for modelling the crime deterrent effect of police stations. Using crime spatial analysis, this paper tests whether monotonic criminal distance decay from police stations or a buffer zone in the vicinity of police stations is the most appropriate way to model criminal behavior. The aim of the paper is to detect fixed patterns of spatial distribution of crime in...

The stay-at-home restrictions to control the spread of COVID-19 led to unparalleled sudden change in daily life, but it is unclear how they affected urban crime globally. We collected data on daily counts of crime in 27 cities across 23 countries in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East and Asia. We conducted interrupted time series analyses to assess the impact of stay-at-home restrictions on different types of crime in each city. Our findings show that the stay-at-home policies were associated...

Global Crime: https://doi.org/10.1080/17440572.2021.1909480 Homicidal violence has increased substantially in Mexico City in recent years. In this regard, we ask three questions: First, is there a contagious spread of this violence across neighbourhoods? Second, does it spread in association with drug market activity among local criminal organisations? Third, does it spread to neighbourhoods characterised by concentrated disadvantage, disorder, and crime opportunity? Using homicide data...

International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy: https://doi.org/10.5204/ijcjsd.v10i1.1538 This study examines the mothering practices and identities of incarcerated women in Mexico. Data gathered from repeated life-story interviews with 12 women, were analyzed to describe mothering practices in the different phases of incarcerated women’s’ lives. We argue that knowledge of the Latin American context is crucial to understand their experiences of motherhood. In a...

International Journal of Law in Context: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1744552320000440 Pre-trial detention is used extensively in Latin America as a systematic practice implemented by courts. Despite this fact, few empirical studies have analysed the role of defence attorneys in pre-trial incarceration. This paper attempts to describe the actions taken by lawyers in order to free their clients during the judicial process, using new empirical evidence collected from the incarcerated...

Cambridge University Press: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108768238 This groundbreaking work examines Latin America's prison crisis and the failure of mass incarceration policies. As crime rates rose over the past few decades, policy makers adopted incarceration as the primary response to public outcry. Yet, as the number of inmates increased, crime rates only continued to grow. Presenting new cross-national data based on extensive surveys of inmates throughout the region, this book...

Global Crime: https://doi.org/10.1080/17440572.2020.1869539 Recent literature has demonstrated that the War on Drugs policies had different consequences for different population groups. Despite this, female homicide victimisation resulting from such policies remains an underexplored subject of study. This paper examines the asymmetrical patterns of female homicides in the Mexican states that implemented the 2006 War on Drugs. A group-based trajectory analysis was undertaken, complemented...

Crime, Law and Social Change: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10611-020-09920-3 Using block level data for Mexico City as case study, this article provides evidence that the type of city block type correlates with the likelihood of residential burglary. We employed five multilevel random intercept models to relate burglary incidents to city block types. We nested the 64,282 city blocks of Mexico City within their corresponding 846 local police quadrants. Our results show that Container-type...

Theoretical Criminology: https://doi.org/10.1177/2F1362480620981637 The epidemic psychology of pandemics creates an atmosphere of panic and fear that can expedite new laws and facilitate criminogenic narrative arousal. Using narrative criminology, we discuss crimes that emerged from pandemic narratives in the early phases of the disease in Mexico. We show how pandemic master narratives have unexpected criminogenic effects; can be negotiated to make them criminogenic; and are opposed by...

The British Journal of Criminology: https://doi.org/10.1093/bjc/azaa089 Using a comprehensive victimization survey data set, we develop the first test of routine activity (RA) theory in a Latin American country. Estimating a complementary log–log multilevel model of the theory in several stages, we investigate what factors in the theory predict residential burglary risk. We find that measures associated with the exposure to potential offenders, target attractiveness, target...

Victims & Offenders: https://doi.org/10.1080/15564886.2020.1828210 Facing the Covid-19 pandemic, prisons in Mexico City prohibited visits. This sparked clearly gendered protests: male prison inmates complained that the restrictions left them without resources to deal with prison shortages, while women complained that it prevented them from sending resources to their families. Based on data from life story interviews conducted before the pandemic, we explore visits, prison work, and...

Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos: https://doi.org/10.1525/msem.2020.36.3.425 Previous research in Mexico has argued that perceived corruption and perceived efficacy predict dissatisfaction and lack of confidence in the police. This article extends previous research by examining whether perceived police corruption impacts fear of crime among the adult population. We argue that—beyond traditional correlates of fear of crime and controlling for the intensity of the war on organized...

Punishment & Society: https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1462474520969822 This study examines the role of fatherhood for incarcerated men in Mexico, based on repeated life-story interviews with twelve men. We distinguish between their descriptions of fatherhood in the past and present and how they imagine the future, and explore how fathers describe their relationship with their children. The incarcerated men idealize the past with their children or tell stories of how they have changed from being...

International Journal of Comparative and Applied Criminal Justice: https://doi.org/10.1080/01924036.2020.1844251 This article furthers the discussion on bail through an analysis of the conditions under which this measure is used in Mexico, a country which has recently reformed its penal system (2008–2016) by introducing new procedural rules, which seek to reduce the use of pretrial detention. The study is based on a statistical-descriptive examination of 1,537 judicial cases in...

Victims & Offenders: https://doi.org/10.1080/15564886.2020.1827110 The purpose of this paper is to identify and analyze how prison systems in Argentina, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico respond to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19). It explores the challenges these institutions face, the actions taken, the beneficiaries from such measures, and their immediate effect. We argue that governments and prison authorities struggle to put in place comprehensive measures to prevent and control the...

Economía, Sociedad y Territorio: https://doi.org/10.22136/est20201621 En este estudio analizamos si el tipo de vivienda y las barreras físicas colocadas entre la calle y la entrada de la misma mantienen una relación estadística con la sensación de inseguridad en el entorno de la colonia. Los resultados sugieren rechazar tal hipótesis por no existir evidencia. Esta investigación permite al lector conocer los correlativos que se asocian con...

Annual Review of Sociology: https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-soc-073018-022657 In this review of violence in Latin America, I have attempted to organize the region's scholarly literature around the most influential and leading research issues. Three main lines of research have materialized from this overview. First, one line of research is concerned with the difference between the old patterns of violence and the so-called new violence. Second, a line of research focuses on the...

International criminal justice review: https://doi.org/10.1177/2F1057567719850235 In this article, we explore patterns of prison violence in five Latin American countries: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, El Salvador, and Peru. Drawing on data from prisoner surveys conducted in 49 facilities with over 4,400 prisoners, we analyze the association between facility-level and individual-level rates of experiences of violence and the extent of perceived criminal activity committed in or ordered from...

Women & Criminal Justice: https://doi.org/10.1080/08974454.2019.1653812 Recent literature has established that War on Drug policies lead to differentiated consequences over the lives of certain groups within the population when analyzed by race, gender, age, and/or social status. In particular is the relationship between the War on Drugs and its effects on women. The objective of this article is to analyze the asymmetric behavior of homicidal victimization between males and females...

Global Crime: https://doi.org/10.1080/17440572.2020.1715219 Focused on Mexico City, this article offers a seminal examination of the relationship between block layout and intentional homicide. The authors applied multilevel random-intercept negative binomial models to assess the contribution of block layout characteristics to homicide counts while controlling for other factors related to the physical environment and socioeconomic disadvantage. The assessment finds that container-type...