Latin America’s Murder Rates Reveal Surprising New Trends
Homicide data from the region’s cities show signs of progress in some places and cause for concern in others.
RIO DE JANEIRO — Cities are bellwethers of nations’ progress. When they thrive, so do their countries. And when they are fragile, their nations are more likely to suffer a wide variety of ills, from deteriorating quality of life to declining foreign direct investment. Crime rates are especially useful measures of urban fragility. Homicide is a particularly convenient early warning indicator precisely because it is the most serious and carefully tracked category of crime. However, the limited availability of standardized city-level data on criminal violence makes lethal and non-lethal...
Read this article on the Americas Quarterly website. | Subscribe to AQ.
