Why is latin america so violent

Indeed, despite continued declines in homicide, there are still rural parts of the country registering high levels of victimization. As for Venezuela, it is hard to know what is going on since the government has not released official figures for over a decade.

Even so, with a purported murder rate of There are signs, in addition, that state killings increased last year. If one added state killings to the homicide tally, the rate would increase to 89 per , , albeit still lower than the combined rate of 91 per , Brazil has yet to release its data, though early indications are that homicidal violence has increased.

Brazil's has the highest absolute number of murders in the world — accounting for 1 in every 10 murders globally. The Brazilian Public Security Forum, a network of research institutions, registered 57, homicides in But early data released by state secretaries suggests the numbers will top 60, murders in Brazil's homicide rate of roughly 30 per , is sufficiently high to ensure that it is among the top 15 most murderous countries.

Finally, the United States will likely also register a modest reduction in homicidal violence in While comprehensive national data is still not publicly available, the national decline could be due to a modest drop in rates in the country's 30 largest cities.

AT the same time, the country's most violent city, Baltimore, saw its murder rate increase from 51 to 56 per , While varying from place to place, homicidal violence is declining in most countries and cities around the world. Many other forms of violence also appear to be dropping as well. While there are still pockets of extreme insecurity, such as war-torn parts of Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, South Sudan, Syria and Yemen, these tendencies align with psychologist Steven Pinker's claims the world is becoming progressively safer, in spite of unsettling media headlines.

Notwithstanding this hopeful news, it is worth recalling that there homicides are only one measure of human suffering. More positively, recent experiences in some Latin American countries show that improvements in security are possible. At the same time as violence frays the social fabric, societies also share a large portion of the responsibility when it comes to fueling violent crime.

For example, societies with high levels of socioeconomic inequality tend to suffer from higher rates of homicides and violence in general, while factors such as high youth unemployment also tend to push up homicide rates. Last year, a report examined this phenomenon in El Salvador, finding that membership in violent gangs like the MS13 was increasingly perceived as a career choice by impoverished youths looking for income to sustain themselves and their families.

Beyond inequality, there are several other societal factors that can contribute to violence. David Weisburd, a distinguished professor at George Mason University, told InSight Crime that there are common-sense reasons why violence tends to be concentrated in certain pockets of society, particularly those most marginalized.

Weisburd explained that government failures to secure justice for victims of violence can contribute to cycles of retribution. And I suspect the most violence when all of those groups fail at the same time. This echoes previous studies that have established a correlation between levels of impunity and the frequency of lynching -- a phenomenon that is reportedly on the rise in some countries. Informal community means of dispute solving mechanisms can make up for a deficient state, Weisburd noted.

But in the case of Latin America and the Caribbean, the development of these peaceful community mechanisms may have been impeded due to the rise of militia and paramilitary groups that imposed their own ways of social control. Rising homicide rates are at the top of the agenda for many leaders in the region.

Policymakers will need to consider how all these factors interact, and how to address them both individually and as a whole in order to combat this perennial problem.

Cases occur every day, averaging more than per year. Reports of attempted femicides are on the rise, likely affected not only by the actual frequency of the crime, but also by the increasing willingness of women and their families to report these events. The Peruvian government is working to incentivize women to report by providing them with a government-backed system of support. The media also work to make women feel safer by reporting not only on the crime, but also on the sentences that perpetrators are given—which can be up to thirty years.

With the creation of the national plan against gender-based violence , the Peruvian government publicly acknowledged the epidemic and placed it as a government priority for years to come. Several agencies with specialized task forces now work toward femicide reduction and prosecuting the abusers, including emergency centers for women, a hotline for victims of violence against women, and the Specialized Police Squad for Prevention Against Domestic Violence.

Simultaneously, the Peruvian government is implementing long-term policies to break the cycle of violence for children who fall victim to domestic violence. Programs include a special unit that protects the rights of children orphaned by the murder of their mother, or for survivors that were disabled by the act of violence against them.

The Peruvian programs against femicide are new, so it is too early to determine their effectiveness. However, these programs appear rather comprehensive and other countries could benefit from following some of these initiatives. To address and reduce femicides across Latin America, countries should consider the following recommendations:.

The first step to action is official acknowledgement of the problem. Some countries have established Ministries of Women. With a percentage-point increase in homicide rates in an area of Mexico, "you see an increase in unemployment in that region of half a point," Viridiana Rios, a visiting professor at Harvard and expert on crime and economics in Mexico, said in early That's pretty significant," Rios said.

But much of that money goes to universities rather than primary and secondary schools, subsidizing the rich, and some is siphoned off by corruption, O'Neil wrote earlier this year. The Program for International Student Assessment for Development, which evaluates year-old students in reading, math, and science, released an assessment this spring that included Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Paraguay.

Less than half of students in the four countries had fully functional indoor plumbing at school. With the exception of Ecuador, more than half of students in the countries went to schools without internet or computers for teachers. The inability to hold perpetrators to account for their crimes is pervasive in Latin America. While there are huge variations in homicides in the region, generally "the cost of killing is very low," Muggah said.

Just 20 of every murders in Latin America lead to a conviction. The global average is about 43 per , Muggah said. The clearance rate is much lower in some places. In certain cities, it can go down to 5 [or] 4. A report from the University of the Americas in Mexico found just 4. Impunity can undermine public perceptions of the police and the criminal-justice system — "a challenge I think [that is] especially acute in the Northern Triangle and Mexico and Brazil, and obviously in Venezuela, but it's a problem that you'll see across the region," Muggah added.

I think that might be too simplistic," Muggah said. The region has seen residents organized self-defense or self-help groups to combat insecurity in the absence of the state. These groups have often devolved into criminal enterprises that prey on the people they formed to protect. A number of these groups have emerged in southwest Mexico, where criminal groups are abundant and state services, particularly policing, are weak or absent.

Cases of vigilante violence and mob justice have increased in Mexico, as have femicides, which are the killings of women or girls for reasons related to their gender.

High levels of crime in Latin America are related in part to "the easy coexistence Latin Americans seem to have both with murder but also with informality and the inability of the state to, in a way, maintain territorial control and ensure strong institutional responses," Muggah said.

Just as Mexico has seen a rise in vigilantism, the country's private-security industry has grown considerably. With the spread of private security firms, "a lack of oversight and enforcement has led to instances where corruption, human rights abuses and excessive use of force have gone unchecked," the report said.

Many people in Latin America live in or around cities — many of them in poorly built or makeshift dwellings that are in marginalized areas overlooked by authorities.

Sao Paulo added 8 million people to its population in about 25 years.