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 …

The literature on the prevalence and causes of punishment has been dominated by
research into the United States. Yet most of the world's prisoners live elsewhere, and the …

What explains prison recidivism? Relying on previously unavailable data on prison inmates
in Uruguay, we study how external factors, such as employment dynamics on labor-intensive …

A prison gang is a durable group that shares a collective identity, maintains a locus of
custodial influence, exhibits collective behavior, and engages in a pattern of illegal activity …

Barrio Azteca is a criminal organization that has significantly evolved since its inception as a
prison solidarity group—first into a true prison gang and then into an organized criminal …

Latin America is the most violent region in the world. Recent research on the causes of crime
have concluded that institutional effectiveness and corruption appear to be relevant …

Most of the literature that discusses the topic of drug trafficking and prisons in Latin America
has focused on the impact of the war on drugs on the significant increase of the prison …

Most of the scholarship on the 'punitive turn'has claimed that there have been two main
trends in punishment since the 1970s: the rise of incarceration rates (quantitative dimension) …

Punitive anti-crime policies in the Americas have contributed to steadily increasing rates of
incarceration. Harsh penalties are often demanded by citizens, making them attractive to …

Latin America is a vast region of the world. In 2022, it is estimated that nearly 620 million
people live in 33 countries spanning almost 20 million km2 across North, South and Central …