Crime, Violence, and Justice in Latin America - Paperback

by Carlos Solar (Editor), Carlos A. Pérez Ricart (Editor)

This book asks why crime and violence persist in Latin America at extreme levels and why the states have not been able to more effectively solve this problem that dominates the lives of many millions of Latin Americans.

Informed by diverse disciplinary backgrounds, the book brings together a team of regional experts to discuss research-based explanations on some of Latin America's most pressing criminal and violent issues distressing the rule of law. First, it examines old and new forms of observing crime upon perpetrators and victimized communities. Second, it explores the geographies of urban and rural violence and the entangled politics following organized criminality. Third, it questions how the transfer of policy knowledge and expertise reshapes local security governance, and, more importantly, critically examines the problems in implementing foreign models and paradigms in the Latin American context. Finally, it exposes the everchanging scenario of policy-making and prosecuting crime and homicide.

Crime, Violence, and Justice in Latin America provides new themes and novel trends on what crime and violence mean in the eyes of observers, perpetrators, policymakers, governmental officials, and victims. It is an important acquisition for policy makers and academics alike.

Author Biography

Carlos Solar is a lecturer at the Department of Sociology and a member of the Centre for Criminology at the University of Essex. Previously, he was a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Oxford. He is the author of Government and Governance of Security: The Politics of Organised Crime in Chile (Routledge, 2018). His recent publications have appeared in Current Sociology, Journal of Cyber Policy, Journal of Strategic Studies, International Politics, British Politics, Latin American Policy, Policy Studies, Peace Review, Politics and Policy, Democracy and Security, and Global Crime, among other journals.

Carlos A. Pérez Ricart is an assistant professor at the Department of International Studies at Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas (CIDE), Mexico. Previously, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Contemporary History and Public Policy of Mexico at the University of Oxford. His recent publications include peer-reviewed articles in Global Governance, Foro Internacional, The Social History of Alcohol and Drugs, and "US pressure and Mexican anti-drug efforts from 1940 to 1980", in Beyond the Drug War in Mexico: Human rights, the Public Sphere and Justice (Routledge, 2018).