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 explains the transformation of prisons from instruments of incapacitation, deterrence, and rehabilitation to drivers of violence and criminality. Bergman and Fondevila highlight the impacts of internal drug markets and the dramatic increase in the number of imprisoned women. Furthermore, they show how prisons are not isolated from society - they are sites of active criminal networks, with many inmates maintaining fluid criminal connections with the outside world. Rather than reducing crime, prisons have become an integral part of the crime problem in Latin America.

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 explains the transformation of prisons from instruments of incapacitation, deterrence, and rehabilitation to drivers of violence and criminality. Bergman and Fondevila highlight the impacts of internal drug markets and the dramatic increase in the number of imprisoned women. Furthermore, they show how prisons are not isolated from society - they are sites of active criminal networks, with many inmates maintaining fluid criminal connections with the outside world. Rather than reducing crime, prisons have become an integral part of the crime problem in Latin America.

This book describes the main patterns and trends of drug trafficking in Latin America and analyzes its political, economic and social effects on several countries over the last twenty years. Its aim is to provide readers an introductory yet elaborate text on the illegal drug problem in the region. It first seeks to define and measure the problem, and then discusses some of the implications that the growth of production, trafficking, and consumption of illegal drugs had in the economies, in the social fabrics, and in the domestic and international policies of Latin American countries. This book analyzes the illegal drugs problem from a Latin American perspective. Although there is a large literature and research on drug use and trade in the USA, Canada, Europe and the Far East, little is understood on the impact of narcotics in countries that have supplied a large share of the drugs used worldwide. This work explores how routes into Europe and the USA are developed, why the so-called drug cartels exist in the region, what level of profits illegal drugs generate, how such gains are distributed among producers, traffickers, and dealers and how much they make, why violence spread in certain places but not in others, and which alternative policies were taken to address the growing challenges posed by illegal drugs. With a strong empirical foundation based on the best available data, Illegal Drugs, Drug Trafficking and Violence in Latin America explains how rackets in the region built highly profitable enterprises transshipping and smuggling drugs northbound and why the large circulation of drugs also produced the emergence of vibrant domestic markets, which doubled the number of drug users in the region the last 10 years. It presents the best available information for 18 countries, and the final two chapters analyze in depth two rather different case studies: Mexico and Argentina.

This book describes the main patterns and trends of drug trafficking in Latin America and analyzes its political, economic and social effects on several countries over the last twenty years. Its aim is to provide readers an introductory yet elaborate text on the illegal drug problem in the region. It first seeks to define and measure the problem, and then discusses some of the implications that the growth of production, trafficking, and consumption of illegal drugs had in the economies, in the social fabrics, and in the domestic and international policies of Latin American countries. This book analyzes the illegal drugs problem from a Latin American perspective. Although there is a large literature and research on drug use and trade in the USA, Canada, Europe and the Far East, little is understood on the impact of narcotics in countries that have supplied a large share of the drugs used worldwide. This work explores how routes into Europe and the USA are developed, why the so-called drug cartels exist in the region, what level of profits illegal drugs generate, how such gains are distributed among producers, traffickers, and dealers and how much they make, why violence spread in certain places but not in others, and which alternative policies were taken to address the growing challenges posed by illegal drugs. With a strong empirical foundation based on the best available data, Illegal Drugs, Drug Trafficking and Violence in Latin America explains how rackets in the region built highly profitable enterprises transshipping and smuggling drugs northbound and why the large circulation of drugs also produced the emergence of vibrant domestic markets, which doubled the number of drug users in the region the last 10 years. It presents the best available information for 18 countries, and the final two chapters analyze in depth two rather different case studies: Mexico and Argentina.

As new democratic regimes take root in Latin America, two of the most striking developments have been a dramatic rise in crime rates and increased perception of insecurity among its citizens. The contributors to this book offer a collective assessment of some of the causes for the alarming rise in criminal activity in the region. They also explore the institutional obstacles that states confront in the effort to curb criminality and build a fairer and more efficient criminal justice system; the connections between those obstacles and larger sociopolitical patterns; and the challenges that those patterns present for the consolidation of democracy in the region. The chapters offer both close studies of restricted regions in Latin America and broader examinations of the region as a whole.The contributors to this volume are prominent scholars and specialists on the issue of citizen security. They draw on the latest methodologies and theoretical approaches to examine the question of how crime and crime fighting impact the consolidation of democracy and the rule of law in the region. These studies represent a major first step towards evaluating broadly a relative dearth of hard data about the Latin American security situation, as well as identifying future research paths. This book will be important for scholars, policy makers, and students, especially in the fields of Latin American and comparative law, political science, sociology, and criminology.

"The dramatic rise in reported criminality and citizen insecurity is one of the most often-mentioned yet least researched aspects of contemporary Latin America. This valuable compendium draws on recent empirical data, uneven and incomplete but nonetheless illuminating, as well as on comparative analysis, to discuss the sources and characteristics of crime in Latin America and its impact on democratization, the rule of law and institutional strength. The authors go beyond mere description and denunciation to develop better shared understanding of criminal activity and of how best to combat it. An important contribution." --Abraham F. Lowenthal, Professor of International Relations, University of Southern California"This is an important and timely collection of essays. For too long criminology has ignored the political dimension of crime and the implications of privatizing security. This collection, bringing together political scientists, sociologists and criminologists, addresses this critical nexus face-on and offers a coherent set of explanations for the rise of crime and the new forms of security that have emerged in Latin America." --Federico Varese, Oxford University "This volume is a solid contribution to the scholarship on crime, security, and democracy in Latin America. Although there are other collections that tackle these or similar issues, this volume offers, for the first time, a combined focus on crime, the police, prisons, and the criminal justice system. As such, it will be of tremendous significance to scholars and students interested in the analysis of crime and public security and their relevance to the challenges that Latin American democracies face." --Carlos Aguirre, University of Oregon

Few tasks are as crucial for the future of democracy in Latin America--and, indeed, in other underdeveloped areas of the world--as strengthening the rule of law and reforming the system of taxation.

In this book, Marcelo Bergman shows how success in getting citizens to pay their taxes is related intimately to the social norms that undergird the rule of law. The threat of legal sanctions is itself insufficient to motivate compliance, he argues. That kind of deterrence works best when citizens already have other reasons to want to comply, based on their beliefs about what is fair and about how their fellow citizens are behaving. The problem of "free riding," which arises when cheaters can count on enough suckers to pay their taxes so they can avoid doing so and still benefit from the government's supply of public goods, cannot be reversed just by stringent law, because the success of governmental enforcement ultimately depends on the social equilibrium that predominates in each country. Culture and state effectiveness are inherently linked.

Using a wealth of new data drawn from his own multidimensional research involving game theory, statistical models, surveys, and simulations, Bergman compares Argentina and Chile to show how, in two societies that otherwise share much in common, the differing traditions of rule of law explain why so many citizens evade paying taxes in Argentina--and why, in Chile, most citizens comply with the law. In the concluding chapter, he draws implications for public policy from the empirical findings and generalizes his argument to other societies in Africa, Asia, and Eastern Europe.

Few tasks are as crucial for the future of democracy in Latin America--and, indeed, in other underdeveloped areas of the world--as strengthening the rule of law and reforming the system of taxation.

In this book, Marcelo Bergman shows how success in getting citizens to pay their taxes is related intimately to the social norms that undergird the rule of law. The threat of legal sanctions is itself insufficient to motivate compliance, he argues. That kind of deterrence works best when citizens already have other reasons to want to comply, based on their beliefs about what is fair and about how their fellow citizens are behaving. The problem of "free riding," which arises when cheaters can count on enough suckers to pay their taxes so they can avoid doing so and still benefit from the government's supply of public goods, cannot be reversed just by stringent law, because the success of governmental enforcement ultimately depends on the social equilibrium that predominates in each country. Culture and state effectiveness are inherently linked.

Using a wealth of new data drawn from his own multidimensional research involving game theory, statistical models, surveys, and simulations, Bergman compares Argentina and Chile to show how, in two societies that otherwise share much in common, the differing traditions of rule of law explain why so many citizens evade paying taxes in Argentina--and why, in Chile, most citizens comply with the law. In the concluding chapter, he draws implications for public policy from the empirical findings and generalizes his argument to other societies in Africa, Asia, and Eastern Europe.