Why targeting guerrilla groups and cartels doesn’t stop violence in Latin America – but focusing on geography might

Environmental features and geography may be a better predictor of homicides in Latin America than the prevalence of organized crime gangs. That’s what we found in a recent study that analyzed homicide patterns across Colombian municipalities between 2010 and 2020. As researchers in place-based criminology, we were interested in understanding whether the locations where violence occurs matter more than the prevalence of organized crime groups operating within them. So we compared violence levels…