The Problems and Promises of Research on Deaths Due to Legal Intervention in Latin America
| Published date | 01 November 2015 |
| Author | Rodrigo Meneses Reyes,Gustavo Fondevila |
| DOI | 10.1177/1088767914550714 |
| Date | 01 November 2015 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
research-article2014
Article
Homicide Studies
2015, Vol. 19(4) 370 –383
The Problems and Promises
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DOI: 10.1177/1088767914550714
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to Legal Intervention in
Latin America
Gustavo Fondevila1 and Rodrigo Meneses Reyes1
Abstract
This research note aims to answer the following questions: (a) How do Latin
American authorities systematize and report data regarding deaths due to legal
intervention? (b) To what extent is this information public and available? (c) Can
this information help to better understand and compare regional patterns of lethal
violence perpetrated by the State? Research findings suggest that data regarding
deaths due to legal intervention are still an unreliable source of information, thereby
hampering any cross-national comparison of how lethal violence is exercised by the
State in Latin America.
Keywords
deaths due to legal intervention, State use of deadly force, distribution of violence,
cross-national comparison, Latin America
Introduction
The power and the capacity of the State to decide who may live and who must die have
been understood as the ultimate expression of sovereignty (Mbembe, 2003). In spite of
this, at least in Latin America, there is a dearth of reliable empirical data on how such
state-sponsored killings are committed. In other words, as Klinger (2012) put it, we
have no sound empirically grounded idea of how many people across the Latin
American region are shot by armed State actors or how many are struck by bullets
bought with public monies.
1Center for Economic Research and Teaching (CIDE), Mexico City, Mexico
Corresponding Author:
Gustavo Fondevila, Faculty of Law, Center for Economic Research and Teaching (CIDE), Carretera
México-Toluca 3655, Col. Lomas de Santa Fe, Mexico City 01210, Mexico.
Email: gustavo.fondevila@cide.edu
Fondevila and Reyes
371
This research note gives a preliminary answer to those questions by analyzing how
Latin American authorities have systematized and published data regarding deaths due
to legal intervention over the last decade. According to the International Classification
of Diseases, “deaths due to legal intervention” are
those deaths caused by injuries inflicted by the police or other law-enforcement agencies,
including military personnel on duty, in the course of arresting or attempting to arrest
lawbreakers, suppressing disturbances, maintaining order, and other legal actions,
regardless of their legality. (Sikora & Mulvihill, 2002; World Health Organization
[WHO], 1977, 2004)
Data regarding deaths due to legal intervention have a dual and often ambiguous
role in the study of a State’s use of deadly force. For scholars focused on the compara-
tive study of mortality due to violent causes, data regarding deaths due to legal inter-
vention represent “one of the main and most systematic sources of information, for
explaining the patterns of State use of deadly force, over time” (Yunes & Rajs, 1994,
pp. 92-93). However, some studies analyzing the problems of the available homicide
data have found that “legal intervention” is, in practice, equivalent to “justifiable
homicide” committed by the police or other law-enforcement agencies (Loftin,
Wiersema, McDowall, & Dobrin, 2003; Rand, 1997). Furthermore, according to
Klinger (2012), “academics have long noted the weakness of the ‘deaths by legal inter-
vention’ data, as an indicator of citizens’ deaths at the hands of police officers”
(pp. 79-80).
In the particular case of Latin America, the paucity of such data may be the result
of the traditional lack of reliable information systems in the region, which have been
characterized as non-existent, fragmented, or of poor quality (Briceño-León, 2008).
However, some studies on the comparative incidence of violence (Marshall & Block,
2004) have found that this situation has improved recently elsewhere, and new
efforts toward the development and improvement of violence and injury surveil-
lance systems have yielded more reliable information in Latin America. As Ríos-
Figueroa (2012) has pointed out, the political transformations that have taken place
throughout Latin America over the last 30 years have also contributed to generating
a wealth of data and information that is now available, making it possible to “sys-
tematically test existing hypotheses, and numerous theoretical questions and empiri-
cal puzzles” (p. 317).
One such empirical puzzle is seen in the elevated homicide rate in Latin America,
which is higher than that of other regions in the world. According to the latest WHO
data on homicide, 2011 rates per 100,000 persons indicate that the Latin America/
Caribbean and African regions were the most affected. As the most violent regions in
the world, countries in Latin America and the Caribbean have an average of 16.8
homicides per 100,000 persons. This regional average represents a 19-fold difference
compared with that of the lowest region, Oceania; an 8-fold difference with Europe;
and a 4-fold difference with homicide rates observed in the United States and Canada
(Cervantes, Meneses, & Quintana, 2013).
372
Homicide Studies 19(4)
Some authors have tried to explain this high homicide rate in Latin America by
highlighting a cultural pattern that values honor and masculinity to extreme levels—
machismo—and which triggers deadly encounters (Briceño-León, 2008; Neapolitan,
1994). Meanwhile, other authors, most notably Chon (2011), have established that the
social inequality, poverty, discrimination, paramilitary activity, and alcohol abuse, all
of which are common in the region, may well represent additional variables that
explain this elevated homicide rate. The inclusion of data regarding deaths due to legal
intervention may represent a particular way of understanding how lethal violence is
also generated by the State in response to the social and civil disorder that some Latin
American countries are experiencing.
As noted by Marshall and Block (2004), “Comparative incidence of violence has
been a central issue in cross-national theory and research for several decades” (p. 267).
Marshall, Marshall, and Ren (2009) point out that further complicating the situation is
the fact that violence rates are usually constructed on a one-dimensional definition of
violence: as an interpersonal interaction. However, from a public health and human
rights perspective, it has been widely noted that violence is not only an interpersonal
situation but also a collective process made up of larger groups such as States, orga-
nized political groups, militia groups, or terrorist organizations (Marshall et al., 2009;
WHO, 2002).
This collective nature of lethal violence has surfaced several times in contemporary
Latin American history. As Meneses and Fondevila (2014) have stated,
several studies developed in Latin America suggest that States have traditionally used
deadly force as a means to design exceptional policies to enhance racial inequality (Cano,
2010), to banish electoral competition (Eisenstadt, 2004; Schatz, 2008) or to control
certain criminal activities, such as drug-trafficking (Gutiérrez, 2001). (pp. 3-4)
Taking these considerations as a point of departure, this research note seeks to
answer the following questions: (a) How do Latin American health authorities system-
atize and report data regarding deaths due to legal intervention? (b) To what extent is
this information public and available? (c) Can this information help to better under-
stand and compare regional patterns of collective violence perpetrated by the State?
Data and Method
This...
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