Latin America and the Caribbean is the most violent region of the world. This emerges from the third successive listing by the Mexico-based Consejo Ciudadano para la Seguridad Pública y Justicia Penal (CCSPJP) of homicide rates across the world. The highest rates are not only concentrated mainly in Latin America and the Caribbean but also in a handful of countries within the region. One finding well worth highlighting, though, is that the picture is not static: many countries have lowered their rates, and some have dropped off the list entirely. Of the 50 cities with the highest homicide rates in…

The prospect of new security policies under a new Mexican government has attracted much attention in the US. In recent weeks several influential academic institutions and think-tanks north of the border have issued studies and papers on the subject, which range from analytic to predictive and even prescriptive. Here we review the salient features of six of them. In most cases we have left out those aspects that have been overtaken by events, particularly those regarding early steps in the application of the Peña Nieto administration’s security policies (see SSR-13-01 and pages 1-2 of this issue) and the reversal of…