Gustavo Fondevila

Centro de Investigacion y Docencia Economicas (CIDE) · División de Estudios Jurídicos

What are the correlates of crime incidence in an uptown and wealthy neighborhood? This article focuses on the Santa Fe neighborhood in Mexico City as a case study to answer to this question. Theoretically, it makes use of crime pattern and social disorganization theories. It is argued that crime incidence in an uptown neighborhood can also be model...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to analyze the design and implementation of the police crackdown strategy employed in Mexico City and to discuss its limitations toward a medium-to-long-term reduction of crime rates for six types of robberies. Design/methodology/approach The present work employs generalized autoregressive conditional heterosce...

Using a comprehensive victimization survey data set, we develop the first test of routine activity (RA) theory in a Latin American country. Estimating a complementary log-log multilevel model of the theory in several stages, we investigate what factors in the theory predict residential burglary risk. We find that measures associated with the exposu...

Recent literature has established that War on Drug policies lead to differentiated consequences over the lives of certain groups within the population when analyzed by race, gender, age, and/or social status. In particular is the relationship between the War on Drugs and its effects on women. The objective of this article is to analyze the asymmetr...

Previous empirical studies on the correlation between residential burglary and concentrated disadvantage (CD) in Latin America commonly omit the spatial elements of the relationship. Using Mexico City (CDMX) residential burglary data for the period 2016 to 2018, we examine the predictive capacity of concentrated disadvantage in relation to resident...

Neoliberalism is often studied as a political ideology, a government program, and even as a pattern of cultural identities. However, less attention is paid to the specific institutional resources employed by neoliberal administrations, which have resulted in the configuration of a neoliberal state model. This accessible volume compiles original ess...

This paper revisits the broken windows theory with a particular focus on one sign of social disorder: clandestine dumpsites. To explore whether these are predictors of different types of crimes at a neighborhood level, two classification methods were used. Results suggest that clandestine dumpsites have a high predictive capacity for the crimes of...

Research and teaching about the state in Latin America have been under the strong influence of constitutional law and political philosophy since the nineteenth century. To this day, a formal constitutional understanding of the state dominates not only professional training and scholarly research in the fields of government and public administration...

We study the emergence of new forms of law violations in Latin America during the coronavirus pandemic. Based on data from online news articles, we construct a typology of “new” crimes: (1) hate or fear crimes against health workers and hospitals; (2) illegal denials of public mobility out of fear of infection; (3) looting and other traditional cri...

It is generally accepted that the State plays an important role in promoting and facilitating practices of dispossession; yet there is little reflection on its role in prevention, processing, and reversion (restitution). Our research focusses on dispossession understood as a crime. The criminal classification of dispossession as well as the continu...

This paper analyzes the impact of the pandemic (from 2020 to 2021) on levels of trust and legitimacy of the Chilean police (Carabineros) by the population in the metropolitan area of Santiago, Chile. Based on a pseudo-panel method and a cohort fixed-effects regression model that controlled for unobserved time invariant heterogeneity, we found a sig...

The literature on crime on public transport focuses on the specific elements that comprise urban transport, such as stations, stops, and vehicles. Studies have analyzed crime within transport stations, during the journey or passenger transfers, or around public transport stations. However, one area remains relatively unexplored: a comparison of cri...

In connection with the democratic transition in Mexico, several autonomous organisms were created by constitutional amendment, in significant public policy areas. However, these same organisms came under increasing criticism over the past years, as technocratic and illegitimate, in the country's national media. Institutional confrontation followed....

Do informal and formal mechanisms of guardianship work together to reduce residential burglary? In this article we argue that informal guardianship moderates the relationship between formal mechanisms of guardianship and residential burglary. Formal guardian-ship requires some level of social cohesion and trust to be effective against residential b...

Objectives: Police-monitored CCTV systems are supposed to reduce on-the-street crime. The purpose of this study is to determine whether the MiCalle CCTV systems program in Mexico City had local and spatial spillover effects on delivery robberies. Methods: When data is clustered in space and time, random effects and errors can be autocorrelated in b...

Background As the legalization of cannabis moves forward in many countries, it is important to highlight the potential harm that excessive use can cause on young consumers. Crafting effective policy interventions to reduce the harm stemming from excessive use requires an understanding of the attitudes and motivations of young consumers. Methods Th...

Understanding the determinants of crime reporting is fundamental to developing responsive judicial services that seek to pursue justice while fostering good relations with citizens. Building on Carpenter’s (Carpenter, D. (2014). Reputation and power: Organizational image and pharmaceutical regulation at the FDA. Princeton University Press.) dimensi...

Recent research on the effectiveness of public defenders vis-à-vis private attorneys in criminal cases has not exhaustively analyzed trial avoiding mechanisms and other pretrial outcomes and expanded beyond the United States. This article addresses these gaps using a novel data set from the Mexican criminal justice system, where trial avoiding mech...

Objectives This study examined whether Covid-19 virus containment measures moderated the relationship between community strain and homicide rates in Mexico City neighborhoods and police quadrants. Methods We tested the moderation effects hypothesis with the use of a mixed-effects regression to estimate fixed effects with random effects at differen...

The paper aims to analyse the links between domestic violence and children abandoning their family home, using new empirical evidence from the Latin American inmate population. Interest in this group is obvious, as it is precisely because they ran away from home that many may have ended up in a criminal environment and finally, in prison. Among pri...

From the start of the COVID-19 outbreak, government measures impacted citizens’ behavior, particularly regarding social distancing and confinement. Whether or not these measures influenced criminal behavior is an area of particular interest. Findings, mainly concerned with the routine activity theory, have correlated restrictions on movement and ci...

The argument that income inequality increases homicide rates has provoked scholarly debate, with some studies not supporting this position and providing evidence to the contrary. We identify several empirical issues with the current body of evidence, as well as their underlying problems. We challenge these issues by using more robust techniques tha...

The definition of what constitutes a conflict, in terms of both time and events, has been consistently debated in the historical study of social phenomena. What has become increasingly clear, however, is that the methods used to define it are generally biased as they are highly dependent on the perceptions of the researchers who establish them. Usi...

Mexico may well be the largest country in the world to legalize cannabis. Nevertheless, it is culturally conservative and a certain discrepancy exists between liberalization reforms and popular opinion regarding cannabis. Based on qualitative interviews with 100 cannabis users in Mexico City, we describe the gendered differences in perceptions and...

El concepto de dificultad contramayoritaria, aplicado al control de constitucionalidad, describe el problema de justificar que un tribunal declare inválida (inconstitucional) una ley, votada por los representantes de una mayoría de los ciudadanos. ¿Es esto legítimo? En el presente trabajo, analizamos un problema similar respecto a las burocracias p...

This study explores the capacity of GST theory at the community level to explain differences in homicide rates across Mexico City neighborhoods. We find that higher levels of economic deprivation, population size, and organized crime activity, the latter being a source of strain leading to the deterioration of Mexican communities, are positively as...

We analyze the interaction between Marijuana and Alcohol as correlates of property crimes among Mexican adolescents. Data were drawn from two waves of a Mexican national survey of public high school students in Mexico. A complementary log-log multilevel regression was fitted separately for each survey year, controlling for neighborhood, school, fam...

This paper discusses the empirical strategy used to test which approximation to journey-to-crime theory is more appropriate for modelling the crime deterrent effect of police stations. Using crime spatial analysis, this paper tests whether monotonic criminal distance decay from police stations or a buffer zone in the vicinity of police stations is...

The quarantine and stay-at-home measures implemented by most governments significantly impacted the volume and distribution of crime, and already, a body of literature exists that focuses on the effects of lockdown on crime. However, the effects of lockdown on firearm violence have yet to be studied. Within this context, this study analyzes reports...

Literature suggests that the spatial concentration of violence can contribute to destabilizing property relations. In this context, there is an underexplored area related to the study of the relationship between specific forms of violence (homicide) and dispossession-defined as the criminal intent of taking property through violence and force. This...

This paper proposes a broad approach to the study of criminal behavior through time using states as the units of analysis. In doing so, it argues that when a specific crime is targeted in one state, a criminal displacement effect in neighboring states can be expected. This is illustrated by the case of direct state intervention to combat kidnapping...

This study seeks to contribute to the literature on the deterrence effect of police on crime by looking at the dynamic between police force presence (number of officers) and criminal behavior on a state level in Mexico. In order to do this, we estimate a panel data pooled ordinary least-squares model, a spatial Durbin model, and a spatial error mod...

Homicidal violence has increased substantially in Mexico City in recent years. In this regard, we ask three questions: First, is there a contagious spread of this violence across neighbourhoods? Second, does it spread in association with drug market activity among local criminal organisations? Third, does it spread to neighbourhoods characterised b...

Scholarship on the Mexican state's role in migration to the United States has been hampered by a lack of comprehensive engagement with meaning. We address this shortcoming by examining a data set of Mexican presidents' public speeches (1994–2012). We argue that increased engagement with migration has been accompanied by more expansive conceptualisa...

Pre-trial detention is used extensively in Latin America as a systematic practice implemented by courts. Despite this fact, few empirical studies have analysed the role of defence attorneys in pre-trial incarcer-ation. This paper attempts to describe the actions taken by lawyers in order to free their clients during the judicial process, using new...

Recent literature has demonstrated that the War on Drugs policies had different consequences for different population groups. Despite this, female homicide victimisation resulting from such policies remains an underexplored subject of study. This paper examines the asymmetrical patterns of female homicides in the Mexican states that implemented the...

Using block level data for Mexico City as case study, this article provides evidence that the type of city block type correlates with the likelihood of residential burglary. We employed five multilevel random intercept models to relate burglary incidents to city block types. We nested the 64,282 city blocks of Mexico City within their corresponding...

The epidemic psychology of pandemics creates an atmosphere of panic and fear that can expedite new laws and facilitate criminogenic narrative arousal. Using narrative criminology, we discuss crimes that emerged from pandemic narratives in the early phases of the disease in Mexico. We show how pandemic master narratives have unexpected criminogenic...

Estudios previos en México argumentan que la percepción de corrupción y la percepción de eficacia predicen la insatisfacción y la falta de confianza en la policía. Este artículo extiende estos estudios previos al examinar si la percepción de corrupción policial impacta el miedo al crimen entre la población adulta. Argumentamos que –más allá de los...

Facing the Covid-19 pandemic, prisons in Mexico City prohibited visits. This sparked clearly gendered protests: male prison inmates complained that the restrictions left them without resources to deal with prison shortages, while women complained that it prevented them from sending resources to their families. Based on data from life story intervie...

This article furthers the discussion on bail through an analysis of the conditions under which this measure is used in Mexico, a country which has recently reformed its penal system (2008–2016) by introducing new procedural rules, which seek to reduce the use of pretrial detention. The study is based on a statistical-descriptive examination of 1,53...

This study examines the role of fatherhood for incarcerated men in Mexico, based on repeated life-story interviews with twelve men. We distinguish between their descriptions of fatherhood in the past and present and how they imagine the future, and explore how fathers describe their relationship with their children. The incarcerated men idealize th...

The purpose of this paper is to identify and analyze how prison systems in Argentina, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico respond to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19). It explores the challenges these institutions face, the actions taken, the beneficiaries from such measures, and their immediate effect. We argue that governments and prison authorities str...

In this study we analyze whether the type of housing and the physical barriers placed between the street and the entrance of the street hold a statistical relationship with the feeling of insecurity in the neighborhood. The results suggest rejecting such a hypothesis given the lack of evidence. This research allows the reader to know the correlates...

This study examines the mothering practices and identities of incarcerated women in Mexico. Data gathered from repeated life-story interviews with 12 women, were analyzed to describe mothering practices in the different phases of incarcerated women’s’ lives. We argue that knowledge of the Latin American context is crucial to understand their experi...

In this article, we explore patterns of prison violence in five Latin American countries: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, El Salvador, and Peru. Drawing on data from prisoner surveys conducted in 49 facilities with over 4,400 prisoners, we analyze the association between facility-level and individual-level rates of experiences of violence and the extent...

Focused on Mexico City, this article offers a seminal examination of the relationship between block layout and intentional homicide. The authors applied multilevel random-intercept negative binomial models to assess the contribution of block layout characteristics to homicide counts while controlling for other factors related to the physical enviro...

Objectives To test the broken windows theory in the Mexican context. Methods Publicly available homicide counts and census data at the neighborhood level were used. Broken windows theory was operationalized through the use of social disorder and physical disorder measures. Measures were both calculated using PCA. For data analysis, we employed fou...

La extorsión empresarial en Ciudad Juárez | El impuesto criminal: lecciones y precauciones

Despite the numerous theoretical and empirical gains rendered by research that has attempted to ‘bring the State back in’ to the study of economic informality, this literature has focused on state regulation and law enforcement while for the most part neglecting the analysis of the state as both an ideological product and a producer of meanings and...

El objetivo de este estudio es brindar una revisión basada en datos del crecimiento, las tendencias, y la razón principal detrás de la rápida expansión de la población carcelaria en la región durante lo corrido de este siglo, esto es, populismo penal. No proporcionamos un argumento que explique la reciente disminución en la tasa de crecimiento, dad...

Resumen: este estudio presenta las bases conceptuales, teóricas y de análisis empírico para el es-tudio ordenado de la victimización delictiva de las empresas. contiene una revisión teórica contemporánea y una discusión de las mediciones actuales en esta materia. además, presenta estadísticos descriptivos que muestran la magnitud del problema de la...

We test the relationship of police closed circuit television (CCTV) systems with crime at the census block level. Our descriptive model is based on environmental criminology theory and spatial modeling. We use as case study the Colonia Roma neighborhood in Mexico City which is a neighborhood characterized by high density, mixed uses, and high level...

This work presents a time-series convergence (divergence) analysis for robbery rates in Mexico. Two distinctive features, in relation to previous studies, can be identified: first, the use of an autoregressive vector to better estimate the series dynamic compared with single-equation models, and second, the implementation of an escalation/de-escala...

This study presents the conceptual, theoretical and empirical bases for the study of criminal victimization of the private sector. It contains a review of contemporary theories and a discussion of current measures. It also presents a set of descriptive statistics showing the extent of the problem of corporate victimization. It is shown that the sec...

Entre 1991 y 2018 en Colombia, la tasa de mujeres en prisión por 100.000 habitantes mujeres aumentó más de tres veces, pasando de 9.9 en 1991 a 31.5 en junio de 2018. El número de mujeres privadas de la libertad en centros penitenciarios del Instituto Nacional Penitenciario y Carcelario (INPEC) era de 1.500 en 1991 y alcanzó la cifra de 7.944 en ju...

This article analyzes a total of 255 interviews with inmates in Mexico City prisons, all of whom were prosecuted for killing someone else (first-degree murder). A comparison is made between two groups of incarcerated murderers: men and women. Our aim is to illustrate and explain how gender interacts with other social groups in the composition of le...

The high concentration of crime in a handful of cities is clear. What is not clear, however, is why crime levels are high in particular places. Using crime victimization data from thirty-two Mexican cities, I test one proposition and develop another. First, I show that Zipf's law fits to a certain degree the distribution of crime victimization and...

Mexico, like other countries in Latin America, is currently facing significant problems with regard to juvenile antisocial behavior and crime. The current study explores some of the factors associated with school vandalism in public high schools. Multilevel modelling with survey data from 22,345 students from 249 schools, acquired over two years, w...

During the government of Felipe Calderón (2006-2012), one of the most important issues on police reform was aimed at the elimination of municipal police or its incorporation into the local police aparatus. The idea that the state police can take over the tasks of the municipal police involves considering the role of both institutions as similar, or...

During the government of Felipe Calderón (2006-2012), one of the most important issues on police reform was aimed at the elimination of municipal police or its incorporation into the local police aparatus. The idea that the state police can take over the tasks of the municipal police involves considering the role of both institutions as similar, or...

p class='p1'>En este trabajo se hace una presentación general del comunitarismo y posteriormente se discuten tres críticas al “comunitarismo integracionista” según la distinción de Sheila Benhabib. Esta posición teórica desarrolla un determinado programa político como alternativa a la fundamentación tradicional del Estado de derecho liberal que pue...

Desde 1919, el Estado mexicano suscribe y ratifica tratados internacionales. Sin embargo, no hay estudios empíricos que revelen la eficacia de dichos tratados ni su cumplimiento. En este sentido, este trabajo intenta contestar la siguiente pregunta: ¿qué utilidad tienen los tratados internacionales en México? Como el universo de población es demasi...

This paper aims to conduct a descriptive analysis of a total of 2,172 semi-structured interviews with sentenced inmates in Mexico City during 2002–2008 in order to explain how public legal defence works, how this service is evaluated by the inmates who took part in the interviews, and how the traditional division between public and private services...

This article's premise is that both social problems and their solutions (interventions) are socially constructed, and that their validity depends to an important degree upon the power wielded by the person or organizations that actively fabricate and sustain them. The article analyzes the construction of the diverse solutions to the crime problem f...

Este reporte constituye una suerte de informe especial de país basado en el “Estudio Comparativo de Población Carcelaria” contenido en el Informe Regional de Desarrollo Humano 2013-2014, Seguridad Ciudadana con Rostro Humano: Diagnóstico y Propuestas para América Latina, el cual estuvo auspiciado por el Programa de las Naciones Unidas para el Desar...

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 S...

This essay analyses how Mexican presidents have interpreted the concepts of drug trafficking and national security and how these particular connotations have redefined national sovereignty and the specific role of the armed forces in protecting this sovereignty. A qualitative technique of discourse analysis is used to examine public speeches by Zed...

This article's premise is that both social problems and their solutions (interventions) are socially constructed, and that their validity depends to an important degree upon the power wielded by the person or organizations that actively fabricate and sustain them. The article analyzes the construction of the diverse solutions to the crime problem f...

Cualquier momento es apropiado para contribuir con información de calidad para el estudio del comportamiento criminal y la prevención social del delito. Sin embargo, esto se vuelve necesario cuando se enfrentan problemas mayúsculos en la materia, como es el caso en México actualmente. Sobre el tema abundan discusiones circulares, aisladas y en ocas...

In recent years, the Federal Judicial Branch has shown certain interest in promoting equal treatment and opportunities between genders and eliminating all kind of violence against women. However, there are practically no studies that analyze the situations of the diverse aspects of gender equity in the administration of justice or that assess the i...

As a now voluminous literature demonstrates, lethal encounters between the State and society can occur under a variety of conditions and have different meanings according to the victims' characteristics. Nevertheless, only a few scholars have specifically discussed the manner in which females lose their lives at the hand of the State. This study ex...

There are four hard, simple facts that can straightforwardly explain the lack of systematic methodology for questioning suspects at the Mexican public prosecutor offices: a) 98% of committed crimes are not reported (Zepeda, 2004), b) 93% of detainees were caught in flagrante (Magaloni, 2007), c) 46.4% of the confessions are obtained through violenc...

Este es el segundo volumen de la serie de estudios de perfiles criminales en México. Si el primero presentó un cúmulo histórico de información demográfica, socioeconómica y criminológica al respecto de la población recluida en cárceles del Distrito Federal y el Estado de México, éste agrega a lo anterior una identificación precisa de los elementos...

Este trabajo revela información que puede servir como insumo para otros estudios, para política pública y para una real evaluación de la justicia penal. En forma muy resumida, se observa que en Argentina, a pesar que las condiciones de reclusión son mejores que las del resto de la región, se va conformando una población para la cual la cárcel ya no...

One of the most relevant issues concerning snitching in the criminal information system of any police organisation is its control. This article analyses the different ways in which the Mexican Judicial Police exert control over their informants. Utilising a mixed qualitative methodology of research, in-depth interviews and ethnographic work, this a...

In recent years, bullying problems in public security or defense institutions have been studied. Such problems are associated with high stress situations, a large workload and pressure in hierarchical organisms that base their success on a rigid system of asymmetric power and authoritarian leadership style. The aim of the current study is to invest...

El trabajo se propone analizar, de manera preliminar y exploratoria, algunos tipos de eventos homicidas que existen en la Ciudad de México. El estudio se basa en la idea de que el contexto situacional del homicidio puede ser analizado desde dos dimensiones separadas pero interrelacionadas: la estructura y el proceso. Al concebir el evento homicida...

This work aims to analyze, in a preliminary and exploratory manner, some sorts of homicidal events that took place in Mexico City. The study is based upon the idea that the situational context of the homicide can be analyzed from two separate dimensions: structure and process. Conceiving the homicidal event as a combination of structures and proces...

This paper analyzes the institutional role of informal para‐police groups in Mexico known as ‘madrinas.’ The specific characteristics of ‘madrinas’ are that they are run as complex‐structured networks with hierarchies, they actively participate in police activities, and they are an alternative way of gaining entry into the police institution. Howev...

Since 1919, the Mexican Government subscribes and ratifies international trades. However, there are not empirical studies that reveal neither their level of efficiency nor the State actions taken afterwards. In that sense, this work tries to response the next question: Do international trades have some utility in Mexico? Given that the universe of...

One of the most important issues involved in any police force's criminal intelligence is how it manages it. This article analyzes the different forms of administration of police informants used by Mexico's Judicial Police. Using mixed methodologies (bibliographical analysis, interviews, and ethnography), it develops a typology of administration tha...

Introduction Over the last few years, the concept of global governance, invoked as a useful tool to analyse certain institutional practices of governments, has acquired a preeminent level of popularity in the academic community as well as within the discourse of international cooperation. In the field of international cooperation, the term has also...

Este artículo analiza la conexión entre derecho y moral en el contexto de la sexualidad, en general, y de la prostitución femenina, en particular, por medio del examen de las sentencias pronunciadas por el poder judicial federal. En contra de la tendencia jurídica mexicana de interpretar las disposiciones legales de manera literal, los jueces en es...

Este trabajo analiza, mediante encuestas de percepción, las diferentes expectativas de la población respecto de sus policías. El miedo al crimen y la baja confianza en las autoridades ha provocado que la ciudadanía tenga demandas contradictorias en relación con las funciones y el desempeño policial. Al mismo tiempo que considera que los policías de...

In this article it is analyzed the way in which the judicial scope has outlined the acceptable sexual behavior of young women in the Mexican society. Since the beginning of the 20th century up to now, the constitutive elements of sexual crimes have served to construct a socially acceptable (moral) ideal of sexuality for young people. In this sense,...

In this essay, the author analyzes the relationship between the juristical complexity of the norms or procedures of the system of administration of justice and the social understanding of the users. It investigates the factors that hinder said process relating the socioeconomic and educational level of the users with their understanding of law, as...

Los distintos desarrollos teóricos en materia de justicia y su percepción suelen concentrarse básicamente en dos temas: redistribución de excedentes económicos y reconocimiento de particularidades de grupo y diferencias socio-culturales. Este trabajo analiza, de manera empírica a nivel exploratorio, el ámbito laboral mexicano como un espacio donde...

In this article it is analyzed the way in which the judicial scope has outlined the acceptable sexual behavior of young women in the Mexican society. Since the beginning of the 20th century up to now, the constitutive elements of sexual crimes have served to construct a socially acceptable (moral) ideal of sexuality for young people. In this sense,...

In this article it is analyzed the way in which the judicial scope has outlined the acceptable sexual behavior of young women in the Mexican society. Since the beginning of the 20(th) century up to now, the constitutive elements of sexual crimes have served to construct a socially acceptable (moral) ideal of sexuality for young people. In this sens...