More Money, More Crime

Prosperity and Rising Crime in Latin America

Marcelo Bergman

Provides a new theory to explain the rise of criminality across Latin America
Analyzes extensive data including large-scale inmate and victimization surveys collected across nine different countries
Proposes the concept of crime equilibria, examining the demand for crime as well as supply

More Money, More Crime

Prosperity and Rising Crime in Latin America

Marcelo Bergman

Description

While worldwide crime is declining overall, criminality in Latin America has reached unprecedented levels that have ushered in social unrest and political turmoil. Despite major political and economic gains, crime has increased in every Latin American country over the past 25 years, currently making this region the most crime-ridden and violent in the world.

Over the past two decades, Latin America has enjoyed economic growth, poverty and inequality reduction, rising consumer demand, and spreading democracy, but it also endured a dramatic outbreak of violence and property crimes. In More Money, More Crime, Marcelo Bergman argues that prosperity enhanced demand for stolen and illicit goods supplied by illegal rackets. Crime surged as weak states and outdated criminal justice systems could not meet the challenge posed by new profitably criminal enterprises. Based on large-scale data sets, including surveys from inmates and victims, Bergman analyzes the development of crime as a business in the region, and the inability-and at times complicity-of state agencies and officers to successfully contain it. While organized crime has grown, Latin American governments have lacked the social vision to promote sustainable upward mobility, and have failed to improve the technical capacities of law enforcement agencies to deter criminality. The weak state responses have only further entrenched the influence of criminal groups making them all the more difficult to dismantle.

More Money, More Crime is a sobering study that foresees a continued rise in violence while prosperity increases unless governments develop appropriate responses to crime and promote genuine social inclusion.

More Money, More Crime

Prosperity and Rising Crime in Latin America

Marcelo Bergman

Chapter 1: Crime and Prosperity: A Latin American Paradox
Part I: Trends and Magnitude of Crime in Latin America
Chapter 2: Trends and Patterns of Criminality in the Latin America
Chapter 3: Why the Rise in Crime in Latin America?
Part II: The Business of Crime and the Spread of Illegal Markets
Chapter 4: Profits and Opportunities: The Growth of Illegal Markets and Crime
Chapter 5: Drug Business and Crime
Chapter 6: Organized Crime and High Crime Equilibrium (HCE)
Part III: The Criminal Justice System and Deterrence
Chapter 7: The Police in Latin America
Chapter 8: Courts, Criminal Procedure and Deterrence
Chapter 9: The Sad Story of Prisons: A Balance of Failures
Chapter 10: Concluding Remarks
Appendix: : Report on Data Collection and Databases
Notes
Index

More Money, More Crime

Prosperity and Rising Crime in Latin America

Marcelo Bergman

Author Information

Marcelo Bergman is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Center for Latin American Studies on Insecurity and Violence at Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

More Money, More Crime

Prosperity and Rising Crime in Latin America

Marcelo Bergman

Reviews and Awards

Winner of the the Outstanding Book Award from the American Society of Criminology Division of International Criminology

"This book is now an unavoidable reference for those interested in unravelling the paradoxical coexistence of economic growth, democratization, and increasing crime." -- Javier Auyero, UT Austin, American Journal of Sociology

"In More Money, More Crime Bergman provides an important and illuminating sociological account of crime in Latin American that makes a critical contribution not just to the criminology of the region but global criminological debates." -Enrique Desmond Arias, Marxe Chair of Western Hemisphere Affairs, Baruch College, City University of New York

"This innovative study of crime and violence in Latin America provides an authoritative synthesis of available evidence together with a sophisticated region-wide explanatory model. Rising prosperity has generated new market incentives for criminality, but trigger conditions are also needed. Bergman therefore constructs a theoretical account of transition from low to high criminal equilibrium which also explains its near irreversibility" -Laurence Whitehead, Senior Research Fellow, Nuffield College, Oxford University

"This book, by one of the leading criminologists in Latin America, Marcelo Bergman, is a huge achievement. Based on a wealth of new data and an innovative theoretical framework, it challenges conventional views about crime in Latin America and makes important proposals about how Latin America's security crisis can be better addressed." - Manuel Eisner, Wolfson Professor of Criminology, University of Cambridge