This is an ex post facto study with a retrospective and cross sectional design, consisting of a random sample of 1,143 participants (538 men and 605 women), age range 17-56 or more. The measures used involved the Escala de estrés y ansiedad delincuencial, and the Cuestionario de salud general. Results revealed that approximately three fourths of the simple considered that the criminal violence context affected their mental health. Differences between men and women were established. Women and urban residents exhibited a greater number of stress symptoms and criminal anxiety. Recommendations for future studies are suggested. / El presente es un estudio expos facto con un diseño retrospectivo y transeccional, que consideró una muestra probabilística de 1,143 personas (538 hombres y 605 mujeres) con un rango de edad entre 17 y 56 años o más. Los instrumentos de medida fueron la Escala de estrés y ansiedad delincuencial, y el Cuestionario de salud general. Los resultados revelaron que aproximadamente las tres cuartas partes de la muestra consideró que el contexto de violencia delincuencial afectó su salud mental. Existen diferencias entre hombres y mujeres. Las mujeres y los residentes urbanos presentaron mayor número de síntomas de estrés y ansiedad delincuencial. Se sugieren recomendaciones para estudios futuros.

Criminal organizations have been commonly associated with violence and disorder. Despite there being truth in that, what is more concerning is their growing influence. Criminal violence has exceeded traditional forms of political violence in the world. In the wake of the signing of the Peace Accord on November 26, 2016, between the Government of Colombia and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia — People’s Army, the disarmament and demobilization process created an institutional and security vacuum in rural regions of Colombia. These rural regions currently experience partial peace, with violence levels peaking under the competition of criminal organizations and other non-state armed groups to govern abandoned territories and communities over the pursuit of illicit markets and trade routes. This study focuses on a more profound understanding of the micro-dynamics between criminal organizations territorial control, governance, and its effects on violence against civilians in rural and post-conflict contexts. This thesis contributes to this research gap by asking why do criminal organizations territorial control affect violence against civilians? Through a qualitative study using the method of structured focused comparison and selecting a most similar research design, the period of study covers September 1, 2017, to June 30, 2022. The municipalities selected were Tarazá and Zaragoza, in the department of Antioquia. The findings seem to suggest that it is more likely that a criminal organization that has or in this case the Gaitanist Self-Defense Forces of Colombia that progressively achieved segmented territorial control would have the incentives to monopolize all functions of governance and to their capacity establish a public goods-based legitimacy governance system reducing the cost of social control and criminal violence against civilians in Tarazá and Zaragoza.

Some peace processes are tainted by more violence than the actual conflict, sometimes worsened by spoilers. Although spoilers pose a threat to the writing or lasting of peace agreements, they do not always succeed, and instead, peace can flourish. Despite this, the effects of spoiling violence on society have not been thoroughly explored. Research suggests that criminal violence thrives in the post-war period, this paper aims to answer the research question: How do spoilers affect post-war criminal violence? As spoilers instil insecurity, the hypothesis is that post-war criminal violence will increase within a state if the peace agreements have experienced outside spoiling. To investigate this, a Structured Focused Comparison approach is employed, comparing two cases, El Salvador and Sierra Leone. However, this paper was unable to find support for the proposed causal relationship between outside spoiling and post-war criminal violence. Further research is needed to understand how spoilers affect both the peace process and criminal violence.

Due to the high rates of criminal violence and the alternative authority of Criminal Armed Groups (CAGs) in Guatemala humanitarian access faces multiple barriers in regions under CAG control, often leaving vulnerable populations without necessary humanitarian services. With limited institutional and conceptual frameworks to support negotiating for humanitarian access in these criminally violent contexts the international humanitarian system favors avoiding these contexts altogether to minimize the risk of their operations, but with the trends of violence increasing in the region not addressing the issue of negotiating for humanitarian spaces in these contexts only will result in crises worsening. Currently there are few substantive discussions regarding establishing such negotiation frameworks in crime-rich environments, those which do discuss the topic directly suggest using frameworks meant for negotiations with Non-State Armed Groups (NSAGs) in armed conflict. However, due to the difference in motivations between CAGs and NSAGs and drastic contextual differences there is doubt for whether the strategies are transferable between the two contexts. Recently few scholars have shifted the conversation to creating the necessary frameworks to approach negotiating humanitarian access specifically in criminally violent situations, providing guidance based on the typology of the criminal organization and the level of violence. While these new discourses have expanded the resources necessary for humanitarian organizations to negotiate access in regions with high rates of criminal violence it is still necessary to broaden topic further. Therefore, examining strategies for negotiating humanitarian access in regions with high rates of criminal violence in Guatemala seeks to understand how to ensure that affected populations in regions under criminal control continue to receive humanitarian aid despite the threat of violence. To examine this phenomenon this study utilizes the mixed qualitative methods of an extensive literature review on the themes of humanitarian access, criminal governance, and humanitarian negotiations, along with a review of the case of El Salvador’s negotiated 2012 gang truce, and semi-structured interviews with experts in the field of negotiating access. Together with considerations of the unique context of Guatemala the points of intersection between themes and responses assisted in triangulating the analysis of the appropriate strategies to consider when negotiating humanitarian access in regions prevalent criminal violence. Ultimately in regions under criminal control in Guatemala strategies which respect the CAG authority, balance the perceived threat of violence with the real threat of violence, communicate humanitarian impartiality, and are specifically crafted for the type of CAG control are potential paths negotiating humanitarian access to affected populations otherwise forgotten.

The end of civil war does not equal the end of violence. Many post-war societies struggle with anoutburst of criminal violence in major cities, after armed conflicts have officially ended in peaceagreements. Crime control programs are a response to reduce criminal violence, but vary greatly interms of level of implementation, approach, and success. This study explores why some of thosecriminal violence control programs are successful in reducing violence, whereas others are not.Deriving from a theoretical framework of urban crime prevention, it is argued that a multi-sectoralcontrol program, targeting social and situational causes of crime, is more successful in reducingviolence in post-war urban communities than a single sector approach. Through a structuredfocused comparison, this hypothesis is tested on three urban communities in post-apartheid SouthAfrica, where high levels of criminal violence were addressed by three different types of crimecontrol. The results show that only the multi-sectoral approach correlates with a reduction ofcriminal violence levels. While the type of control program seems to impact the level of success,there are various other explanatory factors that correlate with a successful reduction of crime, suchas community participation and effective partnerships.

This dissertation examines how parties respond and adapt their behavior to political violence. Building a theoretical argument about strategic party behavior and party capture, I address the following questions: How do parties select and recruit their candidates in regions with high levels of violence and the pervasive presence of VNAs? Do parties respond to violence by selecting certain types of candidates who are more capable of fighting these organizations? Do parties react differently at different levels of government? And finally, how do VNSAs capture political selection across at different levels of government? I argue that in regions where there is high "uncertainty," candidate selection becomes highly important for both party leaders and DTOs. Second, I argue that as violence increases and the number of DTOs also, criminal organizations, as risk-averse actors, will capture candidate selection. I posit that as violence increases, there is a greater likelihood that candidates will have criminal connections. To test my theory, I use the case of Mexico. Violence in Mexico and the presence of criminal organizations across the country has experienced a great deal of variation since the 1990s. In Chapter 2, I find that violence affects the gubernatorial candidate selection of the PRI, PAN and PRD. In high violence states, parties select gubernatorial candidates with long experience in subnational politics compared to other types of experiences. In chapter 3, however, I find that at the municipal level not all the parties respond equally to violence. As a municipality becomes more violent, the PRI and PAN party leaders are more likely to select mayoral candidates who were either state or federal deputies or candidates who were both. In contrast, the PRD is likely to recruit state deputies as a function of violence, but not national deputies or candidates who were deputies at both the state and federal level. Interestingly, I find that as the municipality becomes more violent, party leaders are less likely to recruit inexperienced candidates. This result suggests that parties do indeed respond to levels of violence. Finally, in Chapter 5, I show that criminal organizations capture candidate selection to reduce uncertainty. As utility-maximizing actors, DTOs seek to influence the selection of candidates as a function of violence. At the state level, criminal organizations are more likely to capture candidate selection in states with the presence of multiple DTOs. Party capture is more likely to happen in states where more than one DTO are fighting to control the turf. I show that criminal organizations at the state level equally capture all parties. This finding reveals that DTOs are diversifying their political connections. While under the dominant party regime, they colluded with PRI officials, under the new political Mexican democratic configuration, DTOs are establishing other political relationships with different political parties.

[pt] Esta tese costura histórias do Brasil, Colômbia e México, em que a linha entre a violência criminal, de um lado, e a violência política, de outro, tem sido produzida ao longo dos anos 2000. Ela se concentra em duas dimensões : primeiro , as práticas de produção de linhas de governos que justificam o aumento do papel dos militares na segurança pública, bem como dos próprios oficiais militares que implementam essas operações; e segundo , as práticas de governos e organizações da sociedade civil que estabelecem mecanismos de busca da verdade para esclarecer padrões e casos de violência do passado e do presente. Dois conjuntos de metáforas são mobilizados como dispositivos analíticos para fazer sentido desses processos, conectados aos diferentes significados do verbo em inglês to draw: por um lado, o ato de inscrever um traço sobre uma superfície; de outro, o ato de puxar um fio sobre um espaço tridimensional. Argumento que a produção daquela linha é central no tratamento da violência organizada por governos e org anizações da sociedade civil , em três países que têm sido marcados tanto por um aumento no emprego militar contra atores criminosos quanto o estabelecimento de mecanismos de justiça transicional dedicados ao direito das vítimas à verdade, frustrando expectativas associadas aos padrões de paz e ainda que tais tendências ocorram à luz de contextos históricos marcadamente distintos de democratização e processos de paz, como se discute na tese As histórias reunidas aqui serão informadas por um a análise diversas como documentos governamentais, relatórios de comissões da verdade, entrevistas com especialistas e ativistas de todos os três países e literatura acadêmica. Uma atenção para a produção de distinções, conexões e (des)continuidades entre a violência criminal e a violência política nesses países latino americanos permitirá avaliar criticamente as condições de possibilidade para a reprodução de padrões violentos e as perspectivas para a sua transformação , além dos elementos e limites de um imaginário político no qual essas democracias pacíficas violentas emergem como um quebra cabeça em primeiro lugar. / [en] This thesis sews together stories from Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico, in which the line between criminal violence on the one h and, and political violence on the other has been drawn over the 2000s. It focuses on two dimensions : firstly, the line drawing practices of governments who justify increasing military roles in public security , as well as of military officials themselves as they implement these operations; and secondly, the practices of governments and civil society organizations establishing truth seeking mechanisms to clarify patterns and cases of violence in the past and in the present. T w o sets of metaphors are mobilized as analytical devices to make sense of these processes in connection with different meanings of the verb to draw : on the one hand, the act of inscribing a trace over a surface; on the other hand, the act of pulling a thre ad over three dimensional space. I argue that the drawing of that line has been central to the treatment of organized violence by governments and civil society organizations in th ree countries which have seen both an increase in military deployment agains t criminal actors and the establishment of transitional justice mechanisms devoted to victims right to truth , frustrating expectations associated with the standards of peace and democracy two trends which have, however, taken place against markedly different historical contexts of democratization and peacebuilding, as discussed in the thesis . The stories gathered here will be informed by an analysis of sources as varied as government doc uments, truth commissions reports interviews with experts and activists of all three countries , and scholarly literature A ttending to how distinctions, connections and ( continuities are drawn between criminal violence and political violence in these Latin American countries allow s us to critically assess conditions of possibility for the reproduction of violent patterns and the prospects for their positive transformatio n , as well as the elements and limits of a political imagination for which these violent peaceful democracies have emerged as a puzzle in the first place.

yes / It is now widely recognised that, to be successful, efforts towards preventing and combating the illicit trade in SALW will require a multifaceted approach which simultaneously tackles the demand for and the supply of these weapons. In this regard, developing and promoting international norms, standards and mechanisms for the effective removal of illicit weapons from circulation is a major challenge for the UN Conference on the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in All Its Aspects. There are two distinct scenarios within which weapons collection initiatives operate: the peace-time scenario, where efforts are focused on reducing criminal violence; and the postconflict scenario, where efforts are focused on the objective of conflict prevention through peace-building.