New publication! How to Map and Combat Urban Organised Crime: Lessons from the Medellín Impact Lab

Today see’s publication of a new briefing note under the SOC ACE research project, Developing government information and accountability systems for combatting serious organised crime: Medellín demonstration project, being led by Professor Christopher Blattman (University of Chicago) with Professor Santiago Tobon (EAFIT Universidad), and Associate Professor Benjamin Lessing (University of Chicago), coordinated by Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA).

Briefing note 33 titled, ‘How to Map and Combat Urban Organised Crime: Lessons from the Medellín Impact Lab’ provides insights on how novel approaches to the measurement of less visible characteristics of organised crime, such as extortion, can be used to better diagnose problems and develop, test and iterate more effective interventions to address them.

The briefing note offers an overview of how the research team have utilised new data on extortion as part of four-pillar Impact Lab method, collaborating with Medellín’s local government, police, and local non-governmental organisations, to diagnose the problem of extortion and develop, test, scale and evaluate response interventions. It demonstrates the steps taken under each pillar, bringing new and multiple data and information together that has aided better diagnostic of the problem, how they have collaborated with different actors to develop new initiatives, through to the new interventions that are being piloted as a result, including ‘conditional repression’ and alternative pathways for youths.

Read the new publication here and click through on the project link above to find other related publications.