Developing government information and accountability systems for combating serious organised crime: Medellín demonstration project

Project Live

PROJECT TEAM

Professor Christopher Blattman

University of Chicago

Contact: blattman@uchicago.edu

Christopher Blattman is an economist and political scientist who uses fieldwork and statistics to study poverty, political engagement, the causes and consequences of violence, and policy in developing countries. He is a professor in the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago and the author of Why We Fight: the roots of war and the paths to peace.

Professor Santiago Tobón

Universidad EAFIT

Contact: stobonz@eafit.edu.co

Santiago Tobón is an economist  with a special interest in crime, violence, organised crime, and public policy. He uses  experimental, quasi-experimental, and qualitative methods. He is a professor in Universidad EAFIT in Medellín, Colombia, and was a visiting professor in the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago.

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PROJECT SUMMARY

Like most cities, the Medellín Mayor’s Office and the Colombian police focus their efforts on managing what they measure--homicides and violent crime. While of course there are legitimate reasons to tackle violence, there is relatively less attention to other deleterious effects of SOC: high levels of civilian extortion, criminal political control of civilians, criminal capture of local, state, and community governments, retail drug sales, and so forth. In addition to being costly in and of themselves, these actions also undermine the local control and legitimacy of the state. We believe that these harmful consequences are overlooked in part because they are not measured. This reduces policymakers’ awareness of the problem. Perhaps more importantly, it limits the ability of elected officials and the public to hold the government accountable for these social ills. And finally, it limits the ability of the government to see the unintended and potentially harmful effects of their policies.

We aim to demonstrate the feasibility of collecting a wide variety of metrics on serious organised crime (SOC), and establish the practice of collecting, monitoring, and using these metrics for policy analysis, the design, and evaluation of programmes/policies to combat serious organised crime.

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PUBLICATIONS

• SOC ACE Briefing Notes

  Measuring organised crime: challenges and solutions for collecting data on armed illicit groups (SOC ACE Briefing Note 3)

  The terrible trade-off: How the hidden cost of organised crime harms cities, and what can be done about it (SOC ACE Briefing Note 4)

  How to Map and Combat Urban Organised Crime: Lessons from the Medellín Impact Lab (SOC ACE Briefing Note 33)

  The Political Will to Measure Organised Crime: Why we need it and how to build it (SOC ACE Briefing Note 34)

• Other Publications

  Blattman, C. et al (2023), Civilian alternatives to policing: Evidence from Medellín’s community problem-solving intervention Operación Convivencia, Innovations for Poverty Action

  Blattman, c. et al (2024), Gang Rule: Understanding and Countering Criminal Governance, The Review of Economic Studies, 00 1-35, doi:10.1093/restud/rdae079 (Open Access)

ENGAGEMENT

• Blogs

  Chris Blattman, The terrible trade-off: Why less violent cities often means more powerful and organised crime, 11 May 2022

• Other

  In this widely read twitter thread by Christopher Blattman, we feature the SOC ACE project in general: https://twitter.com/cblatts/status/1524408240301248512?s=20

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