Kingpin approaches to fighting crime and community violence: Evidence from Mexico's drug war

Jason Lindo and María Padilla-Romo

Journal of Health Economics, 2018, vol. 58, issue C, 253-268

Abstract: This study considers the effects of the kingpin strategy, an approach to fighting organized crime in which law-enforcement efforts focus on capturing the leaders of criminal organizations, on community violence in the context of Mexico's drug war. Newly constructed historical data on drug-trafficking organizations’ areas of operation at the municipality level and monthly homicide data allow us to control for a rich set of fixed effects and to leverage variation in the timing of kingpin captures to estimate their effects. This analysis indicates that kingpin captures cause large and sustained increases to the homicide rate in the municipality of capture and smaller but significant effects on other municipalities where the kingpin's organization has a presence, supporting the notion that removing kingpins can have destabilizing effects throughout an organization that are accompanied by escalations in violence. We also find reductions in homicides in municipalities surrounding the municipality where kingpins are captured.

Keywords: Violence; Crime; Kingpin; Mexico; Drugs; Cartels (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I18 K42 O12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Kingpin Approaches to Fighting Crime and Community Violence: Evidence from Mexico's Drug War (2015)
Working Paper: Kingpin Approaches to Fighting Crime and Community Violence: Evidence from Mexico's Drug War (2015)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jhecon:v:58:y:2018:i:c:p:253-268

DOI: 10.1016/j.jhealeco.2018.02.002

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