The Problems and Promises of Research on Deaths Due to Legal Intervention in Latin America

Abstract

This research note aims to answer the following questions: (a) How do Latin American authorities systematize and report data regarding deaths due to legal intervention? (b) To what extent is this information public and available? (c) Can this information help to better understand and compare regional patterns of lethal violence perpetrated by the State? Research findings suggest that data regarding deaths due to legal intervention are still an unreliable source of information, thereby hampering any cross-national comparison of how lethal violence is exercised by the State in Latin America.

Keywords

deaths due to legal intervention State use of deadly force distribution of violence cross-national comparison Latin America

Introduction

The power and the capacity of the State to decide who may live and who must die have been understood as the ultimate expression of sovereignty (Mbembe, 2003). In spite of this, at least in Latin America, there is a dearth of reliable empirical data on how such state-sponsored killings are committed. In other words, as Klinger (2012) put it, we have no sound empirically grounded idea of how many people across the Latin American region are shot by armed State actors or how many are struck by bullets bought with public monies.

This research note gives a preliminary answer to those questions by analyzing how Latin American authorities have systematized and published data regarding deaths due to legal intervention over the last decade. According to the International Classification of Diseases, “deaths due to legal intervention” are

those deaths caused by injuries inflicted by the police or other law-enforcement agencies, including military personnel on duty, in the course of arresting or attempting to arrest lawbreakers, suppressing disturbances, maintaining order, and other legal actions, regardless of their legality. (Sikora & Mulvihill, 2002; World Health Organization [WHO], 1977, 2004)

Data regarding deaths due to legal intervention have a dual and often ambiguous role in the study of a State’s use of deadly force. For scholars focused on the comparative study of mortality due to violent causes, data regarding deaths due to legal intervention represent “one of the main and most systematic sources of information, for explaining the patterns of State use of deadly force, over time” (Yunes & Rajs, 1994, pp. 92-93). However, some studies analyzing the problems of the available homicide data have found that “legal intervention” is, in practice, equivalent to “justifiable homicide” committed by the police or other law-enforcement agencies (Loftin, Wiersema, McDowall, & Dobrin, 2003; Rand, 1997). Furthermore, according to Klinger (2012), “academics have long noted the weakness of the ‘deaths by legal intervention’ data, as an indicator of citizens’ deaths at the hands of police officers” (pp. 79-80).

In the particular case of Latin America, the paucity of such data may be the result of the traditional lack of reliable information systems in the region, which have been characterized as non-existent, fragmented, or of poor quality (Briceño-León, 2008). However, some studies on the comparative incidence of violence (Marshall & Block, 2004) have found that this situation has improved recently elsewhere, and new efforts toward the development and improvement of violence and injury surveillance systems have yielded more reliable information in Latin America. As Ríos-Figueroa (2012) has pointed out, the political transformations that have taken place throughout Latin America over the last 30 years have also contributed to generating a wealth of data and information that is now available, making it possible to “systematically test existing hypotheses, and numerous theoretical questions and empirical puzzles” (p. 317).

One such empirical puzzle is seen in the elevated homicide rate in Latin America, which is higher than that of other regions in the world. According to the latest WHO data on homicide, 2011 rates per 100,000 persons indicate that the Latin America/Caribbean and African regions were the most affected. As the most violent regions in the world, countries in Latin America and the Caribbean have an average of 16.8 homicides per 100,000 persons. This regional average represents a 19-fold difference compared with that of the lowest region, Oceania; an 8-fold difference with Europe; and a 4-fold difference with homicide rates observed in the United States and Canada (Cervantes, Meneses, & Quintana, 2013).

Some authors have tried to explain this high homicide rate in Latin America by highlighting a cultural pattern that values honor and masculinity to extreme levels—machismo—and which triggers deadly encounters (Briceño-León, 2008; Neapolitan, 1994). Meanwhile, other authors, most notably Chon (2011), have established that the social inequality, poverty, discrimination, paramilitary activity, and alcohol abuse, all of which are common in the region, may well represent additional variables that explain this elevated homicide rate. The inclusion of data regarding deaths due to legal intervention may represent a particular way of understanding how lethal violence is also generated by the State in response to the social and civil disorder that some Latin American countries are experiencing.

As noted by Marshall and Block (2004), “Comparative incidence of violence has been a central issue in cross-national theory and research for several decades” (p. 267). Marshall, Marshall, and Ren (2009) point out that further complicating the situation is the fact that violence rates are usually constructed on a one-dimensional definition of violence: as an interpersonal interaction. However, from a public health and human rights perspective, it has been widely noted that violence is not only an interpersonal situation but also a collective process made up of larger groups such as States, organized political groups, militia groups, or terrorist organizations (Marshall et al., 2009; WHO, 2002).

This collective nature of lethal violence has surfaced several times in contemporary Latin American history. As Meneses and Fondevila (2014) have stated,

several studies developed in Latin America suggest that States have traditionally used deadly force as a means to design exceptional policies to enhance racial inequality (Cano, 2010), to banish electoral competition (Eisenstadt, 2004; Schatz, 2008) or to control certain criminal activities, such as drug-trafficking (Gutiérrez, 2001). (pp. 3-4)

Taking these considerations as a point of departure, this research note seeks to answer the following questions: (a) How do Latin American health authorities systematize and report data regarding deaths due to legal intervention? (b) To what extent is this information public and available? (c) Can this information help to better understand and compare regional patterns of collective violence perpetrated by the State?

Data and Method

This research note includes data on deaths due to legal intervention from a total of eight Latin American countries. The time frame observed was from 1979 to 2011, or 33 years for each country (n = 264). However, of the eight countries, only Brazil has systematically reported information regarding deaths due to legal intervention since 1979 (Min. 1; Max. 756; Mean 164). Mexico was the next country with the most information available, with 25 observed years (hereinafter OY) since 1979 (Min. 4; Max. 74; Mean 19), followed by Venezuela (OY = 16; Min. 105; Max. 576; Mean 251), Argentina (OY = 13; Min. 2; Max. 82; Mean 29), and Colombia (OY = 14; Min. 159; Max. 868; Mean 445). Figure 1 summarizes these patterns (see also Appendix).

Figure 1.

Patterns of deaths due to legal intervention in Latin America (1995-2011).

The country with the most easily accessible information is Brazil. The Brazilian Ministry of Health has a webpage with records of deaths due to legal intervention categorized by the type of weapon, place and time of the incident, sex, age, and level of schooling. Information from the rest of the countries included in this study is presented haphazardly. In most cases, data on deaths due to legal intervention are incomplete and scattered. The most complete records are found in the mortality databases generated by official health agencies, unlike those of national statistics institutions that usually offer less information. In the remaining Latin American countries, the statistical yearbooks that record population mortality do not include the WHO categories from versions 9 and 10 of the International Classification of Diseases for the different forms of deaths due to legal intervention that take place in each country. The map in Figure 2 summarizes this information.

Figure 2.

Countries with records of deaths due to legal intervention.

The Brazilian and Mexican databases were accessed online, as were the statistical yearbooks on deaths due to legal intervention for Colombia, Costa Rica, Peru, and Venezuela. The remaining countries do not have information on this topic. A request for this information was sent via email to the corresponding statistics institutions of the countries that did not have this information available online. Only the Argentinian Dirección de Estadística e Información de Salud [Bureau of Statistics and Health Information] responded and offered the research team an interview. This interview was held in 2012 and the physical databases at the institution were accessed along with the records on deaths due to legal intervention.

Guatemala responded to the request for information, explaining that there were no records of that nature under those specific WHO headings. In the case of Honduras, the institution that records these data belongs to the Ministry of Security, which refused us access. The Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Honduras—Instituto Universitario en Democracia Paz y Seguridad (IUDPAS; National Autonomous University of Honduras—University Institute for Democracy, Peace, and Security) offered us an interview during which the staff provided the data on Honduras presented in this study. The corresponding institutions in the other countries did not respond to the requests for information.

The information obtained from Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico was presented on Excel spreadsheets. Information from Honduras was received in the form of aggregated tables. Information on the mortality rates in the other countries was taken from each country’s statistical yearbook. There are two types of institutions in Latin America that record deaths due to legal intervention: health institutions and statistics agencies. The information from databases or statistical yearbooks generated by health institutions was much more complete than that produced by statistics agencies (which were separate from the health sector) in the countries that contributed information.

On the Promises of Research on Deaths Due to Legal Intervention in Latin America

Research on State use of deadly force has shown that discussion and quantification of the issue are encouraged when a particular social process is precipitated by killings of citizens by the State (Fyfe, 1982). The cases of Mexico, Colombia, and Venezuela seem to confirm this premise. For instance, it is interesting to note in Figure 1 that Colombia started reporting deaths due to legal intervention in 1998, right in the middle of its well-known “war on drugs and terrorism” (Gutiérrez, 2001). Similarly, Mexico resumed reporting information on deaths due to legal intervention in 2004, just 1 year before the government’s official declaration of the “war against organized crime,” which resulted in the deployment of more than 50,000 soldiers along with more than 2,200 separate federal, state, and municipal police forces to take part in large-scale counternarcotics operations across the nation (Human Rights Watch, 2011). Although none of these cases proves causality between a massive deployment of State armed actors and the authorities’ willingness to quantify and report deaths due to legal intervention, these findings seem consistent with the literature, which indicates that “war has devastating health effects on civilians” (Reza, Mercy, & Krug, 2001).

The literature also shows that the number of deaths due to legal intervention is similar for both males and females (Reza et al., 2001). Thus, it seems interesting to analyze whether the data regarding deaths due to legal intervention in Latin America follow this pattern. As Figure 3 indicates, female deaths due to legal intervention represent 8% of the total deaths reported between 2000 and 2010 in five countries: Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, and Venezuela.

Figure 3.

Female deaths due to legal intervention in Latin America (2000-2010).

The information presented in Figure 3 thus questions the hypothesis that the number of deaths due to legal intervention is similar for females and males, at least in Latin American. However, these data should be analyzed cautiously, as the Mexican records heavily influence them. If we exclude the Mexican data, the number of women who died due to legal intervention decreases from 8% to 3%. As previous research has noted (Meneses & Fondevila, 2014), females represent 42% of the total deaths caused by legal intervention in Mexico from 2004 to 2010 (n = 317), thereby reflecting an important increase in the trend of this particular type of death:

[In Mexico] female deaths of this type went from an average of 0.72 per year during 1970–1996 to 18.85 from 2004 to 2010; whereas, male deaths went from 7.8 between 1979 and 1996 to 26.4 between 2004 and 2010. In comparative terms, from 1979 to 1996, an average of 0.092 women died by legal intervention for each male; whereas, during 2004–2010, the ratio of female deaths to those of males was 0.71. (Meneses & Fondevila, 2014, p. 8)

In Colombia, female victims made up 8% of the total deaths due to legal intervention between 2000 and 2010. In this case, from 2000 to 2010, an average of 0.09 women died by legal intervention for each male, while in the rest of the countries analyzed—excluding Mexico—the rate was about 0.01 for the same time frame. As a set, these data suggest that deaths due to legal intervention are unevenly distributed in the entire region, thereby affecting particular populations in each case.

Accordingly, it is also interesting to note that previous studies on this issue in Brazil have found that “data from Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo reveal that among lethal victims of police intervention the proportion of blacks and mulattos is higher than their respective share in the population” (Cano, 2010, p. 31). This reinforces the hypothesis suggesting that State use of deadly force disproportionately affects specific populations in each Latin American country. Here it seems that the patterns of deaths due to legal intervention, or at least the disposition of the authorities to report this type of murder, are influenced by particular cultural and social contexts in which State armed actors again and again systematically identify specific populations against whom they exercise violence.

In the case of Mexico, for instance,

recent investigations have shown that it is more frequent for women to be the victims of aggressions and threats of a sexual type than men, when confronting a legal authority (Azaola, 2003). Within the current context of the war against organized crime, this sort of violence seems to increase in relation to women’s involvement in illegal activities. (Meneses & Fondevila, 2014, p. 4)

In the same vein, research regarding State use of deadly force in Brazil has argued that agencies involved in social control show an obvious and systematic tendency to enhance racial bias, wherein Blacks and mulattos tend to be overrepresented, not only in statistics on crime and deviance but also in data regarding subjects killed by the State (Cano, 2010).

The final question we addressed was what is the proportion of deaths due to legal intervention within the patterns of violent deaths experienced in the region? As shown in Figure 4, of the countries analyzed, Honduras has the highest rate of deaths due to legal intervention per 100, 000 inhabitants (1.012), followed by Venezuela (0.649), Colombia (0.553), and Brazil (0.396).

Figure 4.

Rates of deaths due to legal intervention and homicide.

However, when comparing the rate of deaths due to legal intervention with the number of homicides registered in each country, Brazil has the highest rate; 18.45 subjects died due to legal intervention for every 1,000 registered homicides, followed by Colombia (16.95), Venezuela (14.30), and Honduras (11.82). As a set, this information seems to indicate that State use of deadly force is not an isolated phenomenon, but a social dynamic inserted into a particular context in which lethal violence is commonly exercised by both the citizenry and the State.

On the Problems of Research on Deaths Due to Legal Intervention in Latin America

Comparative research on deaths due to legal intervention in Latin America may be useful to explore some hypotheses on the patterns of violence and State use of deadly force. In particular, the information presented here may suggest that in the entire region (a) the quantification of deaths due to legal intervention may be encouraged when a particular social process—such as the declaration of a war against organized crime—is coupled with a massive deployment of State armed actors within a given society; (b) although State use of deadly force is unevenly distributed in the region, it may affect particular populations in each Latin American country; and (c) in Latin America, deadly force by State actors does not seem to be an isolated phenomenon but a social dynamic inserted into a particular context in which lethal violence is commonly exercised by both private and the State armed actors.

Some scholars have long observed the weakness of “deaths by legal intervention” data as an indicator of citizens’ death at the hands of State armed actors. Therefore, it seems important to determine whether data regarding deaths due to legal intervention in Latin America lack reliability. To answer this question, we reviewed previous studies that attempted to illustrate patterns of State use of deadly force in Mexico and Brazil.

In the particular case of Brazil, official data regarding “civis suspeitos mortos em confronto com a policia no Rio de Janeiro” [Civilians killed in police confrontations in Rio de Janeiro] considerably exceed the number of deaths due to legal intervention in the entire country, as reported by the Brazilian Health authorities to the entire country. It was not until 2003 that the data reported by the Brazilian Ministry of Justice (Misse, 2011) showed there were 1,509 more individuals killed by the State in Rio de Janeiro alone than the number of such deaths nationwide as reported by the Brazilian Ministry of Health (see Appendix).

Moreover, the Brazilian situation does not seem to be an isolated case. A similar absence of correspondence appears in the case of Mexico. In Mexico, official information regarding patterns of State use of deadly force indicates that the Mexican Army killed a total of 1,016 subjects just between 2008 and 2010 (Silva, Pérez, & Gutiérrez, 2012); that is to say, a total of 905 more subjects killed by the State than that reported as deaths due to legal intervention by the Mexican Health Authorities (n = 111) for the same time frame (see Appendix).

Of course, it is difficult to explain the reasons behind this absence of correspondence. However, this lack of reliability may be reflecting the lack of regulation and public policies aimed at controlling State use of deadly force in the region. Indeed, as the information in Table 1 indicates, laws regulating the use of force in Latin America were non-existent before 2008, when a specific regulation on this issue was published in Mexico City. Furthermore, other countries like Argentina and Colombia still lack formal laws and rely instead on handbooks to guide State use of force.

Table 1.

Use of Force Rules in Latin America.

Country	Use of force rules	Date of enactment
Argentina	http://www.minseg.gob.ar:8080/resoluci%C3%B3n-9332012	November 15, 2012
Brazil	https://www.unodc.org/documents/lpo-brazil//noticias/2011/01-janeiro/03012011_Portaria_uso_da_forca.pdf	January 03, 2011
Colombia	http://www.policia.edu.co/documentos/doctrina/manuales_de_consulta/107938_manual%20Atencion%20Multi%2011_12_09.pdf	December 11, 2009
Costa Rica		—
Honduras		—
Mexico City	http://www.aldf.gob.mx/archivo-f9c89a9ff39e8126800e6180ee86e224.pdf	April 22, 2008
Peru	http://www.gacetajuridica.com.pe/boletin-nvnet/Setiembre2010/boletin01-09.html	September 01, 2010
Venezuela	http://www.tsj.gov.ve/gaceta/Marzo/1932010/1932010.pdf	March 19, 2010

Discussion and Conclusion

The most noteworthy observation that can be drawn from the data presented is the lack of quality, which arises from obvious errors, deficiencies, and inconsistencies. Evidently, these various States do not systematically adhere to the WHO categories for recording deaths due to legal intervention. At the same time, under normal circumstances (excluding war or major, violent social and political upheaval), it is very difficult to hide the death of a person, for instance, in a confrontation with the police. In this sense, it is likely that deaths due to legal intervention are actually recorded as regular homicides; that is to say, they have been reduced to a violent form of interaction between individuals and turned into a common crime. It is also possible that the different public security organizations do not record their own deaths due to legal intervention because they are unaware of the need to keep such records or because they are simply indifferent. This also reflects the lack of a public policy aimed at providing an accurate and precise record of deaths due to legal intervention.

The lack of reliable information suggests seven common characteristics. First, the patterns of deaths due to legal intervention go hand in hand with levels of social conflict. In countries that show a significant increase in the frequency of deaths due to legal intervention, higher levels of social violence can also be found. Generally speaking, an increase in the national homicide rate corresponds to an increase in deaths due to legal intervention. One unique case is that of Colombia, which registered a 59% increase in deaths due to legal intervention between 2004 and 2007. This appears to be directly related to greater activity of State armed forces against the insurgent group known as “Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia” (FARC) [Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia]. In this case, it seems that although this revolutionary group has operated in Colombia since 1964, the State only began to officially record deaths due to legal intervention in 1998.

Second, some countries begin to record deaths due to legal intervention data specifically when the level of social conflict increases. This probably occurs to justify conflict-related deaths (which are not always political, that is, related to forms of conventional political dissidence) and provide public opinion with figures that are more favorable than those presented by the national or international media or by the political opposition. States have a powerful incentive to report the number of deaths resulting from state violence inaccurately and thus deter scrutiny from the public or human rights groups while whitewashing its own abuses of power.

An interesting case is that of Mexico, which on initiating its so-called “war on drugs” began to officially record the deaths occurring during confrontations between the armed forces and federal police on one side and armed groups on the other. However, these deaths were not classified as deaths due to legal intervention. This makes it necessary to keep two sets of records: one by the country’s presidency and the other by the country’s Ministry of Health. Although Ministry of Health records shows an increase in the number of deaths due to legal intervention, it is still far from being consistent with the fs provided by the country’s own presidency.

Third, an important factor for such an analysis is that the records on deaths due to legal intervention appear to indicate that violence disproportionately afflicts certain social groups, as in the case of women in Mexico or Blacks and mulattos in Brazil. This irregular distribution of violence at the hands of the State may indicate that deaths due to legal intervention reflect a well-established model of victimization of those social groups. In countries with cultural patterns of discrimination toward certain vulnerable groups, deaths due to legal intervention merge with the victimization of these social sectors.

Fourth, in some countries like Brazil or Venezuela, there are deaths due to legal intervention related to situations of war, even though these countries have never officially declared being involved in a war of any kind. In comparison, countries like Colombia that have experienced several decades of guerrilla conflict during which vast sections of national territory were controlled by a revolutionary army, State forces do not record any deaths due to legal intervention associated with situations of war. This case is similar to that of Argentina, which experienced situations of confrontations between the national army and guerrilla forces in the 1970s and yet did not officially record any deaths due to legal intervention linked to these circumstances.

Fifth, national public health authorities generally keep better records than the respective statistics institutions of each country. This seems to suggest that health ministries are the more neutral institutions or have a better tradition of recording population mortality. Another possible explanation is that these institutions gather the information directly from forensic offices, which are in charge of keeping such records and are officially within their own scope.

Sixth, it should be noted that despite new efforts in recent years toward developing and improving violence and injury surveillance systems, in addition to the public policies drafted on the topic (Briceño-León, 2008; Ríos-Figueroa, 2012), there has been no improvement in the recording of deaths due to legal intervention in Latin America. The data on deaths due to legal intervention—which reflect the State’s behavior in a key area: the use of public force against people—is still a gray area in the acts carried out by the governments of the region, even though these acts define characteristics of the legality and legitimacy of Latin American States.

Finally, future studies in this area should analyze whether there is a relationship between increased legislation on the use of force and its actual impact on the control of the police and especially on deaths due to legal intervention. If there were changes, such as a significant difference in the number of deaths due to legal intervention in the countries studied, it could imply that these levels were related to a lack of control and monitoring of the use of force by police or the State’s inability to control it. However, as part of the scheme of State armed actors’ involvement in political and social issues, another avenue of study should be related to the democratization processes in the region and the increasing demand vocalized by civil society and public opinion for greater control over the police, as reflected in the emergence of related legislation in recent years.

Footnotes

Appendix

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Author Biographies

Gustavo Fondevila is professor-researcher at the Faculty of Law at the Center for Economic Research and Teaching (CIDE) - Mexico. He specializes on police culture, police informants and the empirical study of police institutions.

Rodrigo Meneses Reyes is professor-researcher at the faculty of Law at the Center for Economic Research and Teaching (CIDE) - Mexico. He specializes on urban regulation, the empirical study of legal institutions and the way in which law and space shape each other.

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