In two new studies, Sociology faculty and Marienthal Professor Dr. William Pridemore and collaborators led by Guillermo Escaño of Villanova University found that governments' typical responses to violence (sending more police, deploying the military, increasing arrests, and imposing harsher penalties) often led to more violence, instead of less.

The first study, published in “The British Journal of Criminology,” found that El Salvador's "iron fist" anti-gang policies were associated with substantially higher homicide rates than periods when the government pursued negotiated truces. The second study, published in “Journal of Quantitative Criminology,” found that military anti-cartel operations in Mexico led to an increase in homicide rates.

Read more about these studies and their methodologies in an article by Joy Pope