Fear of crime

According to this approach, more than the actual levels of crime or violence affecting a country or a given locality, the levels of fear and insecurity experienced by citizens are what can help predict their approval and exercise of extralegal violence. Angelina Snodgrass Godoy (Reference Godoy2004) offers this explanation when analyzing the recent increase in lynching violence in Latin America. In particular, she explains that in Guatemala lynchings are not concentrated in those areas with reportedly higher crime rates (i.e., they occur with more frequency in the western highlands than in the capital), and thus cannot be interpreted as a direct reaction to higher levels of crime. Furthermore, she argues that lynchings are organized in response to minor property crimes as opposed to those crimes that account for the higher levels of violence and crime in the country, such as organized crime. The same can be said of other scenarios such as Mexico, where lynchings are mainly organized as a response to petty robberies rather than to crimes linked to drug trafficking or kidnapping (Reference Molzahn, Rios and ShirkMolzahn, Rios, and Shirk 2012; Reference Rodríguez GuillénRodríguez Guillén 2012). In other words, extralegal violence is driven by citizens’ perceptions and subjective experiences, not only—or necessarily—by actual levels of crime.

In a similar line, Hume (Reference Hume2004, Reference Hume2007) has studied how local perceptions of crime in El Salvador tend to focus on the violence perpetrated by gang members, whereas people disregard other sources of insecurity such as intrafamily and intimate partner violence, even when the latter two constitute a greater cause of violent deaths in certain neighborhoods. Thus youth gangs have become the primary target for extralegal uses of violence in the country, manifested either in the police abusing their use of force or in targeted assassinations carried out by social cleansing groups and vigilante organizations. Arias and Marston (Reference Arias, Marston, Santamaría and Carey2017) identify a similar dynamic in Rio de Janeiro and Kingston, Jamaica. According to these authors, public perceptions of crime have centered on gangs operating in marginalized neighbors in both these cities, whereas other offenses, such as the use of death squads by political elites, have been largely ignored by the media. As explained by Dammert and Malone (Reference Dammert and Malone2003) in the context of Chile, fear of crime is mediated by several social factors, including unemployment, poverty, trust in institutions, community participation, and social identity characteristics, all of which go beyond actual levels of insecurity. Krause (Reference Krause2014) likewise found that exposure to crime news in Guatemala influenced support for vigilantism by lowering citizen trust in government institutions.

According to Caldeira and Holston (Reference Caldeira and Holston1999), fear of crime may increase citizens’ support for self-help justice such as lynching and vigilante groups, but it may also create incentives encouraging the use of extralegal violence by state actors. As they express it, this reaction may seem paradoxical, as “people usually want the police—whom they fear and accuse of being violent—to be violent ‘toward the side that deserves it,’ even though they know that the police routinely aggrieve innocent people” (Reference Caldeira and HolstonCaldeira and Holston 1999, 712). This reality is also present in countries such as the Dominican Republic, where citizens consistently report high levels of distrust toward the police for their alleged corruption and arbitrariness, but nevertheless approve or tolerate bending the law to capture criminals (Reference BobeaBobea 2011).Footnote ¹

Social inequality and economic distress

Another strand of the literature emphasizes economic factors behind citizens’ approval of extralegal violence. It particularly focuses on the existing levels of social and economic inequality in Latin America as a primary driver of vigilante justice. In Bolivia, Goldstein (Reference Goldstein2004) has argued that, in a context where the provision of security has become privatized and defined according to class lines, lynching and self-help justice have come to be seen as a legitimate means to respond to crimes such as robbery, kidnapping, and rape. This is particularly true in those marginalized communities that have traditionally been excluded from the criminal justice system and that lack the resources to access alternative mechanisms of private security such as gated communities and private guards.

Binford (Reference Binford1999) offers a similar explanation in the context of Mexico. He explains that lynching and support for vigilantism can be read as a direct consequence of the structural adjustments implemented in Mexico, which generated greater levels of economic exclusion and weakened the legitimacy of the security and justice institutions. Lynching and other more organized forms of vigilantism are thus interpreted as a reaction articulated by marginalized communities who respond to the social and political abandonment of the state by taking justice into their hands. As explained by Binford, lynching reproduces violence and distrust in communities that are already negatively affected by their social and economic vulnerability and has thus contributed to the further criminalization and policing of areas that are identified as ungovernable spaces. More recently, Phillips (Reference Phillips2017) found empirical evidence that inequality spurs vigilantism, as economically disadvantaged populations feel relatively deprived of security compared to their wealthier neighbors who enjoy access to private security and even adequate public security.

The use of vigilantism and other illegal forms of self-help justice is certainly not exclusive to marginalized or impoverished communities, as political and economic elites have also exercised and authorized it. As several authors have asserted (Reference Arias, Goldstein, Arias and GoldsteinArias and Goldstein 2010; Reference Benson, Fischer and ThomasBenson, Fischer, and Thomas 2008; Reference CostaCosta 2011), in Latin America violence has served to perpetuate a given social and economic order as well as an instrument for overcoming the problems of exclusion that the system has generated. In light of this interpretation, elite groups’ use of extralegal violence can be understood as an instrument to protect or secure their particular interests at a given time. Social cleansing groups—associations of armed individuals with the purpose of eliminating people considered “undesirable”—who operate in some Latin American countries have been linked to public officials and economic elites who identify certain forms of crime as an obstacle or as a destabilizing force that needs to be controlled and possibly eliminated (Reference HugginsHuggins 1997; Reference WaldmannWaldmann 2006; Reference ZilbergZilberg 2007). In the Mexican state of Michoacán, the surge in self-defense groups since 2012 has been attributed to large landowners and farmers whose economic interests are being affected by the extortions and kidnappings carried out by drug-trafficking organizations operating in the area and who thus decided to confront and expel these groups from their communities. In Brazil, the use of private security guards and police brutality to control crime has been analyzed in light of an urban upper class that is willing to earn more security even at the cost of human rights and democratic values (Reference CaldeiraCaldeira 2001). In summary, according to this interpretation, social inequality is not only expressed in marginalized groups’ approval or exercise of extralegal violence; it may also manifest itself in elites’ willingness to bend the law and use illegal forms of punishment to secure their interest and economic privilege.

Institutional weaknesses

A third explanation of citizens’ support for extralegal violence has focused on the weaknesses and challenges affecting Latin America’s justice and security apparatus. Accordingly, this body of literature has highlighted the impact that high levels of impunity and corruption have had on the legitimacy and efficacy of these institutions and citizen approval of alternative mechanisms of security provision (Reference CarrerasCarreras 2013; Reference CruzCruz 2011; Reference Koonings, Kruijt, Koonings and KruijtKoonings and Kruijt 2004a; Reference UngarUngar 2013). Ungar (Reference Ungar2007), for instance, has argued that private mechanisms of security provision, including lynching but also private guards, gated communities, and so-called neighborhood patrols, are linked to Latin American states’ failure to reform their security institutions. Among other things, this failure is related to the volatility and rotation characterizing security bureaucracies as well as with the pressure experienced by democratically elected governments that aim to reduce crime and violence during their time in office (Reference Saín, Koonings and KruijtSaín 2006; Reference UngarUngar 2007).

For Davis (Reference Davis2006), democratization has had unintended consequences for the rule of law and has paradoxically contributed to the emergence and reproduction of self-help mechanisms of justice. In referring to the Mexican context, she argues that support for extralegal violence may be considered a reaction to the bureaucratic impasse, lack of coordination, and inefficacy generated by the decentralization and democratization of decision making in Mexico. Along the same lines, Pearce (Reference Pearce2010) contends that democratization in Latin America has led to the authorization and legitimation of extralegal uses of violence, as governments build their authority on citizens’ demands for more security and their “successful” battles and encounters with alleged criminal actors. Moreover, because democratic transitions reproduced the logic of social and economic exclusion that characterized Latin American’s authoritarian past, people do view security not as a public good but as an instrument to exclude the many and protect the few.

Whitehead (Reference Whitehead, Bergman and Whitehead2009) adds that citizen’s distrust in the state capacity or willingness to protect citizens has created the conditions for vigilantism and other forms of “rough” justice. Citizens regard extralegal uses of violence as a corrective to the state’s incapacity to deliver justice and to exercise an effective form of punishment against alleged criminals. By the same token, Azaola (Reference Azaola2004) explains that, in Mexico, citizens’ distrust toward security officials, and particularly members of the police force, increases their willingness to bend the law to assert their sense of safety. Zizumbo-Colunga (Reference Zizumbo-Colunga2015) further expands this argument by explaining that support for vigilantism results from both citizen distrust toward state authorities and the presence of greater levels of interpersonal trust. It is important to highlight that the emphasis of this literature is not necessarily on the state’s lack of presence in given areas but on the legitimacy of these public institutions in a given context. This may explain why in countries such as Bolivia, Guatemala, and Mexico there have been attacks against police officers or police stations by mobs trying to take justice into their own hands even when the police have apparently done their job by capturing a suspect.

This article intends to test these theories using Latin Americans’ views about the use of different forms of extralegal violence. Most research referenced in the previous pages has focused on very valuable ethnographic work that, nonetheless, concentrates on specific countries. However, what about the overall region? Is it possible to extrapolate these theories to the hemisphere given that informal violence seems to have spread out to different subregional contexts and countries?

The fear-of-crime model

Do victimization and perceptions of insecurity augment attitudes toward the justification of violence? In predicting attitudinal response, we included individual measures of victimization as collected by the AmericasBarometer, as well as perceptions of insecurity, and whether people see drug-trafficking organizations, youth gangs, or common crime as the main threat to their security. Details on question wording and index construction for all variables can be found in the appendix. We recoded all these variables in values running from 0 to 100 to standardize the interpretation. We also controlled for gender, age group, levels of education, area of residence (urban versus rural), and income measured as quintiles of family income. Because exposure to news can influence both fears of crime and attitudes toward the use of violence (Reference Funk, Elliott, Urman, Flores and MockFunk et al. 1999; Reference KrauseKrause 2014), we added the variable of individual exposure to news media as control. In the fear model, we tapped the country context by adding homicide rates for the year 2011. Following the notion that fear of crime is conducive to approving attitudes toward violence (Reference Briceño-León and ZubillagaBriceño-León and Zubillaga 2002; Reference GodoyGodoy 2004), we expect that people victimized and frightened by crime and people living in environments ridden with criminality will tend to support more the use of extralegal violence than in other contexts.

Model 1 shows the results for the fear of crime argument. As expected, we can see that individuals who have been victimized and alarmed by crime are significantly more likely to exhibit approving opinions toward the use of extralegal violence. Results also show that people who consider youth gangs and drug-trafficking organizations main security threats tend to support the utilization of illegal violence. Likewise, the results of the fear-of-crime model show that, at the personal level, people who believe that the situation of security has worsened in the country tend to support violence more than individuals who think otherwise. All these relationships are statistically significant, and personal victimization has, in comparison, the largest effect of these variables on the probability to support extralegal behavior (coeff. = 0.043).Footnote ⁶

Results also indicate that being male, young, with no higher education, and low family income significantly increase the probability of expressing favorable attitudes toward the use of violence.Footnote ⁷ Also, exposure to news turned out to be significant, although with a negative sign, meaning that people less exposed to news media are more likely to favor violence. At the contextual level, homicide rates are positively and significantly related to support for violence. People who in 2012 lived in countries with reported higher murder rates are more likely to view favorably the use of extralegal violence than are people who live in societies with a lower homicide rate. These findings provide support for the argument that the increase in illegal acts of violence, such as social cleansing and lynching, is related to the moral panic generated by cumulative perceptions of crime. Nevertheless, the findings refute the thesis that perceptions are more important than actual events of crime when explaining support for vigilantism and extralegal violence. In fact, according to the data, both perceptions and actual victimization independently affect disposition to support violent acts. In addition, the model demonstrates that certain perceived threats (youth gangs and criminal organizations) are particularly critical in shaping attitudinal responses.

The model of economic distress

Socioeconomic explanations of the prevalence of extralegal violence contend that greater social exclusion and economic scarcities set the conditions for the use of extralegal violence against vulnerable and disadvantaged groups (Reference PhillipsPhillips 2017). Thus, people will support the use of extralegal violence in environments where they compete for resources and where inequality and exclusion mark social relations and access to security (Reference Koonings, Kruijt, Koonings and KruijtKoonings and Kruijt 2007). To test this line of reasoning at the individual level, we pay attention to the dummy variables created to control by age, education, and income, then compare their stance on the use of extralegal violence. We do this expecting that groups that are usually in a position of social and economic disadvantage will score higher in our variable of support for violence than better-off citizens. In addition, using four items on economic conditions, we added two economy-related variables: one on perceptions of the current economic situation and the other on views of the economy in comparison with the previous year. At the contextual level, we incorporated indicators of per capita gross domestic product per capita and the Gini inequality index per country.

The importance of economic factors on attitudes toward the use of violence can be seen in Model 2. People who perceived that the financial situation at the individual and national level is in bad shape were more likely to support extralegal violence than people who viewed the economy as positive. Likewise, respondents who perceived that the economy had worsened in the previous year (retrospective perception of the economy) tended to favor violence. Interestingly, the findings confirm that males are more likely to support extralegal violence than females. They also corroborate that extralegal violence is viewed less favorably as people age, and that Latin American citizens with a college education tend to endorse extralegal violence less frequently than the rest of the population. Also, respondents with less income (quintile 1) are more likely to favor violence than are those in quintiles 2–5.Footnote ⁸

At the contextual level, attitudes supporting the use of violence are more prevalent in the poorest countries of the region. Holding all other variables constant, there is a significant correlation between economic situation (measured in this case by per capita GDP) and support for extralegal violence. There is also a statistically significant relation with the Human Development Index (HDI) (not shown here), which points to the importance of countries’ social development on the configuration of attitudes toward violence. However, the Gini index of income inequality, though having a positive sign, did not return any statistically significant relation with our attitudinal measure toward violence. In other words, our findings do not provide evidence that income inequality in countries is associated with citizen support for extralegal violence.

The institutional-weakness or failed-state model

Prevalent explanations about the rise of different forms of extralegal violence in the region revolve around the idea of institutional weakness and states’ inability to respond to their citizens (Reference Bergman, Whitehead, Bergman and WhiteheadBergman and Whitehead 2009; Reference DavisDavis 2006; Reference Fruhling, Fruhling, Tulchin and GoldingFruhling 2003). Although these explanations intersect with those about insecurity and fear of crime, the former emphasize the institutional framework that not only allows alternative forms of violence to erupt but also encourages them. Following Easton’s (Reference Easton1975) classification of political support, we included some independent variables that tap into diffuse and specific institutional legitimacy. First, at the individual level, we added Seligson’s (Reference Seligson2000) measure of people’s diffuse support for the political system. This index comprises six different items in the AmericasBarometer that collect views on the overall institutions of the political system (see the appendix for a detailed description). Also, following Zizumbo-Colunga (Reference Zizumbo-Colunga2015), we created a variable that accounts for specific support for incumbent governments; this variable also comprises items that inquire about government performance in creating jobs, fighting poverty, and tackling crime. We expect that low marks on the scales of diffuse and specific political support are associated with high levels of support for violence, an indication of people resorting to private violence in response to the state’s perceived ineffectiveness.

Additionally, anticipating that people may assess government’s efficacy by looking at their public services, we added a variable that integrated people’s satisfaction in government’s services such as public schools, health care, and public works. Also, this variable may work as a proxy of the state’s reach. Finally, at the individual level, we introduced a variable that evaluates the frequency with which people reach out to the different government agencies for help. We hypothesize that people closer to government institutions are less likely to approve the use of violence to solve conflicts.

At the country level, we tested several variables to evaluate the institutional thesis. First, we used the rate of police officers per population for each country, as we expect that more police presence may be related to less support for violent self-help actions. Second, we utilized two different indexes of countries’ institutional development: the Fund for Peace’s 2012 Fragile State Index and the Economist Intelligence Unit’s 2012 index of democracy. We ran separate mixed models for each of the countries’ institutional strength variables, but in Table 2 we show only the results of the Fragile State Index.

Model 3 shows that, at the contextual level, people living in nations with high scores of institutional fragility, as measured by the Fragile State Index, are more likely to express more favorable attitudes toward the use of extralegal violence. These results are consistent with other institutional measures. When we replaced the contextual variable of fragile states with the Economist’s index of democracy, we found that people living in democratic nations tend to approve extralegal violence less often. The data suggest that what stimulates extralegal attitudes is living under political systems that are fragile and likely unable to meet expectations from the population.

However, the findings do not indicate a statistically significant relationship between the degree of police reach, measured as the ratio of police per hundred thousand inhabitants, and support for extralegal violence, suggesting that such attitudes may not be merely the result of police absence or limited state reach.

In fact, at the individual level, the results give credit to the idea that poor system legitimacy is likely behind elevated levels of citizen support for illegal violence. As expected, diffuse support for the system is negatively related to approval for extralegal violence; that is, people who trust the basic institutions of the political system are less likely to endorse the use of extralegal violence. A similar relationship exists between specific support for government institutions (support for the government) and approval for extralegal violence, although in this case it is not statistically significant. However, data show that people who turn to authorities for help are more likely to support the extralegal use of violence. The latter is an unexpected finding. A potential explanation is that people who approve illegal violence may have previously reached out to authorities without obtaining satisfactory responses. As a result, they may have turned to support violence following their frustration with the government’s reaction (Reference GoldsteinGoldstein 2003). In any case, these findings overall follow some of the expectations outlined by the institutional perspectives on extralegal violence. They point to the fact that citizens supporting self-help justice and violence are more likely to be found in countries with weak institutional capacity and with little trust in the fundamental political institutions.

An integrated model explaining support for extralegal violence

So far, the results testing each of the theoretical frameworks have given credit to all of them. That is, we have found evidence that victimization, fear of crime, poor economic performance, low levels of political legitimacy, and institutionally struggling states tend to be associated with attitudes more strongly favoring extralegal violence. However, these interpretations as to why people support the use of extralegal violence may not rule one another out. More frequently than not, they may operate simultaneously. Therefore, we wanted to know which conditions are more critical in shaping attitudes conducive to individuals taking justice into their own hands and encouraging violence. Direct victimization? Trust in the political system? Or perceptions of economic conditions? We combine all variables in Model 4.

Results indicate that, holding all variables constant, support for the political system and victimization have the higher coefficients among the individual-level variables in the model. In the case of support for the system, ceteris paribus, a person with no faith in the system will score nearly six points higher on our index of support for extralegal violence than a person with absolute confidence in the system. Also, a citizen victimized by crime will score almost four points higher in our attitudinal scale toward violence than a citizen who has not been the victim of a crime. Interestingly, the effects of the perceptions about the economy decrease considerably (in comparison with previous models) when the variables of institutional trust and victimization are present. In other words, the grade of personal confidence in the political system and experiences of victimization seem to be the most important factors determining people’s inclination to approve the use of violence. The results are similar at the contextual level: the introduction of the variables of homicide rates and fragile states reduces the significance of per capita GDP. People who support the use of extralegal violence are more likely to live in societies with elevated murder rates and fragile states, but not necessarily in countries with struggling economies.

In any case, the importance of low levels of legitimacy of the political system cannot be overstated. Although victimization and insecurity-related variables are also related to our dependent variable, the combined model indicates that distrust in the political institutions and living in a country with weak institutions are associated more with attitudes favoring extralegal violence than any other condition tested here. In all Latin American countries, the more people have faith in the political system, the less they are drawn to extralegal responses. Even in countries such as Costa Rica, Chile, Uruguay, and Argentina, where the propensity toward extralegal responses is comparatively lower, robust institutions intervene to reduce attitudes favoring violence even more (Figure 2). Several authors have stated this argument in some way (Reference ChevignyChevigny 1997; Reference UngarUngar 2007; Reference Zizumbo-ColungaZizumbo-Colunga 2015). However, these results indicate that institutional legitimacy refers not only to the police and particular criminal justice institutions but, more importantly, to the general political institutions of the system. In other words, the problem of institutional legitimacy goes all the way up to the top of the political system. The inclination toward extralegal violence is not only about the weakness of the police and the courts; according to our results, it is primarily about the state.

Figure 2 Predicted scores of support for extralegal violence by system support.