Strategies That Work to Reduce Community Violence

Harvard researchers identified 30 strategies that attempt to stem violence in the community, and two were particularly effective

Thomas Abt, senior research fellow, Harvard Kennedy School of Government, speaks at the Woodrow Wilson Center, Feb. 22, on a report he coauthored, "What Works in Reducing Community Violence: Spotlight on Central America and Mexico." Gary Feuerberg/Epoch Times

WASHINGTON—Mexico and the Central American countries of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras—the so-called “Northern Triangle”—are facing immense violence with seemingly no way to get it under control. Understandably, people in the region want answers on how to stem the violence.

Let there be no doubt about the magnitude of the problem of escalating violence in the region. In 2015, Mexico’s homicide rate increased 11 percent, and with an average homicide rate of 63 per 100,000, the above Central American countries have become the world’s most violent, according to Eric Olson.

Olson is associate director of the Latin American Program at the Windrow Wilson Center, where he was, on Feb. 22, the moderator for a discussion on “What Works in Reducing Community Violence.“ Olson said that last year El Salvador’s murder rate ”skyrocketed” to 103 per 100,000, replacing its neighbor Honduras for the ignoble title of murder capital of the world. Its other neighbor Costa Rica had a rate of 8 per 100,000, said Beth Hogan, who represented U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) at the discussion.

Putting the El Salvador rate in perspective, this homicide rate [of 103 per 100,000] is 20 times the homicide rate in the U.S.

— Beth Hogan, acting assistant administrator, Latin America and the Caribbean Bureau, USAID