Episode 349: Latin America’s Violence Economy: Inequality, Growth, and State Capacity with Irvin Waller

In this episode of The International Risk Podcast, Dominic Bowen speaks with Irvin Waller about the often-overlooked role of interpersonal violence as a driver of international risk. While violence is frequently treated as a domestic issue, this conversation explores how high levels of homicide and violent crime can shape economic performance, weaken governance, and contribute to broader regional instability, particularly across Latin America and the Caribbean.

The discussion examines why violence should be understood as a systemic risk rather than a purely criminal justice issue. With the region accounting for roughly one third of global homicides despite representing only around 8% of the world’s population, the episode highlights how inequality, weak social safety nets, and transnational factors, such as the flow of firearms and drug markets, combine to sustain high levels of violence. The conversation also explores how these dynamics create pathways into organised crime and reinforce cycles of instability.

Drawing on decades of research and policy engagement, Irvin outlines why traditional responses focused on policing, courts, and incarceration have struggled to deliver lasting reductions in violence. Instead, the episode introduces a public health approach to violence prevention, focusing on identifying high-risk groups, addressing underlying risk factors, and implementing targeted, evidence-based interventions. Case studies from Bogotá, Glasgow, and cities across the United States demonstrate how such strategies have achieved reductions in violence of up to 50% within relatively short timeframes.

The episode also considers the wider implications of violence for economic development and governance. With crime and violence estimated to cost countries in Latin America between 3–4% of GDP annually, the discussion highlights how reducing violence can generate significant economic gains, improve investment environments, and strengthen institutional trust. The role of governments, international organisations, and the private sector in supporting prevention-based approaches is explored in depth.

Irvin Waller is Professor Emeritus of Criminology at the University of Ottawa and a globally recognised expert on violence prevention and victims’ rights. He is the author of Science and Secrets of Ending Violent Crime (2019), which outlines how countries can achieve significant reductions in violence through targeted and evidence-based strategies.

The International Risk Podcast brings you conversations with global experts, frontline practitioners, and senior decision-makers who are shaping how we understand and respond to international risk. From geopolitical volatility and organised crime, to cybersecurity threats and hybrid warfare, each episode explores the forces transforming our world and what smart leaders must do to navigate them. Whether you’re a board member, policymaker, or risk professional, The International Risk Podcast delivers actionable insights, sharp analysis, and real-world stories that matter.

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Dominic Bowen is the host of The International Risk Podcast and Europe’s leading expert on international risk and crisis management. As Head of Strategic Advisory and Partner at one of Europe’s leading risk management consulting firms, Dominic advises CEOs, boards, and senior executives across the continent on how to prepare for uncertainty and act with intent. He has spent decades working in war zones, advising multinational companies, and supporting Europe’s business leaders. Dominic is the go-to business advisor for leaders navigating risk, crisis, and strategy; trusted for his clarity, calmness under pressure, and ability to turn volatility into competitive advantage. Dominic equips today’s business leaders with the insight and confidence to lead through disruption and deliver sustained strategic advantage.

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Irvin Waller: If we could get Mexico a reduction of 50% in homicide rates, that should generate 4 to 5 percentage points increase in GDP. Just think what that does to the overall economy in terms of creating for me, importantly, real jobs.

[00:00:20] Dominic Bowen: Welcome back to the International Risk Podcast, where we discuss the latest world news and significant events that impact businesses and organisations worldwide.

[00:00:29] Dominic Bowen: Today’s episode is sponsored by Conducttr. They’re a crisis exercising software platform built for corporates, consultants, humanitarian teams, and defence and security organisations. It lets you build realistic exercises fast using its intuitive scenario editor and ready-made content. I’ve used Conducttr, and I can testify that if you still use PowerPoint or Excel, well, it’s time to start looking at Conducttr. If you want your teams to be genuinely ready for the next crisis, then Conducttr is certainly worth a look.

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[00:01:33] Dominic Bowen: Violence is often treated as a domestic issue, a matter for policing, criminal justice systems, or maybe even local governments. But in reality, we see that high levels of interpersonal violence are not contained within borders. They often shape economic performance, weaken institutions, and can create conditions that destabilise entire regions. I’m Dominic Bowen. I’m host of the International Risk Podcast, where we unpack the international risks that really matter.

[00:01:55] Dominic Bowen: Latin America and the Caribbean hold about 8% of the world’s population, yet they account for roughly one third of global homicides. The economic drag is also really significant. The direct costs of crime and violence in the region are estimated to cost GDP about 3 to 4%. So this isn’t just a policing problem. It’s a governance problem, it’s a development problem, and it really is a risk multiplier. When left unaddressed, it fuels instability, deepens inequalities, and creates pathways into organised crime that obviously have transnational implications.

[00:02:31] Dominic Bowen: Today on the International Risk Podcast, we’re joined by Irvin Waller. He’s Emeritus Professor at the University of Ottawa. He’s the author of Science and Secrets of Ending Violent Crime, and he’s a globally recognised criminologist who has helped shape United Nations frameworks on crime prevention and victims’ rights. He has advised governments around the world on evidence-based strategies to reduce violence. Irvin, welcome to the International Risk Podcast.

[00:02:56] Irvin Waller: I’m glad to be here.

[00:02:57] Dominic Bowen: Irvin, whereabouts in the world do we find you today?

[00:03:01] Irvin Waller: I live in Ottawa, Canada, and I travel a lot less now that I’m over 80. But I will be in Buenos Aires next week talking about victims’ rights and prevention across Latin America.

[00:03:20] Dominic Bowen: I’m guessing the temperature difference between Ottawa and Buenos Aires in April is probably quite significant.

[00:03:26] Irvin Waller: There are many differences between Ottawa and Buenos Aires, not just the weather, for sure.

[00:03:33] Dominic Bowen: Well, let’s jump straight in, Irvin, and I wonder if you can give us an overview of how you see violence as an international risk, and why this is not just something that domestic and local police forces should be dealing with.

[00:03:46] Irvin Waller: There are two immediate reasons. One is that the reason why Mexico, for instance, moved from a low-violence country in around 2000 to a high-violence country at the end of the Calderón years — that was the president from 2006 to 2012 — is that they got guns from the United States. Even in Canada, which has very moderate levels of gun violence, the handguns almost all come from the United States.

The other important reason is drugs. It’s not just cartels, but young men get involved in retailing drugs. Those drugs are basically exported to the United States.

There’s a third reason that’s important to me, and that is that the disparities in income throughout Latin America and the Caribbean are significant. You basically have half the population living below the poverty line and half the population living like the middle class in Europe. They’ve not managed to deal with this because you have huge swings from left to right in their democracies.

[00:05:07] Dominic Bowen: And what’s the cause behind that? Because when we look at some of the crime statistics and we look at the levels of domestic violence and the levels of homicides in countries like El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, and Mexico, they’re just staggering when compared to places like Canada, where you’re from, or Northern Europe. Do we have some ideas about why these homicide rates are so high?

[00:05:29] Irvin Waller: Well, I focus a lot on causes and risk factors. Causes are basically where you’ve got extremes of wealth. So you’ve got a lot of people under the poverty line, and you’ve got a lot of middle-class people who are potential targets for people to rob. But within that group of disadvantaged people, there is a small concentrated group — maybe 5 to 10% of the young men growing up in those areas — who account for most of the violence between young men and also the violence against, in simple terms, the middle class.

Another very important reason is that these countries have focused on police, courts, and corrections as their solution to controlling violent crime.

You only have to look at US cities. Take your favourite city — Chicago, New Orleans — those cities have homicide rates in the same range as cities in Latin America. Yes, there will be cities like Ciudad Juárez on the border with the United States that have higher rates. But where you get systemic problems of disadvantage, you get more violence. And if you try to deal with it only through police and prisons, you won’t succeed.

[00:07:02] Irvin Waller: One of my favourite comparisons is Chicago and Toronto: two cities in roughly the same climate zone, with the same degree of affluence, both around three million people. Chicago has about 13,000 police officers; Toronto has just over 5,000. If you look at incarceration rates in Illinois, where Chicago is located, they’re a little above the US average, which means around 500 to 600 per 100,000. Toronto is in a country with an incarceration rate of about 100. Then you look at homicides, and Chicago has roughly ten homicides for Toronto’s one.

I think this emphasises the limitations of police, courts, and corrections.

Covid came along and the US decided to get out of Covid by spending a lot of money. A significant part of that money went to what are called community violence intervention programmes. These are outreach programmes to that group most involved in violence. Again, pick your favourite city — Chicago or New Orleans — and you see a 50% reduction over a three- or four-year period. You don’t generally see this in Latin America.

[00:08:29] Dominic Bowen: One thing I’d like to understand from you is where we see organised crime entrenched, especially when there’s drug trafficking and gangs and violence is used to control territory, routes, and markets. We see higher levels of violence, and in Latin America we see, as you mentioned, this high availability of firearms, weak rule of law, corruption, impunity, inequality, lower levels of development, a massive K-shaped economy with the very, very wealthy and the very, very poor, and this also leads to more lethality. Are these all contributing factors? And if they are, is there something that caused that? Why are we in this situation, or is it just a terrible cycle that feeds itself?

[00:09:10] Irvin Waller: My interest in Latin America really started around the 2000s. At that time, Mexico was a low-violence country. Around 2006, the presidency moved from Fox to Calderón. Calderón decided to tackle the initial trafficking of drugs by going heavily after the beginnings of the cartel empires. This was really a total failure.

The homicide rate went up to more than double. Then there was a change in president. The next president invested in prevention, and the homicide rate for the first three years went down. Then, for reasons that have always puzzled me, he stopped doing it because of corruption. And you’re right, corruption is widespread in Mexico. It’s not just the cartels. It’s a normal part of business. But in my view, you don’t stop doing something that’s bringing violence down because of that.

The real short-term solutions — that means in two to three years — are much more localised, and they address what are called risk factors. The risk factors are that identifiable, or relatively identifiable, group that is most involved in shooting each other and fighting with each other.

Bogotá in the 1990s is very interesting. They reduced the homicide rate. It took them 10 years.

[00:10:47] Dominic Bowen: How did they do it?

[00:10:48] Irvin Waller: A good analysis and plan. One was to take guns away, another was to reduce alcohol, and another was what was known as the violence vaccine. It wasn’t a vaccine. It meant that when you went into hospital having been shot, a social worker came up to you and talked you out of vengeance. The Bogotá model influenced Glasgow.

Glasgow got violence reduction the same way, and they got a 50% reduction within three years. Now this has been spread across the UK, and that’s what is needed in Latin America.

[00:11:25] Dominic Bowen: When we look regionally and see how these domestic issues can spiral not just across the country but across the region, it is fairly systemic across Latin America and the Caribbean. We are seeing regional stability affected by these risks. We see impacts on the economy. As I said before, 3 to 4% of GDP is lost through reduced productivity, reduced investment, extortion, and of course tourism and innovation are affected. Governance institutions are affected. There are social and migration pressures, both forcing people out, but also forced migration, sex trafficking, and other sorts of crime that come with that. What are the regional risks and the impact on regional stability that concern you the most, when it comes to these what could be considered local crimes?

[00:12:10] Irvin Waller: I want to pick the big one, which is GDP. You quoted 3 to 4% of GDP lost to violence. That is a figure used by the Inter-American Development Bank. If you look at Mexico, the loss of GDP is much higher. If you go back to the Bogotá model or the Glasgow model, if we could get Mexico to put that across and get a reduction of 50% in homicide rates, that should generate something on the order of 4 to 5 percentage points’ increase in GDP.

But even if you could get a 1% increase in GDP, or a 2% increase in GDP, just think what that does to the overall economy in terms of creating wealth, but for me importantly creating real jobs. The cartels are maybe the fifth biggest industry in Mexico in terms of employment. So why do young men get involved? If there are actually meaningful jobs, then you’re reducing the opportunities for cartels to make money.

You can apply this in any country. I’m going soon to Argentina. It only has a homicide rate of 4%, but if you cut the homicide rate there by 50% over the next three years, for a relatively small investment compared to what it costs to react to it, then you would generate positive GDP growth.

[00:13:48] Dominic Bowen: Well, that’s certainly something worth pursuing. And I’ll take the opportunity, Irvin, to remind our listeners that if you prefer to watch your podcast, the International Risk Podcast is always available on YouTube. So please do go to YouTube and search for the International Risk Podcast, and please do subscribe. If you enjoyed it, also like our content and maybe even share it with a friend. That really, really is important for our success.

[00:14:09] Dominic Bowen: So Irvin, I’d love to hear from you about this persistent violence between people and within households and between gangs. How much does this reflect deeper governance challenges, and how can weakened state institutions actually get on top of this?

[00:14:24] Irvin Waller: El Salvador has one model, and their model is simply to lock everybody up. We could get Mexico to reduce recruitment into gangs. There is no doubt that bringing homicide rates down by 50% should generate something on the order of 4 to 5 percentage points of positive growth. Alternative models are basically what the US has done recently.

You have to balance what you’re going to spend on policing, hospital care, and those sorts of things against the benefits of actually investing in young people who go on to work and be positive in the economy.

Sadly, when you talk about governance, you’re really talking about populism in these countries. At the moment, in many Latin American countries, you have either a very right-wing president, like in El Salvador, or a very left-wing president, like in Colombia. I’m not sure there are easy solutions to that. But I think it is really important for us to promote a balance between enforcement and sustained investment in what brings the violence down and what also reduces the power of cartels.

[00:15:56] Dominic Bowen: And of course Europe isn’t risk-free. Europe has significant problems with organised crime, some countries more than others. Examples like Sweden — a country that had some of the lowest fatalities from gun-related violence — is now one of the highest in Europe. So I wonder what are some of the lessons that European governments can draw when looking at successes and failures in Latin America and the Caribbean, to try and counter violence that we see within Europe?

[00:16:22] Irvin Waller: Well, I hope I made the case for better diagnosis and implementation. It’s a public health strategy. The World Health Organization, based in Geneva, has accumulated a lot of evidence about what actually reduces this violence, both street violence and also intimate partner and sexual violence.

There are other issues that need to be tackled. The UK has a problem with knife crime; it doesn’t have a problem with gun crime. They’ve basically banned the typical weapons used by young men, which are handguns. So guns are very important.

The drug issue — I’m not a big fan of the supply approach. You only have to look at the United States or Latin America. It’s very clear that supply reduction is just not effective. We know a lot about how to reduce demand.

Finland is now leading the world on dealing with homelessness. I think people can learn a lot from Finland. One factor that leads to using drugs is homelessness. You also have to have mental health services. You have to create some way of getting income. The Latin American countries have almost no social safety net, certainly when you compare them with Europe, so you have to look at doing that.

[00:17:51] Dominic Bowen: And when we look at what businesses can do now, of course, if you’ve got a very large employer that’s going to be employing thousands of people in small towns, there’s often an interest in investing in community programmes, especially for workforce development and definitely for violence interruption and minimising drug and substance abuse. Of course, other companies might just look at diversifying their investments away from volatile regions and focusing their investments, their factories, and their capital expenditure in areas that have high levels of rule of law. But what else can businesses be doing when they’re considering the impact that they can have on communities when it comes to minimising these risks and contributing to positive development?

[00:18:30] Irvin Waller: I think skills, skills, and skills. If you look at how these US cities have reduced violence by 50%, or you look at Bogotá 20 or so years ago, these are special skills: diagnosing what the problem is, coming up with a proposed solution, deciding how much you’re going to invest in that solution, and monitoring results.

Monitoring results means focusing on outcomes, or hopefully how you can improve. If a business decided to set up a community safety planning diploma for Latin America, we would see the success of Bogotá, Glasgow, or Medellín more recently.

If one looks to the UN, which you mentioned in the introduction, I think the UN has been preaching the right things, but they’ve not managed to get the funds to actually develop the skills so that countries across Latin America and across the Caribbean can apply these things and get the reductions that are so important.

[00:19:51] Dominic Bowen: And have you seen them? I mean, in your analysis, in your book from 2021, The Science and Secrets of Ending Violence, you talk about how modest investments in prevention — and you gave some really great examples — yielded 40 and 50% violence reductions at just a fraction of policing costs in some communities. Has there actually been any examples or case studies that you can think of where large firms — the Unilevers, the Volvos, et cetera, of this world — have actually invested in and supported community initiatives?

[00:20:19] Irvin Waller: Glasgow was very much driven by the police changing how they dealt with it and setting up a unit with a public health person. The Ford Foundation has given money over time to developing more knowledge about crime and what to do about it. So I think there are some marginal examples, but I think the situation in Latin America is basically so dire that there is an emergency.

We urgently need the funds to actually get the successes that we need.

[00:20:58] Dominic Bowen: And Irvin, one question that we ask all guests that come on the International Risk Podcast is: when you look around the world, what are the international risks that concern you the most?

[00:21:08] Irvin Waller: Well, that’s easy. I’m concerned by interpersonal violence. The reason I’m concerned by interpersonal violence is the harm it does to individuals. If you lose a member of your family to homicide, that is a significant event in your life. If you are raped, that is a significant event in your life.

And it’s not just the short-term pain and trauma and loss. When you have to engage with the justice system, this is generally not a good experience. You will generally not be satisfied by the outcome. You will generally be retraumatised by it. But that’s only the beginning.

If you look at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, they did a national survey on intimate partner and sexual violence. What you see from that survey are the downstream chronic diseases that are created basically by trauma, leading to a range of chronic diseases in your 40s and 50s and beyond.

So that’s what drives me, and I think what drives me as well is knowing that those rates don’t have to be that high. You quoted that a third of all homicides in the world occur in Latin America and the Caribbean, for only 8% of the world’s population. We can reduce those rates by 50% for a relatively small investment.

It has to be a smart investment. There have to be people with the skills to diagnose and plan those things, and that might be learned from private companies. The big investment to make it happen is probably 5 to 10% of what we’re currently spending on policing. And by the way, Latin America is not spending very well on policing.

[00:23:13] Dominic Bowen: Yes, thanks very much for that insight, and thank you very much for coming on the International Risk Podcast today.

[00:23:17] Irvin Waller: My pleasure.

[00:23:20] Dominic Bowen: Well, that was a great conversation with Professor Irvin Waller, the author of Science and Secrets of Ending Violent Crime. I really appreciated hearing his thoughts today on interpersonal violence and, of course, what we can learn from Latin America. Today’s podcast was produced and coordinated by Ella Burden. I’m Dominic Bowen, your host. Thanks very much for listening to the International Risk Podcast.

[00:23:39] Dominic Bowen: We’ll speak again soon.

[00:23:42] Dominic Bowen: Thank you for listening to this episode of the International Risk Podcast. For more episodes and articles, visit the International Risk Podcast website. Follow us on LinkedIn, Bluesky, and Instagram for the latest updates and to ask your questions to our host, Dominic Bowen. See you next time.