Closing Knowledge Gaps: Toward Evidence-Based Crime Prevention Policies in Latin America and the Caribbean

This publication identifies the main areas of research that the Citizen Security and Justice Cluster of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) will undertake in the next four years. The Latin American and Caribbean region is the most violent region in the world. Crime and violence are the population's key concerns. Crime, however, has been a consistently understudied field in the region. While most of the knowledge originates from the United Kingdom and the United States, the issues that arise in Latin America and the Caribbean compels the research community to produce evidence on the cause of the high prevalence of crime in the region and on what models work or do not work to reduce and prevent crime. For more than 15 years, the IDB has been a major partner to the region's countries, providing technical and financial support for crime prevention interventions. The expertise of the IDB and its presence in most Latin American and Caribbean countries are comparative advantages to advocate a comprehensive research agenda.