Violent crime has been commonplace in Latin America over the past decades. While existing research has made progress in explaining the rationale and outcomes of government coercive strategies against crime, it has overlooked the non鈥恈oercive strategies implemented to improve public security. It is argued in this article that political authorities make human capital enhancement efforts to shape actors鈥� incentives about criminal activity and mitigate crime. Accordingly, it is hypothesised that violent crime increases human capital enhancement efforts, and that the effect of violent crime on human capital enhancement efforts is larger when left鈥恛riented governments are in power because they stress actors鈥� motivations over windows of opportunities as the main drivers of crime. Support for these hypotheses is found in a sample of Latin American democracies in the period 1990鈥�2007.
Rivera, Mauricio & B谩rbara Z谩rate-Ten贸rio (2016) Beyond sticks and stones: Human capital enhancement efforts in response to violent crime in Latin America, European Journal of Political Research 55 (3): 531鈥�548.
