Mexico's Deathly Data

gettyimages 459322868 People take a part during a protest at Eje Central Avenue in Mexico City, on November 20, 2014 to demand the safe return of 43 students who went missing in southern Mexico after an attack by gang-linked police last September 26.

“We found that when the government came to arrest or kill the leaders of the drug cartels . . . the structure of crime became disorganized and often made things worse because the leaders of the drug cartels had some capacity to control their armed soldiers. When the [federal police] removed them, they created these short-term spikes in violence that resulted from drug-trafficking gangs fighting each other for turf or for leadership of their criminal organization” says Beatriz Magaloni, Director of the Poverty and Governance Project a CDDRL/FSI Senior Fellow for Stanford Magazine. Read the whole article here.