Latin Americans Combat Crime with Smartphones and Social Media Dana MacLean - The Guardian
go to original November 12, 2013

Mexico City is one of the safer cities in a country fighting a long-term drugs war, and it is hoped that a recent smart phone application allowing people to direct police to crime scenes will make it safer still. Al Jazeera's Rachel Levin reports from Mexico City. (AlJazeeraEnglish)

In Latin America, where violent crime rates are six times higher than in any other region, and where most residents have reported distrust in the state's ability to fight crime, several communities have taken to social media to boost security, say analysts.

"Violent crime in Latin America undermines the social fabric of communities [and poses] a major human security threat to populations who live in slum areas," says Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a US-based non-profit security policy group.

Violent crime has soared in the past decade with murder rates for South and central America four times the global average in 2011, at 29 per 100,000 people, according to a 2013 UN Development Programme (UNDP) report.

In parallel, internet access in Latin America has multiplied thirteenfold in the past decade, providing communities with an alternative way to report crimes in near anonymity, share information on violent hotspots, mobilise community policing and organise protests calling for greater security.

"The use of big data and social media can allow for the scale, speed and specificity that most traditional approaches [to fighting crime] lack," Igarapé Institute director Robert Muggah told IRIN from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where he manages security and development projects across the region.

While governments, such as those of Mexico, Brazil and Argentina, have made efforts in the past decade to improve police forces, continued mistrust in public institutions (alongside fear of drug gangs) has led to what the Igarapé Institute calls "horizontal citizen-to-citizen initiatives" – ordinary people banding together with smartphones and social media to protect themselves from crime.

Read the rest at The Guardian

We invite you to add your charity or supporting organizations' news stories and coming events to PVAngels so we can share them with the world. Do it now!