Changes in Urban Crime in Argentine: From the Neoliberal Period to The left turn

GABRIEL KESSLER

Montreal

Conferencia; RELAM 1st International Conference What's Left? The Left Turn in Latin America 15 years after; 2016

RELAM

During the ?Neoliberal Period? crime, unemployment, poverty and inequality strongly increased throughout the region. Thus, scholars and policy makers assumed that the drop in inequality during the ?Left Turn? would also make crime go down. However, in countries such as Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, Bolivia, Venezuela and Uruguay, that did not happen (or it did happen but to a lesser extent than what they had hoped for) .Why didn't crime drop as they had expected? What are the differences and the continuities in terms of urban crime between the neoliberal period and the left turn? Based on extensive field research in Buenos Aires over an large period of time, the paper discusses the changing relationship between crime, employment, lack of resources, and urban issues between two periods: the neoliberal period (90-2003) and the post-neoliberal era (post 2003).The main argument advanced establishes that transformations in crime practices cannot be understood under a thin criminological framework, but that they are rather a byproduct of two types of experiences. On the one hand, crime is intertwined with the changes in the labor market, and on the other, it is shaped by the ways in which the city, the lack of resources, consumption patterns, peer-group relationships and confrontation against the police change across time. The paper shows how in each period these dimensions and variables transform and thus, shape crime in different ways. To offer a better understanding of such a complex issue, the main trends on crime, fear of crime and policy during the left turn are presented in the introduction in order to offer the reader general framework.