Monitor of Lethal Force in Latin America and the Caribbean : An Analysis of Killings by Police and Army Officers

This book presents the results of a year-long research and monitoring program on police use of lethal force in Latin America and the Caribbean carried out by a network of researchers, practitioners and human right activists in the region. It introduces a novel methodological framework for assessing police violence in contexts where legal accountability remains limited or absent.

The core of the methodology is a set of twelve indicators designed to evaluate patterns of lethal force, with particular attention to identifying abuses and enabling cross-national comparisons to highlight both regional patterns and national outliers. Drawing on these indicators, this volume features in-depth country case studies—Brazil, Mexico, Venezuela, El Salvador, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, Colombia, Peru, Chile, and Uruguay—each offering both national context and application of the framework.

By combining rigorous comparative analysis with grounded national insights, this book provides researchers, advocates, and journalists with a practical and replicable approach to documenting and confronting police violence. It contributes to broader efforts to advance accountability and reform in a region marked by high levels of state violence and the world’s highest homicide rates.

Ignacio Cano got his joint Ph.D. in sociology and social psychology at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Spain) in 1991. From 1991 to 1993 he worked in attention to refugees and war-stricken populations in El Salvador, with UNHCR. He was also a member of the United Nations Truth Commission for El Salvador. He later developed post-doctoral research at the universities of Surrey (UK), Michigan, Arizona (USA) and Lancaster (UK), centred on research methodology and programme evaluation. 

From 1996 onwards, he worked in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on topics related to violence, human rights, public security and education in an NGO called ISER. In 2000, he joined the department of social sciences of the State University of Rio de Janeiro, where he became a full professor of sociology in 2019. He is a founder of the Laboratory for the Analysis of Violence (LAV) of the same university. Over the last 20 years, he has researched different issues related to public security, violence, human rights and education in Latin America. He has also undertaken impact evaluations of several public security interventions in the region. In 2020 he was a researcher at the African Civilian Oversight Police Forum (APCOF) and at the Safety Lab, both in Cape Town, South Africa. In 2021, he became a senior adviser to Mexico Evalúa, a Mexican NGO. Since January 2022, he is a researcher at the Institute of Social Research (IIS) of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).

Catalina Pérez Correa is a Mexican lawyer and academic. She is director and researcher at the APEPD (Asociación para el Estudio de la Política de Drogas) an NGO working on drug policies in Mexico and Latin America. She has published books and academic articles on drug policy in Latin America, Mexico’s criminal justice system, and militarization in the country. She has also conducted several surveys in Mexican prisons.

She received her Law Degree from the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM), her masters (JSM) and doctorate (JSD) degree from theStanford University Law School in California. She has been a professor at the Law School of the National University (UNAM), a researcher at the Institute for Legal Research at UNAM and a visiting fellow at the Schell Center for International Human Rights at the Yale Law School. She collaborates with various prominent media outlets in Mexico such as El Universal, Nexos Magazine and Animal Político. She is a member of the advisory board of El Universal and of the Federal Public Defense Institute.

Carlos Silva holds a degree in Sociology from the Universidad de la República, Montevideo, Uruguay, a master's degree in social sciences from the Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO, Mexico City) and a PhD. in social sciences with a specialization in sociology from El Colegio de México, A.C. He works as a full-time researcher at the Instituto de Investigaciones Jurídicas of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (IIJ-UNAM). In addition, he is a professor in the Bachelor's Degree in Sociology at the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences of the UNAM and in the Master's Degree in Political Sociology at the Instituto de Investigaciones Dr. José María Luis Mora. His main areas of study are public security, use of police force and human rights.