My name is Guillermo J. Escaño (gescano@albany.edu). I am a Ph.D. candidate in the School of Criminal Justice at the University at Albany – SUNY. I am on track to complete my dissertation in Spring 2024 and am on the academic job market to begin a position in Fall 2024.

My general research interests include crime and violence in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), organized criminal groups, the structural and cultural causes and consequences of violence, criminal justice policy (evidence-based practices), urban criminology and sociology, and drug policy. I am a quantitative researcher, thus far mainly using panel and time series models.

I have three manuscripts under manuscript review. The first study examines the effects of state legitimacy and remittances on national homicide rates in LAC. The second study examines the association between alcohol consumption and national homicide rates in LAC. The third study examines the impact of mano dura (a tough-on-crime approach) and gang truces on homicide in El Salvador. The first two studies received revise and resubmits in leading criminology journals, and the third is under review at another leading criminology journal. I also have a forthcoming chapter on violence in LAC in an edited volume.

My dissertation is entitled The Causes and Consequences of Interpersonal Violence in Latin America: State Action, Homicide, and Civic Trust and Engagement, and will consist of three distinct studies. The first study will examine the effect of inflation on robbery and burglary rates in Argentina. The second will evaluate the impact of military confrontations on homicide rates across municipalities in Mexico. The third will use survey data to examine the impact of homicide victimization rates on civic trust and engagement in LAC nations. My research under review and from my dissertation draw from the literatures of and will make important contributions to several fields, including criminology, sociology, LAC area studies, political science, and public policy.

Dissertation Committee

William Pridemore (Advisor), Matt Vogel, Teddy Wilson, Meghan Rogers (University of Iowa), Andres Villarreal (UCLA)

Timeline

Over the last year, I worked closely with my advisor to develop the main idea for the dissertation, craft these three studies, form my dissertation committee, and learn more about the data I will use. I will defend my dissertation proposal early in the Fall 2023 semester, and I have already collected all the data necessary. I expect to defend the dissertation in late spring or early summer of 2024.

I will present the initial results from the consequences of violence in LAC study at the European Society of Criminology conference in September in Florence, Italy, and initial results from the consequences of violence in LAC and Argentina study at the American Society of Criminology conference in Philadelphia in November. Both studies are from my dissertation. 

I have a solid research agenda following the completion of my dissertation. A few of those studies include a couple of manuscripts related to crime and violence across LAC in public policy and structural factors. For public policy, I will examine three studies on the impact of tough on crime (mano dura) and gang truce on homicide in Colombia (Medellín), Guatemala, and Honduras. As for social structures, the next three studies will examine the association of homicide with deportation, gun accessibility, and socioeconomic/demographic in LAC.