Stories of death: homicides of young Montevideans in settling accounts and conflicts between criminal groups

Gabriel Tenenbaum, Nilia Viscardi, Mauricio Fuentes, Ignacio Salamano y Fabiana Espíndola

Abstract

For some time now, a concept has taken center stage in the public debate on security: reckoning. There is a consensus among academics, politicians, and journalists in attributing responsibility for the increase in homicides to this phenomenon, however, little is known about what is behind this category. In this context, the book intends to investigate the lives of adolescent victims of homicides due to "account adjustments" and "criminal conflicts" between 2015 and 2019 in Montevideo. This is a study that seeks a comprehensive approach to the phenomenon through a quantitative and qualitative approach. In this sense, based on data from the National Institute of Statistics, the Municipality of Montevideo and the Ministry of the Interior, the authors carry out a spatial analysis of the link between this type of crime and different socioeconomic indicators. On the other hand, at a qualitative level, they investigate the trajectories of adolescents from two types of sources: 1) interviews with relatives, friends, neighbors, local actors and operators of the justice system; and 2) documentary sources such as police reports, judicial files, files from the National Institute for Adolescent Social Inclusion (INISA).