Crime and Violence Prevention in Latin America and the Caribbean: Evidence from IDB's Interventions

As part of its duties, OVE regularly conducts ex post evaluations of the activities financed by the Bank. In this case, OVE is conducting an evaluation of the first generation of citizen security projects, approved before October 2009. These projects predate the Guidelines for Program Design and Execution in the Area of Civic Coexistence and Public Safety (GN-2535). The objective of the evaluation is primarily to assess these projects' contribution to the reduction of crime and violence in the countries in which they have been operating. A secondary objective is to determine their contribution to the knowledge on what is effective for reducing crime and violence. The evaluation methodology has two elements: First, whenever feasible, statistical analyses are conducted to measure the impact of the projects. Second, evaluability analyses are used to determine the projects' ex ante degree of evaluability. These two elements are combined and complemented with a brief review of the relevant literature to place the projects in the broader context of the discipline and come to a final evaluation of their contribution.