The good the bad and the ugly: The socio-economic impact of drug cartels and their violence in Mexico

Crime and violence are commonplace across many developing regions, particularly in Latin America currently holding the highest crime rate worldwide. In some instances, such as Bolivia, Colombia, Mexico and Peru, drug cartels have contributed to both the high crime and violence rates. Cartels, apart from using gross violence to intimidate and punish rivals, are known to also corrupt state institutions and directly commit crimes against civilians such as extortions and kidnappings among others. Nowadays, Mexico is among the worst affected by drug violence. Until mid-2000, cartels had operated fairly peacefully in the country. But since then, when the government started prosecuting cartels with military force, cartels have been fighting fiercely for territory resulting in over 63,000 drug-related homicides just between 2006 and 2012. Several Mexican cities have become prey to this wave of violence, and in some the overall death toll has been as high as in countries experiencing civil war (Molzahn et al., 2013). Despite the scale of the ongoing conflict, little is known about how families and businesses living in the crossfire have been affected