Gang Violence: Concepts, Benchmarks and Coding Rules

"The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project’s (ACLED) mission is to understand political violence in its fluid and fast-changing manifestations (OECD, 2016). Therefore, rather than sticking to a clear cut definition of political versus criminal violence, ACLED aims to capture this disorderly nature in the political manifestations of criminal violence across the globe. This methodology piece aims to tackle the gray area between political and criminal violence by providing conceptual clarification around when gang violence is political; it does this by providing specific benchmarks and indicators used to determine which countries should be considered to have a gang problem which has extended into the realm of the political, and by discussing the complicated issue of attributing violence to unknown (gang) actors. This piece is particularly tailored towards Latin America but the general approach, benchmarks, and indicators apply equally to other contexts. The term ‘gang violence’ is used to describe violence committed by criminal groups without an overt political agenda. This term is solely meant to communicate that the gangs discussed in this document are organized, have a leadership (Spergel, 1995), and that their objective is not political but economic in nature." but economic in nature.