Enclaves of Violence: Organized Crime and Strategic Territories in Mexico

Understanding the underlying hidden patterns of criminal activity can play a crucial role in their elimination and ensuring public safety. We develop a statistical model for the behavior of organized criminal groups in Mexico from 2007 to 2011, which shows the territorial reconfiguration of illegal activity in enclaves of violence. The model provides empirical evidence of the strategic rationality of criminal groups in occupying specific regions in the country. To capture these patterns of organized criminal behavior, we employ indicators of spatial correlation of the first and first adjusted orders, and centrality measures for the regions - nodes of spatial networks. The network variables improve the fit and explanatory power of the model by accounting for intricate spatial patterns. The modeling approach contributes to characterizing the violence from a geographical approach, transcending the boundary between the origin and consequences of violence on a particular territory.