Mapping the Killer State: Gender, Space, and Deaths Due to Legal Intervention in Mexico (2004–2010)

Abstract

As a now voluminous literature demonstrates, lethal encounters between the State and society can occur under a variety of conditions and have different meanings according to the victims' characteristics. Nevertheless, only a few scholars have specifically discussed the manner in which females lose their lives at the hand of the State. This study examines 132 female deaths due to legal intervention that took place in Mexico from 2004 to 2010. In particular, we seek to understand and explain the magnitude, location, and frequency with which women lose their lives at the hands of the State. Research findings suggest that although deaths due to legal intervention are unevenly distributed in Mexico, their effects are clearly located within specific populations and communities, particularly affecting women in rural locations.

KEYWORDS:

• deaths due to legal intervention
• gender violence
• Mexico
• state use of deadly force
• war against organized crime

Notes

This figure represents 42% of the total deaths caused by legal intervention registered in Mexico during that period (n = 317).

See Klinger (2012) for a recent and thoughtful research note on the problems and promises of official data on the analysis of State use of lethal force.

From a more general perspective, these results coincide with one of the more solid criminological findings in history, indicating that, even if there is an overrepresentation of men in the constitution of homicidal violence, the female population is particularly prone to die in different qualitative conditions from those of males (Miethe & Regoeczi, 2004).

Although from an international medicolegal perspective it is commonly accepted that the deaths due to legal intervention category uses no judgment of criminal involvement in a homicide death (Rokaw, Mercy, & Smith, 1990), some studies focused on analyzing the problems of existing homicide data in America have found that legal intervention is, in practice, equivalent to justifiable homicide caused by the police or other law enforcement agencies (Loftin et al., 2003; Rand, 1997). In the case of Mexico, information reporting deaths due to legal intervention is systematized according to the international medicolegal definition.

Nine percent represents 12 cases.

However, because of the lack of data on the period from 1997 to 2003, it is not possible to identify whether lethal interactions between the State and the female population have really worsened in recent times. These factors make it difficult to analyze the study of deaths by legal intervention, as they occur within the overall conflict between the State and organized crime.

Color versions of one or more of the figures in the article can be found online at www.tandfonline.com/wwcj.