Infrastructure and the diversification and dynamics of crime: the case of the interoceanic highway in the Southwestern Amazon
摘要
Infrastructure projects are often controversial, since they generate a range of positive and negative impacts in affected regions. There has been increasing attention to infrastructure as a facilitator of various forms of crime, including environmental crime, violent crime, and organized crime. We take up the case of the Amazon, a region targeted for infrastructure development with a large recent literature featuring various forms of environmental crime. We focus on the Interoceanic Highway, a high-profile infrastructure project in a tri-national frontier in the southwestern Amazon, and present a two-part analysis of crime along the highway corridor. First, we examined comments by stakeholders in participatory workshops in communities along the highway on two sides of the frontier, focusing on the diversity in types of crime reported. Second, we drew on governmental data for selected types of crime to evaluate change dynamics since paving of the highway. The stakeholder comments indicate a broader range of types of crime than the environmental crimes featured in previous work, though there are geographic differences. The governmental data show that many of those other types of crime, including violence and trafficking, have risen since completion of paving. We discuss the implications of the findings for regional planning and governance of infrastructure, explanations for diversification and increased incidence of crime after infrastructure projects, and the contributions of criminological theory to improving outcomes of infrastructure projects.