January 25, 2017
We have published a response to Vanderbilt University’s Latin America Public Opinion Project, related to their report on USAID-funded anticrime and violence prevention programs in Central America.
We are responding to LAPOP’s critique of our report, “Have US-Funded CARSI Programs Reduced Crime and Violence in Central America?” that we released in September 2016. Our September report was an examination of the only publicly accessible impact assessment of USAID-funded anticrime and community-based violence prevention programs carried out under the umbrella of the US State Department’s Central American Regional Security Initiative (CARSI). LAPOP took issue with our illustration of certain methodological flaws in LAPOP’s study, as well as with the manner in which we presented our conclusions. LAPOP’s criticisms appear to be largely based on misunderstanding and misinterpretation of our arguments and fail to address our main findings. The problems with the LAPOP study that we identified still stand, as does the validity of our conclusion: LAPOP’s study cannot support the conclusion that intervention caused the areas subject to treatment in the CARSI programs to improve relative to those areas where no intervention took place.
You can find our response paper, just published, here.
