A new paper released last week by the Cen­ter for Eco­nom­ic and Pol­i­cy Research (CEPR) dis­putes data from a 2014 report on U.S.-funded anti-crime pro­grams in Cen­tral Amer­i­ca, sug­gest­ing these pro­grams may not have been as effec­tive as pre­vi­ous­ly thought.

Beeton explained that the CEPR hopes the report will force legislators to pause when thinking about appropriating money to Central America to fight drug trafficking and violence under initiatives like CARSI.

In 2007, then-pres­i­dent George W. Bush cre­at­ed the Meri­da Ini­tia­tive, a secu­ri­ty coop­er­a­tion agree­ment between the Unit­ed States, Mex­i­co and Cen­tral Amer­i­ca, as a region­al response to ris­ing drug traf­fick­ing and vio­lence in Cen­tral Amer­i­ca. Fur­ther­ing this approach, in 2010 Pres­i­dent Oba­ma cre­at­ed the Cen­tral Amer­i­ca Region­al Secu­ri­ty Ini­tia­tive (CAR­SI), sep­a­rat­ing the Cen­tral Amer­i­can coun­tries from the Meri­da Initiative.

Accord­ing to the Con­gres­sion­al Research Ser­vice (CRS), between 2008 and 2015, the U.S. has appro­pri­at­ed at least $1.2 bil­lion to Cen­tral Amer­i­ca through these two ini­tia­tives to pro­vide equip­ment, train­ing and tech­ni­cal assis­tance to sup­port imme­di­ate law enforce­ment oper­a­tions in the region, con­se­quent­ly lead­ing to a more mil­i­ta­rized vio­lence pre­ven­tion method that has been wide­ly crit­i­cized.

A 2014 report con­duct­ed by the Van­der­bilt Uni­ver­si­ty-based Latin Amer­i­can Pub­lic Opin­ion Project (LAPOP) with sup­port from the U.S. Agency for Inter­na­tion­al Devel­op­ment (USAID) found that CAR­SI seemed to be reduc­ing crime. This was the only pub­licly avail­able eval­u­a­tion of CAR­SI programs.

USAID has used these find­ings to assert that the crime and vio­lence pre­ven­tion pro­grams have helped ​“res­i­dents feel safer, per­ceive less crime and mur­ders, and express greater trust in police.”

But CEPR’s paper calls into ques­tion one of LAPOP’s find­ings. Specif­i­cal­ly, CEPR argues that con­trary to LAPOP’s claims, the data doesn’t actu­al­ly show a decrease in report­ed rob­beries in those areas receiv­ing CAR­SI fund­ing — that there’s no evi­dence to sup­port that the mon­ey the U.S. is send­ing towards a mil­i­ta­rized response to Latin Amer­i­can crime has been effec­tive on that front.

Accord­ing to CEPR’s press release, they found ​“prob­lems with the method­ol­o­gy used” by LAPOP. ​“The study can­not sup­port the con­clu­sion that the areas sub­ject to treat­ment in the CAR­SI pro­grams showed bet­ter results than those areas that were not,” CEPR wrote.

The prob­lems CEPR found have to do with how LAPOP select­ed the con­trol regions — those not receiv­ing CAR­SI pro­grams — and the regions receiv­ing treat­ment, and how they inter­pret­ed the pre­ex­ist­ing dif­fer­ences between the select­ed regions.

Mitchell Selig­son, Founder and Senior Advi­sor of the LAPOP and Cen­ten­ni­al Pro­fes­sor of Polit­i­cal Sci­ence at Van­der­bilt Uni­ver­si­ty, says, “[CEPR’s] cri­tique as I under­stand it is that the major prob­lem with our study is the alleged non-ran­dom nature of the selec­tion of the treat­ment ver­sus con­trol communities.”

He adds, ​“They have mis­in­ter­pret­ed our report since the treat­ment and con­trol com­mu­ni­ties in almost every instance were indeed ran­dom­ly selected.”

Based on com­par­ing treat­ed and con­trol areas, the 2014 data found that in treat­ed areas, 19 per­cent few­er sur­veyed res­i­dents report­ed cas­es of rob­beries than would be expect­ed with­out USAID inter­ven­tion. The great­est decrease in report­ed rob­beries was found in Hon­duras, with 35 per­cent few­er cas­es than expected.

But, accord­ing to the CEPR’s report, the pre­ex­ist­ing dif­fer­ences between con­trol and treat­ed areas were larg­er than LAPOP’s report account­ed for. When coun­try, munic­i­pal­i­ty and com­mu­ni­ty effects and oth­er socioe­co­nom­ic indi­ca­tors were con­sid­ered, they say, the process worked differently.

When these effects were applied in the pre­treat­ment phase, the CEPR authors found that even after treat­ment, those in treat­ed areas were more like­ly to report being aware of rob­beries than peo­ple in con­trol areas, and that any observed decline may have been relat­ed to non-CAR­SI fac­tors. This sug­gests, the CEPR con­clud­ed, that one could not ​“safe­ly con­clude that the inter­ven­tion helped.”

Selig­son says, ​“We report­ed 16 sep­a­rate find­ings in our study, but their analy­sis focus­es on just one of those 16” — the pur­port­ed decrease in report­ed rob­beries. LAPOP’s study also ana­lyzed crime vic­tim­iza­tion and vio­lence, per­cep­tion of inse­cu­ri­ty, neigh­bor­hood dis­or­der, and the role of insti­tu­tions like the police, among oth­er things. While CEPR didn’t focus on these, their study says that the con­cerns they raise would apply to LAPOP’s oth­er find­ings as well.

“Their cri­tique is not that our analy­sis is flawed … but their inter­pre­ta­tion was dif­fer­ent, and every­one is enti­tled to dif­fer­ent inter­pre­ta­tions, Selig­son says. ​“We took this very seri­ous­ly and we wel­come more stud­ies. No one study is going to be definitive.”

Accord­ing to Dan Bee­ton, Direc­tor for Inter­na­tion­al Com­mu­ni­ca­tions at CEPR, one of the oth­er ​“dis­turb­ing things we’re high­light­ing is that the study we looked at is the only pub­licly acces­si­ble assess­ment of the CAR­SI pro­gram. There needs to be a lot more trans­paren­cy around CARSI.”

This report comes at a crit­i­cal time just after the six-month anniver­sary of the mur­der of Hon­duran envi­ron­men­tal rights leader Berta Cáceres. Inter­na­tion­al con­dem­na­tion for her mur­der has result­ed in activists from around the world and many U.S. leg­is­la­tors call­ing for a halt to all U.S. secu­ri­ty aid to Hon­duras. Most notably, Geor­gia Rep. Hank John­son has intro­duced the Berta Cáceres Human Rights in Hon­duras Act.

Dana Frank, a his­to­ry pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, San­ta Cruz, and an expert on human rights and U.S. pol­i­cy in Hon­duras, explained the impli­ca­tions of the report specif­i­cal­ly for Honduras.

“This under­scores the almost com­plete lack of trans­paren­cy about the actu­al usage of U.S. spend­ing in Hon­duras,” she says. ​“We know very lit­tle about where this mon­ey goes and its effectiveness.

“This study under­scores the prob­lems with the Van­der­bilt study as well as the dan­gers of not hav­ing an inde­pen­dent eval­u­a­tion mech­a­nism for the vast amount of aid pour­ing into the region.”

Accord­ing to sev­er­al Con­gress­peo­ple writ­ing in the Guardian, the Unit­ed States has already allo­cat­ed at least $18 mil­lion to Hon­duran police and mil­i­tary for 2016, and the 2017 bud­get plan calls for increased fund­ing. The CEPR’s study could poten­tial­ly affect the fund­ing allo­cat­ed to Cen­tral Amer­i­ca in 2017.

“In terms of crime, there’s been all kinds of alter­na­tive approach­es pro­posed and there’s cer­tain­ly a lot of crit­i­cism of this kind of approach,” Bee­ton said. ​“This mil­i­ta­rized, anti-gang and anti-drug approach to crime in Cen­tral Amer­i­ca, you see a lot of crit­i­cism of this on the right and the left.”

Bee­ton explained that the CEPR hopes the report will force leg­is­la­tors to pause when think­ing about appro­pri­at­ing mon­ey to Cen­tral Amer­i­ca to fight drug traf­fick­ing and vio­lence under ini­tia­tives like CARSI.

“We’re look­ing at the effec­tive­ness in reduc­ing crime and vio­lence in Cen­tral Amer­i­ca,” Bee­ton says. ​“The U.S. is giv­ing mon­ey to secu­ri­ty forces to con­duct these anti-crime pro­grams, but how effec­tive are they?”

He adds, ​“I don’t want to under­state the effects of gangs and crim­i­nal net­works in the region, but there are alter­na­tive meth­ods beyond a mil­i­ta­rized response. Based on the data that we have, there’s no con­clu­sive evi­dence that these pro­grams are effec­tive and pro­duc­ing results.”