InSight Crime launched its website December 1, 2010, with profiles on groups, personalities, and security initiatives in Mexico and Colombia. It now has profiles on El Salvador and Guatemala, and with time, it will add more countries, regions, groups, personalities and security initiatives to give the most complete, up-to-date picture on organized crime in the region.
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InSight Crime began in April 2010, under the auspices of the Fundacion Ideas para la Paz (FIP) in Bogota, Colombia, and with funding from the Open Society Foundations. In August, American University’s Center for Latin American and Latino Studies (CLALS) became a sponsor and additional host to the project. InSight Crime currently has offices at the FIP in Colombia and at American University in Washington DC.
Addresses:
Washington Office
4545 42nd Street NW, Suite 308
Washington D.C. 20016
Bogota Office
Calle 100 No. 8a-37 Of. 305 Torre A
Bogota D.C., Colombia
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InSight Consultancy
In an effort to help finance both field investigations and the core project of providing quality, in-depth information to the public on these matters, InSight Crime created InSight Consultancy, which produces special reports for both the public and the private sectors on the dynamics of conflict and organized crime, and the their effects on society, government, and business. InSight Consultancy is currently working on projects in Colombia, Mexico and Venezuela. We conduct field investigations, providing detailed on-the-ground research and analysis to our clients. Our combined academic, journalistic and military expertise gives us a unique and comprehensive perspective. InSight Consultancy chooses its clients based on their strong records of defending human rights and the environment, and strictly adhering to worldwide ethical standards and practices in conflict zones.
InSight also does workshops for journalists and non-governmental organizations in the region on topics ranging from investigative reporting in the field, to how to cover elections, to techniques of investigating organized crime on the web.
If you are interested in seeing examples of InSight's work or contracting the organization, please This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it us.
Directors
Steven Dudley, Director/ Head of Research Mexico, Central America and Caribbean: Dudley is a senior researcher at the Fundacion Ideas para la Paz (FIP) and a senior fellow at American University's Center for Latin American and Latino Studies in Washington DC. He is the former Bureau Chief of The Miami Herald in the Andean Region and the author of "Walking Ghosts: Murder and Guerrilla Politics in Colombia" (Routledge 2004). Dudley has also reported from Haiti, Brazil, Nicaragua, Cuba and Miami for National Public Radio and The Washington Post, among others. He has done a documentary film on the life and career of a lawyer that defends drug traffickers and paramilitaries, and has written policy briefs on extradition cases for the FIP. Dudley has a BA in Latin American History from Cornell University and an MA in Latin American Studies from the University of Texas at Austin. He has won numerous journalism prizes and was awarded the prestigious Knight Fellowship at Stanford University in 2007. He has also lectured at Yale University and the State University of New York (Potsdam), and his book has been used for classes at Harvard University, the University of California at Berkeley and others. This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Jeremy McDermott, Director/Head of Research Colombia and South America: McDermott also heads InSight Crime Colombia at the FIP. He is a former British Army officer, who saw active service in Northern Ireland and Bosnia. Upon retiring from the military he became a war correspondent, covering the Balkans, based in Bosnia, then moving to Beirut to work throughout the Middle East and before finally settling in Colombia where he travels extensively through Latin America. He previously worked as the BBC’s Colombia Correspondent, Latin America Correspondent for the Daily Telegraph and Jane’s Intelligence Review, specializing in drug trafficking, organized crime and the Colombian civil conflict. As well as working as a journalist he has done consultancy work for companies operating in dangerous parts of Colombia and run his own business. He has an MA from the University of Edinburgh. This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Team
Elyssa Pachico, Researcher/Writer/Senior Editor: Pachico is a graduate of Wesleyan University (2008) and has worked for InSight Crime since 2010. This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Hannah Stone, Researcher/Writer/Senior Editor: Stone is a graduate of the University of Oxford (2006) and the London School of Economics (2008), and has worked for InSight Crime since 2011. This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Andres Ortiz Sedano, Researcher/Writer: Ortiz is a graduate of the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Bogota (2009), where he studied political science. He has worked for InSight Crime since 2010. This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Geoffrey Ramsey, Researcher/Writer: Ramsey has a BA from American University's School of International Service (2010) and a MA from AU's Latin American Studies program. He has worked for InSight Crime since 2010. This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Patrick Corcoran, Researcher/Writer: Corcoran is a graduate of the University of Tennessee and an MA candidate at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. He has worked for InSight Crime since 2011. He also has a blog: Gancho. This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Christopher Looft, Researcher/Writer: Looft is a 2011 graduate of the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia. He has worked for InSight Crime since 2012. This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Fundacion Ideas para la Paz (FIP)
Our mission is to study and propose initiatives that will help overcome the armed conflict in Colombia and build a sustainable, peaceful solution with respect to human rights.
To this end, FIP investigates the conflict, issues regular reports on it and holds regular conferences to discuss it. As a think tank FIP is firmly convinced that the Colombian conflict must end with negotiations, and FIP tries to help by providing technical assistance to achieve this goal and by developing post-conflict scenarios.
In order to face these challenges, FIP has reinforced its analytical and managerial capacities with a solid academic and professional team that works on four thematic areas:
- Dynamics of the Armed Conflict and Peace Negotiations
- Peace and Post-conflict Scenarios
- Business, Conflict and Peace Building
- Security and Defense Studies
FIP is financed with contributions from Colombian and foreign companies; foreign governments; and international cooperation agencies and philanthropic foundations. Contact
María Victoria Llorente, Executive Director: Llorente graduated from the Universidad de los Andes in political science, and is a specialist in crime and violence issues, national security, and citizen policies and police reform. She has been the Executive Director of Fundacion Ideas para la Paz since 2007. Between 1998 and 2006, Llorente worked as an associate researcher of the Centro de Estudios sobre Desarrollo Económico – CEDE (Center for Studies on Economic Development) at the Universidad de Los Andes, where she coordinated the Public Peace Studies group, which conducted multiple researches on violence, security and justice in Colombia. Llorente has also worked as a consultant for the Inter-American Development Bank- IADB, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, the National Police Force and the Office of the Mayor of Bogotá on several projects related to citizen security policies, prevention of juvenile delinquency and reforms to the police. From 1990 to 1994, she worked as an adviser for the Presidential Council for Defense and National Security and for the Ministry of National Defense on the design of citizen security policies and police reform. Llorente is also the author of several articles on crime and violence, citizen security policies and the police force that have been published in books and in national and international specialized magazines. She has also co-written several books, among them, “Reconocer la guerra para construir la paz,” (Bogotá, 1999), “Caracterización de la violencia homicida en Bogotá” (Alcaldía de Bogotá, 2002), and “Violencia en las familias colombianas: costos socioeconómicos, causas y efectos” (Bogotá, 2004). This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
American University - The Center for Latin American and Latino Studies (CLALS)
The Center for Latin American and Latino Studies (CLALS) at American University in Washington, DC, engages scholars and practitioners to promote cutting-edge research to enrich understanding of Latin America and of Latino communities in the U.S. Contact
Research: Creating and disseminating knowledge is at the core of the Center’s scholarly and institutional agenda. CLALS supports collaborative research projects organized around five thematic clusters: development & inequality; democracy & justice; cultures creativity; environment society; and hemispheric relations.
Training: CLALS is committed to advancing American University's primary goal of ensuring the highest quality training for our students, offering extensive coursework in Latin American and Latino Studies and specific degree and certificate programs around these topics.
Partnerships: In designing and implementing projects, CLALS establishes dynamic partnerships with academic institutions, think tanks, non-governmental and community organizations, and governmental and international agencies throughout the United States and Latin America. Center projects are supported through funding from extramural donors and agencies as well as by University resources.
NGOs, Community Organizations Think Tanks
Governmental Intergovernmental Agencies
Eric Hershberg, Director CLALS: Eric Hershberg is Director of the Center for Latin American and Latino Studies and Professor of Government at American University. From 2007-2009 he was Professor of Political Science and Director of Latin American Studies at Simon Fraser University, in Vancouver, Canada. He received his Ph.D from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and has taught at New York University, Southern Illinois University, Columbia, Princeton and the New School. Prior to arriving at SFU he served for fifteen years as a Program Director at the Social Science Research Council in New York City.
His research focuses on the comparative politics of Latin America, and on the politics of development. Current research projects analyze the state of democracy in South America, social sector reforms in the Andean region and conflicts over accountability for human rights abuses under military regimes in the Southern Cone countries. He has served as a consultant to numerous development and educational agencies, including the Ford Foundation, the World Bank and the Swedish International Development Agency.
Degrees
PhD, Political Science University of Wisconsin-Madison
MA, Political Science University of Wisconsin-Madison
BA Spanish and French, Indiana University
Languages Spoken:
Fluent Spanish and French, Conversational Portuguese, Reading knowledge Catalan and Italian
