ABSTRACT
This chapter presents some indicators for the quantitative level of violence and crime in Central America and its expression as a basis for the subsequent thoughts about fear of crime. It describes the different Central American contexts of violence, crime and fear of crime. The chapter explores the discourse about violence and crime and punitive populism in the region to argue that those aspects help us to better understand the Central American problem of violence and crime. Laura Chinchilla, political scientists, expert in violence in Central America and Costa Rican president from 2010 to 2014, was the politician who took punitive populism to extremes so far. Punitive populism is not the only reason why the former deviant sub-culture of Central American youth gangs became more and more a phenomenon of super-violent organised crime in the present, but it definitely played its part.
