Our Mission

InSight Crime is a think tank and media organization that seeks to deepen and inform the debate about organized crime and citizen security in the Americas by providing regular reporting, analysis, data, investigation, and policy suggestions on how to tackle the multiple challenges they present.

It does this by fusing investigative journalism with academic rigor, building its analysis from extensive ground research, which includes speaking to all the actors, legal and illegal. As well as its published work on this website, it works with a network of experts and partners in the region to provide bespoke risk analysis, diagnostics, and opportunities for positive intervention.

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What Makes Us Different

Shaping the Debate

Each year, we hold conferences, launch investigations, conduct workshops, convene seminars and support local stakeholders to deepen the conversation around organized crime.

Explore InSight Crime Investigations


Virtual Newsroom

Our newsroom team is like no other – global, multilingual, and well-versed in the dynamics of organized crime. Although our main offices are in Washington, DC, and Medellín, Colombia, InSight Crime has personnel positioned in a half-dozen countries across the Americas and at any one time is doing research with multiple contributors in numerous others.

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On the Ground

Our investigators are in the field, from major cities to remote rural corners, reporting on the latest criminal dynamics, actors and hotspots, and gathering data to track the fast-changing illicit economies.

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Monitoring

Every day, we scour hundreds of news outlets, academic journals, and governmental and non-governmental reports from across the Americas. The information collected forms the building blocks of the most comprehensive database on organized crime in the region.

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Go-To Resource

We continually develop and update profiles of countries, criminal organizations and personalities from around the region. Highly organized with infographics and detailed maps, our profiles are a go-to resource for journalists, academics, civil society leaders, government officials, and others seeking to deepen their understanding of criminal dynamics in the Americas.

Explore Criminal Profiles


Academic Alliances

We partner with leading academic institutions across the region, such as American University’s Center for Latin American and Latino Studies (CLALS), which has sponsored joint research initiatives, and the Universidad del Rosario, in Bogotá, which is home to our Colombian Organized Crime Observatory.


Our Team

Our staff of about 50 investigators working across the Americas and Europe includes reporters with years of experience on the ground; investigators with graduate degrees in Latin America, citizen security, and conflict studies; and experts in design, translation, and data analysis. We are a tight-knit team with a nerdy edge and a taste for high-risk environments. Despite our diverse backgrounds, we are bound by an abiding belief that exposing organized crime is critical to dismantling it.


Steven Dudley

Steven Dudley

Steven Dudley is the co-founder and co-director of InSight Crime and a senior research fellow at American University’s Center for Latin American and Latino Studies in Washington, DC. In 2020, Dudley published his second book, MS-13: The Making of America’s Most Notorious Gang (HarperCollins), which in 2019 won the Lukas Prize for work-in-progress. Dudley 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 holds a BA in Latin American History from Cornell University and an MA in Latin American Studies from the University of Texas at Austin. He was a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and is a member of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.


Jeremy McDermott

Jeremy McDermott

Jeremy McDermott is co-founder and co-director of InSight Crime. McDermott has more than two decades of experience reporting from around Latin America. 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 the Middle East from Beirut, before being sent to Colombia to cover the conflict. He has traveled extensively throughout Latin America. Before setting up InSight Crime he worked for many of Britain’s most prestigious media outlets, including the BBC, the Daily Telegraph and The Economist. He specializes in drug trafficking, organized crime and the Colombian civil conflict. He has an MA from the University of Edinburgh.


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Internship Programs & Open Positions