Accountability Shock presents the first systematic explanation of why some 'Third Wave' democracies developed peacefully while others became the world's most violent. The book demonstrates how robust transitional justice processes – combining truth commissions with prosecution of autocratic-era atrocities – prevent criminal violence in new democracies. By holding authoritarian specialists in violence accountable, new democracies can break state impunity, preventing them from becoming key actors in the production of large-scale criminal violence and reshaping the logic of state coercion in democracy. With in-depth analyses of six Latin American cases, the work illuminates why transitional justice is crucial for addressing state-criminal collusion in hybrid contexts. Forged out of a close collaboration between transitional justice scholars and practitioners, Accountability Shock strengthens existing connections while offering practical insights for countries still grappling with authoritarian legacies and violence.

‘Trejo, Tiscornia, and Albarracín’s Accountability Shock will become an indispensable work not just for those interested in transitional justice, but also in security studies, criminology, and in peacebuilding. Impeccably researched, careful methodologically, the authors offer a novel way of understanding the impact of transitional justice. Avoiding the tendency to think that transitional justice measures are ‘cure for all ills,’ a common feature of the early literature in the field, they concentrate on the impact of truth and criminal trials (what they call an ‘accountability shock’) on future organized crime related deaths. Their ingenious explanation, which they manage to establish by means of mixed method methodologies, is that truth and justice take out of the armed forces ‘authoritarian violence experts’ whose continued presence in police or military forces invite militarized ‘iron-fist’ policies, protect criminals using their positions of state power, or defect to organized crime, all of which are associated with increases in deaths characteristic of postauthoritarian countries that fail to implement transitional justice policies.’

Pablo de Greiff - (first) United Nations Special Rapporteur on the promotion of truth, justice, reparation, and guarantees of non-recurrence, Senior Fellow and Director, Prevention Project, School of Law, New York University

‘This groundbreaking book argues that building peaceful democracies requires confronting authoritarian legacies and holding perpetrators accountable. Drawing from an impressive array of evidence across Latin America and beyond, Accountability Shock shows that truth commissions, criminal trials, and other accountability mechanisms play a transformative role in dismantling entrenched networks of ‘state specialists in violence’ tied to the repressive apparatus that otherwise enable organized crime to flourish. A vital contribution to the study of democratization, violence, and the role of justice in shaping post-authoritarian societies.’

Beatriz Magaloni - Graham H. Stuart Professor of International Relations, Stanford University

‘This is the best book ever written on the consequences of transitional justice. Featuring a combination of imaginative theorising, large-N analyses, and rigorously paired case studies, Trejo, Tiscornia and Albarracín explain why robust truth and justice policies in the aftermath of dictatorship and armed conflict can prevent crime epidemics.’

Ezequiel Gonzalez-Ocantos - Professor of Comparative & Judicial Politics, University of Oxford