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This paper aims to understand the meanings of food and nutrition policies for beneficiary mothers and for technicians designing and implementing said policies. The Grounded Theory method was employed. The data collection techniques adopted were the semi-structured interview and the focus group. The participants were beneficiaries of food and nutrition programs, with a minimum two-year experience, and technicians with five-year experience in designing or implementing these policies and programs. Food and nutrition policies are conceived and managed under a market logic, which has required an institutional framework that adopted this commercial model to provide public services, which is implemented in the scheme of outsourcing third parties, especially private companies, who implement these policies to achieve financial profitability. The market is imposed as the benchmark for the State's actions, and, therefore, the State's action is limited the oversight of outsourced actions, and food policies become devices for the diversion of public resources to the private sector.

The scope of this paper was to analyze the trends, impact on life expectancy and effect of the main associated socioeconomic factors with the death rate by homicide in Colombia between 2000 and 2014 at the state level, by gender and age groups. Standardized mortality rates and years of life lost among those under 85 years of age were calculated and multivariate regression analysis was performed using negative binomial fixed effects regression models with panel data to analyze the associated socioeconomic factors with the incidence of homicide. The reduction of the death rate by homicide in Colombia was corroborated, which was generalized at state level, though it did not occur homogenously. A higher mortality risk was found among males, particularly between 15 and 49 years of age. Economic growth and inequality were negatively associated with death rates by homicide; unemployment was positively associated; and poverty had no effect on the mortality rate. Investigating the main associated factors with homicidal violence is complex, but is indispensable due to its impact on economic and social development, given that it mainly affects the population of productive age, with broad public health consequences and at a high cost to healthcare services.

Homicides occur the world over, but they are not homogeneously distributed by geographical areas (continents, countries, regions), either over long or short periods of time, or in social groups, namely age, gender, social class or ethnicity. Why are there more homicides in some countries than in others? Why do killings increase in some countries, while they decrease in others? There are two fundamental schools of thought for social explanations of crime and violence: those attributing its origins to poverty and inequality and those blaming institutionalization or social norms. To discuss these theories, this paper analyzes and compares the changes in Colombia, Venezuela and Brazil in the first decade of the twenty-first century, where the homicide rate has decreased, increased and remained the same, respectively. Using the measurement of six variables (poverty, inequality, unemployment, national wealth, human development and the rule of law) and the technique of trajectory analysis, the results revealed that institutionalization is more to blame for the change than poverty and inequality. The text concludes that poverty and inequality affect crime and homicides, although not directly, but mediated by the institutions instead.