The Future of Political Violence: Destabilization, Disorder and Terrorism

Ebook: Political Violence, Organized Crimes, Terrorism and Youth

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Former TV anchor and FMLN standard-bearer Mauricio Funes won the presidential election in and kick-started parallel prevention and repressive anti-crime campaigns. Primary prevention includes a wide variety of actions, such as building soccer fields or organising social workshops in violence-affected communities; secondary prevention is directed to people at risk, and may include coaching boys living in gang-controlled areas; an example of tertiary prevention would be a job placement program for inmates.

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Hide Footnote The strategies nevertheless proved to be little more than declarations of good intentions. Hide Footnote The Funes administration simultaneously intensified joint police and military operations and approved the Gang Proscription Law in September The government passed seven decrees between authorising military officers to participate in police operations, with the number of soldiers involved rising from 1, in to 6, in With the number of killings again reaching historic highs — 4, people were murdered in — Funes and his security cabinet changed tack, initiating an indirect dialogue with gang leaders to reduce killings in exchange for better conditions in jails.

Charles M. However, lack of broad public and political support contributed to the end of the de facto truce. Not even President Funes publicly admitted that the truce was official state policy.

Hide Footnote His successor, Ricardo Perdomo, declared in his first week in office that the government was not engaged in dialogue with the gangs. Hide Footnote By the end of this process, in the second half of , killings skyrocketed again, while gang extortion and recruitment, which had remained stable during the truce, increased afterwards. The plan has five axes: prevention, attention to victims, law enforcement, rehabilitation, and institutional strengthening.

Crisis Group interview, government official, 22 November Hide Footnote Implementation came in various phases, starting in municipalities affected by higher levels of violence. The government committed to investing 73 per cent of the money collected in prevention.

The merits of the new strategy have been disputed, as have its alleged accompanying human rights violations in the last two years. Hide Footnote Total homicides fell by 20 per cent from to , and government officials had estimated another 27 per cent drop by the end of Hide Footnote However, this foreseen reduction has not been sustained, nor has the general public noted a significant fall in violence.

Hide Footnote The second half of witnessed an uptick in violence, including murders between September and October Lack of adequate investment or qualified personnel has undermined prevention initiatives, putting the onus on more aggressive forms of policing.

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Residents in gang-controlled areas — especially women and children — pay the highest price as a result of the current escalation of violence. The National Civil Police, which spearheads implementation of anti-gang policies, has been profoundly affected both by the tide of gang violence and by the policies chosen to respond to it.

Officers argue that the police has become the favoured institution to lead the fight against crime, but that it cannot fulfil its role without support from other government institutions. Hide Footnote The state response to the rise of targeted killings and armed confrontations with gangs in recent years has focused on small increases in wages, while much-needed support to families of deceased officers and permanent protection mechanisms have been absent, mostly due to financial constraints rather than a lack of political will.

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Hide Footnote Allegations of abuse by the police have also received limited attention. Although the police has a relatively efficient internal control unit, it lacks the personnel required to process the growing number of allegations against officers.

In the context of generic institutional weakness, the armed forces, which continue to count on broad public support, remain the favoured option to combat gang violence. According to the Salvadoran constitution, its role is strictly circumscribed to foreign threats, reflecting the de-militarisation of public security that was one of the pillars of the peace accords.

Hide Footnote The use of executive decrees over the last decade to normalise its role has put this institution into a legal limbo. Judicial efforts to prosecute suspected criminals are constrained by the lack of a solid body of legislation to combat gang violence and of forensic evidence to try culprits. In the following years, prosecutors and police applied the law by rounding up 30, suspected gang members, but the courts only sent to prison around 15 per cent of those captured.

Hide Footnote Recent legislation has not changed this trend: according to one judge on the criminal circuit, evidence presented in court is still often highly circumstantial. Hide Footnote Some 44 per cent of the security budget was invested in the police and justice ministry, 31 per cent in the judiciary, and only 1 per cent on prevention. Hide Footnote The current allocation of funds is similar: though the government has committed to investing over two-thirds of the special security taxes on prevention, in reality it allocates less than 40 per cent.

Whereas all recent governments have admitted the need for a holistic approach to combating gang violence and its root causes, preventive strategies have tended to feature more on paper than in practice. Public fatigue, chronic violence and demands for punishment favour such coercive approaches. They also are concerned that these results cannot easily translate into either electoral support or attract sustainable funding. In this respect, the challenges faced by the Salvadoran government are not unique and affect other Latin American countries confronting high levels of violent crime.

Authorities tend to avoid the political risks and uncertainties of combating criminality and its root causes by handing the security forces discretionary power to tackle the problem. In the context of chronic insecurity, crime experts likewise question whether violence prevention initiatives can have a notable impact. The periods of are as follows: phase one, including the most violent areas, started in November ; phase two between December and July ; and phase three in November Hide Footnote The current budget deficit stands at around 3 per cent of GDP, and public debt is expected to reach 61 per cent of GDP by the end of Some 25 per cent of Salvadorans aged fifteen are neither working nor studying.

Hide Footnote there are few public policies aimed at promoting training and generating employment for young people. According to the Florida International University study, only 36 per cent of gang members interviewed have ever received professional training. Of those that did, nearly 70 per cent were trained in manual work. El Salvador also suffers persistently high poverty rates that increased between and , mostly in urban areas.

Last accessed 14 December Hide Footnote This has made implementation of prevention programs even harder, since officials tend to find that demands expressed by residents in marginalised communities are geared more to basic needs or food than improved public spaces or enhanced community facilities.

The most important flaw in security policies is their failure to address living conditions in gang-controlled communities. Social anomie, the victimisation of youth and women, and a climate of constant fear and suspicion help explain both the resilience of gangs and how well-intentioned policies fail to affect realities on the ground.

There is a consensus among the highest security authorities in El Salvador on the need to reestablish state territorial control as the prelude to improving security. In some areas, gangs have accumulated so much power that they have become de facto custodians of these localities, setting up road-blocks, supervising everyday life and imposing their own law.

At the same time, vigilante activity has become a common threat, especially in areas with major gang presence. These patrols are formed by civilians, some of them war veterans, who seek to stop the entrance of gang members in their territory.

No public policy of the past fifteen years has sought to restrict these groups, or reduce their potential harm. Vigilantism has even been promoted by lawmakers such as the President of the Legislative Assembly Guillermo Gallegos, who has admitted financing some of these groups.

In general, areas with strong social and community bonds have seen far less gang expansion. While there are no empirical studies decisively proving the link, the map in figure 4 suggests a significant correlation. Taking the strength of the insurgency during the civil war as a proxy for social cohesion since guerrillas depended on strong communal ties and collective mobilisation , the map shows that in districts where the insurgency had been strong had relatively few homicides in comparison with districts where the insurgency was weak. The impact of community building on reducing the risk of gang membership has been discussed in many academic papers.

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The Future of Political Violence

Craig D. Uchida, Marc L. Swatt, Shellie E. Solomon, and Sean P. Previous studies have pointed to how a lack of community ties underpinned the expansion of gang control in parts of Central America, and how the presence of these groups proceeded to further undermine social cohesion. Hide Footnote a survey from across the Northern Triangle found that 88 per cent of Salvadorans interviewed in gang-affected areas reported that they did not collaborate with their neighbours in dealing with crime problems in their community.

The survey showed that interviewees in El Salvador and other regional countries instead had opted to change their daily habits, such as avoiding walking alone after sunset or buying a gun. Hide Footnote Some individuals who lived in gang-controlled areas also mentioned the limits on free movement imposed by these groups as a crucial factor behind the deterioration of community life. Lack of investment in education coupled with criminal activity in and around schools allows gangs to use them as recruitment platforms.

Tellingly spending on education in El Salvador is the lowest in Central America, representing only 4. Hide Footnote Many schools are unsafe for students and teachers, both of whom are threatened by gang members and their children.

The effect of gang recruitment and presence on education can be illustrated by comparing years of schooling in areas with a high gang presence to those with a low gang presence. Figure 5 shows that individuals who started school in and lived in what are now high-gang presence areas had significantly more years of schooling than their peers in areas that now boast a low gang presence, largely because education is weaker in rural areas, which tend to have fewer gangs.

The schooling gap was reduced by nearly half over the next six years, mainly because of improvements in rural education. But much more strikingly, the gap was erased completely over the next six years, between and , not because of further improvements in rural education indeed, years of schooling in rural locations declined slightly over that time but rather because of the precipitous drop in schooling in high-gang areas. That drop can be explained by the mass deportation to El Salvador beginning in , which had a highly detrimental effect on schooling.

Specific action to tackle the victimisation of women as civilians or as gang members has been missing from security policies. The levels of violence against women make this absence from key decision-making circles all the more worrying. A total of 10, female minors were reported to have been raped between and , amounting to one of the highest such rates in the hemisphere. Many more go unreported for fear of retaliation. Testimony from people living in gang-controlled communities reveal high levels of distrust of public authorities, limited access to public spaces, and physical abuse against young people.

Below are some of the most representative and disturbing concerns voiced by interviewees, all young people between fourteen and 25 years old from the suburbs of San Salvador.

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The statements underline the difficulties in devising and applying effective security policies in a context of widespread control by gangs coupled with public animosity toward them. I told myself: are these the guys who are going to keep me safe? Hide Footnote At the same time, the current government strategy aims at using all resources available to asphyxiate the gangs, including the militarisation of public spaces, to which the gangs have responded with greater violence.

Hide Footnote While there is little evidence to suggest that the government or opposition will soon offer distinct policies, actions such as adapting the current security strategy, promoting rehabilitation efforts and reinforcing security and justice institutions could contribute to reducing insecurity. Large sums of money have been poured into the prioritised locations and allowed mayors to offer visible changes to communities.

Since young people are both the primary victims and perpetrators of gang violence, it is essential to ensure that schools remain safe havens. The changing dynamics of criminal violence in El Salvador also suggest the need for a differentiated security strategy for areas with high and low gang presence. In contrast, the current mass arrests and generic targeting of teenage suspects are detrimental to efforts to win local support and garner information.

Supporting this shift in policy will require fresh allocations of resources and a change in the partisan political habits. All political parties, and above all ARENA, should avoid blocking legislation on issues where there is in theory broad cross-party agreement.

Although the government is clear that it has no intention to engage again in dialogue with gangs, in practice thousands of low-level officials and community leaders are compelled to negotiate daily with them. The chances of a fresh attempt at national dialogue with the gangs of the sort that failed between and would very much depend on the incoming administration in Legal reforms are urgently needed to relieve the judiciary of the pressures it faces.

Possibilities include reducing sentences for minor offenses such as drug possession, or using trained community mediators to settle disputes outside of the courtroom, which has proven successful in Honduras. Hide Footnote It is clear from interviews with judges and high-level magistrates that the distribution of judicial resources across the country is seriously imbalanced given the geographic clustering of criminal activity.

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Ideally, it should receive more funding and revise its annual goals to ensure they are realistic. Lessons from police reforms in countries such as Guatemala and Honduras indicate that specific innovations can prove more effective than efforts to reform the entire security system.

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