You mean the dictatorship? Yeah, I don’t trust those numbers. That’s like saying “North Korea has a god as supreme leader because they said so.” Especially a dictator that labeled himself the “world’s coolest dictator” on social media. He totally wouldn’t lie for optics, would he?
All the literature on the subject shows that making punishments worse doesn’t actually reduce crime.
My friend told me this years ago, about my own country, and he pretty much convinced me, and I believed him. Certainly it’s all propaganda and lies, right?. Years have passed, anecdotes, data, research, for how it can all be biased and twisted, has all come in.
I truly believe, now, with the evidence presented to me, that my friend was wrong, and Redditors are wrong about this. The actions in El Salvador have worked. The numbers aren’t mere propaganda or fabrications. People of all kinds, of all classes, have told me the same story: it worked.
Everything is more expensive, and civil liberties have taken a big hit. But it is the price ES was willing to pay; and it’s worked so far.
At some point the refusal to see what is in front of you actually becomes the optics, the lies, and the conspiracy.
I’ve grown personally a lot in these years, my stance on things is much more measured. Truth is, even back then, there were a lot of reports coming out of ES about the good things happening, and I accepted the Reddit-like advice and assumption of my friend that it was all propaganda and lies. Ironically, that turned out to be untrue.
I’m both glad I took an overly-cautious approach to the issue, but also a bit ashamed I wasn’t willing to meet with the truth sooner than I should have.
ES has a complicated future ahead of it, economically, and in terms of the political and civil power the state could continue to hold over the people… but the worse version of whatever comes next would still be a heaven to the hell the gangs inflicted on ES. This is something I don’t think people consider with ES specifically. It worked, which at the very least proves it can work, but not with every situation. Could it work in places like the US? I personally doubt it, still, but the truth is that no one can truly know until it is tried. Literature means nothing to that. It probably will never happen, though.
Thanks for the personal insight! I agree it is a very complicated topic. Like yea obviously if you throw all of the criminals in jail, crime will go down. But there are massive implications on people’s rights, due process infringements, etc. I can almost guarantee you that, of the tens of thousands of criminals that have been imprisoned, there are likely dozens, maybe even hundreds of innocent people that got wrapped up in it all. It seems like the people of El Salvador see it as a worthwhile risk because the crime was just that bad. Hopefully the government doesn’t take it anywhere beyond the violent crime.
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u/Badestrand 3d ago
El Salvador reduced their crime from crazy high to almost none by harshly imprisoning all their criminals.