Latin America's struggles with crime and violence are both tragic and puzzling. Decades of mano dura crackdowns have only made things worse. Even relatively peaceful and prosperous countries have seen neighbourhood gangs band together into city- and nation-wide coalitions, governing vast urban areas. Imprisoned leaders order street attacks, hoping to force concessions, such as transfers to lower-security prisons. Kingpin killings by security forces and extraditions spark bloody succession battles.
The problem is not capacity. With the exception of Haiti, Latin American states are not outgunned. Nor are they trigger-shy: many resort to lethal policing, full-blown military occupations, martial law and mass incarceration. Yet such repressive force can be not only ineffective but counterproductive when deployed indiscriminately; in illicit markets like drug-trafficking, incapacitating one group creates growth opportunities for others. Overall, the picture is one of widespread and costly punishment but little deterrence. Overcrowded and expanding prisons are the physical embodiment of this failure.
The alternative to brute force is coercion: threatening punishment in the hope of never having to carry it out. This is the motivation behind a violence-reduction strategy known as focused deterrence (FD). It starts with police identifying and meeting the local criminal groups most likely to commit violence. They offer them carrots—social services like drug treatment or job training—but also brandish sticks, such as tougher prosecution and longer sentences if violence continues.
Built on the assumption that gang members need and deserve help to avoid violence, FD is unabashedly paternalistic. This is not an easy sell. Nevertheless, in places like Boston, Detroit and even Mexico City, where gangs are small and local, FD has been quite successful. But what about Juárez, Medellín, Rio de Janeiro or even Guayaquil?
FD alone won’t solve Latin America’s woes. Governments cannot easily meet sprawling mafias, much less offer them carrots. Moreover, for illicit businesses like drug cartels, violence has a strategic rationale: it can be an efficient way to gain market share. So rather than just nudging individual gang leaders towards better choices, policymakers must reverse the structural incentives for violent competition built into illicit markets.
The key to doing so lies in a force behind FD that I call conditional repression: applying more punishment when criminal groups behave badly and less when they behave better. Naturally, choosing which behaviour merits punishment or reprieve can be contentious. But giving drug-traffickers a break if they curb violence seems a good place to start.
That was the idea behind a programme in Rio de Janeiro, launched in 2008, to establish “pacifying” police units (UPPs in Portuguese). For decades Rio’s slums, or favelas, have been governed by well-armed drug-traffickers. Police generally enter only in military-style raids, killing around 1,000 alleged traffickers in armed confrontations every year. Residents, not unreasonably, often see traffickers as the more legitimate authority. The UPP/Pacification programme sought to end the shootouts and establish a legitimate state presence.
The key was to reframe the problem, from drugs themselves to the violence of those peddling them. Special forces were deployed to occupy many of Rio’s favelas, but then quickly handed control over to UPPs. The remit of the UPPs was not to end the drug trade but to use the threat of additional repression to deter traffickers from carrying and using weapons. Almost overnight, traffickers began to accept police patrols. The programme showed that with careful use of coercive force, states could get gangs to play by new rules.
UPP/Pacification began to falter in 2012, falling prey to two ills common to conditional-repression approaches. The first is logistical. Compared with mano dura, conditional repression requires more money and people for intelligence-gathering, communicating with gangs and the public, and accurately assessing gang behaviour in order to punish or reward it appropriately. FD requires outreach workers and co-ordination with state agencies doling out the carrots. UPPs had to actually govern the communities they occupied. The costs add up. Even successful programmes can become targets for cuts once their impact becomes old news.
The second problem is optics. Whereas mano dura—with its spectacular busts and fearsome super-prisons—looks like it’s working even when it isn’t, conditional repression looks like it isn’t working even when it is. That is because, as Thomas Schelling, a nuclear-deterrence strategist, put it, the effective threat is the one not carried out. And though we all like our missiles safe in their silos, many criticised Rio’s UPPs for tolerating drug retailing by unarmed traffickers, even though traffickers only disarmed because the state held back. The programme’s successes were easily mistaken for laziness or corruption: the police are there, so why not bust the traffickers?
Defusing militarised drug wars like Rio’s therefore requires centralised, well-resourced and politically risky strategies. Yet on smaller scales, even minor tweaks to sentencing guidelines and police practices, along with effective messaging, can reshape criminals’ incentives. Drug-dealers should face steep increases in repression if they turn towards fentanyl or crack, and significant reprieves if they keep such dangerous drugs out of their areas. Cartels and mafias can be encouraged to divide turf peacefully, if they can expect some reprieve from state repression for doing so.
The bad news is that conditional repression is no panacea: it begins with the admission that not all ills can be fought at once. Violence, drug-trafficking and corruption form an unholy trinity; curbing one tends to exacerbate the others. Reducing violence should be a priority, but doing so will not eliminate gangs. Conditional repression “civilises” them—a possible side-effect of which is increased corruption and criminal governance over civilians. Yet as long as the multi-billion-dollar drug trade remains illegal, it is the least bad option.
Benjamin Lessing is associate professor of political science at the University of Chicago and the author of Making Peace in Drug Wars: Crackdowns and Cartels in Latin America (2017).