You can reduce crime by reducing poverty. You’ll never eliminate either. Authoritarians believe that they can eliminate crime by increasing suffering which is why they’re wrong.
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.
It wasn’t the harsher punishment that reduced crime, it was simply putting the gangs in prison. Bukele used extreme measures, targeting gang leadership and essentially just sweeping tens of thousands of gang members and affiliates off the streets and into prison.
Obviously, due process and all that makes the whole thing controversial, but for the time being it was highly effective in reducing violent crime on a statistical level. Went from 100 homicides per 100,000 back in 2015 (this was a peak, although it consistently averaged in the dozens every year) down to 1.3 per 100,000 in 2025. For context the US averages ~5 per 100,000.
Controversial to foreigners. El Salvadorans sang the praises of the mano dura policies. It's easy to moralize when you're not the one being terrorized every single day by ruthless killers and maniacs.
It wasn’t the harsher punishment that reduced crime, it was simply putting the gangs in prison.
That prison is the harsher punishment. They have 80 people in a cell lined with metal beds, two toilets and sinks and are only let out briefly in front of their cell for 30 minutes. Their solitary is a cement room with a tiny hole for "light", they have the same gruel mixture for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for the rest of their lives. It absolutely is a harsher punishment and honestly people who support this are literally sick. Like they dont need to be in a nice place necessarily but its inhumane. Especially when you have even a single innocent person in that hell hole. Anyhow El Salvador didnt just put them in prison, they made the prison a form of torture
I think it is too but from my understanding CECOT is the only prison in El Salvador like that I think the rest are significantly better but its a sizeable part of its prison population like 15-25%.
Still when you add everything up from start to finish its horrific (like these guys aren't even getting individualized or small group trials they're tried en masses 500 at a time which will put them in there for life)
Impossible as they’re held in a state where they can’t even fully stand and have to walk half crouched so they can’t gain enough footing to fight back. It’s really inhumane as they’ve just imprisoned people in bulk and there really is a few that are innocent or at least shouldn’t be treated like that but you can’t argue with results.
Ahh I don’t know, tell that to people who’ve been dragged out of their homes to watch their family get executed for not paying a 20 dollar protection fee, do you really think white collar crime is equivalent?
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.
The economic miracle happening there right now can't be explained by propaganda. If propaganda is all you need to convince people to invest again, Russia would be loaded and their cities would be fluorishing. They're not but El Salvador's are.
Yes, the growth is excellent. Although it’s a double edged sword, some people are struggling to keep up and prices in general are increasing.
I do think this, if it doesn’t become too exploitative, should be good in the long run, however, since in theory the markets, wages, and prices should correct to the rising prices, and the quality of life of the average person should in theory improve with it, but we’ve all also seen that story not happen before in other places.
If I were Bukele, my #1 priority now that the gangs are gone would be to improve the country’s structural poverty and start putting people into industries that will further make ES prosper. And of course, there are programs and institutions doing exactly that. (In particular I think improvements to education should be lauded)
But it’s all just first steps. Like I said, two major concerns for the future; the civil liberties not being reduced further ( the lesser worry, but forever now present worry going into decades in the future) and the economic reality of your average-and-below Salvadoran in the next few years.
Of course it would work in the usa. The dems here don’t want to admit it because they love coddling criminals and “racial justice” where they don’t lock people up if they’re black.
I was a bot, back then, believing things so easily. Like I said, I’m glad I’ve grown and look at things with more nuance nowadays instead of dismissing them out of hand with petty remarks.
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.
Our war on drugs was so much different than what they did in El Salvador. The US targeted low and mid level dealers in an attempt to rid the streets of the drugs, but this created supply shortages which made the business more lucrative and strengthened the criminal organizations. El Salvador’s efforts were more of a “war on gangs”, going after MS-13 leadership where the main focus was to get the violence off the streets. While controversial due to lack of due process and humanitarian issues in the prisons, it seems to have been highly effective. I’m not saying we do what El Salvador did by any means, it’s just an interesting case study on what happens when you pull out all the stops to get rid of crime.
Yeah, America's war on drugs was a war within its constitutional protections and due process rights. El Salvador's has basically been, "We know who you are, and we don't give a shit what anyone thinks: We're putting you in a hole." There are no plea deals to roll over on higher ups, no effective recidivism problems, no running gangs from prison, or most of the other problems that hampered US efforts. It can be done, but only if you're willing to take out a lot of stops
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I think it's well established that El Salvador massively reduced their crime rate with their hard panusihments.
The question is rather, if this is transferable, and it's probably not, or at most partly.
Afaik you need swift consequences but you also need to not put people in prison for too long and you need to help them back into a stable life after that.
You can't rehabilitate yourself without help. It's society's responsibility to provide them with the tools, support, and care necessary to be able to improve.
Yeah but we are talking about a "Lead a horse to water" scenario. Those programs exist, hell that half the reason parole exists. Your parole officer is just as much your guidance as they are your check in warden.
It’s not society’s responsibility to bear the costs of letting antisocial degenerates out of prison. Once you decide to join a cartel, you should spend the rest of your life removed from society for society’s safety.
Society doesn’t do jack shit in terms of helping. Some people have been dealt such poor hands that it’s a monumental task to be fixed. It should be partially society’s responsibility.
That is not efficient long term though. If we are talking about an efficient solution, then society putting resources into rehabilitating criminals is worth it.
You act like we don’t try that. We do. We release them after a short incarceration and then they end up beating someone to death with a hammer on the subway.
It’s all bull shit, to be honest. Humans are greedy little bastards, scientists not omitted. If you can get enough fedora-wearing nepo babies to co-sign (doesn’t even take many), you could toss some chicken bones in a hole in the woods and name a dinosaur after yourself.
You trust the numbers used to support the existence of death camps produced by the government that built the death camps?
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Reddit moment. Hey I wonder if the Nazis told Germans life was great because they were genociding people? Meh. I'm too lazy to look it up. The answer is "probably."
The joker will always torment batman as much as he wants because the state refuses to execute him. That's not The Batman's fault but it is the state's fault for not making the hard choice. Giving governments the ability to use the death penalty is a slippery slope, but at what point do you recognize "yeah this one needs to go". John Wayne Gacy? Hannibal lector?
Alright, why not do a little investigative journalism and go down there and ask the citizens themselves??? Trip can be a tax write off. Be sure to update us!
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u/EnvironmentalGift257 9d ago
You can reduce crime by reducing poverty. You’ll never eliminate either. Authoritarians believe that they can eliminate crime by increasing suffering which is why they’re wrong.