By Maria Micaela Sviatschi

This paper provides evidence showing how deportation policies can backfire by disseminating not only ideas between countries but also criminal networks, spreading gangs, in this case, across Central America and spurring migration back to the US. In 1996, the US Illegal Immigration Responsibility Act drastically increased the number of criminal deportations. In particular, the members of large Salvadoran gangs that developed in Los Angeles were sent back to El Salvador. Using variation in criminal deportations over time and across cohorts combined with geographical variation in the location of gangs and their members’ place of birth, I find that criminal deportations led to a large increase in Salvadoran homicide rates and gang activity, such as extortion and drug trafficking, as well as an increase in gang recruitment of children. In particular, I find evidence that children in their early teens when the leaders arrived are more likely to be involved in gang-related crimes when they are adults. I also find evidence that these deportations, by increasing gang violence in El Salvador, increase child migration to the US–potentially leading to more deportations.

Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Working Paper, 2020. 52p.

By John Pitts

  This report, compiled between September 2006 and March 2007, brings together data from two surveys, 54 interviews with ‘key informants’: professionals, local residents and young people involved with, or affected by, youth gangs. Key informants are marked like this (KI.01) in the text to indicate the source of the information. However, the report also draws on the many insights I have gained from informal conversations at Waltham Forest YOT over the period. The interview and survey data is augmented by a literature review. Some of the material presented here is straightforward reportage, but some of it is more speculative, based on inferences or hunches drawn from what respondents have said or what I have read. So when, in the text, I write ‘it appears’ or ‘it is said’, I am drawing on hearsay and hunches or making an inference that seems plausible to me but is not necessarily a castiron fact. As such, these kinds of assertions or conclusions should be read with caution. In the interests of anonymity this report does not name the key informants; yet without them this study would have been impossible.

Cullompton UK:  Willan Publishing, 2008. 178p.  

By Eleno Castro and Randy Kotti

Despite the growing body of qualitative evidence suggesting collusion between gangs and political parties in various parts of the world, little has been done to study quantitatively the extent to which criminal organization may affect political elections in such context. Using police data and voting results in El Salvador, we find that homicides in gang-controlled neighborhoods tend to decrease by 24 percent of the mean during electoral seasons. We also estimate that gang control is associated with a 2.75 percentage point increase in electoral participation. These effects are especially significant in the neighborhoods where political parties have a strong voting base. Consistent with the interviews we conducted, this suggests that parties negotiate with gangs to mobilize electoral participation in the areas where they are more likely to receive electoral support and thus increase their chances of winning. To conduct our analysis, we geolocated the homicides reported daily in the registry of the National Civil Police from 2005 to 2019 crossed with electoral results reported at the voting-center level across El Salvador. We exploit the sudden and exogenous decrease in criminality resulting from the 2012 truce between the government and the two main gangs in El Salvador to identify gang-controlled neighborhoods. We also use penitentiary data from the General Directorate of Prisons for robustness measures. 

Pre-publication, 2022. 51p.

By Nikita Melnikov, Carlos Schmidt-Padilla, and Maria Micaela Sviatschi   

We study how territorial control by criminal organizations affects economic development. We exploit a natural experiment in El Salvador, where the emergence of these criminal organizations was the consequence of an exogenous shift in American immigration policy that led to the deportation of gang leaders from the United States to El Salvador. Upon arrival, the gangs gained control over many urban areas and re-created a system of borders to protect their territory from outsiders. Using a spatial regression discontinuity design, we find that individuals in gang-controlled neighborhoods have less material well-being, income, and education than individuals living only 50 meters away but outside of gang territory. None of these discontinuities existed before the arrival of the gangs. A key mechanism behind the results is that gangs restrict individuals’ mobility, affecting their labor market options by preventing them from commuting to other parts of the city. The results are not determined by high rates of selective migration, differential exposure to extortion and violence, or differences in public goods provision.     

  NBER Working Paper No. 27832  

Cambridge, MA:; National Bureau of Economic Research, 2022. 123p.

By InSight Crime

President Maduro’s plan to help governors fund their states by gifting them each a gold mine soon ran into trouble. In the sprawling state of Bolívar, this led to immediate conflict. The criminal gangs that ran Venezuela’s mining heartland would never surrender. One group, in particular, has led the resistance. On November 5, 2019, threatening pamphlets appeared on the streets of El Callao, a mining town in Venezuela›s eastern state of Bolívar. The town was already on edge. A week before, a severed head was found on a road in El Callao. The pamphlets contained a message from a local gang leader, Alejandro Rafael Ochoa Sequea, alias “Toto,” to the municipal mayor, Alberto Hurtado. “You handed over your land to the government,” they read. “Resign, you have 48 hours to pack your bags because there is going to be more death, and if you don’t go, I’m coming for your head.” That night, armed men on motorbikes raced around the streets, firing off their weapons and setting off a grenade. This investigation exposes how the Maduro regime’s attempts to control Venezuela’s mining heartland in the state of Bolívar has led to criminal chaos, as guerrilla groups, heavily armed gangs and corrupt state elements battle over the country’s gold. Toto’s message and his gang’s terror campaign came shortly after President Nicolás Maduro had announced an unusual new policy: He would give each state governor a gold mine to help fund their administrations. There was one problem. Bolívar’s gold mines were controlled by brutal criminal gangs known as sindicatos (unions). And the sindicatos such as Toto’s had no intention of giving up the mines without a fight.

Washington, DC: InSight Crime, 2021. 31p.

By InSight Crime

President Maduro’s plan to help governors fund their states by gifting them each a gold mine soon ran into trouble. In the sprawling state of Bolívar, this led to immediate conflict. The criminal gangs that ran Venezuela’s mining heartland would never surrender. One group, in particular, has led the resistance. On November 5, 2019, threatening pamphlets appeared on the streets of El Callao, a mining town in Venezuela›s eastern state of Bolívar. The town was already on edge. A week before, a severed head was found on a road in El Callao. The pamphlets contained a message from a local gang leader, Alejandro Rafael Ochoa Sequea, alias “Toto,” to the municipal mayor, Alberto Hurtado. “You handed over your land to the government,” they read. “Resign, you have 48 hours to pack your bags because there is going to be more death, and if you don’t go, I’m coming for your head.” That night, armed men on motorbikes raced around the streets, firing off their weapons and setting off a grenade. This investigation exposes how the Maduro regime’s attempts to control Venezuela’s mining heartland in the state of Bolívar has led to criminal chaos, as guerrilla groups, heavily armed gangs and corrupt state elements battle over the country’s gold. Toto’s message and his gang’s terror campaign came shortly after President Nicolás Maduro had announced an unusual new policy: He would give each state governor a gold mine to help fund their administrations. There was one problem. Bolívar’s gold mines were controlled by brutal criminal gangs known as sindicatos (unions). And the sindicatos such as Toto’s had no intention of giving up the mines without a fight.

Washington, DC: InSight Crime, 2021. 31p.

By Kyung-Seok Choo

Choo explores group delinquency in the Asian American community. His primary focus is two youth groups, a Korean affiliated Chinese youth gang and a Korean delinquent group. The two groups have evolved through different processes and under different community circumstances. Both manifest differing patterns of delinquent activities and require different approaches to their problems. By analyzing the demographic, socioeconomic, and cultural characteristics of the Korean immigrant community, the book discusses the unique lifestyle of Korean-American immigrants in relation to their youth and group delinquency problem. Choo also explains the phenomenon of gangs and immigrant youth by detailed comparison of the emergence, development, persistence and change of theser two distinctive groups.

New York: LFB Scholarly Publishing, 2007. 215p.