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 Michael W. Flamm
In the mid-1960s, amid a pervasive sense that American society was coming apart at the seams, a new issue known as 'law and order' emerged at the forefront of national politics. First introduced by Barry Goldwater in his ill-fated run for president in 1964, it eventually punished Lyndon Johnson and the Democrats and propelled Richard Nixon and the Republicans to the White House in 1968. In this thought-provoking study, Michael W. Flamm examines how conservatives successfully blamed liberals for the rapid rise in street crime and then skillfully used law and order to link the understandable fears of white voters to growing unease about changing moral values, the civil rights movement, urban disorder, and antiwar protests. Liberals, Flamm argues, were by contrast unable to craft a compelling message for anxious voters. Instead, they either ignored the crime crisis, claimed that law and order was a racist ruse, or maintained that social programs would solve the "root causes" of civil unrest. By 1968, this seemed increasingly unlikely and contributed to a loss of faith in the ability of the government to do what it was above all sworn to do-protect personal security and private property.
New York: Columbia University Press, 2007. 294p.
By Robert McLean
After many years of decline, reported levels of youth violence and gang culture in Britain began to increase again in 2014, and have continued to do so since, particularly in England and Wales. This has happened against the backdrop of deindustrialisation, and as the result of a lack of local community investment, as well as the continuing issues associated with the profiling and criminalisation of young working-class men, particularly those from ethnic minority communities. This document comprises two parts. Part I reviews contemporary literature on gang culture and highlights the most pertinent findings, which were used to brief conversations at the Cumberland Lodge Conference on ‘Understanding and Policing Gangs’ in June 2019. Part II draws upon those conference conversations and presents key themes that cut across the various panel discussions. It also outlines recommendations that emerged from both the conference discussions and a follow-up consultation to further scrutinise the findings, held in October 2019. These recommendations seek to outline ways in which gang culture might be addressed in the UK, and how communities might be better policed.
Windsor, UK: Cumberland Lodge, 2020. 80p.