By Romain Le Cour Grandmaison; Ana Paula Oliveira and Matt Herbert

Over the course of 2023 and early 2024, security has continued to deteriorate alarmingly in Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, and in rural areas in the center and south of the country.

The Haitian crisis worsened critically in 2023. UN reports indicate that in 2023, over 4 789 people were murdered, 1 698 injured, and 2 490 kidnapped, with a 2023 homicide rate of 40.9 per 100 000, more than double the 2022 rate. Besides these figures, the nature of the criminal actors has been profoundly transformed, posing a series of challenges to international intervention.

Over the past years, gangs have undergone a radical evolution, going from rather unstructured actors dependent on resources provided by public or private patronage to violent entrepreneurs who have been able to convert their territorial power into governance capabilities. This shift has been fueled by the gangs’ unprecedented access to firearms and the Haitian state’s inability to halt their expansion, professionalization, and propensity to impose their rule over ever-larger territories, as well as by ongoing collusion by elements of the country’s political and economic elites.

In October 2023, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) adopted a resolution authorizing a non-UN multinational security support (MSS) mission to Haiti. After lengthy negotiations, the Kenyan government agreed to lead the deployment to support the Haitian National Police (HNP) in addressing gang violence and re-establishing security. However, the planned operation is currently being challenged in the Kenyan courts. This resolution came after the UNSC agreed on a sanctions regime for Haiti in October 2022 and the subsequent imposition of sanctions on key gang leaders, businessmen, and politicians. The UN sanctions have been supplemented by unilateral designations issued by Canada, the US, and the European Union (EU). Further, UN sanctions were levied on gang leaders in December 2023 as the preparations accelerated for the MSS deployment.

The UN’s current initiatives on Haiti potentially augur a new international approach to how organized crime actors can be tackled both from a security and human rights perspective. Ensuring international tools are effective in mitigating harm caused by gangs in Haiti is therefore vitally important for the people of the country and the international community.

Therefore, the various international tools must be tailored to the rapidly evolving criminal and violence dynamics on the ground and implemented in a strategically coordinated fashion.

This policy report is intended to further efforts to tailor both the MSS mission and the sanctions regime to the current operational challenges in Haiti, support Haitian and international decision-makers in their mission, and provide strategic backing to the country’s civil society.

It begins by detailing the current situation on the ground, including gangs and other violent groups’ operations, governance, and territorial domination. The following section describes the mandate and operations of the two primary international tools: the sanctions regime and the MSS mission. The third section flags key issues that need to be considered by both the sanctions regime and the international force and presents opportunities to align the two more comprehensively to strengthen public security responses and public policy initiatives to resolve the crisis.

Geneva, SWIT: The Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, 2024. 50p.

By: The International Crisis Group

What’s new? Foreign security personnel are expected to begin arriving in Haiti in early 2024 to assist the national police in fighting the gangs besieging much of the country. UN-authorised, Kenyan-led and designed with U.S. support, this multinational mission aims to restore security and enable long overdue elections.

Why does it matter?: Haiti’s wave of violence and political breakdown have deepened the country’s humanitarian emergency. With police outnumbered and outgunned by criminal groups, foreign assistance is needed. But the mission must overcome daunting operational and political challenges for it to be effective.

What should be done?: The mission should not deploy in force until it has sufficient troops, training and equipment to overpower the gangs. It should prepare for urban combat, and develop community-level sources of intelligence, to help minimise civilian harm. A political settlement and major reforms will be required for gains to endure.

Crisis Group Latin America & Caribbean Briefing N°49, Port-au-Prince/New York/Washington/Brussels, 5 January 2024 . 24p.

By Peers Kayla Freemon, Veronica M. Herrera , Hyunjung Cheon , and Charles M. Katz

Growing up in a household without two parents present is an established risk factor for youth delinquency. However, much of the research on family structure and delinquency derives from U.S. samples, limiting applicability to the developing world. The present study explores the role of traditional and non-traditional family structures on self-reported delinquency in eight English Speaking Caribbean nations. We further examine the moderating role of family processes (parental attachment and parental supervision) and commitment to negative peers on this relationship. We find that youth from intact nuclear families, with a mother and father present, engage in less delinquency than youth from intact blended, single-parent, or no-parent households. Further, family structure moderated the relationship between delinquency, parental attachment, and commitment to negative peers. Theoretical and research implications are discussed.

Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice 2023, Vol. 21(2) 149–171

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 Christian Dustmann, Mikkel Mertz and Anna Okatenko 

The effects of neighbourhood characteristics on the development of children and adolescents is a key area of research in the social sciences literature. Early papers such as Brooks-Gunn et al. (1993) document strong associations between children’s outcomes and the characteristics of the neighbourhoods they live in. More recent work finds evidence that the neighbourhood children grow up in a↵ects their earnings, college attendance, marriage, fertility (Chetty et al., 2016; Chetty and Hendren, 2018a,b; Chyn, 2018; Deutscher, 2020), and school performance (˚Aslund et al., 2011; Galster et al., 2016). One particular concern is the e↵ect of neighbourhood characteristics on adolescents’ criminal, delinquent, and health-compromising activities (for a review, see Leventhal and Brooks-Gunn (2000)), in particular the potential negative impacts of gangs, drugs and violence on children and young teenagers (Jencks and Mayer, 1990; Popkin et al., 2002). A small literature investigates the impact of exposure to crime on the criminal behaviour of young men and women, but little is known about which type of criminal activity in the neighbourhood may lead to spillovers, how this compares with the impact other neighbourhood characteristics have on later outcomes, how exposure to crime affects other dimensions of risky behaviour in particular for girls, and what the longer-term economic consequences of exposure to crime for males and females are….

Bonn: IZA  Institute of Labor Economics .2023. 76p.

By Jean Marie McGloin and Kyle J. Thomas 

Peer influence occupies an intriguing place in criminology. On the one hand, there is a long line of theorizing and empirical work highlighting it as a key causal process for delinquency. On the other, there is a group of theoretical skeptics who view it as one of the most notorious examples of a spurious link. After discussing these perspectives, this review takes stock of our intellectual advancements in understanding peer influence over decades’ worth of research toward this endeavor. We conclude that although there have been important gains, essential questions and gaps remain. Toward this aim, we offer some lines of future work that we believe offer pathways to yielding the greatest added value to the discipline. 

Annu. Rev. Criminol. 2019. 2:241–64 

By U.K. Home Office

Country information and protection guidelines for British asylum authorities on fear of gangs (gangs' origins; main gangs; structure, size and reach; characteristics of members; activities and impact; targets of gang violence; returnees; government anti-gang policy and law; effectiveness of law enforcement agencies; freedom of movement)

London: Home Office, Independent Advisory Group on Country Information, 2021. 92p.

By Dana Polan

“In its original run on HBO, The Sopranos mattered, and it matters still,” Dana Polan asserts early in this analysis of the hit show, in which he sets out to clarify the impact and importance of the series in both its cultural and media-industry contexts. A renowned film and TV scholar, Polan combines a close and extended reading of the show itself—and of select episodes and scenes—with broader attention to the social landscape with which it is in dialogue. For Polan, The Sopranos is a work of playful irony that complicates simplistic attempts to grasp its meanings and values. The show seductively beckons the viewer into an amoral universe, hinting at ways to make sense of its ethically complicated situations, only to challenge the viewer’s complacent grasp of things.

Durham, NC: London; Duke University Press, 2009. 230p.

By Joanna Callen

Jamaica’s violence problem is not new. Since the mid 1970’s the island’s per capita murder rate has steadily increased, by an average of 4.4 percent per year, from 19.8 per 100,000 in 1977, to 60 per 100,000 in 2017. In 2019, Jamaica was recorded as having the second highest murder rate in the Latin America and the Caribbean. Jamaica’ extreme violence rate is often attributed to gangs. CAPRI in partnership with the UK’s Department for International Development, and with Ms. Joanna Callen as the Lead Researcher is undertaking a study with an effort to bring focused attention to Jamaica’s gang problem, with the objective of advancing knowledge towards more effective policies and programmes for gang prevention and control. The information garnered will be used to make relevant policy recommendations, with an emphasis on providing a basis to mobilize civic support for and participation in good governance in the area of crime and violence reduction, particularly as it pertains to gangs. Gangs, organized crime, and violence, and the nexus between them, are Jamaica’s biggest citizen security challenge. With the second highest murder rate in the Latin America and Caribbean region in 2019, Jamaica’s extreme violence is often attributed to gangs. Between 2008 and 2018, gang-related violence was responsible for 56 percent of murders in Jamaica, with a high of 78 percent in 2013. Jamaica is a violent country in other ways, with extraordinarily high rates of domestic violence, including intimate partner (IPV) and gender-based violence (GBV). Jamaica’s violence problem is so

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  pernicious that the country has come to be described by academics and policy makers as having a “culture of violence.

Jamaica, WI: Caribbean Policy Research Institute, 2020. 67p.

By Diana Thorburn, Joanna Callen, Herbert Gayle and Laura Koch

Murder and extreme violence are at crisis levels in Montego Bay. The city is also the birthplace and centre of the lottery scamming industry and its offshoots, an industry that generates millions of U.S. dollars a year, and is thought to be connected to the high murder and shooting rates in St. James. This study considers the purported nexus between lottery scamming, gangs, and the high murder rate in St. James by situating St. James’ violence problem in its socio-economic context, and reviews the measures that have been taken over the past decade to tackle both problems.

Jamaica, WI: Caribbean Policy Research Institute, 2017. 72p.

By The Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime.

This policy note provides a brief background on gangs in El Salvador and the attempts of Salvadoran authorities to negotiate with them to reduce violence in the streets. It analyzes a March 2022 gang-led homicide spree with a particular focus on the government’s response, arguing how it has harmed citizens’ lives, turning fundamental human rights into bargaining chips between licit and illicit actors. Highly punitive responses to contain gang violence have been the norm in El Salvador. In addition, for the past decade, secret negotiations between state actors and imprisoned gang leaders have been conducted, but outcomes have yielded similar or worse results. Authorities must seek alternative avenues for peace, such as promoting restorative justice and community resilience, minimizing the risk of prison riots and providing reinsertion programmes. Mediation from the international community is also needed in order to prevent the situation from spinning out of control.

Geneva: Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, 2022. 14p.

By Kim Geurtjens

Whereas outlaw motorcycle gangs (OMCGs) were originally perceived as uncivilized white men grouped around a passion for motorcycles and riding, they have now become increasingly associated with organized crime. Governments have defined them as a crime policy priority, resulting in a broad-scale law enforcement offensive aimed at reducing OMCG-related crime, reducing the number of clubs and chapters, and reducing interclub tension. The way in which the general public perceives OMCGs and the attitude toward OMCGs is largely influenced by media coverage on the subject, and in recent years OMCGs have become a popular topic. As public perceptions, policymaking, and media coverage influence each other, this paper seeks to explore the contemporary representation of OMCGs and law enforcement in the Meuse Rhine Euregion by means of analyzing regional newspaper articles from 2010 up to and including 2016. The theories used for this analysis are Quinn and Koch’s criminality typology and the situational crime prevention framework. Results demonstrate that the public image of OMCGs indeed centers around (organized) crime, and that even when events not involving crime are covered, the newspaper article focuses on law enforcement working toward containing the risks of OMCG-related crime and monitoring motorcycle clubs. The public image of law enforcement measures against OMCGs therefore relies heavily on police actions and, to a lesser extent, on administrative authority reducing not only crime opportunities, but also making OMCG life in general less attractive.

Unpublished Paper, 2019. 23p.

By Mark Shaw and Kim Thomas

Johannesburg’s western neighbourhoods of Westbury and Eldorado Park have long experienced serious problems derived from the presence of drug gangs and other forms of organized crime, resulting in a cyclical pattern of violence and criminality, followed by backlashes in the form of community protests and state responses. Law enforcement interventions have generally only temporarily quelled the violence before another cycle of gang activity, violence and protests flares up once again. Such continual cycles have been the pattern defining this urban area since the early 1990s. The costs of crime borne by the citizens of western Johannesburg are high and it is essential to reverse the cycle of violence and despair for these communities to thrive. This report focuses principally on gang-engendered violence in the city’s western suburbs of Westbury and Eldorado Park (and, to a lesser extent, Newclare), although other neighbouring urban areas that fall within the Johannesburg metropolitan area are also briefly analyzed. Broadly, in this urban area there have been three cycles of violence, and accompanying periods of protest and responses by community leaders and the state since the start of South Africa’s post-apartheid democratic era in 1994.

Geneva: Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, 2019. 35p.

By the U.S. Department of Justice

La Mara Salvatrucha (“MS-13”) is a violent street gang that operates as a transnational criminal organization (“TCO”) and has been designated as such by federal agencies, including the U.S. Department of Justice and U.S. Department of the Treasury. MS-13 operates in the United States, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, and other countries. Each year, MS-13 is responsible for violent crimes in the United States, including murders, extortion, arms and drug trafficking, assaults, rapes, human trafficking, robberies, and kidnappings. For decades, MS-13 has exploited weaknesses in U.S. immigration enforcement policies to move its members in and out of the United States and to recruit new members who have arrived in the United States illegally.3 Moreover, MS-13 has infiltrated both cities and suburbs of the United States and established cliques in California, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia,

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  This report describes the Department’s work to dismantle La Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) in the United States and abroad. The data show that since 2016, the Department has prosecuted approximately 749 MS-13 gang members. So far, more than 500 of these MS-13 gang members have been convicted, including 37 who received life sentences. Department prosecutors are using more than 20 federal criminal statutes to prosecute MS-13 members, including, for the first time, filing terrorism charges against MS-13’s leadership. The data also show that for decades MS-13 has exploited weaknesses in border enforcement policies, as approximately 74 percent of the defendants prosecuted were unlawfully present in the United States. The report also describes the Department’s efforts to combat MS-13 internationally through increased partnerships with law enforcement in Mexico and Central America. Through international cooperation, hundreds of MS-13 members have been arrested abroad and more than 50 MS-13 members have been extradited to the United States.

Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, 2022. 17p.

By Frederic M. Thrasher

While gangs and gang culture have been around for countless centuries, The Gang is one of the first academic studies of the phenomenon. Originally published in 1927, Frederic Milton Thrasher’s magnum opus offers a profound and careful analysis of hundreds of gangs in Chicago in the early part of the twentieth century. With rich prose and an eye for detail, Thrasher looked specifically at the way in which urban geography shaped gangs, and posited the thesis that neighborhoods in flux were more likely to produce gangs. Moreover, he traced gang culture back to feudal and medieval power systems and linked tribal ethos in other societies to codes of honor and glory found in American gangs

Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973. 214p.

Edited by Scott H. Decker and David C. Pyrooz

Pulling together the most salient, current issues in the field today, The Handbook of Gangs provides a significant assessment by leading scholars of key topics related to gangs, gang members, and responses to gangs.

• Chapters cover a wide array of the most prominent issues in the field of gangs, written by scholars who have been leaders in developing new ways of thinking about the topics

• Delivers cutting-edge reviews of the current state of research and practice and addresses where the field has been, where it is today and where it should go in the future

• Includes extensive coverage of the individual theories of delinquency and provides special emphasis on policy and prevention program implications in the study of gangs

Chichester, West Sussex:Wiley Blackwell, 2015. 592p

Edited by Malcolm W. Klein, Hans-Jürgen Kerner, Cheryl L. Maxson and Elmar G. M. Weitekamp

The Eurogang Paradox is the first comprehensive collection of original research reports on the status of street gangs and problematic youth groups in Europe, as well as a set of special, state-of-the-art reports on the current status of American street gang research and its implications for the European gang situation. Seven American papers are joined with reports from England, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Russia, Holland, Belgium, France, and Slovenia. Summary chapters by the American and European editors provide overviews of the street gang picture: the associated issues and problems of definition, community context, comparative research procedures, and implications for prevention and intervention. Professionals and students will find these papers easy to comprehend yet fully informative on comparative street gang studies.

Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic, 2001. 335p.

By Ko-lin Chin

In Chinatown Gangs, Ko-lin Chin penetrates a closed society and presents a rare portrait of the underworld of New York City's Chinatown. Based on first-hand accounts from gang members, gang victims, community leaders, and law enforcement authorities, this pioneering study reveals the pervasiveness, the muscle, the longevity, and the institutionalization of Chinatown gangs. Chin reveals the fear gangs instill in the Chinese community. At the same time, he shows how the economic viability of the community is sapped, and how gangs encourage lawlessness, making a mockery of law enforcement agencies.Ko-lin Chin makes clear that gang crime is inexorably linked to Chinatown's political economy and social history. He shows how gangs are formed to become "equalizers" within a social environment where individual and group conflicts, whether social, political, or economic, are unlikely to be solved in American courts. Moreover, Chin argues that Chinatown's informal economy provides yet another opportunity for street gangs to become "providers" or "protectors" of illegal services. These gangs, therefore, are the pathological manifestation of a closed community, one whose problems are not easily seen--and less easily understood--by outsiders.Chin's concrete data on gang characteristics, activities, methods of operation and violence make him uniquely qualified to propose ways to restrain gang violence, and Chinatown Gangs closes with his specific policy suggestions. It is the definitive study of gangs in an American Chinatown.

New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. 248p.

By Susan McVie

This report presents key findings on gang membership and knife carrying amongst a cohort of young people based on data collected by the Edinburgh Study of Youth Transitions and Crime (ESYTC). The analysis was commissioned in light of a lack of quantitative data measuring the extent of gang membership and knife crime in Scotland.

Edinburgh: Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research (SCCJR), 2010. 50p.