How to Bring Down Violent Crime, Caracas Edition

In the NY Times, Simon Romero reports that violent crime in Caracas, Venezuela is way down. Nobody known by exactly how much, since the current government is not the most reliable when it comes to statistics. But Romero found many residents celebrating the change, which he says is obvious.

How did this happen?

Well, first, millions of Venezuelans fled the country when the economy collapsed, nearly eight million according to the UNHCR. People who flee a country where life is still at least possible are generally younger than those who stay, and often young men are the largest group. They are the most mobile part of every society, and they probably think that their strong arms and backs will get them some kind of work wherever they go.

Then the government started killing the ones who remained. Romero:

Around a decade ago, President Maduro started what he called Operations for the Liberation of the People, ushering in highly militarized police raids into low-income areas. The stated objective was to dismantle armed gangs.

But instead of reducing crime through the judicial system, the strategy consisted largely of extrajudicial executions. It primarily targeted young men, describing the justification for their killings under the bureaucratic label of “resistance to authority.”

Venezuelan security forces killed at least 6,856 people in just one 18-month period in 2018 and 2019, United Nations investigators found, then often manipulated crime scenes to make it look as if the victims had been resisting arrest.

According to people Romero interviewed, the government did take out many gang leaders and enforcers but they also shot hundreds of innocent men.

One anecdote:

On the ground in Cota 905, a labyrinthine squatter settlement, people are trying to adapt. Until 2021, the area functioned as a self-governed criminal stronghold where gang members stashed kidnap victims.

Then the authorities embarked on a multiday operation that killed or scattered the leadership of the gang controlling Cota 905. Security forces hunted down and killed the gang’s leader, Carlos Luis Revette, better known as El Koki.

Dozens of other innocent young men were killed in the police raids, residents said. The trauma over so much bloodshed lingers even as Cota 905 became much safer.

Now walking tours take visitors deep into the area. The day-trippers, mostly from moneyed parts of Caracas, dance salsa with residents before the outing ends in a half-destroyed watchtower that was El Koki’s base of operations.

So, yeah. As Bukele showed in el Salvador, you can make a big dent in crime just by rounding up all the young men in tough neighborhoods.

Not that I am advocating for such a strategy; I am a believer in human rights as the foundation of any society. But you can understand why such measures have support in places where violence has made any kind of normal life very difficult.