Abstract
With responses to urban violence receiving increasing academic attention, the literature on anti-gang efforts in Latin America has focused mainly on coercive mano dura policies and cooperative gang truces. Yet, there remains a paucity of studies going beyond such carrots-and-sticks approaches towards gangs. To fill this gap, this study investigates the possibilities and limitations of substitutive security governance across Latin America and the Caribbean. More specifically, this article looks at Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration (DDR) programmes in Medellin, Armed Violence Reduction and Prevention (AVRP) efforts in Haiti and Security Sector Reform (SSR) in Guatemala and Rio de Janeiro. It will be argued that communities are driven to support gangs against the oppressive state when they are indiscriminately targeted through muscular operations. Likewise, engaging gangs in dialogue grants them legitimacy and further weakens the position of the state. Therefore, the only sustainable solution lies in substitutive security governance, which aims to replace the functions gangs fulfil for their members, sponsors, and the community in which they are nested with a modern and accountable state that is bound by the rule of law. Still, substitutive strategies vis-a-vis gangs have their own limitations, which can only be overcome by way of an integrated and coordinated framework.
Highlights
Over the last decade, the debate about the prospects and perils of engaging non-state armed groups (NSAGs) – traditionally focusing on insurgents and rebel groups – has been expanded by studies investigating how international agencies operating in cities should deal with the challenge posed by criminal gangs (Bangerter 2010; Wennmann 2014)
Beyond Cooperative and Coercive Strategies vis-à-vis Gangs Given the huge variety of functions of gang violence, this article makes the case that the standard carrots-and-sticks approaches consisting of mano dura policies and gang truces might exacerbate rather than relieve the challenge posed by gangs in contemporary Latin America
To conclude, it has been argued that standard tools to deal with criminal gangs across Latin America – coercive strategies, such as military raids in slums and the mass incarceration of presumed gang members, on one hand, and cooperative strategies including the brokering of truces between gangs, on the other hand – have failed to live up to their own promises
Summary
With responses to urban violence receiving increasing academic attention, the literature on anti-gang efforts in Latin America has focused mainly on coercive mano dura policies and cooperative gang truces. There remains a paucity of studies going beyond such carrots-and-sticks approaches towards gangs. To fill this gap, this study investigates the possibilities and limitations of substitutive security governance across Latin America and the Caribbean. It will be argued that communities are driven to support gangs against the oppressive state when they are indiscriminately targeted through muscular operations. The only sustainable solution lies in substitutive security governance, which aims to replace the functions gangs fulfil for their members, sponsors, and the community in which they are nested with a modern and accountable state that is bound by the rule of law. Substitutive strategies vis-à-vis gangs have their own limitations, which can only be overcome by way of an integrated and coordinated framework
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