El Salvador to treat gangs as organised crime
The government of President Elías Antonio Saca is about to implement a new approach to its campaign against the 'mara' street gangs. Its key feature is that the gangs will henceforth be treated as manifestations of organised crime. It will also include the precise targeting of gangs on which police are able to collect enough evidence to ensure that charges can be filed against those arrested — an indirect admission that the judges have been right in arguing that releases of arrested suspects were usually inevitable because the police had furnished insufficient evidence.
The new approach is part of a sweeping 'security master plan', a draft of which was submitted to President Saca on 13 June. Interior minister René Figueroa summarised its main objectives as 'selective captures of criminals, strengthening of police and prosecutorial investigation, and a sustained effort to reduce crime rates'.
The decision to treat the gangs as manifestations of organised crime, together with legislation inspired by that of the US, is expected to allow the government to overcome the criticism that it is wrong to make mere membership in the gangs a crime, as well as provide an extra charge on which to prosecute gang members. The example cited by the police in support of this approach is that extortion, one of the crimes of which the gangs are most frequently accused, is a highly organised affair from which the gang leaders profit, but which involves the participation of many members.
The antigang component of the new strategy has been partly heralded by a drive codenamed Plan 20-25, to mark its limited duration: launch on 20 May, conclusion by 25 June. It involved police targeting specific clicas (cells) of street gangs on which they had collected enough evidence to prosecute.
The change of strategy takes place just as the five-month tally of homicides published by the Instituto de Medicina Legal (IML), which often comes up with higher figures than the police, shows a slight decline in the daily average — the media's favourite unit of measurement — from the same period last year (10.4 to 10.1). Taking into consideration the monthly ups and downs of monthly murder figures, it is likely that, barring a sudden surge, interannual comparisons will henceforth start showing more improvements.