Leaving the Pervasive Barrio: Gang Disengagement under Criminal Governance

Abstract

Is it possible to disengage from street gangs in communities and districts where gang organizations rule? We argue that disengagement is possible when this process does not alter the social order that allows street gangs to continue controlling and establishing the rules that govern economic activities and relationships in the barrios they control. We explore the process of gang disengagement under criminal governance in El Salvador, a country plagued by the powerful MS-13 and Barrio 18 gangs. We conducted a survey with nearly 1,200 people with a history of gang membership and 25 in-depth interviews with former gang members. We find that disengagement through religious conversion allows the gang to continue exerting power over the deserters, while at the same time enforcing religious commitment to the congregation. The religious community provides the normative framework that reassures the gang that its former associates will not act against it, consolidating its local authority.

The long arm of the gang: Disengagement under gang governance in Central America

“…Disengagement may be entangled in personal processes of religious conversion. In contrast to the literature that underscores the motives to leave the gang through the processes of personal change, however, several gang members choose religious restoration because it is the only path available to them in contexts when gangs rule with the collaboration of churches (Cruz & Rosen, 2022;Offutt, 2019). The former does not mean that the identity transformations afforded by religion are false (Maruna et al, 2006).…”

“…We build these insights based on a comparative case study with 112 in‐depth interviews with former gang members in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. We propose this theory of gang disengagement based on a multiyear research effort that has shown the importance of group processes, social factors, and religious affiliation in gang disengagement in Central America (Cruz & Rosen, 2020, 2022; Rosen & Cruz, 2018). This article, however, advances our scholarship and presents a novel model that explains the modes of gang disengagement based on the ruling capabilities of the criminal group.…”

Sustaining criminal governance with horror: The use of extra-lethal violence to regulate community life

“…Notably, a significant portion of this population resides in urban settings, which suggests that greater state presence does not necessarily correlate negatively with the strength of OCGs. 39 Such governance is exercised by large drug cartels, 40 street gangs 41 and prison gangs alike. 42 Given this variety of OCGs, the way they govern is also multifaceted.…”