Americas view | Violence, poverty and echoes of São Paulo

An everyday plague

By H.J.

THE author of a new book, “The Locust Effect”, was in London recently to talk at the Legatum Institute, a think-tank. Gary Haugen founded the International Justice Mission, a non-profit organisation that tries to increase access to justice in poor countries by helping victims to take cases, by training police and by lobbying for more money and attention to be given to what Mr Haugen terms the “plague of everyday violence”.

The subtitle of his book, “Why the End of Poverty Requires the End of Violence”, explains his thesis in a nutshell: no matter how much is done to improve poor countries’ business environments, education or health care, unless they become safer, they will never stop being poor. And the main reason why violence is endemic in so many places is very simple, he thinks: nothing shields most of the world’s poor from those who wish to prey on them. “In the last half-century,” he writes, “basic public justice systems in the developing world have descended into a state of utter collapse.”

When you picture a poor person in a poor country, you probably imagine someone who lacks food, and perhaps safe water and adequate shelter, and who may be suffering from untreated disease. But what you don’t see, because it is not visible, is that he or she is probably outside the protection of any law. Someone who attacks or steals from a poor person (who may have a small plot of land, or tools of a modest trade) will almost certainly never be punished. When poor people are asked what their biggest problem is, says Mr Haugen, they often answer “violence”—even if they are also hungry, jobless or sick.

Much of the book is given over to truly distressing stories: a Peruvian mother who finds her young daughter’s dead body thrown in the street, bearing marks of torture and rape; Indian villagers enslaved in a brick factory, beaten and starved. The common thread is impunity. In the case of the Peruvian girl there was, to say the least, suggestive evidence implicating a powerful local; it was apparently destroyed with the collusion of the police. When some enslaved workers escaped from the brick factory, the owner not only felt so sure he would not be prosecuted that he went to their village to drag them back, but enlisted local police to help him.

But it is not all depressing. Mr Haugen points out that even countries where the rule of law is now reasonably secure used to have corrupt and violent police, dysfunctional legal systems and de facto impunity for the rich and powerful. In the mid-1900s Parisian police saw their job as protecting the elite from the poor; around the turn of the 20th century New York’s police were hand-in-glove with kleptocratic politicians and racketeers. The powerful lesson of history, he writes, is that even terrible criminal-justice systems can be made to function reasonably well—given time, committed campaigners and reform-minded elites.

One reason I read the book, and went to the event, was that until recently I lived in São Paulo as The Economist’s Brazil correspondent. São Paulo is by no means Brazil’s most violent city; in fact, it has seen its murder rate decline by a remarkable two-thirds in just over a decade. But the murder rate in São Paulo state is still around 10 per 100,000 per year, a level the World Health Organisation classifies as “epidemic”. (Brazil’s national rate is more like 26 per 100,000 per year, which is far higher than almost anywhere else that is as politically stable, lacks internecine strife and is not on a major drug-trafficking land route.)

Violence, and the fear of it, shapes everything about São Paulo. It means the well-off live behind high walls and shop in malls that employ armed guards rather than on the street. Everyone I knew who drove regularly had seen an armed hold-up, even if they had not been the victim of one. Every taxi driver had a horror story: a motorcyclist who produced a gun at a red light, took cash handed through the window and then sped away; a back-seat passenger who grabbed the driver’s seatbelt from behind to pin him in place, held a knife to his neck and relieved him of his watch, phone and wallet.

Another of those at the Legatum Institute’s event, a retired British policeman, asked Mr Haugen if there was any evidence that violence in poor countries drives emigration. That might put it on the agenda for rich-world governments, he pointed out. No firm evidence, was the answer, though it certainly seems reasonable. I can corroborate that from my own experience. Quite a few of the people I met in Brazil asked me about life in Europe or North America, and some would then say: “I want to leave”. The reason was always the same: violent crime. Uncannily often, even the words were the same: “My children aren’t safe here.” Mr Haugen is right: violence in poor countries merits far more attention from donors in the rich world—even if only for reasons of self-interest.

Discover more

Business backlash

A weakened Enrique Peña Nieto faces calls to roll back his tax reform

Back to the table

The FARC's kidnapping of a Colombian general last month did not kill the peace process


The new brooms

Dilma Rousseff's new economic team talk about their plans