Author Archives: Robert Brenneman

About Robert Brenneman

Professor of Sociology and Criminal Justice at Goshen College, Goshen, IN.

Entanglements between Evangelicals & Gangs

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Guest Blog by Stephen Offutt, Asbury Theological Seminary

I conduct research in El Salvador. I began a decade long research initiative in 2013 called the
Religion, Poverty & Development (RPD) project. The first wave of results showed that the most acutely experienced aspect of poverty in lower class Salvadoran communities is violence, and that evangelical churches have a close and complicated relationship with gangs.
I’m delighted to be able to share my findings on Bob’s blog. If you are reading this, you likely
know that Bob’s pathbreaking book, Homies and Hermanos: God and Gangs in Central America (Oxford University Press 2011), explained that gang members are uniquely allowed to leave the gang if they have an authentic conversion to evangelical Christianity – otherwise they are tied to the gang for life. I saw this dynamic at work in my own research; it spoke to the tremendously important role pastors and churches play in impoverished Central American communities.
My book looks at other interactions between evangelicals and gangs. The two groups inhabit
the same marketplaces, schools, buses, parks, and even families, making relationships between them unavoidable. How such relationships function can be surprising. In one example from my research, an evangelical woman (we will call her Maria) had uncles who were in the gang. They got angry with her and threatened her, her children, and her pastor with violence. This is not abnormal: gangs often victimize evangelicals (see photo 1).

Evangelical victim of gang violence showing where a bullet entered and exited his body.
Photographer: David Torres Ayala

But gangs sometimes provide solutions to the dilemmas poor evangelicals face in everyday life. Maria, for example, asked the local gang leader to get her uncles to stop bothering her. He granted her request. That night Maria gave a testimony at prayer meeting, thanking God for solving the problem she had with her uncles.
Such evangelical/gang entanglements are not unique to El Salvador. They occur in poor
communities around the globe: Haiti, Nigeria, South Africa, Brazil, Kenya, the Philippines, etc. In such places the proximity of churches to gangs provides unique opportunities for
transformational development. It also creates pastoral and congregational needs that faith-
based NGOs may be uniquely qualified to meet. These include counseling for victims of
violence, training for pastors who counsel and disciple ex-gang members, and spaces for church members to think about how to interact with family members in gangs. My new book: Blood Entanglements: Evangelicals and Gangs in El Salvador (Oxford University Press 2023), provides a deeper look at the connections evangelicals have with gangs and recommendations that may be applicable in multiple country contexts.

Back in El Salvador, the government recently implemented a mass incarceration strategy to re- take control of poor communities. Of the over 60,000 people that have been put in prison in the last 12 months, there are numerous pastors and tens of thousands of youths from
evangelical homes. El Salvador’s social and religious context is in a period of rapid change.
New questions and ministry opportunities are thus emerging. How will this further complicate
the evangelical/gang relationship (see photo 2). How can churches be planted in prisons? How can rehabilitation and reinsertion into society occur on a large scale? Perhaps future posts in his conversation will come from people with experiences in such efforts.

Gang member in a rehabilitation center holding a Bible in one hand and flashing a gang sign in the other.
Photographer: David Torres Ayala

Stephen Offutt’s research interests include the intersection of religion and
development, religious transnationalism, and churches and street gangs. He is the
author of numerous books and articles, including the recently released Blood
Entanglements: Evangelicals and Gangs in El Salvador.

Teaching about Justice in Jail

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Students in Goshen College’s PJCS 220 “Inside-Out: Justice in Our Lives” course discuss the readings for the day. The course takes place inside the Elkhart County Correctional Complex and the roster is composed of 15 ECCC residents and 12 Goshen College students. All students who complete the coursework have the opportunity of earning three Goshen College credits.

Goshen College runs a three-week “May Term” each year in which faculty have opportunity to teach unique courses that don’t fit easily into the regular calendar. This year I am co-teaching a course (along with my colleague Suzanne Ehst from the Education Department) called “Justice in Our Lives” inside the Elkhart County Jail. The course was designed some years ago using the internationally-acclaimed Inside-Out structure that involves holding class inside a correctional facility with part of the students coming from a traditional college/university setting and the other part coming from the residents of that facility. This particular course involves examining the criminal justice system and how it impacts both those enmeshed in it and the communities it is intended to serve. Each day all students complete assigned readings and write in their journals. Additionally, three extended essays are due, one each week of the course. The course meets every day for three hours over three weeks

Reading the journals has alerted us to the fact that there are some excellent writers in the course. Joe, an “inside student” (residing in the Elkhart County Correctional Complex) gave me permission to share this entry on my blog. It reveals both the power inherent in the encounters made possible by this course as well as the freedom unleashed through reflective writing.

Just as a docmaster guides the comings and goings. Just as they cry “Sail!” You have cried “Write!” I left off where I became lost and I would like to thank you for setting me free. This class has spoken to the deepest parts of my soul. What I have read has brought a sense of “I see you” that I have needed, as well as a place to sail. At least four people opted out of this class [ahead of me]. I was the very last choice [on the list]. I believe the ocean was trying to steal from me yet again. But, hope! Beware!

In the distance, two voices cry out “Sail!”

Thanks, Joe, and all of the Inside (and Outside) students for allowing us to join you on the journey in this incredible learning community!

Policing, Protests, and Peace

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Peaceful Protesters kneel on Chicago’s Skyline Drive, June 1. Photo by Ashley Rezin García / Chicago Sun Times

Below is a message I sent to my students in the summer term course Social Problems. It represents an attempt to help make sense out of what is happening right now using the lenses of my discipline, sociology:

Dear Students,

I am sure you have all been watching or listening to the news this week. There are no easy or simple explanations to make sense of what is happening. There are peaceful demonstrations — many of them — and there are also violent protests. Some of the violent protests begin peacefully and turn violent and it’s not always clear who is behind the violence or what their goals are. What is clear is that violence attracts media and so some of the protesters are happy for this media exposure while others are saddened by it (as I am), especially since it can often have the impact of turning public sentiment against the protesters and in so doing, diminish the likelihood of long-term positive change. 

I believe that the protests are a public form of venting both grief and anger. They are not caused simply by the death of George Floyd, although his unnecessary death is certainly worthy of protest. They are the bursting forth of years of pent up anger at a criminal justice system that systematically disadvantages people of color, and especially young African-American men. This is done both by policing, but also through a justice system that has decimated a generation with lengthy prison sentences and “three strikes” laws that create a vicious cycle of poverty and disrupted families and communities. These policies are set within a larger economic system that disadvantages African-Americans through the twin pillars of unequal schooling and residential segregation. As both a concerned citizen and a person of faith, I reject violence in all its forms, but I cannot help but acknowledge the reality of the pain beneath the messy protests and their sometimes violent spillover. 

My discipline of sociology can provide some tools and perspectives that can be helpful for thinking about what’s happening and assessing the long term outcomes of the protests. Will the protests and (occasional) rioting make a difference? Here is my take as a sociologist and as someone who cares about justice and has put some time into thinking about crime, policing, and police brutality:

1. Protests are a valid and extremely important means of building public awareness about a social problem like police brutality. Of course, we all know that not all police are brutal. There are many — thousands in fact — police officers, black, white, Asian, and Hispanic, who carry out their job as public servants with great attention to the needs of everyone in their community. We need them and need to be able to trust them. But even though the violators are a minority, there are troubling patterns to the violations. Repeat offenders like Derek Chauvin remain, often protected by their union, despite efforts by community members to bring their actions to light. Here is a good article at the New York Times about the difficulty of dealing with these officers.

2. Sustained protests can and do contribute to social movements, and social movements can and do lead to social change. But the key is organization. For a social movement to be effective, it must be organized and strategic. Short bursts of activity are helpful but never enough. If some protesters, even a small minority, remain engaged and involved, there will be change, even though it will take some time and involve incremental policy changes. 

3. We know this because there have been other successful social movements. To take a very recent example, consider the issue of racialized mass incarceration in the US. Some of you graphed incarceration rates over time and by race in your PSE #2 and noticed that the rate of incarceration of African-American males is trending downward (since 2008) much faster than that of whites (although both are going down). This trend is undeniably related to a nationwide movement to reform sentencing and although there were many, many contributors, it was jumpstarted when Michelle Alexander, an African-American lawyer, wrote her book The New Jim Crow. Together with well-organized religious groups like Faith in Action, Alexander helped galvanized a movement that brought about significant legal changes at both the state and the federal level that are making a difference in a big way. And, interestingly, those promoting reform are not just from one political party. They are both Democrat and Republican. I say this to refute the idea that social change happens only when we vote in the correct candidates. Mass incarceration was created with the help of both political parties and it is being dismantled (slowly but surely) with support from members of both parties as well. No one is “off the hook” to help bring change.

4. Holding violators accountable is necessary and urgent, but in the long run, we must create fairer social systems. This means both a justice system that is responsive and fair, but also an economic system that provides real opportunities for all members of society. Good research by sociologists has demonstrated that African-American men face an invisible “penalty” when applying for entry-level jobs, and that this penalty is equal to the penalty faced by a man who has been convicted of a felony at some point in the past. Putting these two facts together means that a young African-American man who does not have a college degree (a scarce commodity in certain inner city communities with weak and/or dangerous schools) faces enormous odds and a public that expects only “trouble” from him. This situation poisons police-community relations and sets up police interactions with black men for failure. In other words, to reduce police brutality, we must examine and change the context in which these interactions take place. 

We can and must change this situation but it will take time, sustained effort, organization, and understanding. The sociological perspective can help guide our responses even though it will take empathy and commitment to keep up the work. I hope that your participation in this class can help you to think about, understand, and act on this situation in a new light.

Best,

Prof B

The US Government’s Complicated Relationship with MS-13

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Members of the [US Funded] Jaguars waiting to deploy on an operation in San Vicente. Credit: Meridith Kohut for The New York Times

By now, most educated US citizens are aware of the fact that the MS-13 got its start not in Central America, but in Los Angeles, among an earlier wave of Salvadoran immigrants fleeing violence. Then as well as now, the US was intimately involved in El Salvador’s violence — trying hard and spending a lot in order to “help” but not always succeeding (to put it charitably). Indeed, on the day I arrived to San Salvador to start interviewing former gang members, the US announced that it was opening an FBI office in San Salvador to investigate the MS-13. That was in 2007! Yesterday’s article in the New York Times titled A Conflicted War: MS-13, Trump and America’s Stake in El Salvador’s Security, offers a helpful look into what the State Department has been doing recently. In a nutshell, we are training Salvadorans to play “good cop, bad cop” both literally and figuratively. We are, on the one hand, promoting “community policing” and on the other, preparing “elite” crime-fighting units charged with investigating high-level crimes and suspects. For a variety of reasons, as I have argued elsewhere, our well-funded efforts in El Salvador have had mixed results at best. In Guatemala, US expenditures on behalf of justice have  been aimed more at improving the accountability and functional capacity of the courts than at training police (although there have been some efforts here as well). And there are indications that this strategy has yielded better results. There are many signs, starting with Guatemala’s significant, continuing reduction in the homicide rate, especially in the capital city, that Guatemala has been able to do far more to provide public safety than El Salvador even though it has fewer police per capita and a lower incarceration rate. Recent setbacks under President Jimmy Morales are worrisome, but we should beware of the tendency to think that if a country has a public security problem, the answer is always more police and better crime labs.

The MS-13 Specter

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Trump Tweet MS-13

Where would the President be without the specter of the MS-13 to continually remind his fellow Americans of how dangerous undocumented immigrants can be? (Never mind that the impact of most MS-13 crime in the US is primarily on other immigrants, especially the undocumented.) By using words like “infest”, he implies that undocumented immigrants and gang members are like rats, insects, or disease. Again, this language has been used for nearly two decades in anti-gang political rhetoric in Central America. Before 2017 I didn’t really expect to see it being used by major politicians in the US.

Sessions’s “Trumped Up” Claims about MS-13

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Jeff SessionsToday’s Boston Herald quoted me (with one sentence) regarding the Trump administration’s claims about the threat posed by the MS-13 in the US. In it, I state that,

“Clearly, the MS-13 represents an opportunity for this administration to publicly herald his view of Central American undocumented youth as a menacing threat to the US.”

This sentence was in response to an inquiry from an AP reporter earlier this week. Here is my full response to his questions about the nature of the threat and the Trump/Sessions proposed responses:

1. In terms of the scope of the MS-13 in the US, although I am not a scholar who focuses on US gang activity, I have been loosely following the MS-13 and M18 activity in the US for about a decade and feel comfortable saying that there is no evidence of an “outbreak” or “outburst” of MS-13 activity in the US.  The Justice Department has been citing the same figure of 10,000 MS-13 members nationwide since 2006.  Meanwhile, according to the FBI’s most recent gang assessment report (in 2015), about half of the law enforcement agencies (in a nationally representative sample) reported a slight or significant increase in gang-related activity since 2013 — the rest reported a decrease or no change — but that report does not state how much of this increased activity is attributable to MS-13. Many of the jurisdictions reported gang activity not related to MS-13 (or other Latino gangs). At best what we’re seeing is an uptick in MS-13-related crime in a few localized areas such as Fairfax County, VA and Long Island, NY, and that in a few cases this violence has been committed by and toward the so-called “unaccompanied minors” whose legal status has not yet been finalized. In short, just as in the past, most of the MS-13 violence is gang-on-gang violence or is aimed at recently-arrived immigrant youth, some of whom were fleeing the gang violence in their home country. Everyday voters, even those living in these areas, have little if anything to fear from the MS-13.
2. Nothing resembling what the President has called “blood-stained killing fields” exists in the US and it is ridiculous to say that “one by one we are liberating towns” from the grip of the MS-13 as he stated in his speech on Long Island in July of this year. Clearly, the MS-13 represents an opportunity for this administration to publicly herald his view of Central American undocumented youth as a menacing threat to the US. This is why the President’s first proposed solution to gang violence (according to his July speech) is to add 30,000 ICE officers and to call on Congress to fund the wall at the southern border.,
3. To the extent that there has been an increase in gang activity in some communities, it appears to be at least in part a result of the increasing strength and organizational capacity of the MS-13 in El Salvador, which grew significantly during multiple “iron fist” anti-gang initiatives released by tough-talking administrations in that country (with lots of advising and resources from the US State Department). As I and others have pointed out (see Fig. 1 in document attached), these iron fist policies which relied on neighborhood sweeps resulting in the arrest and incarceration of thousands of Salvadoran youth, coincided with a rapid increase in the gang membership and violent crime rate in that country. Instead of a reduction in gang membership and violence, the aggressive, incarceration-heavy policies appear to have produced a spatial concentration of gang members and leadership that resulted in a stronger, better-organized national structure, which eventually sought to expand it’s presence in certain communities in the US.
4. While there is certainly a place for good policing and investigative work in addressing and reducing gang violence, that work needs to be focused (rather than broad-brush) and locally-informed. National campaigns aren’t likely to do much. Furthermore, immigrant communities need to have the confidence that they can report gang activity without fear of being deported because police rely on this information to build solid cases. And of course, the best way to reduce MS-13-related membership and gang-related violence is to increase the array of realistic pathways to respect and belonging available to immigrant youth. The first MS-13 gang cells were formed largely by young Salvadorans fleeing violence in their home country, but unable to acquire a legal income in Los Angeles. Restricting legal options for earning a living just makes the gang all the more attractive.

 

“Ralph Northam: Weak on MS-13”

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gillespie_ad

Last week, during a quick trip to the DC area, I decided to turn on the radio in my rental car as I drove away from Dulles Airport. I like to do this when I’m traveling in order to get a feel for what’s happening outside my “Vermont bubble.” Sure enough, life — political life in particular —  is a little different outside the Green Mountains. One of the most surprising moments came when a political ad for the governor’s race came over the airwaves denouncing none other than the MS-13 youth whom I’ve studied across Northern Central America. In many ways it was a familiar piece of campaign rhetoric — familiar in Central America anyway. After all, the topic of transanational gangs and the threat they pose to “good people like you and me” have been an extremely valuable political tool in Central American political campaigns since the early 2000s. Never mind that the administrations, like El Salvador’s Tony Saca, and their policies of mano dura and super mano dura (iron fist and super iron fist) have proven to be enormously ineffective and even counter-productive in reducing gang violence. The important thing for political races is that the rhetoric itself resonates with a wide swath of the population who feel as if the heavy-handed language of “zero tolerance” gets it right morally (settling the score of morality and fairness) even if it doesn’t improve the situation on the ground. In a piece I wrote with Adriana Garcia for the Oxford Handbook of Criminology and Criminal Justice, we note that El Salvador’s mano dura policies of massive arrests of gang members and longer sentences for gang-related crimes coincided with a rapid rise in gang membership and homicides. The graph below makes this clear. Keep in mind that mano dura was introduced in 2004 and super mano dura in 2006.

Picture1

And yet, here we are, listening to American politicians trying to use the same tactics of anti-gang rhetoric in order to get themselves elected. Here is a comment from the Washington Post article on the television ads that Republican candidate for Virginia governor Ed Gillespie has been running.

The 30-second spot intersperses photos of Northam with the tattooed faces of men who, as it turns out, were photographed in a prison in El Salvador and were not MS-13 members but part of a rival gang, Barrio 18 – which ThinkProgress first reported and Spanish photographer Pau Coll later confirmed to The Washington Post.

In other words, it doesn’t matter apparently that the men in the photographs are neither MS-13 members, nor immigrants, nor in the US. The important thing is what they represent to listeners — outsiders who threaten “the rest of us.” And of course, it’s ludicrous to imply that the MS-13 pose a real threat to the typical Virginia resident. Although MS-13 members do practice violence (a lot more in Central America than in the US) I almost laughed out loud when I heard the radio ad announce that Ed Gillespie would protect the fine folks of Virginia from “criminals like the MS-13” — as if the gang were wreaking havoc on Virginia. The vast majority of Virginia voters who are planning to vote for Gillespie, according to a recent Upshot/Siena Poll, are whites without a college degree — in other words, rural whites, who have nothing at all to fear from the MS-13. 

All of this goes to show once again just how valuable the gangs are to politicians in need of an emotion-laden issue that will bring voters to the polls. As it turns out, political discourse in the US and in Central America are not so different after all. . .

Private Security Project Update (español)

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I am wrapping up my one-year sabbatical in Guatemala where I have been researching the private security industry since August 2016. Today, LaHora (a Guatemalan daily that’s been around forever) published an interview with me conducted by Mariela Castañon, the tireless security-crime writer for that journal. If you read Spanish, you can get an idea of what I’ve been up to lately.

Estoy a punto de terminar mi sabático en Guatemala donde he pasado el último año investigando el tema de la seguridad privada en Guatemala. Hoy LaHora publicó una entrevista que da un poco de idea sobre mi nuevo proyecto. Está en español.

Leaving the Gang: Is It Still Possible?

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El Salvador Pandillero Pastor Evangelico

This photo, originally published in D’Aubuisson’s Factum article called “Divine Intervention,” portrays a young female ex-gang member, “Ms. Z”, preaching a fiery sermon against the gang to which she formerly belonged.

Over the last few years, I have tried to ease back on the claims made in my book about leaving the gang by way of the (Evangelical/Pentecostal) church. It’s not that I don’t believe my own research. Rather, given that some of my first interviews with ex-gang members and gang experts are now almost ten years old, I have been less eager to make claims about what the Central American gangs allow. After all, a key characteristic of street gangs is their tendency to adapt to their social surroundings and therefore, gangs, including the Central American gangs, are constantly evolving along with their society. Also, I had been told by several gang researchers that gang leaders, especially those in El Salvador, “no longer let anyone leave.”

I have always been a little bit skittish about the sweeping statements regarding gang policies, especially when those statements make reference to hard-line, supposedly “universal” policies or practices. My research taught me that Central American gangs tend to vary somewhat from one “clica” to the next, even though they do share strong tendencies across the major affiliation groups (MS-13, M-18 “Revolucionarios” and M-18 “Sureños” are the big three in ES). But I had been out of the field long enough that I had started to wonder if my findings regarding religious pathways out of the gang no longer applied in Central America.

Newly published research suggests that my findings — especially the conclusion that many gang leaders allow a “pass” for religious converts if they can show evidence of a changed lifestyle — continue to hold true, including in El Salvador, where gang growth and institutionalization has been the strongest. Two pieces of research that support this conclusion are an extensive report published just this month by Jose Miguel Cruz of Florida International University, and a feature republished in February by Insight Crime. Cruz, who has been studying the Central American gangs consistently longer than any other scholar alive, conducted a large-scale (N=1196) survey of mostly gang members and sympathizers, and came to the conclusion that, not only is it still possible to leave the gang permanently in many clicas, but additionally, “Religious experience plays a key role in the pathway desistance from the gang” (6). He points out that the vast majority of those surveyed reported that the churches are the most capable facilitators of gang rehabilitation (followed by NGO’s).

Meanwhile, Salvadoran sociologist Juan Martinez D’Aubuisson argues, in a very interesting piece called “Divine Intervention” that “Hundreds of gang members are abandoning and outright rejecting their gangs, opting instead for the teachings of evangelical churches.” He also states that some of the ex-gang members, many of whom join churches inside the prison, preach a fiery rejection of the gang.

I am not posting this as “vindication” of my research, conducted in 2007 and 2008. It is, of course, possible, that at some point the gang leaders will end the frequently-held policy of “respecting” religious conversions so long as the convert shows evidence of a changed life. Nor am I stating that the religious pathway out of the gang is the “answer” or “solution” to the problem of gang violence. As my book makes clear, a much more effective, far-reaching approach to reducing gang violence would be to reduce the economic inequalities that fuel alienation among youth, and to expand opportunity and inclusion in marginal barrios through significantly enhanced spending on public schools, parks, and youth recreational opportunities. For the time being, however, local initiatives, both religious and non-religious, can continue to play a key role in providing “off-ramps” from the violent, vida loca lifestyle for a significant minority of gang members who have grown weary of the gang and it’s demands.

El Salvador’s Changing Landscape

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barras

Violence and gang control has spread from San Salvador to almost every province of the country. That was the takeaway from a presentation by Alexander Segovia, director of INCIDE, a Salvadoran think tank created by the director after his tenure working as technical secretary for the Funes administration. Segovia’s talk was based on a recent report put out by INCIDE titled Nuevo Patrón de Violencia. Granted, it´s a fairly easy argument to make when looking at the homicide data. I was more interested in his comment regarding

Three ways communities are responding to the gang violence:

  1. Some communities are responding by “hunkering down” or migrating. In these communities there appears to be insufficient social capital to provide the courage or capacity to resist gang control.
  2. Other communities are organizing to protect their youth from the temptation to join. (I wasn’t clear on all of the details here of how this is done but Segovia was not necessarily speaking about law enforcement here. This kind of organizing includes looking for ways to provide alternative options to youth including local jobs.)
  3. Another set of communities are organizing to arm themselves and fight. This option is most common in communities where the war was the “hottest” and there is a memory of how to organize and arm the citizenry. Among other means of “resisting” gangs, some communities are using social cleansing — the extrajudicial killing of gang members.

Finally, Segovia commented that a relatively new or newly-intensified aspect of Salvadoran society is the pattern of migration — both within Salvador and within Central America, especially to Nicaragua, and especially among youth. When he said this, I immediately thought of one of the young security guards I recently interviewed here in Guatemala. After graduating from high school in El Salvador, he migrated to Guatemala due to the increasing gang activity in his urban neighborhood. “It wasn’t safe enough anymore” he told me. Later I met his cousin, a young woman who had herself just finished her studies and had come to stay with her aunt and uncle in Guatemala, just like her cousin had done a few years earlier. This migration strikes me as a terrible waste of human capital for El Salvador. We are not talking about people who have nothing to offer. We are talking about educated (relatively speaking for the region) young people with hopes and dreams, who are being forced to leave their homeland because of a security situation that has been dealt with in a totally haphazard and “top-down” approach for decades.

On that note, for anyone interested in understanding the actual impact of the Gang Tregua (truce) let me recommend a very interesting thesis I read last week. It’s called Enhancing Citizen Security on the Frontline of a Contested Playing Field by Margriet Zoethout and it provides a view from one of San Salvador’s “Violence-Free Municipalities” over a three-year period during and after the Truce.

One more very interesting point about El Salvador, this one made by Prof. Mauricio Gaborit, Social Psychologist at the Universidad Centroamericana Simeon Cañas. He has been interviewing deported Salvadoran migrants on the day the are forcibly returned to ES. He noted that “The vast majority of Salvadorans who migrate are not jobless or school-less. They have bad jobs or are in weak schools.” Given that the conference was addressing the matter of forced migration, it is interesting to think about the nature of an economy that provides “plenty” of jobs — but way too many of them are really bad ones. Similarly, there are public schools — but most are overcrowded, underfunded, and unsafe. In this context, gang violence and the increasing experiences of insecurity it brings to the community are often a kind of “last straw” as families try to weigh the costs and benefits to sticking it out.