So you lock up 1600 poeple per 100k to get the (*reported*) murder rate down by 95 people per 100k. Something seems a bit fishy.
greatdrams23 on
A little digging shows that the wee gang truces in 2014. It’s a complicated situation, but the gangs stopped long before the incarceration rate soared.
[deleted] on
[deleted]
Greyboxer on
Crazy how it follows a trend line starting from 2016 but mass incarceration didn’t begin until 2022
scraperbase on
In theory if you put ALL people into single cells, murder rate should be close to zero 🙂
rikitikifemi on
Confounding variable would like to enter the chat.
I hate that charts like this are becoming more common as supposed proof of policy effectiveness, especially as foundational social science knowledge gets replaced by “common sense.”
“If this happens before that, this must have caused that.”
It’s classic post hoc ergo propter hoc; the fallacy of assuming causation just because one thing followed another. Logical errors like this used to get cleaned up in an intro research methods class.
FitPlate1405 on
I think two things can indeed be true at once… you can just see in the data that murder rates were precipitously dropping but there’s no guarantee that this would’ve continued without Bukele. Especially given this was all pre-COVID.
But, on the other hand, this *definitely* isnt the first time Latin America’s seen a right-wing dictator come in and try and lock everybody up. He definitely knows the stick, but can he actually transform a class of criminals into something else? Or is El Salvador now just forever a dystopian prison state?
iheartdev247 on
Everyone is in prison who you gonna kill?
ajtrns on
for comparison, california has a murder rate of about 5/100k with an incarceration rate close to 500/100k, massachusetts at murder rate of 2/100k with incarceration rate of close to 250/100k. both incarcerate prople at a much higher rate than most nice places on earth.
hopefully el salvador can transition away from prison state dictatorship into actual peace with freedom, like, for instance, nearby costa rica.
Cobberdude on
Libs aren’t going to like this one.
Justryan95 on
Easy to stop the murders if you lock up 1000 people and 100 of them are actual murderers.
bilboafromboston on
These posts always make it seem like we let murderers go free . Less than 5% in Liberal Mass get freed less than 22 years. Most were very young , batterred women, old old men. The average age at release is 69. While we hear a lot about then if 1 commits a new murder, its been years since its happened.
ghost_desu on
So the murder rate went down thanks to steady and presumably rational efforts, then they just started jailing everyone who looked suspicious and lucked out some murderers in there
gundealsmademebuyit on
So you’re saying is the minority ruins it for the majority
Shocker
InclinationCompass on
There’s strong evidence of secret deals with gangs to lower murder rates in exchange for prison perks. Looks like the numbers were manipulated for PR.
h0rxata on
No politician has ever taken credit for an outcome that could have been extrapolated with the preceding 10 years of data including years before they were elected.
Interesting. So that narrative that new Trump-loving president did wonders with crime is a lie. The homicide rate has been falling dramatically way before 2019 when he became president.
Jackdaw99 on
Jesus, their incarceration rate is three times ours (by which I mean, the United States’). And ours is insanely high — the 5th highest in the world, by far the highest among Western, developed nations. Theirs is first — more than twice that of the Cuba, which holds the second-place.
I wonder how many of those murders actually took place in prison.
CSBD001 on
How many of them fled to the US prior to mass incarceration?
Meinkoi94 on
now what about the murder rate inside the prisons
Jackdaw99 on
As an aside (I’ve written about this a bit), there are all sorts of reasons why murder statistics, and crime statistics in general get out of whack with incarceration rates. First, of course, not everyone in prison is there for murder; or even robbery or drug dealing: in a place like El Salvador, many of them are presumably political prisoners of one sort or another. Second, a lot depends on how sentencing is determined. Third, things like parole violations, which go through phases of involving reincarceration or not, can swell prison populations considerably. Fourth, in the US at least, as treatment for mental illness becomes harder to get, and forced institutionalization in psychiatric facilities falls out of favor, the incarceration rate rises regardless of whether the crime rate does.
See, for example, this famous graph, covering a time when murder rates repeatedly rose and fell from about 5 per 100,000 to 10 per 100,000 — that is, by 80-100%, while combined psychiatric and criminal incarceration swung wildly, by about 600%.
Can anyone residing in the country report on how locals actually feel about this? Is the exceptional reduction of crime actually felt by the population, or is just political spiel? Do they support it?
Arne1234 on
Goes to show that crime is attributed to a select few people who commit crimes like normal people work at a proper job…full time offenders.
chctoons9320 on
murders tanked because of the alliance between FMLN and gangs until 2019, and then between bukele and gangs from the start of his presidential mandate until march 2022
mion81 on
And so we can clearly see that a decline in the murder rate precipitates a sharp rise in the incarceration rate. Discuss.
Y-27632 on
I don’t know all the facts in this particular case, but there’s nothing “crazy” about societal (or other) trends being non-linear. Or having tipping points.
The amount of effort something requires almost inevitably increases as you progress, whether it be crime reduction, launching stuff into orbit, producing a really pure chemical, reducing your body fat percentage…
Two variables that are driven by multiple factors correlating completely linearly is suspicious as hell, and indicates they probably in fact are not actually interacting the way you think.
Rapid-Engineer on
If you’re curious why murders started declining before 2015 understand that in 2015, the Supreme Court designated gangs as terrorist organizations, granting law enforcement broader powers to combat them. This led to increased police and military operations targeting gang activities. Gangs immediately started trying to lay low or escape as they knew this wasn’t just a paper tiger, they were going to start being actively hunted.
Tldr; in 2015 gang == terrorists. Started very aggressive policing activities.
Who_ate_my_cookie on
Funny how a person who uses “El Salvadorian” is trying to explain intricacies of geopolitics of a country they can’t even properly name the people of.
Outragez_guy_ on
Ah yes, the very reliable statistics of El Salvador
![[OC] El Salvadorian Incarceration Rate against Murder rate](https://www.byteseu.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/dj3imomdw45f1-1536x762.jpeg "[OC] El Salvadorian Incarceration Rate against Murder rate")
31 Comments
So you lock up 1600 poeple per 100k to get the (*reported*) murder rate down by 95 people per 100k. Something seems a bit fishy.
A little digging shows that the wee gang truces in 2014. It’s a complicated situation, but the gangs stopped long before the incarceration rate soared.
[deleted]
Crazy how it follows a trend line starting from 2016 but mass incarceration didn’t begin until 2022
In theory if you put ALL people into single cells, murder rate should be close to zero 🙂
Confounding variable would like to enter the chat.
I hate that charts like this are becoming more common as supposed proof of policy effectiveness, especially as foundational social science knowledge gets replaced by “common sense.”
“If this happens before that, this must have caused that.”
It’s classic post hoc ergo propter hoc; the fallacy of assuming causation just because one thing followed another. Logical errors like this used to get cleaned up in an intro research methods class.
I think two things can indeed be true at once… you can just see in the data that murder rates were precipitously dropping but there’s no guarantee that this would’ve continued without Bukele. Especially given this was all pre-COVID.
But, on the other hand, this *definitely* isnt the first time Latin America’s seen a right-wing dictator come in and try and lock everybody up. He definitely knows the stick, but can he actually transform a class of criminals into something else? Or is El Salvador now just forever a dystopian prison state?
Everyone is in prison who you gonna kill?
for comparison, california has a murder rate of about 5/100k with an incarceration rate close to 500/100k, massachusetts at murder rate of 2/100k with incarceration rate of close to 250/100k. both incarcerate prople at a much higher rate than most nice places on earth.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_incarceration_and_correctional_supervision_rate?wprov=sfti1
hopefully el salvador can transition away from prison state dictatorship into actual peace with freedom, like, for instance, nearby costa rica.
Libs aren’t going to like this one.
Easy to stop the murders if you lock up 1000 people and 100 of them are actual murderers.
These posts always make it seem like we let murderers go free . Less than 5% in Liberal Mass get freed less than 22 years. Most were very young , batterred women, old old men. The average age at release is 69. While we hear a lot about then if 1 commits a new murder, its been years since its happened.
So the murder rate went down thanks to steady and presumably rational efforts, then they just started jailing everyone who looked suspicious and lucked out some murderers in there
So you’re saying is the minority ruins it for the majority
Shocker
There’s strong evidence of secret deals with gangs to lower murder rates in exchange for prison perks. Looks like the numbers were manipulated for PR.
No politician has ever taken credit for an outcome that could have been extrapolated with the preceding 10 years of data including years before they were elected.
So this is correlation not causation.
The causal factor in the reduction of murders was likely a [negotiated settlement (bribe) ](https://english.elpais.com/international/2025-05-02/a-gang-leader-released-by-bukele-reveals-his-pacts-with-the-government-of-el-salvador.html)paid to gangs by the Bukele government in 2020.
Wow, what happened in 2015?
Interesting. So that narrative that new Trump-loving president did wonders with crime is a lie. The homicide rate has been falling dramatically way before 2019 when he became president.
Jesus, their incarceration rate is three times ours (by which I mean, the United States’). And ours is insanely high — the 5th highest in the world, by far the highest among Western, developed nations. Theirs is first — more than twice that of the Cuba, which holds the second-place.
I wonder how many of those murders actually took place in prison.
How many of them fled to the US prior to mass incarceration?
now what about the murder rate inside the prisons
As an aside (I’ve written about this a bit), there are all sorts of reasons why murder statistics, and crime statistics in general get out of whack with incarceration rates. First, of course, not everyone in prison is there for murder; or even robbery or drug dealing: in a place like El Salvador, many of them are presumably political prisoners of one sort or another. Second, a lot depends on how sentencing is determined. Third, things like parole violations, which go through phases of involving reincarceration or not, can swell prison populations considerably. Fourth, in the US at least, as treatment for mental illness becomes harder to get, and forced institutionalization in psychiatric facilities falls out of favor, the incarceration rate rises regardless of whether the crime rate does.
See, for example, this famous graph, covering a time when murder rates repeatedly rose and fell from about 5 per 100,000 to 10 per 100,000 — that is, by 80-100%, while combined psychiatric and criminal incarceration swung wildly, by about 600%.
https://preview.redd.it/pa6s4s9nl55f1.jpeg?width=578&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0cd27b7d9e06da6a4d2aa071578413880064262a
Can anyone residing in the country report on how locals actually feel about this? Is the exceptional reduction of crime actually felt by the population, or is just political spiel? Do they support it?
Goes to show that crime is attributed to a select few people who commit crimes like normal people work at a proper job…full time offenders.
murders tanked because of the alliance between FMLN and gangs until 2019, and then between bukele and gangs from the start of his presidential mandate until march 2022
And so we can clearly see that a decline in the murder rate precipitates a sharp rise in the incarceration rate. Discuss.
I don’t know all the facts in this particular case, but there’s nothing “crazy” about societal (or other) trends being non-linear. Or having tipping points.
The amount of effort something requires almost inevitably increases as you progress, whether it be crime reduction, launching stuff into orbit, producing a really pure chemical, reducing your body fat percentage…
Two variables that are driven by multiple factors correlating completely linearly is suspicious as hell, and indicates they probably in fact are not actually interacting the way you think.
If you’re curious why murders started declining before 2015 understand that in 2015, the Supreme Court designated gangs as terrorist organizations, granting law enforcement broader powers to combat them. This led to increased police and military operations targeting gang activities. Gangs immediately started trying to lay low or escape as they knew this wasn’t just a paper tiger, they were going to start being actively hunted.
Tldr; in 2015 gang == terrorists. Started very aggressive policing activities.
Funny how a person who uses “El Salvadorian” is trying to explain intricacies of geopolitics of a country they can’t even properly name the people of.
Ah yes, the very reliable statistics of El Salvador