MS-13: America's Most Notorious Gang - Steven Dudley | Modern Wisdom Podcast 316

1. 0:00 – 0:33

   Intro

   1. SDSteven Dudley0:00

      That's another reason why they have never become this very sophisticated criminal organization, because they're really bad criminals.

   2. CWChris Williamson0:06

      (laughs)

   3. SDSteven Dudley0:07

      You know? I mean, it's, it, it comes down to that. And like -- and if you are managing a very sophisticated criminal organization, why would you align yourself with them? They're totally visible. They, they fall on the radar of, of law enforcement non-stop. They're all tattooed up, and they're really bad at what they do, and there's so many possible leaks of information, and it just doesn't make sense on so many levels to align yourself with them.

2. 0:33 – 1:46

   Stevens work

   1. SDSteven Dudley0:33

      (wind blowing)

   2. CWChris Williamson0:33

      How would you describe what you do for work?

   3. SDSteven Dudley0:37

      I would say I find human stories about organized crime and corruption, mostly in the Americas, where I live, and I try and tell those human stories to illustrate institutional or systematic problems that we face as societies, as countries. Um, and, you know, for me, the most exciting thing is getting to and telling those human stories. That's, that's the part that gets me up in the morning, and that's what I spend most of my time doing. So, a lot of it is kind of finding these people, getting them to talk to you, and then reconstructing their stories, hopefully in the most accurate way possible. We, as humans, are incredibly complex. Um, we are, we're gray. There's no black and white. So, that's what I aim to tell, is that gray area. I love that gray area.

   4. CWChris Williamson1:38

      That's where the interesting stuff is.

   5. SDSteven Dudley1:41

      Yes, absolutely. So, I'm a specialist in the gray area.

   6. CWChris Williamson1:43

      (laughs) Yeah, I get that.

3. 1:46 – 4:07

   What is MS13

   1. CWChris Williamson1:46

      You've been focused on MS-13 for quite a while now. What is MS-13?

   2. SDSteven Dudley1:52

      MS-13 is a gang that was born, really, from refugees that were fleeing a civil conflict in El Salvador and other parts of Central America, eventually, in the 1980s, and they landed in spaces like Los Angeles, in the deep heart of Los Angeles, and found themselves in the midst of hundreds of street gangs, and they formed one of their own. Initially, it's a gang that is grouped together, or at least their, uh, l- their, their, their sort of common bond was initially heavy metal music, of all things. Um, so, that's, I guess, innocent enough, and, um, that evolved, uh, evolved for a lot of reasons, perhaps most of all because of the environment in which they were living, and it became this international or transnational gang over the last 40 years. It is an incredibly notorious gang, even if it's not the most violent, mostly because of these very gruesome ways in which they go after and often kill their rivals or perceived rivals. They use blunt instruments like machetes, knives, those sorts of things, and they kill in groups. Um, so they act as a group, and they often kill in numbers. So, you know, three to four victims, what would be considered sort of a massacre in international standards. You know, those sorts of things, and very often in public. So, they have this, you know, fearsome reputation. But they're really kind of a, a, a, they're a haphazard, loosely knit network. They're grouped under this umbrella, the MS-13, but they're, they're linked, they're, they're, they're more linked, more closely connected to what, what are called cliques, or their sort of personal cells, where they grew up. So, it's a very ... You know, while it's international, most of their activities are very much local. So, that's, that's where it comes from. And then the fascination around them comes from just mostly, I would say, this gruesome way in which they go after their rivals or perceived rivals.

4. 4:07 – 6:49

   Leadership

   1. SDSteven Dudley4:07

   2. CWChris Williamson4:07

      Do they have a leader?

   3. SDSteven Dudley4:10

      They have leaders. Each of the cliques that I mentioned has a leader. Underneath, o- or I say, I should say, above the cliques, they have what are, what are called programs, and those group a number of cliques, and there are probably in the range of 35 or 40 programs. And this is in a half dozen countries now, mostly in the Americas, but there are, they are popping up now in Europe. And then above them, they have leadership, um, kinds of boards of directors, really, that work, that work kind of, um, geographically speaking. So, you have a board of directors, or what they call a mesa, or a table, of directors in LA. You have another one, which is probably the most powerful one, in El Salvador. Um, it's known as the, the Ranfla. They call it the Ranfla Historica, which means, quite literally, the translation would be "historical wheel." R- ranfla is wheel. It goes back to their origins in LA, where there is a fascination with cars, right? And you'll think of the very clichéd cars bouncing up and down. Yeah, that's the ranfla, right? "Let's get the ranfla," right? So, they take that and it's transformed into sort of, in sort of the ... It's, it's referred to as the wheel, or the leadership circle. And historica is historical. So, this is the traditional leadership. That's probably the most powerful, um, board of directors that the MS-13 has. But no one part of the gang has complete control over the other parts of the gang, um, and that's the thing that's very hard for people to wrap their heads around. There isn't, like, one single leader.

   4. CWChris Williamson5:56

      There's no El Chapo. There's no ...

   5. SDSteven Dudley5:58

      No. There's no one single leader moving these guys around like chess pieces. Um, you know, a v- you know, a very common misperception about what, what the gang is. It's very loosely knit network, and they are most al-... mostly loyal to their cliques and their clique leaders, in particular, the person who administered their beating in. So, they have rituals to enter into the gang, and one of them is this sort of beat-in ceremony that lasts, well, they say 13 seconds, but that's a long 13 seconds that they're counting away while a bunch of guys are beating up this guy who's gonna be initiated or who is being initiated. And their loyalty then is to the person who administered that very often. So, it's a, it's, it's a very, very sort of difficult thing, again, to wrap our hands around.

5. 6:49 – 9:20

   Mexican Mafia

   1. SDSteven Dudley6:50

   2. CWChris Williamson6:50

      What's it got to do with the Mexican mafia? There's affiliations there as well, isn't there?

   3. SDSteven Dudley6:54

      The Mexican mafia is this sort of prison gang, um, is a prison, prison-based gang, mostly run out of Southern California state prisons. And what they understood as a kind of gang very early on was that if they controlled the prison systems, in particular, the, the, the Latinos inside the prison system, they could set up and extend their network beyond the prison walls themselves. So, beginning really going back to the 1950s and 1960s, they established a firm control over the Latinos inside the US prison system. Why is that important? Well, in the United States, the prisons are really divided along racial lines. And so it's basically brown versus Black versus white in the, in the crudest sense of, of understanding how it works there. And so the Mexican mafia, which I know that you've spoken about in other shows of yours, you know, was able to sort of corral all the Latinos underneath an umbrella, an umbrella group they call the Sureños. And at a certain point, they not only sort of, you know, would take people who came in, but they began to force all of the Southern California Latino gangs to become part of that umbrella group, the Sureños, and that was the case with the MS-13. They were essentially forced into this umbrella group, the Sureños. So they're part of this Mexican mafia umbrella group, which gives the Mexican mafia this sort of control and leverage over the comings and goings of all of these street gangs operating in Southern California and beyond. And they can use these networks for themselves so they can make money, um, and they do make loads of money. As you well know, the, the Mexican mafia is a very, you know ... Ne- ne- they're sort of a member of the Mexican mafia. It's anywhere between 100 and 130 members. So, very small compared to these street gangs like the MS-13 that have thousands and thousands of members. What do they care, right? This is just contract labor for them. Um, so they're able to, in essence, sort of extend their criminal networks via these gangs like the MS-13.

6. 9:20 – 13:34

   El Salvador

   1. SDSteven Dudley9:20

   2. CWChris Williamson9:20

      I suppose if you're in jail and the choice is between striking out on your own or finding a partnership with your people, if the Mexican mafia s- ... If it's a choice between those two, why would you try and splinter off on your own? The whites aren't gonna have you. The Blacks aren't gonna have you, presumably. So, you've got to go with those people. Going back to El Salvador, is it right that there's about a murder a minute in El Salvador, and it's got a population that's less than London?

   3. SDSteven Dudley9:47

      Not currently. It has gone down considerably since your murder a minute statistic probably came out. Um, it, it wa- ... There was a time in which it, it hovered around 100 murders per 100,000, which would far surpass whatever London's is, which I would imagine is maybe even one or below that per 100,000. So, you know, 100 ti- at any point, it was 100 times more you're more likely to be murdered in El Salvador than you were in London. So, yes, in that regard. It has gone down considerably, and there is a lot of debate about why it's gone down, and one of the theories around why it's gone down is because of an alleged pact between the current government and mostly, in this case, because the MS-13 isn't the only gang there, but mostly the MS-13, because it is the most powerful gang in El Salvador. And what does this pact entail? It entails a, uh, uh, a trade-off where the gang says, "We're, we're gonna lower homicides. At least, we're gonna make it so you don't find nearly as many bodies." So, disappearances, forced disappearances, by the way, are going way up.

   4. CWChris Williamson11:00

      (laughs)

   5. SDSteven Dudley11:01

      Um, and the murder rate goes down. This is-

   6. CWChris Williamson11:04

      (laughs)

   7. SDSteven Dudley11:04

      ... politically advantageous because we, on the outside, what do we do? We use murder rate as a proxy for evaluating how a country is doing on security-

   8. CWChris Williamson11:13

      Yeah, yeah.

   9. SDSteven Dudley11:13

      ... in security matters. You know, it's probably not a fair proxy, but that's the proxy we use. So, that goes down. Great, so, you know, foreign direct investment and all the other things that come along, you know, accolades and, "Look at you, you're solving the gang problem," all of that comes with it-

   10. CWChris Williamson11:29

       (laughs)

   11. SDSteven Dudley11:29

       ... right? And in return, what does the government do? It gives them, you know, sort of special visiting rights and privileges inside of prisons, you know, to their loved ones and others, including, reported by some, not necessarily by us, and I work, I should say, I work for Insight Crime, which is a think tank that covers these matters. You know, you know, i- i- it includes this sort of, you know, maybe quid pro quos of, of trading off certain things inside the prisons, including having meetings or brokering meetings of guys from the outside on the inside so they can continue to do business. Um, you know, visitation rights for family members. As you know, that is super important. Um, you know, and then also their ability to control the administration of special assistance-... and especially during this time of COVID, in the neighborhoods that they control. So, in other words, you have a government program that is providing special assistance to people in need during the pandemic. Who administers that? Who hands out that assistance? What we understand is that gang members begin to control that assistance. So what does that give them? That gives them a huge amount of capital and clout in those communities where they operate. So you can see how this quid pro quo operates. You know, I guess the last thing, and, and arguably super important thing especially from the political perspective, is that they open up the door for political parties that the principal political party run by the president, um, to campaign in their, in their areas under their control, and they prohibit the other campaigns from going in their areas under their control. So, how do you campaign? You know, how do you do a political campaign? This worked very much in the favor of the government, who ended up winning the, uh, midterm elections and now controls Congress by a healthy margin, and it looks as if they might even change the Constitution so the president can stay on for years and years. So you can see how this can have real, real effects.

7. 13:34 – 17:36

   MS13s Mission

   1. SDSteven Dudley13:34

      (laughs)

   2. CWChris Williamson13:34

      Wow. I can't believe that what they gave the government was, "We'll make the bodies disappear." The k- we can't, we can't promise anything about the murders, but the bodies, there'll be fewer bodies around, and that's, that's end up ... Yeah, it really does feel like they've got their fingers into absolutely everything. What is it that they want? Do they have a mission? Obviously when you look back to kind of the classic, the, the Mexican cartels and stuff like that, there was this vision of riches and drugs and kind of conquering and controlling territory. What's the equivalent for MS-13? What's their goal?

   3. SDSteven Dudley14:13

      Yeah, they, they don't have a goal. I mean, th- (laughs) they are very much, uh, for the most part, up until now, and we're talking about sort of a 40-year history where mostly it has been a rudimentary hand-to-mouth existence. It is about the here and now, about sort of living the day. And part of that, and this is what I've learned now 10 years, you know, investigating this and talking to gang members, is, is the social aspect. I think we really downplay the social part of, of the gang. We put the criminal aspect first. We talk about them as a cartel, or they have this money-making machine as it relates to extortion, or maybe they're involved in human smuggling or prostitution rings, or whatever the case may be. We put the, the sort of cart before the horse, I think, in that we put the criminal economy in front, and we say, "This is what drives them." No, I don't think so. I think what drives them is their social cohesion and, and their bonds with one another and their relationship with one another. They, they are not a rich organization. This isn't a, uh, a huge money-making operation. Now, there are elements of the gang that are showing signs of changing this in terms of getting involved in, in increasingly sophisticated drug trafficking activities, but these are very small elements within, uh, you know, the ... And we're talking about the MS-13 umbrella, um, uh, we're talking about anywhere between 50,000 and 100,000 members across, you know, six different countries, and we're talking about, you know, just a few dozen getting involved in these more sophisticated activities. 'Cause most of the others, while they may be making a lot of money in, for example, extortion, and they are, that's parceled out through many, many, many hands, through all of these thousands of hands and their family members, you know, and others who they have to pay off along the way in order to do these criminal activities. So, we can talk about them making, you know, in the millions of dollars, but that is spread out among many hands. And to be honest, you know, again, going back to the most important point for me is, they are a social organization first. You know, maybe we wanna call them anti-social in many respects, but they're social. It's a community. We don't want to think of it that way, but it is a community first. A social community first, a criminal organization second, to the point where in our investigations what we found and what I found in my own investigations, um, are that these, these, um, members who become very good, very entrepreneurial in what they're doing, for example, in drug trafficking, they are literally pushed aside. They're pushed out of the organization, and they don't even use the organization in many respects to do these sophisticated criminal activities, because they know that that's not what the organization is built for. That's not what the MS-13 is built for. Um, so it is, it's, it's very hard for us to wrap our heads around this because a- and this is where I started as well, I, I started by looking at it as a criminal organization. I was looking at it this, what are their criminal activities? That's what drives them, right? No, that's not what drives them.

8. 17:36 – 21:29

   MS13s Purpose

   1. SDSteven Dudley17:36

   2. CWChris Williamson17:36

      That's interesting. I wonder whether the classic South American drug cartel mafia-style approach that's kind of embedded in the back of our brains, I wonder whether that's washing them and we always look, okay, so what's the commercial enterprise here? What's the game that they're playing? Are they, are they running rackets like the New York mafia? Are they, are they in the concrete game? Are they in the drug game? Are they in the people-trafficking game? That's the interesting thing about MS-13. I think you call them this, this hand-to-mouth organization that, for want of a better word, they don't sound tremendously sophisticated, um, like a, a poorly funded, poorly organized version of other cartels that have come before them. I don't know how I feel about that. I wonder whether it...It makes it feel a little bit more desperate, in a way. It makes it feel less bourgeois and kind of like they had a choice. It certainly feels like if they're doing this because they need the social cohesion, that it's there for a ... I- it- it- the purpose feels more human, but that also makes the killing and the violence seem more wanton. Does that make sense?

   3. SDSteven Dudley18:45

      Absolutely. And these are the ... This- that's- that's sort of a central paradox in all this. You- you really hit a central paradox with the MS-13, is that they are, they are victims in a certain way, and they, and they are victimizers. You know?

   4. CWChris Williamson19:00

      (laughs)

   5. SDSteven Dudley19:01

      They, they, they embody both of these things-

   6. CWChris Williamson19:03

      Yeah.

   7. SDSteven Dudley19:03

      ... constantly.

   8. CWChris Williamson19:04

      Yeah, yeah, yeah.

   9. SDSteven Dudley19:05

      We can pick out the victim side, and we can pick out the victimizing side, and we can highlight whichever one we want at the time that most suits us. They do commit horrendous acts of violence. My argument would be that those horrendous acts of violence are part of the way in which they create this group cohesion. They're not, they're not even part of what they're doing as, uh, as a means of establishing control over a criminal economy.

   10. CWChris Williamson19:36

       It's almost purposeless, isn't it?

   11. SDSteven Dudley19:39

       It's purp- It's- it- you think of it as purposeless in the sense of, of your rational, economic mind.

   12. CWChris Williamson19:45

       Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

   13. SDSteven Dudley19:46

       But it's total- totally purposeful when you think about it in your social mind.

   14. CWChris Williamson19:51

       Cohesion, binding them together as a group-

   15. SDSteven Dudley19:53

       Yes.

   16. CWChris Williamson19:53

       ... shared- shared sacrifice.

   17. SDSteven Dudley19:55

       Yes. Illustrating my commitment.

   18. CWChris Williamson19:57

       Yeah, yeah, yeah.

   19. SDSteven Dudley19:57

       And shared sacrifice. Because that's what I'm about. That's the most important element. So, they're- they- if you look at the cases against them, the cases against them are all cases of assault and murder. And, you know, there are some cases of sophisticated activities. You know, sophisticated meaning, the most sophisticated they get-

   20. CWChris Williamson20:19

       (laughs)

   21. SDSteven Dudley20:19

       ... are, and this just came up in an indictment, uh, about six months ago in the United States, was moving 100, uh, I believe it was, I want to say 100 tons of marijuana. That was the- the most ... Not 100 tons, sorry, 100 pounds of marijuana. Um, you know, this is, this is like a class-

   22. CWChris Williamson20:39

       Fairly low-level stuff when you're thinking about the-

   23. SDSteven Dudley20:42

       It's really ... Yeah.

   24. CWChris Williamson20:42

       ... grand scheme of cartels. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

   25. SDSteven Dudley20:44

       It- it's not a cartel, exactly. It's, it's just not, they just don't get there. And when they- the guys who do start to get there, what they do is they liaise with the- with the guys like the Mexican Mafia. They start to interact with them. Um, they are trying their best to get accepted into the Mexican Mafia. The six or seven cases that, uh, at Insight Crime that we've chronicled over the years that illustrate these international drug trafficking schemes, you know, uh, com- commandeered by, by leaders of the MS-13. They're almost invariably, um, connecting with and working with the Mexican Mafia, not

9. 21:29 – 24:11

   Murder Rape Control

   1. SDSteven Dudley21:29

      with their own gang.

   2. CWChris Williamson21:29

      So, they need to outsource to a more sophisticated business unit, because within their own gang, they don't have any of the people that are of this sort of commercial, entrepreneurial, enterprising mind. I don't know whether that's a g- I don't know whether that's a good thing or a bad thing. I can't work that out. I read about, um, "murder rape control" being some sort of tagline. What's that about?

   3. SDSteven Dudley21:56

      I mean, there- there's a lot of myths. I don't know whether to call this a myth, but, you know, there's a lot of stories that I think in part are promoted, um, you know, by the gang as, um, things that are part and parcel of the gang. This is, this is kind of one of them, you know. Like, I think it's just part of a gang trying to burnish its reputation as being extremely strong and vicious and ruthless. Um, because I have never, and this is ... I have (laughs) interviewed dozens of these guys. Not one of them has ever spontaneously talked like that to me. Has ni- has spontaneously said, "Oh, yeah, our- our motto is, you know, this, this, and ..." That is not (laughs) how it works. So, I- I sometimes think that these things got picked up and then they just become, they kind of take on a life of their own. I think this is probably one of them.

   4. CWChris Williamson22:54

      Yeah.

   5. SDSteven Dudley22:55

      Um, and, and-

   6. CWChris Williamson22:55

      Little bit of artistic license, like you might use to embellish the pro- the features of a product. The features-

   7. SDSteven Dudley23:01

      Yeah.

   8. CWChris Williamson23:01

      ... of their product are their scariness and their viciousness.

   9. SDSteven Dudley23:04

      And it helps them, it helps prosecutors, it helps police departments get more resources.

   10. CWChris Williamson23:09

       Mmm.

   11. SDSteven Dudley23:10

       You know, it helps politicians get elected. I mean, it is a win-win win-win situation with, with these kind of, you know, these little teeny myths that kind of percolate about, about these organizations. Um, you know, I think just one more thing, going back to the, the social aspect that I think we have to keep in mind, is that it, it makes them, in the long haul, I think it has made them more resilient to law enforcement efforts. Because if you are simply thinking that you're gonna take away their criminal economy, um, and you are going to thus remove their sort of core element of being, you're sorely mistaken. In fact, by throwing them in jail, you are just reinforcing this social cohesion, which is what happens over and over, and why they were able to basically replicate the Mexican Mafia style when they moved their operations, uh, to El Salvador and other places in Central America.

   12. CWChris Williamson24:10

       I suppose

10. 24:11 – 28:44

    Decentralized Structure

    1. CWChris Williamson24:11

       they're kind of like Bitcoin. They're such a decentralized structure. They don't have one single operator, uh, structurally in terms of the way that the hierarchy is ordered, and their earning potential is also done in that same way. There isn't some great river with tributaries coming off it that everybody's feeding on. It's all just little rackets here and there. It's making the bus driver pay. There was, like, a bus drivers' strike or something because they were threatening the bus drivers (laughs) that they needed to pay them.

    2. SDSteven Dudley24:38

       Yeah.

    3. CWChris Williamson24:38

       Then there's bus drivers dead in the street and stuff like this. So yeah, I suppose...... as being resilient as a gang goes, staying poor is actually quite an easy way to do that, because there isn't one single income stream that can be chopped away. When it comes to who they're recruiting, who, where are they getting their members? Who are they recruiting?

    4. SDSteven Dudley25:02

       I, I think they're, they're, they're recruiting where, um, where gangs recruit. You know, youth in the neighborhood, at the schools, playing soccer-

    5. CWChris Williamson25:13

       So you're talking, like, children?

    6. SDSteven Dudley25:16

       Yes, absolutely. They are, um ... The, the members, those who become members, um, talk about their first interactions with the gang, you know, when they are toddlers. Um, and, 'cause the gang is around, right? It's just another element that is, that is around. That could be part of their house, it could be part of their neighborhood, could be part of their school. Um, and so the gang is there. It's sort of around. And in many places, these are the coolest kids. I mean, they have access to the coolest toys, you know, um, the best music, the marijuana. You know, it's not too different from what draws us as youth to any crowd, you know? So I don't think it's necessarily that different in that respect. I think in other respects it can be very different, in the sense that I may join the gang just to be safe or think that I am safe from the gang. You know, I live in a neighborhood where the gang is operational, and one of the ways in which to keep my own self, i- to keep myself safe is to join them or to collaborate with them in, in some, in some respect. Or maybe to think that I'll keep my, myself maybe not safe, but maybe my brothers safe, um, or my sister, and my family, and all the rest, you know? So I think there's a lot of different motivations that go into this. What, what I hear, what I've heard over the years talking to gang members is that in places like El Salvador, for instance, they don't have to recruit. They have a pretty steady line of possible recruits kind of hovering on the edges. What I think we don't often take into account in a lot of these spaces, both in El Salv- places like El Salvador and the United States, is how much violence is happening inside the home, and how so many of these guys don't want to be in their house, um, and find themselves on the street, just a lot of time on the street, for a lot of reasons, but very often because they have been subjected to violence in their home. Um, and it could be, you know, physical violence or it could be sexual violence. So, we've got a lot of those.

    7. CWChris Williamson27:36

       It's a literal second family, then, a literal surrogate family.

    8. SDSteven Dudley27:40

       Absolutely. Uh, and again, going back to this social, this social aspect, it is definitely their, their surrogate family, uh, no question about it. And they all talk about it like that. It's a bit of a cliché, but I don't think it's far from the truth for them, uh, in, in that, in that core element. That family allows them to speak their own language and, and, and in the book I go through some of this, where you've got a Salvadoran migrant in a largely Mexican, Mexican American neighborhood avoiding the way in which he would normally say the word "you." You know, just referring to you, you know? He would use the word bos. But that immediately identified him as a Salvadoran, so he had to switch his language until he found the Salvadorans who were embracing that. And who were they? They were the MS-13. So, you know, it, we think of, we don't necessarily think of these things, but I think they play a big role in, in drawing these, these groups of people together into this, into this community.

11. 28:44 – 32:48

    Initiation Process

    1. SDSteven Dudley28:44

    2. CWChris Williamson28:44

       Talk me through the full initiation procedure, then. You've talked about this 13 seconds thing. I've also heard about some pretty disturbing stuff that women are supposed to have to do if they're gonna get in, and then there's some other s- steps. How does it work?

    3. SDSteven Dudley28:57

       Quick parentheses would be that women are no longer, um, allowed into the MS-13. Sometime in the early 2000s, they made a kind of collective decision-

    4. CWChris Williamson29:06

       Bloody, bloody patriarchy. Bloody, bloody patriarchy again.

    5. SDSteven Dudley29:09

       Yes. It is the bloody patriarchy. And, uh, you know, yes, there were very, uh, as far as female initiates, you know, the, I, and I, I spoke to, um, uh, a few of them. One of them is, is chronicled in my book. There is this sort of, you know, there's kind of two avenues. You're either, uh, sexed in, where you have to have sex with multiple members of the, of the gang, the clique in this case, or you're beaten in. So, you know, the ones that I spoke to both said that they, they had been beaten into the, the gang. Because if you're sexed in, then you're really never a member of the gang, um, anyway. But in terms of the, the way in which you reach that, that stage, because there's really a long process, or there can be a long process before you reach the initiation stage where you're beaten in. And that, that differs, uh, depending upon geography. Um, in places where you have a lot of potential recruits like El Salvador, that period, at least when I was doing the bulk of my research a couple of years ago, you know, could last, uh, a couple of years. Um, and that included sort of, you know, starting you out doing very basic services, you know, uh, keeping an eye out, uh, those sorts of things, maybe starting to messenger, um, things back and forth. You know, maybe you're involved then into, you know, you can see kind of it's sort of escalating. Maybe you're involved in sort of collecting, uh, for the, you know, the money from extortion. You know, those sorts of things. And it steadily escalates to the point where you're, you're at a certain point required to, or at least asked to participate in a murder or two. Um, you know, there were differing stories about how many murders you had to commit in order to be part of the gang. There are periods, I would suppose, when you have to commit more murders rather than less. So I don't think it necessarily is sort of a hard and fast rule. Um, and it's very much related to, again, geography. You don't necessarily get that same rule of having to commit one or more murders if you are being ushered into the gang in a space like the United States, which has fi- far higher costs to being a violent gang than being a violent gang in a space like El Salvador. So, there are kind of differing ways in, but it's sort of this sort of, uh, rising scale of, of activities till you reach the point where, okay, now you're gonna be a member. They'll beat you in. But even after that, you have to continue to illustrate what they call commitment. And you do that very often by these-... collective or participating in these collective expressions of violence. There's multiple members going after other rivals, you know, basically. And again, not necessarily and very often not even related to criminal economies, just this illustration of group cohesion, just this illustration of "we are the strongest." Um, so, you know, it is... it kind of boggles the mind, but that's why they... that's another reason why they have never become this very sophisticated criminal organization, because they're really bad criminals.

    6. CWChris Williamson32:13

       (laughs)

    7. SDSteven Dudley32:15

       You know? I mean, it's, it, it comes down to that. And like, and if you are, if you are managing a very sophisticated criminal organization, why would you align yourself with them? They're, they're totally visible. They, they fall on the radar of, of law enforcement nonstop. They're all tattooed up. I mean, you know, and they're, and they're really bad at what they do, and there's so many possible leaks of information. You know, you just... and it just doesn't make sense on so many levels to align yourself with them. And then inside, they're just, they're just bad criminals. I mean, it's just, maybe it comes down to that.

12. 32:48 – 34:46

    How hard is it to leave

    1. SDSteven Dudley32:48

    2. CWChris Williamson32:48

       Yeah, maybe. What about leaving? How hard is it to leave?

    3. SDSteven Dudley32:53

       I think, I think, again, it varies from place to place. I think it's much harder to leave in spaces like, uh, like El Salvador. Um, it's a smaller space. Uh, the circles are small or everybody knows each other. And, you know, it is, it's, it's difficult to leave, um, in n- that, in that area, which is why you get a lot of them applying for asylum in the United States, because they leave and they find they can't really leave. Um, and even if they, um, sort of go through the process, and there is a process whereby you are basically supposed to ask for permission, um, and you are-

    4. CWChris Williamson33:33

       How does that go?

    5. SDSteven Dudley33:33

       ... given permission. So you, you get old, you have a family.

    6. CWChris Williamson33:37

       Mm-hmm.

    7. SDSteven Dudley33:37

       You have a job, you have other responsibilities, and you can ask to leave, and you give... you're given sort of permission, and you be- you become basically what they call a, a calmado, you know, you're calmed. You're retired. Now, here's the thing. You can be called out of retirement if you go through this, this way. Now, you can w- you can ask for another way to leave, which is you can say, "I'm gonna join the evangelical church." And then in that instance, if you do commit yourself for real to the evangelical church, you cannot be called out, or you will... it's very unlikely you will be called out of retirement in that case. If you show your commitment, you dedicate yourself to this other higher cause, which by the way has a lot of parallels with the gang life. Again, we don't think of it in that way, but there is a lot of parallels.

    8. CWChris Williamson34:31

       What's going on-

    9. SDSteven Dudley34:31

       And then the third way is you run out, you run away. That's the third way.

    10. CWChris Williamson34:35

        (laughs)

    11. SDSteven Dudley34:35

        You get out, you run, and you say, "I'm not turning around," and they could be chasing you your whole life, which is the case I have in... that kind of forms the spine of my book.

    12. CWChris Williamson34:45

        With Norman,

13. 34:46 – 37:01

    Religion

    1. CWChris Williamson34:46

       yeah. What's-

    2. SDSteven Dudley34:47

       Mm-hmm.

    3. CWChris Williamson34:47

       ... what's the deal with the church thing? Do the gang respect religious faith so much that it supersedes their cohesion as a group?

    4. SDSteven Dudley34:59

       I think that there is a respect for, um, religion in the sense that you are devoted to a higher cause like you are with the gang. So when you're in the gang, you know, everything is about el barrio, right? This idea of community, which is sort of their word for community, el barrio, the neighborhood. Um, and in the same way they see that, um, sort of interestingly in the evangelical church, they don't have the same appreciation or relationship with the Catholic Church. But with the evangelical churches, there are obviously m- m- many, many evangelical churches and strains. Um, they have this acceptable avenue of, of, of escape. Um, again, as long as you dedicate and you illustrate that you are committed to that, you know, and you don't stray away. You could say, "I joined the evangelical church," and if they find you drinking and smoking and all this stuff, you could find yourself in deep trouble. Um, so they have this relation... this, this, this reverence for that.

    5. CWChris Williamson36:10

       Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

    6. SDSteven Dudley36:11

       That they don't have for the Catholic Church, and they allow that. Um, and yeah, we know... again, just going back just quickly about the similarities. You know, our sense from, from like an inside crime perspective and from a Steve Dudley perspective is that there is a lot of similarities in the structure of life. It's a very patriarchal system. Both are very patriarchal systems. Both occupy a huge amount of your time, so you're going to church every night or you're going to, you know, what they call meetings every night for the gang. Um, you have this commitment again to this higher, higher cause. Um, you know, it's about sort of group cohesion. There's a lot of solidarity in churches and obviously a lot of solidarity in the gangs. So anyway, yeah, all that to say that there's a lot of parallels.

    7. CWChris Williamson37:00

       I'm

14. 37:01 – 41:18

    Story of Norman

    1. CWChris Williamson37:01

       not surprised that they're not getting much crime done or much money made. They're too busy. They're at... constantly at meetings or in church singing hymns and stuff. I'd have t- I'd have no time to do anything at all.

    2. SDSteven Dudley37:11

       (laughs)

    3. CWChris Williamson37:11

       What's the story? Can you explain the story that Norman, your character, pseudonym character for a real person in the book, goes through, um, where he needs to prove there's a 50% or greater chance that he's going to be killed or tortured?

    4. SDSteven Dudley37:26

       So he goes to the United States, um, running from the gang. Um, this is, this is again-

    5. CWChris Williamson37:32

       So he wanted to, wanted to leave... Oh no, they wanted to make him a boss of some kind. Then he said, "I don't want to do that, I'm gonna leave." And they said, "You're not." And he said, "I am." And then he ran.

    6. SDSteven Dudley37:41

       (laughs) Yes.Um, so he, he's escaping... He, he escapes one, uh, attempt on his life by the gang, and then the... And the police nearly kill him as well.

    7. CWChris Williamson37:52

       (laughs)

    8. SDSteven Dudley37:52

       So he's got a lot of enemies. And the rival gang, the 18th Street, doesn't exactly like him either. Um, so he's got a lot going on and he's recently out of jail. Let's say, you know, I guess he's a few years out of jail at that stage. And huge portions of the gang have been put in jail, uh, leadership, and so they have, they have holes in their leadership outside of jail. So, they start calling him up and he ignores their calls. There's only so long you can ignore the call of the Ranfla Historica, right? Which is basically the leadership council is calling him up. So he runs and his family comes in, you know, kind of behind him. And his family hands... They hand themselves over to United States authorities at the, at the Texas border. He doesn't have that option. Um, he can't, because of his gang affiliation, can't apply for asylum like his family members can. So he has another avenue that he can use in order to stay and get what's called relief from deportation from the United States, and it's called the Convention Against Torture. It's an international convention. One of the signatories is the United States. And basically, it means that as a signatory, you have the obligation of evaluating whether or not a place where you would send somebody back to, deport somebody back to, would be so dangerous, um, that they would face a greater than 50% chance of being tortured and/or killed by the state, okay? It has to be the state that would commit that crime, right? So in essence, the judge is evaluating whether or not the Salvadoran state, probably pretty specifically the police, in this case, the Salvadoran police, would find and kill, or at least allow for others to kill, perhaps Norman in this case, inside a prison, inside the prison system, for example, um, or torture him, right? Is there a greater, uh, than 50% chance that that's gonna happen? That's what the judge is evaluating. So that's why the part about him, you know, escaping, narrowly escaping death at the hands of the police is so fundamental. Um, and in that case, if the judge finds that, he is obliged, because the United States is a con- is a signatory to this international convention, to give him relief as long as that is the case. So that means that Norman, even though he eventually obtains relief under that convention, um... You know, and he is a gang member too, which obviously this is the, this is the tension. You know, you've got this admitted gang member who is at that point enemy number one of the Trump administration applying for relief to stay in the United States. So... And he eventually gets it, um, but he still has to check in every year with United States authorities and, and say, you know, "Hey, I'm here. I'm living here. You know, you can find me here." Blah, blah, blah. And then, and at any point, the Attorney General of the United States could decide, "You know what? We're done with Norman. He's going back." So that's... So he, he's still in a precarious position, but he did obtain relief. There are people who obtain CAT and stay the rest of their lives, you know, CAT relief and st- and stay the rest of their lives in the United States. So, it could happen with Norman as well.

15. 41:18 – 45:53

    Conditions in prisons

    1. SDSteven Dudley41:18

    2. CWChris Williamson41:18

       That's terrifying. Not only do your enemies hate you, but your old friends hate you and they want to kill you as well. And then the people that are supposed to protect you from both of those groups, they're also, they also hate you and they're going to kill you. It's, um...

    3. SDSteven Dudley41:31

       Yes.

    4. CWChris Williamson41:32

       It's crazy. You talk about in some gruesome detail the conditions of the prisons and the way that some of the experiences go through. Can you tell us some of the more extreme stories that you heard about the conditions in the prisons and what's going on there?

    5. SDSteven Dudley41:48

       Well, I think it's important to consider that when the gangs, um... Basically what happens is more and more gang members who had begun their lives in the gang in the United States get deported back to places like El Salvador, uh, in huge numbers. And that's what establishes the base for which, uh, the gang emerges in El Salvador, are these deportees. They then begin their operations or they start doing their activities, many of them violent, in El Salvador, and they start to land in jail in El Salvador. And when they land in jail in El Salvador, this is the late 1990s, early 2000s, they are at the, they are at the disadvantage. They, they are smaller in number than some of their rivals, uh, including the rival gang, the 18th Street, but also the, the most powerful, uh, criminal prison gangs at the time. And those prison gangs are brutal in many respects. And perhaps the most brutal part of it is that they, uh, commit horrible acts of sexual violence against them. You know, uh, one of the first things that Norman sees when he is ushered into, I think it's the third jail, um, by, by-

    6. CWChris Williamson43:04

       The Marí- Mariona.

    7. SDSteven Dudley43:06

       The Mariona, right, a super famous, uh, jail in, in El Salvador, and the biggest of all the jails in El Salvador, run by a brutal prison gang is, is one... Uh, is another MS-13 member. He gets a- uh, so Norman gets ushered into a cell, and in this cell, he is in... He's in front of, uh, another member who's being raped right in front of him in this jail cell. Um, that other member ends up dying of, of AIDS according to, um... Uh, AIDS-related illnesses, according to Norman. So this is, this is his, this is his initiation into the jail.... of course, this is something that is, um, you know, a- another point of, of cohesion of, of these particular criminal organizations, especially inside jail, is this risk of sexual assault. Um, and so they are, they're definitely ... they almost immediately, you know, begin to bind to e- to each other, um, and they begin to form their own very strong presence inside the prison, enough so that they can confront this stronger prison gang, which is doing not just, you know, rapes inside of those prisons, but it's extorting them. It's extorting their family members, it's assaulting their, their family members, including, uh, um, sometimes sexual assault. Um, you know, it's beating them openly, you know, with the guards' support, because, you know, there are these kind of informal pacts between guards and, you know, you know, strong prison gangs, you know, in a lot of ways, in a, in a per- very perverse way. It kind of makes the prison guards' job easier if there is a, you know, one-

    8. CWChris Williamson44:51

       Self-enforcement.

    9. SDSteven Dudley44:51

       ... sort of master. Yes, exactly, self-enforcement. So I think you probably know all too well what I'm talking about. And so there is, you know, there's that aspect that's playing out. Um, and you have the emergence of these other, these other, you know, criminal prison gangs, one of them is the MS-13, to the point where, um, you know, the fighting begins, and then the fighting gets so bad that the government makes a strategic decision to begin to, um, separate them. So the MS-13 goes to one prison, or they actually control, like, two or three prisons, and then the 18th Street goes to another prison, which gives them de facto control, total control over those prisons, and basically gives them an operational headquarters-

    10. CWChris Williamson45:40

        (laughs)

    11. SDSteven Dudley45:40

        ... in many respects. So, you can see the logic behind it. You know, it's an effort to slow the violence. But the, the, the, the sort of ripple effects thereafter, they didn't foresee.

16. 45:53 – 48:15

    MS13 in jail

    1. SDSteven Dudley45:53

    2. CWChris Williamson45:53

       It's so ... Uh, you're damned if you do and damned if you don't in that situation. They're-

    3. SDSteven Dudley45:57

       Mm-hmm.

    4. CWChris Williamson45:58

       ... committing crime out on the streets, they're killing each other if they're in jail, and then if you do, the only option which is left to kind of segregate jails based on gangs, then you essentially end up with a paid-for headquarters, and it seems like most of those jails are kind of fairly hands off for the guards. I saw Ross Kemp, um, in an MS-13-run jail, pretty terrible conditions. They're talking about how all of their homies have all got, uh, diarrhea and stomach upsets, and it's really dirty, and there's people hanging from hammocks, and, like, t- 20 people per cell, 30 people per cell. It's absolutely packed. But at least they're safe from their enemies, right? And the guards just kind of-

    5. SDSteven Dudley46:43

       Mm-hmm.

    6. CWChris Williamson46:44

       The guards take the, take Ross up to basically the front gate, and then they're like, "Right, okay, now we're gonna hand you over to the guy that runs this," but the guy that runs this isn't some commissioner from the prison. It's the-

    7. SDSteven Dudley46:56

       Mm-hmm.

    8. CWChris Williamson46:56

       ... head inmate.

    9. SDSteven Dudley46:58

       Yes. That's exactly right. I mean, I, I, I haven't, I, I have never been in an MS-13-controlled jail, um, in El Salvador, but I went into an 18th Street one, and it was the exact same experience. They, the guards, um, open the door and then close the door behind you-

    10. CWChris Williamson47:15

        (laughs)

    11. SDSteven Dudley47:15

        ... and then that's the space you're in. Um-

    12. CWChris Williamson47:19

        That's crazy. (laughs)

    13. SDSteven Dudley47:20

        Yeah, I mean, (laughs) you know, I mean, it's a, it is, it is a strange, strange feeling. And they're, they're living in, in, I mean, horrible conditions.

    14. CWChris Williamson47:30

        Squalor.

    15. SDSteven Dudley47:30

        I mean, yeah, it's squalor. Um, you know, one hammock above the other and, you know, sleeping over the, the toilet, and, uh, yeah, it's not, not fun either. So, no, the, the prison, the prison question is, um, I think, you know, a sort of forgotten element of this, and, you know, going back to the Mexican mafia, even their operational style in the U.S. and, and many other prison gangs that are operating in the U.S., um, we just, we just think that we can, you know, lock them up and throw away the key and we're done with it, and it's just so not the case. And, uh, I just don't know when, when we're gonna come round to that realization. Maybe never.

17. 48:15 – 56:14

    MS13 in El Salvador

    1. SDSteven Dudley48:15

    2. CWChris Williamson48:15

       What were the authorities in El Salvador trying to do to crack down on this? Because it's gonna just become a war in the streets if you send the cops in. I've seen videos, I think it might have been Ross Kemp or maybe a VICE News documentary I watched today about MS-13, where they use raids as an opportunity that's almost like a PR stunt to give this show of force to anybody that's nearby in the neighborhood. So they'll send 250 special forces and armed soldiers in to take down a relatively small number of people, but it just seems like that's a mess, and then they were, they were jailing people for just having affiliation tattoos and, and clothing, and colors of clothing at one point. I- it seems like a mess.

    3. SDSteven Dudley48:59

       Yeah, I mean, a lot of the, um, legislation around dealing with gangs, um, r- really emerged in California in the 1980s, when they were dealing with this, um, epicenter of gang activity in the United States. You know, the place where the MS-13 was born had about 400 gangs operational in that, in that area, and what they did was they created, uh, special units of the type that you're talking about, um, the most famous of which in Los Angeles was called CRASH.... um, which included the word hoodlum in it, in the acronym, which is, you know, uh, something you wouldn't necessarily get in a sort of special unit these days. So, you had that. And they, um, you know, they would do very similar style operations, very much kick the door down, you know, flashy type of things and, and, you know, sort of bring them all in jail. Well, we know what happened to them in jail, they became part of the Sureños and part of a larger network, were deported back down, et cetera, et cetera. We know that part of the story. But parallel to that, they are also creating databases, and those databases have all kinds of problems, uh, associated with them since they're, um ... You know, it's very much a kind of, um ... The criteria upon which you are included in those databases are very flimsy, to say the least. Um, there was a database, the most famous database, which was one of the first in California, an analysis of that in 2014, I believe. You know, there were a couple of, uh, four-year-olds that were on the database, um, you know, a gang database. Uh, so you know, it's that sort of thing. Um, and then they create legislation which allows them to enhance penalties, sentences. And the legislation has, and this is perhaps the original sin that you were referring to earlier, um, a notion of gangs which they essentially copy-pasted from the United Nations' definition of organized crime. But if you take my word for it, they're not organized crime. (laughs)

    4. CWChris Williamson51:10

       Unorganized crime.

    5. SDSteven Dudley51:11

       So, if you are going to, like, start ... If, if that's your premise upon which you are building out legislation, then we're in trouble. And not just that, but over the years, all of the states have developed their own laws, uh, regarding the gangs, and they haven't ... There's no single definition of what a gang is. There are, and we counted these when we were doing a report at Inside Crime, there were 40 o- out of 50 states, plus D.C., there were, you know, plus the District of Columbia, there were 44 different definitions of gang, plus D.C.'s definition of gang. So, 45 out of 51 of these jurisdictions had different definitions of what a gang was. So, where are we going with all this? It eventually, not only is it, is it sort of replicated en masse in the United States, but we export that same model to places like El Salvador. And what do they start doing? They start arresting them for the same flimsy-style reasons. They cro- start creating databases. They start overpopulating their jails. And lo and behold, they have not just the same problems, in many regards, much worse problems. And why are we surprised? I mean, it just, for me, it's kind of baffling how we turn away from what, what the, the story tells us, what the data tells us, you know? What we can prove empirically about what works, and maybe more importantly, what definitely does not work. So, I mean, this is, this is kind of the lesson that we see over and over again, and then we're surprised that this gang has been around for 40 years. Why are we surprised when we keep doing the same thing as it relates to them? I'm not saying it's easy to wipe out any gang, but we can certainly mitigate them with much more effective policies that are much broader in scope than simply thinking about it in a punitive way.

    6. CWChris Williamson53:11

       I put Stephen Dudley in charge. I say, "Right, you've got the resources-

    7. SDSteven Dudley53:15

       (laughs)

    8. CWChris Williamson53:15

       ... at your disposal. What do you do?"

    9. SDSteven Dudley53:18

       Look, I think, I think you can't ... I'm not gonna get rid of the law enforcement component. That's already there. That has its own inertia. Who's gonna fight that battle? Nobody, right? (laughs) But you have to expand that-

    10. CWChris Williamson53:28

        You're already, you're already talking like a politician.

    11. SDSteven Dudley53:31

        (laughs) Yeah, exactly, ex- I've already backtracked. (laughs)

    12. CWChris Williamson53:34

        (laughs)

    13. SDSteven Dudley53:34

        Exactly. I've already, like, swallowed all of what I just said five minutes ago. No, the middle, the middle section of this is, what, what do we do, like, you know, now for the people who could be potential- potentially brought into these organizations, these communities? I think we need to work more on, you know, creating alternative communities, right? We need to create competing communities, things that can compete with the, what the gang gives them. And that includes everything from thinking about, how do we protect people, to how do we involve them, to how do we make sure that they're crossing, you know, their interests with other people's interests, and, you know, like-minded interests? And maybe that includes nationality and ethnicity and race and all of that other stuff. I think we need to think about all these things, and when we create these alternative spaces, one of these alternative, or de facto alternative spaces, are the church. And we need to study, why is ... The questions that you were asking me earlier, why is, why is the evangelical church, why is that even acceptable to them? That's a competing community, you know? And so, that, that's the type of thing I think we need to think about in this sort of medium term, um, is how to create these competing communities. And then in the very, very long term, we need to think about how you deal with violence. Um, you know, particularly violence in the home. Um, so we don't put near enough resources towards early family intervention. Um, and I'm talking about dealing with, you know, families that have a lot of situations of abuse, you know, physical and sexual abuse in particular. So, hyper-focus on that, because what we know about people who end up in jail is that a huge portion of them have been, were abused in their home. Um, so this is, this is something we need to consider when we're considering, you know, long term, how are we changing the way people sort of ...... Approach or interact with other human beings. Um, so I think there's a lot of different things. The sort of immediate term is, you know, certainly we have to deal with the problems that, that gangs pose, and much of those problems are related to law enforcement. We have to deal with the issues, uh, in terms of, you know, the way in which they've created this very attractive and obviously, you know, anti-social but very much attractive community. And we have to deal with the, the problems, you know, the sort of core, root problems that happen inside the home, you know, that very often lead people to, to join those spaces.

18. 56:14 – 1:08:17

    The Future of El Salvador

    1. SDSteven Dudley56:14

    2. CWChris Williamson56:15

       It's interesting. I, um... It's not an easy task, sadly. And this is why every time that I get exposed to work like yours or Shaun Attwood's, uh, True Crime podcast, he's a big podcaster in the UK, often has a lot of guys from ex-gang, uh, affiliations on there. Whenever I listen to that, I think, "God, like, this is such a big behemoth, such a leviathan of a problem to try and fix."

    3. SDSteven Dudley56:41

       Mm-hmm.

    4. CWChris Williamson56:41

       And then when you hear politicians that come on and throw buzzwords like tough on crime or, like-

    5. SDSteven Dudley56:47

       Mm-hmm.

    6. CWChris Williamson56:48

       ... crackdown on criminals, you think, "W- what does that even mean?" Like, they... it, it's so long, it's... it... this isn't a task that even the president that gets into office next time is... i- the next term is going to fix. This is the thing that aims to be fixed in 50 years or so. Um...

    7. SDSteven Dudley57:05

       Mm-hmm.

    8. CWChris Williamson57:05

       What are your predictions moving forward? The future of El Salvador? Obviously, we've seen this decline in murder rate, but that could be the, uh, the, the gangs basically fettling the figures. What do you think we'll see over the next decade or so from MS-13?

    9. SDSteven Dudley57:22

       I, I, I fear a little bit the next decade, um, in, in, in, in one respect, in that I do see the beginnings of kind of an evolution of, of the MS-13 in a way that I hadn't seen in the past.

    10. CWChris Williamson57:37

        This is more sophisticated criminal enterprise?

    11. SDSteven Dudley57:41

        Yeah, they're, they're becoming more sophisticated.

    12. CWChris Williamson57:42

        Leveling up.

    13. SDSteven Dudley57:43

        They're, they're leveling up. They're getting more sophisticated. They're beginning to understand in a way they hadn't shown before on both a criminal level, so their understanding of how to deal with excess resources, um, put those resources to work, um, um, you know, get involved in other types of economic activities, so more legitimate businesses, um, money laundering activities, which shows you a sort of, an element of how much they're accumulating as well. And also on a political level, their understanding what their... where their leverage points are, and how to pull those levers. I mean, that's, that's what they're really getting when they're interacting with these governments, is they know when to pull these levers, they know how to, they know how to, you know, create the, uh, the, uh, effective, um, communications channels and, you know, send the messages that they want and get what they want. So anyway, we're, we're seeing that. So I fear it a little bit in, in that respect. On another level, I say to myself, "You know what? This is how criminals become legitimate parts of society." No matter what country, uh, you know, every single criminal group, whether we're talking about the, you know, Irish mafia or the Italian mafia or any other sort of criminal group, is they become sophisticated, and they... over time, pieces of them or their sort of generations below them become legitimate, you know? And this is how it works. Because there are not these sort of traditional avenues of, of moving up the social ladder. How else do we expect them to, you know, become part of legitimate society other than (laughs) criminal activities? And it's not limited to gangs, but I feel like the gang j- mostly we're talking about El Salvador, is beginning to kind of see that, you know? It's kind of, it's kind of crystallizing in front of them in El Salvador. I wouldn't be surprised if 10 years from now, we have a much different MS-13 just in El Salvador, you know? Um, you know, and I don't think may- maybe parts of Honduras, but, you know, just in El Salvador. And if not an MS-13, you know, cliques. I like to talk about, uh, gangs within a gang. The gang is so big, these cliques are so big, some of these cliques have thousands of members themselves, and they're operational on an international scale. And because my loyalty is very often with my clique, you know, these cliques could evolve into criminal organizations in and of themselves, much more sophisticated. So, that is... that's kind of what I see as a possibility. But I, on the other hand, I say, maybe this is the process whereby they become part of legitimate society, less violence. Certainly illicit proceeds will tilt the playing field in their favor on the economic grounds, on political grounds. That's not fair, but criminal groups do this all the time, and they've done this all the time throughout history. So, we should not be surprised if that's the path that they're beginning to take. And maybe we shouldn't get in their way. (laughs) I mean, maybe we'll hasten their arrival to legitimate society, we'll lower the amount of carnage, extortion, murders, you know, forced recruitment, rape, everything else that is related to, you know, the activities of this gang. And they are numerous, um, numerous. And so maybe, maybe if we hasten that, that trip, maybe we might be better off. Because we're certainly not doing anything to slow down the other, you know? 40 years, same amount of... same numbers, at least the same numbers, if not more, you know, greater presence in more countries now. What are we doing?... you know? We're not doing much to mitigate what they are, so w- we need to rethink this maybe. I, I don't know. I'm getting lost in my own thoughts right now.

    14. CWChris Williamson1:02:02

        Man, that's a tough pill to swallow, that-

    15. SDSteven Dudley1:02:04

        (laughs)

    16. CWChris Williamson1:02:05

        ... permitting them to act more effectively as criminals is the most expedient way to get them out of the worst types of criminality that we want to get rid of. Yeah, it's, um ... Yeah, do you know what it is? I- I actually think it's a, a ... I'm unsure whether it's true, and I'm glad I'm, I'm not in the position to have to make the call, but it ... There's part of me that does make, does make sense, and it comes back to what you said at the very beginning about them being this sort of hand-to-mouth organization. Part of what makes them feel quite jarring to, I think, m- me when I think about it, and probably a lot of the listeners as well, is this level of poverty around them. It makes you think, kind of like the Rwandan genocide, they even use machetes as well, right? It's this sort of low-grade, low-rent, unsophisticated, wanton violence, and I would imagine that when there aren't these opportunities, if you're, if you've got enough money for a car and a house and a mansion and these sort of things, you're not bothered about running around just killing people over petty turf wars, because you have bigger things on your mind. The ... I, I guess the inevitability of the criminal enterprise is that there's a lot of operations that need to be looked after that take time away from being on the street doing stuff. I, I wanted to ask you this, th- this story as well that I heard. Last year, I can't remember if it was in Brazil or Venezuela, or, or somewhere else, someone was trying to enact, or someone refused to enact a 6:00 PM curfew for COVID, and the gang made a public statement and said, "If the government won't act, we will." And they enforced a COVID curfew, and that story stuck with me while I was reading your book, because it made me think, oddly ... And you hear these stories about, um ... I don't know whether it was El Chapo or another one of the, the sort of big Mexican cartels who w- w- would g- go and give money to people. They would fund schools. They'd have roads, things named after them. I'm aware that there are better saints to put on a pedestal, but my point is that you ... As the gangs become more sophisticated, they actually integrate themselves into life in a more productive way. Yes, sure, they're still extorting people and doing all of these bad things, but it really does feel like, um ... You know Seth Godin's The Dip, you know, that kind of, uh, the, the area where you have real lack of capacity to do stuff? It feels like MS-13 is in that. It feels like they-

    17. SDSteven Dudley1:04:37

        Mm-hmm.

    18. CWChris Williamson1:04:37

        ... haven't got the resources to integrate and get any of the good things ... And look at me talking about the good things of criminal enterprises. Uh, haven't got any of the advantages that come with a sophisticated criminal organization, but they have all of the aggression and the members and the free time in the world, and the enemies to have these territory wars.

    19. SDSteven Dudley1:04:58

        Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I mean, it's ... I guess kind of how d- how do we, how do we change the equation, and, and who are we changing the equation for, you know? I think there are a lot of different ... When we talk about the gang, uh, we think about sort of one, one sort of narrow strip of, of population, but, you know, really, you know, unless we're talking about, like, kids from, you know ... Kids. I say young adults, 18 to 25, right? That's your, that's your gang strip right there. So, that's your kind of target, but maybe that's not the right target, you know? I mean, I, I don't know. It's, it's so hard to say where, you know, where to put the, the, the emphasis. But I think i- i- in, in your, in your description of it, what I, what I think about is how do we change the, the calculation? And if you can change the calculation from it's in my interest to send four guys out with machetes after this guy, and it won't even, it doesn't even mean that I'm going to, you know, win, uh, that drug corner. It has nothing to do with that. It's just because he's the other side of the ... he's the other gang. If I can change ... start by changing that equation, that it's not in my interest to do that, then we're moving in the right direction. Um, you know, and then of course that is, like, the lowest bar. (laughs) I mean-

    20. CWChris Williamson1:06:24

        (laughs)

    21. SDSteven Dudley1:06:24

        ... you know? That is the lowest bar.

    22. CWChris Williamson1:06:24

        Stop chopping people up.

    23. SDSteven Dudley1:06:26

        Yeah, stop chopping-

    24. CWChris Williamson1:06:26

        That's the first thing we want to have to happen.

    25. SDSteven Dudley1:06:28

        Exactly. Stop making that be your r- ... A rewarding experience, you know? Why is that, why is that a rewarding experience, you know? And part of that, of course, you know, going back, that ... Part of that is a law enforcement equation, but part of that is sort of shifting the direction of where, where they could be putting their energies. It's a, it's a incredibly difficult question to, to answer in the, in the whole, right? But, but I think that there is, there is so many resources that are already in place that can answer it on the micro level, um, that I think a lot of it is just trying to sort of figure out where to harness the existing resources that are already at play. I don't think we need any extra resources in that regard, you know? I don't know. It's a, uh, you know ... We're trying to, we're trying to solve the gang problem here in a, in an hour-long podcast. It's a tough one.

    26. CWChris Williamson1:07:25

        Rightly so. If there are two men on this planet to do it, Stephen-

    27. SDSteven Dudley1:07:28

        (laughs)

    28. CWChris Williamson1:07:28

        ... it's me and you. Uh, Stephen Dudley, ladies and gentlemen. People want to check out more of your stuff, where should they go?

    29. SDSteven Dudley1:07:34

        You can go to stephendudley.com or you can go to insightcrime.org. That's the organization that I co-direct, um, and we cover organized crime in the Americas. So, have a look.

    30. CWChris Williamson1:07:49

        Thank you very much, man. I appreciate your time. Uh, MS-13: The Making of America's Most Notorious Gang will be linked in the show notes below as well. Cheers, man.

Episode duration: 1:08:27