The Locust Effect summary

Imagine you’re being assaulted, then the police show up and side with your assailant. Sadly, this is a common occurrence in many parts of the world.

Poor people lack even the most basic protection in many of the world’s developing countries. In fact, recent UN studies have found that law enforcement systems in developing countries are often so corrupt that poor communities live completely outside protection of the law.

You wouldn’t go to the local butcher if you needed emergency heart surgery. Sadly, this is what law enforcement is like in a lot of developing countries: police are untrained and ignorant about what they’re tasked with doing.

In fact, a 2009 Human Rights Watch report found that 85 percent of police officers in India are constables, meaning they’re largely untrained in dealing with criminal cases. Constabulary staff in India only receive a few months of military training and virtually no training in law.

Phrases like “Let them eat cake” or “Throw them into the dungeons” might evoke memories of bygone eras in European countries, but in their former colonies, the legacy lives on.

Post-colonial countries typically still have criminal justice systems that harken back to the colonial era. The very concept of the “police” was created by the British in the mid-eighteenth century century when soldiers and guards were replaced by Home Secretary Robert Peel with a new kind of civilian police. These early police officers were unarmed, uniformed, and gradually won public support through their efforts to suppress crime.

When the police force doesn’t serve you, you look for other means of protection if you can afford it.

That’s why parallel systems of private security have arisen in the developing world. In some places, the private security industry is experiencing an unprecedented boom.

What do you do if a plague of locusts destroys all of a country’s crops? It wouldn’t help to just replant them – the locusts would only eat those crops too. You have to fight the locusts themselves.

Violence and crime work the same way. We’ve seen how dysfunctional justice systems hold back the poor and leave them vulnerable to criminal attacks – this means that any aid money poured into those dysfunctional systems is wasted. If you send more aid in, crime will only devour it faster.

When it comes to fighting crime in developing countries, aid organizations can’t replace domestic law enforcement. They can advise and support national law enforcement agencies, however.

An NGO called International Justice Mission oversees one such program in Cebu, Philippines. It’s called Project Lantern, and it aims to protect children from sex trafficking. Social workers, lawyers and police officers worked with local authorities for four years to build structures to protect local children.