AJS - Peace and Justice Project Reduces Neighborhood's Crime by 60%

Peace & Justice Project Reduces Neighborhood's Crime by 60%

Thanks to the Peace & Justice project's work, Barrio Verde children like the boy shown here can again play in the streets without fear.

On a lazy afternoon in the poor, dusty Tegucigalpa neighborhood of Barrio Verde*, two gang members smashed in the window of a parked car and methodically ripped out the radio. Dozens of neighbors saw them do it—the whole process took over an hour. But no one alerted officers at the police station just three blocks away. All were painfully aware of the reality that reporting a crime to the police was more likely to result in retaliation against the witnesses than incarceration of the perpetrators.

Four years ago, incidents like this were commonplace. Back then Barrio Verde was a frightening place to live. Members of a ruthless, swiftly growing youth gang held up dozens of neighbors each day, robbing everything from cash to the shoes right off a neighbor’s feet. Gang members extorted money from local family businesses—“war taxes,” they called it—and murdered or raped someone almost every week.

Lack of trust in the police and the judicial system, often well-founded, limited most victims’ responses to either keeping mum or taking violent revenge. But today Barrio Verde is overall much more peaceful. The reason: AJS's Peace & Justice project. Project investigators and lawyers have worked ardously for the last four years to build trust with informants, crime survivors, and witnesses of crimes from the neighborhood, and serve as liasons between them and trustworthy law enforcement officials who can use their testimony to obtain arrest warrants and convictions. Thanks to these efforts, both the youth gang that terrorized Barrio Verde and a violent vigilante group have been dismantled—and Barrio Verde's 35,000 residents now live in peace, not fear.

Olvin and Viki's Story*
Olvin and Viki run a small craft workshop out of their home. They make plaster-of-paris sculptures and wall-hangings depicting typical Honduran scenes, foods, and phrases, and sell them to tourist shops in Tegucigalpa and in several nearby tourist destinations. In the spring of 2005, the youth gang that had been terrorizing Barrio Verde chose Olvin and Viki's shop as their next target for extracting war taxes. One day gang members stopped by their workshop and told them that from then on they would have to pay $50 a month to the gang. Olvin and Viki were frustrated and scared, but they decided that the best thing to do was just pay the tax.

But just weeks after they made their first payment, the gang members got greedier. One night as Olvin and Viki were relaxing at home, gang members kicked in their door, held guns to their heads, went through all their possessions, and took all the cash and valuables they could find.

Olvin was incensed. He began talking with other neighbors about forming a death squad to kill off the gang members. But before he became another link in the chain of violence that held Barrio Verde hostage, God placed a Peace & Justice investigator in his path. The investigator promised Olvin that by working with the project and with trustworthy law enforcement officials, he could help fight the gang that was destroying his neighborhood in a way that would strengthen the rule of law and increase peace, rather than increasing violence.

One of the main reasons Barrio Verde's residents had generally been unwilling to testify against gang members was fear that gang members' friends and family would take revenge against them. Honduran law has provisions for protecting witnesses in dangerous cases like Olvin and Viki's, but has no actual witness protection program. The Peace & Justice Project overcame this hurdle by starting its own witness protection program—and Olvin and Viki bravely became the Peace & Justice Project's first ever protected witnesses.

They gave testimony, first to police and then to the courts, that, together with extensive documentary and photographic evidence compiled by project investigators, led to the arrest and conviction of the gang members who had broken into their home. They also introduced project staff to other Barrio Verde neighbors who had the courage to testify about crimes they had witnessed or been victims of.

Crime Reduced by 60%
The results: justice for dozens of victims of rape, robbery, assault, and murder; the arrest, trial, and imprisonment of over 30 of Barrio Verde’s most violent gang members—and a palpable change in the neighborhood atmosphere. Once again friends dare to visit each other and children dare to play on the street after dark. New businesses have opened, and stay open well after sunset. People have less of a hunted look in their eyes. Most importantly, scores of Barrio Verde residents now feel empowered to respond to crime in a healthy, legal way—instead of suffering in silence, moving out of the neighborhood, or murdering gang members. Thanks to the Association for a More Just Society’s support, violence and fear have been replaced with peace and justice.

Recently project staff analyzed crime statistics compiled by the Investigative Police and by a national Violence Observatory run by the National Autonomous University and the United Nations Development Program. The results, summarized below, show that while from 2005 to 2008 many types of crime increased in Honduras, crime in Barrio Verde decreased dramatically. While in 2005 Barrio Verde was ranked as Tegucigalpa's most violent neighborhood, it is now not even in the worst ten.

To frame it another way, if the murder rate in Barrio Verde had simply increased at the same rate that Honduras' overall murder rate did from 2005 to 2008, in 2008 there would have been 64 murders in the neighborhood. Instead, there were just 14.

Clearly, there is still more to be done. While 14 murders is much better than 35, four, or none at all, would be much better yet. To this end, AJS continues to support the Peace & Justice project's law-enforcement oriented intervention in the neighborhood--but we're also supporting a Youth Empowerment project aimed to reduce the number of youths who get involved with gangs and crime in the first place.

With God's blessing and the continued aid of AJS supporters, we have faith that peace and justice will flow ever stronger in Barrio Verde.

Homicides
2005 2006 2007 2008	Barrio Verde 35 28 23 14 (60% decrease)	Honduras 2,417 3,018 3,574 4,473 (83% increase)
Rape
2005 2006 2007 2008	Barrio Verde 26 22 17 09 (66% decrease)	Honduras 1,300 1,367 1,188 1,468 (11% increase)
Robberies, Hold-Ups, and Break-Ins
2004 2005 2006 2007 2008	Barrio Verde 39 35 29 21 15 (62% decrease)	Honduras not available not available not available 2,421 2,108 (15% decrease)

*"Barrio Verde," "Olvin," and "Vicki" are pseudynoms which AJS has used to protect the security of project staff and beneficiaries; AJS has their real names on file.

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