Criminal gangs will profit from the prolonged downturn. It's easier to recruit people when unemployment is high
Asia’s most crime-ridden cities. And yet in eight days in March, after covid-19 forced it into lockdown, not a single car was reported stolen. El Salvador, which has one of the world’s highest murder rates, enjoyed four homicide-free days in the same month. Many countries have reported tumbling crime rates, as crooks, along with everyone else, have shut themselves away. Italy was the first European country to lock down, on March 9th. Even before then, many people were working from home.
New scams are already proliferating, some ingeniously simple. On March 16th the South African Reserve Bank issued a statement denying that it had sent collectors house-to-house to recover banknotes in case they had been contaminated with covid-19. Sales of counterfeit, often substandard, drugs have surged.
Extortion provides many criminal groups with a regular flow of cash. It is especially important to the street gangs, or, of Central America. But collecting cash during a pandemic is tricky. Data quoted by the Global Initiative against Transnational Organised Crime comparing March 2020 with the same month last year showed 9% and 17% falls in extortion incidents registered by police in Guatemala and El Salvador . In Honduras the decline was 80%.
The next stage in the supply chain—wholesale distribution—has been distorted. But gangs are already adapting. Syndicates that rely on drugs smuggled on flights, such as Nigerian gangs in South Africa, have been hit hard. Two members of Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel told Reuters that far fewer drugs are being transported in cars across the border into the United States since it was shut on March 21st. Syndicates seem to be using tunnels and drones instead.
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