What can Britain learn from El Salvador about policing the riots?

El Salvador’s president has transformed his country’s fortunes and won an electoral landslide with his zero-tolerance approach to gangs. We should take a similar approach to the hardened criminals involved in the riots, says James Price

Mercy, justice, grace. Heavy themes for a Wednesday morning, more often dealt with from the pulpit than the pages of a newspaper. But there has been much discussion of them in the aftermath of the rioting that broke out across our country. 

Many wanted justice to be swift as a deterrent against future unrest. Others felt that those caught up in anger and sorrow over the murder of three girls (and, perhaps, gnawing deeper concerns about a changing society), shouldn’t have gone to prison over social media posts. No one doubts that crimes were committed and unacceptable things were said – but with accusations of a two-tier approach to justice, what are the rights and wrongs of the recent response?

In the Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare deals with the tension between justice and mercy. Portia describes mercy as “twice blest: It blesseth him that gives and him that takes”. This appeals to that other mysterious Christian virtue, grace – that is forgiving even those that don’t deserve to be forgiven. This deep and complicated concept has already filled many books, not least because it conceivably clashes against another fundamental concept – justice. 

Adam Smith is surely right when he says that “mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent”, but isn’t Abraham Lincoln, too, when he wrote to a friend: “I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice”?

So if I may beg forgiveness for boiling one of the great debates of all time down to a few paragraphs, what are today’s policymakers to do about our justice system and the questions that recent stories have thrown up?

At least one problem stems from the fact that a small number of hardened criminals commit a vastly disproportionate number of crimes. Research by Onward from 2019 showed that just nine per cent of offenders commit more than half of all crimes. How? Firstly, prison sentences are far too short or even suspended so that no time is served at all. Connected to this is the lack of cell space across the prison estate. And finally, there is our squeamishness at long sentences. 

Why are there too few spaces? The answer is because we haven’t built enough prisons. If you thought Nimbys were anti-housing, imagine how difficult getting local support for a new prison is. This has a knock-on effect on sentencing, incentivising shorter stretches. Former prisons minister Rory Stewart is right to say that short sentences are costly to the taxpayer and are not effective at deterring crime. But if we had more modern, fit-for-purpose cells, we could accommodate longer sentences, which would keep the majority of us safe from the harm caused by a minority of hardened criminals. 

This is a lesson we should learn from El Salvador. This small, central American country was the most dangerous place on earth until their president, Nayib Bukele, declared war on crime and locked up a staggering 75,000 offenders. The homicide rate has decreased from 103 murders per 100,000 inhabitants in 2015 to 2.4 per 100,000 in 2023. NGOs and charities have criticised the practice no end, but the people love it, re-electing him with a record landslide of 84 per cent.

Our own national collective belief in mercy, and giving second chances is a wonderful thing. But in recent years, these second chances have turned to literally hundreds, and many people here, both home-grown and imported, do not share the values that have knitted our social fabric together. A weak justice system has highlighted the worst disparities – such as the apparently lenient treatment of those involved in pro-Palestine or Black Lives Matter compared to the swift justice meted out to the rioters.

Mercy to some, but justice to others is the epitome of a two-tier system. And it is cruelty to the innocent.

James Price is director of government engagement at the Adam Smith Institute