February 24, 2010
CENTRAL AMERICA: RULE OF LAW AND CRIME PREVENTION
In Central America, the U.S. has made democratic governance, economic development, and
free trade integration cornerstones of its foreign policy. However, high rates of crime and
violence are reducing citizens’ confidence in their governments, limiting investment and
productivity, and threatening security, growth, and development in Central America.
Recognizing that Central America’s stability is critical to the stability of the Western Hemisphere,
USAID works to improve security in the region by strengthening the justice sector and
supporting crime and violence prevention.
USAID’s crime and violence prevention programming in Central America focuses largely on
local and community-based solutions to problems of crime and violence. While much of our
work naturally centers around preventing youth from joining violent criminal gangs, we take a
broader view as well, remembering that the problem of crime and violence does not stem
exclusively from gangs, and that preventing youth from joining gangs should be an effort that
involves the entire community.
Programming in crime and violence prevention and rule of law is funded through various means,
including routine bilateral funding from USAID missions as well as the Central America Regional
Security Initiative (CARSI – formerly known as Mérida Central America), a multi-year agreement
between the U.S. Government and Central American governments to improve regional security
through technical, financial, and material assistance to Central American countries. The primary
goals of CARSI include: breaking the power and impunity of criminal organizations;
strengthening border controls; improving the capacity of justice systems and curtailing gang
activity; and reducing the demand for drugs.
Selected USAID Crime and Violence Prevention Activities
Regional. USAID’s Regional Gang Prevention Program, managed in partnership with the
Central American Integration System (SICA), supports Central American public, private, and
civil society organizations to implement gang prevention and rehabilitation programs. Funds
support innovative approaches to mitigate and prevent the gang problem through alliances with
and contributions from multiple levels of government, civil society, and the private sector.
Programs include a network of Outreach Centers in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras
providing safe spaces for constructive recreation and skills training to at-risk youth; community
security initiatives that bring community members and officials together to build collaborative
solutions to security problems; and an ongoing dialogue on juvenile justice reform to ensure that
youth return to society as contributing members of their communities.
As part of the Central America Regional Security Initiative (CARSI, formerly called Mérida),
USAID: cooperates with the International City/County Management Association to build
networks of municipal actors to share innovations and best practices in crime and violence
prevention; supports the Organization of American States (OAS) to employ a novel collaborative
media campaign to encourage youth to resist crime, violence, and substance abuse; and
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-2coordinates with Vanderbilt University to implement rigorous monitoring and impact evaluation
of the aforementioned two projects, measuring their effects on citizen perceptions of security to
learn what works or does not work in community-based crime and violence prevention.
USAID coordinates closely with other U.S. Government agencies active in crime and violence
prevention through groups such as the International Armed Gangs Task Force and, at the
country level, through the Country Team at each Embassy. USAID Mission personnel regularly
communicate with host country governments, regional organizations such as SICA, and other
donors operating in their countries. USAID’s Washington office coordinates with other donors
and interested parties through ad-hoc meetings and, with other major donors, through standing
meetings with the Inter-American Coalition for the Prevention of Violence.
El Salvador.
The Community-Based Crime and Violence Prevention project increases communities’ ability to
implement crime and violence prevention activities through strengthened municipal leadership,
community engagement, and community crime mapping, as well as strengthening the central
government’s capacity to plan and implement prevention activities and improve coordination
between the local and national levels. Crime prevention activities foster municipal leadership
and provide funding for local governments that demonstrate the capacity to implement
prevention programs.
USAID Rule of Law programs in El Salvador focus on justice sector reform, institutional
strengthening, crime prevention, transparency and anticorruption. In the area of justice reform,
USAID is assisting the Government of El Salvador with the implementation of new and pending
legislation, including a criminal procedure code, laws on mediation, and a national crime
prevention policy. USAID seeks to help the central government improve the effectiveness and
expediency of criminal investigations, with end goals of improving access to justice and quality
of services rendered. Transparency and anticorruption activities include the development of
judicial transparency indicators and anti-corruption training for prosecutors and other judicial
operators. A Dispute Mediation Centers Network incorporates public, private, and civil society
actors to promote a culture of lawfulness and nonviolence through peer mediation.
Guatemala. Building off our successful Youth Centers alliance, which worked with public and
private sector partners to manage youth centers serving over 1,000 at-risk youth in high-risk
areas, USAID is working with the private sector to expand the program. The new program plans
to open up to ten new centers and provide jobs and other assistance to an additional 200 former
gang members.
USAID has worked to create the legal infrastructure to guarantee human rights and is now
focusing on crime, security, and corruption as critical themes. With the Government of
Guatemala, USAID has helped develop and institutionalize a new Criminal Procedures Code,
the Public Defense Institute, victims’ assistance programs, mediation centers, and a new
Judicial School. USAID-assisted 24-hour courts allow for efficient processing of detained
suspects while providing for transparency and due process guarantees. USAID has provided
help to the United Nations to stand up the new International Commission Against Impunity in
Guatemala (CICIG), an investigative entity that will assist with addressing organized crime while
training Public Ministry prosecutors to prosecute organized crime cases arising from CICIG
-3investigations. USAID’s community policing programming in Villa Nueva engaging the
surrounding neighborhood and civil society into efforts to reduce crime and violence. Operating
in various high-risk areas, the Youth Challenge is a partnership of USAID, the Rotary Club, and
smaller faith-based and civil society organizations with municipal governments that provides
outreach centers, skills training, and other services designed to reduce youth vulnerability to
gang recruitment and rehabilitate ex-gang members.
Honduras. Together with the Honduran Ministry of Education, the Educatodos program
provides basic education for Hondurans. Focused on the out-of-school population, Educatodos
plans to reach 540,000 students and an additional 1.1 million young adults age 19 to 30 who
failed to complete nine years of basic education, as well as at-risk youth and others seeking
alternative means of attaining a basic education. Also in partnership with the Ministry of
Education, USAID is expanding its civic education program to target an additional 20,000
vulnerable youth subject to violence, illegal migration, gang recruitment, and school desertion.
The program builds democracy at the grassroots level by promoting citizen participation and
helping youth develop critical thinking skills to provide alternative solutions to real community
problems.
USAID has been instrumental in pushing for key judicial reforms and worked with the
Government of Honduras to ensure the successful implementation of the Criminal Procedures
Code, passed in 2002, to improve accountability and enforceable standards of ethics and
judicial conduct. USAID has helped resolve residual problems from the former criminal law
system, such as the backlog of cases and the disorganization of evidence warehouses; a new
Civil Procedure Code (CPC) will transform the entire civil court system by allowing more
transparent trials and speedier commercial and property transactions and creating a level
playing field for business. Drawing on lessons learned from the reform of criminal courts,
USAID helped establish ad-hoc Inter-Institutional Civil Justice Commissions to coordinate
implementation of the CPC by national and regional government institutions. In addition, USAID
helped improve access to justice by supporting seven regional Alternative Dispute Resolution
centers, with 1,927 cases resolved within the first year, almost doubling the number of cases
resolved through formal criminal courts nationwide.
Panama. With the Government of Panama, USAID has worked to assure civil society
participation in promoting judicial reforms, strengthened the rule of law by improving the justice
system and facilitating citizens’ access to justice, and helped develop Panamanian capacity to
curtail, investigate, and prosecute corruption cases. USAID has supported activities by the
Citizens’ Alliance for Justice Reform, a coalition of 15 civil society organizations that advocates
for critical judicial reforms and improved governance. In addition, USAID has worked with civil
society at the grass roots level to strengthen advocacy and oversight capabilities to galvanize
public support for fundamental reforms.
Nicaragua. USAID has helped the Government of Nicaragua draft and pass a comprehensive
Criminal Procedures Code reform with a corresponding implementation package. A new
Criminal Code, created with USAID help, has helped bring Nicaragua into compliance with the
Inter-American and United Nations Conventions Against Corruption, the American Convention
on Human Rights, and international anti-money laundering and anti-trafficking standards and
commitments. Nicaraguan police, prosecutors, judges, public defenders, and civil society all
participated in a USAID-facilitated consultation process for this new legislation. In addition,
-4USAID-assisted arbitration and mediation centers are providing improved access to justice for
the poor as well as for commercial enterprises, offering an alternative to the formal legal
system. With USAID help, over the past several years new coalitions have emerged to
advocate for justice including - for the first time ever - a women's rights coalition and an
indigenous rights coalition. At the same time, USAID has worked with a coalition of all 24 law
schools on a comprehensive curricular reform package. Today, all new prosecutors, judges,
and public defenders are hired through competitive processes, as a result of past assistance
from the USAID justice program.
Costa Rica. As part of its regional agreement with the OAS, USAID supports technical
assistance to the government of Costa Rica to compose a strategy for maintaining the security
of its citizens.