The other day, the author Mark Galeotti was being interviewed about a book he has written (to be published shortly) called “Homo Criminalis: How crime organises the world”. He has written many books on Russia and, in particular, on the period from the fall of the USSR to the Russia of today. In this book, however, he analyses the role of predatory gangs over the millennia.

He makes a distinction between roving bandits and stationary bandits. Roving bandits come to an area to take everything they can get their hands on and then, leaving devastation behind them, go on somewhere-else. They have to because, having taken everything that isn’t nailed down, there is nothing left to steal.

Stationary bandits have a different modus operandi. They come into an area in order to take as much as they can but without affecting the local economy so much that there will be nothing left to steal tomorrow. At the same time, as an occupying force, they ‘encourage’ the locals to work in order to replace what has been stolen, so providing a continuing source of booty.

Galeotti says that this sort of process is how states come into being. Over time, the ‘stationary’ bandits become the top echelon in the community, whilst imposing their ‘rules’ on it and assuming the role of the governing class. And when we think back we have many examples of this model. In the United Kingdom, for instance, we are hosting families – the aristocracy – whose ancestors came across with William in 1066, families which still have the land holdings granted to them by the invader.

But he also tells us that the existence of states encourages the corresponding existence of organised criminal gangs. In a sense, the opportunities for such gangs exist simply because of the rules and systems required to make a state work.

State-backed currencies for instance, are a target for fraud and forgery. This was true even in the time of the Aztecs. The currency used, at least for smaller purchases, was cacao beans. Now obviously it was worthwhile trying to produce forgeries using anything which could be made to look like a bean, including dung. Being caught meant almost certain death at the hands of the Aztec ‘police-force’, and so the forgeries were typically passed-off in out-lying villages.

Gold has been a currency for a very long time and many means have been used to make other metals seem like gold, including gold-plating lead ingots. There were also frauds based on the elusive philosopher’s stone, although I never had Isaac Newton down as a gang leader. How many bank-notes in circulation are forgeries I do not know, but they are now rather less important: instead, the gangs have moved onto raiding our digital bank accounts.

And we see that limiting what people are allowed to do, such as taking drugs, means that smuggling them into a country becomes very well organised and very profitable. Smuggling people across state borders has also proved to be a real money-spinner. So then, maintaining a regulated state and combatting those who seek to profit from breaking the rules is a difficult, never-ending task.

But sometimes, the gangs have more influence than the state. No, not Italy, but El Salvador. It is a country the size of Wales, with a population of 6.4 million. Until recently, it was virtually controlled by three rival gangs. In 2015, there were 6,656 murders, almost one every hour,  In 2024, there were 114 murders - a 98 per cent decrease in a decade. Last month, the US State Department rated it as a safer place to visit than the UK or France.

Much of the decline in serious crime has occurred since 2022, when the newly elected President Nayib Bukele instigated a state of emergency that is still in place. This decree signalled an all-out assault on El Salvador’s gangs. Government security forces were given free rein to make mass arrests without warrants.

For weeks, around 1,000 men a day were arrested and imprisoned without trial on mere suspicion of being gang members. By 2023, a massive new prison had been built to accommodate the influx of inmates. Today, El Salvador has the highest per capita prison population in the world.

Last year, he was re-elected with 85 per cent of the vote. Given the breakdown of law and order in El Salvador, it is difficult to argue that overriding citizens’ right was wrong. It was to combat what was in effect a civil war.

But how long should it continue? There is no sign of it being replaced with a normal, rights-based system. I suspect that Bukele will cling on to office for a long time.

And others have been only too keen to emulate the actions taken by Bukele. Amid the Trump administration's crackdown on immigrants across the United States, federal agents are operating undercover on the streets, in cars without visible license plates, often in plain clothes, and with their faces covered by masks. No one knows who they are or what authority they have, apart from that deriving from brute force. People have been picked up simply because they look a bit like immigrants or speak with an accent or do jobs often filled by immigrants.

This is of course in line with Trump’s repeated assertion to his gullible MAGA followers that all illegal immigrants are rapists or murderers, deal in drugs and eat cats. It is also based on an apocalyptical view of the crime rate in the States. Trump said “You can't walk across the street to get a loaf of bread. You get shot, you get mugged, you get raped, you get whatever it may be.” In fact, crime has plunged:


But his lies enable him to ‘justify’ sweeping aside the normal checks and balances of the justice system. He tried to subvert an election to stay in power and has long since talked about running for a third time. Fortunately, though, time is not on his side. Even people like him have a shelf-life. But he’s a convicted felon which in itself tells us that he is not a Bukele, but the sort of gang leader Bukele was trying to get rid of from his country.

We can now also see these methods being recycled in this country by our cigar-smoking Mr Farage. Although we are in no way similar to the El Salvador taken over by Bukele, Mr Farage insists that Britain is ‘broken’. It is 'Lawless' and only Reform UK can fix the many deep-rooted problems we have.

We are told by their web-site that we are worse off, both financially and culturally. We have rising crime, both legal and illegal immigration at record levels and woke ideology has captured our public institutions and schools.

Of course, no solutions of substance are offered and no regard is paid to the actual crime figures or to the decreasing relevance of the woke mentality, especially since the Supreme Court decision in the trans debate.

The crime rate was actually significantly worse in the 1990s and although there has been some variation since the turn of the millennium, it’s largely been in the right direction, shop-lifting apart. Oh, and thefts in the streets of mobile phones. Mind you, most of us didn’t have mobile phones in the ‘90s or use them in the streets, so they were difficult to steal.

To emphasise their view, however, for the last few weeks Reform UK have put on a series of press-conferences dealing mainly with the hot topics of crime and immigration. They have wheeled out miscellaneous ex police-officers, a police and crime commissioner and even the 19 year old leader of Warwickshire County Council. They all tell us that we are going to hell in the proverbial hand-cart. Mind you, in their picture of the UK, presumably the hand-cart would be stolen before it got us to our final destination.

Paul Buckingham

8 August 2025