The president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, once again became the center of an international dispute after responding to the delirious statements made by Chicago's Democratic mayor, Brandon Johnson, who claimed that it is "racist" to imprison criminals in order to end violence.
Johnson's remarks came amid the debate over the rise in crime in major cities across the country, especially those led by left-wing leaders, and were aimed at questioning the successful tough-on-crime and incarceration policies.
In response to the Democrat's statements, Bukele replied on his social media, accompanying the post with a series of charts on the evolution of violence in El Salvador since 2000, and particularly under his administration. In his response, he stated: "You can literally end violence by imprisoning criminals. That is precisely what imprisonment exists for in the first place."
The data shared by the president show the drastic drop in homicides in El Salvador since 2019, when he took office and launched his security strategy based on the "State of Exception" and the construction of large penitentiary centers.
Datos de El Salvador.
One of the charts reflects the joint evolution of the homicide rate and the incarceration rate from 2000 to 2024. While the red line, corresponding to homicides per 100,000 inhabitants, reaches peaks above 100 in 2015 and remains at high levels until 2018, it drops sharply from 2019 onward. By 2024, the rate stands at below 2 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants, an unprecedented figure in the country.
Meanwhile, the blue line shows a steady increase in incarceration over the past two decades, with much faster growth starting with the beginning of the State of Exception in 2022. The incarceration rate exceeds 1,600 people deprived of liberty per 100,000 inhabitants in 2024, one of the highest in the world.
Datos de El Salvador.
The second chart, corresponding to the 2014-2024 series, deepens this trend: El Salvador went from a homicide rate of 103 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2015, one of the highest on the planet, to just 1.9 in 2024. This 98% reduction in less than a decade is used by Bukele as evidence of the success of his model.
The exchange between Johnson and Bukele reopened the debate on security models. While left-wing sectors in the United States advocate for more criminal-friendly policies, Bukele defends his tough-on-crime approach as a replicable success story and rejects the notion that incarceration is, logically, racist.
El alcalde demócrata de Chicago, Brandon Johnson.
The discussion also takes place in a context where multiple U.S. cities are struggling to reduce crime rates, while Bukele's administration is being observed, and in many cases imitated, by governments of different countries seeking quick responses to organized crime.
With his usual confrontational style, Bukele used El Salvador's statistics to dismiss the absurd arguments of Chicago's Democratic mayor and reaffirm his position, showing that the correlation between incarceration and the drop in crime is clearly evident.
