The “war on crime” proposed by Peru’s new president faces major challenges as he seeks to pull the country out of a spiraling security crisis.
José Jerí, of the conservative Somos Perú party, assumed the presidency on October 10 after Congress voted to remove Dina Boluarte from office. Congress moved after widespread protests in response to her government’s perceived failure to tackle rampant organized crime and corruption, among other issues.
Jerí is set to lead a transitional government until the country’s next president is decided in a general election in April next year. He has come out swinging, promising a crackdown on crime and joining police during operations at multiple prisons aimed at reducing criminal control within the facilities. On October 23, Peru’s Congress approved a bill proposed by Jerí that aims to tackle extortion – currently a major criminal problem in Peru – and contract killings that impact the public transport sector by creating a national registry of vulnerable transport companies and boosting information sharing between official bodies.
Yet the opening weeks of his term drew some unfortunate parallels with those of his predecessors. On October 15, during the first major demonstration since Jerí took office, a police officer allegedly shot and killed a protester, and more than a hundred people were injured. On October 21, the president announced a 30-day state of emergency in the cities of Lima and Callao.
Organized Crime Expanding in the Streets and Behind Bars
Jerí has prioritized targeting Peru’s prisons which, thanks to being overpopulated and undermanned, are difficult to control. Prisoners are running criminal rackets on the streets from behind bars.
“This issue of there being no control and a truly punitive regime within the prisons and separating them from the outside world … prevents the prisons from fulfilling their real purpose,” Sebastián Flores, general manager of the National Criminology Consultancy (Consultora Nacional de Criminologia) told InSight Crime.
Recent actions aimed at boosting prison security go beyond prison raids, with the imposition of tighter visitation restrictions and electricity supplies reduced to prevent prisoners from charging phones used to contact the outside world. The warden and deputy warden of a prison in Piura were removed from their posts on October 19, and five prison officials were arrested, for allegedly facilitating the escape of a prisoner from the facility.
While the former head of Peru’s prison system claimed in January 2024 that extortion from within prisons is not a major issue, the current head admitted that cell phone signal blocker technology being used in prisons is outdated.
But prisons are only a piece of the puzzle. Skyrocketing cases of extortion, or so-called gota a gota (“drop-by-drop”) loansharking, and the violence associated with these crimes, are major factors driving insecurity, helping contribute to a 36% increase in homicides in 2024.
Extortionists have expanded their traditional victim base, made up of groups like transport workers and small businesses, to include targets including schools and musicians.
“There’s widespread fear,” Nicolás Zevallos Trigoso, Peru’s former public security vice minister and director of non-governmental organization the Institute of Criminology (Instituto de Criminología), told InSight Crime, “They knock on the door, saying, ‘Hey, you have to pay.’ It’s so close that it creates the concern that it could happen to anyone.”
He added that small criminal groups dedicated to predatory crimes such as extortion and loan sharking have emerged, with criminals taking advantage of Peru’s largely informal, unregulated economy and informal workers’ inability to access loans from financial institutions.
Illegal mining gangs have also brought insecurity in Peru’s rural areas into focus, particularly with the discovery of the bodies of 13 massacred security workers at a mine in Pataz, in the northwestern department of La Libertad, in May. Record-high gold prices will further incentivize illegal mining by organized crime groups that thrive thanks to a weaker state presence in rural areas. Tackling the issue will require rural law enforcement to focus on dismantling illegal mining logistics and seeking to control the spread of coca cultivation to new areas. A successful strategy will also target corruption that facilitates illegal mining.
Prior Attempts to Tackle Organized Crime Had Little Success
Jerí, like his predecessors, may look to impose states of emergency as part of his promise to act quickly against rising crime. But past orders merely temporarily pushed crime elsewhere, rather than reducing it, according to Zevallos Trigoso.
“It is clearly proven that they do not work,” he said. “They are an immediate palliative, but are not sustainable.”
A similar balloon effect can be seen in how drug traffickers have responded to state initiatives. While the government’s efforts at targeting traditional coca enclaves have seen nationwide coca cultivation decrease in absolute terms from 95,000 hectares in 2022 to just under 90,000 hectares in 2024, according to official figures, this is still far higher than in the years prior to 2022, and cultivation has spread to new areas.
A greater focus on police intelligence, rather than a brute force approach, will be necessary to effectively combat organized crime, Zeballos Trigoso and Flores agreed.
Institutional Issues Hamper Anti-Crime Efforts
The lack of political and institutional stability, which has led to a revolving door of presidents, interior ministers, and police, has contributed to a lack of long-term crime reduction strategies.
Jerí, Peru’s sixth president since 2020, faces allegations of corruption, which he has denied. He has also weathered a sexual abuse accusation, although the case has been archived due to a lack of evidence.
Corruption has tainted the legacies of many of Jerí’s predecessors. Although Peru’s Constitutional Court suspended investigations into Boluarte for the remainder of her term, two other ex-presidents are serving prison sentences for corruption-related offenses, three others are facing legal proceedings, and another died by suicide when the police came to his home to arrest him.
But it is not only the executive branch of the state that has been permeated by corruption. Politicians and police at all levels offer protection to criminal organizations. Effectively combating this will likely take more time than Jerí has.
Any actions the new president plans to take to stem the tide of organized crime may be moot if he cannot generate and maintain enough popular support to remain in office. Former President Manuel Merino was forced to step down after just five days as leader of the country following the deaths of two protestors in November 2020. A Peruvian legislator proposed a vote of no confidence against Jerí following the death of a protestor on October 15, however, this was archived due to a lack of support.
Featured Image: Peru’s President José Jerí observes an operation at a prison. Credit: Peru’s Presidency Office.
