El Salvador and the perils of being too tough on crime

This is the Weekend Edition of Bloomberg Opinion Today, a roundup of the most popular stories Bloomberg Opinion publishes each week based on [Bloomberg]( This is the Weekend Edition of Bloomberg Opinion Today, a roundup of the most popular stories Bloomberg Opinion publishes each week based on web readership. [El Salvador’s Iron Fist on Crime Will Crush Latin American Democracy]( — Eduardo Porter How about putting more than 1% of your population in prison? That’s how El Salvador is going about fighting crime. In May of last year, 71,000 Salvadorans [were held behind bars](, according to the US State Department, up from 39,600 in 2018. President Nayib Bukele, the mastermind of El Salvador’s mass incarceration policy, doesn’t think he has anything to be ashamed of. Last year, he notes proudly, El Salvador’s [homicide rate]( fell to 7.8 per 100,000 Salvadorans, the second lowest in Central America, after Nicaragua. In 2018, the year before Bukele came into office, the rate was just above 52. In 2015 it topped 100, at the time the highest in the world. If some [human rights have been trampled]( along the way toward social peace — if innocent Salvadorans have been swept up and incarcerated; and the incarcerated occasionally mistreated to the point of death — it’s a reasonable price to squash a festering gang problem that had put the streets off limits for most Salvadorans. Read the [whole thing](. [Tesla and GM Sold More Cars. Only One Made More Money]( — Liam Denning [Buffett’s Florida Bet Bodes Well for Troubled Insurance Market]( — Jonathan Levin [NATO Convoys Can Protect Ukraine’s Grain Harvest From Putin]( — James Stavridis [Elon Musk’s X Misses the Spot In Several Ways]( — Dave Lee [How to End the Hollywood Actors and Writers Strikes]( — Tyler Cowen [Forget 5 Months. Where Will Markets Be in 3, 7 or 10 Years?]( — John Authers [So Much for US Economic Eclipse at the Hands of China]( — Daniel Moss [How Bad Is China’s Youth Unemployment, Really?]( — Shuli Ren [Don’t Tip Your Private Pilot]( — Matt Levine More From Bloomberg Opinion Here’s what we’ve been listening to this week. - [Crash Course: Women, Wall Street and Unfinished Business]( with Timothy L. O’Brien (listen on [Apple]( or [Spotify]() - [Bloomberg Opinion: Human Rights in El Salvador and Race in Hiring]( with Eduardo Porter, Lisa Jarvis, Kathryn Edwards and F.D. Flam - [Twitter Broadcast:]([Fed Rate Decision: Instant Analysis & Reaction]( with Jonathan Levin and Allison Schrager Follow Us You received this message because you are subscribed to Bloomberg's Opinion Today newsletter. If a friend forwarded you this message, [sign up here]( to get it in your inbox. [Unsubscribe]( [Bloomberg.com]( [Contact Us]( Bloomberg L.P. 731 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY 10022 [Ads Powered By Liveintent]( [Ad Choices](