Thoughts on Crime: It's Time to use "Lead or Silver" Against Crime

Pablo Escobar was famous for offering the people he bribed the option of "lead or silver" to cooperate with his crimes. Is it time we make a similar approach but against crime instead?

In one of the opening scenes of Netflix's Paulo Escobar/Cartel miniseries Narcos, we see Escobar develop an unbeatable formula. Smuggling goods across state lines, Escobar tells a lowly border guard that he would be wise to look the other way. The guard can either be paid to let the goods through or he will be killed. "Lead or silver." Lose your life to a bullet or get a little richer by doing nothing.

One can hardly blame a border guard for taking such a bribe. He had a wife and children at home who needed him, and dying for such a cause seems needlessly

cruel. Given how many local politicians, police officers, and journalists have died at the hands of the drug cartels in the past several decades, the formula is not a bluff. It has, in fact, turned Mexico into a narco state, to the point where you have to assume that some of the people in power have chosen to take the silver option.

If that is the strategy the bad guys are employing, the question then arises, can the good guys employ it, too? Because it seems to me like the only way to fight such a ferocious strategy is to employ one of equal severity.

If El Salvador's successful war against their murderous gangs teaches us anything, it is that law-abiding citizens can use the cartel's tactics against them. Indeed, at this point we don't seem to have any other option.

No, it is not exactly a bullet to the head or money in our pocket that we are necessarily presented with as options, but it is pretty close. In El Salvador, you can either go to their now infamous CECOT prison, or decide to straighten out your life. Those in prison for lesser offenses are taught skills to be productive once they re-enter the civilian world. I don't know how many second chances El Salvador offers for repeat offenders, but I'm quite sure it is probably fewer than in America.

What have been the results?

- El Salvador is now one of the safest nations on earth.

- El Salvadorians are choosing to return home after having left due to safety concerns.

- El Salvador has an agreement with the United States to house our deported illegal immigrants.

But what are the costs? Social libertarians are concerned that making gang membership and gang insignia illegal is, I suppose, a form of violation of free speech. Yes, the fundamental civil liberty involving the right to be a MS-13 gangbanger has been revoked.

Such terms are acceptable. Make all gang activity illegal for all I care. Being a member of a criminal gang is not an absolute right. Not if those gangs are conspirators against the public good.

And let's make penalties swift and public again. Why should admitting to a murder reduce the sentence for it? If it must, then by all means, states should take the time to prove the crime in court instead of pushing for a plea bargains.

So long as we continue to appease and tolerate crime, we will get more criminals. And when the criminals get so bold as to play a game of chicken with the innocent public, the only solution is to not blink.

So it is lead (a hard-core El Salvadoran-style prison) or silver (freedom on the outside). Choose wisely.

Photo Credit- CNN