Weekly InSight

This week, InSight Crime looks behind the curtain at Venezuelan security force operations in the country’s prisons. Authorities claim that they have dismantled the pranato system where the prisons were run by criminal bosses, the pranes, yet the operations smack more of political theater.

We also show how children continue to be vulnerable to recruitment by organized crime in rural Colombia, even as the peace process with the illegal armies continues.

In Peru, we analyze the growing extortion activities of the Gallegos — a faction of the Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua.  In the capital Lima, locals have pushed back against the gang’s extortion.

Finally, we examine the case of David Elias Campbell Licona, an alleged drug broker for the Central American street gang MS13, who was recently handed over to Honduran authorities after his capture in Nicaragua.

Featured

Is the ‘Pran’ System in Venezuela’s Prisons Finished?

The system that delegated power in Venezuela’s prisons to pranes, or criminal leaders, seems to be ending after a series of military takeovers of jails by President Nicolás Maduro, as he eyes re-election in 2024.

On the morning of November 10, security forces stormed the San Felipe Judicial Prison, known as La Cuarta, in Yaracuy state, releasing yet another prison from the grip of pranes and seemingly returning it to state control.

Read the article here >

Colombian Armed Groups Continue Recruiting Children Amid Peace Talks

On the morning of September 6, school was canceled at the José Maria Obando high school in Corinto, a small town in Cauca, Colombia. Instead of the typical bustling of 400 students chatting and filing into classrooms, there was only unsettling silence. When school employees arrived that morning, they found notebooks riddled with bullet holes scattered across empty classrooms. Chalkboards and hallway walls were pockmarked and scarred by the over 140 shots that police had fired into the building.

“You can see from the sprays of bullets — in the entire school, on the walls, in the stands — that it’s right in the line of fire,” an educational worker who asked not to be named told InSight Crime.

Read the article here >

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The alleged relationship between the current vice president and former president of Suriname with drug trafficking, exposed by InSight Crime as part of the international investigation NarcoFiles: The New Criminal Order, continued to garner interest this week. InSight Crime investigator, Douwe den Held, gave an interview to ABC Suriname to discuss the investigation’s findings.

Listen to the interview here >

Read the #NarcoFiles article about Suriname here >

This Week's Criminal Group: Tren de Aragua

Venezuela’s most powerful gang, Tren de Aragua, may be intensifying its activities in Peru via one of its international cells, the Gallegos.  Until recently, Tren de Aragua was run from the Venezuelan prison of Tocorón where the group started. But over the last two months, the Venezuelan military has carried out a series of operations to undermine the gang’s control of the country’s prisons, from which the group built its transnational empire. The gang’s loss of Tocorón prison has raised doubts about its future in Venezuela

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