Introduction

The nature of organised criminal groups

Criminal organisations of different sizes and natures share some common features and modes of control. Such groups must be understood to have moved beyond just the provision of illicit goods and services to become organisations that seek exclusive control over territory, deal primarily in private protection and operate as non-state, quasi-political authorities (Schelling 1971, Gambetta 1988, 1996, Paoli 2002, 2014). Regardless of size, they establish and maintain their authority due to key features – a strong collective identity coupled with an “extraordinary capability to adapt to changing social and economic conditions” (Paoli 2002: 64) – and operate by usurping critical activities over which the state usually has a monopoly: notably, the use of force and taxation (Paoli 2002, Kleemans 2014). Criminal groups take advantage of state weaknesses to seize territorial control, to co-opt or corrupt state actors and entities to enable their continued operations with impunity, to diversify their portfolios by leveraging emerging criminal markets and to resort to violence to meet their ends, be they criminal or political (Dudley 2016a). Their political aims are generally linked to control rather than ideology. In order to reinforce their control, unhindered operation and criminal governance, they buy or force allegiance from political and state actors.

Violence is endemic within criminal organisations that vie for exclusivity over markets and territories – to punish, to exert power, to reinforce the need for protection and to demonstrate superiority over rival organisations. With no recourse to formal institutions to enforce economic agreements and to remedy violations, violence – or the threat thereof – must be employed instead. While the threat and use of violence may be linked to transactional activity, it is often employed for “contingent reasons” such as unstable and fragmented relationships between different criminal groups, demonstrations of power and authority, or to send messages to rivals (Gambetta 1996, Paoli 2002). Nonetheless, the ‘private enforcement’ activities of criminal organisations do not always run contrarily to the interests of the state, and there is often cooperation – or, at a minimum, coexistence – from state officials, and an acceptance of the activities and roles of these organisations (Gambetta 1996). Indeed, the state is far from a benign actor in this.

There is generally an absence of effective state action against organised crime throughout Latin America, although this is deeply linked to entrenched corruption and impunity. This contrasts with what we would normally expect to see: the state asserting its authority and its monopoly on the use of force (Osorio 2011). In the absence of appropriate and effective state response, organised criminal groups are able to assert authority, establish strong roots and embed themselves as powerful non-state actors (Schelling 1971, Gambetta 1988, 1996, Manwaring 2007, Karstedt 2014). This, in turn, weakens state control, resulting in power vacuums that are then usurped by organised crime entities. This results in pockets of failed state where criminal organisations become stronger as corrupt state agents become involved in criminal activities: “The State is rather an actor in organised crime than its victim” (Karstedt 2014: 317). This situation is particularly acute in Mexico, because corruption and patronage have been integral to politics for several decades, with strong links and cooperation between the government and organised crime in what has been described as a pax narcotica or pax mafiosa (Buscaglia 2015, 2016).

While criminal groups are important social actors in the region, in some parts of Mexico they have become de facto governments or quasi-political authorities that use certain tactics (force, corruption and intervention in political processes) to steer authorities away from policies that are misaligned with their objectives. Sullivan (2012) calls this usurping of state control “criminal insurgency” and describes how some groups promote themselves as “social bandits”, highlighting that their increasingly transnational nature takes them not only beyond law-enforcement issues, but also beyond issues of national security. Manwaring (2007) describes the increasing similarities between the region’s criminal groups and insurgency movements in terms of political motives and political control; control that is gained not by a coup d’état, but by gradual and meticulously planned smaller incursions into territories and institutions. Further to this, “the persuasive and intimidating actions of the gang phenomenon in the electoral processes have pernicious effects on democracy and tend to erode the will and ability of the State to carry out its legitimising functions” (Manwaring 2007: 29).

In Mexico and Central America, the corruption of state authorities goes beyond impunity for criminal actions, to the collaboration of officials, the collusion of security forces and the co-opting of state employees. This is best understood within the conceptualisation of criminal governance (see, for instance, Lessing 2015, 2017, Moncada 2016, 2021, Barnes 2017, Arias 2017, Durán-Martínez 2018, Magaloni et al. 2020, Trejo and Ley 2020, Feldmann and Luna 2022, Uribe et al. 2025), which explains how criminal groups enforce control, particularly in the context of Latin America. This can explain the social and economic power of criminal groups in regions they control and the complex relationships between the state and criminal groups that extend far beyond the dichotomous distinctions normally understood to be between state and criminal actors.

All organised criminal groups “implement at least a very basic system of governance after consolidating territorial control” (Barnes 2017: 973), which comprises territorial control, social control and collaborative relations with state actors. The form of local authority that different types of criminal groups establish varies according to the three variables of “degree of territorial control; relationship with the state; and relationship with the community”, with five key regime typologies (defined as Insurgent, Bandit, Symbiotic, Predatory and Split) that vary most distinctly in their relationship with the state and the extent to which this is marked by confrontations or alliances (Magaloni et al. 2020: 555).

Within territorial control, criminal groups monopolise economic activities and the use of violence, defending their territory from rival groups and against enforcement by state actors (Barnes 2017). Social control is employed to ensure compliance from residents as well as economic benefits from them (for example as dues or extortion) and to support the avoidance of enforcement and defence of territory against rivals (for example, by maintaining rules of silence and loyalty) (Magaloni et al. 2020). Relations with the state must be managed to avoid enforcement and confrontations – that is, managing state actors and keeping the police away to protect criminal activity and income and maintain the criminal group’s authority and territory – and to facilitate certain activities or ensure impunity through alliances with varied levels of cooperation (Magaloni et al. 2020).

The concept of criminal governance does not imply the parallel existence of criminal groups and the state, but rather acknowledges various levels of interaction between them. These can vary between confrontations and alliances, with a continuum between these or a combination of interactions (Magaloni et al. 2020). The complex and varied interactions between criminal and state entities are neither consistent in their manifestation nor diametrically opposed (Arias 2017, Lessing 2020). These may instead operate in parallel or co-existence that can be described as “instances of divided sovereignty or duopolies of violence” (Feldmann and Luna 2022), where there are symbiotic interactions, collaborations and arrangements between them (Moncada 2016, Durán-Martínez 2018, Lessing 2020, Magaloni et al. 2020). Nor are they static, rather “crime–state relations are often fluid, shifting back and forth between these various arrangements over time” (Barnes 2017: 973). Shifts in these patterns – towards confrontation rather than alliances, and vice versa – can provoke or reduce levels of violence (Magaloni et al. 2020).

Rather than providing an effective intervention, state security responses or confrontations can instead generate or aggravate violence, provoke inter-group hostility or battles, and push criminal presence or activity into previously unaffected areas (Calderón et al. 2015, Lessing 2015, 2017, Magaloni et al. 2017, 2020, Durán-Martínez 2015, Trejo and Ley 2020). The outcome will differ depending on the nature of the group and its criminal governance which “vary according to whether criminal groups confront or collude with state actors; abuse or cooperate with the community; and hold a monopoly or contest territory with rival OCGs” (Magaloni et al. 2020: 555).

Organised criminal groups in Mexico

Large, family-based organised crime groups have been active in Mexico for several decades, and their operations have been supported by endemic corruption, with Mexico’s government and elites cooperating with and benefiting from organised crime. (For detailed analysis of the post-2000 development of and distinction between groups, see, for instance, Medel and Thoumi 2014, Calderón et al. 2015, Trejo and Ley 2020, Magaloni et al. 2017.) Since the 1990s, the form, nature and business models of criminal organisations in Mexico have evolved and reshaped, and their activities and income sources have diversified. Significant changes followed the end of authoritarian rule and the defeat of the PRI (Partido Revolucionario Institucional) in the 2000 presidential elections, with the associated loss of patronage protection from the state and security forces, and then after the 2006 crackdown on organised crime and its strategy to remove the heads of large criminal groups (Dudley 2012, 2016a, Calderón et al. 2015, Medel and Thoumi 2014, Trejo and Ley 2020).

The key transformations that emerged after the changes in 2000 and 2006 were: the fragmentation of existing groups into smaller groups who then formed allegiances or battled over territorial and trade controls; the recruitment of militias with military experience; and a substantial increase in violence, fuelled in part by a flood of heavy weaponry from the USA following the 2004 expiration of a ban on assault weapons. As these new groups emerged and the strategy of territorial control hardened, the groups diversified into other activities, including, ultimately, the kidnap and extortion of transit migrants. The conceptualisation of criminal governance provides framing to enable us to understand the territorial control model, the shift in operations and the ongoing, shifting and complex connections with state actors. It thus explains how groups hardened territorial control in the post-authoritarian context, the rise of private militia to enforce control, protect from confrontations with the state or battle rival groups, and the ongoing territorial control and operationality of groups in the country and beyond (Trejo and Ley 2020).

The US-backed Mexican government crackdown on organised crime from 2006 (commonly referred to as the ‘War on Drugs’ or the ‘Kingpin Strategy’) focused on the ‘decapitation’ of cartels through the capture or killing of their leaders. However, this approach appears to have had a ‘hydra’ effect, with battles for leadership causing division and two or more heads growing in the place of the one that had been removed. Groups fragmented to form new groups, strengthened their paramilitary wings and battled over territory, financial activities and smuggling routes, causing significant increases in violence and homicides. This led to incursions into new criminal markets to increase incomes with the “paradoxical result that the strongest cartels […] consolidated their power” (Stillman 2015). During this time, and as a result of both internal developments and fragmentation within large criminal groups (such as the Gulf Cartel, Sinaloa Cartel and La Familia Michoacana) and the attempts to break them up, smaller groups (such as the Zetas, Knights Templar and Cártel Jalisco Nueva Generación) emerged that were focused on controlling territory. These groups were much more involved in extreme violence, extortion and charging piso.¹ These major criminal groups – often referred to as cartels – now had extraordinary firepower and sphere of influence and could perhaps best be described as “paramilitary organised crime networks” that operate in parallel to the state (Grillo 2023). Within some parts of Mexico, these groups cause a significant amount of internal displacement and external flight.

This period correlates with the involvement of criminal groups in the systematic abuse of transit migrants in Mexico (Dudley 2012, 2016a, Dudley and Rios 2013, Guerrero 2011, Rodríguez 2014). This happened in the context of post-2001 migration policy and the militarisation of the US–Mexico border, intensified in the post-2006 context, and further hardened following the implementation of in-country migration control in 2014 under Plan Frontera Sur (Hiemstra 2019, Basok et al. 2015). Most recently, large organised groups – notably the Sinaloa Cartel and the now large and powerful Cártel Jalisco Nueva Generación – became directly involved in people-smuggling operations, battling each other for control of areas near Mexico’s southern border with Guatemala or exerting their dominance at the US–Mexico border. Below this top level of large criminal groups, there are three discrete operating models – as described by experts in my fieldwork – by which smaller groups engage in criminal activity (including the abuse of migrants) within their territory, and these are intrinsically connected to the new model of territorial control. Firstly, there are franchise models consisting of smaller local groups operating independently but using organised crime ‘brand names’. Secondly, organised crime groups grant concessions to local criminal groups, permitting them to undertake specific activities within their territorial control, such as assaults and kidnappings of migrants. Thirdly, some groups are subcontracted to carry out certain tasks on behalf of organised crime, such as collecting piso on the trains. These different operating models indicate varying levels of involvement in the abuse of migrants by large criminal groups, but they all serve as revenue streams to organised crime.

Organised criminal groups in Northern Central America

The criminal landscape in Northern Central America is markedly different from that in Mexico. These countries have suffered from endemic violence and citizen insecurity, the highest murder rates in the world and, by the early 2010s, were acknowledged as the deadliest countries outside of declared war zones (Cantor 2016).² Dudley (2011) describes three key types of organised crime groups that were operating in the region: street gangs, transportistas (local drug-trafficking groups) and Mexican cartels. This differentiation is critical to understanding each group’s activities and use of violence and the ensuing impact this has on displacement (Cantor 2014), with most appearing to be provoked by violence perpetrated at local level by street gangs that is directly linked to their criminal governance.

There were two extremely powerful and significant street gangs, or maras, in Northern Central America (Mara Salvatrucha or MS-13 and Barrio-18 or B-18 – although these have each split into two other main entities in both El Salvador and Honduras) that originated in exile in California during the region’s civil wars. There are also many smaller street gangs, especially in Honduras. These maras were able to develop because of specific social conditions in these countries – including a weak rule of law, economic inequality and social marginalisation – although their more recent strengthening and increased violence is linked both to these ongoing conditions and to their involvement in international drug trafficking (Dudley 2011, Pérez 2013, International Crisis Group 2016).

Maras are social and criminal organisations that have dominated hundreds of neighbourhoods and towns in the region, with de facto control of some parts of the country – especially marginalised urban areas – where they have become more powerful than the state. They exert societal power in their territory and have spheres of influence throughout the country, as a result of entrenched corruption and their surveillance and communication networks. Within gang-controlled areas, maras effectively govern as “a shadow government, implementing its own laws, rules and taxes” (Martínez d’Aubuisson 2022). As such, the concept of criminal governance explains their establishment of territorial control and imposition of social control in marginalised areas with weak state presence, and the associated violence that derives from this. Such violence is employed to defend territory from other criminal actors and state forces and to maintain territorial control.

Violence and the implicit and explicit threat of this is employed to maintain social control over the population of the territory. A mara views itself “not as just controlling the territory, but also as controlling the people who live there, subjecting the inhabitants to its rules and control” (Weir 2022), using violence and threats to enforce these. This social control imposes requirements for loyalty, obedience and respect for their local authority. Loyalty is demanded to protect from enforcement, with codes of silence (ver, oír y caller or ‘see, hear and be silent’) that punish acts such as making a police report or collaborating with the authorities. Obedience is demanded to maintain the integrity of the territory as well as to meet the gangs’ economic and other wants and needs. People are obliged to comply with all gang demands (whether for extortion payments or ‘tax’, collaboration in criminal activities or to leave the area), and refusal to do so is considered an affront to gang authority that is punishable with extreme violence.

Corruption and impunity are key to the existence, operations and criminal activity of all groups, from maras to transportistas, and the region is marked by entrenched corruption at all levels of governance and authority. Organised criminal groups pursue corruption as a core part of their strategy to manage state relations and ensure their survival and, as a result, have infiltrated state security institutions – police, military and judicial systems – throughout the region. Some members of the security forces and political actors engage in criminal activity or collaborate with organised crime. This situation is fluid rather than constant, however, and the state–gang relationship can change from alliances to confrontations that provoke violent responses from gangs. Security forces’ raids or confrontations in gang territory and the breaking of state–gang truces result in violence (Magaloni et al. 2020) that provokes displacement as residents flee rising levels of violence or the risk of being targeted by state forces. Various repressive crackdowns against maras (known as mano dura or ‘hard fist’ approaches) have been employed, although these tended to result in increased violence (for example, in El Salvador in the mid-2000s) and failed to address the root causes of the violence and criminal gangs’ control.

Maras gained increasing political influence, particularly in El Salvador and Honduras. They have connections with the country’s political and economic elite and have gained influence over some authorities, through infiltration and corruption. They may influence political outcomes, and MS-13 in particular has now moved beyond selling votes and controlling access for political campaigns to direct political action and “involvement in partisan party politics” (Farah and Babineau 2018: 12). While the political influence of the maras was strong in both countries, this trend became “most visible in Honduras, where it is combined with a much more coherent, identifiable political ideology and messaging” (Farah and Babineau 2018: 12). Drug-trafficking groups also have political interests and can purportedly influence subnational decisions. This reached new levels in Honduras through the 2010s, culminating in the former president Juan Orlando Hernández being extradited to the USA and convicted for drug trafficking and collusion with organised crime. An attorney general, security ministers, senior police and close relatives of previous presidents have also previously been convicted of drug trafficking and money laundering.

Fieldwork in Mexico and El Salvador, 2015

In late 2015, I conducted structured and semi-structured interviews with fifty-eight migrants and thirty-four experts on migration and organised crime in the region, including academics, government officials and representatives of international agencies in Mexico City, Tapachula and Ixtepec in Mexico and in San Salvador and Santa Tecla in El Salvador. I spent three weeks at the Albergue ‘Hermanos en el Camino’ migrant shelter in Ixtepec, southern Mexico (the Albergue) and two days at the reception centre for Salvadorans deported overland from Mexico in Santa Tecla, El Salvador (Centro de Atención a Repatriados, the Returns Centre), where I conducted interviews with staff and migrants.³

I lived at the Albergue during my research there, enabling me to make further ethnographic observations about dynamics and incidents. I conducted fifty formal interviews with migrants during my stay, which amounted to a quarter of the people staying there, using stratified sampling to reflect the demographic composition of the full population. Of the sample I interviewed, there were forty-two men, five women, one trans woman, one accompanied minor and one unaccompanied minor. These included the heads of five family groups, three of which were mothers with young children under the age of five and two were the fathers of teenage boys. The majority of the people I interviewed came from Honduras (twenty-one), El Salvador (seventeen) and Guatemala (eight). Of the remaining people, two came from Nicaragua, one from Cuba and one from Mexico. I also conducted eight interviews with Salvadorans who had been deported from Mexico at the Returns Centre in Santa Tecla, employing convenience sampling due to time constraints.

The people I interviewed had not used the services of people-smugglers to travel and, in general, had little experience of such services due to financial constraints. The majority of them had walked the whole of or a large part of the route, often following the train tracks and making diversions to avoid migration checkpoints within Mexico. Many of them had also used combis (microbuses) within Mexico, some had used public buses and taxis, while a few had ridden on top of trains. Of my sample at the Albergue, twenty-seven people gave reasons for leaving their country that could indicate potential international protection needs under the regional definition provided for in Mexican law. Eight of these were claiming or intended to claim asylum in Mexico.⁴

These research sites presented me with systematic biases in my research sample, because I was not able to access people who were using the services of people-smugglers or those who were able to travel in an authorised or regular manner. The people I interviewed at the Albergue were some of the most marginalised people travelling overland through Mexico – those who did not have the resources to use people-smugglers to facilitate their journey or to access authorised travel and regular entry options. Just two interviewees (one at the Albergue and one at the Returns Centre) told me that they had engaged such services for all or part of their journey, although there were other people arriving at the Returns Centre who appeared to have used people-smugglers (they were well dressed with suitcases). As a result, my analysis of people’s decision-making excludes those who were able to leave in a more planned manner, after considering all their options and arranging travel in advance (either using authorised travel options or people-smuggling services), perhaps when at a lower level of risk.⁵

Ethical considerations

My field research presented methodological challenges and significant ethical concerns, which were fully evaluated, and my strategy to mitigate risk was approved by the University of London Research Ethics Committee. My primary ethical responsibility was to respect the safety, wellbeing and confidentiality of all research participants. Considerations about vulnerability, marginalisation and privacy informed all stages of my preparation, including research design, selection of research locations and the planning and implementation of my fieldwork trip. Additionally, the vulnerability of displaced people and the compromised security situation posed by insecurity and organised crime raised some points of concern, namely: the general presence of organised crime and poor security in the region, high levels of corruption and infiltration of state institutions by organised crime actors, and the potential infiltration of migrant shelters by members of criminal groups.

Firstly, my interview design and technique were informed by practical concerns, such as ensuring the physical and psychosocial wellbeing of research participants who may be tired, hungry or mentally distressed, in particular when relating traumatic stories. I took particular care to be sensitive to participants’ emotional wellbeing and not to elicit information that could identify the participant or their family members or that could compromise their anonymity. Secondly, I was conscious of the risk of exposing participants to members of criminal organisations possibly operating in the vicinity of research sites, or who might have infiltrated the migrant shelter, and of the possibility of inadvertently interviewing either criminals posing as migrants or migrants recruited by gangs during transit. I took steps to mitigate this, to act with caution in regard to the nature of all discussions and, above all, to maintain the confidentiality of other research participants. I carefully designed my interview questionnaire to be as neutral as possible, so that any potential exposure would not jeopardise participants, investigators or the research project itself. Furthermore, I did not discuss with anyone who was not a trusted contact the focus of my work on organised crime or enter into conversations that could expose either me or my research participants to security risks.

Data analysis

Analysis of my data was an inductive process, allowing me to explore the sources in an unbiased manner and in increasingly granular detail, extracting narrative elements to give nuance and insight to the patterns I observed. Legal frameworks and publicly available quantitative data on apprehensions and deportations from US and Mexican government agencies were also analysed and interpreted within the context of narrative accounts from experts’ interviews. For my examination of past events, I applied new analysis to previously published work and narrative accounts from my interviews, in order to enhance understanding about the processes of change over time and the causal mechanisms involved.

The morphogenetic approach: a critical realist analytic framework

To look at the evolving situation from the perspectives of both structure and agency, examine how agency and structure interact, reshape and transform one another over time, and analyse the process of change to reveal the causal mechanisms of change, I used the morphogenetic approach (Archer 1982, 1995, 1996, 2011, 2013, 2020, 2024, Archer et al. 1998) – a critical realist analytic framework. This responds to Bakewell’s (2010) call for a critical realist approach to migration studies to help resolve the structure–agency impasse, such as Archer’s (1982, 1995, 1996) morphogenetic theory. Bakewell considered that this might provide a theoretical approach that could analyse both structure and agency and their interactions, map out changes, elaborations and causal mechanisms over time, and encompass the internal and external dimensions of migration and “both forced and voluntary migration in a more comprehensive way” (Bakewell 2010: 1708).

Commentators on organised crime have indicated the value of a critical realist approach that evaluates the dynamic and interactive nature of agency and structure “to look beneath the surface” and identify the causal processes that produce change (Matthews 2014: 29). Indeed, Medel and Thoumi (2014) show how the development of organised crime in Mexico has followed a morphogenetic pattern, with synchronic elements leading to the structural elaboration of criminal groups. This makes it a pertinent lens with which to analyse the evolving dynamics of the three aspects that link organised crime and migration, as well as the dynamic nature of migration journeys and the decision-making that shapes them. This is the first time morphogenetic analysis has been applied in an extensive study on migration and associated issues. Its successful application in this study, while not exhaustive, demonstrates how such critical realist approaches can be used to simultaneously analyse aspects of structure and agency and to reveal complex causal effects and interactions over time and in relation to synchronic events, such as policy implementations. As such, it opens the way for more deeply structured and comprehensive application in future studies.

Applying the morphogenetic approach in my data analysis

I apply morphogenetic analysis to my data to generate understanding about how and why this situation evolved and continues to elaborate and to reveal the direct and indirect causal mechanisms of change over time. This advances understanding about why people flee criminal violence, how the involvement of organised crime in migration has evolved, and the nature and impact of state action. The key elements in each of my analyses are structure, agency, contextual factors – that is, structural elements and social factors – and time-specific (or synchronic) events, such as the implementation of a policy or a violent criminal incident. The morphogenetic approach is used to identify the causal role of such events given the contextual factors, thus also revealing any causal role of the contextual factors themselves. The nature and source of all these factors, however, is important when reflecting on accountability for adverse consequences of policy or on how to disrupt the processes that result in them.

I analyse changes to both organised crime and state factors as structural elements within this framework, because they are both structural factors on migratory transit through Mexico. Organised crime structures display highly emergent properties, being able to adapt and evolve in a much more dynamic manner than state structures can because they are free of both bureaucracy and adherence to law and legal norms. Simultaneously, the morphogenetic framework enables better understanding of migrant agency and of the agentic properties of the state. Examining migrant agency without either differentiating between or conflating forced and voluntary migrants at the point of analysis enables a more coherent picture of how agency responds to opportunities and obstacles presented by synchronic events and contextual factors. Even when options are extremely limited, agency is exercised within the constraints of such obstacles and opportunities, rather than being limited itself. This approach enables us to see how agency shapes and reshapes the migration trajectory: why and when people move, where they decide to move to and the factors that shape their decisions along the way. Attention is also paid to the emergent and transforming properties of migrant agency, to bring new understanding about how it contributes to structural elaborations.

Analysis within this framework allows findings and conclusions to be drawn into broader debates and theories on migration, presenting the deep involvement of organised crime in transit migration in Mexico and Central America as adverse yet foreseeable consequences of government policy – consequences that pose serious risks to human rights. For instance, analysis of the causal mechanisms of structural changes exposes how policy provided fertile ground for the development of systematic criminal violence during migratory transit, how this resulted in people-smuggling becoming a protection racket to protect against attacks, how restrictive migration controls were implemented in response to successful people-smugglers transporting some of the tens of thousands of people fleeing criminal violence to the US border, and how people-smuggling operations responded following this policy event.

Without such an approach, it is difficult to understand how factors such as migrant agency, migration controls and government policy have influenced these developments, whether there were specific causal mechanisms, and how these phenomena fit into the broader debate about the unintended consequences of migration controls. In particular, the approach enables better understanding of how macro-level decision-making influences the micro-level actions and strategies of the different parties. Such analysis is critical in order to identify and understand any indirect or direct state responsibility for the situation and any implications for the delivery of policy in areas affected by criminality and impunity. In addition, the book explores the potential of morphogenetic analysis as a model for understanding and foreseeing the likely adverse consequences of policy when implemented in a toxic environment of systemic corruption, endemic criminal violence and impunity.