It’s probably appropriate and wise to begin a review of Gary Haugen and Victor Boutros’ newly-released The Locust Effect by admitting my biases up front: I’ve been an unabashed supporter of International Justice Mission since the early 2000s, particularly after seeing IJM’s work highlighted on Dateline NBC in June 2003. I’ve applied to work for IJM, have attended the organization’s Global Prayer Gathering and Christmas Benefit gala, occasionally carpool with the CFO, and up until a recent re-allocation of our family’s charitable giving, have been a monthly supporter. So when you read me asserting that over the last fifteen years IJM has revolutionized how the evangelical community in the United States thinks about, talks about, and actually pursues, justice in the developing world, you should know that these are the words of a less-than-neutral observer.
The thesis of The Locust Effect is straightforward: without effectively addressing the “locusts” of “common, everyday, predatory violence” (50) and lawlessness that eat away at the politically and economically disenfranchised in the developing world, no amount of poverty-alleviation work is going to do any lasting good. (94-97) The world, argue Haugen and Boutros, has arrived at a “critical inflection point” where the total percentage of individuals living in dire economic conditions has dropped significantly from years past; however, due to a host of factors, there has been little change in absolute numbers (47-49).
The Locust Effect is meant to spotlight how in conjunction with continued poverty-alleviation programs aimed at well-known challenges of clean water, sanitation, public health, education (especially women’s education), and access to capital and seed money, there has to be concerted efforts at reforming public justice and law enforcement systems. “[P]eople,” the co-authors insist, “do not commonly see [violence] as intrinsic to the problem of poverty…poor people—by virtue of their poverty—are not only vulnerable to hunger, disease, homelessness, illiteracy and a lack of opportunity; they are also vulnerable to violence.” (50) In the developing world, the poor are decidedly more vulnerable to the predations of the strong and corrupt. The strong and corrupt must therefore be deterred, and the Locust Effect insists that deterrence arises out of functioning, non-corrupt law enforcement organs.
The book is structured in three distinct parts. First, in chapters one and two the authors provide a descriptive and typological analysis of the overall problem. The first chapter is not for the faint of heart; it is emotionally trying. The authors describe without apologies real-life cases including, among others, (a) an intentional police and local authority cover-up of a sexual assault/murder of an eight-year old girl in a Peruvian town; (b) the use of physical assault and rape in India to keep bonded laborers from fleeing a brick factory, followed by a litany of failures in the Indian court system. Chapter Two is a more systematic examination of sexual violence (including trafficking), forced/slave labor, “property grabbing” or land expropriation, and police abuse (particularly police predation, arbitrary detention and torture). Haugen and Boutros explain how physical and psychological coercion operate in each of these four categories, but they go into greater detail on how sex trafficking and forced/slave labor are business operations reliant upon deception (to lure economically-vulnerable victims away from the protection of their families and local communities with promises of better jobs or more pay) and violence (what they label the “coercive moment” that keeps victims from leaving and/or reporting).
With respect to police abuse, the chapter touches on extortion and torture, but devotes most space to the injustices associated with lengthy and often-capricious pre-trial detention: lost files, sclerotic legal systems, lack of sanitation, jail overcrowding, and, the longer-lasting damage this does to one’s family, livelihood and psyche. Chapters three and four round out this first part, reiterating the overall argument that this unrestrained violence, the “de facto lawlessness” (111) bred from an ongoing absence of enforcement, impedes human flourishing and cries out not just for attacking “root causes,” but for good policing.
In the middle section, Haugen and Boutros offer an entire chapter (five) describing the chronic infirmities that typically beset law enforcement and public justice in the developing world, and then, over the course of four subsequent chapters, they attempt to locate the origins of the more common political and organizational maladies. I found the discussion in these middle five chapters some of the most engaging of the entire book, particularly Haugen and Boutros’ careful outline of how systemic dysfunction proliferates throughout the three public justice branches (investigational, prosecutorial and judicial), and their analysis of how 19th and early 20th century models of colonial policing combined with late 20th and early 21st century proclivities for privatized corporate security to bring about the current state.
Take, for instance, their discussion of present-day, developing world police forces. It isn’t as simple as the stereotypical coterie of corrupt officers who shakedown the vulnerable and unwary in order to make up for their paltry salaries, arrest those who can’t pay up, and take bribes from those who they should be arresting. There is that, of course, which the co-authors characterize as a “bidding war” over enforcement. (128) But Haugen and Boutros don’t just stop there. Instead, they carefully outline a host of interconnected problems: politicos who aim their country’s scarce policing resources away from ‘poor neighborhood’ problems to protection of state (and, truth be told, often their own personal) companies and assets; little to no training when it comes to interviewing techniques, non-physical interrogation, evidence collection and storage, processing of both criminals and victims; and a woeful lack of infrastructure (i.e. paper, copy equipment, computer hardware, database management; archive retrieval). (123-132)
Chapter seven and eight show that colonial legacies and privatized security are part and parcel of the same problem – that of the relationship between law enforcement and political economy. As Haugen and Boutros clearly bring out, law enforcement in colonial settings was not oriented, in the main, at punishing or deterring colonial subject-on-colonial subject crime or predation, but rather was aimed at guarding and protecting the economic—and typically extractive—interests of the colonial power from labor interruptions, internal dissension, riots and espionage (all of which are encapsulated in Charles Gwynn’s 1934 treatise, Imperial Policing, as enforcement duties rendered in “aid of the civil power”). Indeed, if one can get hold of a library copy of Martin Thomas’ recently-released Violence and Colonial Order (roundtable located here), it makes for an excellent tandem read with these two chapters of Locust Effect. In the developing world, imperial political economy drove the evolution of law enforcement and public justice—the languages used, the way resources were allocated, the overall goals of local enforcement (166-167). The incoherent, rapid, and unprepared way by which former colonial police, intelligence and justice systems were taken over by newly-decolonized states fostered the vacuum one sees today, which, in turn, precipitated the growth of the private security industry. The overwhelming use of privatized security is simply a late 20th and early 21st century manifestation of the same political economy driver.
The last part of the book examines possible avenues for improving or reforming law enforcement in the developing world. Haugen and Boutros insist that when it comes to international aid (whether governmental or non-governmental in character), the program flavor du jour is overly focused on broad, “rule-of-law” approaches that often don’t get down to the nuts-and-bolts of law enforcement infrastructure or training. Moreover, because governments like the United States are (understandably) more interested in protecting citizens from threats which directly impact domestic well-being—terrorism and drugs, for instance—the emphasis on US foreign police training has been almost exclusively centered on counterterrorism and counternarcotics, with comparatively smaller amounts aimed at human trafficking.
In contrast, Haugen and Boutros talk in depth about IJM’s dual approach of “structural transformation” through “collaborative casework.” Over the years, IJM has honed its ability to identify jointly with local law enforcement concrete violations that can be investigated, brought to trial, and result in convictions. In the realm of sex trafficking, this can also include jointly-run surveillance, management and debriefing of confidential informants, undercover operations, and brothel raids. As the co-authors put it, by doing “collaborative casework,” one slowly identifies systemic and structural problems which can then be addressed— jointly—at the local, national or even international level. “Collaborative casework” builds trust and, just as importantly, empathy, between IJM personnel and national law enforcement and public justice officials on the ground. IJM’s Project Lantern—a Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation—funded initiative that successfully decreased the number of available children in the commercial sex industry in Cebu City, Philippines – gets top billing in this section (and I would recommend reading the project report in conjunction with Locust Effect).
Haugen and Boutros have no illusions about the existence of “magic bullets” or the possibility of overnight improvements to law enforcement in the developing world. One thing I appreciated as a historian about Locust Effect was the co-authors’ discussion about the time and effort it took to professionalize policing in the United States, and how such transformation was often undesired and only able to take hold in fits and starts.
This perspective is valuable because, I would argue, this effort is likely to inaugurate a new phase in IJM’s institutional evolution. In the conclusion, Haugen and Boutros call for both increased participation of law enforcement experts in development and human rights circles and for more local-level projects, and so I wonder if IJM’s organizational future in its role as a liaison broker and “standards protocol” or “best practices” provider. In this way, IJM and its field offices might act organizationally like the FBI and Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTFs). Under the JTTF banner, the FBI leads, organizes, liaises with, deconflicts, strategizes, and trains up personnel from a myriad of government, state and local agencies, and as the number of actors—especially private actors—entering the law enforcement reform arena increases, IJM’s reputation, its institutional memory, its existing local footprint, and its methodologies will be at a premium.
This brings up a second, related point. The work and details involved with policing, prosecutorial, and judicial reform in the developing world may not be able to garner the same level of ‘movement cachet’ (or, for that matter, the theological comfort) for churches and individual evangelicals as has the organization’s rally cry for justice. If I could tweak the Gospel Coalition’s “theological famine relief” motif for a minute, I’d like to see churches or denominations adopt individual IJM field offices in order to stave off “law enforcement or justice famine.” I can also see where churches and denominations might be hesitant to do so given limits on resources and/or concerns about condominium with foreign government entities, negative impact on missionary efforts, and doubts about how such an effort directly connects to gospel outreach. I think it’s going to take greater effort to secure long-term evangelical interest in the subject matter of Locust Effort, and I’m curious if the “neo-Anabaptist turn” popular among the Relevant crowd could result in that “tribe’s” hesitancy about sustained, cooperative involvement with foreign law enforcement. One avenue of theological connection to that particular constituency might be found in some of the “just policing” literature, and I also wonder about a larger, positive role that might be played by Christian police associations and ministry groups (like Fellowship of Christian Police Officers, International Christian Police Fellowship, and Christian Police Association).
In conclusion, it is interesting and certainly understandable that Locust Effect was not directly written or marketed for just evangelicals. Haugen ‘s earlier books (Good News About Injustice, Just Courage, and Terrify No More) were directly aimed at the Christian market and were published by evangelical presses. In them, Haugen focused on imago dei as a justification for Christian involvement in the struggle for international justice and worked diligently (and I would say successfully) to overcome the common evangelism vs. social action dichotomy.
The Locust Effect is definitely more advocacy-oriented than other Oxford University Press books I’ve seen, but there is only one section that explicitly addresses IJM’s Christian character (226). And, honestly, I have zero qualms about this. It is exactly the type of book evangelicals need, and it ties nicely together with the current crop of intra-evangelical writing about vocation, “gospel at work” and ordinary vs. radical Christian lifestyles. What does it mean to involve oneself as a Christian in an arena where direct and explicit “workplace evangelism” may be impossible, but where substantial Kingdom dividends could accrue through longevity, steadfastness, and a commitment to what Richard Mouw has labeled “uncommon decency?” Police, crime analysts, detectives, prosecutors, paralegals — these are not the categories of Christian professionals that usually make the so-called “radical” lifestyle cutoff, but through the targeted application of their “ordinary” skill set (guided by organizations like IJM, hopefully in conjunction with a local church body), the Kingdom impact is immeasurable.
In the end, law enforcement and public justice reform in the developing world is going to require steady, disciplined, and trained expertise— Christians and non-Christians experts alike. It is going to require evangelicals who are just plain good at their jobs, and who are able to use their everyday skills for the common good, knowing that Christ is the Lord of all.
Brian J. Auten currently serves as an intelligence analyst with the United States government and is an adjunct professor in the Department of Government at Patrick Henry College. All non-attributed views, opinions and conclusions in the review are those of the author and not the US government, or any entity within the US intelligence community. This review is based on an advance reading copy provided to the author directly from Oxford University Press.
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