Thanks for your response.

I reviewed the source document you linked previously, but I didn't really find much evidence for the claim (that 'the "iron-fisted war on crime" is failing') in it, and reviewed it again just now. Is there a particular section you mean to point towards? I realize the source asserts this claim, but it doesn't seem to actually argue for it.

I'm also curious as to why you are using such old data? Government statistics are often slow, but your charts are literally almost a decade old. For example, you claim, based on the homicide data up to 2015, that 

Even during periods of economic growth and heightened security measures, violence has continued to rise in Latin America.
Conclusion: Past approaches have generally failed to deliver sustainable safety improvements.

But if we consult OWID, we see that there are six more years of data you excluded from your chart, and it shows the opposite pattern: violence has been falling.

If your argument was valid - that rising violence proves past approaches were bad - then this more recent data would suggest we should draw the opposite conclusion, and update in favour of existing approaches. (I don't think we should infer this, because I think the argument is invalid anyway).

I think omitting this later data makes a pretty big difference, because you made a claim in the present tense - that the iron fist approach is failing - which suggests you should be basing this on evidence about current iron fist approaches. The El Salvador crackdown is the most famous and most iron fist approach around right now (most of these countries don't even have capital punishment!), so I don't think you can ignore it.

You also claim that prison spending is unsustainable, based on a forecast for 16bn-24bn of 2024 dollars spend on prisons:

High incarceration rates: There’s been a significant increase in prison populations, leading to substantial government spending and economic losses both for the incarcerated individuals and for society overall.
Conclusion: Simply incarcerating more people is not a sustainable solution.

But Latin American + Caribbean GDP for 2014 was 5.4 trillion, so even at the upper end this is only 0.4%. You're right that government spending can't grow as a share of GDP forever, but I don't see much reason to think this is the limit.

Thanks for sharing this, interesting idea. Could you share some more details about what "strategically weaves educational messages into entertaining formats, like dramas" means in practice? Do you have an example plotline - maybe the radio show features some domestic violence and then the perpetrator gets condemned? 

Sure, I'm not saying their org should directly try to incarcerate people, or that their policy mightn't be good impact/$, but they chose to comment on the prison approach. If their objection was purely cost then surely they would say "the iron-fisted war on crime, while effective at reducing crime, is very expensive". What they wrote makes it sound like they don't think it can achieve any significant progress on crime.

Thanks for sharing this, I applaud you for working on the issue of crime, which I think has been under-studied by EAs, despite Sam's excellent post. 

I'm curious about this claim:

The “iron-fisted war on crime” is failing.

I don't know exactly what counts as "iron-fisted", especially as few Latin American countries sentence criminals to death, but if anything does it surely covers President Bukele's crackdown in El Salvador, where they basically just imprisoned everyone with gang tattoos. My impression is that even unsympathetic observers agree it has dramatically reduced the crime rate - see for example the wikipedia section here. When the NYT investigated, they found that even the mothers of guys who were arrested agreed the policy reduced crime:

One of them was Morena Guadalupe de Sandoval’s son, whom she says she has not seen or spoken to since he was arrested on his way home from work in the capital about a year ago. She says the authorities have accused him of being part of a criminal group, something she denies. ... Ms. de Sandoval says the crackdown has made things better in her neighborhood, an area called the Italian District that was once dominated by MS-13. She doesn’t see young men smoking marijuana on the corners anymore, she said.

“It’s safer,” she said. “In that way, it’s a good thing.”

In another document you link to this article, but doesn't really argue that the Bukele's crackdown has failed... just that other countries, with less extreme policies, have struggled, and that they might have to release the prisoners eventually, and to this one, which simply ignores the incapacitation effect.

The intervention you are investigating could still be worthwhile and productive, I'm just not sure exactly why you are casting aspersions on alternatives.

Very nice work! Both story and production value seems very strong.

That's a cool idea. Presumably you would need a relatively uncensored chatbot - when I recently tried to get several to produce arguments in favour of Trump policies they all refused.

I think you raise some good points. Two potential countervailing considerations:

19 year olds are legally adults - they can (varying a bit by country) vote, drink, buy firearms, join the army, get married, raise children.

It's also common for other ideological movements to target much younger people. For example, both environmentalism and feminism are taught in elementary schools.

I think the repeated guilt-by-association posts pointing out that someone in EA associated with someone who has some right wing views are pretty negative.

Thanks for sharing this interesting and (at least to me) novel argument. It strikes me as a way of mitigating Winner's Curse issues.

Thanks for sharing, very clear writeup.