MS-13: America's Most Notorious Gang - Steven Dudley - #316

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
Hello friends, welcome back to the show. My guest today is Steven Dudley. He's the director of InSight Crime. He's a crime and public security reporter and an author. Ms-13 are one of the best known gangs in the world. President Trump declared war on them and called them a national security threat. Today, we get to hear exactly how the gang works from the most informed Ms-13 expert on the planet. So today, expect to learn how Ms-13 have become so dangerous without any single leader, how the gang initiates new members, the terrifyingly difficult prospect of trying to leave the organization, how the gang are both victimizers and victims, the danger of them entering into politics and much more. One of the most interesting takeaways that I got from this conversation is that a lot of our ideas around how criminal organizations, cartels and gangs are run is very jaded by what we saw towards the back end of the 1900s. We saw the Mexican cartels and we saw the New York Mafia and stuff like that. But in reality, there are gangs who are operating very hand to mouth like MS-13. They don't have huge swaths of cash and submarines and airplanes that they're flying all over the place. They're just doing low level, local, pretty unsophisticated crime. They're not very well organized. They don't have a central power structure and they don't have that much money, which genuinely does make you reframe exactly what's going on with gangs in 2021 Before I get to other news, I wanted to say a massive thank you to everyone that supported the show over the last couple of months. The growth that we've seen so far in 2021 is insane. If you are a new listener here or if you are a long time one, make sure that you've hit the subscribe button. It is the only way that you can ensure that you will never miss an episode every Monday, Thursday and Saturday when they go up. So just navigate to your little podcast app for me and press that subscribe button. It ensures that you're never going to miss these conversations. In other news, this episode is brought to you by MyProtein. They are the world's number one sports nutrition brand. They have best in class products and offer the highest quality and cheapest prices available. I've had my mind blown. Johnny on the most recent Lifehacks told me to start using their clear way.
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