Eva Harrell

During recent years, gangs in El Salvador have become increasingly powerful. Additionally, people in El Salvador have been feeling their effects through violent crimes and corrupt and controlled local governments. One of the crimes attributed to the gangs is disappearances. These cause fear and promote the idea of the power that the gangs hold. These effects need to be evaluated, and in this paper that is done through looking at if there is correlation between public opinion, evaluated through a yearly survey, and disappearance rates per 100,000 people during the years 2010-2017. The data is separated on a regional basis to look at the differences in different parts of the country, then the data is segregated to include only female residents. Both of these categories will be evaluated in three public opinion sections. The first measures whether there is a correlation between perception of crime and the biggest issues facing El Salvador, and disappearance rates. The second measures whether there is correlation between trust in public institutions and disappearance rates. Finally, the third measures whether there is correlation between a desire to leave the country and disappearance rates. I have found that while the first and third sections found little correlation between the variables, the second section, evaluating trust in public institutions, did have some correlation between variables. This demonstrates that people may be attributing disappearances rates to a failure of public institutions in their local regions to effectively control gang violence.