Too often, development efforts to combat hunger, ensure access to clean water, and provide adequate medical services for the world's poor are sabotaged by perpetual violence. In The Locust Effect, Gary Haugen compares this struggle to that of rural farmers of the nineteenth century American Midwest, when locusts laid indiscriminate waste to the resources of poor and vulnerable farming families. As Haugen argues, in the twenty-first century similar “locusts of violence” are assaulting the global poor, thwarting their endeavors to escape poverty, and frustrating the work of institutions and individuals that are trying to help them.

Of course, what makes violence particularly devastating to the global poor is that they have so few resources and little support to weather the added hardships. And compounding their vulnerability are the inadequate, corrupt, and stagnant criminal justice systems serving most poor communities. Haugen explains that in many of these communities the underlying causes of such dysfunctional systems include the remnants of colonial rule—systems that were never designed to protect people from violence and crime, but rather were meant to protect colonial rulers from the people. Today, “justice” often operates as a private enterprise, secured for those who can afford it and out of reach for those who cannot. But one of the most unsettling elements of a broken justice system is the fact that, time and again, poor people cannot even turn to their own law enforcement for help, as authorities themselves are often the perpetrators. A poor community's police force is frequently, as Haugen describes it, its “most pervasive and predatory presence.”

Recounting his work with the International Justice Mission, Haugen portrays the de facto lawlessness that plagues billions of lives and outlines a number of prescriptions, including the need for trained, uncorrupted law enforcement; a sufficient pool of knowledgeable prosecutors; courts that are efficient and professional (too many individuals—perpetrators and innocents alike—languish in jail while their cases move through broken judicial systems); and greater personal security. Ultimately, says Haugen, addressing violence is a precondition for combating poverty, and for obtaining meaningful progress for poor and marginalized groups.