they didn't even like pirating
It's amazing what happens when people's needs are met, isn't it? When they're given chances to make something of their lives?
Leighelse posted this on Mastodon, an article on Japan Inside about The Sushi King dealing with the Somali pirate problem by "turning them into fishermen". I'm pretty sure they were fishermen to begin with, then foreign fishers arrived with bigger, industrial boats and vacuumed up their livelihood:
The waters off the Somali coast are some of the richest yellowfin grounds in the Indian Ocean. For two decades, with no functioning government to police them, foreign trawlers had been fishing them out. Somali fishermen, who had once worked those waters from small boats, had been pushed off their own coast.
I believe Leighelse has already posted the most important snippet from the article:
'... he provided four fishing boats. He taught the crews to catch yellowfin tuna. He set up freezer capacity on shore so the fish would keep until it could be shipped. He helped Somalia engage with the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission, the body that manages the fishery. And he committed to buying what they caught, at a stable price, so that a tuna was worth money the day it came out of the water.
“They didn’t even like pirating. I suggested that they catch tuna instead, and make a proud living for their families.”
Of course, the International Maritime Bureau puts the credit elsewhere, saying that it was the massive naval presence that caused the collapse in Somali piracy, but come on, does anybody really believe that?
Desperate people whose livelihoods have been destroyed are going to sit at home watching their families starve because of a few navy ships? Really? I'm sure scary men with guns helped discourage some piracy, but the need to feed one's family is a pretty powerful motivator.
And I'm sure the opportunity to make a living in a scaled-up and secure version of one's traditional livelihood is a pretty big encouragement to give up the life of a pirate. Fishing is a dangerous business, but I suspect it's a lot less dangerous than anything that involves zooming around on boats with firearms.
So, really, the same old principal: Making sure people's needs are being met goes a long, long way to reducing crime.