As part of Al Jazeera's Drugs Central Special, Al Jazeera's Shihab Rattansi spoke to Steven Dudley, the co-director of Insight Crime, an organisation which examines organised crime in Latin America.
Dudley said that many countries in Central America have an incredibly hard time controlling the penetration of police by drug trafficking cartels and criminal organisations.
Often the military has to become involved in combating the drug gangs.