[imagesource: Adam Hinton / The Guardian]

Even the thought of spending a night inside Pollsmoor is enough to send a shiver down the spine.

Large parts of Cape Town are currently under siege as warring gangs battle for control of contested turf, in order to benefit from the lucrative drug trade new ground brings.

Fact – Grassy Park alone has worse murder stats than the whole of Switzerland.

In Central America, it’s a similar story and the name MS-13 stands atop the list as the deadliest gang of all.

VICE, as part of the War on Drugs series, took a closer look at how the gang operates:

MS-13 are a gang so deadly and violent that the Trump administration tried to officially label them a terrorist group.

But how does this gang really operate? How do they fit into the drug trade which is transforming Central American countries into narco-states? How have they virtually taken over entire cities?

This is how America gets MS-13 totally wrong – totally misunderstanding what this gang is and how they actually work. We go inside Central America’s deadliest street gang.

I don’t imagine spending time inside a Central American prison, some of which are reserved solely for members of MS-13, is for the faint of heart:

[source:vice]