A Country with No Brakes, Part One: How Haiti Lost Every Checkpoint on Its Slide into Collapse

About this series. This is the first part of a series on the institutional failures behind Haiti’s collapse. Part One covers the economy, the police, and the courts. Later parts will examine the collapse of electoral politics and the role of international intervention.

How it began

The collapse of Haiti did not happen overnight, nor can we pinpoint a specific event that kickstarted the downfall. It was a compounded set of events and lack of a call to action that eventually led to the fall of the Haitian government.

From revolution to cautionary tale

Once viewed as a model of revolution, Haiti was born from the only successful slave revolt in modern history, and in 1804 became the first Black republic and the second independent nation in the Americas. Two centuries later, it has become a cautionary tale of how internal failures such as corruption, impunity, and the erosion of democratic institutions, combined with international interventions that often work around the country rather than through it, left a nation unable to stop its own downfall.

What holds a nation together

Every institution has checks and balances to keep everyone accountable, from the president, to the judges, to the officers, all the way down to the people. Together, these checks are a nation’s brakes: they slow a crisis down before it becomes a catastrophe. A police force contains violence. Courts punish those who commit it. Elected officials give citizens a peaceful way to change course. A public treasury that answers to auditors keeps public money accountable. Over the past four decades, Haiti lost each of these brakes in turn, until nothing was left to stop the slide.

The economy unravels

One of the biggest factors in Haiti’s decline has been its rapidly declining economy. According to the World Bank, Haiti’s economy shrank for the seventh year in a row in 2025 as gang violence increased, with real GDP falling 2.7 percent and every sector declining. Prices jumped significantly, with inflation averaging 28.3 percent, driven mostly by food and housing, a cost affecting poorer families the most. Nearly half of all Haitians (49 percent) now live on less than $3 a day. Meanwhile, government revenue fell to just 4.8 percent of GDP, leaving the state with little to fund the police, courts, and public services that hold the country together.[1]

Outmanned and outgunned

Underfunded institutions facilitate gangs’ expansion throughout the country’s territories, as police lack the manpower as well as the adequate equipment to fight the increasing gang violence. The UN says gangs are becoming “stronger, richer and more autonomous,” and due to weapons trafficking coming mostly from the US, they have access to “firepower that exceeds that of the Haitian National Police.”[2]

Justice on hold

Following Haitian news headlines, it can feel as if gangs have replaced the government, brazenly seizing courthouses while prisoners spend months, if not years, waiting for a court date. In June 2022, a gang took over Port-au-Prince’s main courthouse, forcing out judicial officials and stealing or destroying case files and evidence that only existed on paper.[3] Today, 82 percent of Haiti’s prisoners are still awaiting trial. One prisoner told William O’Neill, the UN’s designated expert on human rights in Haiti, that he “had been waiting for a trial date for two years; his alleged crime? The theft of two pairs of shoes.”[4] When arrests rarely lead to trials, the law loses its power to deter, and armed groups face few consequences for their crimes.