Law Enforcement Actions in Urban Spaces Governed by Violent Non-State Entities: Lessons from Latin America

In response to a crime epidemic afflicting Latin America since the early 1990s, several countries in the region have resorted to using heavy-force police or military units to physically retake territories de facto controlled by non-State criminal or insurgent groups. After a period of territory control, the heavy forces hand law enforcement functions in the retaken territories to regular police officers, with the hope that the territories and their populations will remain under the control of the state. To a varying degree, intensity, and consistency, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, and Jamaica have adopted such policies since the mid-1990s. During such operations, governments need to pursue two interrelated objectives: to better establish the state’s physical presence and to realign the allegiance of the population in those areas toward the state and away from the non-State criminal entities. From the perspective of law enforcement, such operations entail several critical decisions and junctions, such as: Whether or not to announce the force insertion in advance. The decision trades off the element of surprise and the ability to capture key leaders of the criminal organizations against the ability to minimize civilian casualties and force levels. The latter, however, may allow criminals to go to ground and escape capture. Governments thus must decide whether they merely seek to displace criminal groups to other areas or maximize their decapitation capacity. Intelligence flows rarely come from the population. Often, rival criminal groups are the best source of intelligence. However, cooperation between the State and such groups that goes beyond using vetted intelligence provided by the groups, such as a State tolerance for militias, compromises the rule-of-law integrity of the State and ultimately can eviscerate even public safety gains. Sustaining security after initial clearing operations is at times even more challenging than conducting the initial operations. Although unlike the heavy forces, traditional police forces, especially if designed as community police, have the capacity to develop trust of the community and ultimately focus on crime prevention, developing such trust often takes a long time. To develop the community’s trust, regular police forces need to conduct frequent on-foot patrols with intensive nonthreatening interactions with the population and minimize the use of force. Moreover, sufficiently robust patrol units need to be placed in designated beats for substantial amount of time, often at least over a year. Establishing oversight mechanisms, including joint police-citizens’ boards, further facilities building trust in the police among the community. After disruption of the established criminal order, street crime often significantly rises and both the heavy-force and community-police units often struggle to contain it. The increase in street crime alienates the population of the retaken territory from the State. Thus developing a capacity to address street crime is critical. Moreover, the community police units tend to be vulnerable (especially initially) to efforts by displaced criminals to reoccupy the cleared territories. Losing a cleared territory back to criminal groups is extremely costly in terms of losing any established trust and being able to recover it. Rather than operating on a priori determined handover schedule, a careful assessment of the relative strength of regular police and criminal groups post-clearing operations is likely to be a better guide for timing the handover from heavy forces to regular police units. Cleared territories often experience not only a peace dividend, but also a peace deficit – in the rise new serious crime (in addition to street crime). Newly – valuable land and other previously-inaccessible resources can lead to land speculation and forced displacement; various other forms of new crime can also significantly rise. Community police forces often struggle to cope with such crime, especially as it is frequently linked to legal business. Such new crime often receives little to no attention in the design of the operations to retake territories from criminal groups. But without developing an effective response to such new crime, the public safety gains of the clearing operations can be altogether lost.

As raízes históricas da política criminal na legislação e nas práticas de atendimento ao adolescente em conflito com a lei

This thesis investigates the historical influence of the criminal policy in the context that shapes the first specific law for children and adolescents in Brazil, the 1927 Children's Code, a standard that inaugurates the conceptual scission between children and "minor" and their different treatment by the State. The study addresses the demand for order in the context of changes in the working world in the transition from the slave system to the capitalist mode of production, and the corresponding disciplinary and punitive control mechanisms directed to the segment of childhood and adolescence. The theoretical route proposes a questioning of the political construction of law and justice, as well as the conformation of the punitive techniques, and the construction of the stereotype of the "delinquent", prime target of the criminal policy, focusing on the process of criminalization of the segment in question through the confrontation of the Critical perspective with the approaches of Classical and Positive schools. This research shows the imposition of a bourgeois morality that obscures the social conflict attributing it to people isolated by the criminalization of their conduct; and points out that the historical forms of selective social control were greatly influenced by psychiatry and psychology, either by the elaboration of the image of the "delinquent" or by the expected performance of custodial institutions. Finally, the developments and the permanence of the historical roots of the criminal policy are problematized, relating them to the difficulties currently encountered in the consolidation of the legal garantism paradigm proposed by the Children and Adolescent Statute.

As raízes históricas da política criminal na legislação e nas práticas de atendimento ao adolescente em conflito com a lei

This thesis investigates the historical influence of the criminal policy in the context that shapes the first specific law for children and adolescents in Brazil, the 1927 Children's Code, a standard that inaugurates the conceptual scission between children and "minor" and their different treatment by the State. The study addresses the demand for order in the context of changes in the working world in the transition from the slave system to the capitalist mode of production, and the corresponding disciplinary and punitive control mechanisms directed to the segment of childhood and adolescence. The theoretical route proposes a questioning of the political construction of law and justice, as well as the conformation of the punitive techniques, and the construction of the stereotype of the "delinquent", prime target of the criminal policy, focusing on the process of criminalization of the segment in question through the confrontation of the Critical perspective with the approaches of Classical and Positive schools. This research shows the imposition of a bourgeois morality that obscures the social conflict attributing it to people isolated by the criminalization of their conduct; and points out that the historical forms of selective social control were greatly influenced by psychiatry and psychology, either by the elaboration of the image of the "delinquent" or by the expected performance of custodial institutions. Finally, the developments and the permanence of the historical roots of the criminal policy are problematized, relating them to the difficulties currently encountered in the consolidation of the legal garantism paradigm proposed by the Children and Adolescent Statute.

Witness Anonymity at the International Criminal Court: Due Process for Defendants, Witnesses or Both?

The question of how far and in what way to extend protection to witnesses in trials has manifested itself in institutions as diverse as the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), the Committee of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the ad hoc criminal tribunals (International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, the Special Court for Sierra Leone), and most recently the International Criminal Court (ICC). This is not surprising; as David Lusty has pointed out in his seminal analysis of the use of anonymous accusers, the question has arisen in almost every legal deliberative body for the past two thousand years.

Artificial intelligence and criminal evidence: A few topics

Abstract not available

Some features of the law and order model in Spain

This research is based on the hypothesis that law and order model is displacing the procedura justice system in Spain. After a thorough review of the international literature, one can observe that the traditional structure of the penal system does not seem to be capable of containing the new forms of crime. The new penal model assumes that public opinion is alarmed and unwilling to understand rational approaches to crime, so it will be likely to accept measures aimed at calming the fear of crime, through extensive control policies and penal tools to manage uncivil behavior. Objectives and methodology A measuring instrument has been developed to confirm this hypothesis, consisting of ten features that characterize the law and order model. This instrument has been used to identify examples of its ten features in the rules and practices developed at each phase of the Spanish criminal justice system. The analysis has focused specifically on public discourse about delinquency, criminal policy decisions, legislative processes, police routines, judicial dynamics, and prison system practices. Main results The investigation has shown that there are many processes and practices indicating that the law and order model is consolidating itself in the Spanish penal system. Nevertheless this process has a different intensity at each phase, being stronger at the legislative stage and softer in the penitentiary enforcement phase. One of the main conclusions is, therefore, that the designed instrument is ideal for measuring the degree of penetration of the model throughout the system. Some of the most striking results of the reasearch will be presented at the conference. Finally, proposals arise that could prevent the new model is fully seated in our criminal justice system, finding that the trend toward more severe penalties shown already unsustainable.