Private (Brown) Eyes: Ethnicity, Genre and Gender in Crime Fiction in the Gloria Damasco novels and the Chicanos Comic Series

The representation of women in crime fiction has traditionally been a complicated one. Consistently forced into secondary characters (assistants, girlfriends, or damsels in distress) the most active role a female character could aspire to was that of the femme fatale, a pit of perdition, an unwelcome distraction for a man looking for truth and justice. This traditional approach to the genre has been challenged in the last decades by women acting as detectives, trusted with solving their cases in a hostile male world. Similarly, the traditional white male protagonist has been contested by fictions where ethnic minorities are not just consigned to the criminal world, but where detectives are members of ethnic groups, and can use their knowledge of the community to solve the case. This essay focuses on the crossroads of ethnic and women’s detective fiction, specifically the Gloria Damasco series by Chicana writer Lucha Corpi and the graphic novel Chicanos (Trillo and Risso, 1996). Both protagonists (Gloria Damasco, a Chicana clairvoyant detective, and “poor, ugly, and a detective” Alejandrina Yolanda Jalisco) must face both the dangers of investigating criminal cases and discrimination in their professional surroundings due to their gender and ethnicity. By contrasting these texts, the essay elucidates the importance of specific cultural products, their connection to (and defiance of) canonical forms of the genre, and their rejection of generic and gender expectations.

Immigration Law by Proxy: The Case of Colorado’s Human Smuggling Crime

Despite the federal government’s well known expansive reach in creating and enforcing immigration law, the states retain substantial authority to play an important role in migrants’ lives. Through their traditional powers to adopt criminal statutes and police their communities, states can indirectly — but intentionally — inject themselves into the incidents of ordinary life as a migrant. Colorado’s human smuggling statute, currently being challenged before the state supreme court, illustrates this type of state regulation of migration. This essay addresses the statute’s reach, its shaky constitutional footing, and places it in a broader context in which states criminalize immigration-related activity.

Russia's Clandestine War against the United States: The Resurrection of the KGB and Russian Organized Crime Post 9/11

As American leadership has narrowly focused on fighting global terror in Iraq and Afghanistan, the modern version of the KGB, now known as the FSB, has been conducting continuous clandestine warfare operations against the United States. These warfare operations include strategic economic and political partnerships with anti-American entities worldwide and direct embedding of double agents in the US intelligence community. This paper investigates the role of Russia's cultural history leading to the merger of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) and Russian Organized Crime (ROC). This paper concludes that the FSB is the most pervasive security threat to the United States and that employing Russian native and heritage speakers of Russian in the US intelligence community compromises US national security.

A admissibilidade jurídico-penal do crime de burla por omissão

O estudo da problemática da admissibilidade jurídico-penal do crime de burla por omissão, enquadrando-se na órbitra dos crimes comissivos por omissão, impõe, a título de questão prévia, a análise do conteúdo e alcance da cláusula de equiparação da omissão à acção, ínsita no art. 10.º do C.P, e, bem assim, a indagação do seu fundamento e da sua compatibilidade com o princípio jurídico-constitucional da legalidade das normas incriminadoras e suas exigências de determinação típica decorrentes dos princípios nullum crimen sine (prævia) lege e nulla poena sine (prævia) lege., matéria a que nos debruçaremos na Parte I da presente dissertação e que deverá ser essencialmente entendida à luz do princípio da dignidade da pessoa humana e da necessidade de um equilíbrio entre a certeza e a segurança jurídicas com a tutela de determinados bens-jurídicos fundamentais, enquanto pilares essenciais de qualquer Estado de Direito Democrático. Na parte II, tentaremos determinar o significado e alcance da conduta enganosa e astuciosa do crime de burla, previsto e punido pelo n.º 1 do art.º 217.º do C.P., desbravando, antes de mais, a sua evolução normativa até aos tempos hodiernos, após o que definiremos a estrutura normativa do tipo. Buscaremos, de seguida, uma aproximação ao conceito de engano e a determinação das formas e modalidades que a conduta enganosa e astuciosa poderá assumir: Exigirá a conduta típica uma mise-en-scène perpetrada pelo agente ou poderá bastar-se com uma mera mentira? Alcançada a sua (possível) determinação, estaremos já em condições de nos debruçarmos sobre a problemática da admissibilidade jurídico-penal da burla por omissão, altura em que, sob uma perspectiva crítica e acompanhada da análise igualmente crítica de casos, avançaremos com argumentos favoráveis e contrários a essa admissibilidade, sem, naturalmente, deixarmos de auscultar a tendência de entendimento da nossa Jurisprudência.