Transnational organized crime in West Africa: the additional challenge

Despite its vast natural and human resources and the undisputed progress made in the last decade towards the establishment of democratic culture and governing systems, West African countries continue to occupy the bottom ranks of the UN Human Development Index. Similarly, many of them score poorly in World Bank and Transparency International indexes that measure good governance. The international mass media have recently highlighted the role played by the West African region in the transatlantic cocaine trade, as well as in the flow of illegal migrants to Europe. Drugs and migrants are, however, just two of the numerous illicit activities that feed the growth of local and transnational criminal organizations, and the establishing of a culture of quick and easy money that is progressively eroding the foundations of any sustainable and well balanced socio‐economic development. The pervasive power of the corruption of criminal organizations, coupled with a general crisis by state actors in the administration of justice and enforcement of the rule of law, contribute towards the progressive diminishing of the credibility of the state as the institution entrusted with the prerogatives of guaranteeing security (of people and investments) and dispensing justice. In this context, the case of Guinea Bissau is probably the clearest example of what West African states may face in the near future if the issues of justice and security are not properly and promptly addressed. If primary responsibilities lie with West African governments and institutions, the international community as a whole should also review its approach to development policies by not only mainstreaming the issues of security and justice in their bilateral and multilateral agendas, but also by making it an essential cornerstone of policies and programmes aimed at supporting good governance and the establishment of states ruled by the law.     

Social reform through parks: the American Civic Association's program for a better America

The American Civic Association, an urban, elite organization based in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and Washington DC, provided a major impetus to the creation of the National Park Service in 1916. The association had actively involved itself with national parks for nearly a decade before 1916 despite the fact that most members lived far from the national parks in the West. This article argues that the concern of the American Civic Association for national parks sprang from its conviction that parks comprised vehicles for reforming society. They dismissed the differences in scale between national and urban parks as irrelevant to the ability of parks to affect society. All properly organized parks offered means to improve America. They characterized the reformed society that would follow on the heels of a national park system as healthy, wealthy, equal and patriotic, the same qualities that they attributed to a post-urban park society. The significance of the national parks for the American Civic Association, therefore, came from the presumed ability of these parks, like all parks, to foster a better America.     

“Stones run it”: taking back control of organized crime in Chicago, 1940-1975

In the 1960s and 1970s African American “supergangs” emerged in Chicago. Many scholars have touted the “prosocial” goals of these gangs but fail to contextualize them in the larger history of black organized crime. Thus, they have overlooked how gang members sought to reclaim the underground economy in their neighborhoods. Yet even as gangs drove out white organized crime figures, they often lacked the know-how to reorganize the complex informal economy. Inexperienced gang members turned to extreme violence, excessive recruitment programs, and unforgiving extortion schemes to take power over criminal activities. These methods alienated black citizens and exacerbated tensions with law enforcement. In addition, the political shelter enjoyed by the previous generation of black criminals was turned into pervasive pressure to break up street gangs. Black street gangs fulfilled their narrow goal of community control of vice. Their interactions with their neighbors, however, remained contentious.     

The “Weakened Spring of Government” and the Executive Branch: The Department of Justice in the Late 19th Century

Recent research on American government and public life in the late 19th century suggests that the extensive growth of the American state during this time did not necessarily involve a corresponding expansion of national authority or effective executive bureaucratic administration. Rather, the American polity was characterized by what Wallace Farnham termed the “weakened spring of government,rdquo; a government that “failed to use the powers it had.” This study examines how the late 19th century Department of Justice exemplified this problem. Despite increased personnel, resources, and responsibilities, effective law enforcement by the department was often frustrated by corruption, partisan political activity by department personnel, and by traditional reliance on local, decentralized responsibility for law enforcement. Examples of this were the attempts by the Justice Department to protect federal timber lands and enforce the federal election statutes in the south. Moreover reforms within the department were little more than “patchwork” efforts to achieve effective enforcement capacities.     

Donor‐Driven Justice and its Discontents: The Case of Rwanda

Never before was a process of doing justice driven so strongly from the outside as in post‐genocide Rwanda. Not only did the 1994 genocide lead to the founding of the International Tribunal, but it also induced intensive donor involvement in domestic attempts to ‘break the cycle of hatred’— from the work done by the national courts and the Unity Commission to the gacaca. In this sense, Rwanda became the forerunner of a much wider trend, towards a judicialization of international relations, for instance through an emphasis on international criminal law. However, the past decade of donor involvement in Rwanda in general, and the case of the gacaca in particular, show us how this specific — technocratic, de‐contextualized — emphasis on justice might seem innocuous at first glance, but carries dangers within it, particularly if it takes place in an increasingly autocratic and oppressive political environment like that of contemporary Rwanda.     

Customary Legal Empowerment in Namibia and Ghana? Lessons about Access,Power and Participation in Non‐state Justice Systems

Since the early 2000s, legal development cooperation has displayed an increasing willingness to engage with customary justice systems. However, this engagement is frequently problematic. External actors often lack knowledge about the different versions of customary law, the negotiable nature of customary justice and the power differentials involved in defining customary law. In customary justice systems, norms are defined and negotiated in administrative structures and dispute‐settlement institutions. Inclusion in these fora is therefore of paramount importance to improve the position of vulnerable groups. To illustrate the point, this article analyses two case studies of customary justice reform, respectively focusing on gender dimensions in northern Namibia and land management in Ghana. These case studies demonstrate that when programming ignores issues of power and empowerment, it will not have the hoped‐for positive impact on vulnerable groups.     

The practical application of counter‐terrorism legislation in England and Wales: a prosecutor's perspective

This article gives a prosecutor's perspective on the practical application of UK terrorism legislation. It gives an overview of the working relationship between the Counter Terrorism Division's specialist prosecutors, police officers and the intelligence services, in order to outline some of the challenges in investigating and prosecuting terrorism cases, and to inform on prosecutorial decision‐making. It summarizes the main additions and changes to the criminal terrorism legislation over the last decade and gives examples of how some of the key powers and offences have been approached and used by prosecutors. The article deliberately concentrates on the criminal aspects of terrorism legislation and the importance of using due process to prosecute alleged terrorists fairly and proportionately. It describes how prosecutors use a mixture of the ordinary criminal and specialist terrorism laws depending on what is deemed appropriate in any given case. It is not intended to be a critique of the legislation itself or an analysis of what may or may not need to be changed. That is a matter for Parliament; the prosecutor's role is to apply the law not to make it. The article concludes that the criminal justice system is the correct place for terrorism prosecutions to take place and that the UK can continue to retain due process and respect for human rights while seeking properly to protect national security.     

The Gilded Age Wasn’t So Gilded in the Anthracite Region of Pennsylvania

The Lattimer Massacre occurred in September of 1897 in the anthracite coalfields of Northeast Pennsylvania. This tragic event saw the death of 19 miners, fired upon by local law enforcement and a posse gathered from local businessmen. This paper will situate this event amidst the deeply turbulent themes underlying the Gilded Age: race, American exceptionalism and Empire and labor struggle. A project undertaken by archaeologists from the University of Maryland seeks to restore the memory of the massacre, highlighting the implications of this history within the current anti-immigrant politics extant in its contemporary setting.     

How racialized policy contact shapes the social constructions of policy targets

Policy feedback scholars argue the relationship between policy and politics is dynamic and reciprocal. For instance, policies “make citizens,” teaching the public who deserves positive government treatment and who does not. Furthermore, individual experiences with policy shape participation and beliefs about government, which shapes future policy. But few scholars have examined how experiences with a law shape attitudes toward those targeted by policy. We use a survey of 3000 respondents on MTurk (including an over-sample of people of color) to show how direct and indirect experience with policy shapes social constructions of politically relevant groups. Specifically, we examine how direct (personal) and indirect (via someone they know well) experience with two policy areas (criminal justice and social welfare) shape perceptions of the targets of criminal justice and welfare policy. We find the effect of policy contact is racialized; policy contact has a greater effect on white respondents compared to Black respondents. But despite this contact, whites' attitudes about groups' deservingness remain lower than those of their Black counterparts.     

The Behavioral Impact of Drinking and Driving Laws

All U.S. states have laws designed to discourage people from drinking and driving, but enforcement varies across the states. Existing studies offer conflicting evidence on the effectiveness of these strategies in deterring drinking‐and‐driving behavior. Deterrence theories imply that the mere existence of such laws has little impact on criminal behavior, but the perception of enforcement and the probability of being detected have a deterrent effect. To test these hypotheses, we develop a measure of the propensity to drink and drive using item response theory and national survey data. Inferential models test the impact of perceptions of enforcement, actual enforcement levels, and deterrence laws on criminal propensity. Results indicate that the existence of statutes impacts only those least likely to drink and drive, while perceptions of the likelihood of arrest and individual agreement with the goals of drinking and driving laws significantly reduce the propensity for almost everyone. Actual enforcement rates display no behavioral effect.     

U.S. Environmental Policy Implementation on Tribal Lands: Trust,Neglect, and Justice

This study investigates the implementation of U.S. environmental protection laws under American Indian tribal governance. The landmark laws of the 1970s that form the core of America's environmental policy regime made no mention of American Indian tribal lands, and the subsequent research literature on environmental policy has given them little attention. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has primary implementation responsibility for environmental protection laws on tribal lands, which offers a unique opportunity to study direct federal implementation apart from typical joint state–federal implementation. Further, because Indian reservations are homes to a disproportionately poor, historically subjugated racial group, analysis of environmental programs on tribal lands offers a unique perspective on environmental justice. We analyze enforcement of and compliance with the Clean Water Act (CWA) and Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) to compare the implementation of environmental policy on tribal lands with nontribal facilities. Analysis reveals that, compared with nontribal facilities, tribal facilities experience less rigorous CWA and SDWA enforcement and are more likely to violate these laws.     

The Snake Bone Case: Law,Custom, and Justice in a Papua New Guinea Village Court

One of the outcomes of judgmental administrative attitudes toward indigenous praxis in colonial Papua New Guinea was a convention that an antagonistic relationship existed between European law and ‘native custom‘. By the end of the colonial period the defence of ‘custom’ had become part of an anti-colonial polemic among indigenous intellectuals and politicians. The Village Court system was established in this rhetorical climate. Its mission, reinforced in legislation, included the favouring of ‘custom’ in the dispensation of justice. Subsequent academic and journalistic commentaries on the development of the Village Court system have perpetuated a binary notion of the relationship between law and custom, whether portraying it as antagonistic or articulatory. This article focuses on a single case from a Port Moresby village court, involving an accusation of attempted sorcery. The case raises questions not only about the validity of the discursive law/custom dichotomy but about the notion of custom itself in the context of the dispensation of justice in contemporary Papua New Guinea. It is suggested that in village court praxis, the notion of custom serves the exploitation of village court officers as cheap labour in the justice system.     

Regulatory Enforcement,Riskscapes, and Environmental Justice

Does environmental regulation vary over poor and minority communities? An uneven governmental response may follow from regulators' varying incentives to negotiate enforcement challenges. We argue that regulators confront two in particular. Regulators can pursue political enforcement, responding to mobilized interests, regardless of environmental risk, or they can pursue instrumental enforcement, responding to at‐risk communities, regardless of political mobilization. To examine these competing strategies, we use an original dataset from the EPA's Risk‐Screening Environmental Indicators model to develop a geographic “riskscape” combined with census tract community data and facility‐level enforcement data. We find that state regulatory agencies pursue a mixture of political and instrumental enforcement, but that these tactics are applied unevenly across traditional environmental justice communities. Specifically, state agencies devote more attention to facilities in communities with relatively higher risk, but less attention in the area of punishment for violations for facilities located in Hispanic communities. Importantly, this lack of attention to Hispanic communities is not mediated by the relative level of risks that they face, but it is to a significant extent in communities in which environmental justice advocacy organizations operate.     

The African Union and the International Criminal Court: counteracting the crisis

In October 2016, South Africa became the first nation to withdraw from the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), after Burundi began taking steps to leave it. Kenya is likely to follow, and other states, like Uganda, could take the same cue. The ICC is facing the most serious diplomatic crisis of its history, with the African Union (AU) denouncing double standards, neo‐colonialism and ‘white justice’, and regularly threatening to withdraw from the Rome Statute en masse. This article adopts both an interdisciplinary and a pragmatic policy‐oriented approach, with the aim of producing concrete recommendations to counteract the crisis. It firstly outlines the context of this crisis which, although not new, is becoming increasingly serious. It then responds to the AU's objections to the ICC. The court's ‘Afro‐centrism’ is explained by objective facts (the occurrence of mass crimes taking place on the African continent, the large number of African parties to the Rome Statute, the principle of complementarity) as well as by subjective decisions (a convergence of interest between the African leaders who brought the cases to the court themselves to weaken their opponents, and the prosecutor who needed quickly to find cases). Afro‐centrism should also be nuanced, as the ICC has already shown an interest in cases outside Africa and the extent to which it is a problem is a matter of perspective. The article also responds to the ‘peace vs justice’ objection, and emphasises that African states were instrumental in creating and sustaining the ICC. It finally formulates recommendations to ease relations between the ICC and AU, such as to investigate more outside Africa, reinforce African national jurisdictions, create intermediary institutional structures, promote regional‐level action, and rely more on ICC‐friendly African states and African civil society.     

Imperial modernity,national identity and capital punishment in the Samarcand Arson Case, 1931

ABSTRACT. This article draws upon the fascinating and little known 1931 Samarcand Arson Case involving the possible execution of adolescent white female inmates at a juvenile reformatory in North Carolina. Marked by nationalist discourses, the spectacle generated by this case indicates much about how white New South advocates construed national life and sought to construct a white ‘civilised’ collective identity, defending their region from Northern charges of Southern barbarism and asserting their place within the imperial politics of American nation building. The decision not to execute any of the sixteen defendants was informed by a series of interconnected ideas about sexuality, national danger, ‘civilisation’ and ‘race,’ suggesting that the presumed ‘legal chivalry’ extended to the young defendants was not a simple matter of gender bias, but involved a nuanced set of reasons related to negotiations of national belonging through racialised alliances.     

The house gun: White writing,white fears and black justice (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

One way of understanding the Pistorius case is through the powerful writings of white South African authors such as Nobel Prize laureate Nadine Gordimer's anticipatory post‐apartheid novel, The house gun, in which she imagined a scenario similar to the one played out in the Pistorius trial where white fears and black justice met in the courtroom. South Africa is not unique. The mobilization of white peoples' fear of black or brown ‘intruders’ has infected other divided nations, like the United States and Israel. Here the social and architectural construction of ‘white’ settler or settler‐like special enclosures fortified by the legal right to self‐defence with private weapons has reproduced a colonial ‘paranoid ethos’ and a dangerous denial of the violence that is nested like a coiled rattlesnake from within their own segregated and hypervigilant enclosures.     

The Future of International Criminal Evidence in New Wars? The Evolution of the Commission for International Justice and Accountability (CIJA)

This article explores the intellectual formation of the Commission for International Justice and Accountability (CIJA). It illuminates how the development of the CIJA was an attempt by state and non-state actors to affect the course of international criminal justice in Syria and Iraq. First, this article argues that the CIJA was the result of four factors: the UK Foreign Office’s desire to support human rights activists in Syria; lessons learned from previous international criminal tribunals; attempts by non-state legal practitioners to invent new ways to overcome the gaps and limitations of the international criminal justice system; and the willingness of Syrian civil society to risk their lives and use the law to hold those responsible for mass atrocities to account. Second, the article argues that as non-state actors with a focus on evidence management, the CIJA may represent an innovative approach to investigating mass atrocities, particularly for activists and civil society actors who wish to play a role in evidence management in new wars. Lastly, it shows how the CIJA may work in parallel with international mechanisms, such as the International Criminal Court (ICC) and other inter-state actors, to collect evidence of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide in new wars, particularly when the ICC is unable to do so. This study combines qualitative research with empirical analysis and draws on a range of primary and secondary sources, including a number of interviews conducted with CIJA personnel, former ICC practitioners, and other practitioners in international criminal law.     

TAX COMPETITION IN THE PRESENCE OF INTERJURISDICTIONAL EXTERNALITIES: THE CASE OF CRIME PREVENTION*

ABSTRACT The paper analyzes the effect of fiscal competition when local governments choose the level of public goods that generate spillover effects elsewhere. For instance, law enforcement activities affect both the crime level in the jurisdiction providing the good and in neighboring communities. The model shows that when local governments rely on capital taxation to finance these expenditures the spillover effects may not lead to an inefficient provision of public goods as predicted by the tax competition literature. In the model, capital is costlessly mobile and offenders relocate responding to differential criminal opportunities and differential local law enforcement efforts.     

The homicidal nation: An investigation into violence in the United States

Violent crime occupies a central place in American political culture, both as an element of the national character and as the focus of continuing policy debates on issues as disparate as school integration and gun control. This paper seeks to identify the root of the American penchant for violent crime, and for homicide in particular, and sketches its political implications. An “opportunity” model, stressing reaction to social immobility in a society with pervasive achievement‐oriented symbols, provides an appealing approach. It fails to explain, however, the regional violence characterising the South. Institutional factors, notably the weaknesses in a fragmented, locally‐controlled system of law enforcement within a non‐parliamentary democracy, must also contribute to this American problem.     

Women in prison: Ethnographic reflections on gender and the carceral state

The criminal justice system is increasingly becoming the subject of national dialogue throughout the United States due to the sheer number of people it impacts: according to the Department of Justice, nearly 7 million, or 1 in 35, U.S. residents are under some form of correctional control. The four books reviewed in this essay derive their findings from ethnographic methods that offer deep insights into the carceral state’s everyday operations in individual women’s lives, while raising profound theoretical and practical questions about gender and governance. We engage with these texts from unique situated standpoints as insider-outsiders with intimate knowledge of the U.S. criminal justice system gleaned from our respective lived experiences, services provision work, and research with currently and formerly incarcerated Wyoming women.