By Bruce A. Jacobs and Richard Wright

Street Justice: Retaliation in the Criminal Underworld is the first systematic exploration of the phenomenon of modern-day retaliation to be written from the perspective of currently active criminals who have experienced it firsthand – as offenders, victims, or both. Retaliation lies at the heart of much of the violence that plagues inner-city neighborhoods across the United States. Street criminals, who live in a dangerous world, realistically cannot rely on the criminal justice system to protect them from attacks by fellow lawbreakers. They are on their own when it comes to dealing with crimes perpetrated against them, and they often use retaliation as a mechanism for deterring and responding to victimization. Against this background, Bruce Jacobs and Richard Wright draw extensively on their candid interviews with active street criminals to shine a penetrating spotlight on the structure, process, and forms of retaliation in the real-world setting of urban America – a way of life that up to now has been poorly understood.

Cambridge, UK: New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. 154p.

By Thomas Grisaffi

Bolivia is a drug production and trafficking center and yet it exhibits far less violence than other countries that form part of cocaine’s commodity chain across Latin America. With reference to a case study from the Chapare, a coca-growing and drug processing zone in central Bolivia, this article considers why this is the case. Building from the literature on embedded economies and the ‘subsistence ethic’ of peasant communities, it shows how the drug trade is part of a local moral order that prioritizes kinship, reciprocal relations and community well-being and in doing so restricts the possibilities for violence. In addition, the agricultural unions act as a parallel form of governance, providing a framework for enforcing illicit contracts and the peaceful resolution of disputes. It is argued that illicit crop and drug production can be understood as a form of autonomous grassroots development. This article draws on more than three years of ethnographic fieldwork carried out between 2005 and 2019.

Paper presented at the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) annual congress (virtual congress). 28th May 2021. 23p.

By Lindsey Sank Davis

Despite significant progress towards equal protection under the law for women, LGBT individuals, and people of color in the United States, hate crime remains a pervasive problem, and rates appear to have increased in recent years. Bias-motivated homicide – arguably the most serious form of hate crime – is statistically rare but may have far-reaching consequences for marginalized communities. Data from the Uniform Crime Reports and the National Crime Victimization Survey have suggested that, on average, fewer than 10 bias-motivated homicides occur in the United States per year; however, data from open sources indicate that the rate of bias-motivated homicide is much higher when utilizing different criteria. In addition to this lack of clarity about prevalence, the dynamics of bias-motivated homicide remain understudied. The present study explores a non-random U.S. sample of 58 closed, adjudicated case files provided by the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit for research purposes. The utility of the leading hate crime typology by McDevitt, Levin, and Bennett (2002) is examined by applying the typology to this sample of bias-motivated homicides, and interrater reliability of the typology is considered. To address weaknesses in the typology, this study explores observable expressive and instrumental crime scene behaviors and their relationship to victim identity group membership, provocation, and victim-offender relationship. Results provide preliminary support for a biasmotivated homicide typology based on victim identity and victim-offender interaction preceding the offense. Implications for prevention, offender rehabilitation, and law enforcement are discussed.

New York: City University of New York, 2018. 172p.

Edited by Gorazd Meško, Eszter Sárik, Anna-Maria Getoš Kalac

This timely and comprehensive collection of discussions on victimology, victims of crime and victim protection policies in the Balkans and beyond engages readers with the current state of the art of regional victimology in the Balkans and Central Europe. Original contributions from as many as ten countries of the region analyse the development of victimology, victim protection policies and practices, as well as major areas of victimological research. The main idea of the book at hand is to provide an insight into the complex nature of victimisation in contemporary societies and a deeper understanding of the nature of, and responses to, victimisation in the context of the criminal justice system and civil society. Chapters about the recent developments of victimology in Albania, Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia, and Turkey reflect on cultural victimology and contextualisation of victimology and victimological thought from a broader societal perspective. More importantly, the chapters thus present, for the first time, a comparative and contextual account of regional contributions to present-day victimology. This publication is a milestone of victimological research calling for a follow-up and more comparative victimological studies in the future, improvement of practice in victim protection and more feasible victim protection policies.

Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2020. 596p.

Edited by Anna-Maria Getoš Kalac Hans-Jörg Albrecht Michael Kilchling

For the first time, this volume brings together experts in the fields of criminology, criminal law and criminal justice from across the Balkans, to discuss the state of the art of criminology and current crime trends in a region that has thus far largely been neglected by European criminological research. The first chapter analytically describes and defines the Balkan region, not only as a unique historical region, but also as a religious and legal territory, as well as a region of migration and violence and a criminological region sui generis. These facts are used to explore and promote the likely benefits of a coherent regional criminological research approach – with the long-term goal of creating a sustainable ›crimiological landscape‹. Contributions from all members of the Balkan Criminology Network provide an in-depth overview of facts and background information about criminological education and research and data about crime, general crime trends, and current crime and criminal justice challenges. The final chapter presents selected research projects from the actual research agenda of the Max Planck Partner Group for Balkan Criminology (MPPG). This selection makes the book an essential reader for anyone interested in the current criminological setting of the Balkans and an excellent starting point for regional or country specific crime research.

Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2014. 554p.

Soraya Giaccardi, Shawn Van Valkenburgh, Erica L. Rosenthal, Erica Watson-Currie.

On average, 110 people are killed by guns every day in the United States, with Black Americans disproportionately impacted. Young Black men are 20 times more likely to be killed by a gun than young white men, and between 2019 and 2020, deaths by guns increased by 39.5% among Black people. In 2021, for the first time, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention declared gun violence a “serious public threat.”

Firearms are the leading cause of death among children and teens, increasing by 29% from 2019 to 2020 alone. School shootings receive disproportionate media and policy attention and are a major source of fear, but 85% of child victims of gun homicide die in their homes, and over 80% of child gun suicides involve a gun owned by a family member. In addition, myths persist, such as the belief that gun violence is primarily caused by mental illness, or that a civilian “good guy” can intervene in an active shooting and save lives if they are allowed to carry a loaded gun.

New York: Everytown for Gun Safety, 2022.

By Violence Policy Center

This annual study examines black homicide victimization at the state level utilizing unpublished Supplementary Homicide Report data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The study ranks the states by their rates of black homicide victimization and offers additional information for the 10 states with the highest black homicide victimization rates.

Washington, DC: Violence Policy Center, 2022. 18p.

By Jerome Hall

From the introduction: “Theories of social science, especially those concerning methodology, are often presented very abstractly and in technical vocabularies which seem remote from the actual problems of research. This does not imply that theory should be abandoned or subordinated to practical guidance on research. What is involved is precisely the question of cogent, critical, realistic social theory. Under the circumstances, it occurred to me that a report and discussion of methods and theories employed in this research on theft might be of Interest. The general approach to the problems studied was simply one of curiosity about many phases of law, an attitude conditioned by strong intellectual currents in the social sciences.

New York. Bobbs-Merrill. (1992) 1995. 409p. CONTAINS MARK-UP

By Jonathan Beller

The Message is Murder analyses the violence bound up in the everyday functions of digital media. At its core is the concept of 'computational capital' - the idea that capitalism itself is a computer, turning qualities into quantities, and that the rise of digital culture and technologies under capitalism should be seen as an extension of capitalism's bloody logic. Engaging with Borges, Turing, Claude Shannon, Hitchcock and Marx, this book tracks computational capital to reveal the lineages of capitalised power as it has restructured representation, consciousness and survival in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Ultimately The Message is Murder makes the case for recognising media communications across all platforms - books, films, videos, photographs and even language itself - as technologies of political economy, entangled with the social contexts of a capitalism that is inherently racial, gendered and genocidal.

London: Pluto Press, 2018. 225p.

By Insecurity Insight

• Gang-related violence has continued to increase due to the worsening security situation and the growing power of the gangs. • On New Year’s Day, Prime Minister Ariel Henry fled a mass he was attending to celebrate Haiti’s Independence Day before he could give his planned speech. • Gang leaders have continued to exert their power over the territories they control, defying the rule of law and committing more acts of violence and extortion. The leader of a gang operating in Gonaïves threatened to kill the judge in charge of an investigation case that involves several gang leaders. The gang leader warned in an audio message that he had killed the judge’s cousin and another man who were discovered to be informants for the police. • There have been numerous other kidnaps for ransom and killings, including the murder of two Haitian journalists who were shot and then burned alive just outside Port-au-Prince. These are VERY LIKELY to increase further in the coming months given the grim security situation and political power vacuum. • Six political blocs, as well as academics and Haitian NGOs, met at the Haiti Unity Summit in Baton Rouge, Louisiana from 13 – 19 January. • Haiti’s Senate sat for the first time in a year on 10 January. • Despite both the Summit and the Senate meeting, concern is building on the ability to develop governance structures.

Switzerland: Insecurity Insight, 2022. 11p.

By Michelle Young

A new diagnosis of gang activity in Belize City, sponsored by the government of Belize and undertaken with the support of the Inter-American Development Bank, reveals issues of significant concern not only for Belize, but also for the Latin American and Caribbean region as a whole. Gang violence has dramatically increased with increased gang access to guns; the risk factors for gang involvement show broader and deeper risk exposure, expanding the pool of youth vulnerable to gang recruitment; and these developments have exposed the weaknesses of government responses to the gang problem, highlighting the need for a sustained and coordinated response across agencies. The assessment explores three years of violent crime incident reports; local demographic data; interviews with current and former gang members; interviews with key leaders and professionals who regularly interact with gang members; surveys of youth, community residents, and community leaders; surveys and focus groups with teachers, youth-serving professionals, and parents; and school performance data. It concludes with broad recommendations for future strategies and activities to reduce gang-related violence in Belize City.

Washington, DC: Inter-American Development Bank, 2019. 75p.

By The Harvard Law School International Human Rights Clinic

Over the course of President Jovenel Moïse’s presidency, Haitian civil society has raised alarm that armed gangs are carrying out heinous, state-sanctioned attacks against civilians in impoverished neighborhoods in Port-au-Prince. The scale, pattern, and context of the attacks indicate that they may amount to crimes against humanity. The attacks have taken place in the context of an escalating political crisis. President Moïse’s rule has become increasingly authoritarian and has turned to repression to quell dissent. Since 2018, massive public protests calling for government accountability and Moïse’s resignation have periodically shut down the country. The government has responded to the protests with aggressive measures, including criminalizing common non-violent protest tactics and increasing illegal surveillance of opponents. Targeted assassinations and threats against government critics have been carried out with impunity. During the four years of Moïse’s presidency, human rights observers have documented at least ten brutal attacks in impoverished parts of the capital where opposition against his administration runs strong. Three attacks—in La Saline, Bel-Air, and Cité Soleil—are particularly well-documented and severe. These three attacks offer insights into the means and methods used to carry out the assaults, and the ways in which state actors have supported the orchestration and execution of the attacks. When viewed together, they reveal a pattern of state-sanctioned violence, human rights abuses, and refusal to hold perpetrators accountable that likely amounts to crimes against humanity.

Cambridge, MA: Harvard Law School International Human Rights Clinic, 2021. 57p.

By The United Nations Integrated Office in Haiti (BINUH) and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights

1. In early July 2022, Rose1 , 25 years old, was one of at least 52 women and girls who were collectively raped by armed elements during a week of intense violence opposing two rival gang coalitions in Cité Soleil. In the afternoon of 7 July 2022, Rose, a mother of four and five-months pregnant, was severely beaten and raped, in the presence of her children, by three heavily armed masked men. The latter had forced their way into her home during an attack launched against the residents of Brooklyn, in Cité Soleil. Earlier that day, Rose’s husband had been shot dead by members of the same gang. Before leaving, the armed individuals set her house ablaze, forcing Rose and her children to sleep out in the open in a public space for many nights. The story of Rose, like that of many other women, illustrates the ordeal of victims of sexual violence who are targeted by armed gangs. This report, jointly published by the United Nations Integrated Office in Haiti (BINUH) and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), shows how armed gangs have used rape, including collective rapes, and other forms of sexual violence to instill fear, punish, subjugate, and inflict pain on local populations with the ultimate goal of expanding their areas of influence, throughout the metropolitan area of Port-au-Prince. As of August 2022, large swathes of the capital, accounting for at least 1.5 million people, were reportedly under the control or the influence of gang elements.

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  Gangs are able to commit acts of sexual violence and other human rights abuses mainly because of widespread impunity and ease of access to high caliber weapons and ammunitions trafficked from abroad. Women, girls and boys of all ages, as well as to a lesser extent men, have been victims of ruthless sexual crimes. Children as young as 10 and elderly women were subjected to collective rapes for hours in front of their parents or children by more than half a dozen armed elements during attacks against their neighborhoods. Viewed as enemies for their real or perceived support to rival gangs, or for the simple fact of living in the same areas as those rival gangs, some of these victims were mutilated and executed after being raped. Gangs have also resorted to sexual violence as a weapon to disrupt the social fabric by targeting women and girls crossing “frontlines” or moving across neighborhoods on foot or in public transport to carry out their daily livelihood activities, such as going to work, to marketplaces or to schools.

United Nations Integrated Office in Haiti (BINUH) and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, 2022. 25p.

By Marc-André Lagrange and Thierry Vircoulon

The current rise in insecurity in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), is often attributed to urban youth gangs – the Kulunas. Embedded in Kinshasa’s neighbourhood life and partnered with local political parties and law enforcement agencies, these gangs threaten urban security in the city. This paper examines the rise of the Kulunas from a historical and sociological perspective, and analyzes the state’s security responses to address it.

Geneva: Global Initiative Against Transnational Crime, 2021. 24p.

By Alex Cobham and Petr Jansky

Illicit financial flows constitute a global phenomenon of massive but uncertain scale, which erodes government revenues and drives corruption in countries rich and poor. In 2015, the countries of the world committed to a target to reduce illicit flows, as part of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. But five years later, there is still no agreement on how that target should be monitored—to say nothing of how it will be achieved. The term ‘illicit financial flows’ covers a range of corrupt practices, aimed at obtaining immunity or impunity from criminal law, from market regulation and from taxation. Illicit flows occur through many different channels, whether they involve laundering the proceeds of crime, for example, or shifting the profits of multinational companies. There are two consistent features. First, illicit flows are deliberately hidden. These cross-border movements of assets and income streams depend on a set of common tools including opaque company accounts, legal vehicles for anonymous ownership, and the secrecy jurisdictions that provide these services. Second, the overall effect of illicit flows is to reduce the revenue available to states, and to weaken the quality of governance—so there is less money to support human development, and it is less likely to be spent well. In this book, two of the economists most closely involved in the process to develop UN indicators of illicit financial flows offer a critical survey of the existing data and methodologies, identifying the most promising avenues for future improvement and setting out their own proposals.

Oxford, UK; New York: Oxford University Press, 2020. 224p.

By Simone Haysom and Mark Shaw

Over the past 15 years, there has been significant growth in awareness that environmental crime constitutes serious organized crime. There has also been a development of laws and policies to accompany that. However, despite the urgency and importance of the issue, responses still fall far short of what is needed. Leading scientists have contributed to these shifts in awareness by producing major syntheses that delineate the vast scale of global risk that environmental damage is unleashing.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC) and Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) have both released dire warnings, with the landmark 2019 IPBES report concluding that over a million species are at risk of extinction in the coming decades. IPBES has also warned that environmental crisis undermines progress towards 80% of the assessed targets of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Environmental crime has a key and underappreciated role in this developing crisis.

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  Our analysis shows that all of the contributing factors identified by IPBES have both direct and indirect connections to criminal networks and transnational criminal flows. We also know that, at its worst, environmental crime is intimately bound up with threats to global peace and stability. It provides a soft entry point into global illicit flows for traffickers, and is often accompanied by widespread human rights abuses and dispossession by criminal networks and actors.

  The corruption related to environmental crime can be so damaging that it creates political instability and entrenches systems of patronage or the elite capture of democratic institutions. While there has been a significant increase in multilateral investments in responding to wildlife and timber crime, some of these interventions are themselves producing harms that outweigh or undermine their benefits. Human-rights abuses, such as torture, rape and displacement, are also bound up in militarized responses to environmental crime. All of this points to the conclusion that the international community is still failing to support effective, sustainable ways of combatting environmental crime. There is still much to do and much to learn – all within a narrow window of time. The severity of these problems and the pressing time constraints on responding are linked to their intersection with other crises – a broader global failure to address the drivers of climate change; the rapid growth of organized crime and illicit trade over the past two decades; and the fall-out of the enormous shifts wrought by the greater social and economic integration of globalization, particularly through the changes introduced by digital communication and commerce on virtual platforms. The latter is having a transformative impact on all sectors, not least of which is the illicit trafficking of multiple commodities.

Geneva; Global Initiative Against Transnational organized Crime, 2022. 44p.

By Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime

This report builds on the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC’s) ‘Forest crimes in Cambodia’ study (March 2021) by further exploring the networks of state and military control that facilitate the illegal timber trade. High-volume logging and trafficking of luxury wood continue unabated despite years of legislation, export bans and high-profile crackdowns. Examples abound. ‘Forest crimes in Cambodia’ presented compelling evidence of this in Prey Lang.1 Hong Kong SAR customs officials seized 211 tonnes of endangered Cambodian timber in May 2021.2 COVID-19 border closures failed to prevent 27 498 cubic metres of high-risk Cambodian sawn timber making its way through official Vietnamese customs in 2020.3 Moreover, the resilience, mutability, earning power and scale of the illicit industry is evidenced by decades of rigorous investigation, monitoring and analysis by Cambodian NGOs, grassroots activism networks and international NGOs.4 Benefiting from, and expanding on, this wealth of evidence, this report adds to the existing knowledge on Cambodia’s illegal logging by shedding light on the actors behind this vast trade and the practices they employ. The emerging picture is one of complex and interdependent networks.

Geneva: Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, 2022. 61p.

By Théo Clément and Sam Inglis

Vietnam is known for its highly diverse tropical fauna and is considered to be a major hub for wildlife trafficking in South East Asia – and globally for certain highly trafficked species, such as rhinoceros and tigers. The country has a globalized, export-driven economy with extensive trade links and has been identified as a key node in the wildlife trafficking chain in previous research. Vietnamese networks abroad have been found to be involved in the poaching of at least 18 000 elephants, 111 000 pangolins and nearly 1 000 rhinoceroses since 2010. However, these investigations have led to only a few prosecutions.

Geneva: Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime. 2022. 26p.

By Gavin Hayman and Duncan Brack.

This paper summarizes the discussions and conclusions of a workshop on the nature and control of environmental black markets held at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, London on 27–28 May 2002. Thanks to generous support from the European Commission (DG Environment) and UNEP Ozone Secretariat, some eighty participants from over thirty different countries were able to attend.

Rather than simply collect and repeat what is known about the extent of the illegal activities in specific jurisdictions – a traditional indulgence of the regulatory community – the workshop was intended to provide a more systematic understanding of the driving forces behind international environmental crime. Efforts to tackle the smuggling of environmental contraband have been dogged by an ad hoc and unsystematic approach where individual enforcement agencies attempt to headhunt environmental criminals without reducing the size of the illegal market in which they operate. The failure of the international ‘war on drugs’ suggests that this policy is doomed: as long as demand and supply pressures that shape profit-making opportunities remain, other operators will expand their operations or new operations will enter the international market. Thus, the workshop raised the need to think beyond simply increasing enforcement effort to minimize overall levels of environmental harm by addressing the demand and supply of the contraband.

Copenhagen: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 2002. 42p.

By Wilson K. Korir

The objective of the study was to determine the effectiveness of environmental crime management in Kenya. Specifically, this included determination of factors affecting environmental crime management, causes of environmental crime, establishment of the nature and extent of environmental crime. All these assisted in understanding the effectiveness of environmental crime management in Kenya. Research questions which the study attempted to answer include what factors affect environmental crime management, the causes of environmental crime, the nature and the extent of environmental crime and the effectiveness of environmental crime management in Kenya. A conceptual framework was used to simplify the relationship between variables in the study. The relationship shows that environmental crime management in Kenya faces several challenges that in varied ways hinder proper environmental crime management. The methodology adopted during the study included desktop review of existing scholarly materials for secondary data and focused questionnaire tool for primary data. The respondents were also made aware of the purpose of the research and informed on how and when they will get feedback on the study. The questionnaire was administered to key respondents and their profiles captured so as to give a picture of their understanding of their background and input to the study.

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  The study concludes that lack of understanding of the long term effects of environmental crimes among key stakeholders has led to crimes being treated as misdemeanors thus attracting low penalties if any, hence resulting in poor management of the crime. The study recommends that the process of enacting legislation on environmental crime should be all inclusive, adopting a wider consultative approach. The study encourages the strengthening of environmental crime management policies. At the moment environmental crime management is a loose concept with weak policy. Environmental crimes should be addressed by policy and legislation that ensures that local communities benefit from the country‘s natural resources so that they value and protect them. Environmental crime management should be greatly enhanced by improving the capacity of the environmental law enforcement officials and other stakeholders through training

Nairobi: University of Nairobi, 2014. 146p.