By Lucía Dammert and Mary Fran T. Malone
In a region plagued by high rates of violent crime and repressive policing practices, Nicara-
gua has earned a reputation as exceptional. Despite poverty, inequality, and a historical legacy

 of political violence and repression, Nicaragua has defied regional trends. It has regis-
tered low rates of violent crime while deploying policing practices that emphasized preven-
tion over repression. April 2018 marked an end to this exceptionalism. Police attacked anti-
government protestors, and launched a sustained campaign against dissidents that continues
to the present day. While the Nicaraguan police had long cultivated a reputation as commu-
nity-oriented and non-repressive, they appeared to quickly change into a repressive, political
force. In this paper, we trace how the Nicaraguan police have evolved over time. Relying
upon longitudinal data from 1996-2019 from the Latin American Public Opinion Project, we
trace the process of police reform in Nicaragua, and analyse public attitudes towards the
police as these reforms unfolded. 

European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies / Revista Europea de Estudios Latinoamericanos y del Caribe, No. 110 (July-December 2020), pp. 79-99 (21 pages)

By Wilson Hernández, Lucía Dammert, and Lilian Kanashiro

Latin America is a violent region where fear of crime is well spread but still not fully understood. Using multilevel methods for a large and subnational representative household survey (N = 271,022), we assess the determinants of fear of crime in Peru, the country with the highest fear of crime and crime victimization in the region. Our results show that body-aimed victimization (physical or sexual abuse from a member of their household, and sexual offenses) is the strongest driver of fear of crime, even higher than armed victimization. Moreover, safety measures based on social capital are negatively related to fear of crime, suggesting that they are palliatives rather than real protections. Finally, our study shows that people in a higher socioeconomic status are more likely to fear more because they have more (resources) to lose. Policy implications address Latin America as a whole and punitive policies against crime are common in the region, while evidence-based decisions are scarce.  Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology 2020, Vol. 53(4) 515–535

By  Mary Fran T. Malone & Lucia Dammert 

 Over the past two decades, most Latin American countries have struggled to create or reform their police forces while simultaneously confronting sharp increases in violent crime. Reformers have gravitated towards community-oriented policing practices, which aim to rely on preventive tactics and build closer ties between police officers and the public. The implementation of such policing practices can be daunting, particularly for countries with authoritarian histories of policing and/or military repression. When confronting rising crime rates, some new democracies are tempted to revert to authoritarian policing practices and circumvent constitutional safeguards on human rights and civil liberties. Still, some countries have resisted such temptations, and seriously invested in community-oriented policing practices. However, do these communityoriented policing practices lead citizens to trust the police more? Or does public trust depend more heavily on results – particularly in countries undergoing crises in public security? To answer these questions, we analyze public trust in the police in 17 Latin American countries through a series of regression analyses of the Latin American Public Opinion Project’s (LAPOP) 2016–2017 survey data. We find that community-oriented policing practices tend to garner more public trust, but that perceptions of police effectiveness are equally important.  

POLICING AND SOCIETY, 2020.  

By Alejandra Luneke, Lucia Dammert,  Liza Zuñiga  

Crime increase in Latin America has occurred in parallel with a change in police policy in territories. Along with the processes of militarization and police repression, strategies of co-production have been inspired by community policing, but the articulation of both in urban margins has been understudied. Our hypothesis affirms the coexistence and ambivalence of both social assistance and abusive practices against the city's poor. Qualitative methods conducted in Santiago, Chile, show police policy involves both dimensions, which are strongly rooted in identity elements of the military tradition of the region's police forces.

Dilemas, Rev. Estud. Conflito Controle Soc. – Rio de Janeiro – Vol. 15 – no 1 – JAN-ABR 2022 – pp. 1-26  

By Renato de Almeida Arão Galhardi 

  Historically, Mexicans deported from the United States tend to be overwhelmingly adult men, where the Mexican borderscape of Tijuana is and continues to be the primary site (and sight) where the majority of deported Mexicans are sent to when deported from the United States. Consequently, the semiotic social topography of Tijuana is peopled through the experiences of deportation. How, then, do Mexican deportees negotiate, mediate and articulate their lived experiences of migration? Working with my ethnographic research in Tijuana, during August 2021 and March 2022, I address the ontopological conditioning of living as a deportee in a borderscape such as Tijuana, assessing how their phenomenographic experiences are shaped by the bordering of the Border, and how Mexican deported men are often “unjustly suffering” and enduring “the bare life.” Through discussions on coloniality of Being, I build off Nicolas de Genova’s “border spectacle,” and argue that deportation is better described through its own “spectacle,” the “deportation spectacle,” highlighting how deportees perform and negotiate their agency between the tensions of suffering and resiliency as a consequence of the practices of imposed by deportation. I posit that deportation is not the end of a process, but reshapes migrancy continuity within new constraints, challenges and obstacles. Finally, I conclude by emphasizing the need to recognize misrepresented, misinterpreted and misdiagnosed populations such as deportees in borderscapes such as Tijuana, in order to better attend to the challenges that deportation creates.   

Working Paper No. 2023/07 September 2023  

Toronto: Metropolitan University, 2023. 23p.

By Min-Taec Kim and George Karystianis (UNSW)
AIM To construct a measure of coercive control behaviours from free-text narratives recorded by the NSW Police Force for each domestic violence event, and to assess how useful this measure might be in detecting coercive control behaviours when combined with existing measures and/ or predicting which events are followed by violence within 12 months. METHOD We developed a text-mining system to capture a (non-exhaustive) set of behaviours that could be used to exert coercive control. Our text mining system consisted of a set of rules and dictionaries, with our definition of ‘coercive control behaviours’ drawn from Stark (2007). We concentrated on behaviours that were not already well captured by fixed fields in the police system. We applied this text mining system across all police narratives of domestic violence events recorded between 1 January 2009 and 31 March 2020, and used this data to construct our measure of coercive control behaviour. We then compared the incidence of coercive control behaviours using our measure against existing incident categories (where they exist). Finally, we estimated a gradient boosted decision tree (xgboost) model three times (once with standard predictors, once with just our coercive control measure, and once with both sets of variables included) and compared the performance of each model. This allowed us to estimate the contribution of our measure for improving the prediction of future violence. RESULTS There were 852,162 behaviours extracted by the text-mining system across 526,787 domestic violence events, with 57% of these events having at least one coercive control behaviour detected and 8% having three or more distinct subcategories of coercive control behaviours. These events were associated with 223,645 unique persons of interest. Our text mining system agreed with the pre-existing police incident categories (where they exist) in 80 to 99% of cases, with the text mining approach identifying an additional 30 to 60% of events that were not identified using the police incident categories, depending on the behaviour. The inclusion of the text mining variables did not improve the performance of our predictive model. CONCLUSION Our text mining system successfully extracted coercive control behaviours from police narratives, allowing us to identify how often these events are recorded in police narratives and supplement existing police categories of DV behaviours. Use of our measure in conjunction with existing incident categories significantly expands our ability to identify coercive control behaviours, however it does not improve our ability to predict which events are followed by further domestic violence.  

Crime and Justice Bulletin No. CJB260. No. 26o
Sydney:  NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research. 2023. 28p.

By Stephanie Ramsey, Min-Taec Kim and Jackie Fitzgerald  
AIM This paper describes the significant rise in incidents of domestic violence-related stalking and intimidation recorded in NSW over the 10 years to 2021 and their passage through the criminal justice system. METHOD Characteristics of stalking/intimidation incidents from 2012 to 2021 were collated from the NSW Police and Criminal Courts databases. We focus on those flagged as ‘domestic violencerelated’. Additional information about these incidents was obtained through text mining 12,676 police domestic violence-related stalking/intimidation narratives. RESULTS Key findings: • Domestic violence-related stalking/intimidation incidents recorded by NSW Police increased 110 per cent from 2012 to 2021 (from 8,120 to 17,063). • Police legal proceedings for domestic violence-related stalking/intimidation incidents increased 163.8 per cent from 2012 to 2021 (from 4,469 to 11,789). • Domestic violence-related ‘stalking/intimidation’ typically involves threats, intimidation and verbal abuse (not stalking). • Court appearances including a domestic violence-related stalking/intimidation charge increased 63.8 percent from 2014 to 2021 (from 3,562 to 5,836). • Courts consider domestic violence-related stalking/intimidation seriously, with one in eight offenders sentenced to a custodial penalty. The number of custodial sentences increased 96.1% from 2014 to 2021 (from 311 to 610). • The increase in stalking/intimidation has had a pronounced effect on Aboriginal people who accounted for 28% of court finalisations and 52% of custodial penalties in 2021. The number of Aboriginal people receiving a custodial penalty increased 101% in eight years from 158 in 2014 to 317 in 2021. CONCLUSION The substantial increase in stalking/intimidation offences in the criminal justice system seems more likely to reflect changes in the police response to domestic violence rather than a change in criminal behaviour. 
  (Bureau Brief No. 159).
 Sydney: NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, 2022. 19p.

By Felix Leung and Lily Trimboli
Background

Previous research has shown that the NSW Police Force’s Domestic Violence Safety Assessment Tool, the DVSAT, has poor predictive accuracy in discriminating those who experience intimate partner re-victimisation from those who do not (Ringland, 2018). The aim of this study was to develop a tool with better predictive accuracy than the DVSAT. Using police data on 234,454 incidents of intimate partner violence recorded between January 2016 and December 2018, we evaluated four predictive models of intimate partner re-victimisation:
• NRAP-all: a model with all 16 risk factors identified in the National Risk Assessment Principles (NRAP) developed by Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety (ANROWS);
• NRAP-10: a model with only the 10 high-risk factors identified by ANROWS in the NRAP;
• SAFVR: the Static Assessment of Family Violence Recidivism (SAFVR), developed by the New Zealand Police; and
• DVSAT-8: a model with the eight items from the NSW DVSAT that are most predictive of repeat victimisation.

Key findings

Of the four models, only the two NRAP models had acceptable predictive performance (i.e., with an Area under the Curve (AUC) above 0.7). The model with the highest AUC was the NRAP model that combined all 16 risk factors identified by ANROWS (with an average AUC of 0.732). When tested on unseen data, its out-of-sample AUC was similar, at 0.738. The simpler NRAP-10 model performed only slightly worse with an average AUC of 0.728.
Further analysis found that the best performing NRAP model could be simplified, with almost no loss in predictive performance. Of the 16 risk factors in the NRAP model, a simplified model using only the best five predictors delivered an out-of-sample AUC of 0.734.

(Crime and Justice Bulletin No. 244).    

Sydney: NSW Bureau of Crimes Statistics and Research, 2022. 27p.

By Adam Teperski and Stewart Boiteux

AIM To examine whether longer apprehended domestic violence orders (ADVO) are associated with changes in domestic violence (DV) offending and ADVO breaches. METHOD A dataset of 13,717 defendants who were placed on an ADVO after a DV incident between January 2016 and April 2018 was extracted from the NSW Bureau of Crime and Statistics and Research’s ADVO database. This included 10,820 defendants subject to a final 12-month order, and 2,897 defendants subject to a final 24-month order. We utilised an entropy balancing matching approach to ensure groups of defendants subjected to differing ADVO lengths were comparable and implemented an event study analysis to examine quarterly differences in offending outcomes in the three years after the start of the order. In doing so, we were able to examine relative differences in offending in the first 12 months (where both groups were subject to an ADVO), the second 12 months (where only the 24-month ADVO group were subject to an ADVO), and the third 12 months (where neither group were subject to an ADVO). RESULTS In the 12 to 24 month period, where ADVOs with a longer duration were active and shorter ADVOs were not, longer ADVOs were associated with increased breach offending and decreased DV offending. Specifically, in the 5th, 6th and 7th quarters after the beginning of a final order we observed 3.4 percentage points (p.p.), 4.1 p.p., and 2.3 p.p. increases in defendants breaching their ADVO, respectively. When considering baseline rates of breaching, this represents relative increases of 79% to 161%. In the 5th, 6th, and 7th quarters after the beginning of a finalised order, longer ADVOs were associated with respective 1.8 p.p., 2.0 p.p., and 3.1 p.p. decreases in DV offending, reflecting relative decreases in DV offending by 41% to 59%. We find no group differences in DV offending or breaches in the subsequent 12 months, when ADVOs for both groups had expired. While the study examined multiple factors related to both longer ADVO length and offending, we cannot exclude the possibility that unobserved factors may be influencing our results. CONCLUSION Relative to 12-month ADVOs, 24-month ADVOs were associated with an increase in the probability that an offender breaches the conditions of their ADVO, and a decrease in the probability that an offender commits a proven DV offence.
Crime and Justice Bulletin No. CJB261; no. 221
Sydney: NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, 2023. 34p.

By Chris Dyke, Carol Rivas, Karen Schucan Bird

This study, the first to examine parole decisions for perpetrators of domestic violence in England and Wales, examines how parole boards reach decisions through a thematic analysis of interviews with 20 Parole Board members, alongside logistic regressions of all 137 parole decisions about perpetrators in an 18-month period. In this sample, recommendations of professionals, especially psychologists, were by far the strongest predictor of a release decision. The nature of offending was also significant in predicting release. Size and composition of the panel may also affect decisions. More panel members, and longitudinal feedback, may encourage more reflective, considered decision making.

The Howard Journal of Crime and Justice,  22 January 2024

By  Timothy Cubitt and Anthony Morgan

Risk assessment is a growing feature of law enforcement and an important strategy for identifying high-risk individuals, places and problems. Prediction models must be developed in a transparent way, using robust methods and the best available data. But attention must also be given to implementation. In practice, the data available to law enforcement from police information systems can be limited in their completeness, quality and accessibility. Prediction models need to be tested in as close to real-world settings as possible, including using less than optimal data, before they can be implemented and used. In this paper we replicate a prediction model that was developed in New South Wales to predict high-harm offending among outlaw motorcycle gangs nationally and in other states. We find that, even with a limited pool of data from a national police information system, high-harm offending can be predicted with a relatively high degree of accuracy. However, it was not possible to reproduce the same prediction accuracy achieved in the original model. Model accuracy varied between jurisdictions, as did the power of different predictive factors, highlighting the importance of considering context. There are trade-offs in real-world applications of prediction models and consideration needs to be given to what data can be readily accessed by law enforcement agencies to identify targets for prioritisation.

Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology. 2024, 47pg

By Jonathan Goodhand, Patrick Meehan, Camilo Acero, and Jan Koehler

This research paper is the second in a three-part series analysing the nexus between paramilitaries, illicit economies and organised crime in borderland and frontier regions. This research challenges the idea that paramilitaries are symptomatic of state breakdown, flourishing in marginal spaces suffering from ‘governance deficits’; and that they can primarily be understood as apolitical, predatory self-enriching actors, driven by economic motives, and operating outside formal political systems.

In this research paper, a set of detailed case studies are presented that explore coercive brokerage in Afghanistan, Colombia and Myanmar that seek to address these ideas, drawing upon data and analysis generated by a four-year Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) project, Drugs & (Dis)order (https://drugs-disorder.soas.ac.uk), and other relevant research.

Birmingham, UK:  University of Birmingham. 2023, 65pg

By Kristina Amerhauser

Illicit financial flows (IFFs) are a serious concern in the Mekong region, which includes Cambodia, Lao People’s Democratic Republic (PDR), Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam. Facilitated by state-embedded actors, each year vast amounts of illicit proceeds are generated, moved and laundered across the region and beyond in offshore tax havens. This distorts the local economies; deprives the state of income needed for health, education and infrastructure; and deepens inequality. This paper is part of a comparative research project that tests and applies the ‘IFFs pyramid’, a new framework of analysis of IFFs proposed by Reitano (2022), in the context of the Mekong region. Based on a review of secondary literature, it provides an overview of financial flows, trade flows and informality – the three main means by which IFFs are enabled, moved and held according to the ‘IFFs pyramid’ – and discusses how IFFs manifest across the Mekong. It finds that: • There is widespread evidence that each flow is significant in the Mekong and that flows converge and intersect. Nevertheless, current responses to IFFs almost entirely focus on the formal financial system. • Porous borders and strong trade relationships, including with neighbouring China, offer abundant and diverse opportunities for trade-based money laundering (TBML). Lack of capacity to identify misclassified goods and low cross-border collaboration are key impediments to its response. • There are a large number of special economic zones (SEZs), some of which are treated as ‘lawless zones’ where national governments have no authority. This creates widespread opportunities for value to be extracted, under-reported and comingled with legitimate flows. They have also been linked to other illicit markets, such as drug trafficking, the illegal wildlife trade (IWT), human trafficking and financial crimes, and provide the space to generate and launder illicit proceeds in a multitude of ways. • The big informal economy, coupled with the large number of people who remain outside the formal financial system, limits the efficiency of regulatory and oversight instruments. • Political will to tackle IFFs in the Mekong appears to be limited, in large part due to the involvement of Chinese actors. In fact, some actors in charge of the response to IFFs seem to have created loopholes to their own benefit. State-embedded actors are part of the problem, both as a source of IFFs as well as by further enabling them. This research shows that the IFFs pyramid proposed by Reitano (2022) is a helpful tool for organising information related to IFFs in the Mekong and for improving understanding of the major negative impact and harms that IFFs exert on societies and economies of the region  

SOC ACE Research Paper No. 30. University of Birmingham. 2023, 32pg

By  James Porteous

This report examines human trafficking linked to organised crime groups involved in illegal betting and related criminal activity in four key regions in Southeast Asia. Research was primarily via desktop information gathering conducted in 2022/23, supplemented by the expertise and existing knowledge of the Mekong Club and the Asian Racing Federation Council on Anti-Illegal Betting and Related Financial Crime in human trafficking and illegal betting, respectively. Key findings are: • Tens of thousands of people are being held in modern slavery conditions to work in organised illegal betting and cyber-scam operations across Southeast Asia. • These operations, which are run by individuals with long histories of involvement in illegal betting and organised crime across Asia, are estimated to make at least USD 40 to 100 billion a year in illicit profits from such activity. • Some individuals are recruited on false job advertisements, have their passports removed and are kept in dormitories attached to fully contained casino compounds as forced labour to promote illegal betting websites and engage in industrial-scale cyber-fraud such as “pig butchering”, romance scams, and cryptocurrency Ponzi schemes. • Workers are typically not permitted to leave without paying large ransoms to their captors, and can be sold and traded between organised crime groups. Fines for breaking rules or failing to hit monetary targets are added to victims’ ransoms. • Reports on victim testimony and online video shows “staff” being beaten with iron bars, shocked with cattle prods, tied up, and subject to other forms of torture. Female victims have been forced into sex work for failing to meet targets. • The groups running such operations have been active in organising and promoting gambling across Asia since at least the 1990s. Because many of the core activities in this business (e.g., movement of money across borders, violent debt collection, bribery of local officials, provision of related “entertainment” such as narcotics and sex), are illicit, such operations have by necessity been closely associated with, or directly run by, individuals with organised crime backgrounds. • In the early 2000s, this business was supercharged by the development of online gambling (both casino games and sports betting), run directly out of existing casinos or related properties, which massively increased the target market, and has grown to be a trillion dollar illegal industry funding organised crime. • Attempts to profit from this by governments in Southeast Asia, typically by licensing operators for a fee, have led to the spread of such operations across the region and had major negative impacts, including widespread corruption. It has also concentrated operations in self-contained compounds and so-called special economic zones which local police are often unwilling or unable to enter or investigate. • Hundreds of thousands of workers are required to serve the industry in marketing, customer recruitment, funds transfers, tech support and related fields. • Pre-pandemic, demand for workers was usually satisfied by voluntary means, although an unknown percentage of “voluntary” arrivals were held in modern-slavery like conditions, and there were related human trafficking aspects such as trafficking of sex workers to serve the industry. • This began to change in 2018 as a result of China’s growing concern over cross-border illegal betting, and change was accelerated massively by travel restrictions due to the pandemic, which cut off the supply of workers. • At the same time, the organised criminal groups had a key business line – land-based casinos – essentially closed down because of travel restrictions. As a result, they greatly expanded and developed existing cyber-scam operations, leveraging their expertise and technology in areas such as social media marketing, customer recruitment and cryptocurrency, which were in place from their online illegal betting operations. • Now, as the pandemic recedes, the organised crime groups running these operations have, in effect, hugely increased their potential revenue by complementing illegal betting with cyber-scam operations of comparable scale. • The success of such operations has been an enormous financial boon to organised crime, for whom cyber scams and illegal betting are just two of many illicit business lines that include money laundering as a service, illicit wildlife trafficking and production and distribution of methamphetamine and heroin. • The vast profits from such operations have provided plentiful ammunition to corrupt local authorities, and the operations in this group are frequently protected by powerful politicians and/or armed militias. • Global attention on the issue has not eliminated this activity, just displaced it into even more vulnerable jurisdictions, leading some to fear the industry could lead to geopolitical instability.   

Hong Kong: Asian Racing Federation, 2023. 39p.

By Martin Purbrick  

The report provides an analysis of variable Betting Duty (tax) rates on racing and sports betting operators to assess the impact on legal markets of higher rates and the related impact on betting turnover in the illegal betting markets. The economic impact of excessive Betting Duty in the Internet age is to drive consumers to the illegal betting market.

  • The highest rate of Betting Duty noted is in Hong Kong, at 75% of GGR. • The lowest rate of Betting Duty noted is in South Africa, at 6% of GGR. • The median rate of Betting Duty noted is in France, at 37.7% of GGR. • The highest Betting Duty rate in Hong Kong exists with an estimated illegal market of USD 257 per head of population, with lessening illegal markets per head of population with correspondingly lower Betting Duty rates of USD 61 in Singapore (25% Betting Duty), USD 59 per head in South Africa (6.5%), USD30 in Australia (10% to 20%), and USD 11.44 in the USA (6.75% to 51%). • Betting Duty rates have an impact on the turnover in betting markets, causing customers to potentially move from legal (licensed) to illegal (unlicensed) betting channels. • Higher Betting Duty rates lead to an increased theoretical margin to betting odds (which betting operators build in to ensure a profit margin), consequent increases to the takeout rate of the operator, increased prices for the customer, and inevitably drive customers to illegal betting markets where odds are better value because of no take out rate. • Illegal betting operators pay no Betting Duty or any other taxes and hence have no theoretical margin relating to taxation costs. There is hence a permanent price differential between the legal and illegal betting markets, with illegal markets consequently offering better odds (prices) to consumers. Betting customers, like the consumers of most products, are price sensitive and all things being equal prefer a cheaper betting product. • Higher Betting Duty rates also have increasingly less impact on consumer protection (when intended to discourage betting and gambling in society) as raising rates has the impact of migrating customers from the more expensive legal to the less expensive illegal betting market.  Government policy makers and gambling regulators should seek a commercially reasonable and stable Betting Duty rate that provides a balance between channelling gambling demand to the legal betting sector and allowing licensed betting operators to effectively compete with the illegal market.  
Hong Kong: Asian Racing Federation Council on Anti-Illegal Betting & Related Financial Crime, 2023. 30p.

By David Pérez Esparza

This thesis aims to explain why, against the background of a fairly global crime drop, violence and crime increased in Mexico in the mid-2000s. Since most classical hypotheses from criminological research are unable to account satisfactorily for these trends, this study tests the explanatory power of a situational hypothesis as the main independent variable (i.e. the role of opportunity). In particular, this involves testing whether the rise in violence can be explained by an increase in the availability of illegal weapons in Mexico resulting from policy changes and rises in gun production in the bordering U.S. To conduct this study, the thesis develops and implements an ad hoc analytic strategy (composed of six steps) that helps to examine each gun market (i.e. pistols, revolvers, rifles, and shotguns) both in the supply (U.S.) and in the illegal demand for firearms (Mexico). Following this market approach, the study finds that patterns of gun production in the U.S. temporally and spatially coincide with the patterns of gun confiscation (and violent crime) in Mexico. More specifically, analyses suggest that changes in illegal gun availability (across time and space) provide a better explanation for the observed difference in state-level homicide in Mexico than traditional hypotheses. The thesis presents additional analyses in favour of the situational hypothesis (through triangulation) and reports the findings of novel interviews with law enforcement officers with experience on gun trafficking in the U.S.-Mexico context. The study concludes by reviewing the key findings concerning the illicit markets between Mexico and the U.S., their theoretical and policy implications, as well as possible avenues for future research . 

UCL (University College London). , 2019. 389p.  

By Caroline Delgado ,  Farah Hegazi and Anniek Barnhoorn

  The Latin American Regional Working Group was initiated by the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) Colombia office and the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) in 2022. The working group comprises 20 climate and environmental experts from 10 Latin American countries. This report presents the collective perspective of the working group on the pressing issues surrounding climate and environmental justice, as well as food security, that affect the region as a whole, but whose impact is most strongly felt at the local level. The report is accompanied by a brief interview series of 4 working group members, addressing the challenges of environmental security in the region from their individual perspectives.  Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) is a region of unparalleled ecological diversity, encompassing tropical rainforests, arid deserts, and expansive coastlines, making it particularly susceptible to the far-reaching impacts of climate change and environmental degradation. Beyond its diverse and unique natural landscapes, Latin America faces a complex web of climatic and environmental challenges that transcend national borders. From the melting glaciers of the Andes Mountains, which threaten water security for millions, to deforestation in the Amazon rainforest, which jeopardizes biodiversity and global carbon sequestration, the region grapples with issues that have far-reaching implications for both local communities and the international community. Projections for how climate change will affect Latin America indicate that temperatures are expected to increase across the region and rainfall patterns are expected to change. Extreme events such as droughts and floods are also predicted to increase in frequency and intensity. In a region heavily dependent on agriculture, changes to temperature and precipitation patterns will have negative implications for food production and security. Crop yields are expected to decrease, increas ing food insecurity and malnutrition in the region. Furthermore, the projected degradation of forests from droughts and temperature increases is expected to reduce the availability of forest products. At the same time, Latin America is expected to meet part of the growing global demand for food, livestock and timber, which risks exacerbating environmental degradation linked to inadequate land management practices associated with the expansion of large-scale agriculture. Of particular concern is the way climate and environmental challenges intersect with social inequalities and political instability. This region endures various forms of violence, from armed conflicts to rampant criminal violence on par with armed conflicts. The region stands out as one of the world’s most violent. According to UNODC figures from 2023, LAC accounts for 29% of global homicides, in a region with 8% of the world’s population. The region is home to 8 of the 10 most homicidal countries and 15 of the most lethal countries. Seven of the top 10 cities by homicide rate are in LAC.  LAC is also the region with the highest number of environmental conflicts and a hotspot for environmental crime. Many of these conflicts are linked to the legal and illegal extraction of natural resources, which often intersects with other criminal economies, such as drug trafficking, human trafficking, and contraband smuggling. A multitude of nonstate armed groups, including gangs, cartels, smuggling networks, militias, and vigilante groups, are among the main perpetrators of this violence. According to some sources, mining companies at times voluntarily cooperate with illegal armed groups, who in exchange provide security against other groups. Consequently, Latin America is one of the most dangerous regions for environmental defenders, with 75 percent of all global assassinations of human rights advocates that occurred between 2015 and 2019 taking place in LAC.  In 2022, 20 percent of assassinations of human rights defenders occurred in the Amazon region.9 Communities and environmental defenders in areas where extractive activities take place frequently have been subjected to gross human rights violations, with such attacks on the rise across LAC. In addition to killings, death threats, arbitrary arrests, sexual assaults, militarized policing, judicial harassment, intimidation, beatings, and other forms of violence are used to silence the complaints of local communities and thwart their attempts to use legal means of protest against extractive projects. Environmental defenders have also been repressed and criminalized by the governments that should be protecting them. Criminal violence, including environmental crime, is largely concentrated in rural areas with poor state presence and strong illicit economies and in the poor neighbourhoods of cities. As such, the main victims of violence are the socio-economically poor and disadvantaged, including ethnic minorities such as indigenous and afro-descendant populations, gender minorities, women, and subsistence farmers. Around half of all homicide victims are between 15 and 29 years old. Violence against social leaders, including environmental and human rights defenders, also tends to disproportionately affect low-income people and ethnic minorities. Furthermore, current extractive violence is largely fed by the prejudices and legacy of earlier racial and class conflicts.....

Stockholm, SIPRI, 2024. and Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) Calle 71 nº 11-90 | Bogotá-Colombia 2024. 25p.

By Oluwaseun Kugbayi and Adeleke Adegbami

Many towns and villages in Nigeria have been experiencing bandits activities, vis-à-vis kidnapping, armed robbery, murder, rape, cattle-rustling, and violent actions in recent years. These activities have continued to escalate despite the presence of security agencies such as – the Nigerian Army, the Nigerian Navy, the Nigerian Air Force, the Nigerian Police, the State Security Service, the National Intelligence Agency, and the Defence Intelligence among others. The unabated bandits' activities in part of the country depict a picture of ungoverned spaces, which suggests that there are territories that are experiencing a vacuum of political order. The study for that reason examines the connections between banditry and the ungoverned spaces, as well as, analyses the effects of bandits' activities on Nigeria and Nigerians. Using the discourse analysis that relies on secondary sources, the paper argues that the inability to govern some territories adequately in Nigeria has created a vacuum for bandits’ activities to thrive.
Law Research Review Quarterly, (4), 399-418. https://doi.org/10.15294/lrrq.v9i4.71054

By Sara Mariella Lambertini

The Orinoco Mining Arc (OMA) is in the south of Venezuela, a region rich in minerals and natural resources with a particular social, economic, and security dynamic. Due to its remoteness and difficult access, different actors have found a privileged space to conduct criminal activities. Venezuela has ratified the international conventions against transnational organized crime, trafficking in persons, and illicit drug trafficking. It also has national legislation criminalizing all these illicit activities. However, factors such as corruption and government inefficiency have led to impunity and a lack of implementation of legislation. Moreover, the complex social and economic situation in the country has forced part of the population to yield to the pressure of criminal groups operating in the mining sector. The research exposes the consolidation of organized crime groups in the OMA and their control of illicit activities in the area, such as illegal mining, human trafficking, and drug trafficking, among others. A documentary investigation is conducted to review the reports prepared by international organizations, academic institutions, and non-governmental organizations on Venezuela, as well as the Venezuelan legal framework and the official information issued by national authorities. The results indicate that organized crime has taken root in the OMA, generating an overlap between national and foreign actors. These actors lead the perpetration of a variety of illegal activities thanks to a criminal network, state corruption, and the vulnerability of the region’s inhabitants.

Journal of Illicit Economies and Development, 5 (1). 22 - 33. ISSN 2516-7227

By Abel Basutu, Jane Marie Ogola Ongolo

African countries have been experiencing an upsurge in public health problems as a result of the increased availability and use of psychoactive substances trafficked into the continent and also produced locally. However, mounting effective policy and programme interventions have been impeded by a lack of reliable data on various aspects of drug use and the harms associated with drugs. To address this challenge, the African Union started an ambitious programme aimed at improving the capacity of African Union member states to respond effectively to drug demand reduction challenges through strengthening research and data collection capabilities. The programme entails the establishment and operationalisation of a continent-wide drug surveillance sentinel with a public health orientation for the systematic collection and dissemination of comparable data on drug use and related problems in Africa. A key finding of the surveillance system, which draws data from national networks, has been the increase in the number of young drug users in the context of inadequate comprehensive treatment and care services, which threatens harnessing the continent’s demographic dividend. Sprouting evidence on drug use patterns and trends has aided shifts in policies and programmes towards addressing drug addictions and related health challenges at the national level.

Journal of Illicit Economies and Development, 5(3): pp. 60–69.2024.