By Jeremy McDermott,  Steven Dudley

“Connections between European and Latin American criminal networks have surged in recent years, with drugs, gold, and human trafficking proving particularly lucrative in the European market.

The number of European citizens linked to criminal networks arrested in Latin America has increased significantly, especially in Colombia, Peru, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, and Argentina. The strengthening alliance between Latin American and European crime groups now poses a global threat.

Today’s Latin America’s major criminal networks, unlike the cartels of the 1980s, operate in a world of subcontracting. Groups, or nodes in the network, often specialize in specific roles or stages of the supply chain. If a node is targeted by law enforcement, the network can quickly adjust and reconfigure itself, ensuring efficiency and the uninterrupted flow of criminal commodities.

These networks pose a serious threat to the rule of law, subverting it by establishing social norms through violence to exercise control with different forms of criminal governance. In Latin America and the Caribbean, they pose the single biggest threat to democracy in the region, using corruption to penetrate the state, and violence where bribery fails. This means it is the primary motor for human rights abuses and homicides. Corruption, like cancer, is spreading through state institutions in many nations of the region. Additionally, these networks harm economic stability development, distorting local economies, deterring foreign investment and affecting international financing.

Studying these networks is crucial to understanding the flow of illicit goods from Latin America to Europe, and essential to crafting effective strategies to combat these structures. After an analysis of different variables such as their criminal economies, geographical distribution or state response, EL PACCTO 2.0 and InSight Crime, with the support of the European Multidisciplinary Platform Against Criminal Threats (EMPACT), particularly within the Operational Action 8.3, of the High Risk Criminal Networks EMPACT, have ranked the 28 most active or relevant high-risk criminal networks in Latin America and the Caribbean, identifying key factors about their operations that reveal potential opportunities for combating organized crime in the region. This work has direct implications for both Latin America and Europe.

The list ranges from criminal networks with thousands of members to small brokers or gangs operating in Latin American countries, Caribbean islands or in Central America. In addition, the current report has sought to identify the connections or influence that high-risk criminal networks may have in different countries. This has led to the creation of a specific file for each criminal network with a specific individual map. Likewise, an aggregate map of all the information on the 28 criminal networks has been designed to provide a global overview.”

Washington, DC: Insight Crime, 2025. 114p

By Nicholas Barnes

Over the last decade, organized criminal violence has reached unprecedented levels and has caused as much violent death globally as direct armed conflict. Nonetheless, the study of organized crime in political science remains limited because these organizations and their violence are not viewed as political. Building on recent innovations in the study of armed conflict, I argue that organized criminal violence should no longer be segregated from related forms of organized violence and incorporated within the political violence literature. While criminal organizations do not seek to replace or break away from the state, they have increasingly engaged in the politics of the state through the accumulation of the means of violence itself. Like other non-state armed groups, they have developed variously collaborative and competitive relationships with the state that have produced heightened levels of violence in many contexts and allowed these organizations to gather significant political authority. I propose a simple conceptual typology for incorporating the study of these organizations into the political violence literature and suggest several areas of future inquiry that will illuminate the relationship between violence and politics more generally.

Perspectives on Politics. 2017;15(4):967-987.

By Kate Bryan, Rachel Schmidt, and Ashley Neufeld, with support from Nikki Miguel and Maura McNamara.

Michigan’s sentencing structure remains among the most restrictive in the nation. While many states have adopted policies that allow earned-time credits and provide opportunities for early release or resentencing, Michigan requires individuals to serve 100 percent of their minimum sentence before parole eligibility. While recent reforms, such as record clearing, medical parole, and limits to pretrial detention, have advanced progress to the state’s system, they do not target the key challenge of long lengths of stay. Today, more than 65 percent of the state’s prison population is serving a sentence of ten years or more, with limited opportunity for review or reduction. As the prison population rises for the first time in a decade, coupled with the state’s mounting budget pressures, a comprehensive examination of the state’s length of stay challenges is necessary. The goal of this brief is to serve as a baseline to begin that deeper examination. The Crime and Justice Institute, supported by Arnold Ventures, analyzed Michigan’s publicly available prison population data to understand the key trends regarding length of stay. Key findings include: Population growth: The prison population is growing after decades of decline, up 3% since 2021, with more individuals receiving additional sentences while already incarcerated. Sentences are getting longer: Average minimum terms rose 30% in the past decade, from 9.3 years (2014) to 12 years (2023). Drug offenses saw sharpest increases: Average minimum terms for drug offenses grew 33% over  the past decade. Sentencing practices exceeding statutory maximums: Data show minimum terms beyond statutory maximums for top offenses indicating the impacts of habitual offender enhancements, consecutive sentences, and additional sentencing stacking. With the urgency of a now rising population, the reinstated Sentencing Commission provides a renewed opportunity for the state to review sentencing practices. As Michigan prepares for leadership changes in 2026, the state has an opportunity to tackle its most pressing criminal justice challenge. To advance reform, Michigan must: Leverage the Sentencing Commission to produce data-driven recommendations and introduce corresponding legislation. Use corrections data to identify policies contributing to long stays, especially those related to enhancements, habitual offenders, and additional sentences imposed on already incarcerated individuals. Analyze the fiscal impact of long sentences considering recent budget volatility and an aging prison population. Reintroduce policies to reduce length of stay early in the 2026 session, backed by fiscal and public safety data.

Boston: Crime and Justice Institute, 2026. 17p.

By New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services Justice Lab

This report describes an analysis of racial and ethnic disparities in felony case processing in New York State at three processing points: arrests made in 2019, disposition of those arrests, and prison sentences imposed after convictions resulting from those arrests. 2019 was chosen as the benchmark because arrests made that year occurred prior to the implementation of landmark changes to the state’s bail, and evidence and information disclosure (discovery) laws. As a result, this analysis provides an overview of how the system functioned prior to those reforms and before the full impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, which disrupted all facets of the state’s criminal justice system.

Albany: New York State, Division of Criminal Justice Services Justice Lab.. 2025. 22p.

By Alon Steinberg and Amanda Frugoli 

Sudden and unexpected arrest-related deaths are deeply tragic and have generated widespread concern among the public, medical professionals, and law enforcement agencies. One mechanism that has garnered considerable attention is the use of prone restraint, wherein a subject is placed face-down and controlled in this position. The safety and risks of this technique remain subjects of debate within both scientific literature and legal settings. Supporters of prone restraint’s safety frequently cite prospective epidemiologic studies that report no fatalities associated with its use. However, these studies typically involve small cohorts and are conducted over limited timeframes, potentially underestimating rare but serious outcomes. In contrast, retrospective analyses, which assess larger populations over extended periods, have identified multiple cases of fatal outcomes linked to prone restraint. Notably, some of the most comprehensive data on these fatalities come from investigative journalism, which has uncovered patterns and prevalence rates not fully captured in academic or institutional studies. Based on available evidence, we estimate the mortality rate with use of in-custody prone restraint is at approximately 1 per 4.4 million individuals per year, or 0.023 per 100,000 population annually. These findings underscore the need for more rigorous, large-scale, and transparent epidemiological studies to better inform public policy, law enforcement practices, and clinical guidelines. The potential lethality of prone restraint must be recognized, and its use re-evaluated in light of both fatal risk and ethical responsibility.

By Victor Weedn , Alon Steinberg , Pete Speth 

We postulate that most atraumatic deaths during police restraint of subjects in the prone position are due to prone restraint cardiac arrest (PRCA), rather than from restraint asphyxia or a stress‐induced cardiac condition, such as excited delirium. The prone position restricts ventilation and diminishes pulmonary perfusion. In the setting of a police encounter, metabolic demand will be high from anxiety, stress, excitement, physical struggle, and/or stimulant drugs, leading to metabolic acidosis and requiring significant hyperventilation. Although oxygen levels may be maintained, prolonged restraint in the prone position may result in an inability to adequately blow off CO2, causing blood pCO2 levels to rise rapidly. The uncompensated metabolic acidosis (low pH) will eventually result in loss of myocyte contractility. The initial electrocardiogram rhythm will generally be either pulseless electrical activity (PEA) or asystole, indicating a noncardiac etiology, more consistent with PRCA and inconsistent with a primary role of any underlying cardiac pathology or stress‐induced cardiac etiology. We point to two animal models: in one model rats unable to breathe deeply due to an external restraint die when their metabolic demand is increased, and in the other model, pressure on the chest of rats results in decreased venous return and cardiac arrest rather than death from asphyxia. We present two cases of subjects restrained in the prone position who went into cardiac arrest and had low pHs and initial PEA cardiac rhythms. Our cases demonstrate the danger of prone restraint and serve as examples of PRCA.