By Diane E. Davis and Tina Hilgers

Using a focus on the ways that Covid-19 has impacted everyday life in urban Latin America, this article examines the shifting activities of organized criminal groups in the context of a global pandemic. Using grounded ethnographic fieldwork drawn from Brazil, it asks whether a health crisis with direct life and death consequences has empowered illicit actors, and by so doing changed long-standing relationships between illicit actors and citizens on one hand, and/or illicit actors and local authorities on the other. Its larger aim is to understand whether and how the global pandemic has impacted governance by producing new scalar and sovereignty tensions between state and non-state actors at the scale of the city, and with what implications for the legitimacy of national authorities and democratic governance more generally.

Journal of Illicit Economies and Development, 4(3), pp. 241–256, 2022. DOI: https:// doi.org/10.31389/jied.134

By Michael Friedrich and Sheila McCarthy

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit New York in March 2020, it forced drug courts across the state to hear cases remotely using teleservices, a practice that has continued. The pandemic also demonstrated that many daily drug court operations—appearances, case management, graduation ceremonies—could be conducted virtually. 

As part of the Bureau of Justice Assistance’s Comprehensive Opioid, Stimulant, and Substance Abuse Program (COSSAP), this report details a three-year project to implement the Opioid Reduction Teleservices Program, conducted by the Center for Court Innovation, in partnership with the New York State Unified Court System and the New York State Office of Addiction Services and Supports (OASAS). The goals were fourfold: (1) to expand access to evidence-based interventions at OASAS-licensed treatment facilities; (2) to establish secure video connections at the treatment facilities so that people in residential programs can appear remotely for court hearings and receive evidence-based judicial monitoring; (3) to remote link participants to medical professionals for evaluation and access to medication for opioid use disorder (MOUD); and (4) to educate the field about technology-based solutions to the opioid epidemic.

The report offers profiles of several project partners and discusses outcomes, lessons learned, measures toward sustainability, and recommendations for future COSSAP projects.

New York:  Center for Justice Innovation, 2022. 22p.