By Ahilan Arulanantham

When can the government imprison people without trial?  That question lurks beneath many important civil rights issues of our time, from the federal government’s plans to jail and deport millions of non-citizens under the immigration laws, to the indefinite detention of people convicted of sex offenses, to the confinement of unhoused people in major American cities, and, most recently, the plan to summarily jail and deport “alien enemies” on national security grounds.  All of these involve forms of preventive detention—that is, imprisonment without trial to protect the public.

Under current doctrine, the legality of preventive detention schemes is governed by a substantive due process framework that requires courts to balance society’s interest in safety against the detained individual’s interest in liberty.  Although litigators, judges, and scholars often disagree about how to apply that framework, they have all generally assumed that it does apply.

But that framework is a modern invention.  Prior to World War II, the law took a very different approach to evaluating imprisonment without trial: the state could not preventively detain to stop conduct that could be punished under criminal law.  That framework reflected a basic normative constraint—that preventive detention should not be used to circumvent the criminal legal system.  If the conduct the state wanted to stop could be punished, the state was required to use the criminal law, rather than displacing it with a bespoke regime lacking the criminal law’s procedural and substantive protections.

That bedrock constraint began to erode during the Japanese American mass incarceration of World War II, and then disappeared over the next several decades as the Supreme Court upheld the preventive detention of non-citizen Communist Party members and then the pretrial preventive detention of people charged with federal crimes.  Since then, state power to imprison people outside the criminal legal system has grown rapidly in new ways, as the due process balancing framework has proven malleable enough to legitimate nearly every preventive detention scheme that governments have created.  As the federal government’s recent invocation of the “Alien Enemies” Act illustrates, more may soon be on the way.

In this Article, I uncover the origins of the common law doctrinal framework governing preventive detention, and then tell the story of its downfall, describing how today’s due process balancing framework took its place.  I then draw lessons from that doctrinal history for our present moment, as scholars, policymakers, litigators, and courts seek to chart the limits of preventive detention authority in the face of new demands for expanded state power.

73 UCLA L. Rev. ___ (forthcoming), UCLA School of Law, Public Law Research Paper No. 26-07

By Raoul Sumo Tayo

This report explores current and emerging maritime piracy trends and the associated flow of criminal activities in Cameroon.

Maritime piracy has become one of the most urgent security issues in the Gulf of Guinea, which is currently the second-most affected region worldwide. Cameroon’s coastline is at the centre of these dynamics, with attacks, shifting routes and an expanding set of criminal activities that both accompany and sustain piracy. Understanding these trends is essential to analysing how violence is maintained at sea, in mangrove areas and on land.

This report provides an overview of current and emerging patterns of maritime piracy and the cohabitant flows that reinforce it. It tracks the evolution of incidents on and off the Cameroonian coast, describing the methods used by individuals commonly referred to as pirates, including timing of attacks, routes, targets and operational tactics. While vessel boardings, attempted attacks, hijackings and kidnappings have generally decreased, illegal activities that generate alternative income have increased, particularly hostage-taking, extortion and illegal taxation. These criminal flows sustain pirate economies and strengthen their resilience when groups are not directly involved in kidnapping-for-ransom operations.

PretoriaL  Institute for Security Studies, 2025. 42p.

By FATF/OECD - GAFILAT 

This report summarises the AML/CFT measures in place in Brazil as at the date of the on-site visit, 13-31 March 2023. It analyses the level of compliance with the FATF 40 Recommendations and the level of effectiveness of Brazil’s AML/CFT system, and provides recommendations on how the system could be strengthened. Key Findings a) Brazil has a strong domestic coordination mechanism to address risks from money laundering, ENCCLA. Brazil has built a legal and structural framework largely enabling competent authorities to prevent and combat ML. More recently, Brazil has also improved its framework to fight terrorist financing (TF) by passing legislation criminalising the offence and enabling implementation of targeted financial sanctions (TFS). Informed by the longstanding coordination within ENCCLA and a National Risk Assessment conducted in 2021, authorities have shared and robust understanding of national ML threats, namely, corruption, drug trafficking and organised crime, environmental crimes, and tax crimes. There is a precise understanding of the ML risks and vulnerabilities linked to most threats— including informal and illicit value transfers, misuse of cash, and front companies—however, there is a lack of depth in the understanding of financial flows linked to environmental crimes. b) Through ENCCLA, since 2003, Brazil has developed and refined policies to tackle many of its higher ML risks, particularly those stemming from corruption. Brazil has taken many steps to address other higher risk areas, however, these actions are taken without longer-term, comprehensive strategies, which results in occasional disjointed efforts and misalignment of objectives and priorities (such as ML from environmental crimes where interagency cooperation is growing but limited, and where some keyauthorities lack sufficient resources). At times, structural issues inhibit effective coordination in combatting ML/TF, including cooperation between police and prosecution offices and resources to handle the complex criminal justice system. In addition, the tax authority (RFB) has a central role in the AML/CFT system given that it controls access to many pieces of relevant information, but legal obstacles frustrate its full ability to assist other authorities in tackling ML/TF and its own AML/CFT activities are not adequately prioritised. c) Brazil has successfully prosecuted high-end cases of ML, including from corruption, reflecting the capacity to conduct financial investigations and the development of supportive institutional structures. Despite important successes, there is a mismatch between the investigative input and the results seen in terms of prosecutions and convictions. Structural issues have a major impact. Among other things, ML proceedings take too long due to appeals and when convictions are obtained, sometimes a decade or more after charges, and the sanctioning regime needs major improvements. Criminal assets are generally identified and temporarily seized, and in some major cases Brazil was able to recuperate large sums of criminal money; however, there was not sufficient evidence of final confiscation and asset recovery is mainly accomplished through agreements. While there is highlevel commitment to fighting ML/TF, the resources available to competent authorities are largely insufficient, particularly those of COAF and prosecutors. Lack of resources hinders the production of deeper financial intelligence to identify a larger number of complex ML schemes and frustrate efforts to trace criminal financial networks. d) Brazil is committed to fighting terrorism and terrorist financing and has an improving understanding of its TF risks including those stemming from farright extremism. While it has expertise to investigate TF activity, the legal framework in place and the corresponding view of the authorities hinder successful prosecutions. The authorities are not always well coordinated to identify, prosecute, or prevent TF. The framework to implement targeted financial sanctions without delay for TF and proliferation financing is in place, although it remains largely untested at the time of the onsite visit as no designations had been made by Brazil and no funds or assets were frozen. Sanctions implementation by the private sector is improving particularly in the financial sector, thanks to the supervisory activity of the Central Bank of Brazil (BCB), and more slowly in other sectors. There is a lack of interagency coordination on issues related to the financing of proliferation and guidance is needed for the private sector. NPOs are not yet subject to risk-based measures specifically to prevent TF. e) As a major regional and global economy, Brazil has a large and diverse universe of financial and non-financial sectors with increasing sophistication. BCB is the key supervisor for the most material financial institutions and its long-standing risk-based activities have contributed to significantly improve the ability of financial institutions to detect and prevent ML and TF, particularly the largest ones. With few exceptions, other supervisors have not been able yet to take sufficient measures to ensure sufficient implementation of the AML/CFT framework. At the time of the on-site visit, some activities remained unregulated, notably those of lawyers and virtual asset service providers, leaving serious vulnerabilities. f) The misuse of companies is a feature in many ML schemes and Brazil has been able to detect abusers in many cases by using the information available through REDESIM to map out the company structure. Brazil has also created a requirement for companies to provide beneficial ownership (BO) information to RFB, however, this database is largely unpopulated. Moreover, declaratory BO information is considered by law to be “tax secret,” which means that LEAs need to request a court order to obtain it and that COAF and other administrative authorities (including those involved in the fight against corruption) cannot access it for their analysis. g) Brazil generally cooperates well in ML/TF areas with its international partners. As many ML schemes include the sending of money abroad, LEAs and COAF are very proactive in seeking assistance to obtain information and restrain criminal assets. As a major financial centre, Brazil also receives requests for cooperation from abroad, and competent authorities provide high quality assistance, with soon-site visit, some activities remained unregulated, notably those of lawyers and virtual asset service providers, leaving serious vulnerabilities. f) The misuse of companies is a feature in many ML schemes and Brazil has been able to detect abusers in many cases by using the information available through REDESIM to map out the company structure. Brazil has also created a requirement for companies to provide beneficial ownership (BO) information to RFB, however, this database is largely unpopulated. Moreover, declaratory BO information is considered by law to be “tax secret,” which means that LEAs need to request a court order to obtain it and that COAF and other administrative authorities (including those involved in the fight against corruption) cannot access it for their analysis. g) Brazil generally cooperates well in ML/TF areas with its international partners. As many ML schemes include the sending of money abroad, LEAs and COAF are very proactive in seeking assistance to obtain information and restrain criminal assets. As a major financial centre, Brazil also receives requests for cooperation from abroad, and competent authorities provide high quality assistance, with so on-site visit, some activities remained unregulated, notably those of lawyers and virtual asset service providers, leaving serious vulnerabilities. f) The misuse of companies is a feature in many ML schemes and Brazil has been able to detect abusers in many cases by using the information available through REDESIM to map out the company structure. Brazil has also created a requirement for companies to provide beneficial ownership (BO) information to RFB, however, this database is largely unpopulated. Moreover, declaratory BO information is considered by law to be “tax secret,” which means that LEAs need to request a court order to obtain it and that COAF and other administrative authorities (including those involved in the fight against corruption) cannot access it for their analysis. g) Brazil generally cooperates well in ML/TF areas with its international partners. As many ML schemes include the sending of money abroad, LEAs and COAF are very proactive in seeking assistance to obtain information and restrain criminal assets. As a major financial centre, Brazil also receives requests for cooperation from abroad, and competent authorities provide high quality assistance, with some improvements needed in extradition and the speed of responses.

Paris, FATF, 2023. 354p.

By Nazgol Ghandnoosh, Bobby Boxerman and Celeste Barry
Prior criminal records account for a large share of already lengthy prison sentences, often adding years or even decades to sentences, without evidence of community safety benefits.



What’s new? Recruitment of children to fight in armed and criminal groups has boomed across Colombia over the last decade, with hundreds of minors lured into joining violent groups on false promises of wealth, status and protection. This war crime disproportionately affects Colombia’s ethnic communities and those who live in conflict zones.

Why does it matter? Armed groups rely on minors to maintain territorial control. Children carry out high-risk tasks, suffer abuse, and are punished with death if caught escaping. Recruitment shatters communities’ ability to resist armed groups because locals fear their own family members will be the targets of reprisals if they speak out.

What should be done? Colombia should act promptly to identify children at risk, boost protection at schools (where recruitment often happens) and strengthen its criminal investigations into the perpetrators. Foreign donors should support police efforts to track recruiters and help strengthen communities’ ability to prevent the crime from taking place.

International Crisis Group, 2026, 28p.

By Alice Fereday

Chad’s role as a departure and transit country for northbound migration to North Africa and Europe is often overlooked, particularly in comparison to neighbouring Niger and Sudan. However, the country’s position at the crossroads of routes connecting central and eastern Africa to Libya and Niger makes it a significant transit corridor for regional migration, and its role as a bastion of relative stability in an increasingly volatile region has further increased its importance in recent years. Since 2023, the conflict in Sudan and a major influx of refugees into Chad have further shaped these mobility dynamics, making the country a major destination and transit point for Sudanese refugee displacement in the region. At the same time, Chad is navigating a fractious and contested political transition. Political violence escalated in 2024 and remains an important source of tension and political instability. The combination of these complex internal and regional dynamics, and their impact on human smuggling dynamics, make Chad a key country to monitor. A major component of human smuggling dynamics in Chad is internal movements to the country’s northern goldfields. These mobility patterns have typically been shaped by internal factors, including political instability, rebel activity and gold mining.1 This changed in 2023 with the outbreak of the conflict in Sudan and the massive influx of refugees and returnees into eastern Chad. Though northbound movements were temporarily hindered by this shift, which resulted in a relative decrease in demand for northbound travel from eastern Chad in the early months of the conflict, by the end of 2023 human smuggling had picked up again as many Sudanese began leaving refugee camps with the intention of travelling to northern Chad, Libya, Niger and Tunisia, often with the help of smugglers.2 In 2024, these movements escalated further and human smuggling between eastern and northern Chad saw significant growth, due in large part to increasing demand among Sudanese refugees for travel to northern Chad and Libya. However, the movement of Sudanese refugees through Chad also involved travel to Niger via N’Djamena or northern Chad. Northbound movements in Chad were also driven by increasing demand for travel to the Kouri Bougoudi goldfield. The flow of prospective gold miners, which began after the goldfield reopened at the end of 2022, was also facilitated by decreased restrictions on northbound travel as risks of rebel incursions in northern Chad remained contained in 2024. This encouraged the activities of passeurs, who catered to increasing demand for northbound travel, particularly from eastern Chad.Overall, Chad recorded progressively increasing movement levels in 2024 compared to previous years, presaging its emergence as an important space to watch for migrant and refugee movement, and associated protection risks. This is the latest GI-TOC monitoring report on human smuggling in Chad. It builds on a series of annual reports – issued since 2019 – which track the evolution of human smuggling in Chad and the political, security and economic dynamics that influence it

By The Group of Human Rights Experts on Nicaragua

A. Background 1. Pursuant to its resolution 49/3, the Human Rights Council established the Group of Human Rights Experts on Nicaragua, to investigate alleged human rights violations and abuses committed in Nicaragua since April 2018 and provide guidance on justice and accountability. In its resolution 52/2, the Council extended the mandate of the Group for a period of two years. The Group is composed of Jan-Michael Simon (Chair), Ariela Peralta Distéfano and Reed Brody. 2. The Group has previously concluded that there were reasonable grounds to believe that, since April 2018, State and non-State actors had committed serious human rights violations and abuses against an ever-growing range of real or perceived opponents and their relatives in a systematic and widespread manner. 1 The Group determined that some of those violations constituted, prima facie, the crimes against humanity of murder, imprisonment, torture, including rape and other forms of sexual violence of comparable gravity, deportation and persecution. 3. The present conference room paper, which complements the report submitted to the Human Rights Council (A/HRC/58/26), contains the detailed findings of the Group of Experts on the structure of the repressive State, chains of command and State and individual responsibilities in relation to the main patterns of violations and abuses documented since the beginning of its mandate. Ten functional diagrams illustrating the de jure and de facto connections between different State and non-State entities are available on the Group’s web page. 2 4. The present document identifies individuals whom the Group of Experts has reasonable grounds to believe are responsible for violations, abuses and crimes. A list of these names was sent to the Government of Nicaragua to give the identified individuals an opportunity to respond to the allegations made against them. The Group recalls that while the threshold of "reasonable grounds to believe" is lower than that required to establish responsibility in criminal proceedings, it is sufficient to justify the initiation of investigations (see section I(C)(3) below). While that threshold does not preclude the identification in the present conference room paper of possible individual responsibilities, determinations about individual criminal responsibility can be made only by competent judicial authorities with full respect for the right to a fair trial of the accused. 5. Despite the Council's calls upon the Government of Nicaragua to cooperate fully with the Group, including by granting it unfettered access to the whole country, the Government continues to refuse to engage with the Group. Since the beginning of its mandate, the Group has sent 17 unanswered letters to the Nicaraguan authorities requesting information. 3 On 27 February 2025, the Government of Nicaragua announced its withdrawal from the Human Rights Council and all its subsidiary mechanisms. 4 6. On 26 March 2025, the Human Rights Council decided to postpone consideration of the adoption of the outcome document of the Universal Periodic Review of Nicaragua, fourth cycle, scheduled for the 58th session of the Human Rights Council. This decision was taken as Nicaragua's positions on the recommendations received on 13 November 2024 during the Review were not received. The Human Rights Council decided to call on the Government of Review were not received. The Human Rights Council decided to call on the Government of Nicaragua to resume its cooperation and to schedule the consideration of the outcome document of the Universal Periodic Review at its 60th session.5 7. Despite the lack of cooperation and elevated security risks for victims, witnesses and others providing information, the Group was able to gather, analyse and corroborate the information and evidence necessary to establish the facts of, and prima facie responsibility for,the serious violations, abuses and crimes described in the present conference room paper.

By Briana A. Scott, Sarah M. Stilwell, Zaida V. Pearson, Marc A. Zimmerman

Students of color are disciplined for behavioral infractions at higher rates than white students in K-12 schools in the USA. The consequences of racism in K-12 schools include mental health problems, school dropout, and disproportionate disciplinary practices, leading to the school-to-prison pipeline. Many school personnel implement interventions to address student behavior rather than racism and other implicit biases. Furthermore, culturally relevant practices are imperative to address the root causes of racial disparities in student discipline. For these reasons, a systematic and comprehensive review of the published literature on school-based interventions in the USA (including public and private K-12 schools) was conducted to identify interventions to remedy racial disparities in school discipline, as well as the research designs used to test their efficacy. The final sample includes 48 studies that directly or indirectly attempt to address the race discipline gap. There were only three studies that reduced race disparities in school discipline with a culturally relevant intervention. Future researchers may consider the importance of the school’s cultural context and intervention audience when developing and testing efforts to reduce racial disproportionality

By Sylvia Walby, Philippa Olive, Jude Towers, Brian Francis, Sofia Strid, Andrea Krizsán, Emanuela Lombardo, Corinne May-Chahal, Suzanne Franzway, David Sugarman, Bina Agarwal and Jo Armstrong

Rape shatters lives. Its traumatising effects can linger for many years after the immediate pain and suffering. Rape is a consequence and a cause of gender inequality. It is an injury to health; a crime; a violation of women’s human rights; and costly to both the economy and society. Stopping rape requires changes to many policies and practices. There is no simple solution; rather, a myriad of reforms are needed to prevent rape. New policies are being innovated around the world, north and south, which are often intended to prevent rape and to support victims/survivors simultaneously. This book provides an overview of the current best practice from around the world for ending rape.

Policy Press 2015, British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data, 307?

By John G. Bellamy

Murder in the sixteenth century, which to English men and women of that time meant planned slaying, usually with an element of stealth or with the victim taken unawares, was not then a common crime; rather the reverse. For example, Sir Thomas Smith, the knowledgeable Tudor legal commentator, tells us that murder by poisoning was virtually unknown in his day. Also writing in the reign of Elizabeth I was William Harrison, who, in a contribution to Holinshed's Chronicles that dealt with the criminal law, its penalties and its impact on society, stated that, although manslaughter and "bloudie robberies" occurred "now and then," "we do not often heare of horrible, merciless, and wilfull murthers."1 Nor do other writers of the period who touch on criminal law or on crime and public order indicate anything different. These brief indications of a relatively low murder rate are borne out by statistics to be garnered from the extant assize records of the late sixteenth century. Because of the existence of victims' corpses, murder may well have been among the most reported of felonies (that is, reported to officers of the law), yet in Sussex and Cheshire in Elizabeth's reign only about 5 percent of all persons put on trial for felony were suspected murderers, while the relatively high rate of 8 percent in Kent has to be set against the trivial 1 percent in Essex. The overall impression is that probably about 1 in every 20 indicted felons was believed to be a murderer.

History Press Limited, Dec 1, 2008, 212 pages

By Francesco Bruno M.D.

Argentina, Brazil, Costa Rica, Japan, Jordan, Italy, Malaysia, the United States (State of New York), Singapore, Sweden, and the United Kingdom participated. In each country, local researchers conducted the study following a plan developed for the whole project. The multidisciplinary methodology included four phases: a comparative analysis of antidrug legislation, preliminary national reports, eight vignettes administered to different groups to gain information on the perceptions of the justice system, and guided interviews conducted with drug addicts. The data were quantified, and evaluation scales were constructed for purposes of comparison. Binary automatic scoring was applied to data from the vignettes and interviews. The data are shown graphically in 97 tables. Three conclusions are emphasized. First, drug abuse is apparently both quantitatively and qualitatively more serious where the system is perceived as less harsh and more permissive. Second, a significant correlation exists between knowledge of the law and the efficacy of the system. Third, a close association exists between the abuse of drugs and criminal behavior. These points are important for policymakers to consider. The studies in New York, Sweden, and the United Kingdom are outlined. Attachments include a 560-item bibliography and a list of experts and researchers involved in the study. Other publications from the United Nations Social Defense Research Institute are also listed.

United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute, 1984, 246p.

By Alan Dower

Hutchinson of Australia, 1979, 322p.

By Elisabeth Duban,

The OSCE participating States have agreed to several commitments that specifically mandate the Organization’s structures to assist participating States with developing programmes aimed at preventing all forms of gender-based violence, as outlined in the 2004 Action Plan for the Promotion of Gender Equality, and OSCE Ministerial Council decisions from 2005, 2014 and 2018 which emphasize the importance of collecting and disseminating reliable, disaggregated data on violence against women, alongside efforts to criminalize gender-based violence. Femicide, the gender-related killing of women and girls, is a global phenomenon and represents the most extreme manifestation of violence against women. This report aims to assess the response to femicide across the 57 OSCE participating States, focusing on three key areas: the criminal justice response, the collection of comparable data, and the reporting and analysis of femicide.

Prague: The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), 2025. 50p.

By Human Rights Watch

Following the July 2024 presidential elections, electoral authorities in Venezuela announced that Nicolas Maduro had been re-elected president, despite substantial evidence to the contrary. When people took to the streets to demand a fair counting of votes, Venezuelan authorities responded with brutal repression. At least 24 protesters and bystanders were killed and over 2,000 people were detained in connection with post-electoral protests. Punished for Seeking Change documents human rights violations committed against protesters, bystanders, opposition leaders, and critics in the post-electoral protests and the months that followed. It implicates Venezuelan authorities and pro-government armed groups, known as “colectivos,” in widespread abuses, including the killing of protesters and bystanders, enforced disappearances of opposition party members and foreign nationals, arbitrary detention and prosecution of children and others, and torture and ill-treatment of detainees. With 8 million Venezuelans abroad, the rights crisis in Venezuela remains arguably the most consequential in the Western Hemisphere. Governments should support accountability efforts for these grave human rights violations, call for the release of people arbitrarily detained, and expand access to asylum and other forms of international protection for Venezuelans fleeing repression.

New York: HRW, 2025. 109p.

By Gilbert Munoz Cornejo

This study investigates the incidence and characteristics of cybersecurity data breaches across U.S. rural and urban hospitals from 2016 to 2022, employing a two-stage design. Stage 1 used logistic regression to determine whether a hospital had a breach, controlling for key variables. Stage 2 analyzed the subset of 212 hospitals that experienced a breach, focusing on breach type, and breach location. The results revealed that 3.46% of hospitals experienced a breach, with urban facilities showing a slightly higher rate (3.84%) than rural ones (2.64%). Larger, non profit, and non-affiliated hospitals and those in the Northeast faced higher breach odds. Once breached, no significant rural–urban differences emerged regarding breach characteristics, but year of breach, ownership type, and membership affiliation played key roles in how incidents manifested. These findings underscore the importance of targeted cybersecurity strategies, informing healthcare administrators, policymakers, and cybersecurity professionals in safeguarding patient data across diverse hospital settings.    

Security Journal, 2025, 21p.

By  Talia A. Dunyak 

Over the past several decades, travel and tourism have become both more accessible and cheaper for people. Until the Covid-19 pandemic, tourism was projected to continue growing rapidly in popularity, with estimates that by 2030 more than 1.8 billion people would travel internationally every year. 2 The increase in international and domestic travel and tourism brings benefits such as expanded cultural understanding, economic growth, and preservation of local monuments and traditions. However, despite the benefits of tourism, there is a dark side to the industry: human trafficking. This report seeks to map out the intersections between human trafficking and tourism and focuses primarily on sex trafficking and labor trafficking’s presence within the tourism sector. The discussion of sex trafficking will include sex tourism, child sex tourism, and the use of hotels in the sex trade. The discussion of labor exploitation will include child labor and beggars, hospitality staff, construction staff, and labor trafficking in the supply chain. The report will also touch on how the Covid-19 pandemic has affected and changed modern slavery in the tourism industry. The report will conclude with mapping the current interventions and recommendations for combatting instances of human trafficking within the tourism industry. 

Human Trafficking Search,  2021 28p.

By Brian G. Knight and Ana Tribin 

This paper investigates the link between violent crime and immigration using data from Colombian municipalities during the recent episode of immigration from Venezuela. The key finding is that, following the closing and then re-opening of the border in 2016, which precipitated a massive immigration wave, homicides in Colombia increased in areas close to the border with Venezuela. Using information on the nationality of the victim, we find that this increase was driven by homicides involving Venezuelan victims, with no evidence of a statistically significant increase in homicides in which Colombians were victimized. Thus, in contrast to xenophobic fears that migrants might victimize natives, it was migrants, rather than natives, who faced risks associated with immigration. Using arrests data, there is no corresponding increase in arrests for homicides in these areas. Taken together, these results suggest that the increase in homicides close to the border documented here are driven by crimes against migrants and have occurred without a corresponding increase in arrests, suggesting that some of these crimes have gone unsolved.  

Working Paper 27620

Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research, 2020. 34p.

By Dinu Ostavciuc, Gina Aurora Necula

The Art. in question is dedicated to the specificity of detecting the evidence of an offence and its prosecution, particularly referring to the organised illegal migration, both from the point of view of criminal science and from the point of view of the criminal lawsuit. The subject under investigation here is both practically and legislatively sensitive. The aim of the research is to establish and elucidate the legal interactions, as well as to develop a practical algorithm for law enforcement authorities to detect evidence of organised illegal migration. The study comes with recommendations for law enforcement and prosecution bodies applicable both to the stage of establishing reasonable suspicion of committing the crime of organised illegal migration and to the stage of criminal prosecution initiation. At the same time, we aim at pointing out those features of the initial actions of the law enforcement bodies to which attention should be drawn and the indicated actions should be carried out in order to decide whether or not the conditions of the specified crime are met. The research comes up with findings, recommendations and proposals of lex ferenda, in order to reach the top effectiveness of the organised illegal migration investigation, implicitly that the investigating and prosecuting authorities detect the evidence of organised illegal migration crime within a reasonable extend of time and expeditiously start the prosecution, with respect to the principle of formality of the criminal process.

Fiat Iustitia, Issue Year: 2/2023, 16p.

By Dany Bahar; Meagan Dooley; Andrew Selee

The sudden, large-scale movement of nearly 5.2 million Venezuelans out of their country, most since 2014, with more than 4.2 million of them settling in other countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, has raised concerns about how this is affecting receiving communities, with some politicians and pundits claiming that these new arrivals are leading to a rise in crime. Yet few studies have been conducted in the region that examine whether and what type of link may exist between immigration and crime, in part because immigration at this scale is a relatively new phenomenon in most Latin American countries, and this particular mass migration is so recent.1 This issue brief explores data in the three countries with the largest number of Venezuelan migrants and refugees as of 2020—Colombia, Peru, and Chile, which together host more than 2 million Venezuelan nationals—to better understand whether and what sort of relationship exists between this immigration and crime rates. Some of the datasets used are publicly available, while others were obtained by the authors through direct requests to government agencies. For each country, this study analyzes crime data, when possible disaggregated by nationality, and data on the presence of Venezuelans at the subnational level (though the available data do not allow for this to be done in exactly the same way in all three countries). For the most part, analysis of data from 2019 suggests that Venezuelan immigrants commit substantially fewer crimes than the native born, relative to their share in the overall population, signaling that public perceptions on newcomers driving up crime rates are misleading. In Chile, for example, only 0.7 percent of people indicted for crimes in 2019 were Venezuelan nationals, even though Venezuelans made up 2.4 percent of the population. Similarly, in Peru, where this analysis uses imprisonment data as a proxy for crime rates, 1.3 percent of those in prison were foreign born—of any nationality—as of 2019, whereas Venezuelan nationals make up 2.9 percent of the country’s overall population. For the most part, analysis of data from 2019 suggests that Venezuelan immigrants commit substantially fewer crimes than the native born. In Colombia this relationship holds true for violent crimes, as Venezuelan nationals comprised 2.3 percent of arrests for violent crimes in 2019, while they represent 3.2 percent of the population. For crimes overall, however, the picture is more mixed, as 5.4 percent of all arrests were of Venezuelans, a rate higher than their share of the population. Most of these crimes were reported in border regions, perhaps a reflection of the illicit smuggling networks that operate across the Colombian-Venezuelan border. In exploring plausible explanations for crime rates in different parts of the country, it appears that the regions in which Venezuelans were responsible for higher shares of crimes are also those where Venezuelans face higher rates of unemployment. This finding is consistent with the literature that suggests granting migrants and refugees formal labor market access can reduce the incidence of crime among this population. The data in this study provide strong evidence that the presence of Venezuelan immigrants is not leading to increased crime in the region—certainly not in the three countries that have received the largest number of Venezuelan migrants and refugees. Indeed, in most cases they tend to commit a smaller share of crimes than their proportion of the population. Even in the one case where the results are more ambiguous—Colombia—they are more involved in minor crimes and far less involved in major crimes than their population share. These results suggest that fears about Venezuelan newcomers driving up crime are simply misplaced. Sudden mass migration certainly presents challenges to receiving societies, but, at least in this case, a major crime wave is not one of them. 

Washington, DC; Brookings Institute, 2020. 27p.

By Joshua D. Freilich and Graeme R. Newman

The first series of the International Library of Criminology, Criminal Justice and Penology has established itself as a major research resource by bringing together the most significant journal essays in contemporary criminology, criminal justice and penology. The series made available to researchers, teachers and students an extensive range of essays which are indispensable for obtaining an overview of the latest theories and findings in this fast changing subject. Indeed the rapid growth of interesting scholarly work in the field has created a demand for a second series which like the first consists of volumes dealing with criminological schools and theories as well as with approaches to particular areas of crime criminal justice and penology. Each volume is edited by a recognised authority who has selected twenty or so of the best journal articles in the field of their special competence and provided an informative introduction giving a summary of the field and the relevance of the articles chosen. The original pagination is retained for ease of reference. The difficulties of keeping on top of the steadily growing literature in criminology are complicated by the many disciplines from which its theories and findings are drawn (sociology, law, sociology of law, psychology, psychiatry, philosophy and economics are the most obvious). The development of new specialisms with their own journals (policing, victimology, mediation) as well as the debates between rival schools of thought (feminist criminology, left realism, critical criminology, abolitionism etc.) make necessary overviews that offer syntheses of the state of the art.

Ashgate, 2007, 510p.

By Jesse O.. Stutman

Can crime be cured—or must it always be punished?

In Curing the Criminal: A Treatise on the Philosophy and Practices of Modern Correctional Methods, Jesse O. Stutsman offers one of the most ambitious reformist visions of the early twentieth century. Writing in an age of optimism about science and psychology, Stutsman argues that offenders are not beyond redemption but can be guided, educated, and rehabilitated. He calls for prisons to function as clinics, where work, education, and moral training replace idleness and despair. His treatise blends philosophy with practical strategies, insisting that true justice requires transformation, not vengeance.

Paired in spirit with later works such as Graeme Newman’s The Punishment Response, which reveals the deep human roots of our urge to punish, Stutsman’s book invites readers to reconsider the purpose of punishment itself. Should society cling to retribution, or strive toward cure? Nearly a century after its first appearance, this question is more urgent than ever.

Both a historical landmark and a timeless challenge, Curing the Criminal reminds us that the measure of a civilization lies in how it treats its most troubled members.

Macmillan, 1926,Read-Me.Org 2025. 276 pages