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11. Banditry in Nigeria: Insights from Situational Action and Situational Crime Prevention Theories

Author:
Tope Shola Akinyetun
Publication Date:
03-2021
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Conflict Trends
Institution:
The African Centre for the Constructive Resolution of Disputes (ACCORD)
Abstract:
Insecurity in Nigeria is a recurring phenomenon that threatens the well-being of its citizens. The multipronged occurrence constitutes a bane to development and leads to the proliferation of crime. As a multifaceted quandary, insecurity assumes varying dimensions in different geopolitical zones. The South West is plagued by a surge in cybercrime, armed robbery, kidnapping, domestic crime, extrajudicial killings, herder-farmer conflicts, ritual killings, and banditry. The South East is a haven for ritual killings, commercial crime, secessionist agitation, kidnapping, herder-farmer clashes, attacks by unknown gunmen, and banditry. The South remains threatened by militancy, kidnapping, and environmental agitation. The North East has been subject to a humanitarian crisis lasting over a decade and caused by the Boko Haram insurgency and the Islamic State in West Africa Province. Meanwhile, the North West is enmeshed in illegal mining, ethnoreligious killings, and banditry. It is, therefore, an axiom that insecurity in Nigeria has assumed a disproportionate geopolitical stance and that it has claimed thousands of lives and extensive damage and loss of property.
Topic:
Security, Crime, and Law Enforcement
Political Geography:
Africa and Nigeria

12. Crime, inequality and subsidized housing: evidence from South Africa

Author:
Roxana Elena Manea, Patrizio Piraino, and Martina Viarengo
Publication Date:
05-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for International Environmental Studies, The Graduate Institute (IHEID)
Abstract:
We study the relationship between housing inequality and crime in South Africa. We create a novel panel dataset combining information on crimes at the police station level with census data. We find that housing inequality explains a significant share of the variation in both property and violent crimes, net of spillover effects, time and district fixed effects. An increase of one standard deviation in housing inequality explains between 9 and 13 percent of crime increases. Additionally, we suggest that a prominent post-apartheid housing program for low-income South Africans helped to reduce inequality and violent crimes. Together, these findings suggest the important role that equality in housing conditions can play in the reduction of crime in an emerging economy context.
Topic:
Crime, Development, Inequality, and Housing
Political Geography:
Africa and South Africa

13. Collaborative Policing and Negotiating Urban Order in Abidjan

Author:
Maxime Ricard and Kouame Felix Grodji
Publication Date:
11-2021
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Africa Center for Strategic Studies
Abstract:
Community-based security groups are emerging in African cities in response to rising crime and overstretched police forces. Experience from Abidjan shows that collaboration with the police, avoiding coercive tactics, and retaining citizen oversight councils are key to the effectiveness of these groups.
Topic:
Civil Society, Crime, Urban, Police, and Community Engagement
Political Geography:
Africa and Ivory Coast

14. Trade Update 2020: An Eye on Ammunition Transfers to Africa

Author:
Nicolas Florquin, Elodie Hainard, and Benjamin Jongleux
Publication Date:
12-2020
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Small Arms Survey
Abstract:
Even though states may not intentionally supply materiel to armed groups, a lack of stringent risk assessments on weapons and ammunition exports destined for areas prone to diversion can hamper efforts to curtail the broader illicit arms trade. The 2020 edition of the Small Arms Survey’s annual Trade Update, Trade Update 2020: An Eye on Ammunition Transfers to Africa, delves into cases of authorized small arms ammunition transfers to Africa through exploring the potential of beyond-the-norm data sources. Relying on peacekeeping operations, national customs, and civil society research, the case studies highlight ammunition imports from opaque exporters to countries affected by armed conflict, states subject to arms embargoes, and other areas on the continent equally prone to seeing arms and ammunition diverted from the licit to illicit markets. Ammunition accounted for 42 per cent of all authorized African small arms imports in 2017. Since countries with low transparency records do export ammunition to government forces in conflict-affected regions and such regions are prone to diversion, there is a gap in risk identification. Therefore, findings from the case studies emphasize the importance of exporters improving their reporting practices and carrying out stringent risk assessments. In addition, the leveraging of multiple data sources can enhance the monitoring of the authorized ammunition trade and help curb unauthorized activities.
Topic:
Civil Society, Crime, Markets, Peacekeeping, Arms Trade, and Transparency
Political Geography:
Africa

15. Legal Transborder Crime Of Chadian Immigrants In N'gaoundere, Garoua And Maroua (Cameroon): Factors, Typology And Consequences

Author:
Dawaï Samuel
Publication Date:
08-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
African Heritage Institution (AfriHeritage)
Abstract:
The relatively favorable North Cameroonian area in the Chadian basin is a factor conducive to migration in general and Chadian immigration in particular. This historical work presents individual and environmental characteristics of the legal crime of Chadian immigrants in three selected prisons, the types of anti-social acts carried out as well as the consequences of this phenomenon. In addition, analytical, systemic and diachronic methods were use. Thus, oral sources, penitentiary registers, electronic journal articles were used. The present study shows how illegal transborder immigrants considerably impede development. Because, they contribute to the increase of the violence and crime rates, these uncontrolled migrations constitute an important challenge not only for the countries of Central Africa but also many other poor countries in the world. This contribution shows that the evolution of the antisocial behavior of these immigrants is one of the consequences of the situation and context of postcolonial Cameroon.
Topic:
Crime, Post Colonialism, Immigration, Colonialism, and Borders
Political Geography:
Africa, Chad, and Cameroon

16. Domestic Prosecution of International Crimes

Author:
Cleo Meinicke
Publication Date:
03-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Public International Law Policy Group
Abstract:
In October 2018, the Bosnian state court indicted a former soldier of crimes against humanity for his involvement in the murder and enforced disappearance of civilians in the Kljuc area. In September of that year, a German court convicted Ibrahim Al F. for war crimes committed in Syria and in the same month a military tribunal in the Democratic Republic of the Congo found two military commanders guilty of crimes against humanity committed in the villages of Kamananga and Lumenje (South Kivu). These are just three recent examples of domestic efforts in the prosecution of those responsible for international crimes. Based on the complementarity principle of the International Criminal Court (ICC), where states are “unwilling or unable” to prosecute international crimes, the ICC may step in to prosecute those most responsible for the commission of the crimes under its jurisdiction, namely genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression. However, out of 28 cases before the Court since its inception in 2001 only three resulted in successful convictions. Several suspects were acquitted after lengthy proceedings, of which Gbagbo and Blé Goudé are the latest examples. Therefore, the ICC should be regarded as a last resort while domestic courts carry the main responsibility to prosecute those responsible for international crimes.
Topic:
Crime, International Law, Crimes Against Humanity, and International Criminal Court (ICC)
Political Geography:
Africa, Europe, Germany, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Bosnia and Hercegovina

17. Murder in Equatorial Guinea: A Foreign Service Urban Legend

Author:
Mark L. Asquino
Publication Date:
09-2019
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
American Diplomacy
Institution:
American Diplomacy
Abstract:
Almost fifty years have passed since the terrible day in 1971 when one State Department officer brutally killed another in the tiny, African country of Equatorial Guinea. What took place there is a lurid story of sex, madness and murder that almost every foreign service officer has heard about at one time or another. In many ways it’s the State Department’s version of the 1984 classic film, “Nightmare on Elm Street.” However, the murder in Equatorial Guinea is a real-life tale of horror that continues to intrigue foreign service officers. Here are the basic facts of what happened.
Topic:
Cold War, Crime, Diplomacy, and Memoir
Political Geography:
Africa, Russia, North America, United States of America, and Equatorial Guinea

18. Arms Monitoring in Guinea: A Survey of National Forensic Services

Author:
André Desmarais
Publication Date:
09-2019
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Small Arms Survey
Abstract:
Forensic science institutions have a key role to play—not only in criminal investigations, but also in the broader fight against illicit arms proliferation. However, their ability to play this role depends on their capacities, which are not well understood. A Briefing Paper (originally published in French) on the forensic services in Guinea aims to fill this gap. Building on previous case studies on forensic services in Chad, Mauritania, and Niger, Arms Monitoring in Guinea: A Survey of National Forensic Services by ballistics specialist André Desmarais—co-published by INTERPOL and the Small Arms Survey’s Security Assessment in North Africa (SANA) project—examines capabilities, limitations, and needs of Guinea’s forensic services. It finds that information on calibres, models, and ammunition types of seized weapons is limited, and that the country lacks a central firearms database. Based on this analysis, the study provides tailored suggestions for areas of improvement, as a way to support Guinea in significantly reducing illicit arms flows.
Topic:
Arms Control and Proliferation, Crime, and Forensic Science
Political Geography:
Africa, Chad, Guinea, Mauritania, and Niger

19. What We Think about When We Think of Crime

Author:
Michelle Nicholasen
Publication Date:
10-2017
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
Jean and John Comaroff, professors in the Departments of African and African American Studies and of Anthropology, divide their teaching and research between Harvard and universities in South Africa. Their scholarship has focused on colonialism and the transformation of societies in the postcolonial and late modern worlds. A recent joint effort, The Truth about Crime, documents their “existential engagement” with the interplay of crime, policing, and sovereignty, in response to what they see as a rising global preoccupation. The Comaroffs joined the academic boycott of South Africa in the 1970s and 1980s until the transition of power and formal end of apartheid in 1994. Upon their return to Cape Town, they immediately noticed an overwhelming preoccupation with crime in South Africa. Their desire to unpack this obsession, and what it says about modernity and our relationship to the state, is the subject of their book. Together, the Comaroffs consider the economic, political, and sociological shifts that underlie modern attitudes toward criminality and how these shifts have contributed to the fear of one another, to racial violence, and to public distrust in government. The Weatherhead Center spoke to the Comaroffs from their home in Cape Town, and asked them to tease out some of the complex relationships between crime and policing and how they affect the concept of citizenship.
Topic:
Crime, Politics, Democracy, and Police
Political Geography:
Africa, United States, South Africa, and North America

20. Critical Perspectives on Transnational Criminality in West Africa

Author:
Kwesi Aning and Lydia Amedzrator
Publication Date:
10-2016
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
Abstract:
This is an overview of the impact and challenge of transnational organized crime which often overlaps with Islamist insurgency in West Africa. Although these developments threaten the foundations of the state in West Africa, the regional Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has been unable to deal with the situation. Canadian policy makers pondering a troop commitment to Mali should pay particular attention to this piece.
Topic:
Crime, Insurgency, Fragile States, and transnationalism
Political Geography:
Africa, West Africa, and Mali