Search

Begin New Search Topic Police

21. UN Police and Conflict Prevention

Author:
Marina Caparini
Publication Date:
06-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute
Abstract:
This discussion paper connects the sustaining peace agenda and conflict prevention with the police component in United Nations (UN) peace operations. UN Police (UNPOL) play a critical role in conflict prevention through: (a) direct operational actions aimed at mediating disputes, defusing tensions and deterring violence; (b) structural prevention linked to mentoring, training and advising host state police, and the development of more effective, accountable and legitimate law enforcement institutions; and (c) systemic prevention through support for international norms and mechanisms to combat transnational organized crime, illicit arms flows and human trafficking. UNPOL’s role in conflict prevention can be further developed by a stronger focus on relationships with host state counterparts and civil society; more qualitative assessments on drivers of conflict and the inclusion of such assessments in early warning systems as well as UN reporting; and greater integration of UNPOL contributions to UN conflict prevention efforts.
Topic:
Security, Development, United Nations, Governance, Conflict, Peace, Police, and Justice
Political Geography:
Global Focus

22. April 2018 Issue

Author:
Nicholas Tallant, Jesse Morton, Mitchell D. Silber, Scott Atran, Hoshang Waziri, Angel Gomez, Hammad Sheikh, Lucia Lopez-Rodriguez, Charles Rogan, Richard Davis, Amira Jadoon, Nakissa Jahanbani, Charmaine Willis, and Nafees Hamid
Publication Date:
04-2018
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
CTC Sentinel
Institution:
The Combating Terrorism Center at West Point
Abstract:
Between 2006 and 2012, two men working on opposite sides of the struggle between global jihadis and the United States faced off in New York City. Jesse Morton was the founder of Revolution Muslim, a group that proselytized—online and on New York City streets—on behalf of al-Qa`ida. Mitchell Silber led efforts to track the terrorist threat facing the city as the director of intelligence analysis for the NYPD. After serving a prison sentence for terrorist activity, Morton now works to counter violent extremism. In our feature article, they tell the inside story of the rise of Revolution Muslim and how the NYPD, by using undercover officers and other methods, put the most dangerous homegrown jihadi support group to emerge on U.S. soil since 9/11 out of business. As the Islamic State morphs into a ‘virtual caliphate,’ their case study provides lessons for current and future counterterrorism investigations. Five years ago this month, terror came to Boston, and Boston stood strong. Nicholas Tallant interviews William Weinreb and Harold Shaw on the lessons learned. Weinreb stepped down as Acting United States Attorney for the District of Massachusetts in January 2018. He was the lead prosecutor of the 2015 investigation and trial of Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Shaw has served as the Special Agent in Charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Boston Division since 2015. Between July and October 2017, a team of researchers conducted field interviews with young Sunni Arab men coming out from under Islamic State rule in the Mosul area. The resulting study by Scott Atran, Hoshang Waziri, Ángel Gómez, Hammad Sheikh, Lucía López-Rodríguez, Charles Rogan, and Richard Davis found that “the Islamic State may have lost its ‘caliphate,’ but not necessarily the allegiance of supporters of both a Sunni Arab homeland and governance by sharia law.” Amira Jadoon, Nakissa Jahanbani, and Charmaine Willis examine the evolving rivalry between the Islamic State and other jihadi groups in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region. Nafees Hamid profiles Junaid Hussain, a hacker from the United Kingdom, who until his death in August 2015 was the Islamic State’s most prolific English-language social media propagandist and terror ‘cybercoach.’
Topic:
Terrorism, Law Enforcement, Counter-terrorism, Radicalization, Islamic State, Police, and NYPD
Political Geography:
Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Middle East, North America, and United States of America

23. The South China Sea: Beijing’s Challenge to ASEAN and UNCLOS and the Necessity of a New Multi-tiered Approach

Author:
Christopher Roberts
Publication Date:
08-2017
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies (NTS)
Abstract:
This Working Paper examines the South China Sea disputes and primarily focuses on developments since 2013 when the Philippines filed for international arbitration. The first part of the paper examines how the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and China reacted to the arbitral process and the potential for the Association to undertake an effective and unified position in the future. The second part of the article builds on the analysis by assessing the prospects for, and likely impact of, the long-sought Code of Conduct. In the process, it examines the continued viability of ASEAN’s consensus-based decision-making approach, whether and how it could be reformed, and the potential benefits and viability of a new institutional arrangement with membership based on shared values and interests (rather than geography). The paper also argues that to enhance the possibility of redress on the issue, other key stakeholder states (such as Japan, Australia, India, and the United States) will need to be more strongly engaged and support claimant countries through a diverse array of activities. Such activities range from investments in capacity building to the provision of coastguards (if invited) to police and protect resources within the Exclusive Economic Zones of claimant states, as clarified by the July 2016 Arbitral Ruling.
Topic:
Development, Regional Cooperation, Police, and ASEAN
Political Geography:
Japan, India, Asia, Australia, and South China Sea

24. 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

25. China’s Crackdown and Arrest of Human Rights Activists

Author:
Kate Morgan
Publication Date:
04-2017
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center on Human Rights Education, University of Denver
Abstract:
ince his rise to power in 2012, President Xi Jinping has cracked down on human rights lawyers, activists, and NGO actors. There have been multiple police raids, with one of the main targets being the Fengrui Law Firm in Beijing, which employs lawyers that are know to take on cases involving human rights activists. The most famous cases that arose from the Fenrui Law Firm were when they defended the dissident artist Ai Weiwei; Ilham Tohti, the Uighur academic sentenced to life in prison last year on charges of separatism; and Cao Shunli, a human rights campaigner who died after being denied medical care while in custody.
Topic:
Human Rights, Political Activism, NGOs, and Police
Political Geography:
China and Asia

26. Cultural Policing: Police and Minorities in Berlin | Le policier et le culturel. Police et minorités à Berlin

Author:
Jérémie Gauthier
Publication Date:
09-2017
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Cultures & Conflits
Institution:
Cultures & Conflits
Abstract:
Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Berlin police precincts, this article focuses on the so-called “intercultural prevention” policy implemented in Berlin since the early 2000s. The author analyzes how police work is informed by a culturalist framework, particularly regarding Muslim communities. The article shows how the link between prevention strategies and the culturalist approach to the treatment of minorities has broadened the police mandate, making police work closer to social work. Yet, this culturalist framework has ambivalent effects: on the one hand, it limits the effects of individual stereotyping during police interventions; on the other hand, it produces forms of reification of groups labeled as “cultural minorities.”
Topic:
Sociology, Minorities, Ethnography, and Police
Political Geography:
Europe, France, and Germany

27. Armed Forces, Police and Crimefighting in Latin America

Author:
David Pion-Berlin and Miguel Carreras
Publication Date:
08-2017
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
German Institute of Global and Area Studies
Abstract:
Over the past two decades, the armed forces have increasingly been asked to take an active role in the fight against the rampant crime in Latin America. Since the militaries in this region are not always trained to conduct themselves with restraint, the possibility of excesses and human rights violations is always latent. Despite that prospect, there is a high level of public support for military counter-crime interventions throughout the region. The key argument in this article is that when the Latin American public supports military interventions to combat crime, it makes a comparative judgment call about the relative efficacy of military vs. police conduct in domestic security roles. Latin American citizens have very low confidence in the capacity of the police to fight crime effectively and to respect human rights. They place more trust in the armed forces as an institution capable of performing effectively and in accordance with human rights standards and the rule of law. This study develops these arguments in greater detail and then turns to recent Americas Barometer surveys that clearly show that Latin American citizens place more trust in the armed forces than the police as an institution capable of effectively and humanely fighting criminal violence.
Topic:
Crime, Law Enforcement, Police, and Armed Conflict
Political Geography:
South America, Latin America, and North America

28. Expanding Governance as Development: Evidence on Child Nutrition in the Philippines

Author:
Eli Berman, Joseph Felter, and Mitch Downey
Publication Date:
01-2016
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Empirical Studies of Conflict Project (ESOC)
Abstract:
Citizens in Mexico are trapped in between two illegitimate forces – the drug gangs and their criminal organizations and the police who are supposed to protect them. Through the use of list experiments within the Survey on Public Safety and Governance in Mexico (SPSGM), we measure the pervasiveness of drug gang activity as it pertains to strategies of coercion (extortion) and co-optation (offering help) to ordinary citizens. The list experiments also allow us to provide a mapping of the geography of drug activity and the extent to which not only the drug gangs, but also the police, engages in strategies of coercion. The paper seeks to provide a better understanding of which groups are most vulnerable and where is it that drug gangs have become most embedded in society. Our findings suggest that although narcotraficantes extort citizens the most in high violence regions and the police does so in low violence ones, both forms of extortion are present everywhere in Mexico. This has triggered a spiral of fear: drug gangs signal unambiguously that they are in control and will punish anyone who provides information to the government, while the police can’t credibly signal that they can regain control of the streets. Police corruption is hence an essential part of the story of Mexico’s violence. Ever more fearful citizens have turned to the narcos for help, we demonstrate, and hence many tacitly –or even openly– support them. The paper results suggest that public strategies emphasizing military action and harsh treatment might not affect the social embeddedness that protects drug gangs and criminal organizations. Instead, enhancing citizen trust within communities and shifting the reputation of police forces while improving the adjudication of justice are more likely to strengthen the social fabric.
Topic:
Security, Governance, Violence, Drugs, and Police
Political Geography:
Asia, Philippines, and Mexico

29. Enduring Uncertainty

Author:
Ines Hasselberg
Publication Date:
03-2016
Content Type:
Book
Institution:
Berghahn Books
Abstract:
Focusing on the lived experience of immigration policy and processes, this volume provides fascinating insights into the deportation process as it is felt and understood by those subjected to it. The author presents a rich and innovative ethnography of deportation and deportability experienced by migrants convicted of criminal offenses in England and Wales. The unique perspectives developed here – on due process in immigration appeals, migrant surveillance and control, social relations and sense of self, and compliance and resistance – are important for broader understandings of border control policy and human rights.
Topic:
Human Rights, Migration, Immigration, Border Control, Surveillance, Police, and Resistance
Political Geography:
United Kingdom, Europe, England, and Wales

30. Research on Public Trust in the Police in Turkey

Author:
Nur Kırmızıdağ
Publication Date:
01-2015
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation (TESEV)
Abstract:
Research on Public Trust in the Police in Turkey, is based on survey data collected on a large-scale sample representative of Turkey. The report provides insights on perceptions of the public with regard to effectiveness/performance, legitimacy of the police and thereby lays bare the level of trust different segments in Turkey attribute to the police. The report utilizes sophisticated statistical methods and, for the first time in Turkey comprehensive scientific models on police trust are being applied giving the opportunity to comparatively analyze the results. Thus the following questions are examined in the report: What is the level of public trust towards police? What are the main components of police trust in Turkey? In how far do police legitimacy and police effectiveness/performance affect police trust in Turkey? What are the factors influencing public’s perception of police legitimacy and effectiveness? How does public’s perception of police legitimacy and effectiveness affect cooperation with and compliance to the police? How does this perception affect public’s toleration of police misconduct? How does public perception of police legitimacy, effectiveness and trust change with regard to different demographic factors in Turkey (political affiliation, ethnic background, religious affinity etc.)?
Topic:
Security, Law Enforcement, Democracy, Legitimacy, Statistics, and Police
Political Geography:
Turkey and Middle East