tag:theconversation.com,2011:/es/topics/organized-crime-18626/articlesOrganized crime – The Conversation2023-08-31T12:19:57Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2122392023-08-31T12:19:57Z2023-08-31T12:19:57ZRICO is often used to target the mob and cartels − but Trump and his associates aren’t the first outside those worlds to face charges<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/545340/original/file-20230829-22497-mdx0an.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis speaks during a news conference after former President Donald Trump's Aug. 15 indictment. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/fulton-county-district-attorney-fani-willis-speaks-during-a-news-photo/1615613099?adppopup=true">Joe Raedle/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>It might seem odd to some that former President Donald Trump and his co-defendants, many of whom are lawyers and served as senior government officials, were charged with racketeering regarding their alleged attempt to <a href="https://d3i6fh83elv35t.cloudfront.net/static/2023/08/CRIMINAL-INDICTMENT-Trump-Fulton-County-GA.pdf">overturn the results of the 2020 election</a> in Georgia.</p>
<p>Racketeering charges are complex but generally speak to dishonest business dealings. Many racketeering prosecutions involve lucrative criminal enterprises, such as illegal drug operations or the Mafia. </p>
<p>Whatever the lawfulness of Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, no one claims his conduct was part of a Mafia scheme. </p>
<p>I <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=DMWfDCgAAAAJ&hl=en">am a scholar of criminal law</a> and procedure. Prosecutors sometimes charge white-collar defendants who are not part of a mob with RICO violations.</p>
<p>Trump is set to be arraigned on Sept. 6, 2023, in Atlanta, for his alleged attempt to overturn the election in that state. At that time, he will be read his formal charges and will plead guilty or, far more likely, not guilty. </p>
<p>A grand jury in Fulton County, Georgia, <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/read-the-full-georgia-indictment-against-trump-and-18-allies">indicted Trump</a> and 18 other political associates on Aug. 15, 2023. They are facing charges under Georgia’s <a href="https://law.justia.com/codes/georgia/2022/title-16/chapter-14/">Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act</a>, often called RICO. </p>
<p>Trump and others, including former Trump <a href="https://apnews.com/article/trump-giuliani-georgia-election-indictment-fulton-county-203b1e69cbff227a0bf8cc59a6bb645f">attorney Rudolph Giuliani</a>, are also charged with a number of other specific crimes such as forgery, filing false documents and <a href="https://law.justia.com/codes/georgia/2022/title-16/chapter-4/section-16-4-7/">solicitation</a> of <a href="https://law.justia.com/codes/georgia/2022/title-16/chapter-10/article-1/section-16-10-1/">violation of oath by a public officer</a>. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/545342/original/file-20230829-22-rsr2b4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A black and white cartoon shows a map of New York City with photos of different known Mafia men, including Al Capone." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/545342/original/file-20230829-22-rsr2b4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/545342/original/file-20230829-22-rsr2b4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=604&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545342/original/file-20230829-22-rsr2b4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=604&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545342/original/file-20230829-22-rsr2b4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=604&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545342/original/file-20230829-22-rsr2b4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=759&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545342/original/file-20230829-22-rsr2b4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=759&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545342/original/file-20230829-22-rsr2b4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=759&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">A graphic from 1933 shows where different gang leaders, including Al Capone, operated. Before 1970, members of the Mafia or other similar groups were tried individually for their crimes.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/heres-the-way-the-racketeering-group-lined-up-in-the-early-news-photo/515619350?adppopup=true">Bettmann/Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>RICO’s relatively short history</h2>
<p>In 1970, <a href="https://history.house.gov/Historical-Highlights/1951-2000/Crime-Control-Act-of-1970/">Congress enacted</a> the <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/part-I/chapter-96">Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations law</a>.</p>
<p>Before 1970, prosecutors could <a href="https://www.justia.com/criminal/docs/rico/">prosecute individuals</a> only for conspiracy and other specific offenses, even if they were allegedly Mafia-related crimes and even if the defendants were alleged to be career or professional offenders. </p>
<p>At least <a href="https://www.findlaw.com/state/criminal-laws/racketeering.html">31 states</a>, including <a href="https://law.justia.com/codes/georgia/2022/title-16/chapter-14/">Georgia, have since enacted</a> so-called “little RICO” or “state RICO” laws modeled after federal RICO, allowing such prosecutions to be brought in their courts. </p>
<p>The federal and state versions of RICO are notoriously <a href="https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/training/primers/2021_Primer_RICO.pdf">detailed</a> and <a href="https://readingroom.law.gsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?httpsredir=1&article=1415&context=gsulr">complex</a>. </p>
<p>In essence, however, most versions of the law create a new, and more serious, offense – namely, engagement in a pattern of <a href="https://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/racketeering.asp">specified criminal activity</a> as part of an organization. Sometimes the organization is a criminal gang of some kind that exists to make an illegal profit, such as robbery teams, loan sharks, narcotics manufacturers, professional gamblers or human traffickers. </p>
<p>The organization could also be an otherwise legitimate business or governmental entity. Making money is sometimes, but not always, a factor in racketeering cases.</p>
<p>So-called RICO predicates – the underlying crimes that form the pattern – encompass a wide range of illegal conduct, including crimes as diverse as <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/bribery">bribery</a>, <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/mail_fraud">mail fraud</a>, kidnapping and murder. </p>
<p>In general, both federal and state judges have interpreted RICO broadly, in both allowing charges and convicting defendants. RICO claims may also be brought by civil plaintiffs. But in such cases only monetary damages and other forms of civil relief may be awarded, and this does not result in imprisonment. </p>
<h2>Anyone can get charged with RICO</h2>
<p>In 1989, the Supreme Court explained that while <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/492/229/">RICO was originally intended for gangsters</a>, it could apply to companies and other people who are not part of an organized crime operation, as long as they violated the terms of the statute. </p>
<p>That year, the Supreme Court was <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/business/1989/06/27/supreme-court-backs-use-of-rico-statute-damages/15eb8a87-5873-474b-8952-f2d87bf4e78d/">considering a case</a> in which the telephone company Northwestern Bell, which was serving the Minneapolis area, was accused of bribing state officials at the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission with gifts and employment in order to win rate increases. </p>
<p>The Supreme Court explained that Congress had organized crime in mind when it drafted the law but intentionally made it broader, encompassing a wider range of criminal conduct. </p>
<p>So, if otherwise upstanding citizens who work for legitimate businesses commit acts of bribery and corruption, this can lead to a RICO charge.</p>
<p>A few years later, in 1994, <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/510/249/">the Supreme Court unanimously ruled</a> that abortion clinics could use the federal RICO law to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1994/01/25/abortion-clinics-can-use-racketeer-law-on-protests/bbb61b8b-b737-47ba-8161-7cf5a0b25237/">sue anti-abortion protesters</a> who conspired to shut them down. </p>
<p>In 1997, the federal government <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/522/52">charged a Texas sheriff</a> with RICO after he accepted money from a federal prisoner in exchange for conjugal visits with the prisoner’s wife or girlfriend. The sheriff, Mario Salino, was <a href="https://www.tampabay.com/archive/1997/12/03/texas-jail-bribery-conviction-is-upheld/">sentenced to three years in prison</a> and fined $5,000. </p>
<p>Cases in the U.S. Supreme Court included liquor dealers suspected of <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/03-725.ZS.html">evading Canadian export taxes</a> and a person accused of transporting automobile titles with <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/498/103">falsified odometer readings</a>. </p>
<p>Over the past few decades, <a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/castro-enterprise-leader-convicted-rico-conspiracy-and-other-violent-crimes">many business leaders</a>, <a href="https://www.justice.gov/usao-edpa/pr/philadelphia-congressman-and-associates-convicted-rico-conspiracy-public-corruption">politicians</a> and other <a href="https://www.npr.org/2019/07/11/740596170/fbi-arrests-former-top-puerto-rico-officials-in-government-corruption-scandal">government officials</a> <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/23/business/dealbook/rico-insys-opioid-executives.html">have been convicted</a> of state and local RICO offenses for various crimes. </p>
<p>In August 2023, for example, a former mayor of Humacao, Puerto Rico, was sentenced to three years and one month in prison for his involvement in a bribery scheme. According to the Department of Justice, the politician, Reinaldo Vargas-Rodriguez, privately <a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/former-puerto-rico-mayor-sentenced-accepting-bribes">accepted cash from two companies</a> in exchange for his giving them municipal contracts. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/545338/original/file-20230829-29-huoio9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A large screen on a street with trees and parked cars shows a photo of Donald Trump's mugshot." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/545338/original/file-20230829-29-huoio9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/545338/original/file-20230829-29-huoio9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=372&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545338/original/file-20230829-29-huoio9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=372&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545338/original/file-20230829-29-huoio9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=372&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545338/original/file-20230829-29-huoio9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545338/original/file-20230829-29-huoio9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545338/original/file-20230829-29-huoio9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">An outdoor screen in London displays a news story showing former President Donald Trump’s mug shot following his arrest in Georgia.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/an-outdoor-screen-in-central-london-displays-a-news-story-news-photo/1623314163?adppopup=true">Vuk Valcic/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>Georgia courts are on board</h2>
<p>Georgia courts agree with the Supreme Court that their state RICO law requires no allegation or proof of “<a href="https://law.justia.com/cases/georgia/court-of-appeals/1990/a89a1832-0.html">nexus with organized crime</a>.” </p>
<p>A range of people in Georgia have been hit with RICO charges. In 2005, Georgia prosecutors charged a former DeKalb County <a href="https://law.justia.com/cases/georgia/supreme-court/2005/s05a0897-1.html">sheriff named Sidney Dorsey</a> with killing his successor, as well as racketeering and other crimes. <a href="https://www.11alive.com/article/news/local/derwin-brown-daughter-brandy-remembers-father/85-6825c440-0022-41af-a504-dd0fb0fa8d7c">Dorsey is</a> serving <a href="https://www.ajc.com/news/crime--law/sidney-dorsey-shot-death-clayton-county/Uz5AVLnfjNJpQ6NTgrnpLL/">life in prison</a>. Truck stop owners and operators accused of doctoring the <a href="https://cases.justia.com/georgia/supreme-court/s09a0371.pdf">prices and fuel quality labels on gas pumps</a> have also been prosecuted. </p>
<p>Perhaps most relevant to the charges against Trump and his associates, the <a href="https://law.justia.com/cases/georgia/supreme-court/1984/41044-1.html">Georgia Supreme Court</a> rejected a claim by Georgia’s elected commissioner of labor that officeholders seeking reelection were exempt from RICO: “By its express terms, the RICO act includes as a crime a reelection campaign by the holder of public office in which 2 or more similar or interrelated predicate offenses specified in the act are committed.”</p>
<p>It is not yet clear how Trump and his former associates will fare with RICO charges in a Georgia court. But they are far from the first people with no involvement in an organized criminal organization to be forced to defend themselves against racketeering charges.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/212239/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gabriel J. Chin receives funding from the University of California and the State Bar of California.</span></em></p>Federal and state RICO charges, which target racketeering, have been applied to a wide range of crimes committed by politicians and business people over the past few decades.Gabriel J. Chin, Professor of Criminal Law, Immigration, and Race and Law, University of California, DavisLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1982772023-02-07T13:34:35Z2023-02-07T13:34:35ZMexico made criminal justice reforms in 2008 – they haven’t done much to reduce crime<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/508503/original/file-20230206-19-85s1yi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=134%2C206%2C5838%2C3763&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Mexican soldiers stand guard near during the arrest of Joaquin Ovidio Guzman in Culiacan, Mexico, in January 2023.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://media.gettyimages.com/id/1246022600/photo/topshot-mexico-drugs-violence-guzman-arrest.jpg?s=1024x1024&w=gi&k=20&c=VuwfDMIAXP0eeKfKdmH1zgboCcJwmwCKFNXWDaNdbvU=">Juan Carlos Cruz/AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://theconversation.com/mexico-hizo-reformas-al-sistema-de-justicia-penal-en-2008-aunque-no-han-hecho-mucho-para-reducir-la-delincuencia-201657">Leer en español.</a></p>
<p>Mexico has waged a long, bloody battle on drugs and crime for decades. But violence there <a href="https://www.asisonline.org/security-management-magazine/latest-news/today-in-security/2022/september/Extreme-Violence-in-Mexico-Continues-to-Increase/">continues to soar</a>.</p>
<p>In one of the latest high-profile incidents, Mexican law enforcement arrested <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-64179356">Ovidio Guzmán-López</a>, a leader of the powerful Sinaloa drug cartel and the son of imprisoned drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, in early January 2023. The arrest <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/we-threw-ourselves-floor-mexican-passenger-plane-caught-cartel-crossfire-2023-01-06/">sparked a wave</a> of violence in Culiacan in northwest Mexico, resulting in looting, shootouts and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jan/06/terror-cartel-violence-engulfs-mexican-city-el-chapo-son">29 people killed</a>.</p>
<p>The ongoing violence in parts of Mexico is largely associated with drug trafficking organizations like Sinaloa, street gangs and <a href="https://www.scielo.cl/scielo.php?pid=S0719-37692015000200006&script=sci_arttext">self-defense forces</a> regular citizens have formed to protect themselves from crime because of ineffective police and military deterrents. </p>
<p>I am <a href="https://sc.edu/uofsc/posts/2022/04/breakthrough_star_rebecca_janzen.php">a scholar of Mexican</a> culture and literature. <a href="https://www.vanderbiltuniversitypress.com/9780826504449/unlawful-violence/">I have written about</a> how the Mexican government <a href="https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/judicial-reform-mexico-toward-new-criminal-justice-system">has attempted to</a> reduce violent crime through changes to criminal justice and human rights law. </p>
<p>But these attempts have largely failed, allowing the cycle of violence to escalate. </p>
<p>Here are four key points to understand. </p>
<h2>1. Violence in Mexico continues to rise</h2>
<p>An <a href="https://www.economist.com/the-americas/2022/09/01/several-violent-episodes-in-mexico-suggest-a-worrying-trend">average of 25</a> people disappear every day in Mexico. The <a href="https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/VC.IHR.PSRC.P5?locations=MX">murder rate</a> stands at 28 per 100,000 people – four times the rate in the United States. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/VC.IHR.PSRC.P5?locations=MX">violence rate in Mexico shot</a> up starting in 2007, with the worst years in 2011 and <a href="https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/MEX/mexico/crime-rate-statistics">again</a> from 2018 to the present. </p>
<p>Violent crime <a href="https://www.globalguardian.com/newsroom/risk-map-mexico">varies significantly</a> across the country. </p>
<p>The people most at risk of violence are in the central and southwestern parts of the country, as well as in the northern states of Chihuahua, Sinaloa, <a href="https://www.scielo.cl/scielo.php?pid=S0719-37692015000200006&script=sci_arttext">Baja California Norte and Tamaulipas</a>. </p>
<p>In the western states of Michoacán and Guerrero, violent crime – including kidnappings, murders and disappearances – occur mostly between <a href="https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/new-self-defense-forces-surface-in-guerrero/">citizens’ self-defense</a> and drug-trafficking groups. In the northern states, bordering the U.S., the violence is dominated by fighting between drug cartels and street gangs.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/507960/original/file-20230202-14692-3d58yn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Many small metal bullet casings are seen scattered on a beige ceramic tile floor outside." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/507960/original/file-20230202-14692-3d58yn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/507960/original/file-20230202-14692-3d58yn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=372&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507960/original/file-20230202-14692-3d58yn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=372&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507960/original/file-20230202-14692-3d58yn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=372&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507960/original/file-20230202-14692-3d58yn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507960/original/file-20230202-14692-3d58yn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507960/original/file-20230202-14692-3d58yn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Bullet casings outside the Mexican home of drug trafficker Ovidio Guzmán-López, whom police arrested in January 2023.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://media.gettyimages.com/id/1246073900/photo/mexico-drugs-violence-guzman-arrest.jpg?s=1024x1024&w=gi&k=20&c=BCo4jL_w0j13ebbvBvACoLgyhF6E-daIAVuQbcRDdBA=">Juan Carlos Cruz/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>2. Military used to fight war on drugs</h2>
<p>Mexican federal authorities have associated rising violence with drug trafficking since the beginning of the 20th century – dating back to 1917, when the <a href="https://www2.juridicas.unam.mx/constitucion-reordenada-consolidada/en/vigente">Mexican Constitution</a> prohibited drugs, with the goal of preventing violence. </p>
<p>And, so, when Mexico’s former President Felipe Calderón <a href="https://www.npr.org/2011/12/09/143429367/5-years-later-calderons-war-on-cartels">first declared a formal war </a> on drugs in 2006, his decision had a long history. </p>
<p>The U.S. government supported this war with a <a href="https://mx.usembassy.gov/the-merida-initiative/">US$3.4 billion</a> military agreement, <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/articles/us-mexico-security-collaboration-wont-be-easily-resurrected/">called the Merida Initiative</a>, that began in 2007 and lapsed in 2021. </p>
<p>The plan’s tactics – including the Mexican military’s targeting and killing of drug cartel leaders – did not quell the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep11780">rising violence</a>, which continued to spread and intensify <a href="https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/MEX/mexico/crime-rate-statistics">over the past 16 years</a>. </p>
<p>Mexico has tried to address this rise in drug cartel activity and crime with different measures, including sending <a href="https://law.yale.edu/yls-today/news/militarization-mexico-costs-lives-and-constitutional-legitimacy-panel-says">128,000 Mexican soldiers</a> to fight drug cartels and other criminal groups in Mexico’s streets – a violation of Mexico’s original Constitution that prohibited the use of military for police work within the country. In October 2022, Mexico approved a constitutional reform that allows the military to carry out domestic law enforcement <a href="https://constitutionnet.org/news/mexico-constitutional-reform-allowing-military-perform-police-work-passes-pending-majority">through 2028</a>.</p>
<h2>3. Corruption complicates crime reduction</h2>
<p>The Mexican government also passed a number of new laws over the past decade to address crime. </p>
<p>One main problem with implementing these laws effectively is <a href="https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2021">widespread corruption</a> across the government, military and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/09592310903561544">justice system</a>. The Mexican military, for example, is tasked with fighting cartels – but <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/10/14/1129001666/data-leak-exposes-mexico-military-corruption-including-collusion-with-drug-carte">soldiers have also</a> been known to sell weapons to them.</p>
<p>In 2008, the Mexican Congress approved a series of constitutional reforms affecting the <a href="https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/judicial-reform-mexico-toward-new-criminal-justice-system">criminal justice system</a> – these reforms addressed the reality that <a href="https://biblioteca.cejamericas.org/bitstream/handle/2015/5143/mex-detenciones-arbitrarias.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y">people often are arrested</a> and convicted for crimes they did not commit. This is partially because Mexico’s old legal system <a href="https://www.economist.com/the-americas/2016/06/18/trials-and-errors">presumed all people</a> put on trial were guilty until proved innocent – the reforms switched this norm to the U.S. model, so people are now considered innocent until proved guilty.</p>
<p>Over 90% murders in Mexico <a href="https://insightcrime.org/news/analysis/solving-mexico-homicide-backlog-could-take-124-years/">from 2010 to 2016</a>, meanwhile, remain unsolved. </p>
<p>The changes to the criminal justice system aim to address these issues and make several important changes. These reforms include making trials – which were typically documented only in writing – oral, making it easier for people to track court cases and <a href="https://worldjusticeproject.mx/la-nueva-justicia-penal-en-mexico/">leading to a rise</a> in public monitoring of court proceedings. </p>
<p>The changes also mandated that <a href="https://justiceinmexico.org/judicial-reform-in-mexico-toward-a-new-criminal-justice-system/">three independent judges</a> serve on all trials, to avoid the risk of a single <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mexico-politics-crime/mexico-to-go-after-all-narco-judges-official-idUSKCN1SQ2H6">judge aligned with drug cartels</a> presiding over a decision. </p>
<p>The changes were fully implemented across all 31 states of Mexico in 2016. But these <a href="https://www.wola.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/WEB-JUSTICE-REFORMS-REPORT-ENG.pdf">reforms have not</a> reduced violence in Mexico. They only scratch the surface and do not address the structural issues – like misogyny and racism – at the root of violence against particularly vulnerable people, <a href="https://theconversation.com/mexicos-other-epidemic-murdered-women-132307">like women</a> and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/08/31/tapachula-crisis-chiapas-mexico-migrants-racism-violence/">Indigenous people</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/01924036.2021.1998917">Most Mexican people</a> also do not trust their police or criminal justice system. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.mexicoviolence.org/essential-numbers#">University of California’s San Diego’s Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies estimates</a> that 93.3% of crimes are not reported. Out of the small number of reported cases, arrests are made in only 11.5%. </p>
<p>Women, notoriously, <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yVfgnItDgQC88zr2fnHW4lE8MwmzuPi0/view">are not</a> acknowledged when they report that they <a href="https://apnews.com/article/mexico-caribbean-gender-6594c9b2c9ea39a52dc3204e16be704c">are victims of crime</a>, or they are reported missing by loved ones. And <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/mexico-lack-resources-aggravates-impunity-gender-crimes-group-2022-12-02/">violent crimes</a> against women are solved at even lower rates than other crimes. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/507962/original/file-20230202-12962-fzxm26.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A soldier wearing camouflage and carrying a gun stands in front of a charred car on a sunny day." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/507962/original/file-20230202-12962-fzxm26.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/507962/original/file-20230202-12962-fzxm26.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507962/original/file-20230202-12962-fzxm26.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507962/original/file-20230202-12962-fzxm26.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507962/original/file-20230202-12962-fzxm26.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507962/original/file-20230202-12962-fzxm26.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507962/original/file-20230202-12962-fzxm26.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A Mexican soldier stands guard outside a crime scene in Zacatecas state, Mexico, in March 2022.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://media.gettyimages.com/id/1239480084/photo/mexico-crime-drugs-zacatecas.jpg?s=1024x1024&w=gi&k=20&c=QIgWwOpyu1WAXV3Gg_Glcrgk1cfGDkZlrbxj1J6DlRQ=">Pedro Pardo/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>4. The laws don’t tackle core problems</h2>
<p>In my opinion, criminal justice reforms alone cannot reduce crime in Mexico. </p>
<p>The percentage of Mexican <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/18/world/americas/mexico-economy-poverty.html">people living in</a> poverty <a href="https://www.bbvaresearch.com/en/publicaciones/mexico-38-million-more-poor-and-21-million-more-in-extreme-poverty-between-2018-2020/">continued to grow</a> from 2018 and 2020, increasing by 7.3% during these years. </p>
<p>Inequality between <a href="https://wir2022.wid.world">Mexico’s richest and poorest</a> people also remains on the rise, making it one of the most unequal countries in the world. <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00220388.2021.1971649">Some research</a> shows that strengthening educational systems in Mexico – <a href="https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/18825/WPS6935.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y">and reducing inequality</a> – could help curb crime.</p>
<p>These factors – in addition to <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/17/the-us-has-spent-over-a-trillion-dollars-fighting-war-on-drugs.html">illicit drug usage</a> in the U.S. and demand for drugs transported through Mexico – all form a complicated web that will need to be untangled, and systematically addressed, before criminal justice reforms alone can help make Mexico a safer and more just country.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/198277/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rebecca Janzen received funding from the University of South Carolina's College of Arts and Sciences to conduct research for this work. </span></em></p>Mexico’s crime epidemic continues to worsen, as poverty and inequality also grow in the country.Rebecca Janzen, Associate Professor of Spanish and Comparative Literature, University of South CarolinaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1948002022-11-18T13:31:25Z2022-11-18T13:31:25ZEnding Amazon deforestation: 4 essential reads about the future of the world’s largest rainforest<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/495894/original/file-20221117-26-53xlp9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=11%2C5%2C3781%2C2519&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A burnt area in Amazonas state, Brazil, Sept. 21, 2022. Fires in the Amazon are often set to clear land.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/view-of-a-burnt-are-of-the-amazonia-rainforest-in-apui-news-photo/1243414040">Michael Dantas/AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Brazil’s president-elect, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, was greeted with applause and cheers when he addressed the U.N. climate conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, on Nov. 16, 2022. As he had in his campaign, Lula pledged to <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/cop/brazils-lula-put-climate-center-first-post-election-speech-abroad-2022-11-16/">stop rampant deforestation in the Amazon</a>, which his predecessor, Jair Bolsanaro, had encouraged. </p>
<p>Forests play a critical role in slowing climate change by taking up carbon dioxide, and the Amazon rainforest absorbs <a href="https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/amazon-deforestation-and-climate-change">one-fourth of the CO2 absorbed by all the land on Earth</a>. These articles from The Conversation’s archive examine stresses on the Amazon and the Indigenous groups who live there.</p>
<h2>1. Massive losses</h2>
<p>The Amazon rainforest is vast, covering some 2.3 million square miles (6 million square kilometers). It extends over eight countries, with about 60% of it in Brazil. And the destruction occurring there is also enormous. </p>
<p>From 2010 to 2019, the Amazon lost <a href="https://theconversation.com/statistic-of-the-decade-the-massive-deforestation-of-the-amazon-128307">24,000 square miles</a> (62,000 square kilometers) of forest – the equivalent of about 10.3 million U.S. football fields. Much of this land was turned into cattle ranches, farms and palm oil plantations.</p>
<p>“There are a number of reasons why this deforestation matters – financial, environmental and social,” wrote Washington University in St. Louis data scientist <a href="https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?user=UtiewDkAAAAJ&hl=en">Liberty Vittert</a>, explaining why she and other judges chose Amazon deforestation as the Royal Statistical Society’s International Statistic of the Decade. </p>
<p>Forest clearance in the region threatens people, wild species and freshwater supplies along with the climate. “The farmers, commercial interest groups and others looking for cheap land all have a clear vested interest in deforestation going ahead, but any possible short-term gain is clearly outweighed by long-term loss,” Vittert concluded.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/495887/original/file-20221117-16-nvekis.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Map of the Amazon region showing forest loss from 2001 to 2020, much of it in Brazil." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/495887/original/file-20221117-16-nvekis.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/495887/original/file-20221117-16-nvekis.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495887/original/file-20221117-16-nvekis.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495887/original/file-20221117-16-nvekis.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495887/original/file-20221117-16-nvekis.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=593&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495887/original/file-20221117-16-nvekis.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=593&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495887/original/file-20221117-16-nvekis.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=593&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Scientists estimate that 17%-20% of the Amazon has been destroyed over the past 50 years. Some researchers believe that at 20%-25% deforestation, the forest’s wet, tropical climate could begin to dry out in a phenomenon known as ‘dieback.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.cfr.org/in-brief/deforestation-brazils-amazon-has-reached-record-high-whats-being-done">Council on Foreign Relations</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
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<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/statistic-of-the-decade-the-massive-deforestation-of-the-amazon-128307">Statistic of the decade: The massive deforestation of the Amazon</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<h2>2. Legalizing land grabs</h2>
<p>Much of the Amazon has been under state control for decades. In the 1970s, Brazil’s military government started encouraging farmers and miners to move into the region to spur economic development, while also setting some zones aside for conservation. More recently, however, Brazil’s government has <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-great-amazon-land-grab-how-brazils-government-is-clearing-the-way-for-deforestation-173416">made it easier for wealthy interests</a> to seize large swaths of land – including in conservation areas and Indigenous territories.</p>
<p>Reviewing national laws and land holdings, University of Florida geographers <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Gabriel-Cardoso-Carrero">Gabriel Cardoso Carrero</a>, <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=qcS5yogAAAAJ&hl=en">Cynthia S. Simmons</a> and <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=PTEKYYoAAAAJ&hl=en">Robert T. Walker</a> found that Brazil’s National Congress was expanding the legal size of private holdings in the Amazon even before Bolsonaro was elected in 2019. </p>
<p>In southern Amazonas state, Amazonia’s most active deforestation frontier, rates of deforestation started to rise in 2012 because of loosened regulatory oversight. The number and size of clearings that the researchers identified using satellite data increased after Bolsonaro took office.</p>
<p>“Because of policy interventions and the greening of agricultural supply chains, deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon fell after 2005, reaching a low point in 2012, when it began trending up again because of weakening environmental governance and reduced surveillance,” they observed. “In our view, the global community can help by insisting that supply chains for Amazonian beef and soybean products originate on lands deforested long ago and whose legality is long-standing.”</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/CR5xL9WoVm8?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The Amazon overall is still a net absorber of carbon dioxide, but a recent study found that deforestation was turning parts of the Brazilian Amazon into net carbon sources.</span></figcaption>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-great-amazon-land-grab-how-brazils-government-is-clearing-the-way-for-deforestation-173416">The great Amazon land grab – how Brazil's government is clearing the way for deforestation</a>
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</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>3. Indigenous resistance</h2>
<p>Road building in the Amazon, which increased dramatically during Bolsonaro’s tenure, brings development and related threats like wildfires into wild areas. University of Richmond geographer <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/David-Salisbury">David Salisbury</a> also saw it as an <a href="https://theconversation.com/indigenous-defenders-stand-between-illegal-roads-and-survival-of-the-amazon-rainforest-brazils-election-could-be-a-turning-point-190550">existential threat to Indigenous communities</a>. </p>
<p>Indigenous residents of the Brazilian-Peruvian borderlands where Salisbury worked “understand that the loggers and their tractors and chainsaws are the sharp point of a road allowing coca growers, land traffickers and others access to traditional Indigenous territories and resources,” Salisbury reported. “They also realize that their Indigenous communities may be all that stands in defense of the forest and stops invaders and road builders.”</p>
<p>Several Indigenous women won office as federal deputies in Brazil’s recent elections, and Lula has pledged to <a href="https://theconversation.com/indigenous-defenders-stand-between-illegal-roads-and-survival-of-the-amazon-rainforest-brazils-election-could-be-a-turning-point-190550">protect Indigenous people’s rights</a>. Salisbury saw it as crucial to ensure that Indigenous defenders of the Amazon receive “the support and educational opportunities needed to be safe, prosperous and empowered to protect their rainforest home.”</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Animation of map changes and close up of one area year to year" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/487180/original/file-20220928-20-lc39rq.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/487180/original/file-20220928-20-lc39rq.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=784&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/487180/original/file-20220928-20-lc39rq.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=784&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/487180/original/file-20220928-20-lc39rq.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=784&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/487180/original/file-20220928-20-lc39rq.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=985&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/487180/original/file-20220928-20-lc39rq.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=985&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/487180/original/file-20220928-20-lc39rq.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=985&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">How road building leads to the rapid deforestation of surrounding lands. The satellite maps show road expansion from 2003 to 2021 into the Serra do Divisor National Park and its buffer zone.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Yunuen Reygadas/ABSAT/University of Richmond</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/indigenous-defenders-stand-between-illegal-roads-and-survival-of-the-amazon-rainforest-brazils-election-could-be-a-turning-point-190550">Indigenous defenders stand between illegal roads and survival of the Amazon rainforest – Brazil's election could be a turning point</a>
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<h2>4. Five global deforestation drivers: Beef, soy, palm oil, wood – and crime</h2>
<p>A small handful of highly lucrative commodities are the main causes of deforestation in the Amazon and other tropical regions around the world. In Brazil, much of the land is cleared for raising beef cattle or cultivating soy. In Indonesia and Malaysia, palm oil production is spurring large-scale rainforest destruction. Wood production, for pulp and paper products as well as fuel, is also a major driver in Asia and Africa.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/495750/original/file-20221116-12-yeiuzy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A bearded man at a lectern in front of a sign reading 'Global Climate Action.'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/495750/original/file-20221116-12-yeiuzy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/495750/original/file-20221116-12-yeiuzy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495750/original/file-20221116-12-yeiuzy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495750/original/file-20221116-12-yeiuzy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495750/original/file-20221116-12-yeiuzy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=558&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495750/original/file-20221116-12-yeiuzy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=558&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495750/original/file-20221116-12-yeiuzy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=558&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, president-elect of Brazil, speaks at the U.N. Climate Summit, COP27, in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, Nov. 16, 2022.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/dpatop-16-november-2022-egypt-scharm-el-scheich-luiz-inacio-news-photo/1244827637">Christophe Gateau/picture alliance via Getty Images.</a></span>
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<p>“Making the supply chains for these four commodities more sustainable is an important strategy for reducing deforestation,” wrote Texas State University geographer <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=BA2cjRgAAAAJ&hl=en">Jennifer Devine</a>. But Devine also found a fifth factor interwoven with these four industries: organized crime.</p>
<p>“Large, lucrative industries offer opportunities to move and launder money; as a result, in many parts of the world, deforestation is driven by the drug trade,” she reported. In the Amazon, for example, drug traffickers are illegally logging forests and <a href="https://theconversation.com/organized-crime-is-a-top-driver-of-global-deforestation-along-with-beef-soy-palm-oil-and-wood-products-170906">hiding cocaine in timber shipments to Europe</a>. </p>
<p>“Promoting sustainable production and consumption are critical to halting deforestation worldwide. But in my view, national and industry leaders also have to root organized crime and illicit markets out of these commodity chains,” Devine concluded.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/organized-crime-is-a-top-driver-of-global-deforestation-along-with-beef-soy-palm-oil-and-wood-products-170906">Organized crime is a top driver of global deforestation – along with beef, soy, palm oil and wood products</a>
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<hr>
<p><em>Editor’s note: This story is a roundup of articles from The Conversation’s archive.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/194800/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Brazilian President-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva says he will end land clearance in Brazil’s Amazon region. But powerful forces profit from rainforest destruction.Jennifer Weeks, Senior Environment + Cities Editor, The ConversationLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1930872022-11-08T13:41:35Z2022-11-08T13:41:35ZInsurance fraud costs $309 billion a year – nearly $1,000 for every American<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/493904/original/file-20221107-23-gc3aq3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=218%2C116%2C4634%2C3506&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The way insurance claims are processed makes the system a very easy target for scammers.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/paper-money-flying-out-of-mans-hand-royalty-free-image/94989168?phrase=cash%20dollars">Jeffrey Coolidge/Stone via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/493921/original/file-20221107-3575-l5mafa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/493921/original/file-20221107-3575-l5mafa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=255&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493921/original/file-20221107-3575-l5mafa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=255&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493921/original/file-20221107-3575-l5mafa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=255&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493921/original/file-20221107-3575-l5mafa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=321&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493921/original/file-20221107-3575-l5mafa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=321&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493921/original/file-20221107-3575-l5mafa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=321&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="attribution"><a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
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<p>What would you do with an extra US$932.63 in your pocket? </p>
<p>That’s how much insurance fraud costs every American a year – $309 billion in total, according to the findings of a <a href="https://insurancefraud.org/wp-content/uploads/The-Impact-of-Insurance-Fraud-on-the-U.S.-Economy-Report-2022-8.26.2022.pdf">recent research study that I led</a>. For a family of four, that adds up to nearly $3,800 – about enough to finance a small family vacation. </p>
<p>This additional cost comes from increased premiums that consumers have to pay to help offset the cost of fraud to the insurance industry. Yet despite the incredible financial impact on the average consumer, the research also suggests that almost half of Americans feel that it is an “acceptable” type of crime. </p>
<p>This little-known type of fraud <a href="https://insurancefraud.org/wp-content/uploads/The-Impact-of-Insurance-Fraud-on-the-U.S.-Economy-Report-2022-8.26.2022.pdf">comes in many forms</a>, such as misrepresenting facts on an insurance policy to receive a lower premium. This would involve not disclosing additional drivers in the household, understating the miles driven per year and using an address that is in a lower-premium and -risk neighborhood. </p>
<p>Another example is a patient exaggerating an injury in the hopes of gaining additional benefits, such as better medical treatment, additional time off from work due to disability and even attempting to get an injury covered that was not part of an auto accident. Besides resulting in inflated bills that others ultimately pay for, the fraudulent claims clog up an <a href="https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/is-our-healthcare-system-broken-202107132542">already busy and stressed medical system</a>, which could potentially take valued treatment away from a patient who does need it.</p>
<p>Insurance fraud also involves <a href="https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/etd/5731">large-scale organized fraud</a> whereby organized international criminal groups and terrorist cells launch highly detailed campaigns targeting specific insurance carriers. In the past, organized criminal rings would focus on crimes such as kidnapping, drugs and extortion as a means to fund their organizations. My colleagues and I found, however, that most of those groups have moved to insurance fraud because it is much less dangerous, the payout is greater and the punishment is low or nonexistent. </p>
<h2>What’s unique about insurance fraud</h2>
<p>The fact that insurance fraud is high reward, low risk is what makes it stand out among other types of fraud.</p>
<p>There are dozens of other kinds of scams that fraudsters engage in, all with the goal of either gaining a monetary profit or securing valuable personal information for use in other identity theft schemes. From romance and travel scams to schemes related to work or COVID-19, these all have the same “fraud DNA” of using <a href="https://www.scamnet.wa.gov.au/scamnet/Scam_prevention-The_Psychology_of_Scams.htm">psychological tricks to manipulate</a>.</p>
<p>But the nature of the insurance system, with many gaps in how claims are processed, makes it a very easy target and creates additional opportunities to commit fraud. </p>
<p>In addition, it’s a crime that receives <a href="https://trac.syr.edu/tracreports/crim/597/">very little media and prosecutorial attention</a>. From a legal perspective, insurance fraud cases often move to the bottom of the priority list of law enforcement and prosecutors, which is why fraudsters are so tempted by this type of crime.</p>
<p>And given how easy this fraud is to commit, how acceptable it seems to many Americans and how hard it is to detect, the level of insurance fraud in the U.S. is only expected to grow.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/193087/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael Skiba does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A new analysis of this type of fraud shows it’s a growing problem that almost half of Americans consider an ‘acceptable’ crime.Michael Skiba, Chair of Criminal Justice, Colorado State University GlobalLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1774452022-03-01T15:51:55Z2022-03-01T15:51:55ZOrganized crime has infiltrated online dating with sophisticated ‘pig-butchering’ scams<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/449007/original/file-20220228-13-1tujvnd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C6020%2C4010&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Scammers have stolen hundreds of millions of dollars from unsuspecting victims.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 175px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/organized-crime-has-infiltrated-online-dating-with-sophisticated--pig-butchering--scams" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>While we have been focused on the COVID-19 pandemic, vaccine mandates and related protests for much of the past two years, a wave of financial fraud has spread rapidly across Canada and around the world.</p>
<p>While not a deadly respiratory virus, this new approach to scamming has affected <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/crypto-dating-scam/">thousands of individuals globally</a>, with victims defrauded of a record <a href="https://time.com/nextadvisor/investing/cryptocurrency/common-crypto-scams/">US$14 billion in 2021</a>. The Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre reported <a href="https://www.antifraudcentre-centreantifraude.ca/features-vedette/2022/02/romance-rencontre-eng.htm">nearly $100 million stolen from victims in Canada alone in 2020 and 2021</a>.</p>
<h2>Emotional manipulation</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://www.scamadviser.com/scam-reports/scam-trends/4117/sha-zhu-pan-the-pig-butchering-scam">pig-butchering, or “sha zhu pan,”</a> scam is a highly sophisticated form of romance and cryptocurrency investment scam. Scammers — mainly working for Chinese organized crime gangs — pose as attractive professionals or entrepreneurs looking for true love. They use <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/crypto-scammers-fake-romance-on-dating-apps-like-hinge-2022-2">dating apps</a>, including Tinder, Grindr and Hinge, as well as social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram to match with their potential victims. The scammers target single women and men, LGBTQ+ and those over 50 years old, as well as new immigrants as their potential victims.</p>
<p>Using a combination of savvy technological tools, fake social media profiles and psychological manipulation, the scammers trick victims into believing that they live close by and are willing to meet in person whenever COVID-19 restrictions are lifted. In reality, the scammers are located mainly in Southeast Asia. </p>
<p>They slowly gain victims’ trust by using their personal information on social media against them to play the role of their dream romantic partner. They also shower their victims with messages of love and affection day and night. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/KSVKOaZL2to?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">A victim of the pig-butchering scam describes how it worked on her.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>According to the Global Anti-Scam Organization, this stage of the scam is referred to as <a href="https://www.globalantiscam.org/about">fattening or raising the pig</a> before slaughtering it. The “pig” here is the unsuspecting person, located in <a href="https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/courts-crime/she-lost-240000-in-pig-butchering-cryptocurrency-scam-after-fraudster-courted-her-for-months">Asia</a>, North America or Europe who is looking for a genuine love match on dating apps.</p>
<p>Contrary to more traditional romance scams, scammers manage to convince their victims that they are not interested in their money or personal banking information. Instead, they want to build a bright economic future with their soulmate by investing in cryptocurrency together as a couple. </p>
<p>Once the victims’ guard is down, scammers convince them to invest increasing amounts of money. Victims have, in many cases, emptied out their bank accounts, spent their inheritances and life savings, taken out loans and mortgages, and sold their houses and cars to invest in fake crypto platforms. Victims realize they were scammed only after <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/21/technology/crypto-scammers-new-target-dating-apps.html">being blocked from withdrawing</a> the thousands or millions of dollars they invested.</p>
<h2>Isolation and vulnerability</h2>
<p>My doctoral research examines how gay men across international borders navigate romantic relationships online. As such, I understand how unsuspecting people looking for love and companionship online during the COVID-19 pandemic can fall victim to these highly sophisticated romance-cryptocurrency investment scams.</p>
<p>The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted everybody’s life. Its intense periods of isolation, fear and uncertainty have particularly affected <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/21/technology/crypto-scammers-new-target-dating-apps.html">single people who don’t have emotional and social support systems in place</a>. And <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/31/well/live/dating-during-coronavirus-pandemic.html">dating during the pandemic has been especially difficult</a>.</p>
<p>Limited to online dating and dating apps, singles have become <a href="https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/two-ontario-women-speak-out-after-losing-more-than-100-000-in-cryptocurrency-scams-1.5662694">the perfect prey for criminals</a>. Taking advantage of their <a href="https://time.com/5955250/single-during-covid-19-pandemic/">vulnerability, loneliness and desire for human connection</a>, organized criminals have feigned romantic interest to con them out of their money.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/449010/original/file-20220228-4438-1cnts55.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Composite photograph of a man on a laptop sitting across from another person on a laptop wearing a hoodie" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/449010/original/file-20220228-4438-1cnts55.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/449010/original/file-20220228-4438-1cnts55.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/449010/original/file-20220228-4438-1cnts55.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/449010/original/file-20220228-4438-1cnts55.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/449010/original/file-20220228-4438-1cnts55.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=553&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/449010/original/file-20220228-4438-1cnts55.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=553&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/449010/original/file-20220228-4438-1cnts55.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=553&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Using sophisticated methods, scammers working for organized crime are able to defraud people of their life savings.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Previously, people may have thought they could outsmart being “catfished” — <a href="https://www.ageuk.org.uk/information-advice/money-legal/scams-fraud/how-to-spot-a-catfish/">misled by an individual scammer pretending to be someone else</a> — but most of the perpetrators of these new scams work in organized crime gangs. They appear to be made up of experts in psychological profiling who can hook their victims more efficiently using <a href="https://www.globalantiscam.org/post/tricking-english-translators-for-shazhupan-scripts">elaborate scripts</a> and algorithms, gradually making them fall in love with a good-looking and wealthy professional looking for a long-term relationship. At some point, they offer financial advice, particularly in investments, usually in cryptocurrency. </p>
<p>Often, the plan is for the scammer and the victim to invest together, getting even greater returns, only the victim’s money is real while the scammer’s isn’t. This has left victims with huge debts, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/money/2021/apr/17/bank-transfer-scams-fraud-victims">while also dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder, shame, embarrassment and anger</a> after being scammed. </p>
<h2>Regulating online safety</h2>
<p>In the United Kingdom, a <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/99f727b1-b1b7-4a00-855a-e126a97188a9">landmark online safety bill has been proposed</a> that would compel online companies <a href="https://www.which.co.uk/news/2021/12/landmark-report-targets-new-laws-for-online-safety/">to proactively tackle fraudulent content and harmful advertising</a>. </p>
<p>If passed, the Online Safety Bill will allocate greater funds to police and anti-fraud departments, <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/online-safety-bill-ignoring-epidemic-of-scams-faced-by-the-uk-experts-warn-12298864">which are critically underfunded</a>.</p>
<p>In addition, <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/27/elizabeth-warren-presses-yellen-financial-regulator-to-manage-crypto.html">senators in the United States</a> and <a href="https://indianexpress.com/article/technology/crypto/cryptocurrency-in-india-a-look-at-the-regulatory-journey-of-cryptocurrencies-7648767/">officials in India</a> have called for tighter government regulations of cryptocurrencies to protect people from fraud. </p>
<p>Given the devastating financial and emotional impact that scams have on victims, some banks and other financial institutions in <a href="https://news.bitcoin.com/8000-bitcoin-scam-victims-refunds/">the U.S.</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/money/2021/nov/11/victims-face-reimbursement-lottery-from-their-banks">the U.K.</a> have refunded their customers. </p>
<p>Canadian government, financial institutions and the media need to work toward preventing online fraud and helping victims recover. As we increasingly integrate the virtual world with our day-to-day living, more needs to be done to protect Canadians.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/177445/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Carlo Handy Charles receives funding from the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation as well as the Social Sciences and the Humanities Research Council as a Vanier Scholar. He is a fellow at the Convergence Migrations Insitute (Paris). He is an advisor on the Toronto Francophone Affairs Advisory Committee. </span></em></p>Organized crime gangs in Southeast Asia use psychological profiling, elaborate scripts and algorithms to produce sophisticated scams. Using dating apps, they target vulnerable people looking for love.Carlo Handy Charles, Ph.D. Candidate in Sociology/Geography and Research Fellow at Convergence Migrations Institute (Paris), McMaster UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1734162022-02-02T13:08:50Z2022-02-02T13:08:50ZThe great Amazon land grab – how Brazil’s government is clearing the way for deforestation<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/442638/original/file-20220125-23-sjc83.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=7%2C14%2C1590%2C1123&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A satellite captured large and small deforestation patches in Amazonas State in 2015. The forest loss has escalated since then.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/natural-satellite-image-of-deforestation-on-the-banks-of-news-photo/627792180">USGS/NASA Landsat data/Orbital Horizon/Gallo Images/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Imagine that a group of politicians decide that Yellowstone National Park is too big, so they downsize the park by a million acres, then sell that land in a private auction.</p>
<p>Outrageous? Yes. Unheard of? No. <a href="https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ab1e24">It’s happening</a> with increasing frequency in the Brazilian Amazon. </p>
<p>The most widely publicized threat to the Amazonian rainforest is deforestation. A new study by European scientists released March 7, 2022, finds that tree clearing and less rainfall over the past 20 years have left <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-022-01287-8">over 75% of the region increasingly less resilient to disturbances</a>, suggesting the rainforest may be nearing a tipping point for dieback. Fewer trees mean less moisture evaporating into the atmosphere to fall again as rain. </p>
<p>We have studied the Amazon’s changing hydroclimate, the role of deforestation and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/00139157.2021.1842711">evidence that the Amazon is being pushed toward a tipping point</a> – as well as what that means for different regions, biodiversity and climate change.</p>
<p>While the rise in deforestation is clear, less well understood are the sources driving it – particularly the way public lands are being converted to private holdings in a land grab <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Gabriel-Cardoso-Carrero">we’ve</a> <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=qcS5yogAAAAJ&hl=en">been</a> <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=PTEKYYoAAAAJ&hl=en">studying</a>
for the past decade. </p>
<p>Much of this land is cleared for cattle ranches and soybean farms, <a href="https://interactive.pri.org/2018/10/amazon-carbon/science.html">threatening biodiversity and the Earth’s climate</a>. Prior research has quantified how much public land has been grabbed, but only for one type of public land called “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2020.104863">undesignated public forests</a>.” Our research provides a complete account across all classes of public land. </p>
<p>We looked at Amazonia’s most active deforestation frontier, southern Amazonas State, starting in 2012 as rates of deforestation began to increase <a href="https://www.cell.com/one-earth/pdfExtended/S2590-3322(19)30081-8">because of loosened regulatory oversight</a>. Our research shows how land grabs are tied to accelerating deforestation spearheaded by wealthy interests, and how Brazil’s National Congress, by changing laws, is <a href="http://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/_ato2015-2018/2017/lei/l13465.htm">legitimizing these land grabs</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/442639/original/file-20220125-17-6i1s1l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A section of forest showing different stages of deforestation." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/442639/original/file-20220125-17-6i1s1l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/442639/original/file-20220125-17-6i1s1l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442639/original/file-20220125-17-6i1s1l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442639/original/file-20220125-17-6i1s1l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442639/original/file-20220125-17-6i1s1l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442639/original/file-20220125-17-6i1s1l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442639/original/file-20220125-17-6i1s1l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Three stages of deforestation: cleared land where the forest has recently been burned to create pasture; pastureland; and forest being burned.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/aerial-view-of-amazon-rainforest-deforestation-and-farm-news-photo/462437532">Ricardo Funari/Brazil Photos/LightRocket via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>How the Amazon land grab began</h2>
<p>Brazil’s modern land grab started in the 1970s, when the military government began offering free land to encourage mining industries and farmers to move in, <a href="https://origins.osu.edu/article/amazon-rainforest-under-threat-Bolsonaro-fires-agrobusiness-indigenous-Brazil?language_content_entity=en">arguing that national security</a> depended on developing the region. It took lands that had been under state jurisdictions since colonial times and allocated them to rural settlement, granting 150- to 250-acre holdings to poor farmers. </p>
<p>Federal and state governments ultimately designated over 65% of Amazonia to several public interests, including rural settlement. For biodiversity, they created conservation units, some allowing traditional resource use and subsistence agriculture. Leftover government lands are generally referred to as <a href="http://www.bibliotecaflorestal.ufv.br/handle/123456789/4031">“vacant or undesignated public lands.”</a> </p>
<h2>Tracking the land grab</h2>
<p>Studies have estimated that by 2020, <a href="https://ipam.org.br/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Amazo%CC%82nia-em-Chamas-7-Florestas-pu%CC%81blicas-na%CC%83o-destinadas.pdf">32% of “undesignated public forests”</a> had been grabbed for private use. But this is only part of the story, because land grabbing is now affecting many types of public land.</p>
<p>Importantly, land grabs now impact conservation areas and indigenous territories, where private holdings are forbidden. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A herd of cattle on grass with thick forest behind them." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/442640/original/file-20220125-15-wy06rh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/442640/original/file-20220125-15-wy06rh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442640/original/file-20220125-15-wy06rh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442640/original/file-20220125-15-wy06rh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442640/original/file-20220125-15-wy06rh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442640/original/file-20220125-15-wy06rh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442640/original/file-20220125-15-wy06rh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Cattle on land cleared in the Jamanxim National Forest in 2020.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/land-grabbing-cattle-raising-and-deforestation-illegal-news-photo/1228648531">Marco Antonio Rezende/Brazil Photos/LightRocket via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We compared the boundaries of self-declared private holdings in the government’s Rural Environmental Registry database, known as CAR, with the boundaries of all public lands in southern Amazonas State. The region has 50,309 square miles in conservation units. Of these, we found that <a href="https://www.datawrapper.de/_/JbEql/">10,425 square miles, 21%</a>, have been “grabbed,” or declared in the CAR register as private between 2014 and 2020. </p>
<p>In the United States, this would be like having 21% of the national parks disappear into private property.</p>
<p>Our measurement is probably an underestimate, given that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2014.06.026">not all grabbed lands are registered</a>. Some land grabbers now use CAR <a href="https://www.socioambiental.org/en/noticias-socioambientais/even-before-approval-a-land-grab-draft-law-is-already-destroying-the-amazon">to establish claims that could become legal</a> with changes in the law.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/440680/original/file-20220113-25-10q4hm4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/440680/original/file-20220113-25-10q4hm4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/440680/original/file-20220113-25-10q4hm4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/440680/original/file-20220113-25-10q4hm4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/440680/original/file-20220113-25-10q4hm4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=482&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/440680/original/file-20220113-25-10q4hm4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=482&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/440680/original/file-20220113-25-10q4hm4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=482&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A map of the region showing deforestation and public lands.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Gabriel Cardoso Carrero</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Land grabs put the rainforest at risk by <a href="https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ab1e24">increasing deforestation</a>. In southern Amazonas, <a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/440680/original/file-20220113-25-10q4hm4.png">our research reveals that twice as much deforestation occurred on illegal as opposed to legal CAR holdings between 2008 and 2021</a>, a relative magnitude that is growing. </p>
<h2>Large deforestation patches point to wealth</h2>
<p>So who are these land grabbers? </p>
<p>In Pará State, Amazonas State’s neighbor, deforestation in the 1990s <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8306.9302008">was dominated by poor family farms in rural settlements</a>. On average, these households accumulated 120 acres of farmland after several decades by opening 4-6 acres of forest every few years in clearings visible on satellite images as deforestation patches. </p>
<p>Since then, <a href="https://www.datawrapper.de/_/JbEql/">patch sizes have grown dramatically</a> in the region, with most deforestation occurring on illicit holdings whose patches are much larger than on legal holdings. </p>
<p><iframe id="JbEql" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/JbEql/12/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>Large deforestation patches <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-020-01354-w">indicate the presence of wealthy grabbers</a>, given the cost of clearing land.</p>
<p>Land grabbers benefit by selling the on-site timber and by subdividing what they’ve grabbed for sale in small parcels. Arrest records and research by groups such as Transparency International Brasil show that <a href="https://comunidade.transparenciainternacional.org.br/grilagem-de-terras">many of them are involved in criminal enterprises</a> that use the land for money laundering, tax evasion and illegal mining and logging.</p>
<p>In the 10-year period before President Jair Bolsonaro took office, <a href="http://terrabrasilis.dpi.inpe.br/app/map/deforestation?hl=en">satellite data</a> showed two deforestation patches exceeding 3,707 acres in Southern Amazonas. Since his election in 2019, we can identify nine massive clearings with an average size of 5,105 acres. The clearance and preparation cost for each Bolsonaro-era deforestation patch, legal or illicit, would be about US$353,000. </p>
<h2>Legitimizing land grabbing</h2>
<p>Brazil’s National Congress has been making it easier to grab public land. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/_ato2015-2018/2017/lei/l13465.htm">A 2017 change in the law</a> expanded the legally allowed size of private holdings in undesignated public lands and in rural settlements. This has reclassified over 1,000 square miles of land that had been considered illegal in 2014 as legal in southern Amazonas. Of all illegal <a href="https://www.car.gov.br/#/baixar">CAR claims</a> in undesignated public lands and rural settlements in 2014, <a href="http://atlasagropecuario.imaflora.org/mapa">we found that 94% became legal in 2017</a>.</p>
<p>Congress is now considering two additional pieces of legislation. One <a href="https://legis.senado.leg.br/sdleg-getter/documento?dm=9050818&ts=1639516395952&disposition=inline">would legitimize land grabs up to 6,180 acres, about 9.5 square miles</a>, in all undesignated public forests – an amount <a href="http://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/_ato2015-2018/2017/lei/l13465.htm">already allowed by law</a> in other types of undesignated public lands. The second would legitimize large holdings on about <a href="https://www.camara.leg.br/proposicoesWeb/prop_mostrarintegra;jsessionid=node0ncik9mq5phv818u4p592bgsuc3415152.node0?codteor=2066398&filename=Tramitacao-PL+4348/2019">80,000 square miles of land once meant for the poor</a>. </p>
<p>Our research also shows that the federal government increased the amount of public land up for grabs in southern Amazonas by shrinking rural settlements by 16%, just over 2,000 square miles, between <a href="https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s00267-016-0783-2.pdf">2015</a> and <a href="https://certificacao.incra.gov.br/csv_shp/export_shp.py">2020</a>. <a href="https://governancadeterras.com.br/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Andre%CC%81-Segura-Tomasi-PAF-Curuquete%CC%82-Grilagem-de-Terras-e-Viole%CC%82ncia-Agra%CC%81ria-SulAM-1.pdf">Large ranches are now absorbing that land</a>. Similar downsizing of public land has affected <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/627431/pdf?casa_token=w5cmTxINMOYAAAAA:SwlFEGwJj4BsjBSYggfqbr57fsSgCyOw9AcykDICyjSIzl05hFLFhRADSEJENKFDyqyf4Z5_lQ">Amazonia’s national parks</a>. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/c4-KpR1HrNs?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Satellite images over time show how deforestation spread in the Amazon.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>What can turn this around?</h2>
<p>Because of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1248525">policy interventions and the greening of agricultural supply chains</a>, deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon fell after 2005, reaching a low point in 2012, when it began trending up again <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2020.105072">because of weakening environmental governance and reduced surveillance</a>.</p>
<p>Other countries <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-climatechange-amazon-norway/norway-to-complete-1-billion-payment-to-brazil-for-protecting-amazon-idUSKCN0RF1P520150915">have helped Brazil with billions of dollars</a> to protect the Amazon for the good of the climate, but in the end, the land belongs to Brazil. Outsiders have limited power to influence its use.</p>
<p>At the U.N. climate summit in 2021, 141 countries – including Brazil – signed a <a href="https://ukcop26.org/glasgow-leaders-declaration-on-forests-and-land-use/">pledge to end deforestation by 2030</a>. This pledge holds potential because, unlike past ones, the private sector has committed <a href="https://cnr.ncsu.edu/news/2021/11/cop26-deforestation-pledge-a-promising-solution-with-an-uncertain-future/">$7.2 billion to reduce agriculture’s impact on the forest</a>. In our view, the global community can help by insisting that supply chains for Amazonian beef and soybean products originate on lands deforested long ago and whose legality is long-standing.</p>
<p><em>This article was updated March 7, 2022, with new research suggesting the Amazon is nearing a tipping point.</em></p>
<p>[<em>Over 140,000 readers rely on The Conversation’s newsletters to understand the world.</em> <a href="https://memberservices.theconversation.com/newsletters/?source=inline-140ksignup">Sign up today</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/173416/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gabriel Cardoso Carrero received funding from the Tropical Conservation and Development Program at the University of Florida to conduct fieldwork related to this research. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Cynthia S. Simmons and Robert T. Walker do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Land grabs spearheaded by wealthy interests are accelerating deforestation, and Brazil’s National Congress is working to legitimize them.Gabriel Cardoso Carrero, Graduate Student Fellow and PhD Candidate in Geography, University of FloridaCynthia S. Simmons, Professor of Geography, University of FloridaRobert T. Walker, Professor of Latin American Studies and Geography, University of FloridaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1735432021-12-09T20:52:28Z2021-12-09T20:52:28Z‘West Side Story’ may be timeless – but life in gangs today differs drastically from when the Jets and Sharks ruled the streets<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/436757/original/file-20211209-172173-l3qs80.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=15%2C13%2C949%2C502&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Dancing with danger.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://amblin.com/movie/west-side-story/">West Side Story/Amblin</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The songs are timeless, the casting contemporary and dance routines still daring.</p>
<p>But for <a href="https://www.colorado.edu/sociology/our-people/david-pyrooz">social</a> <a href="https://ccj.asu.edu/content/scott-decker">scientists</a> <a href="https://www.metrostate.edu/about/directory/james-densley">like us</a>, Steven Spielberg’s <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/08/movies/west-side-story-review.html">remake of the 1961 hit musical “West Side Story”</a> – a film about two rival street gangs – is more than a 21st-century face-lift of a Broadway classic. Released in theaters on Dec. 10, 2021, it is an opportunity to consider societal changes in the six decades since Maria and Tony stole the hearts of audiences across the world – particularly in the world of gangs.</p>
<p>As scholars who have <a href="http://tupress.temple.edu/book/20000000010332">studied gang culture</a>, we find that the soul of the street gang hasn’t changed much since the days of the Jets and the Sharks – but the world around them has. Demographics, economics, technology and public policy have reshaped and reshuffled gang life in America. So dramatic are the changes that the romanticized “West Side Story” characterization of gangs is <a href="http://tupress.temple.edu/book/20000000010332">now a relic of a bygone era</a>.</p>
<h2>Evolving demographics</h2>
<p>Perhaps the biggest shift in gangs is skin-deep – urban white-ethnic neighborhood-based gangs like the Jets <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520300453/alt-right-gangs">no longer really exist</a>.</p>
<p>Ethnonational conflict among Italian, Irish, Jewish and Polish youth in cities like Boston, Chicago, New York and Philadelphia culminated with the end of mass migration from Europe in the early to mid-20th century. Many urban white people moved to the suburbs in the 1960s and, generally speaking, <a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781498511346/The-History-of-Street-Gangs-in-the-United-States-Their-Origins-and-Transformations">took their gangs</a> with them. Today, when people think of the American street gang, they are more likely to think of Black gangs, like the Bloods and Crips, or Latino gangs, like the Nortenos and Surenos. White street gangs are located outside of urban areas and cast as <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520300453/alt-right-gangs">domestic extremists</a> such as the Proud Boys, Three Percenters and Skinheads.</p>
<h2>The gang as an American enterprise</h2>
<p>The gangs of the “West Side Story” era were often a normal yet fleeting aspect of adolescence, soon to be supplanted by work, marriage and children.</p>
<p>But in the 1970s and 1980s, globalization and industrial restructuring caused the well-paying, stable blue-collar jobs that young men in gangs were qualified for to largely <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Gang_as_an_American_Enterprise/Xgi5BWKFuqoC?hl=en">disappear</a>. Around this same time, gang involvement became more prolonged into <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/262522967_From_Your_First_Cigarette_to_Your_Last_Dyin'_Day_The_Patterning_of_Gang_Membership_in_the_Life-Course">adulthood</a> and intergenerational within <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Going_Down_To_The_Barrio/at3ol3zcrsMC?hl=en">families</a>.</p>
<p>This era also coincided with an increase in imported drugs such as heroin and crack cocaine. With the rise of the illicit drug economy, the gang itself became an <a href="https://pricetheory.uchicago.edu/levitt/Papers/LevittVenkateshAnEconomicAnalysis2000.pdf">institutionalized route</a> to mythologized riches. Gang activity <a href="https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles/171153.pdf">expanded</a> throughout the country, emerging in the suburbs and even rural towns, leading to the most recent estimates from the <a href="https://nationalgangcenter.ojp.gov/survey-analysis/measuring-the-extent-of-gang-problems">National Gang Center</a> of 31,000 gangs and 850,000 gang members. </p>
<h2>The West Side goes digital</h2>
<p>Gang life saw more changes with the emergence of the internet. The internet and social media were in the realms of far-fetched fantasy when “West Side Story” was made, but they now provide a <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/274265882_Criminal_and_Routine_Activities_in_Online_Settings_Gangs_Offenders_and_the_Internet">repository</a> for gang content, a <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/317662741_Broadcasting_Badness_Violence_Identity_and_Performance_in_the_Online_Rap_Scene">blueprint</a> for gang activity and a <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/332043722_When_Twitter_Fingers_Turn_to_Trigger_Fingers_a_Qualitative_Study_of_Social_Media-Related_Gang_Violence">catalyst</a> for gang conflict. A modern “West Side Story” would entail taunts on Twitter, fights over Facebook, and reliving the rumble on Reddit.</p>
<p>Word always traveled fast on the streets; “West Side Story” shows that well. But social media makes it faster, more public and more permanent. Gossip, taunts and threats are now <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691194431/ballad-of-the-bullet">broadcast to a much bigger social world</a> – in some cases, with violent consequences.</p>
<h2>Gang violence becomes deadlier</h2>
<p>Contemporary gangs “shoot it out” rather than “slug it out.” In the 1960s, there were <a href="https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/Digitization/34497NCJRS.pdf">several hundred</a> gang homicides annually; now there are <a href="https://nationalgangcenter.ojp.gov/survey-analysis/measuring-the-extent-of-gang-problems#homicidesnumber">several thousand</a>.</p>
<p>When compared with other homicides, gang-related homicides disproportionately involve the <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/354422122_Gang_Homicide_The_Road_so_Far_and_a_Map_for_the_Future">use of firearms</a>. Firearms are far more <a href="https://www.thetrace.org/2021/12/atf-time-to-crime-gun-data-shooting-pandemic/">prevalent and accessible</a> now than when “West Side Story” was conceived. But what original “West Side Story” director and choreographer Jerome Robbins understood back in the 1950s still holds true: When guns and knives are present, pushing and shoving can escalate quickly into stabbing and shooting. The movie’s fateful knife fight dramatically illustrates this.</p>
<h2>Gangs are a criminal justice priority</h2>
<p>As <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-american-street-gang-9780195115734">gangs and violence proliferated</a> in the decades after “West Side Story” first hit screens, the cure for the Jets’ self-diagnosis of “<a href="https://www.westsidestory.com/gee-officer-krupke">sociological sickness</a>” has shifted from social work to suppression. Criminal justice is now the rule of the day. Beat police officers like Officer Krupke and Lt. Shrank have been replaced by <a href="https://bjs.ojp.gov/library/publications/gang-units-large-local-law-enforcement-agencies-2007">gang unit officers and special investigators</a> tasked with gathering intelligence and documenting and collating gang members in <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/336810674_The_Matrix_in_Context_Taking_Stock_of_Police_Gang_Databases_in_London_and_Beyond">databases</a>.</p>
<p>States also responded <a href="https://nationalgangcenter.ojp.gov/legislation">legislatively</a> to gangs. California first passed its anti-gang laws in 1988, and 44 states have since followed suit. Gang membership and recruitment have been criminalized, while sentencing enhancements for crimes with a gang nexus have been controversially introduced.</p>
<p>In the days of “West Side Story,” gangs were not a significant issue in prisons. Since the onset of mass incarceration in the 1970s, prisons have become a <a href="https://theconversation.com/we-spoke-to-hundreds-of-prison-gang-members-heres-what-they-said-about-life-behind-bars-132573">vector for gang activity</a> – around 15% of U.S. prisoners today are affiliated with gangs.</p>
<h2>American street gangs in the 21st century</h2>
<p>It is impossible to understand gangs in the 21st century without considering how the world around them has shifted. And while structural shifts in policy, population and technology clearly matter, what is perhaps the starkest change has little to do with the gangs themselves, but the way in which the general public and the legal system <a href="https://nyupress.org/9780814776384/punished/">stigmatize the children</a> within them. The <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/262522967_From_Your_First_Cigarette_to_Your_Last_Dyin'_Day_The_Patterning_of_Gang_Membership_in_the_Life-Course">average age</a> of a gang member is 15 – these are kids who are trying to survive in the worst of circumstances.</p>
<p>If the gang was a rite of passage when Riff and Bernardo roamed the streets of New York City in “West Side Story,” the reality of the contemporary gang has become much bleaker because of worsening violence, mass incarceration and other factors that have operated largely outside of their control.</p>
<p>“West Side Story” harks back to simpler times, with less <a href="https://time.com/2862299/how-the-united-states-is-growing-more-partisan-in-10-charts/">polarization</a> and <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/187592/death-rate-from-homicide-in-the-us-since-1950/">violence</a>. Perhaps it could also assist in revising what we know about gangs and reforming some of our more punitive impulses to respond to them.</p>
<p>[<em>Like what you’ve read? Want more?</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=likethis">Sign up for The Conversation’s daily newsletter</a>.\</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/173543/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Pyrooz receives funding from the National Institute of Justice, National Institute of Child Health & Human Development, Charles Koch Foundation, and Laura and John Arnold Foundation</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Densley has received funding from The National Institute of Justice.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Scott H. Decker has received funding from the National Institute of Justice. </span></em></p>Gangs have changed in the decades since ‘West Side Story’ first came out – they are deadlier, and their demographics are different – as are the means law enforcement use to control them.David Pyrooz, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Colorado BoulderJames Densley, Professor of Criminal Justice, Metropolitan State University Scott H. Decker, Foundation Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Arizona State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1269862019-11-22T13:41:08Z2019-11-22T13:41:08ZCartel sieges leave Mexicans wondering if criminals run the country<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/302677/original/file-20191120-524-p89iev.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C9%2C6006%2C3998&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Clouds of smoke from burning cars mark the skyline of Culiacan, Mexico, during a 12-hour siege by the Sinaloa Cartel, Oct. 17, 2019. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Mexico-Government-On-The-Run/c3bf2e9efad0497cb1aeb7c54d159bc9/20/0">AP Photo/Hector Parra</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Recent deadly attacks by criminal organizations have instilled fear across Mexico.</p>
<p>In mid-October, <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/mexico-shaken-second-mass-shooting-two-days-n1067296">shootouts between cartels and police</a> in the states of Guerrero and Michoacán killed over 30 people. And a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/18/world/americas/mexico-cartel-chapo-son-guzman.html">12-hour criminal assault on Culiacán</a>, Sinaloa, after Mexican security forces <a href="https://riodoce.mx/categoria/operacion-ovidio/">captured the son of drug kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán</a> left 13 people dead, including at least three civilians. </p>
<p>On Nov. 4 the massacre of nine <a href="https://theconversation.com/mormons-in-mexico-a-brief-history-of-polygamy-cartel-violence-and-faith-126493">Mexican-American Mormon women and children in northern Mexico</a> shocked both sides of the border.</p>
<p>The attacks, some carefully planned and executed, have made the Mexican government appear weak on organized crime. By early November, the hashtag <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23MexicoNoTienePresidente&src=typed_query">#MexicoNoTienePresidente</a> – Mexico has no president – was trending on Twitter.</p>
<h2>Mexico’s violent cycles</h2>
<p>Security was a focus of <a href="https://www.animalpolitico.com/2018/06/que-dijeron-los-candidatos-presidenciales-en-sus-cierres-de-campana-estos-son-sus-discursos/">Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s winning campaign for the presidency</a> last year. </p>
<p>He proposed <a href="https://theconversation.com/mexico-is-bleeding-can-its-new-president-stop-the-violence-109490">novel strategies</a> to “<a href="https://theconversation.com/mexico-is-bleeding-can-its-new-president-stop-the-violence-109490">pacify</a>” Mexico, including giving <a href="https://theconversation.com/amnesty-for-drug-traffickers-thats-one-mexican-presidential-candidates-pitch-to-voters-96063">amnesty to low-level drug traffickers</a> who leave the business, and <a href="https://cnnespanol.cnn.com/video/marihuana-olga-sanchez-legalizacion-cannabis-propuesta-iniciativa-vo-perspectivas-mexico/">legalizing marijuana</a> to turn a <a href="http://www.lse.ac.uk/ideas/Assets/Documents/reports/LSE-IDEAS-Ending-the-Drug-Wars.pdf">lucrative criminal market into a regulated, commercial one</a>. </p>
<p>López Obrador also promised to punish police and soldiers for human rights violations committed when battling cartels. </p>
<p>But 18 months into his six-year term, López Obrador’s only concrete security policy was the creation in June 2019 of a controversial <a href="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/54ff874b5ab8ff86ab68f4f15/files/a1d0d906-3ad6-415c-881b-d0dacdce9863/Observaciones_finales_del_Comit%C3%A9_de_Derechos_Humanos_de_la_ONU_sobre_M%C3%A9xico_2019.pdf">new military-style police force</a>, the National Guard. So far, however, Mexico’s 70,000 National Guardsmen have mostly been tasked with <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/es/2019/06/24/guardia-nacional-migrantes-mexico/">stopping Central American migration</a>. </p>
<p>One initiative that looked promising – an independent commission of forensic experts and prosecutors established to investigate the <a href="http://www.comisionayotzinapa.segob.gob.mx/en/Comision_para_la_Verdad/Informes_y_otros_documentos">unsolved 2014 disappearance of 43 students in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero state</a> – has had setbacks. In September, 24 police officers implicated in the students’ disappearances <a href="https://www.dw.com/es/gobierno-mexicano-revisar%C3%A1-caso-ayotzinapa-junto-al-poder-judicial-y-fiscal%C3%ADa/a-50462513">were freed from jail</a> for insufficient evidence, compelling López Obrador’s government to file a judicial appeal.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, with <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uQYGfTWPsKghiMNi7BjDwRRTPkIEIvSX/view">25,890 murders reported through September</a>, 2019 looks to be another record-shatteringly violent year for Mexico.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/302683/original/file-20191120-542-k34qno.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/302683/original/file-20191120-542-k34qno.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/302683/original/file-20191120-542-k34qno.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302683/original/file-20191120-542-k34qno.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302683/original/file-20191120-542-k34qno.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302683/original/file-20191120-542-k34qno.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302683/original/file-20191120-542-k34qno.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302683/original/file-20191120-542-k34qno.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An attack on the LeBaron family killed three Mormon women and six of their children near the U.S.-Mexico border, Nov. 6, 2019.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Mexico-Border-Killings/f2bcdb2f2d5e423d84c3c648d2e7baeb/47/0">AP Photo/Christian Chavez</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>No new drug war</h2>
<p>My research on <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-politics-of-drug-violence-9780190695965?lang=en&cc=us">Mexico’s chronic criminal violence</a> finds that sudden upticks in violence usually signal increased conflict between criminal cartels, like the current <a href="https://justiceinmexico.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/180319-Policy_Brief-CJNG.pdf">clashes between the Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación and the Sinaloa Cartel</a>. </p>
<p>I also find that showy, coordinated attacks like those seen recently typically occur during political transitions or because of intense electoral competition – times when the government cannot effectively coordinate law enforcement or maintain corrupt criminal arrangements.</p>
<p>Some in Mexico argue that the recent cartel offensives demand an extreme military response. President Donald Trump <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/05/trump-says-us-is-ready-to-help-mexico-wage-war-on-drug-cartels.html">has even offered</a> a <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-cartelization-of-mexico-11572999461?emailToken=201492b9d90b381bc434a74aced6c67bjK7QQkqaCsSp7EIVLelJdDcoaQZaXFk44cVEQeHIeBHThmCFimccMV9ua8rFSt1ZVIlATBMADphDMTyyK77luw%3D%3D&reflink=article_copyURL_share&fbclid=IwAR1u7CRQUmP_0qbhvbVYP9w_E3hg8N4gWmFP4zdwstQ-1EYYqgSPIrB_XN8%22%22">U.S. intervention</a>. </p>
<p>But President López Obrador insists that <a href="https://news.culturacolectiva.com/mexico/no-se-cambiara-estrategia-anticrimen-pues-no-es-una-ocurrencia-amlo/">he will not restart</a> the Mexican government’s all-out war on cartels. Sending soldiers to fight crime, as consecutive governments have done since 2006, actually <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-decade-of-murder-and-grief-mexicos-drug-war-turns-ten-70036">drove up violence</a> in Mexico by creating <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0022002715587053?casa_token=iTT_CyLGjkQAAAAA:DI_ihrHhmSUhSxdQSVeJPEwyMCykMwSBPPan672sdkyn82zsficdLeFWa0ls2rK_Mi8adCPS9LhF">more competition between organized crime groups</a> and thus more retaliation. Thousands of civilians have also been killed in the cross-fire between cartels and soldiers.</p>
<p>The president’s aversion to militarized security didn’t stop him from creating the Mexican National Guard. But it was on display in Culiacán last month when Mexican soldiers were outpowered by <a href="https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/43jz9m/what-happens-to-the-sinaloa-cartel-after-el-chapo-game-of-thrones">cartel members</a>. Rather than fight to keep El Chapo’s son in custody, they released him.</p>
<p>“<a href="https://www.jornada.com.mx/2019/10/19/politica/004n1pol">The capture of a criminal is not worth more than people’s lives</a>,” López Obrador said.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/302681/original/file-20191120-547-16orwum.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/302681/original/file-20191120-547-16orwum.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/302681/original/file-20191120-547-16orwum.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=366&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302681/original/file-20191120-547-16orwum.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=366&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302681/original/file-20191120-547-16orwum.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=366&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302681/original/file-20191120-547-16orwum.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302681/original/file-20191120-547-16orwum.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302681/original/file-20191120-547-16orwum.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">President Andrés Manuel López Obrador faced scrutiny after security forces released the son of drug kingpin Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman, Oct. 18, 2019.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Mexico-Violence/93aa6f5c8ba644b7b0c6c1a704fdf126/44/0">Mexico Presidential Press Office via AP</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The incident was widely seen as an embarrassment for the Mexican government. López Obrador’s approval rating, while still high, has <a href="http://consulta.mx/index.php/estudios-e-investigaciones/evaluacion-de-gobierno/item/1183-aprobacion-lopez-obrador-en-octubre-2019%22%22">declined since the recent violence</a>. </p>
<p>But in times of war, deescalation is sometimes the only way to prevent more bloodshed. There is no easy fix for entrenched criminal violence. Every decision, every policy, has trade-offs.</p>
<h2>Indigenous resistance</h2>
<p>That doesn’t mean the cartels should be left alone. </p>
<p>The researchers Sandra Ley, Guillermo Trejo and Shannan Mattiace have studied how <a href="https://larrlasa.org/articles/10.25222/larr.377/">some indigenous communities in the dangerous southern state of Guerrero</a> have managed to prevent criminal infiltration of the police and local judiciary. One strategy, they found, was quickly identifying and shaming officers and judges who collude with cartels. </p>
<p>Having trustworthy institutions has, in turn, enabled these communities to resist cartel pressures from within and react powerfully when cartels attack. </p>
<p>Because it draws on Mexican indigenous communities’ unique, <a href="https://larrlasa.org/articles/10.25222/larr.377/">long tradition of social mobilization</a>, this strategy is not easily replicable.</p>
<p>But that, too, is a lesson: All violence is local. The many illegal markets that fuel the criminal business in Mexico – from <a href="https://theconversation.com/cartel-kingpin-el-chapo-is-jailed-for-life-but-the-us-mexico-drug-trade-is-booming-120556">drugs</a> and <a href="https://www.kpbs.org/news/2019/may/03/university-san-diego-mexicos-violence-grows-new-he/">oil theft to extortion and avocado distribution</a> – may be national and international, but the cartels’ specific crime dynamics are not. </p>
<p>The way crime groups establish territorial control, gain power and carry out attacks <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/criminal-enterprises-and-governance-in-latin-america-and-the-caribbean/9010435C967FFD890CF1EDF40D99DA47">varies from place to place</a>. So do the criminals’ political relationships and the ways different communities respond to violence.</p>
<h2>A temporary turnaround</h2>
<p>Take Ciudad Juárez, for example – just across the border from El Paso, Texas. </p>
<p>In 2010, Juárez was <a href="http://www.seguridadjusticiaypaz.org.mx/sala-de-prensa/58-cd-juarez-por-segundo-ano-consecutivo-la-ciudad-mas-violenta-del-mundolink">the most violent city in the world</a>. By 2012, violence had dropped by 60%. </p>
<p>Some analysts and politicians credited <a href="https://justiceinmexico.org/todos-somos-juarez-program-explained/">Todos Somos Juárez</a> – “We Are All Juarez” – a federal program that funded 160 short-term social improvement projects like new housing, sports programs and improved public security infrastructure.</p>
<p>But violence also decreased in Juárez, <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-politics-of-drug-violence-9780190695958?cc=us&lang=en&">my research shows</a>, because the federal security forces occupying the city, who were <a href="https://www.wola.org/sites/default/files/downloadable/Mexico/2010/WOLA_RPT-SPANISH_Juarez_FNL-color.pdf">responsible for many abuses of power</a>, largely withdrew in 2011. Plus, the Sinaloa Cartel eventually <a href="https://es.insightcrime.org/investigaciones/de-como-la-policia-el-ejercito-politicos-y-fiscales-determinaron-quien-gano-la-plaza-de-juarez">prevailed in its turf war with the Juárez Cartel</a>.</p>
<p>Ciudad Juárez’s turnaround was temporary. As a result of increased competition between cartels, new armed factions and local gangs, <a href="https://ficosec.org/homicidios-dolosos-2019/">homicides in the city increased 700%</a> last year.</p>
<p>U.S. immigration policy is hurting Ciudad Juárez, too. The thousands of migrants forced to <a href="https://www.dhs.gov/news/2019/01/24/migrant-protection-protocols">await their U.S. asylum hearings in Mexico</a> – many of them homeless – have become easy prey for organized crime, <a href="https://usipc.ucsd.edu/publications/usipc-seeking-asylum-part-2-final.pdf">according to the U.S. Immigration Policy Center at the University of San Diego</a>. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/12/world/americas/mexico-migrants.html">Kidnapping and robbery are way up</a> along the U.S.-Mexico border.</p>
<h2>All crime is local</h2>
<p>The Juárez and Guerrero examples suggest that Mexico may have to tackle crime not only federally, with its new National Guard, but also city by city. </p>
<p>That may mean federal financing and training of elite, reliable local civilian police forces, learning from indigenous towns in Guerrero. It could mean funding social programs like Juárez’s, to get at the root causes of violence. </p>
<p>It will certainly require partnering with local political and civilian allies who understand how criminal gangs exert their power.</p>
<p>City-specific security strategies won’t show immediate results. But they can help restore the Mexican government’s legitimacy and control in a country besieged by cartels. </p>
<p>[ <em>Insight, in your inbox each day.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=insight">You can get it with The Conversation’s email newsletter</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/126986/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Angélica Durán-Martínez has received funding from the United States Institute of Peace and the Social Science Research Council. In 2011, she was an SSRC Drugs, Security and Democracy fellow, a program partially funded by Open Society Foundations.</span></em></p>A series of brazen, highly visible attacks by Mexican drug cartels have killed at least 50 people in the past month, terrorizing citizens and making the government look weak on crime.Angélica Durán-Martínez, Associate Professor of Political Science, UMass LowellLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1263062019-11-14T12:59:24Z2019-11-14T12:59:24ZUrban unrest propels global wave of protests<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/301580/original/file-20191113-77291-1nxmrnz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C6%2C4176%2C2792&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Chilean police clash with anti-government demonstrators during a protest in Santiago, Chile, Nov. 12, 2019. Santiago is one of a dozen cities worldwide to see mass unrest in recent months.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Chile-Protests/349587027bf24a9d9cb1d90de10bf884/11/0">AP Photo/Esteban Felix</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/why-are-there-so-many-protests-across-the-globe-right-now/2019/10/24/5ced176c-f69b-11e9-ad8b-85e2aa00b5ce_story.html">Numerous anti-government protests</a> have paralyzed cities across the globe for months, from La Paz, Bolivia, to Santiago, Chile, and Monrovia, Liberia, to Beirut.</p>
<p>Each protest in this worldwide wave of unrest has its own local dynamic and cause. But they also <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2019/10/25/global-wave-protests-share-themes-economic-anger-political-hopelessness/">share certain characteristics</a>: Fed up with <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-50123743">rising inequality, corruption and slow economic growth</a>, angry citizens worldwide are demanding an end to corruption and the restoration of a democratic rule of law.</p>
<p>It is no accident, as <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/central-america-caribbean/2019-10-29/why-latin-america-was-primed-explode">Foreign Affairs recently observed</a>, that Latin America – which has seen the most countries explode into the longest-lasting violent protests – has the slowest regional growth in the world, with only 0.2% expected in 2019. Latin America is also the world’s <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/01/inequality-is-getting-worse-in-latin-america-here-s-how-to-fix-it/">region</a> with the most inequality.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/10/world/americas/evo-morales-bolivia.html">Bolivia’s once-powerful president</a>, Evo Morales – whose support was strongest in rural areas – was forced out on Nov. 11 by a military response to mass urban unrest after alleged electoral fraud. </p>
<p>In October, <a href="https://theconversation.com/lebanon-uprising-unites-people-across-faiths-defying-deep-sectarian-divides-125772">Lebanon’s prime minister</a> also resigned after mass protests. </p>
<p>One under-covered factor in these demonstrations, I would observe as a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=Dv_-dxQAAAAJ&hl=enhttps://scholar.google.com/citations?user=Dv_-dxQAAAAJ&hl=en">scholar of migration</a>, is domestic, rural-to-urban migration. All these capital cities gripped by protest have huge populations of desperately poor formerly rural people <a href="https://www.cairn.info/mediterra-2018-english--9782724623956-page-101.htm">pushed out of the countryside</a> and into the city by <a href="https://theconversation.com/climate-change-is-making-soils-saltier-forcing-many-farmers-to-find-new-livelihoods-106048">climate change</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-struggling-agricultural-sector-what-went-wrong-20-years-ago-45171">national policies</a> that hurt small farmers or a <a href="https://theconversation.com/who-is-responsible-for-migrants-108388">global trade system that impoverishes local agriculture</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/301593/original/file-20191113-77326-6t9jol.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/301593/original/file-20191113-77326-6t9jol.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/301593/original/file-20191113-77326-6t9jol.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301593/original/file-20191113-77326-6t9jol.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301593/original/file-20191113-77326-6t9jol.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301593/original/file-20191113-77326-6t9jol.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301593/original/file-20191113-77326-6t9jol.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301593/original/file-20191113-77326-6t9jol.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Backers of ousted Bolivian president Evo Morales march in La Paz, Bolivia, Nov. 13, 2019.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Bolivia-Elections/bf7e9e9d1762473c952642cba48435d8/2/0">AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Rapid urban growth</h2>
<p>Cities worldwide have been growing at an <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/jul/12/urban-sprawl-how-cities-grow-change-sustainability-urban-age">unsustainable pace</a> over the past seven decades. </p>
<p>In 1950, the New York metropolitan area and Tokyo were the world’s only megacities – cities with more than 10 million people. By 1995, 14 megacities had emerged. Today, there are 25. Of the 7.6 billion people in the world, 4.2 billion, or 55%, <a href="https://www.un.org/development/desa/en/news/population/2018-revision-of-world-urbanization-prospects.html">live in cities and other urban settlements</a>. Another 2.5 billion people will <a href="https://www.un.org/development/desa/en/news/population/2018-revision-of-world-urbanization-prospects.html">move into cities in poor countries by 2050</a>, according to the United Nations. </p>
<p>Most modern megacities are in the <a href="https://qz.com/africa/688823/80-of-the-worlds-megacities-are-now-in-asia-latin-america-or-africa/">developing regions of Africa, Asia and Latin America</a>. There, natural population increases in cities are aggravated by surges in rural migrants in search of a better life. </p>
<p>What they find, instead, are sprawling <a href="https://www.insightcrime.org/news/analysis/south-america-drug-slums-jurisdiction-organized-crime/">informal settlements</a>, frequently called <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-humanitarian-summit-urban-crisis-idUSKCN0Y80GA">urban slums</a>. </p>
<p>These marginalized parts of cities in the developing world – called “favelas” in Brazil, “bidonvilles” in Haiti and “villas miserias” in Argentina – <a href="https://blogs.unicef.org/east-asia-pacific/the-dark-of-day-life-in-jakarta-urban/">look remarkably similar across the globe</a>. Ignored by the municipal government, they usually lack sanitation, clean drinking water, electricity, health care facilities and schools. Informal urban settlements are usually <a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/massive-urban-slums-1435765">precariously located</a>, near flood-prone waterfronts or on steep, unstable mountainsides. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/301583/original/file-20191113-77305-nugz0y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/301583/original/file-20191113-77305-nugz0y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/301583/original/file-20191113-77305-nugz0y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=387&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301583/original/file-20191113-77305-nugz0y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=387&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301583/original/file-20191113-77305-nugz0y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=387&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301583/original/file-20191113-77305-nugz0y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301583/original/file-20191113-77305-nugz0y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301583/original/file-20191113-77305-nugz0y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An urban slum in Jakarta, Indonesia, April 3, 2017. Jakarta has seen regular outbreaks of protest since May 2019.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Indonesia-Daily-Life/50adf90547c94f898ba7b39c5342e8b8/18/0">AP Photo/Tatan Syuflana</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Their economy and, to a significant degree, politics, are <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/research/bringing-the-state-to-the-slum-confronting-organized-crime-and-urban-violence-in-latin-america/">infiltrated by gangs</a> – organized crime groups that profit off the illegal trafficking of drugs, people and weapons. These gangs, in turn, may be <a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/massive-urban-slums-1435765">linked to political parties</a>, serving as their <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/40553119?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">armed enforcers</a>.</p>
<p>Many rural migrants, who lack identity documentation, social entitlements, housing and financial services, are forced to work in these illicit labor markets. </p>
<p>This system replicates in a predatory, illegal form the <a href="https://oxfordindex.oup.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100310810">patron-client relationship</a> still common in many developing countries, in which a rural economic elite provides employment, loans, seeds, cash or protection for farmers in exchange for “taxes” – usually a share of the farmer’s produce – and political fealty. </p>
<p>In the unstable market economy of the urban slum, <a href="https://www.un.org/ruleoflaw/files/Challenge%20of%20Slums.pdf">gangs are the patron</a>.</p>
<h2>A staging ground for discontent</h2>
<p>The injustices of this daily life underlie the anger of many of today’s protesters. From Quito, Ecuador, to Beirut, the extreme marginalization of so many people living in big, dysfunctional and dangerous places has boiled over into deadly unrest. </p>
<p>In Haiti, for example, the majority of demonstrators who’ve staged <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/04/opinion/haiti-protests.html">nine straight weeks of massive protests</a> against documented official corruption, gasoline shortages and food scarcity are extremely poor Port-au-Prince residents. They are highly motivated to keep protesting because they are facing starvation.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/301591/original/file-20191113-77342-1krg6v2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/301591/original/file-20191113-77342-1krg6v2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/301591/original/file-20191113-77342-1krg6v2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301591/original/file-20191113-77342-1krg6v2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301591/original/file-20191113-77342-1krg6v2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301591/original/file-20191113-77342-1krg6v2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301591/original/file-20191113-77342-1krg6v2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301591/original/file-20191113-77342-1krg6v2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">People in the Cite Soleil slum, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, wait for government-distributed food and school supplies, Oct. 3, 2019.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/APTOPIX-Haiti-Political-Crisis/0fab5cb697ef4794b291c63bd3f1a76f/1/0">AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Even Chile, which technically is the wealthiest Latin American country, has an awful lot of <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-50123743">very poor people struggling to get by</a>. Its current protests, which began in mid-October with a hike in the Santiago subway fare, are disproportionately composed of youth and rural migrants from Santiago’s poor outskirts. Among Latin American countries, Chile has the second-highest rate of internal migration in <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5362059/">all of Latin America</a>, second only to Panama. Bolivia ranks fifth in the region.</p>
<p>It is not the actual movement of rural people into cities that <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0738894215581315">creates social upheaval</a>, according to a 2015 analysis of 20 years of data on internal migration, poverty and inequality for 34 cities in Africa and Asia. Rather, it’s the overall poor and unequal educational and housing opportunities that rural-to-urban migrants face in cities – coupled with their <a href="https://homerdixon.com/tag/project-on-environment-population-and-security/">socioeconomic marginalization</a> – that <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0738894215581315">spurs urban discontent</a>. </p>
<p>People who fled impoverished countryside only to find poverty in the city, too, are demanding more. Two centuries after the <a href="https://mappinghistory.uoregon.edu/english/EU/EU06-00.html">peasant rebellions that toppled monarchies across Europe</a>, cities have become the stage for the kind of <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-50123743">resentment and frustration</a> that can destabilize entire nations.</p>
<p>[ <em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/126306/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Henry F. (Chip) Carey does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>From Santiago and La Paz to Beirut and Jakarta, many of the cities now gripped by protest share a common problem: They’ve grown too much, too fast.Henry F. (Chip) Carey, Associate Professor, Political Science, Georgia State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1094902019-01-29T11:45:31Z2019-01-29T11:45:31ZMexico is bleeding. Can its new president stop the violence?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/255618/original/file-20190125-108345-1q1a7y5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador with the families of the 43 students who went missing in 2014 in Guerrero state. He has ordered a truth commission to investigate the unsolved disappearance.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://pictures.reuters.com/CS.aspx?VP3=SearchResult&VBID=2C0FCIH2PB307&SMLS=1&RW=1440&RH=816#/SearchResult&VBID=2C0FCIH2PB307&SMLS=1&RW=1440&RH=816&POPUPPN=36&POPUPIID=2C0FQEQJOYWTP">Reuters/Edgard Garrido</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Nearly 34,000 people were murdered in <a href="http://secretariadoejecutivo.gob.mx/docs/pdfs/nueva-metodologia/CNSP-V%C3%ADctimas-2018_dic18.pdf%22">Mexico last year</a>, according to new government statistics — the deadliest year since modern record-keeping began.</p>
<p>Of all the challenges facing Mexico’s new president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, curbing violence may be the biggest. </p>
<p>Mexico has seen <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-record-29-000-mexicans-were-murdered-last-year-can-soldiers-stop-the-bloodshed-90574">ever-growing bloodshed</a> since 2006, when President Felipe Calderon deployed <a href="https://theconversation.com/mexicos-military-is-a-lethal-killing-force-should-it-really-be-deployed-as-police-75521">the Mexican armed forces to fight drug cartels</a>. </p>
<p>Rather than reduce violence, the government’s crackdown actually increased conflicts between and among cartels, according to <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-politics-of-drug-violence-9780190695965?q=the%20politics%20of%20drug%20violence&lang=en&cc=us">my research on criminal violence</a> and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/es/2018/11/28/opinion-lopez-obrador-guardia-nacional/">numerous other studies</a>. It also led to widespread military abuses of power against civilians.</p>
<p>More than 250,000 people have been murdered and <a href="http://secretariadoejecutivo.gob.mx/rnped/estadisticas-fuerocomun.php">35,000 have disappeared</a> since the beginning of Mexico’s drug war. </p>
<p>López Obrador said on the campaign trail that Mexico must “<a href="https://www.animalpolitico.com/2018/06/que-dijeron-los-candidatos-presidenciales-en-sus-cierres-de-campana-estos-son-sus-discursos/%22">consider multiple alternatives to achieve the pacification of the country</a>.” </p>
<p>He pitched several possibilities to reduce crime without using law enforcement, including <a href="https://www.animalpolitico.com/2017/12/lopez-obrador-precandidato-amnistia/%22">granting amnesty to low-level criminals</a>, negotiating with <a href="http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/elecciones-2018/amlo-plantea-analizar-amnistia-lideres-del-narco-para-garantizar-la-paz">crime bosses to dismantle their syndicates</a> and confronting the human rights violations <a href="https://www.ictj.org/about/transitional-justice%22">committed by soldiers, police and public officials</a>.</p>
<h2>Finding the truth</h2>
<p>Some of those ideas – particularly the controversial notion of negotiating with organized crime – have faded away since López Obrador took office on Dec. 1. </p>
<p>So far, his administration has put more emphasis on traditional law-and-order policies. </p>
<p>In December, he ordered the creation of a <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mexico-politics/mexican-president-elects-party-presents-national-guard-plan-idUSKCN1NP2MZ">Mexican national guard</a> to fight organized crime. Though human rights advocates and security experts <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/es/2018/11/28/opinion-lopez-obrador-guardia-nacional/">fear</a> this approach will repeat past fatal mistakes of militarizing Mexican law enforcement, the lower house of Congress recently <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mexico-security/mexicos-new-crime-fighting-national-guard-easily-wins-lower-house-approval-idUSKCN1PB060">approved the measure</a>. It will likely be approved in the Senate. </p>
<p>López Obrador has followed through on one of his campaign proposals for “pacifying” Mexico, though. </p>
<p>Days after being sworn in, the president <a href="http://www.alejandroencinas.mx/home/decreto-presidencial-para-el-acceso-a-la-verdad-en-el-caso-ayotzinapa/">established a truth commission</a> to investigate the unsolved disappearance of 43 students from the Ayotzinapa teachers college in the southern Mexican town of Iguala in 2014. </p>
<p>Five years after their disappearance, the truth of this infamous case remains elusive. </p>
<p>According to the <a href="https://theconversation.com/massacres-disappearances-and-1968-mexicans-remember-the-victims-of-a-perfect-dictatorship-104196">government</a> of former president Enrique Peña Nieto, the crime was a local affair. Students en route to a protest march in Mexico City were detained by the Iguala police, and, at the mayor’s order, handed over to a local gang, which killed them and burned their bodies. </p>
<p>Investigators <a href="http://www.oas.org/en/iachr/activities/giei.asp">from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights</a> could not corroborate this story. In the burn pit identified in 2016, they found no physical evidence of the missing students. </p>
<p>In a scathing <a href="http://centroprodh.org.mx/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/giei-informeayotzinapa2.pdf%22%22">final report</a>, investigators said that authorities had ignored crucial evidence that the army and federal police were involved in the students’ disappearance.</p>
<p>A truth commission will help Mexicans “understand the truth and do justice to the young people of Ayotzinapa,” López Obrador <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/12/mexico-president-forms-truth-commission-missing-students-181204060357515.html">said on Twitter</a> in announcing its creation.</p>
<p>The Ayotzinapa truth commission will put extraordinary resources and personnel on the case and give the victims’ families and perpetrators a voice in the process – neither of which police investigations in Mexico typically do. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/255617/original/file-20190125-108348-180pk8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/255617/original/file-20190125-108348-180pk8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/255617/original/file-20190125-108348-180pk8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/255617/original/file-20190125-108348-180pk8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/255617/original/file-20190125-108348-180pk8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/255617/original/file-20190125-108348-180pk8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/255617/original/file-20190125-108348-180pk8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/255617/original/file-20190125-108348-180pk8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Mexicans have marched every year since 2014 to demand the truth about what happened to the 43 college students who went missing in Guerrero state in September 2014.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://ustv-mrs-prod.ap.org/9298dcd7a7a54689a889c09efdfb4542/components/secured/main.jpg?response-cache-control=No-cache&response-content-disposition=attachment%3Bfilename%3DAP_638350409083.jpg&Expires=1538757901&Signature=T1uh0Bfk~MZmcCCL5QXiVcubCD1aAmf~mQvcUkUD3~olkGsqGsm2E~eOFGO0nbaigBDhBkWXLxAm6nhQ07jiy8lLvlfPMz0cxIga~HnNrDhq1vuxJ6S1hJqDTxhX05cP5HGgXOdIsA1mig8t1uqftJtUl9OoTDo~IANEQp~QncA_&Key-Pair-Id=APKAJ2U2YQ4Z3WBFV6TA,%20http://www.apimages.com/Search?query=ayotzinapa+investigation&ss=10&st=kw&entitysearch=&toItem=24&">AP Photo/Marco Ugarte</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Transitional justice</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.ictj.org/gallery-items/truth-commissions">Truth commissions</a> aim to create a collective, participatory narrative of human rights atrocities that not only exposes the perpetrators but also identifies the conditions that facilitated violence. They are a central component of transitional justice, an approach to helping countries recover after civil war or dictatorship.</p>
<p>Countries like Argentina, Guatemala, Brazil and Peru all used truth commissions to reckon with the toll of their bloody dictatorships and wars and give reparations to victims. <a href="https://transitionaljusticedata.com/browse/index/Browse.mechanism:truthCommissions/Browse.countryid:all!">South Africa</a> famously used a truth commission to document the horrific human rights violations committed under apartheid.</p>
<p>Mexico’s situation is different: It has a criminal violence problem, not a civil war. </p>
<p>But my research indicates this pacification strategy may have some promise. </p>
<p>Recent <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0022343318793480%22">studies suggest</a> that truth commissions can actually help prevent future violence. Because they identify perpetrators, who then face punishment for their crimes, truth commissions can both take criminals off the street and deter others from committing crime.</p>
<p>Holding public officials responsible for their <a href="https://www.hrw.org/blog-feed/mexico-lessons-human-rights-catastrophe%22">corruption</a> would be a major achievement in Mexico. </p>
<p>As the U.S. federal <a href="https://theconversation.com/el-chapo-trial-shows-why-a-wall-wont-stop-drugs-from-crossing-the-us-mexico-border-110001">trial of drug trafficker Joaquín “Chapo” Guzmán</a> illustrates, corruption penetrates the highest levels of Mexican government. </p>
<p>Since the beginning of its drug war, in 2006, Mexican citizens have filed <a href="https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2018/country-chapters/mexico#043288%22">10,000 complaints of abuse against soldiers</a>, including accusations of extrajudicial killings and torture. The government has done little to look into those allegations. Nor has it actively investigated most of the <a href="https://articulo19.org/periodistasasesinados/%22">murders of 97 Mexican journalists</a> since then.</p>
<p>If an Ayotzinapa truth commission enjoys the full support of federal authorities – which is not a guarantee, given the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/28/nyregion/el-chapo-trial-mexico-corruption.html">corruption it will almost certainly uncover</a> – it could restore some faith in Mexico’s justice system. Currently, 97 percent of all crimes <a href="https://www.udlap.mx/igimex/assets/files/2018/igimex2018_ESP.pdf">go unpunished</a>. </p>
<p>Focusing on truth may also help the country better understand – and therefore address – the root causes of violence in Mexico.</p>
<p>Truth commissions, however, will not immediately solve an incredibly complex security crisis. </p>
<p>As <a href="http://www.zocalo.com.mx/reforma/detail/imposible-comision-verdad-por-caso.-ai">Amnesty International has said</a>, the Mexican government cannot create a truth commission to investigate every mass atrocity of the drug war. Mexico also needs a functioning justice system.</p>
<h2>Pardoning low level crimes</h2>
<p>Another transitional justice tool the López Obrador government has proposed is <a href="https://seguridad.nexos.com.mx/?p=712">amnesty to non-violent, low-level drug offenders</a>.</p>
<p>The president’s Secretary of Governance, Olga Sánchez Cordero, says that pardoning people convicted and jailed for growing, processing, transporting or using drugs – particularly women and offenders from <a href="http://www.drogasyderecho.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Irrational_Punishments_ok.pdf">marginalized populations</a> – would <a href="https://www.animalpolitico.com/2018/07/amnistia-ley-reduccion-penas-sanchez-cordero/">stop the cycle of violence in Mexico</a> and encourage petty criminals to disarm. </p>
<p>Mexico’s amnesty proposal is not unlike the <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-signing-ceremony-s-756-first-step-act-2018-h-r-6964-juvenile-justice-reform-act-2018/">First Step Act</a> recently passed in the United States, which will result in the early release of about <a href="https://www.themarshallproject.org/2018/11/16/what-s-really-in-the-first-step-act">2,600 prisoners, many of them drug offenders</a>.</p>
<p>Mexico’s prison population has been steadily rising for years. </p>
<p>Between 2000 and 2016, it increased 40 percent, from 154,765 inmates to 217,868 inmates, according to the <a href="http://www.prisonstudies.org/country/mexico%22">Institute of Criminal Policy Research</a>. The number of people jailed in Mexico for drug offenders has also increased <a href="http://www.drogasyderecho.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Irrational_Punishments_ok.pdf%22%22">markedly</a>.</p>
<p>As in the United States, most prisoners in Mexico come from economically and socially disadvantaged backgrounds, according to the <a href="http://www.drogasyderecho.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Irrational_Punishments_ok.pdf">Collective for the Study of Drugs and Law</a>, a nonprofit research group. </p>
<h2>What lies ahead</h2>
<p>Should López Obrador’s amnesty idea become policy, it would surely be controversial. </p>
<p>Victims of violence in Ciudad Juárez were outraged when, in August 2018, President-elect López Obrador said residents must be “<a href="https://www.animalpolitico.com/2018/08/momentos-foros-paz-juarez/">willing to forgive</a>.” </p>
<p>Many caught in the crossfire of Mexico’s drug war say justice and punishment should come before forgiveness. </p>
<p>But violence in Mexico is so pervasive that, in my opinion, the country must consider every option that might stanch the bleeding. </p>
<p>Truth commissions and amnesties to low level crimes will not pacify the country immediately – but they may bring some of the truth and justice Mexicans so desperately need. </p>
<p><em>This article has been updated to reflect the correct title of Olga Sanchez-Cordero. She is the Secretary of Governance, not Chief-of-Staff.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/109490/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Angélica Durán-Martínez has received funding from the United States Institute of Peace and the Social Science Research Council (SSRC). In 2011, she was an SSRC Drugs, Security and Democracy fellow, a program funded by Open Society Foundations.</span></em></p>President López Obrador campaigned on some outside-the-box ideas to ‘pacify’ Mexico after 12 years of extreme violence. But so far his government has emphasized traditional law-and-order policies.Angélica Durán-Martínez, Assistant Professor of Political Science, UMass LowellLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1030312018-09-26T16:00:35Z2018-09-26T16:00:35ZHow the mafia uses violence to control politics<p>Italy is not the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-42794848">only country with an organized crime problem</a>. But movies and TV shows like “Scarface,” “The Godfather” and “Gomorrah” have made the Italian mobs – in both their southern Italian and American incarnations – world-famous. </p>
<p>Such pop culture portrayals tend to romanticize a dangerous phenomenon that’s all too real for those whose lives it affects. </p>
<p>What TV and movies have often gotten right, however, is the idea that Italy’s criminal networks are powerful enough to threaten the government. </p>
<p>According to the country’s first-ever comprehensive survey on <a href="http://www.avvisopubblico.it/home/home/cosa-facciamo/pubblicazioni/amministratori-sotto-tiro/">political violence</a>, Italy saw 1,191 violent attacks against politicians between 2013 and 2015. The count, undertaken by the Italian nonprofit organization Avviso Pubblico, was culled from local news stories and first-hand accounts.</p>
<p>How does this pervasive violence affect Italian politics? </p>
<p>A new <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047272717301251">paper in the Journal of Public Economics</a>, which I co-authored alongside University of Pennsylvania political scientist Gemma Dipoppa, analyzes Italy’s new survey data to find out. </p>
<h2>Why do criminals attack politicians?</h2>
<p>The goals of criminal organizations differ from group to group. </p>
<p>Organized crime is defined as a highly centralized, often international criminal enterprise that seeks to infiltrate politics and extract public resources for <a href="http://www.people.hbs.edu/rditella/papers/APSRPlataPlomo.pdf">private benefits</a>.</p>
<p>In Italy, our study found, the mafia frequently threatens politicians to obtain government contracts that pay handsomely for <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3124949">waste management, construction</a> and other public services.</p>
<p>Individual politicians who threaten those business interests may find themselves in danger. Physical assaults, arson and threats are the mafia’s favored tactics. These crimes make up 70 percent of the 1,191 political attacks documented by Avviso Pubblico.</p>
<p>After the director of a Sicilian national park in 2016 strengthened anti-mafia checks on local firms applying to work in the park, for example, he narrowly survived a <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/05/19/sicilian-mafia-try-to-assassinate-head-of-national-park-in-night/">nighttime assassination attempt</a>. </p>
<p>Other politicians are corrupt, contributing to Italy’s organized crime problem by sharing illegal profits with the mob. </p>
<p>“<a href="https://youmedia.fanpage.it/video/aa/WpCVzuSwR86CPntI">We all have to get our fill</a>,” said one Naples bureaucrat who was recorded taking bribes from the mafia. </p>
<p>Between 1991 and 2018, Italian police dissolved <a href="http://www.avvisopubblico.it/home/home/cosa-facciamo/informare/documenti-tematici/comuni-sciolti-per-mafia/amministrazioni-sciolte-mafia-dati-riassuntivi/">266</a> city councils for having ties with criminal organizations.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/237372/original/file-20180920-129862-127tgrh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/237372/original/file-20180920-129862-127tgrh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237372/original/file-20180920-129862-127tgrh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237372/original/file-20180920-129862-127tgrh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237372/original/file-20180920-129862-127tgrh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237372/original/file-20180920-129862-127tgrh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237372/original/file-20180920-129862-127tgrh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Media representations of the mafia like ‘The Sopranos’ tend to romanticize mobsters. But they get some things right.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/diariocriticove/9093537008">Diariocritico de Venezuela/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Local officials are most at risk</h2>
<p>Interestingly, none of the documented political violence we analyzed targeted national figures – likely because attacking well-known politicians would bring more media exposure. </p>
<p>Rather, the Italian mafia typically targets local officials. Mayors were the target of 310 of the documented 1,191 attacks on politicians from 2013 to 2015.</p>
<p>Italians know this, because these stories play out regularly in local newspapers.</p>
<p>The mayor of <a href="http://www.avvisopubblico.it/home/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/AmmSottoTiro_Rapporto2017.pdf">Marcianise</a>, a town near Naples, left office in early 2018 after a wave of threats, for example. </p>
<p><iframe id="c5011" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/c5011/1/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>And the mayor of <a href="http://www.avvisopubblico.it/home/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/avvisopubblico_rapporto_amministratori-sotto-tiro-2015_giugno-2016_colore.pdf">Rizziconi</a>, in the southern Italian province of Reggio Calabria, has been blacklisted by some community members – and even by some of his own relatives – after reporting the mob’s pressure tactics against him to the police. </p>
<p>Mafia attacks on politicians are usually linked to the electoral cycle. </p>
<p>In regions where criminal organizations are more powerful – such as <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Mafia">Sicily</a>, <a href="http://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/events/2011/03/14/the-origins-of-the-ndrangheta-of-calabria-italys-most-powerful-mafia/">Calabria</a> and <a href="http://www.hrpub.org/download/201309/sa.2013.010211.pdf">Campania</a> – our research found that political violence was much more likely immediately after a local election.<br>
Political violence is 25 percent more likely in the four weeks after the election of a new mayor. </p>
<p>This sends a message to newly elected officials: They are the mafia’s new negotiating partners in government. They need to understand the risks associated with disobeying the will of organized crime. </p>
<h2>Political violence diminishes a candidate pool</h2>
<p>Strategic political violence has a destructive effect on political life in Italy. </p>
<p>My <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/ecoj.12237">prior research</a> shows that if politics seems like a dangerous job, some competent and educated individuals will be discouraged from entering the field. </p>
<p>I studied Italian candidates for local political office between 1985 and 2011. My data came from over 1,500 southern municipalities where strong anti-mafia law enforcement policies during that period had effectively reduced the presence of the mob.</p>
<p>In the first election after a drop in organized crime, I discovered that politicians in these cities were 18 percent more educated, meaning a substantially higher number held a university degree. </p>
<p>Typically less than 25 percent of elected officials in these areas have completed college.</p>
<p>Apparently, politics is perceived as a more appealing field when it is less influenced by criminal organizations, thus attracting more qualified candidates. </p>
<p>The reverse <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167268117301993">also holds true</a>. Italian cities that experience an increase in mafia presence see competent officials quitting politics for less dangerous professions. </p>
<h2>How organized crime hurts citizens</h2>
<p>These findings shed light on how organized crime hurts millions of Italians who have nothing to do with the mafia’s illegal business. </p>
<p>Targeted political violence by the mafia distorts the electoral process, reducing the quality of the candidate pool and compromising officials.</p>
<p>These dangerous dynamics, of course, are not restricted to Italy. </p>
<p>During Mexico’s 2018 election season, <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2018/06/27/americas/mexico-political-deaths-election-season-trnd/index.html">132</a> politicians and political operatives were killed. Drug cartels are believed to be behind many of the assassinations, though the crimes remain unsolved. </p>
<p>Colombia has also seen targeted violence decimate its politics. </p>
<p>In 2002, the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, or FARC guerrillas, launched a campaign to intimidate public officials who were unsympathetic to its cause. Five politicians were murdered and <a href="http://www.people.hbs.edu/rditella/papers/APSRPlataPlomo.pdf">222 of 463 mayors in Colombia</a> resigned due to death threats. </p>
<p>Similar processes are most likely playing out in other countries with organized crime groups sufficiently strong and organized to threaten politicians and other civil servants, among them <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/mafia-murders-shock-serbia-reveal-web-of-corruption/a-44902334">Serbia</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/feb/28/slovakian-journalist-was-investigating-political-links-to-italian-mafia">Slovakia</a>.</p>
<p>And as organized crime enriches itself, our findings show, it impoverishes local politics.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/103031/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gianmarco Daniele does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Italy saw 1,191 attacks on politicians from 2013 to 2015. A new study reveals, for the first time, the destructive effect this strategic political violence has on the nation’s political life.Gianmarco Daniele, Post-Doctoral economics researcher, Bocconi UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/860972017-11-02T23:38:53Z2017-11-02T23:38:53ZIn Brazil, religious gang leaders say they’re waging a holy war<p>The expression “evangelical drug trafficker” may sound incongruous, but in Rio de Janeiro, it’s an increasingly familiar phenomenon.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.religionfacts.com/neo-pentecostalism">Charismatic Christianity</a> is <a href="https://theconversation.com/in-censoring-a-queer-museum-brazil-edges-closer-to-authoritarianism-84199">on the rise across Brazil</a>. Even Rio, a famously libertine city, elected an <a href="https://theconversation.com/rio-de-janeiros-new-evangelical-mayor-could-threaten-the-citys-famed-diversity-68138">evangelical mayor</a> last year. Now, evangelical Protestantism is so far-reaching in Rio that even some of the city’s most notorious drug dealers claim to be spreading the gospel. </p>
<p>I study <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/authors/robert-muggah">violence in Latin America</a>, and I’ve observed a sharp increase in reports of religiously motivated crimes in Rio de Janeiro over the past year, in particular <a href="http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/9/13/prejudice-againstcandombleworshippersincreasesinbrazil.html">attacks on “terreiros”</a> – the temples belonging to the Candomblé and Umbanda faiths. </p>
<h2>Brazil’s evangelical turn</h2>
<p>Persecution of these <a href="https://rlp.hds.harvard.edu/faq/african-derived-religions-brazil">Afro-Brazilian religions</a>, whose adherents are largely poor black Brazilians, <a href="http://www.publicadireito.com.br/artigos/?cod=13d83d3841ae1b92">has been around since the 19th century</a>. But studies in Rio – both mine and those of other crime researchers – suggest that the current wave of religious bigotry is more pointed, and more violent, than in the past. </p>
<p>While statistics confirming this new trend are still poor, the increase in religious hate crimes appears to coincide with the spread of evangelical Protestantism in Brazil.</p>
<p>Today roughly a quarter of all Brazilians identify as Protestant, up from 5 percent in the 1960s. Many Brazilian Protestants attend mainstream services. But the <a href="https://www.alternet.org/belief/dramatic-religious-shift-brazil-evangelicals-are-rapidly-overtaking-catholics">fastest-growing denominations in Brazil</a> are the hard-line <a href="http://www.pewforum.org/2013/07/18/brazils-changing-religious-landscape/">Pentecostals and Neopentecostal churches</a>
– including the wildly successful Assembly of God and the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"917344908834467840"}"></div></p>
<p>That’s also true in politics. Evangelical lawmakers currently hold <a href="http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/poder/2017/08/1910522-evangelicos-apostam-em-distritao-para-ampliar-bancada-na-camara.shtml">85 of 513 seats</a> in Brazil’s lower house of Congress, meaning that the religious right is <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/amid-crisis-in-brazil-the-evangelical-bloc-emerges-as-a-political-power/">shaping the national debate</a> on <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/in-brazils-political-crisis-a-powerful-new-force-evangelical-christians/2016/05/26/5c8b9bdc-1c7d-11e6-82c2-a7dcb313287d_story.html?utm_term=.4f66043996c1">gay rights</a>, racial equality, women’s reproductive health, education and other social issues. </p>
<p>Rio de Janeiro saw a <a href="https://www.alternet.org/belief/dramatic-religious-shift-brazil-evangelicals-are-rapidly-overtaking-catholics">30 percent increase in evangelicals</a> from 2000 to 2010. Over the same period, the number of Catholics and followers of Candomblé and Umbanda <a href="http://m.folha.uol.com.br/poder/2016/12/1844365-deixam-de-ser-catolicos-ao-menos-9-milhoes-afirma-datafolha.shtml?mobile">dropped by 9 percent and 23 percent, respectively</a>. </p>
<p>Most converts are poor people attracted to the evangelical doctrine of <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/9047c83c-197d-11e5-a130-2e7db721f996">personal salvation</a>. Today, evangelical leaders in Rio’s impoverished favelas routinely deliver a message of fidelity, purity and prosperity. </p>
<p>Some of them also have a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/afro-brazilian-religions-struggle-against-evangelical-hostility/2015/02/05/b6a30c6e-aaf9-11e4-8876-460b1144cbc1_story.html?utm_term=.1fb994c29b40">dim view of Afro-Brazilian religions</a>. For preachers espousing a binary spiritual worldview, “good” Christians must wage holy war against “evil” practitioners of Candomblé and Umbanda. </p>
<p>As Edir Macedo, the multi-millionaire bishop of the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, <a href="http://portais4.ufes.br/posgrad/teses/tese_3321_Wal%E9ria_Vieira_de_Almeida.pdf">wrote</a> in <a href="https://blogs.universal.org/bispomacedo/2012/05/19/orixas-caboclos-e-guias-deuses-ou-demonios/">his 1997 book “Orixás, Caboclos and False Gods or Demons”</a>, Afro-Brazilian religions “seek to keep us from God. They are enemies of Him and the human race … This struggle with Satan is necessary…to eternal salvation.” </p>
<p>The book sold more than three million copies before it was <a href="http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/folha/cotidiano/ult95u115122.shtml">banned by federal authorities</a> in 2005.</p>
<h2>Religious ‘cleansing’</h2>
<p>For <a href="http://negrobelchior.cartacapital.com.br/trafico-igrejas-evangelicas-e-intolerancia-religiosa/">some analysts</a>, this theological interpretation is just thinly veiled religious discrimination. </p>
<p>Still, parishioners – including a handful of drug kingpins who control favelas across Rio – are heeding the call to arms. For these evangelical criminals, Candomblé and Umbanda are Satan’s work, and they must be stamped out, one terreiro at a time.</p>
<p>Fernandinho Guarabu, a 38-year-old don in Rio’s <a href="http://tudo-sobre.estadao.com.br/terceiro-comando-puro">Terceiro Comando Puro gang</a>, is an example. Sporting a tattoo of Jesus Christ, Guarabu is <a href="https://g1.globo.com/rio-de-janeiro/noticia/traficante-mais-antigo-no-poder-no-rio-guarabu-garante-liberdade-com-olheiros-e-propina-a-pms-da-ilha-diz-policia.ghtml">known for violently “cleansing”</a> his community – the Morro do Dendê favela – of practitioners of Afro-Brazilian religions. </p>
<p>According to a <a href="http://www.rj.gov.br/web/imprensa/exibeconteudo?article-id=4285777">state hotline dedicated to tracking religious intolerance</a>, more than 30 terreiros were destroyed in fewer than 20 days during September 2017, and reports of religious discrimination have increased 119 percent since 2015. </p>
<p>Adherents of Afro-Brazilian religions living in gang-controlled areas report personal harassment, too. Followers are often prohibited from practicing their faith, and people caught wearing the religious garb of Candomblé and Umbanda may be expelled from the community. </p>
<p>According to representatives of a newly launched <a href="http://ccir.org.br/">Commission on Combating Religious Intolerance</a>, drug traffickers are responsible for a sizable number of these cases. </p>
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<h2>The prison-to-church pipeline</h2>
<p>A small group of evangelical preachers in Rio de Janeiro’s favelas may have inspired these anti-Candomblé and Umbanda crusades, but the problem escalated in prisons. </p>
<p>A decade-long war on drugs has fueled <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-war-on-drugs-fuels-deadly-prison-riots-in-brazil-67337">mass incarceration</a>. Brazil’s overcrowded state prisons are essentially <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/04/opinion/brazils-deadly-prison-system.html">governed by one of two competing drug trafficking organizations</a> with the government only nominally in control. </p>
<p>Gangs have long <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/01/17/brazils-prison-massacres-are-a-frightening-window-into-gang-warfare/?utm_term=.caf8689bc967">recruited their rank and file from prisons</a>, and incarcerated members stay busy organizing trafficking and racketeering businesses. </p>
<p>Faith groups, too, have <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-brazil-drugs-church/brazil-evangelicals-seek-drug-gangs-lost-souls-idUSN0132664320080915">a long tradition of working with prisoners</a>. The <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/12/world/americas/turning-to-religion-in-prison-brazilian-ends-up-on-other-side-of-the-bars.html">Universal Church</a> and <a href="http://www.adventistreview.org/church-news/story5485-55-inmates-baptized-in-brazilian-prison">Seventh Day Adventists</a>, among others, run programs in those same prisons, from drug treatment to restorative justice. </p>
<p>Previously, these <a href="http://carceraria.org.br/tag/igreja-catolica">ministries</a> were <a href="http://www.fbac.org.br/index.php/en/realidade-atual/map-of-the-apacs-in-brazil">predominantly Catholic</a>. Today, of the 100 faith-based organizations subcontracted to run social programs in prisons, <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/if-i-give-my-soul-9780190238995?cc=us&lang=en&">81 are evangelical churches</a>.</p>
<p>As a result, Charismatic Christianity has spread quickly through the criminal justice system. Jailhouse conversions are common. Evangelized inmates are frequently housed in separate prison wings that <a href="https://conservancy.umn.edu/bitstream/handle/11299/137508/Johnson_umn_0130E_13041.pdf?sequence=1">stand out for their order and cleanliness</a>. Some have even <a href="http://www.researchonreligion.org/church-organization/andrew-johnson-on-pentecostals-in-prison-in-brazil">established their own ministries</a> inside jail.</p>
<h1>Life in Baixada Fluminense</h1>
<p>For drug kingpins, developing positive relationships with local Rio pastors while in jail can tighten their grip on power once released. </p>
<p>Converted traffickers control many of the city’s favelas, but the violent heartland of evangelical trafficking is Baixada Fluminense, a sprawl of townships in Rio’s poor northern outskirts. </p>
<p>Over the past century, the area has seen <a href="http://puc-riodigital.com.puc-rio.br/Texto/Desafios-2015/Explosao-demografica%2C-o-grande-no-da-Regiao-Metropolitana-25497.html#.WfKEnFtSyUk">waves of migration</a> from Brazil’s north and northeast, where Afro-Brazilian religions prosper. Baixada Fluminense is now home to at least 253 <a href="http://www.nima.puc-rio.br/images/MAPCMRA-RJ/TEXTOS/Cartilha%20Mapeamento%20com%20codigo.pdf">Candomblé and Umbanda terreiros</a>, more than any other municipality in the state. </p>
<p>The Baixada Fluminense is also one of Rio’s most dangerous corners. Murder rates have fallen slightly across most of the city over the past decade, but not in Baixada Fluminense. According to the <a href="http://www.isp.rj.gov.br/">Institute for Public Security</a> 1,486 of a total 4,197 reported homicides in the state so far in 2017 occurred in Baixada Fluminense.</p>
<p>Described by locals as a “Wild West,” the area is home to <a href="https://apublica.org/2017/09/a-baixada-fluminense-e-invisivel/">famously corrupt public officials</a> who have long worked with <a href="http://bandnewsfmrio.band.uol.com.br/editorias-detalhes/mp-denuncia-milicianos-da-baixada-fluminense">militia and mafia groups</a> to intimidate their rivals. This practice – called “coronelismo,” or patronage – allows drug traffickers, evangelical or otherwise, to operate with impunity.</p>
<h2>Fighting back</h2>
<p>Rio de Janeiro state officials are taking note of this worrying new strain of violence. In the wake of attacks on Afro-Brazilian terreiros in Nova Igaçu, a municipality in Baixada Fluminense, the <a href="http://www.rj.gov.br/web/sedhmi/exibeconteudo?article-id=4258439">Joint Commission to Support Victims of Attacks on Religious Institutions</a> was launched. </p>
<p>Working alongside a <a href="http://agenciabrasil.ebc.com.br/direitos-humanos/noticia/2017-08/rio-tera-delegacia-especializada-para-combater-crimes-raciais-e">newly established task force</a> dedicated to tackling racial crimes and intolerance, the state commission aims to map religious violence and resolve outstanding cases, including those involving evangelical drug traffickers. It will also make recommendations to prevent violence in the name of God.</p>
<p>People of faith are fighting back, too. In September 2017, some 50,000 people joined Rio’s <a href="http://brasil.estadao.com.br/noticias/rio-de-janeiro,marcha-no-rio-pede-liberdade-religiosa,70002005117">10th annual walk for religious freedom</a>, the largest gathering since the procession’s inception. The iconic Copacabana beach was packed with evangelicals, Catholics, Baha'i, Buddhists, Jews, Hari Krishnas and others – all dressed in white and marching in solidarity with Afro-Brazilians. </p>
<p>In Brazil’s religious diversity, there is conflict, yes, but unity, too.</p>
<p><em>Dandara Tinoco helped to report this article.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/86097/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Robert Muggah is the co-founder of the Igarapé Institute (Brazil) and the SecDev Foundation (Canada). Both organizations are impartial, non-partisan and research focused. Each receives funding support from bilateral agencies and foundations. All relevant information is available on the websites of these institutions. </span></em></p>As hard-line Pentecostalism spreads across Brazil, some drug traffickers in gang-controlled areas of Rio de Janeiro are using religion as an excuse to attack nonbelievers.Robert Muggah, Associate Lecturer, Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio)Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/855842017-10-13T04:19:23Z2017-10-13T04:19:23ZSent to Haiti to keep the peace, departing UN troops leave a damaged nation in their wake<p>On Oct. 15, 2017, the United Nations will <a href="http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/haiti/article144436294.html">withdraw its peacekeeping troops from Haiti</a>, ending its 13-year mission there.</p>
<p>One might expect mixed feelings about the soldiers’ departure. After all, since the arrival of the U.N. Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) in June 2004, after former President Jean-Bertrande Aristide was <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/18/world/jean-bertrand-aristide-fast-facts/index.html">forced out by a coup</a>, the island has seen neither war nor <a href="https://www.crisisgroup.org/latin-america-caribbean/haiti/towards-post-minustah-haiti-making-effective-transition">armed conflict</a>. </p>
<p>Crime and violence levels also <a href="http://www.insightcrime.org/news-briefs/haiti-political-instability-complicates-efforts-to-confront-crime">remain high</a> in Haiti, particularly in the capital of Port-au-Prince, and until January 2017 the country was leaderless due to repeated delays in <a href="http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/01/04/508171191/14-months-after-elections-began-haiti-finally-has-a-president-elect">holding its presidential election</a>. Haiti is also still <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/US/famine-fears-rise-haiti-devastating-hurricane/story?id=42724525">recovering from Hurricane Matthew</a>, which caused famine in some hard-hit areas in 2016.</p>
<p>Despite these challenges, <a href="http://beta.latimes.com/world/global-development/la-fg-un-haiti-mission-20170417-story.html">reports</a> from the island suggest that <a href="https://www.voanews.com/a/haiti-peacekeepers-leave/3756651.html">most Haitians are ready</a> to see the mission depart. That’s because, beyond stabilizing the country during a period of political tumult, the U.N.’s troops have also done harm in Haiti. </p>
<p>The international organization has admitted that its peacekeepers <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/13/world/americas/un-peacekeeping-haiti-cholera.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Famericas&action=click&contentCollection=americas&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront&_r=1">introduced cholera</a> to the island after the devastating 2010 earthquake and sexually abused women <a href="http://cepr.net/blogs/haiti-relief-and-reconstruction-watch/new-report-sexual-exploitation-and-abuse-at-the-hands-of-the-un-in-haiti">who lived near U.N. camps</a>.</p>
<p>What it has not yet acknowledged is that during early efforts to <a href="http://www.ijdh.org/2007/01/topics/law-justice/us-embassy-in-haiti-acknowledges-excessive-force-by-un/">take out gangs in crime-riddled neighborhoods</a>, U.N. troops also unintentionally killed more than 25 of the same citizens they were deployed to protect. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189054/original/file-20171005-9757-1u200ww.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189054/original/file-20171005-9757-1u200ww.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189054/original/file-20171005-9757-1u200ww.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189054/original/file-20171005-9757-1u200ww.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189054/original/file-20171005-9757-1u200ww.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189054/original/file-20171005-9757-1u200ww.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189054/original/file-20171005-9757-1u200ww.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">MINUSTAH soldiers, here seen in November 2016, have occupied Bois Neuf, Cité Soleil, for over a decade.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Siobhán Wills</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Keeping the peace?</h2>
<p>This lethal violence, which has garnered little international press, is the subject of our new film, “<a href="https://itstayswithyou.com/">It Stays With You: Use of Force by U.N. Peacekeepers in Haiti</a>,” a 50-minute documentary released in Port-au-Prince in June 2017 and set for its U.S. release on Oct. 30. </p>
<p>Between 2004 and 2007, MINUSTAH carried out at least 15 heavily militarized operations against <a href="http://cco.ndu.edu/Publications/Books/Impunity/Article/780129/chapter-3-haiti-the-gangs-of-cit-soleil/">criminal gangs living in Cité Soleil</a>, a seaside shantytown of 300,000 to 400,000 people. In these crowded neighborhoods, where most homes are made of scavenged sheets of corrugated metal and other scrap materials, the U.N. troops battled local organized crime groups using heavy weaponry, including automatic rifles and grenades. </p>
<p>During Operation Iron First, for example, which took place in the Bois Neuf section of Cité Soleil on July 6, 2005, the U.N. <a href="https://issuu.com/karapatan/docs/a.hrc.14.24_alston_report">reports</a> that it used 22,700 bullets, 78 grenades and five mortars and killed seven gang members. </p>
<p>But, according to some residents interviewed in “It Stays with You,” unarmed civilians also died in this raid. Douglas Griffiths, then deputy U.S. ambassador to Haiti, has also <a href="https://www.cod.edu/people/faculty/yearman/cite_soleil.htm">confirmed</a> that “credible sources” have accused U.N. peacekeepers of killing “more than 20 women and children” in the operation. </p>
<p>Some were shot inside their homes by U.N. soldiers in helicopters, whose bullets easily penetrated their metal rooftops. These accounts have been substantiated by witnesses and international aid workers interviewed for our film, including by one American doctor who saw bullet holes in the roof of a home that he visited while treating a young girl for gunshot wounds. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188212/original/file-20170929-19343-bd2pgl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188212/original/file-20170929-19343-bd2pgl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188212/original/file-20170929-19343-bd2pgl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188212/original/file-20170929-19343-bd2pgl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188212/original/file-20170929-19343-bd2pgl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188212/original/file-20170929-19343-bd2pgl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188212/original/file-20170929-19343-bd2pgl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Some homes in Cité Soleil were completely destroyed by MINUSTAH gunfire and shelling.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Siobhan Wills</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Other Cité Soleil residents were killed by machine gun fire by U.N. troops from armored personnel carriers, shooting from guns mounted on the vehicles’ roofs. Witnesses <a href="http://www.cod.edu/people/faculty/yearman/cite_soleil.htm">state</a> that during Operation Iron Fist, <a href="http://haitiaction.net/News/HIP/7_12_5.html">sustained firing over several hours</a> destroyed entire homes, <a href="https://www.democracynow.org/2005/7/11/eyewitnesses_describe_massacre_by_un_troops">killing some of the people inside them</a>. </p>
<p>In 2005, Jean-Marie Guehenno, who was then the U.N.’s undersecretary general for peacekeeping, essentially confirmed these reports. At a press briefing at the U.N. headquarters in New York, he <a href="http://www.unmultimedia.org/avlibrary/asset/U050/U050729b/">said</a>, “A number of operations have been conducted by MINUSTAH… I have to be honest with you, there may have been some civilian casualties.”</p>
<p>The following December, just before Christmas in 2006, the U.N.’s Operation New Forest went through some <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02684520903320410">10,000 bullets over two days</a>. Numerous people with no connection to gangs, including children, were <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2006-12-23/at-least-nine-killed-in-haitian-slum-raid/2160534">killed or injured</a> in this raid. </p>
<p>The exact number is unclear, however, since the U.N. has carried out no investigations involving a visit to the neighborhood into this raid or others in Cité Soleil. The Haitian police have <a href="http://projectcensored.org/12-another-massacre-in-haiti-by-un-troops/">conducted no investigations, either</a>.</p>
<h2>No accountability</h2>
<p>These accusations are not the first to damage the reputation of the U.N.’s vast peacekeeping operation, which currently has soldiers stationed in 15 countries around the world. <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2017/07/peacekeepers-rape-170730075455216.html">Rape and other forms of sexual abuse</a> are an endemic problem in multiple missions.</p>
<p>Even so, MINUSTAH has a bad record. In Haiti, 134 Sri Lankan soldiers <a href="https://www.apnews.com/e6ebc331460345c5abd4f57d77f535c1/AP-Exclusive:-UN-child-sex-ring-left-victims-but-no-arrests">set up a child sex ring</a>, exploiting boys and girls as young as 12 years of age. There is little accountability for such violations. The Sri Lankan troops were sent home, but none have been jailed; the U.N. was <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3YJChM4U1o">criticized for its inadequate response</a>. It also took five years for the U.N. leadership to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/18/world/americas/united-nations-haiti-cholera.html">take responsibility for the cholera epidemic</a>. </p>
<p>It is not surprising, then, that the international organization’s response to the killings in Cité Soleil has been lackluster. The end of the Haiti mission this month offers an opportunity for an independent investigation into the unintended harms of U.N. operations in Cité Soleil, particularly in Bois Neuf. </p>
<p>Based on our on-the-ground research, we believe a full accounting would find that the repeated military raids not only killed innocent bystanders but also exacerbated the precariousness of residents’ already marginal existence. Poor families lost their breadwinners; homes were destroyed; children were made orphans and had to be taken in by neighbors. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188213/original/file-20170929-21094-12soh43.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188213/original/file-20170929-21094-12soh43.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188213/original/file-20170929-21094-12soh43.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188213/original/file-20170929-21094-12soh43.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188213/original/file-20170929-21094-12soh43.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188213/original/file-20170929-21094-12soh43.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188213/original/file-20170929-21094-12soh43.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Evelyn Myrtil (here with granddaughter) and her family were caught in the crossfire between gangs and MINUSTAH troops. Myrtil’s brother did not survive.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Siobhan Wills</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>After a pot-maker, Nelson Ti Lari, was inadvertently killed in his workshop in 2005, his wife, Veronique, told us that she repeatedly visited the U.N. base at Camp Delta with a photograph of her dead husband, seeking acknowledgment that the breadwinner of her family had been killed. But, she says, the staff there sent her away every time. Eventually, she gave up.</p>
<p>Failing U.N. support – such as medical assistance to those injured in raids or financial support to people who lost their homes or livelihoods in the crossfire – people were compelled to seek help from the <a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125343322">cohort of international NGOs</a> that have provided the bulk of citizen services in Haiti since the 2010 earthquake.</p>
<p>There is a growing <a href="https://www.twigh.org/twigh-blog-archives/2015/7/31/aid-dependency-the-damage-of-donation">body of international literature</a>, including research <a href="https://www.canadahaitiaction.ca/content/des-bidonvilles-aux-camps-conditions-de-vie-%C3%A0-canaan-%C3%A0-corail-cesse-lesse-et-%C3%A0-la-piste-de-l">by Dr. Ilionor Louis, co-author of this article</a>, demonstrating that such forced dependency is itself a form of indirect violence. And in a country like Haiti, where <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com/young-professionals-in-foreign-policy/haitis-multi-billion-doll_b_8207494.html">post-disaster aid is big business</a> and oversight of NGOs is almost nil, this will be another lasting legacy of the U.N. mission. </p>
<p>In making our documentary, we found that Cité Soleil residents aren’t just sad for their losses – they’re also angry that the U.N. hasn’t taken responsibility for its actions. MINUSTAH <a href="http://www.youphil.com/fr/article/04685-ong-haiti-sous-developpement?ypcli=ano">may be pulling out of Haiti</a> on Oct. 15, but the the agency’s misdeeds will live on in Cité Soleil long after the last peacekeeper departs.</p>
<p><em>The film “<a href="http://www.itstayswithyou.com">It Stays With You: Use of Force by UN Peacekeepers in Haiti</a>” is <a href="https://vimeo.com/222497700">available for streaming</a> (password Haiti17).</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/85584/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Siobhán Wills received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council UK to make the documentary It Stays With You: Use of Force by UN Peacekeepers in Haiti</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Cahal McLaughlin receives funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council of the UK.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ilionor Louis does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>On the eve of its departure from Haiti after a 13-year stabilization effort, the UN faces accusations that its troops used excessive force to fight gangs, killing innocent bystanders.Siobhán Wills, Professor of Law, Ulster UniversityCahal McLaughlin, Professor of Film Studies, Queen's University BelfastIlionor Louis, Sociologist, Ethnology Department, Université d'Etat d'HaitiLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/835572017-09-07T20:22:02Z2017-09-07T20:22:02ZThe world is facing a global sand crisis<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/185180/original/file-20170907-9542-1ye0qul.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Sand for use in hydraulic fracturing operations at a processing plant in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin in 2011.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Fracking-Sand-Mining/4e176bf17da14d44af6a83dd00d060b1/23/0">AP Photo/Steve Karnowski)</a>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>When people picture sand spread across idyllic beaches and endless deserts, they understandably think of it as an infinite resource. But as we discuss in a <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.aao0503">just-published perspective</a> in the journal Science, over-exploitation of global supplies of sand is damaging the environment, endangering communities, causing shortages and promoting violent conflict. </p>
<p>Skyrocketing demand, combined with unfettered mining to meet it, is creating the perfect recipe for shortages. Plentiful evidence strongly suggests that sand is becoming increasingly scarce in many regions. For example, in Vietnam domestic demand for sand exceeds the country’s total reserves. If this mismatch continues, the country may run out of construction sand by 2020, according to <a href="http://tuoitrenews.vn/news/society/20170803/vietnam-forecast-to-run-out-of-construction-sand-by-2020/40865.html">recent statements from the country’s Ministry of Construction</a>.</p>
<p>This problem is rarely mentioned in scientific discussions and has not been systemically studied. Media attention drew us to this issue. While scientists are making a great effort to quantify how infrastructure systems such as roads and buildings affect the habitats that surround them, the impacts of extracting construction minerals such as sand and gravel to build those structures have been overlooked. Two years ago we created a working group designed to provide an integrated perspective on global sand use. </p>
<p>In our view, it is essential to understand what happens at the places where sand is mined, where it is used and many impacted points in between in order to craft workable policies. We are analyzing those questions through a <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1258832">systems integration approach</a> that allows us to better understand socioeconomic and environmental interactions over distances and time. Based on what we have already learned, we believe it is time to develop international conventions to regulate sand mining, use and trade.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/184995/original/file-20170906-9823-1tf131m.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/184995/original/file-20170906-9823-1tf131m.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/184995/original/file-20170906-9823-1tf131m.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/184995/original/file-20170906-9823-1tf131m.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/184995/original/file-20170906-9823-1tf131m.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/184995/original/file-20170906-9823-1tf131m.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/184995/original/file-20170906-9823-1tf131m.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/184995/original/file-20170906-9823-1tf131m.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sand mining on the west side of the Mabukala bridge in Karnataka, India.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%27sand_mining%27_at_Mabukal.JPG">Rudolph A. Furtado</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Skyrocketing demand</h2>
<p>Sand and gravel are now the most-extracted materials in the world, exceeding fossil fuels and biomass (measured by weight). Sand is a key ingredient for <a href="http://matse1.matse.illinois.edu/concrete/bm.html">concrete</a>, roads, <a href="http://www.o-i.com/Why-Glass/How-Glass-Is-Made/">glass</a> and <a href="http://www.popsci.com/diy/article/2005-10/making-silicon-sand">electronics</a>. Massive amounts of sand are mined for <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/20/magazine/how-singapore-is-creating-more-land-for-itself.html?mcubz=3&_r=0">land reclamation projects</a>, <a href="http://geology.com/articles/frac-sand/">shale gas extraction</a> and <a href="http://explorebeaches.msi.ucsb.edu/beach-health/beach-nourishment">beach renourishment programs</a>. Recent floods in Houston, India, Nepal and Bangladesh will add to growing global demand for sand.</p>
<p>In 2010, nations mined about 11 billion tonnes of sand <a href="http://www.resourcepanel.org/reports/global-material-flows-and-resource-productivity">just for construction</a>. Extraction rates were highest in the Asia-Pacific region, followed by Europe and North America. In the United States alone, production and use of construction sand and gravel was valued at US$8.9 billion in 2016, and production has <a href="https://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/mcs/2017/mcs2017.pdf">increased by 24 percent</a> in the past five years.</p>
<p>Moreover, we have found that these numbers grossly underestimate global sand extraction and use. According to government agencies, uneven record-keeping in many countries <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jiec.12471/full">may hide real extraction rates</a>. Official statistics widely underreport sand use and typically do not include nonconstruction purposes such as hydraulic fracturing and beach nourishment. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/185145/original/file-20170907-9549-mopxhj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/185145/original/file-20170907-9549-mopxhj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/185145/original/file-20170907-9549-mopxhj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185145/original/file-20170907-9549-mopxhj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185145/original/file-20170907-9549-mopxhj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185145/original/file-20170907-9549-mopxhj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185145/original/file-20170907-9549-mopxhj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185145/original/file-20170907-9549-mopxhj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dredger pumping sand and water to shore for beach renourishment, Mermaid Beach, Gold Coast, Australia, Aug. 20, 2017.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://flic.kr/p/XhmVbU">Steve Austin</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Sand traditionally has been a local product. However, regional shortages and sand mining bans in some countries are turning it into a globalized commodity. Its international trade value has skyrocketed, increasing <a href="https://comtrade.un.org/">almost sixfold in the last 25 years</a>.</p>
<p>Profits from sand mining frequently spur profiteering. In response to rampant violence stemming from competition for sand, the government of Hong Kong established a state monopoly over sand mining and trade in the early 1900s <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800915303979">that lasted until 1981</a>. </p>
<p>Today organized crime groups in India, Italy and elsewhere conduct <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1477370816649627">illegal trade in soil and sand</a>. Singapore’s high-volume sand imports have drawn it into disputes with <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/16/world/asia/16singapore.html?mcubz=3">Indonesia</a>, <a href="https://www.economist.com/news/asia/21645221-asias-mania-reclaiming-land-sea-spawns-mounting-problems-such-quantities-sand">Malaysia</a> and <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/business-40590695">Cambodia</a>. </p>
<h2>Sand mining harms humans and the environment</h2>
<p>The negative consequences of overexploiting sand are felt in poorer regions where sand is mined. Extensive sand extraction physically alters rivers and coastal ecosystems, increases suspended sediments and causes erosion.</p>
<iframe frameborder="0" class="juxtapose" width="100%" height="720" src="https://cdn.knightlab.com/libs/juxtapose/latest/embed/index.html?uid=d6b3a49e-93e2-11e7-b263-0edaf8f81e27"></iframe>
<p>Research shows that sand mining operations are affecting numerous animal species, including <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/sjtg.12150">fish</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gecco.2014.09.004">dolphins</a>, <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.11609/JoTT.o3734.5315-26">crustaceans</a> and <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/aqc.960">crocodiles</a>. For example, the gharial (<em>Gavialis gangeticus</em>) – a critically endangered crocodile found in Asian river systems – is increasingly threatened by sand mining, which destroys or erodes sand banks where the animals bask.</p>
<p>Sand mining also has serious impacts on people’s livelihoods. Beaches and wetlands buffer coastal communities against surging seas. Increased erosion resulting from extensive mining makes these communities more vulnerable to floods and storm surges. </p>
<p>A recent report by the Water Integrity Network found that sand mining <a href="http://www.waterintegritynetwork.net/2013/10/08/curbing-illegal-sand-mining-in-sri-lanka/">exacerbated the impacts of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami in Sri Lanka</a>. In the Mekong Delta, sand mining is reducing sediment supplies as drastically as dam construction, <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep14745">threatening the sustainability of the delta</a>. It also is probably enhancing saltwater intrusion during the dry season, which threatens local communities’ water and food security.</p>
<p>Potential health impacts from sand mining are poorly characterized but deserve further study. Extraction activities create new standing pools of water that can become <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/S1995-7645(13)60087-5">breeding sites for malaria-carrying mosquitoes</a>. The pools may also play an important role in the spread of emerging diseases such as <a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pntd.0000911">Buruli ulcer</a> in West Africa, a bacterial skin infection.</p>
<h2>Preventing a tragedy of the sand commons</h2>
<p>Media coverage of this issue is growing, thanks to work by organizations such as the <a href="http://unepineurope.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=86:unep-global-environmental-alert-service-sand-rarer-than-one-thinks&catid=15&Itemid=101">United Nations Environment Programme</a>, but the scale of the problem is not widely appreciated. Despite huge demand, sand sustainability is rarely addressed in scientific research and policy forums.</p>
<p>The complexity of this problem is doubtlessly a factor. Sand is a common-pool resource – open to all, easy to get and hard to regulate. As a result, we know little about the true global costs of sand mining and consumption.</p>
<p>Demand will increase further as urban areas continue to expand and sea levels rise. Major international agreements such as the <a href="https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/post2015/transformingourworld">2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development</a> and the <a href="https://www.cbd.int/">Convention on Biological Diversity</a> promote responsible allocation of natural resources, but there are no international conventions to regulate sand extraction, use and trade. </p>
<p>As long as national regulations are lightly enforced, harmful effects will continue to occur. We believe that the international community needs to develop a global strategy for sand governance, along with global and regional sand budgets. It is time to treat sand like a resource, on a par with clean air, biodiversity and other natural endowments that nations seek to manage for the future.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/83557/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Aurora Torres received funding from U.S. National Science Foundation, NASA-MSU Professional Enhancement Awards Program, and US-IALE Foreign Scholar Travel Award Program. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jianguo "Jack" Liu receives funding from the National Science Foundation, the NASA-MSU Professional Enhancement Awards Program and Michigan AgBioResearch.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kristen Lear received funding from the NASA-MSU Professional Enhancement Awards Program. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jodi Brandt does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Overuse of sand for construction and industry is harming the environment and fueling violence around the world. Scientists explain why we need international rules to regulate sand mining and use.Aurora Torres, Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Ecology, German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity ResearchJianguo "Jack" Liu, Rachel Carson Chair in Sustainability, Michigan State UniversityJodi Brandt, Assistant Professor - Human Environment Systems, Boise State UniversityKristen Lear, Ph.D. Candidate, University of GeorgiaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/816472017-07-28T12:32:19Z2017-07-28T12:32:19ZData science can help us fight human trafficking<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180070/original/file-20170727-8518-15wdp2b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Ngwe Thein says he was forced to work on a fishing trawler with inadequate food and little or no pay.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Seafood-From-Slavery/54c028384c7743489db27e47603d8949/321/0">APTN, Esther Htusan/AP Photo</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>July 30 marks the United Nations’ <a href="http://www.un.org/en/events/humantrafficking/">World Day Against Trafficking in Persons</a>, a day focused on ending the criminal exploitation of children, women and men for forced labor or sex work.</p>
<p>Between 27 and 45.8 million individuals worldwide are trapped in some form of <a href="https://www.state.gov/documents/organization/271339.pdf">modern-day slavery</a>. The victims are forced into slavery as sex workers, beggars and child soldiers, or as domestic workers, factory workers and laborers in manufacturing, construction, mining, commercial fishing and other industries.</p>
<p>Human trafficking occurs in every country in the world, including the U.S. It’s a hugely profitable industry, generating an estimated US$150 billion annually in <a href="http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---ed_norm/---declaration/documents/publication/wcms_243391.pdf">illegal profits</a> per year. In fact, it’s one of the largest sources of profit for global organized crime, second only to illicit drugs.</p>
<p>Analytics, the mathematical search for insights in data, could help law enforcement combat human trafficking. Human trafficking is essentially a supply chain in which the “supply” (human victims) moves through a network to meet “demand” (for cheap, vulnerable and illegal labor). Traffickers leave a data trail, however faint or broken, despite their efforts to operate off the grid and in the shadows. </p>
<p>There is an opportunity – albeit a challenging one – to use the bits of information we can get on the distribution of victims, traffickers, buyers and exploiters, and disrupt the supply chain wherever and however we can. In our latest study, <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0377221716308992">we have detailed</a> how this might work.</p>
<h1>Finding people at risk</h1>
<p>In most countries, <a href="https://2009-2017.state.gov/j/tip/rls/reports/2012/207590.htm">resources to fight human trafficking</a> are woefully inadequate. Agencies strive to use them as effectively and efficiently as possible, and often find themselves fighting for scarce funding and support. A government, for example, may need to decide how best to fund or schedule labor inspectors to detect child labor in the manufacturing industry. An organization with limited resources may need insight into which prevention program to run, or what type of awareness campaign to implement.</p>
<p>We can use data to identify populations most at-risk and target prevention campaigns to those populations. <a href="https://www.hhrjournal.org/2013/12/how-do-social-determinants-affect-human-trafficking-in-southeast-asia-and-what-can-we-do-about-it-a-systematic-review/">Risk factors</a> for being drawn into trafficking include poverty, unemployment, migration and escape from political conflict or war. Experiences with organized crime and natural disasters can also change to a person’s risk. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179853/original/file-20170726-27705-16gjz6j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179853/original/file-20170726-27705-16gjz6j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179853/original/file-20170726-27705-16gjz6j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=371&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179853/original/file-20170726-27705-16gjz6j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=371&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179853/original/file-20170726-27705-16gjz6j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=371&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179853/original/file-20170726-27705-16gjz6j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179853/original/file-20170726-27705-16gjz6j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179853/original/file-20170726-27705-16gjz6j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">People opposed to child sex trafficking protest in Washington, D.C. in October 2014.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Internet-Sex-Trafficking/9365beab16b1487ab0d5ddc8a5f7a82f/14/0">Rachel La Corte/AP Photo</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>Trafficking often begins with fraudulent recruitment methods, such as promises of employment or romance. Data can help identify specific economically depressed areas, where we can deploy <a href="http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/humtraffconf3/17/">awareness campaigns</a> and social service support. </p>
<p>In operations research, scientists apply mathematical methods to answer complex questions about patterns in data and predict future trends or behaviors. Analytical tools similar to those used in transportation, manufacturing and finance can help us decide where to best allocate resources and help locate shelters for victims. </p>
<h1>Victim identification and location</h1>
<p>Trafficking networks are dynamic. Traffickers are likely to frequently change distribution and transportation routes to avoid detection, leaving law enforcement and analysts with incomplete information as they attempt to identify and dismantle trafficking networks. </p>
<p>However, researchers can help by tracking subtle trends in data at various locations; at access points where we actually come in contact with victims, such as the emergency room; and in the activity of local law enforcement.</p>
<p>In the sex trade, for example, clues may be found in patterns of petty theft, by looking at transactional data from purchases at retail outlets. Victims sometimes steal essential supplies that traffickers may not provide for them such as feminine hygiene products, soap and toothpaste. Trends in the use of cash for transactions normally made with debit or credit cards – hotel bookings, for example – may also raise a red flag. </p>
<p>Traffickers advertise on social media and internet-based sites. Analytics could seek patterns in photos through facial recognition software, comparing images from missing person reports or trafficking ads. </p>
<p>Sex trafficking activity, in particular, leaves traces in the public areas of the internet, mostly in the form of advertisements and escort ads. Advertisers tend to use social networks and dating websites, while more proficient traffickers frequently alter their online presence to try to elude identification. </p>
<p>Machine learning – a type of artificial intelligence where computers teach themselves to do tasks, such as recognize images – can be used to detect online trafficking activity. Recent advances in <a href="https://statweb.stanford.edu/%7Ecandes/papers/MatrixCompletion.pdf">matrix completion</a>, a type of machine learning, could even help clean up falsified information or make predictions about missing data. </p>
<p>Traffickers are also known to take advantage of increased demand for commercial sexual exploitation during <a href="https://technologyandtrafficking.usc.edu/files/2011/09/HumanTrafficking_FINAL.pdf">major events</a>, including conventions and large sporting events. Analyses that look at both location and timing of online ads could help law enforcement detect and possibly interdict transportation of victims to the event. They could also suggest when and where policymakers should focus intervention efforts.</p>
<h1>Network disruption</h1>
<p>Interrupting the flow of people, money and other components of trafficking is critical to identifying trafficking networks, disrupting their infrastructure at the source and eliminating them. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, network interruption requires the cooperation of authorities and the public surrounding the network. In some countries, such as Nepal and Costa Rica, officials are threatened or bribed into ignoring or otherwise allowing human trafficking. There is often inadequate regulatory oversight of industries known to use trafficked laborers. Traffickers can easily fabricate or alter a victim’s identification documents, rendering them invisible to overburdened authorities.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179855/original/file-20170726-2676-rqdcnq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179855/original/file-20170726-2676-rqdcnq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179855/original/file-20170726-2676-rqdcnq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179855/original/file-20170726-2676-rqdcnq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179855/original/file-20170726-2676-rqdcnq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179855/original/file-20170726-2676-rqdcnq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179855/original/file-20170726-2676-rqdcnq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179855/original/file-20170726-2676-rqdcnq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Police detain an activist during a November 2016 protest against child trafficking in Kolkata, India.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/India-Child-Trafficking-Protest/c4cd8aa87708482590597077889008a5/182/0">Bikas Das/AP Photo</a></span>
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<p>To help authorities identify trafficking operations to target, researchers could turn to network analysis, a mathematical way of representing real world systems and their interactions. For example, <a href="http://repository.cmu.edu/hsshonors/155/">network analysis</a> can be used to map out the dynamics of users and their connections embedded in social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter. This can possibly identify at-risk persons or, alternatively, traffickers or customers. </p>
<p>Social network analysis could also help to determine which contacts have a critical influence over others. This may enable early identification of either a victim or trafficking transaction. </p>
<p>Human trafficking is a serious crime and an appalling violation of human rights. Almost every country is affected by human trafficking as a source of victims, a transit point, or a destination and location of abuse. These new mathematical tools show great potential both to interrupt the human trafficking cycle and to provide the information needed to help victims escape to safety.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/81647/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>July 30 marks the United Nations’ World Day Against Trafficking in Persons. How can computer scientists help combat this problem?Renata Konrad, Assistant Professor of Operations and Industrial Engineering, Worcester Polytechnic InstituteAndrew C. Trapp, Associate Professor of Operations and Industrial Engineering, Worcester Polytechnic InstituteLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.