Crime and punishment in Liberia

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Concern about the growing number of blacks and freed slaves in the United States led the American Colonization Society (with assistance from British colonial officials in Sierra Leone) to re-settle former slaves in what became known as Liberia (“Land of the Free”). Ironically, the government established by the Americo-Liberians following independence in 1847, denied indigenous Liberians (who comprised about 95% of the population of the new republic), the same rights they themselves were denied in America. Many years of prejudice, discrimination, exploitation, oppression, and other forms of social and economic injustices perpetrated against indigenous Liberians by successive Americo-Liberian government culminated in the April 12, 1980 coup d'etat, carried out by Master Sergeant Samuel Doe. This paper discusses the problem of crime and punishment in Liberia before the coup d'etat and after, during the fourteen years of civil wars which followed the coup d'etat, and during the immediate period following the return to civilian rule in 2004. The study reveals that non-enforcement of existing laws coupled with racial/ethnic and gender discrimination were a problem in the country and continues to be. The study further reveals that rapes and other forms of sexual violence, mass killings and extra-judicial executions targeting specific ethnic groups, harassment and illegal arrests and detention, lootings, armed robberies, and ritualistic killings were common during the civil wars. Available information also indicate that sex with young children has continued in post civil war Liberia along with increased incidence of prostitution, domestic violence, human trafficking, and drug trafficking mainly due to lack of enforcement of existing laws.