Livestock Theft Research Articles

Diagnosing constraints to market participation of small ruminant producers in northern Ghana: An innovation systems analysis

This paper assesses why participation in markets for small ruminants is relatively low in northern Ghana by analysing the technical and institutional constraints to innovation in smallholder small ruminant production and marketing in Lawra and Nadowli Districts. The results show that the limitations experienced by smallholders, i.e., water shortages during the dry season, high mortality and theft of livestock, persist because of institutional constraints. These include structural limitations related to availability of arable lands, weak support systems for animal production and health services delivery, community values that are skewed towards crop production more than animal husbandry, ineffective traditional and formal structures for justice delivery, and gaps in the interaction between communities and district and national level organizations such as the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, district assemblies, rural banks, and non-governmental organizations as well as traders and butchers. Confronted with such constraints, the strategies that most smallholders have adopted to be resilient entail diversified sources of livelihood, low input use in small ruminant production, and maintaining the herd as a capital stock and insurance. Only a few smallholders (i.e., ‘positive deviants’) engage in market or demand-driven production or exhibit successful strategies in small ruminant husbandry. It is argued in this paper that for the majority of smallholders, market production, which requires high levels of external inputs or intensification of resource use, is not a viable option. The main implications of the study are (1) that other institutional constraints than market access constraints should be addressed, (2) that commercial livestock production should not be idealized as the best or only option (as is being done in many contemporary interventions that aim at incorporating smallholders into commodity value chains), and (3) that different types of small ruminant system innovation pathways should be explored by making use of local positive deviants.

The effectiveness of microfinance banks in reducing the poverty of men and women at Akinyele Local Government, Oyo State Nigeria

While livestock theft in Lesotho is primarily caused by increased poverty among unemployed workers and drought stricken crop farmers, its effect on stock farmers can be devastating. Using an asset-based approach we show how such theft reduces the affected households’ own consumption of both the “returns” on their wealth, for example milk and wool, and of wealth itself, for example meat and hides. It also restricts their ability to apply asset smoothing by forcing them to sell their remaining livestock wealth in the market place and use the proceeds to acquire the necessary food and non-food products. Some policy implications are briefly highlighted. Key words: Livestock theft, unemployed, drought, asset-based approach, livestock wealth, returns on wealth, household utility, asset smoothing, other coping methods.

Health and Human Rights in Chin State, Western Burma: A Population-Based Assessment Using Multistaged Household Cluster Sampling

The Chin State of Burma (also known as Myanmar) is an isolated ethnic minority area with poor health outcomes and reports of food insecurity and human rights violations. We report on a population-based assessment of health and human rights in Chin State. We sought to quantify reported human rights violations in Chin State and associations between these reported violations and health status at the household level. Multistaged household cluster sampling was done. Heads of household were interviewed on demographics, access to health care, health status, food insecurity, forced displacement, forced labor, and other human rights violations during the preceding 12 months. Ratios of the prevalence of household hunger comparing exposed and unexposed to each reported violation were estimated using binomial regression, and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were constructed. Multivariate models were done to adjust for possible confounders. Overall, 91.9% of households (95% CI 89.7%-94.1%) reported forced labor in the past 12 months. Forty-three percent of households met FANTA-2 (Food and Nutrition Technical Assistance II project) definitions for moderate to severe household hunger. Common violations reported were food theft, livestock theft or killing, forced displacement, beatings and torture, detentions, disappearances, and religious and ethnic persecution. Self reporting of multiple rights abuses was independently associated with household hunger. Our findings indicate widespread self-reports of human rights violations. The nature and extent of these violations may warrant investigation by the United Nations or International Criminal Court. Please see later in the article for the Editors' Summary.

Traditional property rights, common property, and mobility in semi-arid African pastoralist systems

ABSTRACTTraditional pastoralist land management institutions in sub-Saharan Africa have been stressed by an increasing human population and related forces, including private enclosure of grazing land; government-sponsored privatization; and the increasing prevalence of violent conflicts and livestock theft. We model the incompleteness and flexibility of traditional grazing rights using fuzzy set theory. We compare individual and social welfare under the traditional system to individual and social welfare under a private property system and a common property system. Whether the traditional system is preferred to private property depends on whether the value of mobility, as defined by the traditional system, is more valuable than the right of exclusion inherent in private property. We find that under some conditions the imprecision which characterizes traditional rights can result in higher social returns than a common property regime characterized by complete symmetric rights across all members of the user group and complete exclusion of non-members.

Opportunity Theory and Agricultural Crime Victimization*

Abstract A growing body of research lends support to opportunity theory and its variants, but has yet to focus systematically on a number of specific offenses and contexts. Typically, the more crimes and contexts to which a theory applies, the broader its scope and range, respectively, and thus generalizability. In this paper, we focus on agricultural crime victimization— including theft of farm equipment, crops, livestock, and chemicals—an offense that opportunity theory appears well‐situated to explain. Specifically, we examine whether key dimensions of the theory are empirically associated with the likelihood of victimization and also examine factors associated with farmers' use of guardianship measures. In contrast to much previous research, we combine multiple individual‐level measures of these dimensions. We conclude that the theory partially accounts for variation in agricultural crime victimization, depending on the type of crime, and that greater work is needed investigating how key dimensions of opportunity theory should be conceptualized and operationalized in rural contexts. The study's implications for theory and practice are discussed.

A Process and Outcome Evaluation of an Agricultural Crime Prevention Initiative

Agricultural crime victimization—including theft of farm crops, livestock, pesticides, and equipment—and efforts to address it remain largely ignored despite the potential of such crime to adversely affect the lives and businesses of farmers and increase the costs of food to consumers. The Agricultural Crime, Technology, Information, and Operations Network (ACTION) initiative, located in California's central valley, was recently developed to combat such crime. The authors present findings from a process and outcome evaluation of this program. The findings are limited by the design of the study but nonetheless suggest that efforts to increase guardianship measures among farmers (e.g., marking equipment and livestock and using surveillance equipment), to “harden targets” (e.g., locking tractors and storing chemicals in locked storage sheds), and to arrest and prosecute offenders may help reduce agricultural crime victimization.

Pastoral Perspectivism: A View from Altai

AbstractOne of the characteristic aspects ofViveiros de Castro’s perspectivismis the relative rather than absolute character of subject/object positions. In the Altaian context, animals are not attributed with subjectivity in the way found in Amazonian cosmologies. Still, the subject position is not particular to humans: the landscape is populated by masters of a both human and nonhuman kind. The terminological division of animals into wild (a?dar-kushtar) and domesticated (mal) in Altaian language is analogical to the human/animal division in Amazonia. Wildness and domesticity thus become relative categories defined with reference to the idiom of the master. What is wild for a human master is domesticated for a nonhumanmaster. Here, the common denominator is a sort of ‘livestock-morphism’:what for the human hunters looks like a deer is a cowfrom the point of view of the forest masters. If conducted improperly, hunting is thus analogous to livestock theft – morality transcends perspectivism in Altai. Exploring this ‘pastoralist perspectivism’ leads to questions about subjectivity and agency, ethics and ownership. The discussion is finally placed ‘into perspective’ by showing thatAltaians do not operate with a single idea of the animal and human–animal relationship.

Ear Candy

autumn 2003 issue of this journal featured eight articles offering some uninvited suggestions on international relations and foreign to Paul Martin as he was making his debut as prime minister. In his overview of challenges faced by new Martin cabinet, Denis Stairs cautioned new prime minister against the tendency to indulge in inflated and selfserving rhetoric, clearly designed to appeal to preferences and prejudices of population indoctrinated by its own myths.1 In this, Stairs was reflecting common criticism of foreign of government of Jean Chretien: that over nine years that Chretien was in power, growing gap had emerged between and reality. On one hand, efforts of Chretien government to bring deficit under control had led to dramatic diminution of Canadian capabilities on international stage as Canadian armed forces, foreign service, and development assistance budget were all slashed.2 On other hand, Chretien government sought to cover this declining capacity by turning to what Allan Gotlieb has called feel-good foreign policy marked by a tendency to moralize and proclaim superior values.3 As Stairs put it, grandiose and self-serving rhetoric was crucial to this exercise: The spinning of tales-tales not false, but certainly canted-becomes an increasingly valued and admired art as establishment struggles to bridge gap between what well-intentioned Canadians think and what government really is doing.4In short, over course of 19905, Chretien government increasingly pursued what might be thought of as an approach to foreign policy: government ministers tended to speak about Canada's role in world in terms that were so sweet-sounding to Canadians that not only did convince listeners that their government was actually doing something worthwhile in their name, but it also generated considerable political support for those engaging in rhetoric. But sugar high produced by steady diet of ear candy tends to be no less addictive than diet of real candy: more that their governors fed them feelgood about Canadian foreign policy, more that Canadians appeared to expect such rhetorical excesses from their government-and, as importantly, to be entirely unsatisfied with more honest, realistic, or sober assessments of options available to Canada in real world of world politics. Moreover, dynamic quickly became circular as government ministers themselves became addicted to telling Canadians about their role in international affairs in terms that they knew would generate political support.Although it was hoped by some in 2003 that Martin would bring less rhetorical and more realistic approach to conduct of Canadian foreign policy, it can be argued that Martin himself and government he leads have proved to be as addicted to ear candy in foreign as Chretien government had been.' There is no better indication of this than Martin government's towards humanitarian disaster in western Sudanese region of Darfur that had been unfolding since February aooj.6 atrocity crimes7 in Darfur include killings of tens of thousands of Sudanese citizens by so-called Janjaweed, militias that are, by all credible accounts, armed, supported, and controlled by government of Sudan;8 fanjaweed's systematic use of rape as tool of war; and widespread destruction of villages and crops and theft of livestock that has led not only to displacement of more than 1.5 million Sudanese but also to deaths of tens of thousands more from disease and malnutrition.9This article seeks to examine evolution of Canadian towards Darfur. I will demonstrate that early on significant gap appeared in Canadian policy. prime minister's about Canada's concern for humanitarian crisis became so inflated that it was impossible for government to ensure that its actions matched its rhetoric. …

For the Defense of the Western Border: Arkansas Volunteers on the Indian Frontier, 1846-1847

WITH THE OUTBREAK OF THE MEXICAN WAR in May 1846, soldiers of the Sixth Infantry and First Dragoons stationed at the frontier posts of Fort Smith, Arkansas, and Fort Gibson, Indian Territory, prepared to depart for Mexico. Their deployment would leave a reduced garrison in a troubled region of the frontier. To replace these men, five companies of volunteers from the state of Arkansas were called to service in the U.S. Army. Known as the Battalion of Arkansas Volunteers, they occupied Fort Smith and Fort Gibson, as well as Fort Wayne in the Indian Territory, for nine and a half months during 1846 and 1847. By reinforcing these frontier garrisons, the Battalion of Arkansas Volunteers rendered valuable service to the U.S. in a time of national crisis. Political violence in the Cherokee Nation had prompted the U.S. government to patrol the region with increased forces. With the majority of the Sixth Infantry and First Dragoons en route to Mexico, the volunteers were essential to maintaining a strong federal presence along the Arkansas border and preventing further violence among the Cherokees. The volunteers rounded up deserters, criminals, and murderers for prosecution by local authorities or military courts and helped prevent theft of livestock and property from local inhabitants. Their story is worth telling not only for the duty they did well but for the light it sheds on the experience of the volunteer soldier of this era. Though they never faced combat, the volunteers experienced many of the same hardships and privations as their brethren in Mexico. Disease plagued troops, and unfamiliarity with army regulations caused continual conflict between volunteer and regular army commanders. The presence of the U.S. military had grown steadily on the southwestern frontier as the tide of immigrants pushing westward into Missouri, Arkansas, and Louisiana swelled during the decades before the Mexican War. In the 1820s and 1830s, the U.S. government established forts in the Indian Territory to allow the military to protect American citizens, as well as the eastern Indians being removed to the territory, from hostile tribes already occupying the region. The establishment of Fort Gibson and Fort Wayne in the Cherokee Nation allowed the army to enforce peace between indigenous Osages and the Cherokees being settled there and protect travel routes in what is now eastern Oklahoma. In the 1840s, the army continued to perform these roles, but also became involved in calming troubles between the major political factions of the Cherokee Nation. In the autumn of 1845, conflict between the three primary Cherokee factions turned violent. The dominant party, made up of recently arrived Cherokees led by Chief John Ross, formed a Light Horse police force that terrorized opponents in the minority Old Settler and Treaty parties of the Cherokee Nation. These minority parties, which had been in the territory long before Ross's eastern contingent arrived, inevitably retaliated. The conflict between the three parties resulted in the murders of thirty-four people between November 1845 and November 1846 and destroyed much personal property belonging to both Cherokee and Arkansas residents along the border.1 Victims of Ross's police fled their homes and took shelter in Fort Wayne, an abandoned army post located just inside the Cherokee Nation four miles southwest of Maysville, a small settlement in Benton County, Arkansas. The displaced and often starving refugees stole livestock and supplies from Arkansans living along the border, and several murders occurred near Maysville. The violence and incursions by Cherokee refugees fueled rumors that an Indian invasion of Arkansas was imminent. In a state of excitement Benton County citizens called out their militia and requested that the government place additional troops in the area.2 The commander of the Second Military Department at Fort Smith, Gen. Mathew Arbuckle, promptly ordered elements of the First Dragoons from Fort Gibson to occupy strategic positions along the Arkansas border. …

Herding and Homicide: An Examination of the Nisbett-Reaves Hypothesis

Replication of the Nisbett-Reaves test of the herding-culture-of-honor hypothesis fails to support expectations derived from Nisbett's culture-of-honor theory. The theory predicts that violent culture has economic advantage in frontier areas with herding economies, because there is a chronic threat of livestock theft. Nisbett and Reaves hypothesize that rural counties in the South, where ecological conditions promote livestock herding will have especially high white non-Hispanic male homicide rates. Our statistical analysis reproduces the mean homicide rates reported by previous research, but indicates that they are artifacts of skewed distributions, unreliable estimates of homicide rates, and the failure to control for differences in the distribution of white poverty.

Herding and Homicide: An Examination of the Nisbett-Reaves Hypothesis

Replication of the Nisbett-Reaves test of the herding-culture-of-honor hypothesis fails to support expectations derived from Nisbett's culture-of-honor theory. The theory predicts that violent culture has economic advantage in frontier areas with herding economies, because there is a chronic threat of livestock theft. Nisbett and Reaves hypothesize that rural counties in the South, where ecological conditions promote livestock herding, will have especially high white non-Hispanic male homicide rates. Our statistical analysis reproduces the mean homicide rates reported by previous research, but indicates that they are artifacts of skewed distributions, unreliable estimates of homicide rates, and thefailure to controlfor differences in the distribution of white

0,4° au nord de l’équateur : une souveraineté à l’abandon

0,4° north of the equator : sovereignty in a state of neglect. In the regions North of the Equator, the Kenyan State has left all sovereignty to warlords who use their control of a territory to terrorise neighbours and steal their livestock. In the West, the Pokots have remained unpunished and become the unquestioned masters of the livestock theft which supplies the markets of the rebellions in Uganda and Southern Sudan. In the East, the taking of sides of the regime in the Somali conflict and the fear of the Ethiopian threat leave the way clear for the most murderous feuds between different armed factions.

‘Restrain the Lawless Savages’: Native Defendants in the Criminal Courts of the North West Territories, 1878–1885

This article examines the imposition of Canadian criminal Law on the native population of the North West Territories 1878–1885. In spite of severe deprivation as a result of the difficulties of adjusting to an agricultural economy, the crime rate among the native population was strikingly low. With the single exception of livestock theft, native crime rates were less than 20% of those of whites. The authors conclude that the Canadian authorities adopted a cautious and selective approach to introducing criminal sanctions. Native dispute settlement institutions remained viable and individuals were able to choose which system best suited their circumstances.

Murder in the Market: Penal Aspects of Berber Customary Law in the Precolonial Moroccan Rif

AbstractThis article focuses on the penal customary law of the Aith Waryaghar tribe of the Moroccan Rif in the immediate precolonial period during the two-plus decades prior to the emergence from their ranks of the former qādī bin ʿAbd al-Krim, the leader of the Rifian War of 1921-1926. In it are discussed the results of my fieldwork on the related subjects of alliance, bloodfeud and vendetta in the region, with particular attention to the enormous ḥaqq fines levied by the tribal councillors of both the Aith Waryaghar and adjacent tribes for murders committed in the weekly tribal markets. These fines are compared with the contents of five Aith Waryaghar qānūns, customary law documents drawn up in Arabic, deriving from the same period and originally published by Col. Emilio Blanco Izaga in Spanish translation in 1939. Here, the qānūns are presented in order to provide written documentation for the reconstructed accounts given by my elderly informants in the period 1953-1965. The fit between the two sets of accounts is very close, particularly in the spirit of the law if not in the letter. For the major feature of these qānūns is precisely these same heavy fines. The contrast between them and the trifling ones for theft of livestock, for example, is also examined, as are other aspects of feud and vendetta. Finally, the reforming role of bin ʿAbd al-Krim is summarized along with his successful wartime endeavor to substitute the Shariʿa for customary law in the Rif in all major spheres, thereby preempting any Spanish follow-through on the French declaration of the Berber Dahir of 1930 in their own zone of Morrocco.

Black mischief: crime, protest and resistance in colonial Kenya

ABSTRACTThis article examines the history of African resistance to colonial rule among the Nandi and Kipsigis peoples of Kenya's Western Highlands. Anti-colonial protest centred on the activities of a group of ritual leaders, the orkoiik of the Talai clan, who were believed to possess supernatural powers of prophecy and divination. Between the late 1890s and 1905, the orkoiyot Koitalel had come to prominence as a leader of resistance to conquest. After his defeat the British briefly attempted to harness his Talai clansmen to the system of colonial government, promoting them as chiefs. This move was based upon a misunderstanding of the status of the orkoiik, whose powers often stood in direct conflict with the authorityof the elders and who were greatly feared by many Nandi and Kipsigis. By the igsos the orkoiik were deeply implicated in much criminal activity, especially the theft of livestock from European settler farmers. On three occasions orkoiik attempted to organize armed risings.The article concludes with a discussion of the place of the orkoiik in the historiography of Kenya. Although Koitalel and Barserion are commonly presented as heroes of a glorious resistance to colonialism, it is suggested that this interpretation fails to reflect the deep ambiguity of the status of the orkoiik, and the complexity of the struggles that took placewithin African societies under colonial rule.

Media explanations of small-town vigilante murder

According to media accounts of the events leading up to the apparent vigilante-style murder, McElroy had been arrested at least eighteen times in the area for offenses including the shooting of a local farmer, rape, arson, and theft of livestock. Each time he was arrested, with the aid of lawyers from nearby Kansas City, McElroy was able to escape conviction and usually a trial would not even occur. McElroy allegedly terrorized those who were to appear in court to testify against him, leaving the prosecutor without witnesses and without a case. The critical event for the community occured when McElroy allegedly shot the loca170-year-old grocer after the latter had accused McElroy's daughter of stealing a piece of candy from the store. The grocer survived after a lengthy hospital stay. Because the local minister had visted the grocer in the hospital, McElroy had telephoned him and threatened to maim his children and rape his wife. These phoned threats were nothing new for McElroy for he had frequently threatened local women with rape. In the case of shooting the grocer, as had happened orten in the past, McElroy threatened all potential witnesses; and almost a year later at the trial, the only witnesses were McElroy and the grocer. McElroy admitted shooting the grocer, but claimed that he had done

Notes of an Examination of 'The Devil's Dyke', in Dumfriesshire

This article describes the course of the embankment know as the ‘Devil’s Dyke’ that runs through Dumfries and Galloway. The author suggests that this dyke may have been used as a defensive feature intended to prevent the theft of livestock and argues that it was constructed around the year 1000 by the Anglo-Saxon people who lived in the East , to protect their livestock from the Celtic people who lived in the West .