Petty Crime Research Articles

Old Buddies and Same Old Stories: Argentina and US relations in the Trump Era

Old Buddies and Same Old Stories:Argentina and US relations in the Trump Era Mónica Farías On January 25th 2017 the President of the United States of America, Donald Trump, issued Executive Orders 13767 and 13768. The former commands Customs and Border Patrol to "secure the southern border of the United States through the immediate construction of a physical wall on the southern border." The latter enhances immigration officers' power to initiate deportation proceedings. Two days later, on January 27th, Trump issued EO 13769 suspending the refugee program as well as the entry to the United States of America of citizens from seven predominantly Muslim countries. On the very same day, Trump's Argentine counterpart, President Mauricio Macri, issued Decreto de Necesidad y Urgencia 70/2017 (DNU - Decree of Need and Urgency) that reformed Argentine immigration statutes, lowering the requirements for the deportation of foreign residents while expediting the deportation process. This simultaneity could very well be just an unfortunate coincidence but what should call our immediate attention is that the content of these measures—the xenophobic targeting and racialized stereo-types [End Page 176] that they mobilize—are strikingly similar. According to the Center for Legal and Social Studies (CELS), Macri's DNU 70/2017 reinstates the same criteria that existed under the 1976-1983 Argentine dictatorship. Under the Law 22.439, also known as the Ley Videla (after de facto president of Argentina Jorge R. Videla) in place until 2004, undocumented immigrants were denied access to social services such as education and health care, both free and public in Argentina, and the right to legitimate legal defense. At the time of its implementation Congress had been dissolved and national security doctrines "justified" the establishment of a system of control and sanction of the immigrant population. But what can possibly justify a measure like this under a democratic government, where it is the prerogative of the Congress to legislate on immigration issues? According to CELS, DNU 70/2017 was neither justified on the basis of need, nor of urgency. "Immigration" was not a central issue of Macri's political campaigns neither as Mayor of the city of Buenos Aires, nor for President of Argentina. Yet, Macri's xenophobia is not new. During his tenure as the Mayor of Buenos Aires (2007-2015), he and members of his administration made several remarks linking immigration from neighboring countries with delinquency of all kinds, from petty crime to illegal occupation of land and drug trafficking. Furthermore, Macri, just like Trump, won his campaign and has built his policies by tapping into deep-rooted fears and grievances. For instance, his campaign tapped into middle class discourses about a lack of law and order in an urban space increasingly perceived as dangerous and ungovernable. This is not the only similarity between the two presidents. Macri's association with Donald Trump goes back to the 1980s when he and his father tried to close a deal with him in New York. In a 2005 interview Macri said of Trump and himself: "we remained buddies. Every time I go to New York, I visit him, and I have lunch with him and his wife" (Página 12 2016). That said, Macri did not support Trump's candidacy and instead bet on Hillary Clinton's continuation of Obama's diplomatic and economic policies. Yet, the morning after the election, Macri congratulated Trump on twitter, arranged to have a phone call that took place on November 14th and tried to secure a visit to the United States. In a public opinion poll undertaken a few days prior to the announcement of DNU 70/2017, the pollster Poliarquía (http://poliarquia.com/encuesta-nacional-sobre-politica-migratoria/) reported that the level of approval for at least two of the measures—the banning of immigrants with a criminal record and "deportation express" procedures—surpassed 80 percent. But this is not new, either. In Argentina, migrants have been scapegoated for the lack of jobs and the critical economic situation at multiple points throughout the 20th century (Grimson 2001, 2006; Guano 2003). For instance, in 1902, the Ley de Residencia (Residence Law) legalized the deportation of...

Ghostbusters 2.0

Ghostbusters 2.0 Ralph Clare (bio) In my book Fictions Inc.: The Corporation in Postmodern Fiction, Film, and Popular Culture (2014), I present a case for the original Ghostbusters (1984) as an allegory of the neoliberal transformation of New York City (and by extension America) in which the Ghostbusters themselves function as a kind of corporate savior. In the film, of course, the group is basically a small business on par with pest control exterminators, as one of the group's television commercials suggests. However, the Ghostbusters's business booms after the city finds itself unable to cope with the growing problem of paranormal activity—the ghosts that commit petty crimes, loitering/haunting, and comprise a troubling "otherness" that can be seen as representative of poor and minority residents of certain NY City neighborhoods that were seen as acting as a drain on the city's already tenuous resources. The Ghostbuster's "clean up the city" by removing undesirable "residents" and "containing" them in their Containment Unit in a process analogous to the "urban renewal" projects meant to cure the city of its blighted areas after the 1970s fiscal crisis through the implementation of public-private partnerships that greatly favored businesses and corporations with massive tax cuts and other concessions. Ghostbusters, then, can clearly be seen as a movie heralding the increasing corporate power and profits during the early stages of a neoliberal America that Ronald Reagan would continue to usher in via a healthy dose of corporate tax cuts, deregulation, union busting, and by slashing a variety of social services. Not only are the Ghostbusters freed from any oversight or regulation when the mayor grants them the authority to save the city (the EPA is the true villain of the film because it shuts down the nuclear powered containment unit the Ghostbusters are running, which leads to the actual crisis), but they are seen as the only option in the face of a failing government that is unequipped to handle the crisis in addition to adequately policing or running the city. Despite the film's overarching if obscured political/economic logic, we nevertheless find ourselves rooting for the Ghostbusters, the small start-up that eventually makes it big, to save the day. In short, we root for corporate power and influence under the guise of a kind of superhero group. In the new Ghostbusters (2016), we once again find ourselves cheering for a small business—another tech-start up, paranormal exterminating business—that becomes enormously successful after the city government finds itself unable to handle an overwhelming threat. Yet if the first Ghostbusters can be said to play out a fantasy of the corporation as savior that helps to "clean up" and "revitalize" the city, what is left to do for the latest crew of Ghostbusters? The city of the new Ghostbusters, for instance, is a post-, not pre-, gentrified New York. The downtown that Egon Spengler once likened to a "war zone" that nevertheless offers the group cheap real estate in the form of an abandoned firehouse (another instance of the city's failings), has been transformed, in the new film, into an up-an-coming neighborhood whose converted firehouse is a too-expensive, trendy "loft-space" that forces the new Ghostbusters to move further downtown (to a small space above a Chinese restaurant in Chinatown, as if even this would be affordable). Consequently, the ghosts of the past in this gentrified and post-9/11 Ghostbusters do not hold the same symbolic meaning that they once did. The ghosts of the first film are depicted as pests or nuisances, and they are "present" in a sense—indicative of NYC's present "problems"—but the new film can only offer cartoon or flattened "historical" ghosts—a soldier from the revolutionary war, some circus-like, Tim Burtonesque figures, Slimer from the first film, etc. (one wonders where the ghosts of Native Americans or even the slaves who built Wall Street might be). And whereas the EPA is the true villain in the earlier film—the Feds' regulation creates the fin(anci)al crisis—the new film shifts this threat onto an individual man whose resentment fuels his capture and...

When the Elderly Turn to Petty Crime

Declines in offending in older age have been consistently observed in nearly every criminological study to date. Because of this, theories that address offending in older life focus exclusively on explaining decreases in crime or “desistance.” However, recent increases in elderly arrest rates in some aging societies provide a unique opportunity to forward theories of older age offending with an empirical touchstone. Using Japan as a case study, this article draws from a social integration perspective to examine whether changes in family and economic integration are associated with increasing arrest rates. Using prefectural fixed-effects models with elderly arrests from 1995 to 2004, the findings suggest that weakened family integration is associated with elderly arrest rates, particularly for petty crimes. This article situates these results within the context of Japan and discusses how social integration and later life offending may be related in aging societies like Japan.

NAZEWNICTWO KAR W KODEKSIE KARNYM REPUBLIKI KOREI W ASPEKCIE TŁUMACZENIOWYM KOREAŃSKO-POLSKIM

The article was written with the aim of translating the names of criminal penalties in the Republic of Korea’s Penal Code to the Polish language. The text of the current Korean Penal Code has been compared with the pararell text of the Polish Penal Code. Although both Penal Codes have similar functions, the scope of application is slightly different, so the Polish Code of Petty Crimes and the previous Polish Penal Code (from the year 1969) were used subsidiary. However, the article was written not only for translatory purposes, but also to initially present an image of South Korean penal law to the Polish readers since Poland is deficient in such papers. Even though the article is written in Polish, it was essential to use original Korean names of criminal penalties. Due to Koreans using a different alphabet, the names had to be transcripted according to the rules of McCune-Reischauer (Ogarek-Czoj, 2007, 30), to make the Korean words legible for non-Korean readers. The paper is, de facto, a shortened version of my BA paper of the same title.

Eyewitness recall and suggestibility in individuals with Down syndrome.

Many criminal justice professionals perceive the eyewitness skills of individuals with intellectual disabilities to be weaker than those of typically developing (TD) individuals. Down syndrome (DS) is one of the most common genetic causes of intellectual disabilities, yet there is no research addressing eyewitness skills in this population. This study examined the eyewitness recall and suggestibility of young people with DS. Young people with DS and mental age-matched TD children viewed a video of a non-violent petty crime and were subsequently asked to freely recall the event before being asked general and specific questions incorporating both misleading and non-leading prompts. Compared with mental age-matched TD individuals, young people with DS produced as much information, were just as accurate and were no more suggestible. The eyewitness memory skills of young people with DS are comparable to those of mental age-matched TD children. The implications of these findings for the forensic context and eyewitness memory are discussed.

Virginia County Builds Consensus to Keep Mentally Ill Out of Jail

“Slow but steady” is the watchword as one county tackles the problem of too many people with mental illness in jail.

Counterfeiting and terrorism

Identifying and cutting off terrorists’ access to funding has become a key priority for the international community. It is thus not surprising that while the United Nations, the European Union, G8 and others present action plans to dry up financial sources for terrorists, right-holder organizations remind the authorities and policymakers of the links between counterfeiting and terrorism. The French right-holders’ association Union des Fabricants (Unifab) has presented a report on ‘Counterfeiting & Terrorism’ (available at: http://www.unifab.com/images/ Rapport-A-Terrorisme-2015_GB.pdf) in which they highlight the proven links between counterfeiting and terrorism. The thoroughly documented report presents the involvement of several terrorist organizations in counterfeiting activities, explains the reasons for this choice and recommends further actions. We learn, for example, that Mokhtar Belmokhtar the leader of Al-Qaeda in the Maghreb (Aqmi), responsible for several recent attacks in West Africa, has the nickname ‘Mr Marlboro’ because large parts of his activities are financed by counterfeit and contraband tobacco products. What is more astonishing is that the Kouachi brothers— the terrorists involved in the Paris attacks on Charlie Hebdo—were under the surveillance of the French antiterrorist police, until the monitoring of their telephone conversations revealed that they were setting up a business involving counterfeit clothing and sports shoes. This is when the police surveillance was stopped because, according to the officers, they were leaving the terrorist world to focus on petty crime. Only a few months later the Kouachi brothers burst into the newsroom of Charlie Hebdo. Some of the weapons used in the attacks were financed by the counterfeiting activity and the Director-General of French Customs confirmed that in this particular case there were ‘close links between counterfeiting and the financing of terrorism’. This specific example shows how regrettable it is that public authorities categorize counterfeiting as a ‘petty crime’ while in reality, it represents a major funding method for organized crime in general and terrorism in particular. The Unifab report shows that the conflict in Syria is partially financed by the traffic of counterfeit amphetamines, which are very popular with consumers in the Middle East and those fighting in the conflict. In Syria, the money obtained from the sale of these counterfeit amphetamines enables forces to arm themselves, while the—albeit fake— medicine is used by fighters who see it as a way to withstand many hours in battle, without fear or fatigue. In relation to the Paris attacks of 13 November 2015, the links are less obvious: the report points out that some of the terrorists come from the Belgian city Molenbeek, which is considered as a notorious place of radicalization, and the report cites the mayor of Molenbeek, who expressly links delinquency such as drug trafficking, counterfeiting and offences to social law with the phenomenon of radicalization. In this particular case one can only ‘feel the link’, but the suspicions are not established beyond reasonable doubt. Then again, this is probably due to the fact that both terrorism and counterfeiting remain illegal activities which are carried out underground. To stay with the example of Molenbeek—which I know very well since I regularly assist my clients with seizures of counterfeit products in this part of Brussels—it is clear that counterfeiting and other delinquency are widespread in this community. However, to conclude from there that this leads to radicalization and ultimately to terrorism is less obvious. Having said that, there will inevitably be instances where candidates for the jihad engage in counterfeiting or piracy to make ‘quick money’ to finance a trip to terrorist camps or for their terrorist ventures like the Kouachi brothers did in France. The Unifab report clearly shows why counterfeiting is a ‘logical choice’ for terrorists—and other malicious individuals—who are out for quick money while taking a low risk. The report demonstrates that counterfeiting is a highly lucrative activity in comparison to other criminal activities, such as drug dealing or human trafficking, while the stakes are low for those who are caught. This is due in part to the fact that the legislation in place in most countries is not sufficiently dissuasive, that penalties are rarely enforced and are often well below the maximum that the law provides for. The report rightly concludes that the gap between the reality of counterfeiting and its treatment by national, European and international institutions is almost unreal!

Who Benefits from Customary Justice? Rent-seeking, Bribery and Criminality in sub-Saharan Africa

In many Sub-Saharan countries, customary and statutory judicial systems co-exist. Customary justice is exercised by clan leaders or local courts, and based on restorative principles. By contrast, statutory justice is mostly retributive and administered by magistrates’ courts. As the jurisdiction of the customary and the statutory systems often overlap, victims can choose which judicial system to refer to, which may lead to contradictions between rules and inconsistencies in judgments. In this essay, we construct a model representing a dual judicial system. We show that the overlap of competence encourages rent-seeking and bribery, and yields to high rates of petty crimes and civil disputes. We recommend the subsidization of the statutory judicial system, as it efficiently improves deterrence and incapacitation in the dual judicial system while minimizing corruption of customary judges. We illustrate our theoretical predictions by discussing the functioning of the Ugandan dual judicial system.

PETTY CRIMES THAT MATTER: Evaluating the Western Cape community courts

By focusing on petty crimes, community courts hope to encourage a ‘zero tolerance’ approach to criminality, develop integrated and constructive responses to local crime problems, and alleviate case loads in magistrates’ courts. Based on an evaluation of three community courts in the Western Cape, this article argues that overall, the courts are functioning satisfactorily. Challenges in the areas of planning, public awareness, police data collection, and the provision of diversion and alternative sentencing options must, however, be addressed.

Tom L. Johnson and Cleveland Traction Wars, 1901–1909

AbstractTom L. Johnson made his mark on politics far from Capitol Hill, in the gritty world of turn‐of‐the‐century Cleveland, Ohio. Barely 30 years old and at the height of a successful career as an inventor, steel manufacturer, and street railway monopolist, Tom Loftin Johnson experienced a change of heart. After discovering the ideas of Henry George, Johnson became a lifelong advocate of the single tax, which he used to guide his new career in politics. In 1901, Cleveland voters elected Johnson to the first of his four terms as mayor of the industrial city of 400,000 people. During his eight‐year reign as chief executive, Cleveland took over essential services such as garbage collection, street cleaning, and lighting from private enterprise. Johnson helped humanize the city's correctional system by replacing the old workhouse with a network of farm colonies designed to rehabilitate wayward youths and adults convicted of petty crimes. Largely as a result of Johnson's efforts, Cleveland won constitutional home rule, a lower streetcar fare, the referendum, and higher taxes on the corporations that amassed giant fortunes through perpetual public franchise grants. For a short time, while he was still mayor, Cleveland owned and operated its own streetcar company, a rarity in early 20th‐century America. All of these accomplishments made Johnson something of a hero to progressive reformers. The muckraker Lincoln Steffens famously called Johnson “the best Mayor of the best‐governed city in the United States.”

Cross Border Migration as the Flip Side of Patriarchy, Poverty and Development in India and Nepal

When Nepal's poverty and patriarchy extended their political chemistry to the ideas and the ideal of development and progress, it could not have been foreseen that social, economic political profile of migrants would entail, not only issues regarding the movement of workers between the two countries, income and remittances but also involvement in petty crimes, child labour and unregistered employment. India has been a traditional hot spot for Nepalese migrants since the past century. Detailed studies of the migration pattern between India and Nepal reveal that a new peculiar category of migrants has of late come into being in big cities adding outside of traditional migration destinations such as Bihar and West Bengal. Through this paper I aim to examine the changing dynamics of migration between India and Nepal by working among three kinds of migrants in Delhi, namely, cooks and/or waiters in restaurants or roadside eating joints, night-watchmen, domestic helps and tailors. On the basis my findings, I refer to them as ‘itinerant migrants’ in order to situate their particular migration model. These migrants ‘on the go’ not only traverse freely through the symbolic realms of friendship between the two countries, but reside with a dual existential focus upon their lives. These actors have achieved a monetary and emotional satisfaction for themselves even at the cost of working informally without rights. My work takes the stand that although the itinerant migrants remain silently entrenched in the anonymous underbelly of development and international relations, yet they are not entirely invisible. Those who deal with them, employ them, trust or remain distant with them are fully aware of their existence and status. Traversing the space created by a partnership between the loopholes of bilateral relations on the one hand and changing migration patterns on the other, these iterant travelers throw open grey zones of existence worth debating. Out of these, day to day exploitation, drugs and unregistered existences amidst a fraternal ethos of solidarity are some of the issues that this paper identifies and proposes for further research.

COMMUNITY POLICING AS PUBLIC PARTICIPATION STRATEGY FOR ENHANCING SECURITY IN KENYA

Security is a basic necessity in every society as it is a watershed for development and prosperity in all sectors of the economy. However, for a long time this has been elusive both in the urban and rural areas. The insecurity experienced in many societies ranging from terrorism, cattle rustling to petty crimes has had devastating effects inducing loss of lives and massive destruction of property. In managing the security situation, the police resources in terms of personnel and equipment seem to have been strained as insecurity levels soar. It is believed that the criminals and perpetrators of insecurity live within same society and therefore, members of the society can identify them thus community policing was muted in Kenya. This study therefore, aimed at evaluating community policing as a security enhancing strategy. The study was guided by the Abraham Maslows hierarchy of needs which identifies security as a great concern which must be satisfied. The study adopted a case study research design with Koibatek District as the case. The target population for the study was 1679 members of community policing at the sub-location, location and Division levels, from which a sample of 265 was picked using stratified sampling, purposive sampling and simple random sampling. Data was collected using questionnaires and interviews and analysed descriptively where percentages and frequencies were computed and presented in tables, pie charts and graphs. The study established that there are community policing structures which have been clearly laid down at all levels as per the community policing manual. Further, community policing plays a significant role in reducing crime though riddled by a number of challenges such as mistrust and lack of capacity to handle crime. The study recommends that a strong partnership be created between the police and the members of the public and that capacity building through training is required to make the community policing committees effective.

When threat matters: Self-regulation, threat salience, and stereotyping

Four experiments examined whether information implying imminent threat to safety would interact with regulatory focus (Higgins, 1997) to affect the utilization of threat-relevant stereotypes. Because information suggesting imminent danger is more relevant to the safety goals of prevention-focused individuals than the advancement goals of promotion-focused individuals, utilization of threat-relevant stereotypes was expected to increase under such conditions only under prevention focus. Support for this prediction was obtained in four distinct and socially important domains. Using scenarios describing a violent crime committed by an African-American male (Experiment 1) or a petty crime committed by an undocumented immigrant (Experiment 2), prevention-focused individuals made judgments consistent with stereotypes when threat was perceived to be high rather than low. In studies that manipulated the stereotypicality of the target in a terrorism scenario (Experiments 3 & 4), prevention-focused individuals were more likely to endorse scrutinizing a stereotypical compared with a non-stereotypical target when terrorism was described as an increasing problem. Implications for models of stereotyping, self-regulation, and responding to threat are discussed.

Breaking Laws to Fix Broken Windows: A Revisionist Take on Order Maintenance Policing

Today, there is a family of celebrated police strategies that teach the importance of cracking down on petty crime and urban nuisance as the key to effective crime control. Under the “broken windows” appellation, this strategy is linked in the public mind with New York City and the alleged successes of its police department in reducing the rate of crime over the past two decades. This paper is critical of such order maintenance approaches to policing: I argue that infringements of civil liberty by such departments could be reduced if the departments looked at law more as a good to be served for its own sake and less as an instrument for the promotion of order. In other words, a shot of legalism is the correct medicine to reduce police misconduct that pierces the law’s protections of citizen freedom.This Article contributes to the critical literature on broken windows policing by reassessing the work of the famous Harvard scholar (James Q. Wilson) who fathered it. The Article takes Wilson’s work and turns it on its head, drawing very different prescriptive conclusions than he did himself.

Paediatric Research in Latin America: Focus on Governance and Populations

Research with children is globally subjected to specific safeguards. There are natural aspects related to their cognitive development and their capacity to assent and consent to their participation as subjects. Developing countries, and overall, countries with high levels of inequality due to socio-economic reasons create additional concerns for investigators and research ethics committees members. Several Latin American countries are emerging from decades of political unrest, civil wars and different levels of corruption—situations that are reflected in the number of children living on the street. These children are prone to being used in petty crime, sexual abuse and human trafficking. All research carried out with this particular vulnerable population must adhere to strict ethical safeguards. Although there is no evidence that these minors could be used as subjects in clinical trials, all studies that are to be conducted with these children must respond to specific hypotheses that could ameliorate or even improve their living conditions. The uneven capabilities of local research ethics committees and lax regulatory framework in some Latin American countries are of further concern to this population.

Collateral Incentives to Arrest

In the 1960s, criminal procedure experts such as Wayne LaFave documented the use of custodial arrests for all sorts of purposes, from arrests of gamblers to disrupt their activities to arrests of prostitutes for medical examinations. The same experts also claimed that arrests made for purposes other than prosecution are illegitimate. Today, police arrest in pursuit of a comparably broad set of aims and are influenced by a variety of considerations in that decision. This Article draws attention to a problematic subset of influences on arrest decisions, which arise as a result of “collateral incentives.” Incentives to arrest are “collateral” when they lead police to arrest on the basis of factors irrelevant to the suspect’s likely guilt of the crime of arrest, and when police may reap the full benefits offered by these incentives irrespective of the suspect’s guilt of, or prosecution for, the crime of arrest. Collateral incentives may be created by a variety of policies: this Article focuses on two on-arrest biometric screening regime as examples, one set up by the federal government’s Secure Communities program and another regime set up by the state and federal laws authorizing the collection of DNA from arrestees. These policies create incentives to target likely immigration violators and likely criminal recidivists, respectively. Notwithstanding the fact that both immigration screening and DNA collection advance important public goals, collateral incentives to arrest are a cause for concern for two sets of reasons. First, if the principles asserted by the scholars of the 1960s remain viable, collateral incentives plainly lead police to misuse their arrest discretion. And, as the Article suggests, the claim that prosecution is the proper purpose of custodial arrests largely survived into the modern era as a normative principle. Second, collateral incentives are likely to exacerbate unwarranted inequalities in arrest patterns, in addition to reducing the quality of arrests for a subset of crimes. The Article generates empirical expectations about the effects of collateral incentives, suggesting in particular that the effects are not limited to high-discretion petty crimes that commonly cause concern about discretionary power. As the number and scope of electronic databases increases, so does temptation to use the moment of arrest to advance other public policy goals with their aid. This Article articulates the normative and practical case for resisting the temptations to use data-driven technological advances to reshape the use of a key instrument of state coercion, the custodial arrest.

Location-Based Reporting and Mapping of Crimes Using Google Maps

 Abstract—Surveys showed that the majority of crimes committed were unreported to the authorities. Given this fact, this paper presents the development of a crime incidents reporting system with the use of Google Maps at the same time exploiting the active participation of netizens. This will provide another venue for reporting crime incidents. The idea draws its motivation from the inconvenience of going to the police station, personal belief of the weak investigative capabilities of the authorities to resolve petty crimes and limited dissemination of crime information to the community from the authorities. The system used Google Maps to present crime information accessible through a browser. In this way, people may report crimes using a location pointed on the map before providing detailed information. It enables an automatic method for displaying information on the map because the respondents itself identify the location. In addition, the system supports the idea of a witness hence; a crime can also be confirmed by other members of the community. This facility uses the idea of +1 or like method used by popular networking sites. The system is deployed for testing in the school but reporting can be done by the public. This scope allows the researcher to easily get the evaluation of the respondents. Currently, the system is deployed for testing and evaluation.

When Protection Collapses: Post-Demobilization Trajectories of Violence

The implementation of peacebuilding activities, including the demobilization of non-state illegal actors, does not necessarily bring about a reduction in violence. While there are several theories that address the causes of persistent violence, there are few that adequately explain why rates of violence can rapidly increase in a post-demobilization context. Using the method of process tracing, this article explores the case of Córdoba Department, Colombia, where rates of violence have increased after the demobilization of paramilitary groups (Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia [AUC]) in 2005. We argue that the AUC created and maintained a monopolistic illegal protection system during its years of operation, and this type of local order was able to contain violence. After demobilization, the protection system was disrupted and as a consequence, new competition between post-demobilization criminal organizations for existing illegal rents developed, petty crime became pervasive, and revenge killings spiked, thus contributing to increased rates of violence in the post-demobilization period. Our theory about the breakdown of protection finds support in other AUC-dominated regions of Colombia.

Effective and Legitimate?: Learning from the Lessons of 10 Years of Practice with the European Arrest Warrant

The article examines the European Arrest Warrant (EAW) and the issues which have emerged in its first 10 years of practice. After a first section explaining the choice for the principle of mutual recognition as expression of effectiveness and subsidiarity in judicial cooperation in criminal matters, the articles discusses questions such as (ab)uses of the EAW as a mutual legal assistance instrument, the question of petty crimes and the proportionality test, the relation between mutual trust, fundamental rights and judicial review, and, lastly, nationality and residence clauses. It concludes on the importance of addressing these issues in the appropriate legal setting, be it legislative or judicial, with the aim of strengthening the effectiveness and legitimacy of the EAW.

Minion by John David Anderson (review)

Reviewed by: Minion by John David Anderson Thaddeus Andracki Anderson, John David Minion. Walden Pond/HarperCollins, 2014 278p Trade ed. ISBN 978-0-06-213311-3 $16.99 R* Gr. 5-9 Abandoned at a White Castle as an infant and adopted by a mad scientist, Michael Marion Magdalene Morn is already not your average fourteen year old, but he also possesses some seriously superhuman powers of persuasion. In this companion to Anderson’s Sidekicked (BCCB 9/13), the city of New Liberty has been forsaken by its supers and is now economically depressed, leaving its inhabitants turning to petty crime if they’re to survive at all. Michael and his dad live much the same way, using their talents to pull bank robberies—just enough to pay the bills—until a new cadre of silver-masked goons controlled by the Dictator start making hits, followed by the blue-suited, flashy Comet. When the Dictator makes Michael’s dad an offer he can’t refuse, Michael must sort out his notions of good and evil and figure out if people’s action are ever really truly either. Deliberate pacing propels readers along, and the theme of the ambiguity of right and wrong is contemplatively interwoven with some real kick-butt action. With the success of franchises like Despicable Me and Maleficent, there’s a niche to be filled with good bad guys; Michael, precocious in a street-smart and world-weary kind of way, but prone to middle-school snark and susceptible to an other-side-of-the-tracks romance, fills the bill admirably. Drama, intrigue, and an antihero: this one’s got it all for kids with a bit of a taste for the dark. [End Page 5] Copyright © 2014 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois