Gang Strategies in the Northern Triangle

Gang Strategies in the Northern Triangle
Author: Adam Golob
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 213
Release: 2022-08-22
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1666909807

Gang Strategies in the Northern Triangle: Coerced Criminality as a Form of Human Trafficking argues for a more robust understanding of the issues, dynamics, and contextual factors of human trafficking. Relying on the definition as established by the Palermo Protocol more than two decades ago, this book takes a hard look at the strategies and results of gang “recruitment” in the Northern Triangle countries as a particular and understudied form of human trafficking—gang trafficking. It offers a lens through which to evaluate the actions of gangs, specifically MS13 and Barrio 18, as they use methods of coercion to force the compliance of youths as de facto gang slaves. By elaborating on this dynamic, and on the risks associated with anti-gang policies and harsh law enforcement practices, Gang Strategies in the Northern Triangle unravels the underlying victimization, exploitation, and criminalization of youths in Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador. The book maintains that the crimes of gang violence and the crimes of human trafficking intertwine and intersect to perpetuate an environment of trauma, exploitation, and hopelessness that leaves thousands with no options, as refugees, conscripted into gangs, incarcerated for crimes they were forced to commit, or dead.

Contemporary U.S.-Latin American Relations

Contemporary U.S.-Latin American Relations
Author: Jorge I. Domínguez
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 283
Release: 2016-03-02
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1317552806

Drawing on the research and experience of fifteen internationally recognized Latin America scholars, this insightful text presents an overview of inter-American relations during the first two decades of the twenty-first century. This unique collection identifies broad changes in the international system that have had significant effects in the Western Hemisphere, including issues of politics and economics, the securitization of U.S. foreign policy, balancing U.S. primacy, the wider impact of the world beyond the Americas, especially the rise of China, and the complexities of relationships between neighbors. The second edition of Contemporary U.S.-Latin American Relations focuses on U.S. neighbors near and far —Mexico, Cuba, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Peru, and Venezuela. Each chapter addresses a country’s relations with the United States, and each considers themes that are unique to that country’s bilateral relations as well as those themes that are more general to the relations of Latin America as a whole. The book also features new chapters on transnational criminal violence, the Latino diasporas in the United States, and U.S.-Latin American migration. This cohesive and accessible volume is required reading for Latin American politics students and scholars alike.

Human Rights and Social Equality: Challenges for Social Work

Human Rights and Social Equality: Challenges for Social Work
Author: Sven Hessle
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 217
Release: 2016-05-13
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 131711986X

The mission of the social work profession and the development of social policy are rooted in a set of core values and are the foundation of social work’s unique purpose and perspective. Human rights offer a normative base for social work and for the formation of inclusive social policies. This informative and incisively written edited collection brings together experts from around the world to explore the tension between a normative and a political base of social work and social development and, therefore, to address the question: How can social work and social policies contribute in the endeavor to respect, protect and fulfill human rights? This volume will show that there is no straightforward answer to this question owing to the clash between different sociocultural and local conditions and demands for universal human rights.

Democracy and Security in Latin America

Democracy and Security in Latin America
Author: Gabriel Marcella
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2021-11-05
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1000459098

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the need for governments to generate the necessary capacity to address important security and institutional challenges; this volume deepens our understanding of the nature and extent of state governance in Latin America. State capacity is multidimensional, with all elements interacting to produce stable governance and security. As such, a collection of scholars and practitioners use an explicit interdisciplinary approach, drawing on the contributions of history, political science, economics, public policy, military studies, and other fields to gain a rounded understanding of the link between security and democracy. Democracy and Security in Latin America is divided in two sections: Part 1 focuses on the challenges to governance and key institutions such as police, courts, armed forces. and the prison system. Part 2 features country case studies that illustrate particularly important security challenges and various means by which the state has confronted them. Democracy and Security in Latin America should appeal not only to those seeking to learn more about the capacity of the democratic state in Latin America to effectively provide public security in times of stress, but to all those curious about the reality that a democracy must have security to function.

If the War on Drugs is Over ...Now What ?

If the War on Drugs is Over ...Now What ?
Author: Adam Blackwell
Publisher: FriesenPress
Total Pages: 238
Release: 2015-12-03
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1460277821

It’s Time to Declare War on the War on Crime In 2011, the Global Commission on Drug Policy deemed the War on Drugs a failure. Initiated under Richard Nixon in 1971, the War on Drugs’ emphasis on harsh law enforcement and strong-arm police tactics spawned four decades of widespread violence, corruption, economic devastation, and overflowing prisons, with little to no effect on the flow of drugs around the world. While most people realize the War on Drugs was a failure, many of these same people continue to champion its “often forgotten cousin,” the War on Crime. Characterized by the same punitive philosophy and tactics, the War on Crime is a multi-billion dollar global enterprise that is achieving similarly dismal results. Despite the obvious inadequacy of this approach to domestic and international security, few politicians are willing to consider an alternative, for fear of being labeled “soft on crime.” Into this environment steps Ambassador Adam Blackwell, Secretary for Multidimensional Security at the Organization of American States. Drawing on his extensive experience working in some of the most violent countries in the world, Ambassador Blackwell argues that the solution to insecurity is not necessarily more security, more police, more troops, or harsher sentences. Instead, using case studies from Latin America and the Caribbean, he argues in favor of a multi-dimensional, data-driven, multi-stakeholder approach that focuses on solving systemic societal problems rather than punishing individual crimes. Far from a “soft on crime” method, in this book, Ambassador Blackwell contends that such an approach opens up fresh new ideas and methods for battling crime at home and abroad that, unlike the War on Crime, don’t exacerbate the very problems they are trying to solve.

Routledge International Handbook of Critical Gang Studies

Routledge International Handbook of Critical Gang Studies
Author: David C. Brotherton
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 851
Release: 2021-07-28
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0429869665

Routledge International Handbook of Critical Gang Studies is rooted in the instability, inequality and liquidity of the post-industrial era. It understands the gang as a complex and contradictory phenomenon; a socio-historical agent that reflects, responds to and creates a certain structured environment in spaces which are always in flux. International in scope and drawing on a range of sociological, criminological and anthropological traditions, it looks beyond pathological, ahistorical and non-transformative approaches, and considers other important factors that produce the phenomenon, whether the historically entrenched racialized power structure and segregation in Chicago; the unconstrained state-abandoned development of favelas in Brazil; or the colonization, displacement and dependency of people in Central America. This handbook reflects and defines the new theoretical and empirical traditions of critical gang studies. It offers a variety of perspectives, including: A view of gangs that takes into consideration the global context and appearance of the "gang" in its various forms and stages of development; An appreciation of the gang as a socio-cultural formation; A race-ethnic and class analysis of the gang that problematizes domain assumptions such as the "underclass"; Gender variations of the gang phenomenon with a particular emphasis on their intersectional properties; Relations between gangs and the political economy that address the dominant mode of production and exchange; Treatments that demonstrate the historically contingent nature of gangs and their changes across time; The contradictory impact of gang repressive policies, institutions and practices as part of a broader discussion on the nature of the state in specific societies; and Critical methodologies on gangs that involve discussions of visual and textual representations and the problematics of data collection and analysis. Authoritative, multi-disciplinary and international, this book will be of interest to criminologists, sociologists and anthropologists alike, particularly those engaged with critical criminology/sociology, youth crime, delinquency and global social inequality. The Handbook will also be of interest to policy makers and those in the peacebuilding field.

Alternative Governance in the Northern Triangle and Implications for U.S. Foreign Policy

Alternative Governance in the Northern Triangle and Implications for U.S. Foreign Policy
Author: Douglas Farah
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 75
Release: 2015-10-06
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1442258853

This study examines different forms of alternative governance in the absence of a strong state presence in the Northern Triangle of Central America—along part of the Guatemala-Honduras border—a region notorious for its soaring homicide rates, corruption, violence, and emigration to the United States. The purpose of the study is to shed light on the complex and interwoven issues that drive the current crisis of governance in the region and spill over with increasing frequency into strategic issues for the United States.

Corruption, Institutions, and Fragile States

Corruption, Institutions, and Fragile States
Author: Hanna Samir Kassab
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 209
Release: 2018-12-11
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 3030043126

This book examines the relationship between state fragility and corruption. It analyzes a variety of regions throughout the world, including Latin America, Central Asia and the Middle East, Africa, Central America and Mexico, South America, and Russia. States that are plagued by high levels of state fragility and corruption facilitate illicit activities and other criminal enterprises.

Violence and Resilience in Latin American Cities

Violence and Resilience in Latin American Cities
Author: Kees Koonings
Publisher: Zed Books Ltd.
Total Pages: 164
Release: 2015-11-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1780324596

Why are Latin American cities amongst the most violent in the world? Over the past decades Latin America has not only become the most urbanised of the regions of the so-called global South, it has also been the scene of the urbanisation of poverty and exclusion. Overall regional homicides rates are the highest in the world, a fact closely related to the spread and use of firearms by male youths, who are frequently involved in local and translocal forms of organised crime. In response, governments and law enforcements agencies have been facing mounting pressure to address violence through repressive strategies, which in turn has led to a number of consequences: law enforcement is often based on excessive violence and the victimisation of entire marginal populations. Thus, the dynamics of violence have generated a widespread perception of insecurity and fear. Featuring much original fieldwork across a broad array of case studies, this cutting edge volume focuses on questions not only of crime, insecurity and violence but also of Latin American cities’ ability to respond to these problems in creative and productive ways.