Transaction Search Form: please type in any of the fields below.
Date: April 30, 2024 Tue
Time: 12:22 am
Time: 12:22 am
Results for vigilantes
8 results foundAuthor: Title: Justice at the Barrel of a Gun: Vigilante Militias in Mexico Summary: A rapid expansion in 2013 of vigilante militias – civilian armed groups that claim to fight crime – has created a third force in Mexico’s ongoing cartel-related violence. Some of these militias contain well-meaning citizens and have detained hundreds of suspected criminals. However, they challenge the government’s necessary monopoly on the use of force to impart justice. As the militias spread, there is also concern some are being used by criminal groups to fight their rivals and control territory. The Peña Nieto administration needs to develop a coherent policy for dealing with the vigilantes, so that it can work with authentic community policing projects while stopping the continued expansion of unregulated armed groups; this also requires demonstrating that the state has sufficient capacity to restore law and order on its own. If the government fails to deal with this issue, militias could spread across the country, triggering more violence and further damaging the rule of law. President Peña Nieto had expected to have to cope with the well-armed, ruthless cartels that dominate portions of the country, as well as the problems presented by uncoordinated national, state and municipal law enforcement bodies and a legacy of impunity. The appearance of a growing number of armed groups in at least nine of the 31 states, from close to the U.S. border to the south east, however, has added another dangerous level of complexity to the security challenge. Their epicentre, on which this briefing concentrates, is in the Pacific states of Guerrero and Michoacán, where thousands of armed men participate in a range of vigilante organisations. There have been more than 30 killings there since January 2013, either by or against the vigilantes, and they have become increasingly worrying hotspots of insecurity. While the vigilante killings are still only a fraction of the more than 5,000 cartel-related murders that took place across Mexico in the first five months of Peña Nieto’s administration, the concern is that this new type of violence could expand across the land. The violence has coincided with protests against government reforms in these states, including road blockades and looting of food trucks that are part of a broader challenge to authority. The government launched a major security offensive in Michoacán in May that has weakened the militia presence there, at least in the short term. In Guerrero, the state government has made agreements with some militia leaders in an attempt to lessen their impact. However, various vigilante groups are still active, and some of the core problems of insecurity that led to their presence are unresolved. The vigilantism issue is complicated by the fact that many communities, particularly indigenous, have a centuries-old tradition of community policing. Many groups have shown themselves to be successful and have demonstrated legitimate ways of providing security. However, it is legally ambiguous how far such community groups can go in bearing arms and imparting justice. Furthermore, many of the new militias copy the language and claim the same rights as these community police, even though they do not come from a local tradition or are not even rooted in indigenous communities. The government needs to work with the authentic and unarmed community police and clearly define the parameters of what they can and cannot do. Some rules can be established on the basis of guidelines that are being developed under state and federal laws or by expanding agreements being worked out between state governments and community leaders. In some cases, the government needs to require the disarmament of vigilante groups; in yet others, it needs to more aggressively detain and prosecute militias with criminal links. But the government also needs to significantly improve security in all the communities where militias have been formed. Many residents have taken up arms because the state has systematically failed to protect them. The clamour for security is legitimate; but justice is better served through functional state institutions than the barrels of private guns. Details: Mexico City/Bogota/Brussels: International Crisis Group, 2013. 20p. Source: Internet Resource: Latin America Briefing N°29: Accessed May 30, 2013 at: http://www.crisisgroup.org/en/regions/latin-america-caribbean/mexico/b029-justice-at-the-barrel-of-a-gun-vigilante-militias-in-mexico.aspx Year: 2013 Country: Mexico URL: http://www.crisisgroup.org/en/regions/latin-america-caribbean/mexico/b029-justice-at-the-barrel-of-a-gun-vigilante-militias-in-mexico.aspx Shelf Number: 128879 Keywords: Criminal CartelsGun Violence (Mexico)HomicidesOrganized CrimeVigilantesViolent Crime |
Author: Heinle, Kimberly Title: Citizen Security in Michoacan Summary: Arguably the most intractable security issue facing the administration of Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto has been the dynamic and dangerous situation in the state of Michoacan, located on the Pacific in the southwestern portion of the country. During Pena Nieto's first two years in office, the state has seen a significant increase in violence and criminal activities; the emergence, evolution, and internal struggles of armed "self-defense" groups (grupos de autodefensa, commonly referred to as autodefensas); and concerted federal government efforts to gain control and restore order in certain parts of the state, particularly in the state's western Tierra Caliente region. While certain crime indicators - notably homicide - have fallen significantly throughout much of Mexico since 2011, Michoacan is one of the states where problems of crime and violence have been most intractable. It is also one of the places where citizen mobilization has manifested most visibly through self-defense forces and vigilantism, with entire communities rising up to take the law into their own hands because of the real or perceived inability of authorities to address the problem of organized crime. Over the course of 2014, the worsening situation in Michoacan led the Mexican government to intervene heavily and try to regain the trust of the citizenry. The federal government must be exceedingly careful and deliberate in its strategy for intervening in state and local security matters, its approach to dealing with armed citizens taking the law into their own hands, its efforts to empower state and local authorities to pick up the reigns, and its efforts to rebuild civic engagement and social trust. The authors offer three guiding recommendations: First, since achieving success will require that the Mexican government have clear targets focused on outcomes and performance for social development programs aimed at strengthening community resilience (e.g., the relationship between farm subsidies and poppy cultivation, the relationship between the number of student scholarships and gang membership, etc.), the authors recommend that the Pena Nieto administration should conduct and present regular evaluation and assessment of the outcomes of its programs using precise, program-specific performance metrics. Second, a core challenge in Michoacan, as elsewhere in Mexico, is the lack of institutional integrity, which has contributed to often visible corruption of local officials and widespread support for vigilantism. Unfortunately, recent developments have delayed implementation of Michoacan's judicial reform, which was due for implementation in February 2014, pushing back urgently needed reforms to introduce greater transparency and accountability into the state's criminal justice system. Given the state's complex security situation, it is critically important that operators of the criminal justice system - particularly prosecutors, public defenders, and court personnel - be adequately trained and prepared for the transition. Third, the Pena Nieto administration's intervention in Michoacan positions the federal government to help resolve these problems, but it also runs the risk of unwittingly stifling civic engagement. The federal government's liaison should work intently to create spaces and regular opportunities for dialogue and collaboration among citizens and civic organizations, and should particularly empower the state and local citizen security counsels to provide consistent communication and constructive feedback on the progress of security measures. Details: Washington, DC: Wilson Center, Mexico Institute; San Diego: University of San Diego, Justice in Mexico Project, 2015. 46p. Source: Internet Resource: Briefing Paper Series: Accessed October 5, 2015 at: https://justiceinmexico.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/2015_Heilnle-Molzahn-Shirk_Citizen-Security-in-Michoacan.pdf Year: 2015 Country: Mexico URL: https://justiceinmexico.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/2015_Heilnle-Molzahn-Shirk_Citizen-Security-in-Michoacn.pdf Shelf Number: 136952 Keywords: HomicidesPolitical Violence VigilantesViolence Violent Crime |
Author: Zizumbo-Colunga, Daniel Title: Crime, Corruption and Societal Support for Vigilante Justice: Ten Years of Evidence in Review Summary: Main Findings: - In 2014, support for vigilante justice reached a 10-year high - Suriname, Ecuador, and El Salvador are the countries in which vigilante justice is the most accepted - Brazil, Bahamas, Uruguay, and Venezuela are the countries in which vigilante justice is the least accepted - Variations in societal support within the countries of the Americas are linked to the prevalence of crime and police corruption Details: Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University, 2015. 13p. Source: Internet Resource: AmericasBarometer Insights: 2015 Number 120: Accessed September 8, 2016 at: http://www.vanderbilt.edu/lapop/insights/IO920en.pdf Year: 2015 Country: International URL: http://www.vanderbilt.edu/lapop/insights/IO920en.pdf Shelf Number: 140247 Keywords: Police CorruptionVigilante JusticeVigilantesVigilantism |
Author: Ojebode, A. Title: Explaining the Effectiveness of Community-Based Crime Prevention Practices in Ibadan, Nigeria Summary: The problem of ineffective policing still persists in post-colonial Africa and as a result, both donors and governments are seeking non-state alternatives or complements to the state apparatuses. These alternatives include private sector provision, donor-driven interventions and community-based or community-driven crime prevention practices. There is no shortage of community-based crime prevention (CBCP) practices in Africa and they come in a variety of forms and models: neighbourhood watches, vigilantes, religious and ethnic militias, and neighbourhood guards. However, the effectiveness of CBCP practices is still a subject of controversy despite the widespread prevalence of these practices. This study looks at the effectiveness of CBCP practices, considers possible reasons for their effectiveness or ineffectiveness, and on the basis of the research, makes some policy recommendations. Details: Brighton, UK: Institute of Development Studies, 2016. 59p. Source: Internet Resource: IDS Working Paper 479: Accessed October 6, 2016 at: https://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/bitstream/handle/123456789/12192/Wp479.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y Year: 2016 Country: Nigeria URL: https://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/bitstream/handle/123456789/12192/Wp479.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y Shelf Number: 147819 Keywords: Crime PreventionNeighborhood WatchNeighborhoods and CrimeVigilantes |
Author: Human Rights Watch Title: "License to Kill" : Philippine Police Killings in Duterte's "War on Drugs" Summary: Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte's "war on drugs" has produced a campaign of unlawful killings by Philippine National Police personnel and unidentified "vigilantes" that has resulted in the deaths of more than 7,000 suspected drug users and dealers since July 1, 2016. Duterte's public endorsement of the campaign implicates him and other senior figures in possible incitement to violence, instigation of murder and in command responsibility for crimes against humanity. "License to Kill": Philippine Police Killings in Duterte’s “War on Drugs,” is based on several dozen interviews with family members of victims of police killings, witnesses, journalists and human rights activists. The report exposes the falsehood of official police reports that invariably assert self-defense to justify unlawful police killings. Instead, police routinely carry out extrajudicial killings of drug suspects and then cover-up those crimes. In several instances Human Rights Watch investigated, suspects in police custody were later found dead and classified by police as "found bodies," casting doubt on government assertions that most killings have been committed by vigilantes or rival drug gangs. The report also documents the lack of a cohesive approach by the Philippines’ allies, including the United States, Japan and the European Union, to pressure the government to stop these killings and to bring the perpetrators to justice. The report calls for Duterte to publicly denounce extrajudicial killings and press for the investigation and prosecution of police and other officials implicated in such abuses. In addition, the United Nations should launch an independent international investigation into the killings. Finally, the report urges foreign donors to immediately suspend any assistance or weapons sales to the police until the "drug war" killings end and meaningful investigations into those killings are underway. Details: New York: HRW, 2017. 134p. Source: Internet Resource: accessed march 2, 2017 at: https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/report_pdf/philippines0317_web_1.pdf Year: 2017 Country: Philippines URL: https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/report_pdf/philippines0317_web_1.pdf Shelf Number: 141291 Keywords: Deadly ForceDrug EnforcementExtrajudicial ExecutionsPolice Use of ForceVigilantesWar on Drugs |
Author: Price, Megan Title: Hustling for Security: Managing plural security in Nairobi's poor urban settlements Summary: Nairobi's urban settlements offer unique settings in which to examine the interplay between citizens' need for security, the state's inability to fully meet that need, and the opportunities this creates for powerful private actors. In Kenya’s capital, this situation has led to a context of plural security provision, in which an array of actors assert claims on the use of force, operating simultaneously and with varying relationships to the state. Despite the proliferation of active security providers, who range from opportunistic enforcers to tireless local guardians, most people in Nairobi’s poor urban settlements are exposed to daily threats on their person and property. Fieldwork in Mathare, Korogocho and Kangemi provided insights into how settlement residents must rely upon their social networks and personal attributes to ensure access to a combination of protective communities. Unable to call upon the state as the guarantor of public welfare, citizens must ‘hustle for security’, using their wits and their networks to assemble a tenuous patchwork of protection. The research identified not only the risks this creates for individuals and communities, but also how the propensity to resort to individualised security strategies can undermine the notion and the actualisation of 'the public good'. The paper concludes with proposals for addressing the more malign aspects of plural security provision, specifically, the need to curtail the providers' power and to work towards consolidating various providers under uniform rubrics of oversight and performance standards. The paper contributes to a comparative research project on plural security in urban settings that draws upon empirical insights from case studies in Beirut, Nairobi, and Tunis. Details: The Hague: Plural Security Insights Clingendael Conflict Research Unit, 2016. 32p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed March 3, 2017 at: http://pluralsecurityinsights.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/160707_PSI_Policy-brief_Nairobi.pdf Year: 2016 Country: Kenya URL: http://pluralsecurityinsights.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/160707_PSI_Policy-brief_Nairobi.pdf Shelf Number: 141309 Keywords: Citizen PatrolsCrime PreventionSecurityUrban Areas and CrimeVigilantes |
Author: International Crisis Group Title: Watchmen of Lake Chad: Vigilante Groups Fighting Boko Haram Summary: Vigilante groups in Nigeria, Cameroon, Niger and Chad play a major role in the fight against Boko Haram, but their presence raises concerns. They make military operations less blunt and more effective and have reconnected these states somewhat with many of their local communities, but they have also committed abuses and become involved in the war economy. In Nigeria in particular, vigilantism did much to turn an anti-state insurgency into a bloodier civil war, pitting Boko Haram against communities and leading to drastic increases in violence. As the conflict continues to evolve, so will vigilantes. They are enmeshed with high politics, especially in Nigeria, and in local intercommunal relations, business operations and chiefdoms. Their belief that they should be rewarded will need to be addressed, and it is also important for the Lake Chad basin states to address the common gap in community policing, particularly in rural areas. To ensure vigilantes are not a future source of insecurity, these states will each need to devise their own mix of slowly disbanding and formalising and regulating them. Vigilantism, the recourse to non-state actors to enforce law and order (of a sort), has a history in the Lake Chad region. Colonial powers there relied, to a substantial degree, on local traditional chiefs and their retinues. The multi-faceted crisis in governance and decline in services among the Lake Chad states since the 1980s gave rise to new vigilante groups. The law and order challenges vigilantes tried to address were a factor in the formation and growth of Boko Haram, itself an attempt to provide regulation and guidance. The vigilante fight against Boko Haram started in 2013, in Maiduguri, the Borno state capital and the insurgency's epicentre, under the twin pressure of mounting jihadist violence and security force retaliation. The Joint Task Force (JTF), led by the Nigerian army, quickly realised the vigilantes’ potential as a source of local knowledge, intelligence and manpower and set out to help organise it, with the assistance of local and traditional authorities. Operating under the unofficial but revealing name of Civilian Joint Task Force (CJTF), vigilantes were essential in flushing Boko Haram out of the city, then began replicating throughout the state. The official use of vigilantes to fight the movement spread further in Nigeria, then to Cameroon in 2014 and Chad in 2015, where the groups are known as comités de vigilance. Niger has been more cautious, partly because of past struggles with armed groups and because it has not needed them as much. Vigilantes have played many roles, from mostly discrete surveillance networks in Niger to military combat auxiliaries or semi-autonomous fighting forces in Nigeria. For the region’s overstretched and under pressure militaries, they have somewhat filled the security gap and provided local knowledge. They have made the military response more targeted and more efficient, but their mobilisation also provoked retribution by Boko Haram against their communities and contributed to the massive levels of civilian casualties in 2014 and 2015. Paradoxically, this, too, has favoured regional governments’ strategy of pushing civilians away from the jihadists. As the insurgency splinters and falls back on more discrete guerrilla operations and terror attacks, however, the time has come to measure the risks posed by such a massive mobilisation of vigilantes (they claim to be about 26,000 in Borno state alone). Their compensation demands will have to be addressed, especially if authorities consider offering deals to Boko Haram militants to lay down their weapons. In the longer term, vigilantes may become political foot soldiers, turn to organised crime or feed communal violence. Vigilantism can be a powerful counter-insurgency tool, but there is a compelling need to confront the immediate concerns it raises, notably in terms of impunity, and to begin planning for its long-term post-conflict transformation. Details: Brussels: International Crisis Group, 2017. 37p. Source: Internet Resource: Africa Report No. 244: Accessed March 8, 2017 at: https://d2071andvip0wj.cloudfront.net/244-watchmen-of-lake-chad-vigilante-groups-fighting-boko-haram.pdf Year: 2017 Country: Chad URL: https://d2071andvip0wj.cloudfront.net/244-watchmen-of-lake-chad-vigilante-groups-fighting-boko-haram.pdf Shelf Number: 141380 Keywords: Boko HaramJihadistsTerrorismVigilantesVigilantism |
Author: Baldrich, Roxana Title: Taking the Law Into Our Own Hands: Female Vigilantism in India and Mexico Summary: To conclude, the female vigilantes presented in this paper clearly have a positive short and long-term impact on society. In spite of the limitations listed above, they significantly contribute to the improvement of living conditions for people within their respective communities, especially of those of girls and women. I do not agree with Rastogi and White's (2009) conclusion that "violent retributive activities do not challenge fundamental structures of domination in society over the long term" (324) nor with Sen's (2012) conclusion that "Globally, female vigilantism eventually achieves only partial social freedoms for women, while continuing to operate within the constraints and constants of patriarchal structures" (5-6). There might be female vigilante groups for which these claims are true, but they do not hold as a general conclusion. In the case of the female vigilantes presented in this paper, we have seen that the conclusions drawn on women participating in the autodefensas of Michoacan and Guerrero were mixed, as they do not act independently of men and the media sometimes portray them in a way that highlights the inequality between them and their male comrades. Concerning the Ni Una Mas movement, the Gulabi Gang and the Red Brigade, however, this paper has demonstrated that they clearly contribute to the betterment of society. They might not be in a position where they have the means and influence to radically change their communities, but it would be unrealistic to expect them to be able to achieve this in the short run. Considering the highly oppressive and violent contexts in which these women live, the manifold activities and services that they have developed are already revolutionary. And by showing their communities - and the world - that they want change and are ready to fight for it, they have taken the first step to reforming society. Today, there might still be flaws in their strategies and limitations to their impact, but they have already achieved a lot, and each and every of their small achievements contributes to long-term change in their communities. However, it is obvious that it takes a long time to make such change happen. In a nutshell, female vigilantism seems indeed to have "transformative and dynamic properties [...] that support and empower the potential for equitable and viable female agency (Graham-Bertolini, 2011, 4). In fact, the diversity of the activities undertaken by most of the vigilantes described in this paper prove that they do have a long-term, collective vision of what they would like to achieve: in addition to their short-term goals of protecting themselves against male aggression and providing their communities with services and support on a day-to-day basis, they also clearly work towards their long-term goal of empowering women. In fact, by giving women a voice and creating an environment for them in which they can act more self-determinedly and more independently of men, as well as by negating commonly assumed gender roles and prejudices about violent women, they might be able, in the long run, to change the place that is assigned to women within their respective communities, thereby improving women's living conditions and liberating them. The success and popularity of female vigilante groups is a proof of "the power of informal women's collectives to implement change without elite intervention or leadership" (Sen, 2012, 10). However, if the Ni Una Mas movement, the Gulabi Gang and the Red Brigade clearly contribute to the betterment of society, this is in large part thanks to their peaceful activities, not through the violent acts that they perpetrate. As we have seen in this paper, violence merely represents a starting point for these vigilante groups: it is used in order to gain the attention and respect of the community, especially of its male members and of officials, and thereby enable the women to carry out their manifold activities. He have also seen that members of female vigilante groups, especially of the Gulabi Gang and the Red Brigade, "are increasingly called upon by men to challenge not only male authority over women, but all human rights abuses inflicted on the weak" (website of Sampat Pal Devi). These findings are consistent with Rastogi and White's conclusion that Gulabi Gang members are "women with grassroots feminist sensibilities, offering psychological, social and justice-related assistance" (2009, 314), as well as with Graham-Bertolini's claim that female vigilantism can be described as a form of "constructive collective enterprise" (2011, 6). These findings indicate that an important direction for further research lies in the exploration of more traditional scholarly work on activism and social movements. It would indeed be very interesting to analyze female vigilantism from a perspective where the phenomenon is seen as part of more traditional forms of collective action. This approach would allow the researcher to refer to the abundant literature available on social movements, and on the role that violence can play within them. Traditional scholarly work on activism and social movements that would be helpful in this context includes, for instance, the work by Sidney Tarrow (1994) on "protest cycles", also known as cycles of contention or waves of collective action, which help explain the rise and fall in social movement activity, described by the author as being related to cyclical openings in political opportunity which create incentives for collective action. Another important work by Tarrow, developed in cooperation with Doug McAdam and Charles Tilly, concerns the concept of "contentious politics" (Doug, Tarrow and Tilly, 2001; Tarrow and Tilly, 2006), which explains how dynamics of social protest are tied to their social, political and economic contexts. With regard to the study of vigilantism, this concept is important both as a field of study and as a methodological approach, because, amongst other things, it helps describe the use of disruptive techniques to make a political point, or to change government policy. Another important contribution to the study of social movements by Tilly (1995) is the conceptualization of the "social movement repertoire" which describes "a limited set of routines that are learned, shared, and acted out through a relatively deliberate process of choice" (264). These routines "emerge from struggle" and change over space and time (Ibid.). The concepts of protest cycles, contentious politics and repertoires are particularly relevant to the study of vigilantism because they help describe and explain the repression of social movements, as well as consequences of, and reactions to, such repression. The latter include militants' adaptation techniques and their turn to violence (Steinhoff, P.G. and Zwerman, G., 2013). The issue of social movement repression is particularly important to further the study of the Ni Una Mas movement, and has been explored in more detail by Helene Combes (2009) and by Daniela Cuadros and Daniella Rocha (2013), amongst others. Some other sources that are relevant to further research on female vigilantism include work by Etienne Penissat (2009) on the occupation of premises - a strategy used by the Gulabi Gang - and work by Lucie Bargel and Xavier Dunezat (2009) on gender and activism - especially important with regard to the study of women within mixed vigilante groups. Details: Paris: Paris School of International Affairs, 2014. 79p. Source: Internet Resource: Thesis: Accessed August 30, 2017 at: http://www.sciencespo.fr/psia/sites/sciencespo.fr.psia/files/Taking%20the%20Law%20Into%20Our%20Own%20Hands%20-%20Female%20Vigilantism%20in%20India%20%26%20Mexico_Roxanna%20Baldrich.pdf Year: 2014 Country: India URL: http://www.sciencespo.fr/psia/sites/sciencespo.fr.psia/files/Taking%20the%20Law%20Into%20Our%20Own%20Hands%20-%20Female%20Vigilantism%20in%20India%20%26%20Mexico_Roxanna%20Baldrich.pdf Shelf Number: 146956 Keywords: Female VigilantesVigilantesVigilantism |