Domestic Violence, Couple Interaction and Children’s Health in Latin America

This paper examines the relationships between several measures of couple interaction and children’s health. We hypothesize that more maternal input in decision-making, joint discussion of health issues, and the absence of violence and male control are conducive to better child health. Mortality and nutritional status are used as measures of child health. Analyses are based on Demographic and Health Surveys in five Latin American countries (Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Haiti and Nicaragua). Violence is the best interaction predictor of poor nutrition and lack of female autonomy is the best predictor of higher mortality. Joint discussion of family planning and joint decision-making about household issues are also predictive of child health. Male controlling behavior did not have a strong relationship with health outcomes in most countries. Overall, findings indicate that positive couple interaction is associated with improved health outcomes for children.     

Governing Cocaine Supply and Organized Crime from Latin America and the Caribbean: The Changing Security Logics in European Union External Policy

The logics of the European Union’s policy and practices against narcotic drugs in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) have undergone a substantial shift the past decade: from development to security. Based on an empirical mapping of the EU’s drug-related projects in LAC, this article argues that an ‘integrated and balanced’ approach to drugs policy is being replaced by a bifurcation between the broader domains of development policy and security policy. Questions are raised as to how the EU’s projects on development and security might counteract one another, and how the Union’s programme aimed at dismantling transnational organized crime along the cocaine trafficking routes to Europe might have unintended consequences. While keeping in mind the shifting tectonics of the international drug prohibition consensus, the article goes on to analyze the increasingly salient security rationale in EU external drugs policy against the backdrop of the EU’s emerging role as a global security actor. In doing so, it touches upon the intrinsic tensions between human rights and (supra) national security.     

The Violence of Non-Violence: Law and War in Iraq

The article examines the relation between war making in Iraq and juridical reforms aimed at instituting democracy, or what the article coins juridico-democracy. It is argued that a certain aspiration for global peace, global security, and non-violence to be instituted by juridico-democracy accompanies the war against Iraq. Rather than leave this aspiration intact, the article examines the extent to which this aspiration itself is conducive to the war's violence. The associations between violence and non-violence, war and peace, conflict and security are examined not as oppositions, but as cycles, where nonviolence, peace, and security are performative of more violence.     

The War on Violence: Improving the Response to Domestic Violence in the Military

The Department of Defense has taken steps in recent years to improve outcomes for victims of domestic violence who reside on military installations. In 2000, the Defense Task Force on Domestic Violence was established, a military‐civilian group of experts charged with improving the military's effectiveness in addressing domestic violence in the Armed Forces in a variety of areas including offender accountability, coordination between military and civilian communities, and changing the military climate around domestic violence. This article will provide an overview of the Task Force, its work during the past three years, and its recommendations.     

Gringo: a coming-of-age in Latin America

The classic studies of the authoritarian personality imply that free‐and‐just societies would need a different kind of personality. Social structure and personality are interdependent. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts but the nature of the parts is not irrelevant. Without a truly utopian world, we have to guess at what such personalities would look like—an important, often neglected insight of Marx. So we look for hints in a less‐than‐perfect world. Towards that end novelists have offered, intentionally and unintentionally, certain indices or codes of the kind of personality necessary for a just world. Kazantzakis’ Zorba is one such hint, as seen in his autonomy, manifested most importantly in his anti‐nationalism. In Zorba we see that community is possible where he has become “free” (rejection of nationalism, etc.); it is not possible where he is not “free” (vis‐à‐vis women). The paradox is that the just society needs autonomous personalities. Crudely put, real human community might require personalities who do not need it.     

Punitive Attitudes in Latin America

The purpose of this paper is to describe, initially, the population’s perception regarding some aspects related to the phenomenon of crime, the criminal system and the punitive response the State should supply (the population’s disapproving attitudes), bearing in mind the role of the mass media, since the latter perhaps represents the most important link providing feedback between social demand and the activity of the State with regard to subjective perceptions of criminality and the construction of a State with greater punitive reaction. A second part will analyze the scope of the expansive tendencies in criminal matters in Latin America and particularly in Argentina. With this aim, after outlining the phenomenon — from several theoretical perspectives — and summarising its characteristics in Latin America, we shall specify its distinctive features in our midst, as a way of sounding the main problems entailed in this legislative inflation — decidedly influenced by the multiplying effect of the mass media. This diagnosis is necessary in order to intuit possible strategies for criminal policy.     

Forensic anthropology in Latin America

Forensic anthropology has been one of the fastest growing medico-legal disciplines both in its contribution to the practical needs of the legal system and research accomplishments. New anthropological standards were developed to apply to a specific population of a region. The purpose of this paper is to analyze a large sample of anthropological forensic cases and to review pertinent literature that deals with anthropological standards developed for the population of the continent of Central and South America. Using Uruguay as an example, there was not a single office or anthropologist assigned to analyze human skeletal remains in Uruguay. In 1991 the Laboratorio de Antropología Forense at the Morgue Judicial of Montevideo was created. A total of 189 forensic anthropological cases (276 individuals) were analyzed since this date. Twenty six percent of cases involving human remains were positively identified. The majority came from the Departamento de Montevideo, the largest population district of the country. Most of the cases fell into the 60 to 69 years old age range (35%). Females represented 32% of the total. Since the establishment of the laboratory, the number of forensic cases increased considerably from 20 in 1991 to 40 in 1997. The case studies were accompanied with skull-photo superimposition and facial reconstruction when no other evidence for positive identification was available. This service provided by the laboratory was quickly known to coroners, law enforcement agencies, and other legal authorities and thus utilized not only in Uruguay but also in several other countries in the continent. Because of the obvious need for an anthropologist, there are now university programs to provide forensic anthropological education. Yet, research has lagged behind considerably. Deficiencies are obvious in basic osteological standards of estimating age, calculating stature, determining sex and assessing race that can be applied to populations of the continent. Regional standards are also needed to estimate postmortem interval, to identify culture specific causes of trauma and other forensic phenomena. Some of these can be remedied if there is a database where the available literature is stored and osteometric information is shared.     

The rise of the penal state in Latin America

The recent work of Loïc Wacquant identified the emergence of the penal state as a core feature of the global expansion of neoliberalism and the neoliberal government urban marginality. Drawing on Wacquant’s theoretical and conceptual reflections, this article analyses the emergence of a Latin American form of penal statecraft. By taking an in-depth look at the increasing criminalization of urban marginality in contemporary Latin America as well as the related developments in the local prison system, the single most important institutional expression of the Latin American penal state, important commonalities and differences between the penal statecraft experiments throughout Latin America and the countries of the ‘developed world’ are highlighted.     

侵害银行系统有组织暴力抢劫犯罪的思考

20世纪90年代以来,侵害银行系统有组织暴力抢劫犯罪活动有所增多,且严重程度不断加剧。据公安与银行的报告材料:1992年以来,犯罪分子持枪械抢劫银行基层网点的恶性大案急剧上升。1992年,全国银行系统发生抢劫案44起,1993年上升到66起,被抢现金293万元,比往年上升3倍多,银行职工死20人,伤15人。1996年春季“严打”战役前夕,暴力抢劫已上升为刑事案件之首。1996年头两个     

The Cost of Crime and Violence in Five Latin American Countries

This paper provides evidence on the costs imposed by crime and violence in five Latin American countries: Chile, Costa Rica, Honduras, Paraguay and Uruguay. Crime and violence stand out as one of the major social challenges to be dealt with in Latin America. However, the incidence of crime (and thus its social and economic impact) varies among countries. Based on a common theoretical framework across all five countries, we use a costs-accounting methodology and find that the cost of criminality varies from a striking 10.5 % of GDP in Honduras to a moderate 2.5 % in Costa Rica. Also, by quantifying the different components of the cost equation separately, we provide insight on which felonies are more costly and which agents are burdened most heavily by these costs.     

Replacing and Amending Constitutions: The Logic of Constitutional Change in Latin America

Since 1978, all countries in Latin America have either replaced or amended their constitutions. What explains the choice between these two substantively different means of constitutional transformation? This article argues that constitutions are replaced when they fail to work as governance structures or when their design prevents competing political interests from accommodating to changing environments. According to this perspective, constitutions are likely to be replaced when constitutional crises are frequent, when political actors lack the capacity to implement changes by means of amendments or judicial interpretation, or when the constitutional regime has a power‐concentrating design. It is further argued that the frequency of amendments depends both on the length and detail of the constitution and on the interaction between the rigidity of the amendment procedure and the fragmentation of the party system. The article provides statistical evidence to support these arguments and discusses the normative implications of the analysis.     

Truth as Justice: Investigatory Commissions in Latin America

In recent years, Latin American countries have sought to come to terms with prior periods of widespread human rights violations, relying increasingly on investigatory commissions. Investigatory efforts have been undertaken by democratically elected governments that replaced military dictatorships, by UN-sponsored commissions as part of a UN-mediated peace process, and by national human rights commissioners. This article examines truth commissions in Chile and El Salvador, an investigatory effort in Honduras, and a proposed commission in Guatemala. It compares the achievements and limitations of these commissions within the political constraints and institutional reality of each country, focusing on four major goals: the effort to create an authoritative account of the past; vindication of victims; recommendations for legislative, structural, or other changes to avoid repetition of past abuses; and establishing accountability or the identity of perpetrators.     

战后日本的民法修改与家制度

20世纪初以后,随着社会的变革,日本传统的家制度越来越不能适应现实的需要,因此,战前已开始出现缓慢变革的家制度,战后在以美国为主的占领军强制下,通过民法的大幅度修改实现了根本性的变革,但同时,社会的实际变化没有与之同步。     

Confidence in the police in Latin America

The study of confidence in the police in Latin America is rare, partially for lack of interest and partially for lack of reliable data. Social, economic, and political instability in those countries also contributes to the problem. Relying on data from the World Values Surveys 1995-1997, the current research proposed a theory of the police in transitional societies and reported the results of analyses of confidence in the police in nine countries of Latin America. The levels of confidence in the police in the nine Latin American nations were compared with that of the U.S. The inclusion of a heterogeneous set of control variables in the multivariate analysis yielded several consistent predictors of confidence in the police. Similar to the findings in the U.S., confidence in the police in Latin America was part of the broader attitude complex. Different from the findings in the U.S., confidence in the police was positively related to one's employment status and religiosity, and negatively to income.     

Recruitment into Organized Crime: An Agent-Based Approach Testing the Impact of Different Policies

Journal of Quantitative Criminology - We test the effects of four policy scenarios on recruitment into organized crime. The policy scenarios target (i) organized crime leaders and (ii) facilitators...