When Calls for Vengeance Go Online
An anthropologist reckons with how digital media has changed youth gang culture dynamics—and what can be done to combat the spread of deadly rumors. ✽ In 2019, Luis…
Tag: crime
Where Cultures Collide
For the eighth season of the SAPIENS podcast, we’re meeting at a crossroads of cultures—past and present—in search of humanity’s collective destination. Culture is a force that makes…
Peoples Tribunal on Police Killings in the UK
From @thepeoplestribunal “After 50 years of state excuses we are pleased to announce this collaboration in the form of the People’s Tribunal on Police Killings. The People’s Tribunal…
When a Message App Became Evidence of Terrorism
Beginning in 2016, the Turkish government accused anyone with the messaging application ByLock of terrorism. An anthropologist investigates the risks of this kind of digital evidence. ✽ Summer…
Grappling With Guilt Inside a System of Structural Violence
Criminals and Gangmembers Anonymous, a 12-step recovery program, has proliferated in California’s carceral system. An anthropologist investigates the program, which sees criminality as a chronic addic…
How Museum Items Go Missing
After alleged thefts from the British Museum, a curator explains the challenges of keeping track of collections—and the legal limitations on returning cultural material to source communities. A…
Weaving Stories: Two Women Speak
Author and poet Sia Figiel and activist and anthropologist Doris Tulifau share their stories of being Samoan women. They also discuss the violence and challenges they’ve faced and…
Treasure Hunters Pose Problems for Archaeologists
Two scholars discuss the challenges of accurately studying underwater archaeological heritage—among them, unauthorized acquisitions. This article was originally published at The Conversation and has …
Do Strict Criminal Penalties Protect Animals From Abuse?
In Mexico, a growing animal protection movement often promotes harsh criminal punishment for those who abuse animals. But are these strategies working, or do they lead to further…
Inside Mexico City’s Surveillance State
An anthropologist investigates how one city’s rapidly expanding video surveillance system is transforming criminal investigation—sometimes in deeply flawed ways. ✽ In September 2022, a criminal prose…
The Power of Criminal Prosecutors
“Criminal.” It’s a label that can follow someone around for much of their life. But how does a person become a criminal? Anyone who is in prison has…
I Do This for You, Mom
One day, a woman in Baltimore received a text message from her mother wishing her a happy holiday. But something didn’t feel quite right. Jeri Hutton Green is…
SAPIENS Podcast Season 5 Trailer
In the fifth season of the SAPIENS podcast, listeners will hear a range of human stories: from the origins of the chili pepper to how prosecutors decide someone…
Containment and Expropriation: Lockdowns, Public Health, and the Scrap Iron Industry in Trinidad & Tobago
Beginning in July of 2022 a series of articles here and on Disaster X have been examining and questioning what it means to declare crime a “public health…
Declaring Crime to be a Public Health Emergency: Trinidad & Tobago Out Front
When it should be that the declaration of a public health emergency is itself the crime. “There are efforts being made to ensure that countries respond in the…
In the Journals – Conflict and Captivity
POW release to UN authorities was the first step in repatriation. Here, communists turn over UN troops at the POW receiving center at Panmunjon, on the border of…
The Double Life of Coca
In Andean countries such as Peru and Bolivia, locals and tourists drink mate de coca, a tea made from coca leaves, to stave off altitude sickness. Calsidyrose/Flickr In…
Robert Samet on his book, Deadline
https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/D/bo38871952.html Interview by Alejandro Velasco Alejandro Velasco: Venezuela is in the news these days, but that wasn’t always the case. For dec…
The making of a market: politicising gangs in Sierra Leone, by Kars de Bruijne
The back of a clique member By January 2019, politicians were recruiting gang members once again, nearly a year after the Sierra Leone elections. They were asked to…
Are Sierra Leone’s gangs a new phenomenon? by Kars de Bruijne
MOB – Members of Blood together with 103 a constituency number is an indication of the politics and gangs nexus – photo by the author One Friday afternoon,…
Sierra Leone’s laws to protect women have unintended consequences, by Luisa Schneider
Age-of-consent law is complex. If it is set too high, there’s a risk that it will undercut young people’s agency. If it is set too low, it does…
Re-framing Crime, Violence, and Poverty: new cinematic narratives of Black criminality in Imperial Dreams
Introduction: reframings Redmond (2017) has noted that, in order to garner support for the punitive policies of the War on Drugs, Americans were presented with stories that framed…
Can Child Sex Offenders Be Rehabilitated?
Dexter, the protagonist of a TV series by the same name, commits horrific acts of murder—but he does not sexually abuse children, which seems to make him less…
Sexual Violence in the Clinics and the Courts
Medico-legal systems must change how they respond to victims. Many survivors of sexual assault neither seek out health care nor report to law enforcement, yet these two institutional…