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…
Tag: crime
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…
#Review: The Truth About Crime
What is ‘crime’? A social pathology? A violation of social order? The object or raison d’être of law enforcement? How can we best conceive of crime, criminality, and…
Book Review: Mafia Life: Love, Death and Money at the Heart of Organised Crime by Federico Varese
In Mafia Life: Love, Death and Money at the Heart of Organised Crime, Federico Varese journeys into the everyday lives of members of different mafia groups across the globe,…
When Ex-convicts Become Criminologists
Education can offer prisoners an avenue by which to both voice their critiques of the system and to help transform it. Wenting Li/SAPIENS One fresh, sunny morning this…
which movie?
zeph’s pop culture quiz #60 A man is sitting in the cinema. Which movie is he watching? Mind, I am not asking from which film the screenshot is…
Capturing the Art of Imprisonment
Over the span of about four decades, the late Russian artist Vasily Konovalenko (1929–1989) produced more than 70 wonderful gem-carving sculptures that depict themes and scenes of Russian…
Capturing the Art of Imprisonment
Over the span of about four decades, the late Russian artist Vasily Konovalenko (1929–1989) produced more than 70 wonderful gem-carving sculptures that depict themes and scenes of Russian…
How Rumors Tap and Fuel Anxieties in the Internet Age
I sometimes like to joke that anthropologists looking for the strangest and most exotic society on earth should do fieldwork in the United States. As if to prove…
Utopias of Crime: Review of the Maurice Halbwachs Summer Institute 2016
“They say everyone’s born a hero. But if you let it, life will push you over the line until you’re the villain. Problem is, you don’t always know…
In the Journals – March 2016
Welcome back to In the Journals, our monthly recap of recent publications regarding security, law, crime, and governance. The upcoming April edition of Security Dialogue features a fantastic…