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As the cartels grow deadlier, should the Mexican military be involved in law enforcement?

By Patricio Estevez-Soto, on 14 December 2017

By Patricio R. Estévez-Soto, UCL and David Perez Esparza, UCL

File 20171214 27593 10frerr.jpg?ixlib=rb 1.1

Boots on the ground. Shutterstock

While the main mission of the Mexican Armed Forces (army, air force and navy) is to safeguard national security, Mexico is faced with very few direct foreign threats. Consequently, the armed forces instead focus most of their attention on internal threats: emergency response to natural disasters, and temporary operations for countering organised crime.

Successive Mexican presidents have continuously relied on the well-armed and highly respected armed forces to combat the large and powerful organised crime groups (colloquially known as “cartels”) that dominate the Latin American drug trade.

They have done it for two reasons. On the one hand, local and state police forces have been neglected for decades and have been unable to cope with the corruptive influence of criminal groups. On the other, federal police forces have been too weak and small to counter the national presence of powerful cartels. So when faced with a rising death toll and increasingly violent organised crime groups, presidents have had few alternatives but to turn to the military.

Until a decade ago, these interventions were rather sporadic. The most dramatic upsurge came about in 2006, when then-president Felipe Calderón (2006-2012) declared an all-out war on organised crime.

While the decade-long strategy was successful in breaking apart the main organised crime groups, violence induced by splinter groups and new actors has not abated.

The strategy has plunged the country into an ongoing conflict that has cost thousands of lives. Furthermore, it has also provoked countless human rights violations by the security forces (including the military) in the form of torture, extrajudicial killings and forced disappearances, and has led to an explosion in criminality in both petty and serious crime, such as kidnapping and extortion.

President Peña Nieto (in office since 2012) has sought to scale back the focus of the Calderón government’s war on organised crime. This led to an illusory lull in homicide trends for the first couple of years of his term, only for violence to return with a vengeance: October 2017 was Mexico’s deadliest month on record.

Around the tenth anniversary of the war on organised crime, Mexico’s secretary of defence complained about the lack of a proper legal framework for the involvement of the armed forces in “matters of internal security”, including the fight against organised crime. Such criticism was echoing a 2012 statement by a minister of the Supreme Court, who said that the constitution did not empower the army to take on roles attributed to civil law enforcement agents.

The Internal Security Law

To fill this legal vacuum, legislators proposed an Internal Security Law, approved on November 30 by the Chamber of Deputies (Mexico’s lower house of congress), with support from the governing PRI party and a few PAN deputies (the largest opposition party). The bill set to now be debated (and probably approved) by the Senate seeks to regulate the involvement of the armed forces in “threats to internal security”. Such interventions would have to be requested by state governments, or could be initiated by the president if the threats are deemed to be urgent.

The police are struggling to contain a wave of violent crime. Shutterstock

Proponents of the law note that such “actions of internal security” are never supposed to substitute local law enforcement; are bound to respect human rights; are to be deployed only against specific threats for a limited time (though subject to extensions); are explicitly forbidden to be used against peaceful social and political protests; and should involve the military only if the Federal Police cannot deal with the threat.

Nevertheless, the proposed law has been met with wide opposition from civil society organisations, academics, and international organisations such as the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International.

Critics claim that given the country’s poor track record in punishing human rights abuses by the military, institutionalising their role in law enforcement could lead to more abuse. Furthermore, they argue that the vague definition of “threats to internal security” gives too much discretion to the president, prompting fears that the military might be deployed as a tool of political repression. They also complain that the law rolls back accountability and transparency, as all information related to such interventions would be automatically classified as state secrets.

It’s about trust

It is true that there is a legal void regarding the involvement of the armed forces in internal threats. Such participation of the military in civilian life is not exclusive to Mexico. Liberal democracies increasingly resort to the military in support of internal security missions, including in the UK and France, for example. The question is how, and to what extent.

The proposed law does attempt to regulate such involvement in principle, however it does little more than state in law what already takes place in practice. Not surprisingly, this raises legitimate fears that it will only lead to a perpetuation of the status quo at the expense of developing capable local civil law enforcement institutions.

A truly beneficial law on internal security, if any, would go to greater lengths to curb the executive’s use of the armed forces to deal with internal security problems, for example by mandating stricter mechanisms for oversight (including legislative and judicial control) and by defaulting the interventions at their most restrictive setting, rather than leaving their terms to executive discretion.

Patricio R. Estévez-Soto, PhD Candidate in Security and Crime Science, UCL and David Perez Esparza, PhD Candidate in Security and Crime Science at University College London (UCL), UCL

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.


The views expressed in this blog post are the authors own and do not necessarily represent the views of UCL, the Department of Security and Crime Science or the UCL Organised Crime Research Network.

Review: Governing Criminal Markets: The role of insurers in kidnap for ransom

By uctzrec, on 28 April 2017

U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Tony D. Curtis/Released

The issue of kidnapping for ransom often appears in the media, with certain high profile cases dominating the headlines for weeks.  According to these cases, hostages are brutalized and regularly murdered to either send a political message or due to external environmental factors such as stress.  However, Dr Anja Shortland, of King’s College London, argues differently.  She claims through her extensive research on the subject that the majority of kidnapping for ransom cases end with the victim returning home safely.  And all this is thanks to a stable and well governed private market.

Dr Shortland began her research ‘when [Somali] piracy was cool’ back in 2014.  She was fascinated by questions revolving around the value of a human life and about how companies could interact with criminal organizations legitimately and safely.  When she analyzed the effectiveness of private companies in recovering prisoners, she discovered a surprisingly high success rate.  In fact, when foreign nationals or nationals working for multinational companies were kidnapped, 97.5% returned safely to their families.  In the remaining 2.5%, hostages were mainly killed due to rescue or escape attempts.  Therefore, it appears that the kidnap for ransom market is fairly stable and well governed.

One fascinating aspect of the kidnap for ransom business is the interplay between legitimate businesses and criminal enterprises.  On the business side, insurers play a role in the governance of the market.  In order to do so, they must accomplish certain tasks.  First and foremost they must conduct successful resolutions to hostage incidents, i.e. family members must return home safely.  However, they must do so by understanding the kidnapping risks in geographic areas, pricing policies accordingly and knowing the ‘average’ cost of a ransom.   If firms can fulfill these requirements, they can play an important role in saving lives and providing valuable services.

Dr Shortland also addressed the issue when terrorist groups conduct kidnapping for ransom activities.  Her research argues that private firms act as stabilizers in the market so long as ransom prices remain constant.  Therefore, it is in the interest of the market and in the interest of the victims that firms pay the required ransom amount.  This sum usually never rises above a few thousand US-Dollars (USD) and only in very rare circumstances will a group request and be paid over a million USD.  However, this dynamic changes when the ‘terrorist’ label is introduced, usually by governments.

State involvement in the market is seen as counterproductive and even dangerous for several reasons.  Given that the counterparty has changed from a private to a public organization, the stakes increase.  Governments tend to be weak negotiators because they are myopic and in part regulated by public perception and the media.  Essentially, while a private firm may be willing to conduct a relatively long negotiation (most kidnapping for ransom cases rarely extend more than a week or so), governments must deliver results in a short time frame and they must achieve success.

Furthermore, and more importantly, governments are not limited by a hard budget.  This means that while a terrorist group may request a lower ransom, governments generally overcompensate to ensure the release of the hostages.  While this is generally a positive outcome, overpaying destabilizes the market prices for hostages and can cause an increase in insurance premiums.  This, in turn, can reduce coverage and result in more uninsured and consequently vulnerable employees that might be at risk of being kidnapped.   Dr Shortland uses this argument to support her claims that private institutions are best suited to provide governance of the kidnapping for ransom market.

This academic work can help to understand market dynamics and provides some ideas of how public and private actors interact with each other.  Furthermore, the field addresses issues of how legitimate and legal firms can maintain complex and working relationships with criminal and terrorist organizations.  Shortland’s arguments provided a concise and detailed presentation of the research that she been conducting over several years.  For any further information please read her numerous papers on the subject and keep your eye out for upcoming publications.

 

I am an American/Italian MSc student reading for a degree in Countering Organized Crime and Terrorism at the Jill Dando Institute.  I like to think/write about the crime-terror nexus, organized crime in Italy and art crime. Contact: LinkedIn

The views expressed in this blog post are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent the views of UCL, the Department of Security and Crime Science or the UCL Organised Crime Research Network.