Bernardo Gluch
Coordinator, Horizontal Cooperation, Executive Secretariat for Integral Development, OAS
In response to the request by Dr. Peter Ward for ideas on the follow up of the Research Workshop, it was suggested that a home page be created on the Internet, which would serve as a virtual forum or space for all the participants to exchange ideas, present papers, announce events and in general, to stay in touch on the specific topic of research on criminal justice in Latin-America.
In the final session of the workshop participants were asked to join a number of thematic working groups and to spend some time refelecting upon the following questions:
The themes selected were the same as those of the sessions of the conference, with the exception that The Rising Crime and the Youth Crime topics were conflated into a single group, as were the Judicial Reform and Dispute Resolution topics.
What struck us most:
The most striking aspects presented throughout this conference are the regional deficit in communication, lack of standardization in Latin America, and the convergence of the needs pointed out by the four panel members. The needs identified in this area are having culturally adaptive methods, triangulation or using different methods to detect bias, publicity of data, and greater improvement of data instruments. Also, more methodology seminars are necessary to discuss improving and funding for methodological issues in particular and not just on issues.
What struck us most was:
Needs and proposals:
The group recommended three policy-related areas in which research should be conducted: records and statistics, pretrial prisoners and procedures, and maintenance of prison order.
Records and Statistics:
Records of Latin American prison systems are extremely inadequate by international standards and are not comparable between countries. Therefore, it is very difficult to do cross-national research, because it requires each Ministry of Justice explaining what is meant by each country's records. Researchers need to sit down and define or create a desirable data set which may included information on the following: reception, length of stay, death, staff rates, and recidivism. Although it is a large task, it needs to be started and will require the cooperation of many governments.
Pretrial Prisoners and Procedures:
The high percentage of pretrial prisoners in Latin America makes the region striking compared to others. Serious work needs to be done in this area, including addressing issues of human rights and pretrial conditions for prisoners. In speaking of reform, it is necessary to first identify what the desirable reforms are. Any effective reform will require some sort of judicial intervention.
Maintenance of Prison Order:
Anthony Bottoms' study in Cambridge found a strong connection between prison order and staffing. If this is applied to the Latin American context, training of prison staff and how they handle themselves and maintain order are critical issues and ones that are in need of improvement in a number of Latin American countries.
Solutions to most problems affecting judicial reform should be addressed within the present framework and existing norms. Better use should be made of existing sources and laws with increased emphasis placed on improving communication between legal actors. The task would be too much if it was approached from a "reform" perspective.
Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) strengthened community cohesion and decreased docket load. It needs to be better coordinated within the formal legal system.
There is a need to improve the formal administration of justice, for example small claims court, to provide a better legal system for the poor and better judicial training that includes the role of law and of judges in a society. There is need to increase interest in public law programs, emphasis on sociological research, clinical and legal service programs, and access to relevant legal data for lawyers and judges. Such legal data is necessary for them to serve clients, and one way this may be accomplished is through the Internet, which only requires only one computer in a public institution in town.
There is a need for legal education and knowledge of one's legal rights in order to increase access to justice and extend real citizenship to all parts of society. Increased paralegal training would be beneficial as many defendant rights don't need a lawyer. Internal organization of the judiciary needs to open up and be more accountable to society. Currently it tends to be immune from criticism; research and evaluation into all these programs and systems is necessary in order to provide better justice. Additionally links between those justice-related institutions not linked to the court (e.g., NGOs, Bar Association) need to be increased.
If there were money to conduct research in this area, then a study of domestic violence that looked at children, adolescents, adult women, and the elderly would be proposed. This study would work from a gendered perspective and include Mexico, Peru, and Brazil. The two main approaches would probably involve survey and agencies/services of all types (including shelters) that can help victims of violence.
The idea of survey research and complementary methods is good, but it is also beneficial to work with methodology experts. Women's rights and domestic violence experts tend to have strong existing networks that do not usually contain methodologists. It is important to consider methodologies and working with universities on these.
The striking things in relation to youth crime are the trends and the complexity. Specifically, the dramatic overall increase in violence in a short period;and the variation (both in youth crime and crime in general) that occurs in types, regions within a country, countries, and between gender and age groups. But what also struck us is the patent inadequacy of current theory or framework does not exist, one which can explain the nuances of the situation. We know what we believe are the social contructs for this, but they are not adequate and can even be misleading. In the U.S., we expected a decrease in violence as the size of the adolescent/young adult cohort decreased, but this was not what was observed, and in some types it has gone up.
The complexity of the issues make certain demands. There is a real need for increased standardization of data and its analysis so as to allow comparative analysis. There needs to be improvement in the systems of analysis that will allow processes to be explained; this may be done through a multidisciplinary approach that includes micro-level and ethnographic research. We need to address the gap between macro trends and the ability to explain trends on a more micro level. Perhaps this can best be addressed through good ethnography that will allow greater analytical "purchase" which seeking to explain trends.
We need analysis that looks at disaggregated effects of secondary or intervening variables. For example, the role of arms or guns and the role of drugs; how does changing access to arms change patterns of violence? There is also a need to look at age specificity and gender specificity that will provide for explanations that are more nuanced.
There is a need for general meetings where groups and subgroups can meet for a better understanding of the issues and to address comparability. This would hopefully lead to collaborative research. Face to face meetings are the best, and it may be possible to have a sub-meeting at the next LASA conference in Miami. If actual meetings are not feasible, using a listserve may work to keep communication open. Virtual networks are a good way to catch up, for example a homepage could be set up for the purpose of following up on this conference. Participants could add information to the homepage, listing what they are doing and send in papers and publications. This would serve to "institutionalize" the context: participants could say they were part of this network, even if it is only a homepage. It allows queries and issues to be rooted. It may also be a mechanism for sharing and posting important publications in the area that are often missed. Hopefully, collaboration can start from here.
Elena Azaola Garrido is Coordinator of the "Niños en la Calle" Program in Mexico City, Mexico financed by the European Union. She received her Ph.D. in anthropology from the Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropologia Social. She has published over sixty books and articles on the subject of juvenile delinquency in Mexico. She received the CIESAS award in 1993 for her book, Los niños de la correciona: fragmentos de vida. eazaola@spin.com.mx
Claudio Beato is a professor of sociology at the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais. He is currently a member of the Grupo de Estudos sobre Criminalidade e Controle Social at the Universidade Federal Minas Gerais. He earned his Ph.D. in sociology at the Instituto Universitário de Pesquisa do Rio de Janeiro. His areas of interest are criminology, public safety and the sociology of science. beato@dedalus.lcc.ufmg.br
Marcelo Bergman took his MA in political science from theHebrew University of Jerusalem and Ph.D in Sociology from UCSD. Between 1995-97 he was an instructor in the Sociology Dept. at the Unversity of Oregon, and since 1998 he has ben working on the UNDP Tax Compliance and State Enforcement Measurement program in Buenos Aires, where he also serves as an adviser to the Ministry of Justice on crime victimization surveys. mbergman@oregon.uoregon.edu
Christopher Birkbeck is a professor of criminology at the Universidad de los Andes in Mérida, Venezuela. He earned his Ph.D. in criminology from the University of Oxford. He is the Executive Director of the New Mexico Criminal and Juvenile Justice Coordinating Council, a position he has held part-time since 1995. He has written extensively on victimization surveys, comparative methods in criminology and crime and criminal justice in Venezuela. His most recent publications include (with Luis Gabaldón) Control Social y Justicia Penal en Venezuela and "The Effect of Citizens' Status and Behavior on Venezuelan Police Officers' Decisions to Use Force" in Policing and Society. birkbeck@faces.ula.ve
Anthony Bottoms is a professor of criminology at the University of Cambridge. He is also director of the Center of Criminology at the same university. He has published many books and articles on the subject of prisons, including comparative studies between England and the United States. His most recent publications include Prisons and the problem of order published in 1996 and (with J. Sparks) "Legitimacy and order in prisons" in The British Journal of Sociology in 1995. aeb11@cus.cam.ac.uk
Roberto Briceño-León is professor of sociology and medicine at the Universidad central de Venezuela (UCV) and Director of the Laboratorio de Ciensas Sociales (LACSO). He took his docorate in social sciencies at the UCV and has been a visiting professor at Oxford University. He is a member of the Executive Committee of the International Sociology Association (ISA) and serves as the global secrtray for the International Forum for Social Sciences and Health. He was formerly the president of the Venezuelan Sociology Association. He is author of numerous major academic works the most recent of which is Las ciencias sociales y la salud en américa latina: un balance (1999, Fundación Polar, Caracas). Since 1995 joinly with Rogelio Pérez Perdomo he has been directing a Panamerican Health Organization project on Violence. rbriceno@reacciun.ve
Teresa Caldeira is an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of California - Irvine. She earned her Ph.D. in anthropology at the University of California - Berkeley. She has conducted research on spatial segregation and violence in Brazil. Her most recent book is City of Walls. tpcaldei@uci.edu
Ignacio Cano is a professor of sociology at the Universidade Federal Flumenese. He received his Ph.D. in sociology at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. He completed post-doctoral studies at the University of Michigan in 1994 and the University of Arizona in 1996. In 1992 he was a member of the United Nations team to supervise psychological testing for entrance to the Academia Nacional de Policía Civil of El Salvador. He has published on the areas of violence, human rights and police use of force in Brazil. His most recent publication is Letalidade da Acão Policial no Rio de Janeiro: A atuação da Justiça Militar. icano@openlink.com.br
Nancy Cardia is currently Research Coordinator at the Núcleo de Estudos de Violência at the Universidade de São Paulo, a position she has held since 1989. She obtained her Ph.D. in Social Psychology at the London School of Economics. Her recent publications include "A violência urbana e os jovens" in São Paulo sem medo: Um diagnóstico da violência urbana in 1998 and "A violência urbana e a escola" in Contemporaneidade e educação in 1997. ncardia@usp.br
James Cavallaro is the director of the Brazil Office of Human Rights Watch. Most recently, his office has been involved in a comprehensive study of human rights abuses in the Brazilian prison system. His most recent publication is Brazil Behind Bars. hrwatchrj@alternex.com.br
Corinne M. Davis is a doctoral candidate in sociology at the University of Texas at Austin. She received her Masters in Criminal Justice at the American University. Her doctoral research is a comparative study of dispute resolution in a Brazilian shantytown. Her areas of interest are criminology, sociology of law and Latin American studies. cmdavis@mail.la.utexas.edu
Rosa del Olmo is president of the Fundación José Félix Ribas and professor at the Universidad Central de Venezuela. She has published extensively on the subject of violence and crime in Latin America. Her most recent publication is Criminalidad y criminalización de la mujer en la región andina. rolmo@reacciun.ve
Emilio Enrique Dellasoppa studied Chemical Engineering at the Universidad Nacional de la Plata in Argentina, and began his career as an engineering and environmental professor before moving to Brazil where he took a doctorate in political science at the University of São Paulo in 1987. Between 1987 and 1994 he was consultant in the Violence Studies group at the same University, and since that time has benn professor in the Dept. of Political Science, where he now serves as Chair. He is author of a number of publications, including a 1998 book Ao inimigo, nem justiça: violência política na Argentina, 1943-1983 (U. de São Paulo, Ediora Hucitec. dellasop@uerj.br
Enrique Díaz-Aranda is currently a Alexander von Humbolt post-doctoral fellow at the University of Munich. He is the only Mexican to be so recognized in the 140 year history this fellowship. He has received doctoral degrees in law from the Universidad Complutense of Madrid, Spain and the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. He is the author of multiple articles and books on the subject of Mexican penal law. His most recent publications include Dogmática del suicidio y homicidio consentido, Del suicidio a la eutanasia and Enriquecimiento ilícito de servidores públicos. enriquediazaranda@yahoo.com
Sheldon Eckland-Olson is Provost and Executive Vice President at UT-Austin where he has been a professor of sociology since 1972. He took his BA from Seattle Pacific University, and Ph.D in Sociology from the University of Washington, with post-doctoral research at Yale Law School. As a sociologist and criminologist he has published extensively on the issues of prison reform and capital punishment. He is author of several books including (with Dr Bill Kelly) Justice Under Pressure: A Comparison of Recidivism Patterns Among Four Successive Parolee Cohorts; and The Rope, the Chair and the Needle: Capital Punishment in Texas, 1923-1990.
Carter Hay is an assistant professor in sociology at Washington State University. He received his Ph.D. in sociology at the University of Texas at Austin. His main areas of interest are criminological theory and juvenile delinquency.
Teresa Hernández is a representative of DEMUS, a legal research group in Lima, Peru. She is a lawyer who has done research on legal reform and women's rights. demus@amauta.rcp.net.pe
Rene Alejandro Jiménez Ornelas is currently the director of the Project of Interinstitutional Investigation of Social Violence at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. He earned his Ph.D. in Social Science from the Univeridad Nacional Autónoma de México. His areas of interest are mortality by violent causes, bands of delinquents, kidnapping, and domestic violence. His most recent publication is Actions against the social delays in the great coast of Guerrero: Analysis (1995-1999). renal@servidor.unam.mx
William R. Kelly is a professor of sociology at the University of Texas at Austin. He is currently the director of the Center for Criminology and Criminal Justice Research. He was awarded his Ph.D. in sociology from Indiana University, Bloomington. He has published extensively on U.S. racial conflict, fertility, and family structure. His primary research interest is criminal justice, with a particular focus on the system-wide consequences of prison crowding and recidivism patterns of probationers. He is currently evaluating various diversion and probation programs in Travis County. wkelly@mail.la.utexas.edu
James P. Lynch is a professor in the Justice, Law and Society department at American University. He earned his Ph.D. in sociology at the University of Chicago. He has published extensively in the areas of crime statistics, victimization survey and cross-national comparisons of criminal justice policies. He was the chair of the American Statistical Association Committee on Law and Justice Statistics from 1994-1996. He is currently the Project Manager of the National Crime Survey Redesign, a five-year effort to totally redesign the major victimization survey in the United States. His most recent publication (with A. D. Biderman) is Understanding Crime Incidence Statistics: Why UCR diverges from NCS. jlynch@american.edu
Dan P. Mears is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow post-doctoral fellow at the Center for Criminology and Criminal Justice Research at the University of Texas at Austin, where he also received his Ph.D. in sociology. His major areas of interest include theories of juvenile and criminal justice sentencing, gender and crime, immigration and crime, racial variation in homicide rates and community policing. His recent publications include, "Evaluation Issues Confronting Juvenile Justice Sentencing Reforms: A Case Study of Texas" in Crime and Delinquency and (with Matthew Ploeger and Mark Warr) "Explaining the Gender Gap in Delinquency: Peer Influence and Moral Evaluations of Behavior" in Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency.
Joseph E. Potter is a professor at the University of Texas at Austin. He earned his Ph.D. in 1975 from Princeton University. He is a demographer who was originally trained in economics. His research experience is in both formal demography and the broad field of population and development. He is particularly interested in the influence that doctors and medicalization have on reproductive behavior, and is seeking to clarify the role medical personnel have played in promoting the revolution in contraceptive practice that has taken place in Latin America since the late 1960s. Since moving to Texas, he has developed an interest in the demography and maternal and child health issues of the border region. joe@prc.utexas.edu
Bryan R. Roberts holds the C.B. Smith, Sr. Centennial Chair in US-Mexico Relations at the University of Texas at Austin. He completed his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1964. His activities encompass many funded research projects, the most recent being funded by the Ford Foundation. He is the author of numerous books, articles, including New Perspectives in Economic Life and The Sociology of Development in Latin America. He teaches courses in class and stratification in developing countries, urban sociology, and sociological theory. brr@prc.utexas.edu
Luis Rodríguez Manzanera is president of the Sociedad Mexicana de Criminología. He is a professor of sociology at the Universidade Nacional Autónoma de México. He has published numerous books and articles on the subjects of crime, prisons and victimology in Mexico. His recent publications include Criminalidad de menores, 2. ed. in 1997 and La crisis penitenciaria y los substitutivos de la prision in 1998. luroma@themis.derecho.unam.mx
Maria Tereza Sadek is a professor in the political science department at the Universidade de São Paulo. She received her Ph.D. in political science from the Universidade de São Paulo. She conducted post-doctoral studies at the Center for Mexican-American Studies at the University of California - San Diego in 1988 and at the Institute of Latin American Studies at the University of London in 1991. She has published widely on the of electoral and judicial reform in Brazil. Her most recent publications include (with Ela Wiecko V. de Castilho) O Ministerio Público Federal e a Administração da Justiça no Brasil and O Ministerio Público e a Justiça no Brasil. idesp@uol.com.br
Mark Stafford is a professor of sociology at the University of Texas at Austin. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Arizona. His current areas of research include a control theory of homicide, US suicide rates with emphasis on race and gender differences, and the deterrent effects of punishment. Control, Interpersonal Violence, and Homicide and American Delinquency: Its Meaning and Construction, third edition, Belmont, California: Wadsworth, are among his most recent publications. stafford@mail.la.utexas.edu
Elizabeth Sussekind is the Director of the Balcão de Direitos project at Viva-Rio. She is a professor of law at the Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro. As director of Balcão de Direitos she involved in the implementation of centers of alternative dispute resolution and legal assistance for residents of low-income areas of Rio de Janeiro. bethsussekind@hotmail.com
Joseph R. Thome is an Emeritus Professor of Law at the University of Wisconsin - Madison Law School. He earned his J.D. from Harvard Law School. He has published and taught on the subject of law and development for more than thirty years, as well as acting as a consultant on legal reform for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Ford Foundation. From 1988-1992 he was Director of the Latin American and Iberian Studies Program. His most recent publication is "Land rights and Agrarian Reform: Latin America and South African Perspectives" in Good Government and Law: Legal and Institutional Reform in Developng Countries, edited by Julio Faundez. jrthome@facstaff.wisc.edu
Peter M. Ward took his BA in geography at the University of Hull and received his Ph.D from the University of Liverpool in 1976. He has held senior teaching positions at the Universities of London (UCL) and Cambridge, where he was also Fellow of Fitzwilliam College. Since 1991 he has been a professor at the LBJ School of Public Affairs and in the Department of Sociology at -UR-Austin. He is currently coordinator of the Mellon Latin American Sociology (Ph.D) Fellowships Program. Between 1993-96 he was Director of the Mexican Center. He is author of 14 books on housing, urban development, Mexican politics and local governance, among the most recent of which are: Mexico City (1998, Wiley) and Colonias and Public Policy in Texas and Mexico: Urbanization by Stealth, (1999, UT Press). peter.ward@mail.utexas.edu
Alba Zaluar is a full professor of anthropology in the Institute of Social Medicine at the Universidade Estadual do Rio de Janeiro. She earned her Ph.D. in anthropology at the Universidade de São Paulo. She has published extensively on the subject of violence and drug trafficking in Brazil. Recent publications include Condomínio do diabo and Os cidadaos não vão ao paraíso. azaluar@openlink.com.br