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The rising tensions in disputed waters in Southeast Asia have caused policymakers to diverge their maritime diplomatic strategy to include maritime constabulary forces. The use of coastguards and other non-military vessels are an emerging trend in the maritime diplomatic strategy of Southeast Asian states, including in the high-profile case of the North Natuna Seas, to which scholars pay little attention. This article contends that (1) contemporary maritime diplomacy in Southeast Asia positions the utilization of maritime constabulary forces (coastguards, maritime law enforcement agencies) as its primary maritime diplomatic strategy; (2) Vietnam’s coercive turn in its maritime disputed areas was a deliberate attempt to balance a coercive-cooperative stance against Indonesia in the North Natuna Seas, following its traditional coercive maritime diplomatic stance against China, and; (3) Vietnam’s utilization of maritime constabulary forces as a measure to solidify its sovereign claims coincided with the benefits of tactical military flexibility and non-escalatory means to achieve its aims in the Natuna Seas. This empirical explanatory research delves into the development of Vietnam’s coastguards and maritime law enforcement agencies by interpreting the secondary data from the Indonesia Ocean Justice Initiative between 2021–2022 on cases relating to suspicious maneuvers conducted by the Vietnamese Fisheries Resource Surveillance vessels safeguarding the conduct of Vietnamese IUUF.

Purpose The paper aims to provide a critical review of how variations in the conceptualization and contextualization of hate crime across US cities might impact how their individual law enforcement agencies collect hate crime data. Media reports and political discourses present hate crime as a prevalent problem in the USA. However, this representation of hate crime in the public sphere is not reflected in the relatively low national numbers of hate crimes published annually by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Design/methodology/approach Drawing primarily on the national hate crime data for the period 2008–2018, this author conducted a secondary research study of the concept, context, extent and law enforcement collection of hate crime data in five cities in the USA. Findings This paper is a product of some of the findings of the study, which include the definition of hate crime at the federal, state and city levels and the contextualization of hate crimes at these levels. The findings show inconsistencies in how the five cities and associated law enforcement agencies conceptualize hate crime and in how they collect and report hate crime data at local and national levels. Originality/value Through its analysis of how five US cities and the associated law enforcement agencies interpret and respond to hate crime data collection, with recommendations of best practices for hate crime data collection by law enforcement agencies, the paper contributes to the academic and nonacademic debate on hate crime.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to develop a new methodology for the interaction of law enforcement agencies with each other, financial institutions and other legal entities in the field of counteracting and combating the legalization of criminal income as a prerequisite for increasing the effectiveness of their activity in the area of countering and combating money laundering, which will improve the conditions for the development of the financial system and increase the level of living of the population of Ukraine. Design/methodology/approach An interdisciplinary approach was used during the writing of the paper. In particular, legal techniques, analysis and generalization, sociological research, questionnaires, etc., were used. Findings This paper demonstrates the need for a comprehensive approach to effectively building cooperation between law enforcement agencies in another money laundering. A proposal is made to improve the interaction between law enforcement agencies, financial institutions and other legal entities by creating a single database of information on money laundering and suspicious transactions and involving financial intelligence units in the process of investigating cases of money laundering. Practical implications Law enforcement agencies can use the proposed approach to ensure the effectiveness of their activities in counteracting and combating money laundering. Originality/value The authors have developed a new approach to improving the interaction of law enforcement agencies in the field of counteracting and combating money laundering, which involves the creation of a single database of information on money laundering and suspicious transactions, as well as the involvement of financial intelligence units in the process of detecting and investigating cases of money laundering.

The relevance of the topic lies in the fact that, despite the high standards established by Ukraine's criminal justice policy for the activities of law enforcement agencies, the situation in the field of criminal proceedings has several negative phenomena. Comparative legal analysis allows for the assessment of national criminal legislation development by comparing the norms of the 'Criminal Code of Ukraine' and the criminal codes of other countries. Particularly, an examination of current legislation in post-Soviet and foreign countries leads to the conclusion that the institution of criminal responsibility is regulated differently in different countries and in different legal systems. The findings of this study could aid in the development of appropriate models for improving the national legal system and developing a systematic approach to the theory and practice of applying these norms.

What are the political consequences of militarizing law enforcement? Across the world, law enforcement has become increasingly militarized over the last three decades, with civilian police operating more like armed forces and soldiers replacing civilian police in law enforcement tasks. Scholarly, policy, and journalistic attention has mostly focused on the first type, but has neglected the study of three main areas toward which we seek to contribute: 1) the constabularization of the military—i.e., when the armed forces take on the responsibilities of civilian law enforcement agencies, 2) the extent to which this process has taken place outside of the United States, and 3) its political consequences. Toward this end, we unpack the concept of militarized law enforcement, develop theoretical expectations about its political consequences, take stock of militarization in Latin America, and evaluate whether expectations have played out in the region. We show that the distinction between civilian and military law enforcement typical of democratic regimes has been severely blurred in the region. Further, we argue that the constabularization of the military has had important consequences for the quality of democracy in the region by undermining citizen security, human rights, police reform, and the legal order.

Objectives. We sought to understand how local immigration enforcement policies affect the utilization of health services among immigrant Hispanics/Latinos in North Carolina. Methods. In 2012, we analyzed vital records data to determine whether local implementation of section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act and the Secure Communities program, which authorizes local law enforcement agencies to enforce federal immigration laws, affected the prenatal care utilization of Hispanics/Latinas. We also conducted 6 focus groups and 17 interviews with Hispanic/Latino persons across North Carolina to explore the impact of immigration policies on their utilization of health services. Results. We found no significant differences in utilization of prenatal care before and after implementation of section 287(g), but we did find that, in individual-level analysis, Hispanic/Latina mothers sought prenatal care later and had inadequate care when compared with non-Hispanic/Latina mothers. Participants reported profound mistrust of health services, avoiding health services, and sacrificing their health and the health of their family members. Conclusions. Fear of immigration enforcement policies is generalized across counties. Interventions are needed to increase immigrant Hispanics/Latinos’ understanding of their rights and eligibility to utilize health services. Policy-level initiatives are also needed (e.g., driver’s licenses) to help undocumented persons access and utilize these services.

The School-to-Prison Pipeline is a social phenomenon where students become formally involved with the cnminal justice system as a result of school policies that use law enforcement, rather than discipline, to address behavioral problems. A potentially important part of the School-to-Prison Pipeline is the use of sworn School Resource Officers (SROs), but there is little research on the causal effect of hiring these officers on school cnme or arrests. Using credibly exogenous variation in the use of SROs generated by federal hiring grants specifically to place law enforcement in schools, I find evidence that law enforcement agencies learn about more crimes in schools upon receipt of a grant, and are more likely to make arrests for those crimes. This primarily affects children under the age of 15. However, I also find evidence that SROs increase school safety, and help law enforcement agencies make arrests for drug crimes occurring on and off school grounds.

A growing set of social movements has in recent years revived interest in “community control,” the idea that local residents should exercise power over services like the police, infrastructure, and schools. These range from a call from the Partnership for Working Families, a grassroots coalition, to build community control through the direct democratic governance of local infrastructure, to the push from the Movement for Black Lives, a racial justice coalition, to institute community control of law enforcement agencies. For these movement reformers, community control grants local communities greater power over both the levers of urban policy-making and the direction of local services and resources. These social movement visions of community control offer a real-time exploration of potentially transformative institutional designs to shift power in a more equitable direction. This Article uses two current movement governance proposals—community control of the police and community control of local economic development—to develop a broader, transsubstantive framework for analyzing how local governance institutions might shift power and attempt to redress inequality. We identify three key dimensions along which to analyze the potential for power-shifting and contestation in local governance: the nature of authority, the composition of the governing body, and the moment of authority. Community control may or may not be part of the answer to longstanding structural inequality. But it is still worth exploring the dynamics of local governance that can (or cannot) facilitate contestation, build power, and push back on the antidemocratic structures of law themselves. This Article begins to take on that task.

Countries have been developing and deploying anti-corruption tools based on artificial intelligence with hopes of them having positive capabilities. Yet, we still lack empirical analyses of these automated systems designed to identify and curb corruption. Hence, this article explores novel data on 31 bottom-up and top-down initiatives in Brazil, presented as a case study. Methodologically, it uses a qualitative analysis and draws on secondary data and interviews to assess the most common features, usages and constraints of these tools. Data collected are scrutinised under a new conceptual framework that considers how these tools operate, who created them for what purpose, who uses and monitors these tools, what types of corruption they are targeting, and what their tangible outcomes are. Findings suggest that in Brazil, AI-based anti-corruption technology has been tailored by tech-savvy civil servants working for law enforcement agencies and by concerned citizens with tech skills to take over the key tasks of mining and crosschecking large datasets, aiming to monitor, identify, report and predict risks and flag suspicions related to clear-cut unlawful cases. The target is corruption in key governmental functions, mainly public spending. While most of the governmental tools still lack transparency, bottom-up initiatives struggle to expand their scope due to high dependence on and limited access to open data. Because this new technology is seen as supporting human action, a low level of concern related to biased codes has been observed.