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The global illegal wildlife trade (IWT) is a multibillion dollar annual trade that threatens numerous species. Understanding ways to improve the law enforcement response is an essential component in addressing this trade. Yet, quantifying the impacts of such conservation measures is often hindered by a lack of long‐term and reliable datasets. Here, we evaluate a 15‐year multistakeholder collaboration that aimed to detect, report, and robustly respond to IWT across the vast Indonesian archipelago. Our results demonstrate the performance of site‐based monitoring networks in reliably reporting a widespread IWT of hundreds of nationally protected species. It revealed highly responsive government law enforcement agencies, high prosecution and conviction rates, and increasing penal sanctions over time, which significantly differed by province, year of arrest, and the number of unique protected species seized in a case. From these results, we formulate management recommendations for key agencies working in the criminal justice system.

To meet the huge demand for a workforce in the plantation belt that arose on Sumatra’s East Coast, coolies were initially recruited from Malaya and later from China and Java. They were held captive by a labour contract subjecting them to penal sanctions. An official but undisclosed report documented a wide range of atrocities to discipline workers found ‘slothful’ or resisting. My monograph, Taming the Coolie Beast (1989), featured this report, but was challenged by some reviewers as biased and moralistic. In a riposte, I argued that ‘the coolie scandal’ should be contextualized in the wider setting of colonial rule and its objectives. Resistance to the forced production of agrarian commodities led colonial wisdom to blame the peasantry of indolence. A more polished veneer of this myth suggested that the indigenous population was driven by social rather than economic needs. Institutionalized in legislation, the racist imprint of colonialism insisted on fixing a colour bar. The so-called Dutch ‘ethical policy’ of the early twentieth century promised welfare for the people, referred to as ‘natives’ in discriminatory colonial jargon, but was not implemented.

La Sentencia 190/2020, de 15 de diciembre, del Tribunal Constitucional ha reabierto el debate sobre la compatibilidad del delito de ultraje a los símbolos nacionales (art. 543 CP) con la garantía constitucional de la libertad ideológica y de expresión. Después de pasar revista a las distintas soluciones que se han adoptado en el derecho comparado, se pone el foco en el tipo penal vigente, muy cuestionado por la mayoría de la doctrina, en sus antecedentes y en su aplicación por los tribunales, tanto en la modalidad de ultraje al himno como en la de ultraje a la bandera. Se cierra el artículo con el análisis de la STC 190/2020 en el caso Fragoso, que ya ha recalado en el Tribunal de Estrasburgo.

In this paper, we draw attention to new assemblages with risk in order to highlight the multiple forms of knowledge and logics at work in new risk assessment practices. We seek to complicate the theoretical explanations of risk by highlighting how risk logics merge and shift in tandem with various rationalities. For example, when risk is merged with need, needs are reconfigured as criminogenic needs but, in this process, risk becomes a fluid concept that can be treated, altered and transformed. When risk is merged with more welfare and disciplinary-based logics, such as rehabilitation and clinical assessments, new forms of risk management are produced, such as targeted treatment. Through these processes, risk’s association with actuarial calculations is weakened by other judgments and appraisals. As well, risk takes on more productive ameliorative possibilities, associated with risk minimization. These new assemblages enable new forms of risk-based governance as evident in contemporary correctional case management planning and the accreditation of programmes. This analysis is developed through an examination of the Level of Service Inventory (LSI)—an internationally used risk assessment instrument.

The existence of life imprisonment in the criminal legislation of Russia is assessed ambiguously both by representatives of Russian science and by foreign analysts. This problem is many-sided and ambiguous in its content. Its solution depends on a large number of variables, sometimes independent of the subject of analysis. These include trends in criminal policy, the state of crime in the state, and the related “punitive claims” of the population. The balance of Domestic and International Interests in ensuring Human Rights is the key idea in analyzing life imprisonment from the perspective of historical viability or reality. The purpose of the research was to clarify the place and role of life imprisonment in the current system of criminal punishment based on the analysis of doctrinal approaches, the practice of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation, the European Court of Human Rights, and statistical data. The work is based on the use of such general scientific methods of research as dialectical, statistical, comparative-legal and hermeneutic. The above methods are used in interaction to obtain a synergistic effect. In the course of the study, the “deterrent” mechanism of the most severe punishment in the criminal system was found to be sufficient. It is determined that life imprisonment is a necessary measure to ensure social justice, albeit cruel, but appropriate in today’s society.

La literacidad conjuga prácticas letradas que impactan la construcción de identidad y la formación ciudadana. Esta visión es particularmente retadora para adolescentes y jóvenes del Sistema de Responsabilidad Penal Adolescente en Colombia. La investigación más amplia de la cual hace parte este artículo, se enmarca en un enfoque mixto. En este caso se presenta la medición inicial del abordaje explicativo pretest, con el propósito de caracterizar la literacidad de los adolescentes y jóvenes. Los principales hallazgos señalan que, si bien los adolescentes y jóvenes del Sistema tienen dificultades en la comprensión y producción escrita, estas no son prácticas ajenas a sus formas de comunicación y expresión. De hecho, a través de ellas se tejen sus sueños, intereses, miedos e interpretaciones del mundo.

This study examines self-defense in cases of chronic domestic violence in Ecuador, focusing on the legal challenges surrounding its application as a form of resistance in non-confrontational contexts, and its comparative treatment in Argentina and Chile. Although Ecuador has ratified interna- tional treaties such as the Convention of Belém do Pará and CEDAW, the Organic Law to Prevent and Eradicate Violence against Women and the Organic Comprehensive Criminal Code lack provisions that offer a proper evidentiary framework to recognize self-defense in repeated violence sce- narios. While there are institutional guides and manuals, these lack binding legal authority to override organic laws, leaving women exposed to struc- tural violence and the ineffectiveness of conventional protection measu- res. In contrast, Argentina and Chile represent jurisprudential progress by incorporating the “battered woman syndrome” into their legal systems and reinterpreting the classical elements of self-defense from a gender perspective. The study concludes that the restrictive application of self-defense in Ecuador re-victimizes women and underscores the need for legal reform that acknowledges their ongoing state of danger and the legitimacy of a single defensive opportunity. The research was conducted using a qualitative methodology based on documentary analysis, semistructured interviews, and comparative legal review. Este trabajo analiza la legítima defensa en casos de violencia intrafamiliar sistemática en Ecuador considerando los desafíos normativos que plantea su aplicación como mecanismo de resistencia en contextos no confrontacionales, y su tratamiento comparado en Argentina y Chile. Aunque el Estado ecuatoriano ha ratificado tratados internacionales como la Convención de Belém do Pará y la Cedaw, tanto la Ley Orgánica Integral para Prevenir y Erradicar la Violencia contra las Mujeres como el Código Orgánico Integral Penal carecen de disposiciones que establezcan un marco probatorio adecuado para reconocer la legítima defensa de mujeres en contextos de violencia reiterada. Si bien existen guías y manuales de apoyo, estos no tienen fuerza normativa suficiente para prevalecer sobre leyes orgánicas, lo que expone a las mujeres a un Estado de violencia estructural e indefensión frente a medidas tradicionales. En contraste, Argentina y Chile han desarrollado avances jurisprudenciales al incorporar el “síndrome de la mujer maltratada” y reinterpretar los elementos tradicionales de la legítima defensa desde una perspectiva de género. Se concluye que la aplicación restrictiva de esta figura en Ecuador revictimiza a las mujeres y evidencia la necesidad de una reforma legal que reconozca su estado de peligro permanente y su derecho a una oportunidad única de defensa. Se utilizó una metodología cualitativa basada en análisis documental, entrevistas y derecho comparado.

This study presents an empirical analysis of domestic violence case resolution in North Carolina for the years 2004 to 2010. The key hypothesis is that penalties at the level set for domestic violence crimes reduce recidivism (re-arrest on domestic violence charges or conviction in 2 years following an index arrest). We use state court data for all domestic violence-related arrests. Decisions to commit an act of domestic violence are based on a Bayesian process of updating subjective beliefs. Individuals have prior beliefs about penalties for domestic violence based on actual practice in their areas. An individual's experience with an index arrest leads to belief updating. To address endogeneity of case outcomes, we use an instrumental variables strategy based on decisions of prosecutors and judges assigned to each index arrest in our sample. Contrary to our hypothesis, we find that penalities, at least as set at the current levels, do not deter future arrests and convictions.

The consequence of the pandemic caused by COVID-19 was the introduction of social restrictions, which led to an increase in the number of users of social networks, as well as their activity on the Internet. The involvement of citizens in the digital environment has changed the targets of criminal efforts of the criminals. The public’s fear of the coronavirus was subjected to criminal exploitation, new forms and methods of theft appeared, as a result, the spectrum of crime shifted to the criminal use of information and communication technologies (hereinafter – ICT. The purpose of the study is to analyze the dynamics of the indicators of Russian crime during the pandemic, to assess the adopted criminal-political decisions in terms of adequacy to the changes in crime, to develop on this basis the proposals for criminal law improvement able to increase the consistency of the current Criminal Code of the Russian Federation and its compliance with the requirements of the criminal-political situation in Russia. The assessment of the sectoral structure consistency in the regulation of criminal liability for committing crimes in the special conditions of a pandemic was used as the main research method. The research was carried out by the authors based on the dialectical method, which made it possible to manage changes in social reality by means of legal response, other scientific methods: sociological, modeling, concrete historical, comparative were applied as well. The results obtained showed that overcoming the negative changes in crime requires adjusting the vector of criminal policy from liberalization towards tightening in relation to crimes committed using ICT. It is proposed to expand the list of aggravating circumstances, limit the use of some mechanisms for terminating criminal liability associated with exemption from it, and review the possibilities of applying conditional conviction to persons who have committed crimes in a pandemic, up to and including refusal of this form of implementation of criminal liability. The formulated new proposals for improving the General Part of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation restore the consistency of the criminal law and increase the consistency of criminal-political decisions during a pandemic.

Two rival conceptions for international organization circulated in America during World War I. The first and initially more popular was a “legalist‐sanctionist” league, intended to develop international legal code and obligate and enforce judicial settlement of disputes. The second was the League of Nations that came into being. This article traces the intellectual development and political reception of the former from 1914 to 1920. Theodore Roosevelt, Elihu Root, and William H. Taft were its most important architects and advocates. Like President Woodrow Wilson, they aimed to create an international polity without supranational authority. Unlike Wilson, they insisted on the codification of law and the necessity of physical sanction: the league had to enforce its word or not speak at all. Wilson fatally rejected legalist‐sanctionist ideas. Holding a thoroughgoing organicist understanding of political evolution, he and the League's British progenitors preferred international organization to center on a parliament of politicians divining the popular will and anticipating future needs, not a court of judges interpreting formal codes of law. A flexible model of organization carried over to the United Nations, the alternative forgotten by a world leader that now found it natural to subordinate law to politics.