Addressing security actors’ involvement in serious and organised crime
Project Live
PROJECT TEAM
Dr Liam O’Shea
Royal United Service Institute
Contact: liamO@rusi.org
Dr Liam O'Shea is an expert on police integrity, violence and corruption, security sector reform and politics and security in the former Soviet Union.
His research examines how to address prominent problems in Western policing, including police brutality, racism and misogyny. Dr O’Shea also focuses on how to address and manage corruption and state capture within aid and security assistance. He leads RUSI’s Organised Crime, Terror and Insecurity in Africa project, developing policy options to address these issues in Kenya, Mozambique and Nigeria. He is a former adviser in the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office for the UK's Conflict, Stability and Security Fund, and has consulted various organisations on security and justice in developing countries including the Overseas Development Institute and Saferworld.
Dr Louis Alexandre Berg
Georgia State University
Contact: lberg@gsu.edu
Louis-Alexandre Berg is an Associate Professor in the Global Studies Institute and Political Science Department and Georgia State University. His research explores the causes and consequences of conflict, crime and political violence in weak states, with a focus on the effects of civil war on state formation, and the impact of international peacebuilding and state-building programs. His current book project examines efforts to restructure police and military forces in war-torn countries, focusing on how political context in war-torn countries shapes the effects of foreign assistance efforts. It is based on field work in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Timor Leste. He has also published research, and on the politics of urban violence and organized crime in Central America, and on justice system and rule of law development in conflict-affected countries.
Dr Lucía Tiscornia
University College Dublin
Contact: lucia.tiscornia@ucd.ie
Dr. Lucía Tiscornia is Assistant Professor in the School of Politics and International Relations at University College Dublin, and a Research Affiliate with the Transitional Justice and Violence Lab at the University of Notre Dame. Her work explores the conditions under which police reform contributes to (or hinders) the respect of human rights in new democracies. She also conducts research on the determinants of organized criminal behavior. Within this line of research, she focuses on the role of the security apparatus in increasing or decreasing violent criminal responses, as well as other criminal behavior such as market capture. Her work has been published in the Journal of Peace Research, Sociological Methods & Research, and Studies in Comparative International Development, among others.
Dr Alexander Kupatadze
King’s College London
Contact: Alexander.kupatadze@kcl.ac.uk
Dr Alexander Kupatadze is Associate Professor at King’s College London. Prior to joining King’s College Dr Kupatadze taught at the School of International Relations, St Andrews University. He held the postdoctoral positions at George Washington University (2010-11), Oxford University (2012-13) and Princeton University (2013-14). His research specialisation is organised crime, corruption, public sector reform, informal politics and crime-terror nexus. His regional expertise is post-Soviet Eurasia. His work has appeared in Journal of Democracy, Theoretical Criminology, Nonproliferation Review, British Journal of Political Science and other leading journals. His research has been funded by European Union, British Academy and Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation.
PROJECT SUMMARY
Security, stability and development all require clean, efficient and effective police and militaries. But in many countries security sector organisations are heavily involved in serious and organised crime and widespread corruption and abuse. There is also very little evidence on what types of initiatives and reforms are effective at addressing such problems. In particular, insufficient attention has been given to dynamics which affect political elites’ ability and interest in supporting reform.
This project focuses primarily on what drives political elites to curtail political and security actors’ involvement in serious and organised crime, since an effective state response to serious and organised crime is not possible without this. Too often, evidence on ‘what works’ is limited to synthesis of evaluations of short-term donor programmes. Our approach takes a broader look to identify what sets of reforms are most effective at countering state security actors’ involvement in serious and organised crime and what makes political elites decide to initiate reform. The project consolidates findings from research on anticorruption, on organised crime in Western states, and political settlements and is based on deep case study analysis of what drove relatively successful reforms in Colombia, Georgia and South Africa.
PUBLICATIONS
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Publications from this project will be posted here when available