Kidnappings in Mexico City: A Social Problem

This paper examines criminal kidnappings in Mexico City, Mexico. While numerous types of crime are prevalent in Mexico’s capital, kidnapping remains a constant social problem affecting not only wealthy individuals and families, but also members across all types of social class. From the victims and their families, individuals living in fear, to criminal organizations, and local gangs, to the local, state, and federal government, everyone is impacted by this interconnecting social problem. This paper explains how kidnapping for ransom began in Mexico City, how methods of kidnappings have evolved overtime, the different types of kidnapping, and the preventative measures individual citizens, and Mexico City’s local and federal government are taking to combat this crime

To pay or not: game theoretic models of ransomware

Ransomware is a type of malware that encrypts files and demands a ransom from victims. It can be viewed as a form of kidnapping in which the criminal takes control of the victim’s files with the objective of financial gain. In this article, we review and develop the game theoretic literature on kidnapping in order to gain insight on ransomware. The prior literature on kidnapping has largely focused on political or terrorist hostage taking. We demonstrate, however, that key models within the literature can be adapted to give critical new insight on ransomware. We primarily focus on two models. The first gives insight on the optimal ransom that criminals should charge. The second gives insight on the role of deterrence through preventative measures. A key insight from both models will be the importance of spillover effects across victims. We will argue that such spillovers point to the need for some level of outside intervention, by governments or otherwise, to tackle ransomware

Falling Kidnapping Rates and the Expansion of Mobile Phones in Colombia

This paper tries to explain why kidnapping has fallen so dramatically in Colombia during the period 2000-2008. The widely held belief is that the falling kidnapping rates can basically be explained as a consequence of the success of President Alvaro Uribe´s democratic security policy. Without providing conclusive alternative explanations, some academic papers have expressed doubts about Uribe´s security policy being the main cause of this phenomenon. While we consider the democratic security policy as constituting a necessary condition behind Colombia´s falling kidnapping rates, we argue in this paper that a complementary condition underlying this phenomenon has been the significant increase during this period in the speed and quality of communications between potential victims and public security forces. In this sense, the expansion of the mobile phone industry in Colombia implies that there has been a substantial reduction in information asymmetries between kidnappers and targeted citizens. This has led to a higher level of deterrence as well as to higher costs for perpetrating this type of crime. This has resulted in a virtuous circle: improved security allows higher investments in telecommunications around the country, which in turn lead to faster communications between citizens and security forces, which consequently leads to greater security. We introduce a Becker-Ehrlich type supply and demand model for kidnappings. Using regional and departmental data on kidnapping, the police and mobile phones, we show that mobile phone network expansion has expanded the effective coverage of public protection; this, in turn, has led to a spectacular reduction in kidnapping rates.Kidnapping, mobile phones, Colombia

Slaving in Australian courts: blackbirding cases, 1869-1871

This article examines major prosecutions in New South Wales and Queensland for blackbirding practices in Melanesian waters, and early regulation under the Imperial Kidnapping Act that was meant to correct problems those prosecutions raised. It considers how legal argument and adjudication appropriated the political debate on the question whether the trade in Melanesian labour to Queensland and Fiji amounted to slaving, and whether references to slaving in Australian courts only compounded the difficulties of deterring recruiting abuses in Melanesia. It is suggested that, even though the Imperial Government conceived of the Kidnapping Act as a measure to deal with slaving, its success in Australian courts depended on its avoiding any reference to the idea of slavery in the legislation itself. This is developed in three parts. Part 1 provides the social context, introducing the trade in Melanesian labour for work in Queensland. Part 2 explores the prosecutions brought under the slave trade legislation and at common law against labour recruiters, especially those arising from incidents involving the Daphne and the Jason. It attempts to uncover the way that lawyers in these cases used arguments from the broader political debate as to whether the trade amounted to slaving. Part 3 concludes with an account of the relatively more effective regulation brought by the Kidnapping Act, with tentative suggestions as to how the arguments about slaving in Australian courts influenced the form that regulation under the Act had to take

Understanding Crime in Colombia and What Can Be Done About It

Abstract. We attempt to spell out the causes and costs of Colombia´s crime situation. Homicide rates are the highest in the world, three times higher than those of Brazil & Mexico and ten times higher than those of other Latin American countries. Paradoxically, Colombia is not exceptional with relation to property crime. In recent years, homicide rates have dropped in some of the most violent regions. Our conclusion is that drug trafficking coupled with low levels of punishment to criminals are the most important contributors to Colombian exceptional homicide rates. In relation to guerrillas, we find that their activities explain the high rates of kidnapping (and, in particular, its recent upsurge), but they are little related to the evolution of homicide rates. Socioeconomic factors, such as, income inequality and poverty, and sociological factors, such as the notion that Colombians are more violent by nature, do not appear to be the central explanation of crime rates in this country. Accordingly, our main policy recommendations are as follows: more and better information is required, lessening corruption in the criminal justice system is paramount, independent units for fighting kidnapping and homicides are needed, and financing the guerrillas so that they stop kidnapping should be explored. Most of our recommendations are related to the Colombian criminal justice system, the Plan Colombia and the drug policy.Violencia, Crimen, Economía Institucional, Reformas Institucionales

Integrating explanation-based and empirical learning methods in OCCAM

This paper discusses an approach to integrating empirical and explanation based learning techniques. The paper focuses on OCCAM, a program that has the capability to acquire via empirical means the knowledge needed for analytical learning. Two examples of this capability are discussed:The ability to use empirical techniques to acquire a domain theory for explanation based learning.The ability to use empirical learning techniques to find common patterns for causal relationships. These patterns encode a theory of causality (i.e., a set of general principles for recognizing causal relationships). Once acquired, a theory of causality can facilitate later learning by focusing on hypotheses which are consistent with the theory

A Theory of Child Protection against Kidnapping

This paper studies the microeconomics of child vulnerability to kidnapping in an environment where child protection is produced through a private effort, a public investment and a foreign aid. We first show that in absence of public investment and foreign aid, private investment in child protection may exhibit a vicious cycle of rising child's vulnerability, which justify public production of child safety resources on efficiency grounds. However, the introduction of a redistributive taxation to finance public investment may lead to a reduction of the global child protection, and then to an increase of the number of kidnapped children. In addition, richer families prefer private production of child safety resources to public production, while poorer families are in favour of public production. In this context, a foreign help is useful to deal with this disagreement. Nevertheless, foreign aid may raise an aid dependency. We then conclude that State and international organisms have a duty to assist households for building a protective environment. However, State's policy and foreign aid have to be chosen with care in order to avoid crowding out the parents' effort, and create an aid dependency.Child trafficking, child kidnapping, public policy, foreign aid, vulnerability

The Increase on Nonconsensual Bride Kidnapping in Kyrgyzstan

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the country of Kyrgyzstan has had an unprecedented jump in bride kidnapping. The number of occurrences has skyrocketed and with that so has the severity of the violence. In this time women are taken, with no prior indication of when or how, and forced to marry their kidnappers. This non-consensual practice has morphed for reasons unknown. To stop the increasingly abysmal state of women’s rights in Kyrgyzstan, and in countries all of over the world, we must discover why people turned towards violence and lack of consent in the 1990’s. To determine the cause of the rise in bride kidnapping, I reviewed ten social science journal articles. These articles varied from topics on the bump in bride kidnapping to the nature of familial relations in Kyrgyzstan prior to and after the rise of the Soviet Union. I found that after the Soviet Union fell from power, the Kyrgyz people sought to define and reclaim their Kyrgyz identity by clinging to practices they believed were inherently Kyrgyz. The Kyrgyz men believe bride kidnapping to be a traditional Kyrgyz practice that not only reaffirms their Kyrgyz background but also their masculinity as they impose their will over women. However, contrary to the beliefs of the Kyrgyz people, bride kidnapping has no substantial history of being a tradition of Kyrgyzstan. This means that the Kyrgyz people have defined their identity and committed crimes against their own women due to an incorrect assumption about their traditions. In order to reverse the trend of increasingly violent and non-consensual bride abduction, further research must be done on why the Kyrgyz people believe that kidnapping women for marriage maintains Kyrgyz heritage.https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/uresposters/1132/thumbnail.jp

Kear v. Hilton: Enforcing the Treaty On Extradition Between the United States and Canada

This Note examines the justness of the Kear decision. The current provisions of the Extradition Treaty, the powers of bounty hunters, and the role of the courts in regulating extradition are discussed. The Note concludes that extradition was not only proper, but necessary in order to maintain the Extradition Treaty\u27s goal of suppressing crime through cooperation between Canada and the United States