A vigente política brasileira sobre drogas aloca, aos que as consomem ou aos que as comercializam, ao patamar da ilegalidade – ainda que preveja a diferenciação de fronteiras imprecisas, entre consumo e tráfico. A conjuntura proibicionista proporciona a existência de complexas redes sociais, entre os que mais lucram, e não são identificados como tais, e os que são passíveis de punição/correção. Estes últimos são os que se encontram na porção final da rede de vendas de drogas, em geral ocupada por jovens pobres, fato denunciado no contexto das medidas socioeducativas descritas por este trabalho. Esta dissertação é o resultado de um processo cartográfico junto a jovens em cumprimento de medidas socioeducativas em meio aberto por envolvimento no comércio de drogas, a partir da inserção em grupos de Prestação de Serviços à Comunidade e de Liberdade Assistida. Apresento aqui os elementos vivenciados no período da pesquisa, relacionando-os com as noções de criminalização das juventudes, biopoder e de medicalização do social, analisando como estes se expressam na contemporaneidade e como são trabalhados e (re)produzidos no contexto socioeducativo. Demonstrar como estes conceitos se articulam e constituem a produção de discursos na relação com jovens envolvidos/as com a rede de comércio de drogas, com as políticas públicas para crianças e jovens ao longo do tempo e com as instituições responsáveis pelas medidas socioeducativas em meio aberto foram as pistas percorridas por esta cartografia. Neste contexto é coerente questionar, serão os jovens que estão em conflito com as leis, ou as leis que estão em conflito com os jovens? / The current Brazilian substance misuse policy allocates to those who consume or to those who sell, the illegality – although providing a differentiation, yet of blurred boundaries between consumption and trafficking. The prohibitionist scenario provides the existence of complex social networks among those who profit from, and are not identified as such, and of those whom are punishable. The latter are those who are in the final portion of the drug sales network, generally occupied by poor young people, a fact reported in the context of socio-educational measures described in this work. This dissertation is the result of a social cartography process with young people in fulfilment of educational measures for involvement in the drug trade, part of the integration in Service Delivery groups to Community and Assisted Freedom. I present here the experiences during the research period, relating them to the criminalization of youths, biopower and the medicalization of social, analyzing how these are expressed in contemporary society and how they are worked out and (re)produced in the social and educational context. To demonstrate how these concepts are linked and constitute the production of discourse in relation to young people involved with the drug trade network, with public policies for children and young people over time and with the institutions responsible for social and educational measures were the hints used by this cartography. In this context it is relevant to question: is it the youths who are in conflict with the laws, or are the laws in conflict with the youths?

Submitted by Renata Lopes (renatasil82@gmail.com) on 2016-02-19T14:47:32Z No. of bitstreams: 1 sintiasoareshelpes.pdf: 2146752 bytes, checksum: 5de513c3043bca1e7b4163e8689c25b5 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Adriana Oliveira (adriana.oliveira@ufjf.edu.br) on 2016-02-26T13:49:41Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 sintiasoareshelpes.pdf: 2146752 bytes, checksum: 5de513c3043bca1e7b4163e8689c25b5 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-02-26T13:49:41Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 sintiasoareshelpes.pdf: 2146752 bytes, checksum: 5de513c3043bca1e7b4163e8689c25b5 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-03-14 / Propomos concentrar nossa atenção sobre três aspectos em relação à criminalidade no Brasil. Primeiro, o tráfico de drogas tem ganhado papel de destaque nas últimas décadas, aumentando, cada vez mais sua representatividade dentre os demais crimes. Segundo, apesar do protagonismo masculino na maior parte das ações criminosas, a participação feminina em atividades ilícitas tem se destacado, uma vez que a quantidade de mulheres presas, nos últimos anos, sofreu um aumento proporcionalmente superior ao número de homens na mesma condição. O terceiro aspecto, síntese dos dois primeiros, é o aumento de mulheres envolvidas com o tráfico de drogas. Esta tipificação ocupa, atualmente, a primeira, entre os crimes praticados pelas brasileiras que cumprem pena privativa de liberdade. O objetivo desde trabalho é compreender a condição das mulheres envolvidas com o tráfico de drogas na cidade de Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais. Entender suas motivações e, principalmente, como o gênero influencia na construção da carreira ilícita. O objeto de estudo foi assim delimitado, uma vez que, ao recorrermos à literatura sobre criminalidade, percebemos a escassez de pesquisas voltadas para a participação feminina nas atividades ilegais. Com esta finalidade, foi realizado um trabalho de campo na Penitenciária Professor Ariosvaldo Campos Pires, local onde a pesquisadora trabalha há aproximadamente quatro anos, metodologicamente, além de contarmos com a observação participante, recorremos a aplicação de 81 (oitenta e um) questionários, direcionados às presas por tráfico de drogas, o que corresponde a 100% das mulheres condenadas sob esta tipificação, e 10 (dez) entrevistas de histórias de vida, nas quais buscamos identificar de que forma a questão de gênero interfere nas relações do tráfico, quais posições, na hierarquia da atividade, as mulheres conseguem alcançar e como as relações sociais vão consolidando a carreira da mulher no tráfico de entorpecentes. Concluímos que parte significativa das entrevistadas consideraram sua entrada e permanência no tráfico de drogas, enquanto uma possibilidade de elevação em sua condição financeira, uma vez que, 58% delas são as provedoras de seus lares. Percebemos também que, apesar de uma série de dificuldades a elas impostas no interior da atividade ilícita, muitas alcançaram postos de trabalho no tráfico considerados significativos, tais como “donas de boca de fumo” e “distribuidora e abastecedora”. / We propose to focus our attention on three aspects in relation to crime in Brazil. First, drug trafficking has gained a prominent role in recent decades, increasing their representation among the other crimes . Second, despite the male role in most criminal actions , women's participation in illegal activities has been highlighted since the number of women arrested in recent years , suffered a proportionally greater increase in the number of men in the same condition . The third aspect, the synthesis of the first two, is the increase of women involved in drug trafficking. This classification holds currently the first , among the crimes committed by the Brazilian who meet custodial sentence . The objective of this work is to understand the condition of women involved in drug trafficking in the city of Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais. Understand their motivations, and especially how gender influences the construction of illicit career. The object of study was defined, since , by resorting to the literature on crime , we realized the dearth of research focused on women's participation in the illegal activity. For this purpose , fieldwork in Prison Teacher Ariosvaldo Campos Pires, where the researcher worked for about four years , in which we rely on participant observation, application of 81 ( eighty one ) directed at arrested for trafficking of questionnaires was conducted drugs , which corresponds to 100 % of women convicted under this classification , and 10 (ten) life story interviews , in which we seek to identify how gender affects the relations of trafficking , including positions in the hierarchy of activity women can achieve and how social relations will consolidate the careers of women in the trafficking of narcotics . We conclude that a significant proportion of respondents considered their entry and stay in the drug trade , while a possibility of increase in their financial condition , since 58 % of them are the providers of their homes . We also see that despite a number of difficulties they impose on the inside of the infringing activity , achieved many jobs in trafficking considered significant , such as "wives mouths smoke" and "distributing and supplying" .

FundaÃÃo Cearense de Apoio ao Desenvolvimento Cientifico e TecnolÃgico / O presente trabalho visa trazer uma compreensÃo sobre a vivÃncia de trabalhadores frente à realidade do processo de inserÃÃo laboral de formas atÃpicas de trabalho, segundo o modelo salarial, consideradas em uma posiÃÃo à margem da sociedade. Mais especificamente, temos o objetivo de fazer uma pesquisa exploratÃria sobre os trabalhadores do trÃfico de drogas frente à sua posiÃÃo de marginalidade, levando em consideraÃÃo a importÃncia de seus ganhos financeiros. Damos inÃcio a este estudo discutindo sobre as mutaÃÃes do sistema capitalista, a partir de novas forÃas de dominaÃÃo, que traz como conseqÃÃncia algumas reformulaÃÃes nas formas de gerir o trabalho, disseminando a flexibilidade e a precarizaÃÃo, que por sua vez tem justificado o aparecimento de ocupaÃÃes cada vez mais atÃpicas de inserÃÃo. Partindo da visÃo de produÃÃo de subjetividade por meio das prÃticas sociais, percebemos que esse processo de reestruturaÃÃo produtiva interfere na constituiÃÃo dos trabalhadores na contemporaneidade, regida pelos princÃpios do consumo. Com base nessa contextualizaÃÃo, tentamos investigar as realidades laborais dos trabalhadores do trÃfico de drogas. Observamos que tal ocupaÃÃo tambÃm obedece à lÃgica do capital e que surge em resposta à marginalidade econÃmica, funcionando como uma alternativa ilegal à massa de trabalhadores que nÃo consegue uma inserÃÃo legal. TraÃado esse percurso teÃrico, seguimos para a realizaÃÃo da pesquisa qualitativa com cinco trabalhadores do trÃfico de drogas de dois bairros da cidade de Fortaleza. Realizamos entrevistas semi-dirigidas que foram submetidas a uma anÃlise semÃntica de conteÃdo. Os conteÃdos foram organizados em quatro categorias, para efeito meramente didÃtico, com o intuito de facilitar a compreensÃo dos dados: motivos de inserÃÃo e permanÃncia, os significados atribuÃdos ao trabalho, organizaÃÃo do trabalho no trÃfico de drogas, consumo e a inserÃÃo limitada. A partir das anÃlises, podemos dizer que o trÃfico de drogas à uma categoria complexa e traz contradiÃÃes, visto que se encontra em uma posiÃÃo de marginalidade, mas acaba correspondendo, devido aos ganhos que proporciona, a um meio de reconhecimento e inserÃÃo, pelo menos ao nÃvel do consumo. No entanto, tal inserÃÃo mostra-se limitada, idÃia aproximada com o conceito de inserÃÃo marginal de Castel (1998), pois os trabalhadores de tal atividade continuam vivenciando uma situaÃÃo marginal, ante a restriÃÃo de participaÃÃo social de determinados grupos e coletivos frente ao contexto mais amplo da sociedade. / This work aims to bring an understanding about the experiences of workers facing the reality of the jobs of atypical forms of work, according to the wage model, considered in a position beyond the edge of the society. More specifically, we aim to make a survey on drug workers, in relation to their position of marginality, considering the importance of their financial gain. We initiated this study discusses the changes in the capitalist system, from new forces of domination, which brings as a consequence some changes in ways of managing the work, spreading the flexibility and reduction, which in turn has justified the emergence of occupations increasingly atypical of insertion. From the vision of production of subjectivity through social practices, we can see that the restructuring process of production interferes with the formation of workers in the contemporary, governed by the principles of consumption. Based on this context, we tried to investigate the working conditions of employees in the drug trade. We observed that this occupation also follows the logic of capital and it comes in response to economic marginalization, working as an illegal alternative to the mass of workers who can not find a legal insertion. Track this theoretical path, we follow for the conduct of qualitative research with five employees of the drug trade in two neighborhoods of the city of Fortaleza. We conducted semi-directed interviews that were submitted to a semantic analysis of content. The contents were organized into four categories, for teaching purpose only, to facilitate understanding of the data: reasons for insertion and permanence, the meanings attributed to work, organization of work in drug traffic, consumption and limited integration. From the analysis we can say that drug trafficking is a complex category and brings contradictions, as is in a position of marginality, but ends up corresponding, due to gains it provides, to a means of recognition, at least at the level of consumption. However, this inset shows is limited, approximate idea of the concept of marginal insertion of Castel (1998), because workers in such activity still experiencing a marginal situation, before the restriction of social participation of certain groups and against the collective context wider society.

Submitted by Marlene Santos (marlene.bc.ufg@gmail.com) on 2016-09-02T18:11:09Z No. of bitstreams: 2 Dissertação - Guiherme Borges da Silva - 2016.pdf: 3704900 bytes, checksum: 93336d803ca68792d582c789cc2bd45a (MD5) license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Luciana Ferreira (lucgeral@gmail.com) on 2016-09-06T13:39:19Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 2 Dissertação - Guiherme Borges da Silva - 2016.pdf: 3704900 bytes, checksum: 93336d803ca68792d582c789cc2bd45a (MD5) license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-09-06T13:39:19Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 Dissertação - Guiherme Borges da Silva - 2016.pdf: 3704900 bytes, checksum: 93336d803ca68792d582c789cc2bd45a (MD5) license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-09-10 / Conselho Nacional de Pesquisa e Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico - CNPq / The idea that urban violence associated with drug trafficking spread for almost the whole population of Goiás. The institutions responsible for public security, for all the difficulties in the investigation of the crimes, and the television media, mostly the police’s TV show, propagate the speech that increased rates of homicides in recent years is due to the proliferation of drug trafficking in the Metropolitan Region of Goiânia. These lines, when reproduced, feed on the practice of punishment’s policies to counter drug trafficking and, with it, build the social imaginary accusatory speeches that identifies some ct as more predisposed to selling drugs than others. In addition, the accusatory process obscures the multiplicity of arrangements and of individuals who are behind these practices criminalized. And in Goiás no scientific studies on the ct and, therefore, the research presented here is a pioneer in the quest for understanding this phenomenon. To develop this study , we conducted a purposeful journey through the ethnographic method , in-depth interviews and analyzed records and police inquests of prisoners in order to understand the dynamics of commercialization and the processes of territorialization of the illegal drug market in the Metropolitan Region of Goiânia. At the same time, committed itself to identify who are the cts that are entered into this market and what moral aspects and the meanings they attach themselves and criminalized activities that practice. And finally, check when violence, specifically murder, is used as a regulatory tool in conflict resolution and trade disagreements. / A ideia de que a violência urbana se associa ao tráfico de drogas se disseminou por quase toda população goiana. As próprias instituições responsáveis pela segurança pública, por todas as dificuldades na elucidação dos crimes, e a mídia televisiva, principalmente os programas policiais, propagam o discurso de que o aumento das taxas de homicídios nos últimos anos se deve à proliferação do tráfico de drogas na Grande Goiânia. Essas afirmações, quando reproduzidas, alimentam a prática de políticas altamente repressivas de enfrentamento ao tráfico de drogas e, com isso, constroem-se no imaginário social discursos acusatórios que identificam alguns sujeitos como mais predispostos à venda de drogas do que outros. Além disso, os processos acusatórios obscurecem a multiplicidade de arranjos e de indivíduos que estão por trás dessas práticas criminalizadas. E em Goiás não há estudos científicos sobre o tema e, deste modo, a pesquisa aqui apresentada é pioneira em busca de compreender esse fenômeno. Para desenvolver este estudo, realizei uma viagem propositada por meio do método etnográfico, entrevistas em profundidade e, também, analisei prontuários e inquéritos policiais de presos com o objetivo de compreender as dinâmicas de comercialização e os processos de territorialização do mercado ilegal das drogas na Grande Goiânia. Ao mesmo tempo, me empenhei em identificar quem são os sujeitos que estão inseridos nesse mercado e quais os aspectos morais e os sentidos que atribuem a si mesmos e às atividades que praticam. E, por fim, verificar quando a violência, mais especificamente o homicídio, é uma ferramenta regulamentadora utilizada na resolução dos conflitos e dos desacordos comerciais.

No campo de estudos dos sistemas jurídicos da Infância e da adolescência, a Lei 8.069 de 13 de julho de 1990 a qual instituiu o Estatuto da criança e do Adolescente - ECA representa um importante marco legal na relação entre adolescência e criminalidade, rompendo com a perspectiva de legislações anteriores instaurando o Paradigma da Proteção Integral nas ações de responsabilização diante de condutas infracionais (Brasil, 1990). Todavia, esta transformação condicionava uma mudança estrutural no Sistema de Justiça Juvenil, que houveram se constituído sob a égide das normativas anteriores. Trata-se de estudo exploratório de processos socioeducativos aplicados a adolescentes que cometeram ato infracional na cidade de São Paulo entre os anos de 2015 e 2016. A questão das drogas e do tráfico funciona, ao mesmo tempo, como eixo aglutinador dos delitos estudados na presente tese como também contextualiza o campo macrossocial de vulnerabilidades e violações que atingem entre outras populações crianças e adolescentes residentes nas periferias das grandes cidades. Ao curso do presente estudo buscamos publicizar reflexos desta justaposição de paradigmas na justiça juvenil, discorrer sobre os hibridismo e as posições que coabitam os pólos das Doutrinas da Situação Irregular e da Proteção Integral (Gomes, 2012), a partir do olhar da Psicologia Social, das ferramentas metodológicas de análise documental e de conteúdo e do diálogo teórico com os postulados de Michel Foucault e Loic Wacquant, naquilo em que tratam da vontade de verdade nas práticas jurídicas e da criminalização da pobreza nas sociedades contemporâneas. Não obstante os avanços recentes, as políticas públicas para a infância e adolescência ainda possuem caráter Penal-Policial institucionalizado nas práticas do Estado. O desafio de efetivar e garantir a Proteção Integral, tal qual sugere a Doutrina ainda permanece / For the studies of legal systems concerning Childhood and Adolescence, Law no. 8.069 of July 13th, 1990, which set for the Statute of the Child and Teenager (ECA), represents an important legal milestone concerning the relation between adolescence and criminality, breaking the perspective of previous laws and establishing the Full Protection Paradigm in actions for damages due to offenses (Brasil, 1990). However, this transformation required a structural change in Juvenile Justice System, which has been built under the auspices of previous rules. This is an exploratory study of social and educational processes applied to teenagers who committed any offense in the city of São Paulo between 2015 and 2016. The drug and trafficking issues at the same time work as a unifying axis of the offenses herein studied and sets the macrosocial field of vulnerabilities and violations affecting, in addition to other populations, children and teenagers living in the outskirts of major cities. Throughout this study, we aimed at publicizing the reflexes of this juxtaposition of paradigms in juvenile justice, discussing the hybridity and the positions sharing the poles of both the Irregular Welfare and the Full Protection Doctrines (Gomes, 2012), from the perspective of the Social Psychology, the methodological tools for document and content analysis and the theoretical dialogue with Michel Foucaults and Loic Wacquants theories, concerning the true will in legal practices and the criminalization of poverty in contemporary societies. Notwithstanding recent advances, public policies for childhood and adolescence still have criminal aspects institutionalized in the practices of the State. The challenge of making the Full Protection effective and ensuring it as suggested by the Doctrine is still on

Introduction: The Police in Sundsvall has identified a problem of an open drug market in the inner city of Sundsvall. Behind an open drug market there is an organization that consists of several steps. Internet also contributes to a drug trafficking. There is research about how the illegal drugs arrive to Sweden, but no research about what happens with the drugs after they have entered Sweden. Aim: The study aimed to examine how the national drug trafficking provides an illegal local drug market in Sundsvall with illegal drugs in a medium sized city in the middle of Sweden. In order to do so, the researchers studied the most common illegal drugs that are transported to the local market and how the illegal drugs arrive to the local market. Method: This study has a mixed method design and are divided into three parts. The first part is quantitative and consists of statistics from the Board of Customs. The second part is qualitative and consists of interviews with professionals from the Police and Customs and also with former drugs dealers and one heavy user. The third part is also qualitative and consists of interviews from Postnord, DHL, the Customs and the Police. Results: It was concluded in the results that cannabis and amphetamine were the most common illegal drugs on the local market in Sundsvall. It was also found that there are no specific routes that the illegal drugs are transported along to Sundsvall. It rather depends on the contacts that each local seller in Sundsvall has. Internet and the logistic companies were found to play an important role regarding the means for transportation. Discussion: The consequences and underlying causes of the phenomena was discussed. Also, two criminological theories were applied in order to explain what motivates people to involve in the transportation of illegal drugs to the local market and thus why illegal drugs are transported. / <p>2017-06-01</p>

International actors from International Organizations, Western States, Think tanks, risk management consultancies, NGOs, and private security companies understand borderless threats like clandestine migration, drug trafficking, and international terrorism to emanate from ‘ungoverned spaces’ in the Global South. The Sahelian sub-region of West Africa has taken a prominent place in global discourses of insecurity and borderless threats. These non-traditional security concerns have been translated into an expanding array of transnational governance initiatives that bring together the activities and practices of a wide range of state and non-state, global and local, and public and private actors in efforts to deal with the challenges that borderless threats are assumed to present. This dissertation argues that attempts to govern drug trafficking in the Sahel are producing global assemblages of security intervention: shifting, multi-scalar, institutional orders that reorient and reconfigure the security practices, knowledges, mentalities, technologies, and priorities of multiple sets of governance actors across disparate jurisdictional spaces. The effects of the transnationalized security governance and capacity-building initiatives that unfold in simultaneous, connected spaces of intervention amplify and alter positions of social power and prominence in local fields of conflict. Through the practices and projects of global security experts and capacity-builders in the Sahel, new forms of international capital are introduced and become realized in local settings that intensify rivalries between local, national, and regional security institutions over the question of the recognition of their authority over security matters. In their relationships with international capacity-builders and other global actors, sets of local recipients of security governance interventions practice forms of extraversion whereby their structural positions of dependence and differentials of power and resources are leveraged to accumulate forms of international capital that they then use to dominate the fields of power in which they are embedded. The dissertation examines three components of the assemblages of security intervention in West Africa: the effects of the transnational field of capacity- building in the Sahelian interior; the establishment and operation of the UNODC Airport Communications drug interdiction project (AIRCOP) at Dakar’s International Airport, and the joint UNODC/World Customs Organization Container Control Programme operating at the port of Dakar. It advances new empirical material from these case studies, and makes contributions to debates in three sub-fields of International Relations: critical security studies, global governance, and international statebuilding.

Tesis para optar al grado de Magíster en Estudios Internacionales / El fenómeno globalizador, no sólo ha consolidado escenarios de comunicaciones de carácter universal, disipando de esta forma las tradicionales fronteras físicas en reemplazo de las virtuales, sino a su vez propiciando un sin fin de oportunidades de características transaccionales entre los distintos Estados de la comunidad internacional. La apertura comunicacional agudiza las brechas sociales de los actores internacionales, más aún en Estados poseedores de estructuras productivas primarias, principalmente, y en atención al objeto de estudio para este análisis, Sudamérica. Ésta además de poseer una estructura comercial enfocada en la producción de materias primas, sufre una fragilidad institucional extendida, lo que propicia un escenario de vulnerabilidad frente a la amenaza del crimen organizado, específicamente al narcotráfico. Los Estados de la región se consolidan en figuras institucionalmente débiles y/o con altos índices de corrupción, que promueven tácitamente, la explotación de espacios físicos y virtuales para la consolidación de focos ilícitos, tales como el narcotráfico. De esta forma logran proyectarse empleando las mismas herramientas que brinda la aludida condición globalizada. A partir de lo anteriormente expuesto, el presente estudio pretende determinar bajo qué mecanismos, en alusión al escenario antes mencionado, dos países otrora antagónicos como Perú y Colombia, logran proyectarse en la actualidad sobre una relación de profundas interacciones, mitigando la amenaza del conflicto convencional. Condición que se pretende analizar, con el propósito de extrapolar dichas herramientas, sobre la relación bilateral entre Chile y Perú. / The globalizing phenomenon has not only consolidated communication scenarios of a universal nature, dissipating the traditional physical boundaries in place of the virtual ones. At the same time propitiating endless opportunities of transactional characteristics among the different States of the international community. The openness of communication intensifies the social gaps of international actors, even more in states that possess primary productive structures, as it happens in response to the object of the present study with South America. The said region, in addition of having a primary commercial structure as mentioned, suffers an extended institutional fragility that causes a scenario of vulnerability facing the threat of organized crime, specifically drug trafficking. The States of the region tend to consolidate into fragile institutional organizations, with high levels of corruption, which tacitly promote the exploitation of physical and virtual spaces for the consolidation of illicit structures, such as drug trafficking. In the same way, they have manage to project these using the same tools provided by the aforementioned prevailing globalized condition. Based on the mentioned facts, the present study aims to determine under what mechanisms, in reference to the previously mentioned scenario, how two once antagonistic countries such as Peru and Colombia, manage nowadays to project themselves on a relation of deep interactions, mitigating the threat of conventional conflict. Condition that is intended to analyze, with the purpose of extrapolating these tools over the bilateral relationship between Chile and Peru.

Drug trafficking is popularly associated with high-levels of violence; however, this relationship does not hold across all cases. This dissertation asks: why do traffickers sometimes decide to use violence, but other times demonstrate restraint? Building on recent work on criminal politics and patterns of drug violence, this dissertation explores how criminal organizations’ choices of strategy impacts drug-related violence in the areas where they operate. I specifically focus on a certain type of trafficker that has received less attention in the academic literature to-date: Central American transportistas. I argue that politics and institutions incentivize drug traffickers to use different strategies in different locations. Specifically, traffickers’ strategies are determined first by whether or not the country where they are operating has institutionalized corruption. In countries where there is institutionalized corruption, the centralization of political power and electoral competition are important in determining whether traffickers will pursue collusion strategies or attempt to co-opt politics. In the absence of institutionalized corruption, I argue traffickers are left with evasion as their only means of operation. These strategies lead to different levels of narco-related violence: collusion results in the lowest levels of violence, evasion yields moderate levels of violence, and co-optation produces the highest levels of violence. In addition, I explore how traffickers’ relationships to communities at the local level further impacts their modus operandi and levels of violence. I show how narcos have assumed roles traditionally associated with the state and gained support and legitimacy within some communities in Central America. I argue that support for illicit economies occurs when (1) traffickers are operating in their own communities, (2) in rural spaces, (3) in highly marginalized areas, and (4) are not reliant on evasive strategies. Communities where narcos have greater levels of support experience lower levels of violence, all else being equal. Moreover, narcos’ strategies vis-à-vis both states and communities have implications not just for the overall level of violence, but also for the visibility, geography, and nature of the violence. I explore this theory with comparative ethnographic methods, drawing on over two years of fieldwork in several drug trafficking hubs along the Caribbean coast of Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica. During this time, I conducted participant observation and spoke with over 200 individuals, including politicians, residents, police, drug dealers, and both former and current traffickers ranging from low to relatively high-level. Ultimately, there are policy lessons evident in the differences in violence related to narco strategies vis-à-vis both states and communities. Illicit economies do not have to be violent. Policy priorities should shift away from intercepting drug shipments and arresting transportistas and instead focus on limiting violence related to the drug trade. / 2025-02-28T00:00:00Z

Drug trafficking and smuggling is an ongoing challenge for law enforcement agencies. Cocaine smuggling is a high-value pursuit for smugglers and has been attempted using a variety of concealment methods including the use of bottled liquids, canned milk, wax and suspensions in cans of beer. In particular, traffickers have used clothing impregnated with cocaine for smuggling. Handling, transportation or re-packaging of drugs of abuse and explosives will inevitably leave residual material on the clothing and other possessions of the involved persons. The nails and skin of the person may also be contaminated through the handling of these substances. This research study describes the development of Raman spectroscopic techniques for the detection of drugs of abuse and explosives on biomaterials of forensic relevance including undyed natural and synthetic fibres and dyed textile specimens, nail and skin. Confocal Raman microscopy has been developed and evaluated for the detection and identification of particulates of several drugs of abuse and explosives on different substrates. The results show that excellent spectroscopic discrimination can be achieved between single particles and substrate materials, giving a ubiquitous non-destructive approach to the analysis of pico-gram quantities of the drugs and explosives in-situ. Isolating the particle in this way corresponds with an analytical sensitivity comparable with the most sensitive analytical techniques currently available e.g. the highly sensitive, yet destructive ionization desorption mass spectrometry. With the confocal Raman approach, this work demonstrates that definitive molecular-specific information can be achieved within seconds without significant interference from the substrate. The potential for the application of this technique as a rapid preliminary, forensic screening procedure is obvious and attractive to non-specialist operators as it does not involve prior chemical pretreatment ii or detachment of the analyte from the substrate. As a result, evidential materials can be analysed without compromising their integrity for future investigation. Also, the applications of benchtop and portable Raman spectroscopy for the in-situ detection of drugs of abuse in clothing impregnated with the drugs have been demonstrated. Raman spectra were obtained from a set of undyed natural and synthetic fibres and dyed textiles impregnated with these drugs. The spectra were collected using three Raman spectrometers; one benchtop dispersive spectrometer coupled to a fibre-optic probe and two portable spectrometers. High quality spectra of the drugs could be acquired in-situ within seconds and without any sample preparation or alteration of the evidential material. A field-portable Raman spectrometer is a reliable instrument that can be used by emergency response teams to rapidly identify unknown samples. This method lends itself well to further development for the in-situ examination by law enforcement officers of items associated with users, handlers and suppliers of drugs of abuse in the forensics arena. In the last section of this study, a portable prototype Raman spectrometer ( DeltaNu Advantage 1064) equipped with 1064 nm laser excitation has been evaluated for the analysis of drugs of abuse and explosives. The feasibility of the instrument for the analysis of the samples both as neat materials and whilst contained in plastic and glass containers has been investigated. The advantages, disadvantages and the analytical potential in the forensics arena of this instrument have been discussed. / Egyptian Government and Sohag University