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Data plays a crucial role in enhancing decision-making within the Criminal Justice System (CJS). The CJS Data Improvement Programme, led by the Ministry of Justice and the Home Office, addresses the challenges of fragmented data across various organisations by fostering a unified approach to data management. By leveraging innovative tools like Splink for data linking, the programme aims to improve policy formulation, operational performance, and system efficiency. This initiative not only promises to refine data-driven strategies across the CJS but also actively seeks participation from skilled data professionals to join and enrich this transformative journey.

PPIC researcher Heather Harris discusses a new report on the effects of policies put in place by California courts to address pandemic conditions, with a focus on remote hearings.

This story was co-published with The Intercept.Students at Northwestern University, in the Chicago suburbs, woke up on October 25 to face an unexpected allegation. "Northwestern complicit in genocide of Palestinians," declared the school's venerable student newspaper, the Daily Northwestern, in a front-page story.The students, however, weren't really looking at the Daily Northwestern. Instead, they had found the Northwestern Daily, a parody newspaper attacking the school's stance on Israel's war on the Gaza Strip. The mock front page featured fake quotes from school officials, accusations of Israeli war crimes, and a fake ad for Birthright Israel — the travel abroad program that sends young American Jews to Israel — with the tagline "One man's home is another man's former home!" Overnight, someone had pinned the mock papers on bulletin boards, spread them on desks in lecture halls, and even wrapped the false front pages around roughly 300 copies of the Daily Northwestern itself.The stunt quickly sparked a furor among Israel's supporters online. One writer, at the conservative National Review, said the fake newspaper included an antisemitic "blood libel." The university itself said the spoof "included images and language about Israel that many in our community found offensive."The parent company of the school paper, Students Publishing Company, or SPC, announced that it had "engaged law enforcement to investigate and find those responsible." The results of the inquiry are just now coming to light. Following the investigation, local prosecutors brought charges against two students for theft of advertising services. The little-known statute appears to only exist in Illinois and California, where it was originally passed to prevent the Ku Klux Klan from distributing recruitment materials in newspapers. The statute makes it illegal to insert an "unauthorized advertisement in a newspaper or periodical." The students, both of whom are Black, now face up to a year in jail and a $2,500 fine."I have never seen anyone charged with theft of advertising," said Elaine Odeh, a lawyer who formerly supervised public defenders in Cook County, Illinois, which includes Evanston, where Northwestern is based.Jon Yates, a spokesperson for Northwestern, told The Intercept and Responsible Statecraft, "The Students Publishing Company, independent publisher of The Daily Northwestern, pursued a criminal complaint related to the publication of the 'fake Daily' this fall. As required by law, University Police pursued a criminal investigation, which led to a citation for violating state law that was issued to multiple students." (SPC is independent from the university, though several professors and students sit on its board of directors.)Some student staffers working for the actual Daily Northwestern are angry that charges are going forward, according to a former Daily Northwestern editor and current student, who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation from school officials. "It's very clear that this is a discriminatory action," the student said. The Daily Northwestern's own editorial board wrote Monday that its publisher should formally request that the case be dropped, calling the investigation "unnecessary and harmful." (Disclosure: I am a graduate of Northwestern's journalism school but was never involved with the Daily Northwestern.)The Class A misdemeanor charges, the highest level short of a felony, represent an escalation in the battle over free speech and protest on college campuses as the war in Gaza drags into its fifth month. Pro-Palestine activism on campus has faced a severe crackdown due to what Israel's backers say is antisemitism and hate speech, with school administrations working closely with police.At American University, school officials enlisted the FBI to help investigate incidents in which students defaced pro-Israel posters. Several colleges have banned or suspended chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine, a popular pro-Palestine group, including at Columbia University, which subsequently beefed up its police presence. And several dozen students at the University of Michigan are facing charges for trespassing after refusing police orders to leave a building.Graham Piro of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a nonprofit specializing in free speech advocacy, said, "It's always a concern when colleges and universities appear to be disproportionately targeting one form of political speech.""Pursue it as a criminal act"At Northwestern, the criminal charges struck many as a serious escalation. One student, who requested anonymity to prevent backlash from family in Israel, said he found the parody "offensive" but felt the charges went too far.Stephanie Kollmann, the policy director of a Northwestern's law school clinic focused on criminal justice, questioned why SPC chose to go directly to the police rather than issuing a cease-and-desist letter to the students. Kollmann said colleges and affiliated institutions often seek to keep incidents out of the courts despite potential criminal conduct. The fact that charges were brought in this case means that SPC, university police, and the state's attorney's office all used their discretion to opt for the harshest response."The idea that multiple people in a chain of reaction to this incident repeatedly decided to not use any of the other tools of reproval available to them," said Kollmann, "but rather chose to pursue it as a criminal act is frankly remarkable."Many at the university are pushing back on the charges. Over 70 student organizations — including high-profile groups like Mayfest Productions, which sponsors an annual music festival on campus — have pledged to not speak with the Daily Northwestern until the charges are dropped. "Even students who have just been generally quiet on what's happening with Israel and Palestine, I've been seeing them speak out for the first time regarding this," said a student organizer, who requested anonymity due to fears of retaliation from the university.More than 5,000 people have signed a student-led petition calling on SPC to drop the charges and alleging that the incident represents "targeted over-policing of Black students." Students and lawyers expressed surprise that prosecutors chose to bring the hammer down using such a little-known law, especially one originally designed to target white supremacist groups. Chicago police have only ever arrested one person under the statute, according to the city's arrest database.The decision of whether to prosecute the charges now rests solely with the local prosecutor, the Cook County State's Attorney's Office, which did not respond to a request for comment. SPC, however, can join students in asking prosecutors to drop the case, which could influence their decision-making going forward.SPC's board of directors, for its part, denies that political motivations had anything to do with its decision to report the incident to police. "This is not an issue of free speech or parody," the board said in a statement. "[J]ust as you cannot take over the airwaves of a TV station or the website of a publication, you also cannot disrupt the distribution of a student newspaper."The board includes several prominent journalists and media executives, including longtime ESPN personality J.A. Adande, CNN legal director Steve Kiehl, and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Robert Samuels.The war in Gaza has created a litany of challenges for Northwestern. President Michael Schill initially drew backlash when, shortly after October 7, he said the school would not take a position on the conflict. Schill issued a second statement just a day later, in which he condemned Hamas's attacks as "barbaric acts" that are "clearly antithetical to Northwestern's values."Some faculty and students have loudly condemned the school, saying it's showed a bias against pro-Palestinian activists. However, pro-Israel advocates claim Schill has failed to protect Jewish students. Alums for Campus Fairness dropped a cool $600,000 on ads attacking Schill, including a 30-second spot that ran during Northwestern's bowl game. The ad alleged that student groups "resoundingly support" Hamas and called on the school to "take decisive action against individuals violating university policy."Evgeny Stolyarov, a Jewish student at Northwestern who supports a ceasefire in Gaza, said that the charges will have a "chilling effect on speech" related to the war. "If this was done about literally any other topic, there would not be this amount of blowback," Stolyarov said. "It also, in some ways, reinvigorates the student body," he added. "Hopefully this ends up bringing activists on campus together."

Many people take drugs because they like the feeling they experience by doing so. This is a more extreme version of why some people smoke cigarettes or drink alcohol. Most do so because they like it and most don't become addicts.Because most drugs are illegal, they are traded on the black market, setting their users and suppliers at odds with the law. Because they are illicit and underground, there is little to no quality control, leading to deaths from adulterated or over-strength supplies.Their illegality makes them expensive as suppliers risk prosecution and punishment, as well as considerable price gouging. The profits to be had from their sale leads to violent turf wars, as gangs fight for control of the trade. It echoes what happened in the United States during the prohibition era. People in the UK, especially young people, are killed in the street by members of rival gangs fighting for control of a very lucrative business.Several US states and Canada have joined the growing list of countries that have legalized the recreational use of cannabis. If the UK were to do the same, it would lead to better quality control and enable age checks to be made as the illegal market would dry up if the legal market were allowed to prosper through light regulations and licensing. It would free up much of the logjam on courts and prisons, and end the conflict between recreational users and the police. The Treasury, rather than the criminals, would gain revenue.The legalization of cannabis would take one widely used recreational drug off the black market. The same could be done with cocaine (8.7% of the population) and MDMA (Ecstasy), (1.9% of the population) both in quite widespread use. Their legalization would free up large numbers of police to deal with more serious crimes in which other people are victims.Heroin was once available on prescription to registered addicts to consume at home, and it was seen as a problem that it could circulate to others. This could be resolved by setting up clinics manned by medical personnel, in which hard drugs such as heroin could be obtained for consumption on the premises, after medical inspection and advice. This would treat addiction as a medical, rather than a criminal, problem, and address it by medical personnel instead of with law enforcement officers. It would bring quality control and safety to the fore, and remove the current illicit drugs trade that underlies so much crime.It could be argued that legalization would lead to increased use, just as the ending of prohibition led to increased alcohol consumption. US voters went for repeal because the alternative was Al Capone and his ilk. The UK is in an Al Capone situation with illegal drugs, and could similarly end it by repealing the prohibition of them.

How Americans interact with government shapes the way they view government policy. This is no more apparent than in the criminal justice system. In new research, Allison Anoll and Andrew Engelhardt examine how the attitudes towards criminal justice reform among white and Black Americans is influenced by their experiences of being stopped by police. They … Continued

Megan T. Stevenson is an active researcher in the criminal-justice-and-economics literature. She has also noted a disconcerting fact: When you look at the published studies that use randomized control trial methods to evaluate ways of reducing crime, most of the studies don’t show a meaningful effect, and of those that do show a meaningful effect, … Continue reading Do Randomized Control Trials Support Real-World Policy Reforms?
The post Do Randomized Control Trials Support Real-World Policy Reforms? first appeared on Conversable Economist.

American militarism has many authors. From lawmakers on Capitol Hill and policy makers in the executive branch to the defense industry and its army of lobbyists, many in Washington and beyond have an interest, whether political or financial (or both), in keeping the Pentagon's coffers overstuffed and the global U.S. military machine humming. Unfortunately America's fourth estate doesn't do a very good job of keeping an overly militaristic U.S. foreign policy in check. On the contrary, it too is a key pillar that buttresses America's dependence on aggression abroad. Looking back at much of the mainstream media's national security coverage this past year — from Ukraine and Gaza to China and the military industrial complex — 2023, with few exceptions, was no different.The War in UkraineMainstream media failures in covering the war in Ukraine this year ranged from seeming to downplay questions about who blew up the Nord Stream pipeline and ignoring key flashpoints that could have expanded the conflict into a direct U.S. war with Russia.But back in June, the New York Times' Paul Krugman provided a window into how many top journalists and pundits view U.S. foreign policy more broadly, and the war in Ukraine specifically: through the lens of American exceptionalism. Krugman used the D-Day anniversary this year to lament that Americans and other Western democracies weren't sufficiently supportive of Ukraine's war against Russia, saying then that if the country's counteroffensive fails (which by now it has), "it will be a disaster not just for Ukraine but for the world."As RS noted at the time, Krugman's argument "follows a problematic pattern among many in the media whose historical reference point will always be World War II and in turn believe the United States can apply that experience to any other world problem no matter how dissimilar or unrelated it is, or whether even a military solution is required." Of course there were many calling for a more diplomatic approach to ending the war then and the evidence six months later suggests they were right.A month before Krugman's article, the Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg and Anne Applebaum published a lengthy article running along the same themes. The piece was based largely on an uncritical relay of an interview with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that crescendos to a call for taking back Crimea — a maximalist military objective that most sober observers believe to be unachievable — and overthrowing Putin, all in the name of a global struggle between good and evil. Except, as QI's Anatol Lieven pointed out then, most of the rest of the world doesn't see it that way."It is not that people in these countries approve of the Russian invasion of Ukraine," Lieven wrote in RS. "It is that they do not perceive such a huge difference between the regional hegemonic ambitions and criminal actions of Russia and the global ones of the United States; and they are thoroughly sick of having their opinions and interests ignored by Washington in the name of an American moral superiority that actual U.S. policies in their parts of the world have repeatedly belied."The China boogeymanThis year kicked off with a turn-it-up-to-11 media hyperventilation about the infamous Chinese spy balloon that, according to the Pentagon at least, turned out to never have spied. But the incident was indicative of how Washington and the mainstream media generally deal with U.S. policy toward China: freak out first and maybe — just maybe — ask questions later.CBS's flagship news magazine 60 Minutes is a primary offender of this approach. Back in March, 60 Minutes ran a lengthy piece seemingly aimed at scaring Americans about the size of China's navy and about the U.S. is lagging behind — classic China threat inflation that is common in Washington. Except the navy officers 60 Minutes interviewed didn't see it that way, and neither did experts RS interviewed about the segment."The U.S. Navy appears to believe it's ready to take on China," RS reported then, adding, "[b]ut lawmakers who stand to benefit from hyping the China threat don't. And that in a nutshell is the military-industrial-complex, or in this case, the military-industrial-congressional-media-complex."Back in August, an NBC Nightly News segment perfectly illustrated how the mainstream media, perhaps inadvertently, builds public support for confrontation with China. The segment hyped a fairly routine, if even U.S. prompted, Russian and Chinese military exercise in international waters off the coast of Alaska. NBC News presented the event as a five-alarm fire. However, experts, and even the U.S. military, didn't think it was that big of a deal.The war in GazaIf anything can represent how mainstream U.S. media has, for the most part, covered the tragic Hamas attack on Israel on October 7 and Israel's response, it's this headline from CNN on December 6:

The "man in military fatigues" was of course an Israeli soldier, which CNN later acknowledged. But the episode is emblematic of a general problem of mainstream media leaning in on the Israeli narrative of the conflict, which prevents Americans more generally from getting a full understanding of the conflict, including not just legitimate Israeli claims but also Palestinian concerns about the occupation and the prospects of a future state. That in turn leads to the promotion of misguided notions like support for Palestinian rights equaling support for Hamas.Roots of the problemWe also saw many instances this year of why, in part, an American exceptionalist view of U.S. foreign policy tends to guide mainstream U.S. media coverage. First, news outlets often publish essays and opinion pieces arguing for a more militaristic American posture by writers who are funded by foreign governments or the defense industry. Most often — as was the case this year with the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and Bloomberg, for example — those potential conflicts are not disclosed. Second, there are other media outlets that are openly underwritten by titans of the defense industry. And once again this year, we saw the potential impacts of those investments. For example, one particular November article in Politico — whose foreign policy coverage is sponsored in part by Lockheed Martin — uncritically relayed baseless concerns from the Pentagon that it was running out of money, a notion that one military spending expert told RS "doesn't hold water."***The examples above from this year are part of just a small sample of how mainstream media outlets generally cover U.S. foreign policy. There are exceptions of course but the incentives to feed the stream of militarism are far greater than the forces against it. Will 2024 be any different?

PPIC's policy director for criminal justice Magnus Lofstrom presents findings from a new report examining whether younger generations of Californians are less criminally active than earlier generations and discusses the broader implications of these trends.

Jeffrey Miron


This article appeared on SubStack on July 3, 2023.
Last week Maine legalized the sale—but not the purchase—of prostitution services, becoming the first state to enact such a law. (Nevada allows legal prostitution in counties with fewer than 700,000 residents; Rhode Island had no law against indoor prostitution between 1980 and 2009.)
Maine's policy is a step in the right direction, but as with laws that legalize drug possession but not production or sale, removing criminal penalties from only one side of the market is a minor step that can be worse than no legalization at all.
Under partial legalization, the prostitution market remains underground, with all the attendant negatives: violence, corruption, and poor "quality control," meaning greater transmission of sexually transmitted diseases.
De‐​criminalizing only the supply side improves the well‐​being of prostitutes. The risk, however, is that when other evils of underground markets continue, some observers assert that legalization has failed. This happens repeatedly in debates over decriminalized drug markets.
The ideal policy is therefore full legalization of prostitution that involves consenting adults. Child prostitution and trafficking are different stories, since both involve coercion (presumptively for children, as with statutory rape laws, or explicitly for children and adults when traffickers use deception and force). The most effective way to eliminate these components of the market is full legalization of adult, voluntary transactions.

Contributor(s): Dr Simon Bastow, Professor Nicola Lacey, Dr Sharon Shalev | Welcome to LSE IQ, a new monthly podcast from the London School of Economics and Political Science. This is the podcast where we ask some of the leading social scientists - and other experts - to answer intelligent questions about economics, politics or society. It is with alarming regularity that reports of prison violence, overcrowding and concerns over the impact of funding cuts are hitting the headlines. With 46% of all prisoners reoffending within a year of release last year, the system could be considered not just expensive and unpleasant, but failing. In this episode, Jess Winterstein takes a look at the prison system in England and Wales and asks, is our prison system broken? This episode features: Dr Simon Bastow, LSE Fellow, Department of Management; Professor Nicola Lacey, School Professor of Law, Gender and Social Policy at LSE; and Dr Sharon Shalev, a fellow of the Mannheim Centre for the Study of Criminology and Criminal Science at LSE and founder of SolitaryConfinement.org For further information about the podcast visit lse.ac.uk/iq and please tell us what you think using the hashtag #LSEIQ.

UPDATE, 1/16: Trump won the Iowa caucuses early-on Monday night, with 51% of the vote totals, followed by Ron DeSantis at 21%, Nikki Haley at 19%, and Vivek Ramaswamy, who later suspended his campaign, at 8%. In exit polling, 12% voters said that foreign policy was their most important issue going into the caucuses, behind the economy (38%) and immigration (34%).On the eve of the Iowa Caucus, a Donald Trump caucus captain said that Nikki Haley was a "warmonger" and a shill for the Deep State, and that Ron DeSantis was pretty much the same.Welcome to the beginning of the 2024 Republican primary contests where foreign policy is very much a part of the conversation.While Trump is still far ahead of his primary competitors, the battle for a distant second is in play. A Des Moines Register/NBC News poll last week showed Trump with 48 percent in Iowa, Haley at 20 percent and DeSantis at 16 percent. Vivek Ramaswamy trails in fourth with 8 percent. The Iowa caucuses begin tonight at 8 p.m. EST.Just as noteworthy, an Associated Press poll released in early January revealed that, "Foreign policy has gained importance among respondents from both parties. Some 46% of Republicans named it, up from 23% last year. And 34% of Democrats list foreign policy as a focal point, compared with 16% a year ago.""It also shows that the Israeli-Hamas war is feeding public anxiety," AP noted, reporting that double the amount of Americans are bringing up foreign policy now as compared to last year's polling on the same subject. The data also showed concerns about U.S. involvement with the Ukraine conflict were about where they were a year ago.But via their positions on both the Israel-Gaza and Russia-Ukraine conflicts, this is a diverse GOP presidential field when it comes to foreign policy.Donald TrumpThe current Republican frontrunner boasted in the spring that he would settle the Ukraine-Russia war in 24 hours. "The key is the war has to stop now because Ukraine is being obliterated," Trump said in March.Meanwhile, he has issued intermittent and mixed messages on Israel-Gaza, though often seems to imply it was a problem of those entities and not necessarily the U.S."So you have a war that's going on, and you're probably going to have to let this play out," Trump told Univision in November. "You're probably going to have to let it play out because a lot of people are dying."Trump appeared to acknowledge that as far as grievances, there were two sides regarding Palestine and the Jewish state. "There is no hatred like the Palestinian hatred of Israel and Jewish people. And probably the other way around also, I don't know," the former president said. "You know, it's not as obvious, but probably that's it too. So sometimes you have to let things play out and you have to see where it ends." Trump has called what was taking place in Gaza "unbelievable."Nikki HaleyIf Trump's inclination on both Ukraine and Gaza is somewhere between diplomacy and letting things play out, there are not two sides in these conflicts for Nikki Haley. For the former United Nations ambassador, there is the impenetrable righteousness of Ukraine and Israel, and the undebatable evil of Russia and Palestine.And she wants the U.S. fully backing the good guys of both. If you liked George W. Bush kicking off the Global War on Terror by declaring, "either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists," then Haley is your candidate.For Republicans, particularly in leadership and the donor class, for whom Bush-Cheney still represents the fundamental approach to Republican foreign policy — trying desperately to ignore that attitudes in the Trump-era base have changed — Haley is unquestionably their candidate.Not surprisingly, neoconservative lodestar Bill Kristol is a big Haley fan, and on the flipside, antiwar Republican Sen. Rand Paul recently launched a 'Never Nikki' campaign.Ron DeSantisBut if some Trump supporters revel in calling Haley a "warmonger," Ron DeSantis, who began his campaign promoting himself as a more responsible or viable version of Trump, now often gets lumped in with Haley.After calling Ukraine-Russia a "territorial dispute" in March 2023, the Florida governor seemed quick to walk back his remark, calling Russian head Vladimir Putin a "war criminal."In contrast, Trump has been urged to call Putin a war criminal but has refused to do so, while also admitting Russia "made a mistake" in invading Ukraine. "If you say he's a war criminal it's going to be a lot tougher to make a deal to get this thing stopped," Trump said in May.Haley has said she thinks President Biden isn't being aggressive enough with Russia.DeSantis has said it is far more important to support Israel than Ukraine, and that he would not try to stop Israel's war in Gaza, going so far as to say in the last Republican debate that he would support "mass removal" of the Palestinians.Vivek RamaswamyThe clearest '"America First" foreign policy message in 2024 to date on these two conflicts has not come from Trump, but entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who doesn't want the U.S. involved in the Russia-Ukraine war and says a negotiated peace with Ukraine giving up some territory is the only solution. "I don't think it is preferable for Russia to be able to invade a sovereign country that is its neighbor, but I think the job of the U.S. president is to look after American interests," Ramaswamy said in June. Haley has said Putin is "salivating" over a Ramswamy presidency — a neocon tactic used in the past on anti-war Republican candidates like Ron Paul, who was constantly accused of siding with America's enemies.Ramaswamy has said Israel had the right to defend itself after the October 7 terrorist attacks, but opposes U.S. intervention and aid, but also says that aid should be contingent on what actions Israel's government takes in Gaza."Israel is barreling toward a potentially catastrophic ground invasion of Gaza without clear objectives," Ramaswamy said in late October. "'Destroy Hamas' is not on its own a viable or coherent strategy."The fight for the foreign policy mantleTwo decades after the Global War on Terror, some candidates still run to carry on the legacy of George W. Bush, but others — even frontrunners — appear to reject that kind of foreign policy.The same goes for some Republican voters, though they appear split on the Ukraine and Israel issues. While a growing number oppose more aid to Ukraine for example, a plurality say the U.S. is not doing enough to support Israel in its war on Gaza and are more likely than Democrats to support Israel's bombardment and siege of the Palestinian territory. There is some hope, with restrainers on the conservative side quite vocally questioning not only the strategic thinking behind Biden's recent strikes against the Houthis, but their constitutionality.What does a Republican foreign policy look like in 2024? We won't know for some time, but it's arguably more of a question than an answer right now than at any time in modern party history.

The Biden administration recently established a new system for responding to incidents in which a U.S. arms recipient is suspected of using American-made weapons to injure or kill civilians. The policy represents the first systematic approach to monitoring when and where U.S. arms sales cause civilian casualties and aligns well with the Biden administration's Conventional Arms Transfer (CAT) policy. But an executive order is not enough to durably improve oversight of U.S. arms transfers. Congress should codify the new system into law, ensuring that it receives the resources and attention it needs to make an impact and making it impossible for a future president to end the program on a whim. Losing this policy, or otherwise allowing it to languish, would mean eliminating the first process for tracking and punishing those who harm civilians with U.S. weapons. Having such a system in place is important because the United States itself has a terrible track record of harming civilians. And until now, the government did not appear to care about how many more were harmed by U.S. weapons in the hands of others.The policy, known as Civilian Harm Incident Response Guidance (CHIRG), compels State Department officials to investigate and potentially penalize reported abuses of U.S. weapons abroad. Under this system, U.S. government officials will examine allegations of abuse reported by diplomatic or intelligence officials, the United Nations, international media, or civil society groups. If investigators deem a report valid, they will recommend a course of action that could include intensifying military training and education to shore up issues, curbing future arms sales until the recipient addresses its human rights problems, or other authorized diplomatic responses.There are multiple security and humanitarian reasons to institutionalize such a policy. For example, there is evidence that U.S. national security is threatened when it sends arms to nations that frequently violate human rights. These risks include American-made weapons threatening U.S. troops, strengthening relations between autocrats and terrorist or criminal groups, and preventing less risky and strategically important partners like Taiwan from getting the weapons that they need.The Cato Institute's 2022 Arms Sales Risk Index analyzes the risks presented by every U.S. weapons recipient. While this year's index shows that the Biden administration has thus far sold weapons to a less risky portfolio of clients than its two most recent predecessors, the White House continues to dole out significant numbers of weapons to some of the world's riskiest countries, like Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Egypt.Furthermore, the CHIRG allows the administration to finally put actions to its words. Biden's CAT policy claims that the United States will strive to "prevent arms transfers that risk facilitating or otherwise contributing to violations of human rights or international humanitarian law." Nonetheless, the White House continues approving massive weapons sales to some of the worst human rights abusers, including a recent deal to give 31 advanced drones to India despite concerns about the actions of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. A new policy analyzing civilian harm will at least force U.S. officials to confront the consequences of their decisions.In fact, the CHIRG should reduce the risk of civilian casualties from problematic clients. The new system would theoretically impose some degree of punishment — including potentially delaying or ending weapons transfers — against countries like Saudi Arabia if, for example, Riyadh continues to use U.S. weapons to intentionally target civilians in Yemen.Nonetheless, the CHIRG does contain potential pitfalls, similar to those found in the Leahy Laws. The Leahy Laws focus on preventing the president from providing U.S. security assistance to military units that have committed a gross violation of human rights. This vetting process often lacks any real bite because there is little guidance as to how to document instances of human rights abuses, vague definitions of what constitutes "civilian harm," a reporting system that is difficult to use, and a lack of transparency. The CHIRG will likely face similar problems. Moreover, the CHIRG does not currently specify the exact consequences of violations, nor the resources required to undertake such an initiative.Despite the problems associated with the Leahy Laws, Congress did codify them after more than a decade of yearly reauthorizations. This means that, to end the Leahy Laws, a president would need Congress to pass new legislation — no small feat in a gridlocked legislature.The lack of codification for the CHIRG means that, at any point, a presidential administration can undo this policy. Absent congressional action to codify the CHIRG, it will likely be undone by a future administration that wants to sell more weapons to risky countries like Saudi Arabia.Fortunately, Congress can codify this legislation. In fact, recent research shows that Congress has a good opportunity of successfully doing so in the near future. Even the Leahy Laws — named for democratic Senator Patrick Leahy, initially passed under President Bill Clinton, and codified under President Barack Obama — passed with the support of a Republican-controlled Congress. The key was framing the legislation as a way to publicly restrict Clinton's foreign policy authority following arms transfer scandals in Colombia. The timing is also ripe to codify the CHIRG according to new findings about how lawmakers develop foreign policy, which show that the legislature tends to pass measures to restrict presidential authority abroad during bipartisan congresses.The CHIRG is a positive step forward for reducing risk in arms sales, but without congressional codification to clarify the ambiguities, it will create only moderate improvements — like the Leahy Laws — until a new president decides to end the policy.

Daniel Raisbeck


Any American who smoked pot in the 1970's likely came across Colombian marijuana. In 1979, in fact, Colombia was providing "roughly two‐​thirds of all the pot smoked" in the United States, according to Time Magazine. The industry certainly was illegal, but it also arose from an exemplary instance of bicultural exchange and bilateral trade. It was, after all, American Peace Corps volunteers who came across the legendary "Santa Marta Gold" strain on Colombia's Caribbean coast, thus kicking off the country's decade‐​long "marijuana bonanza."
The boom times for Colombian pot came to an end due to the onset of the War on Drugs—which President Nixon officially declared in 1971— and the rapid rise of indoor cannabis farming in the fifty states. Today, with nearly half of U.S. states having legalized recreational consumption, and with the end of federal prohibition perhaps in sight, is there any chance that Colombian cannabis can regain its former glory days—this time legally— in the American market? Much depends on if, when, and how federal prohibition is repealed, but also on Colombia's capacity to reform its own byzantine drug laws.
A law approved in 1986 (no. 30) defined any quantity up to 20 grams of marijuana as the "minimum dose" for personal consumption, and it applied a series of criminal charges for its possession. In 1994, however, Colombia's Constitutional Court ruled that no individual could be penalized for carrying said minimum dose. However, the law, which is still in effect, makes it a criminal offense to possess or carry a narcotic, "whatever its quantity, for the purpose of distribution or sale."
As I wrote in Foreign Policy, the minimum dose rule provides a good example of Colombia's trademark legalism: unless one grows cannabis oneself (more on which later), the only way to obtain a legal gram for personal consumption—or 20—is by buying it, illegally.
Eventually, local drug warriors would have their say. In 2009, former president Alvaro Uribe passed a Legislative Act (no. 2) which altered Article 49 of the constitution so as to prohibit "the possession and consumption of narcotic or psychotropic substances, unless prescribed by a medical doctor." The following year, Uribe's government introduced a bill (Law 248) that sought to regulate the legislative act and criminalize the minimum dose. The objective, professors Hernando Londoño and Adrian Restrepo argue, was to bolster the war against the drug cartels by targeting internal consumption. This latter initiative failed and the minimum dose was maintained. Nonetheless, by enshrining drug prohibition in the constitution, Uribe made any future reform of the country's drug laws extremely difficult.
In 2015, when the government of former president Juan Manuel Santos sought to legalize medical marijuana, it had to resort to a decree (2467) that expanded on Law 30 of 1986. The decree regulated cannabis production for "strictly medical or scientific purposes." While legalizing the medical use of marijuana was a step in the right direction, the local industry has been saddled by red tape.
For instance, physicians still are allowed to prescribe only manufactured cannabis‐​based products, not dry cannabis flower. Also, the use of CBD—a multibillion‐​dollar industry in the U.S.—is not allowed in Colombian food, beverages, supplements, or veterinary products. Since the local market has not been allowed to develop, local cannabis firms—including a few that raised funds in the U.S. and are even listed on the Nasdaq—are on the verge of bankruptcy. Potential investors, meanwhile, are eyeing other markets, and rightly so.
The black market, however, has thrived, not least because the 2015 decree allowed the "self‐​cultivation" of up to 20 cannabis plants for personal use without a license from the Health Ministry. Since each plant can produce around a kilo of marijuana, massive amounts of pot are grown legally, only to be transported and sold illegally. Which is to say, Colombian lawmakers have created the worst of all worlds for consumers and legal producers alike, this in spite of the industry's immense potential to generate profits, jobs, and tax revenues.
But Colombia's Congress now has a chance to unravel the marijuana muddle. A new Legislative Act, introduced by Representative Juan Carlos Losada, a member of the Liberal Party, seeks to insert an exception for adult, recreational cannabis consumption into Article 49 of the constitution. This would create a legal market to buy, sell, and distribute marijuana in Colombia. After being approved in seven debates in Congress, Losada's project faces one final hurdle in the Senate on Thursday, June 15.
Legislators should approve the measure. Colombian conservatives should keep in mind that extreme leftist Gustavo Petro, the current president, did not bring forth the initiative (despite his supposedly revolutionary stance against the drug war). Hence, supporting marijuana legalization does not involve supporting the government. Center‐​right politicians also should remember the words of the great Alvaro Gómez, the conservative leader who warned as early as 1976 that the war on drugs was doomed to failure.
Regulating marijuana use for adults, on the other hand, implies seizing the local market from violent, criminal gangs and leaving it in the hands of the legal, regulated businesses that can assure quality, safety, and transparency. Eventually, when the United States and other countries open their markets to cannabis products from other latitudes, Colombia can regain its standing as a global exporting powerhouse. Far more than foreign aid handouts, the country could use a legal marijuana bonanza.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro sent shockwaves through the diplomatic world recently when he accused Israel of carrying out a "genocide" in Gaza."The head of the state who carries out this genocide is a criminal against humanity," Petro wrote on X. "Their allies cannot talk about democracy."The comments are remarkable for a leader of Colombia, which has historically stuck with the United States on matters of international affairs. "It was just kind of unimaginable for the Colombian government to take a position like that, that would be so divergent from the U.S.," said Alex Main, the director of international policy at the Center for Economic and Policy Research.Petro, who is the country's first-ever left-wing president, has doubled down on his criticism of Israel in recent weeks. He retweeted a poster depicting a cartoon baby being menaced by Israeli rifles and called Israel's attack on the Al-Shifa hospital a "war crime," promised to petition the United Nations to make Palestine a full member state, and threatened to bring Israel before the International Criminal Court.And Petro is far from alone in Latin America. While most states in the region condemned Hamas's initial attack, their harsh response to the Israeli offensive in Gaza has only been equalled by that of Arab- and Muslim-majority countries. Belize and Bolivia both cut ties with Israel over the war, and Colombia, Chile, and Honduras have all recalled their ambassadors from Tel Aviv. Even states that consider themselves neutral on the conflict — like Brazil and Argentina — have issued withering condemnations of Israel's attacks on civilians in Gaza. "This is not a war," said Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. "This is a genocide."So why are Latin American leaders so pro-Palestine? Experts who spoke with RS said it mostly comes down to three factors: Latin America's increasing independence from the U.S.; the rise of left-wing and indigenous movements; and the presence of large Arab diasporas in much of the region.U.S. pressure 'doesn't count as much as it used to'Brazil's Lula, as he is popularly known, has spent much of his first year back in office carving out an independent path for the country's foreign policy. The leftist leader led a charge for talks to end the war in Ukraine while helping to bolster the influence of BRICS, a geopolitical grouping meant to offset the G7 that he had helped found in the late 2000s. So when a new round of fighting broke out in Israel-Palestine, there was little doubt that Lula would jump in with a pitch to solve it.In practice, this meant leading an effort to pass a United Nations Security Council resolution calling for humanitarian pauses to allow much-needed aid into Gaza. But his initiative hit a wall when the U.S. vetoed the resolution. That, combined with growing pressure from his domestic allies as well as the evacuation of Brazilians stuck in Gaza, led Lula to turn up his rhetoric on Israel's offensive, according to Guilherme Casaroes, a senior researcher at the Brazilian Center of International Relations."He's defending the right of Israel to exist, but not the right of Israel to massacre Palestinians in Gaza," Casaroes argued, adding that Lula views his approach to the conflict as a balancing act aimed at reaching a two-state solution. (The Brazilian leader is not the first to advocate for such a path forward; in fact, Brazil presided over the 1947 U.N. vote in favor of the partition of Mandatory Palestine.)The episode, experts say, highlights the extent to which American influence has waned in Latin America since the height of the unipolar moment after the first Gulf War.The U.S. has privately "expressed disappointment with governments that have done things like recall their ambassadors, or referred to genocide or used strong language and so on," according to Main of CEPR, who has extensive contacts in Latin American governments. "But that pressure doesn't count as much as it used to," he argued. "It's a region that's changed enormously in terms of its dependence on the U.S. and the level of influence that the U.S. can have on foreign policy."The 'pink tide' rolls onThe pro-Palestine stance of many Latin American leaders also stems from the "pink tide" of left-wing and indigenous activists who have taken power in recent years. Left-of-center politicians now hold power in two-thirds of Latin American states, representing more than 90 percent of the region's population and GDP.As Main noted, these groups have long been involved in Palestine solidarity campaigns and other indigenous rights movements, especially since Israel had helped to arm many of the region's most oppressive 20th century governments.For many activists in the region, the disappointment of the Oslo peace process in the 1990s led them to view the situation in Israel-Palestine as little more than a new form of colonialism, according to Casaroes."The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is very often pictured in the back of the minds of Latin American leaders as the conflict between the oppressor, which is Israel, and the oppressed, which are the Palestinians," he said.This helps to explain why the Latin American left has been so united on this issue, as opposed to the war in Ukraine, which has pitted progressive leaders like Chile's Gabriel Boric against traditional leftist stalwarts like Lula and Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.While Boric has largely stood alone in his strong support for Ukraine, he has joined his fellow leftists in excoriating Israel for its conduct in Gaza and even withdrew Chile's ambassador from Tel Aviv. "These Hamas attacks are without justification, they deserve global condemnation, but the response by Benjamin Netanyahu's government also deserves our clearest condemnation," Boric argued following a meeting with Biden in Washington earlier this month.Deep ties to the Arab worldThe Arab diaspora in Latin America is also a major force behind pro-Palestine activism. Brazil alone has some 16 million citizens of Arab descent, and Chile has the largest Palestinian population of any country outside of the Middle East.
The phenomenon of Arab migration to the region dates back to the late 1800s, when many Lebanese and Syrian migrants fled to the Americas to escape the death throes of the Ottoman Empire. Palestinians followed in waves after each major war between Israel and Arab states.
This large diaspora has significant political influence across the region, with Arab politicians holding top positions in many governments. Fully 10 percent of Brazil's parliament had Arab origins as of 2016, according to the Washington Post.
Contrast this with the region's relatively small Jewish community, which numbered only 500,000 in 2017. As Main noted, Latin American Jews who support Israel also have no equivalent to powerful U.S. Zionist groups like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which will reportedly spend $100 million next year to try to push lawmakers advocating for a ceasefire in Gaza out of office.
Of course, there are notable exceptions in the Arab diaspora. El Salvador's president, Nayib Bukele, is of Palestinian descent but has thrown his full support behind Israel's campaign in Gaza. But, experts say, most Arabs in the region still favor Palestine over Israel.
A new shift, however, could upset the region's political balance in the coming years, according to Casaroes. Latin America has an increasingly large evangelical Christian movement whose leaders see the state of Israel as a crucial part of their theology of the "end times." And survey research suggests that, as a country's evangelical population grows, so does its support for Israel.This has already led to political dust-ups in places like Brazil, where former President Jair Bolsonaro has made pro-Israel activism a key part of his efforts to bolster his evangelical support. Bolsonaro sparked a controversy earlier this month when he met with Israel's ambassador to Brazil, a move that a ruling party official condemned as a "spurious alliance" between the former leader and the foreign diplomat.

On May 20, the International Criminal Court announced that it was seeking arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his defense minister, and three leaders of Hamas for war crimes committed in Gaza. President Biden denounced this demand, stating that, "There is no equivalence between Israel and Hamas," and also denied that Israel was carrying out a genocide. This is part of a long-running pattern for Biden and his advisers. A recently implemented policy — National Security Memorandum 20 — requires regular reports to Congress on U.S. weapons supplied to countries engaged in active armed conflict to determine whether those recipients are engaging in violations of international human rights law. This year Israel was among the seven countries requiring such reports. While the evidence is overwhelming that the Israeli military is indeed guilty of such violations, the report issued this month by the Biden administration concluded that the evidence was not sufficient to justify reducing arms sales.Instead the U.S. is sending more weapons, as the president notified Congress on May 14 of a renewed commitment of more than $1 billion. A left-wing podcast has named Biden and three key advisers who are blocking any reduction in arms or military support to Israel: Secretary of State Antony Blinken, national security adviser Jake Sullivan, and Brett McGurk, the president's Middle East coordinator.They are all standing firm in resisting the pressure to reduce support for Israel, despite unprecedented criticism. Annelle Sheline, a former State Department official who resigned in protest over the administration's handling of Gaza observed that "in general, the administration seems to view Israel's military operations in Gaza as a PR issue, rather than grappling with the significant political as well as moral questions raised by Israeli actions." Sheline had previously worked for the Quincy Institute, which publishes Responsible Statecraft.The wave of student protests against U.S. military support for Israel to date are similar in scale to those against the South African government in the 1980s. Encampments at Berkeley and elsewhere mirror the shantytowns built on U.S. campuses, and have sprung up in a fraction of the time.Internal dissent has been most visible in the State Department, where three U.S. diplomats have resigned and spoken out publicly. In the Department of the Interior, Linda Greenberg Call became the first Jewish Biden political appointment to resign, accusing the president of using Jews to justify his support for the war in Gaza. Almost 200 lawyers working in U.S. government posts prepared a legal brief concluding that "supplying Israel with unconditional military aid to continue its bombardment on the Gaza Strip is not only totally disingenuous, but also severely inadequate to fulfill the U.S.'s obligations to prevent and punish genocide." Why does Biden refuse to curb the flow of offensive weapons to Israel? Peter Baker of the New York Times does not answer this question. Instead he describes differences among the president's key advisers, including Blinken, Sullivan, and McGurk, about how to engage with Netanyahu and respond to the ongoing violence, urging symbolic acts such as a delay in shipping heavier bombs. When asked about these alleged differences, Sheline said, "I would say that although it's quite plausible that different high level figures inside the White House have different views, in practice these divisions have yet to have any impact on policy, which seems to come directly from Biden himself." The Biden administration is still wedded to the hope of an Israeli grand bargain with authoritarian Gulf states. This "Abraham Accords" strategy, starting during the Trump administration with Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates in 2020, aims to ensure stability in the Middle East by setting up Israel and powerful Arab states as regional policemen, excluding the Palestinians. This combined with the entrenched support of the donor class for Israel means that Biden and company continue to cling to the Abraham Accords. To do so, however, requires denying the realities of the war in Gaza. As four willfully blind mice, Biden, Blinken, Sullivan and McGurk continue a futile chase, with Netanyahu playing the farmer's wife in the classic nursery rhyme.