Reading about crime in post-intervention societies: a critical assessment

Contemporary conflicts often arise from distrust among certain ethnic, religious or militant groups who no longer believe that the local government and its legal system are able to guarantee and defend their individual and collective rights, their cultural identity and their personal or collective safety. Discrimination, corruption and abuse of power by law enforcement officials or the military, fuel and exacerbate conflicts. Since it is commonly accepted that safeguarding domestic security is a crucial precondition for achieving sustainable peace and the best guarantee against the pernicious consequences of conflicts such as enduring instability, streams of refugees and the prevalence of organized crime, interventions in the post-Cold War era have increasingly put the spotlight on the internal security situation of war-torn societies. Because criminal violence and lawlessness have a disrupting impact on post-intervention societies as a whole, the prevention and control of crime is a vital aspect of procuring that security. This contribution provides an overview of our current understanding of crime in post-intervention societies and the typical reaction to it (exporting the community-based police model) through a literature study. The objective of this paper is to highlight where the existing literature falls short, where more research is needed, how and why. It also critically addresses the basic principles of international (military) interventions, the basic doctrines behind them and assumptions concerning the nature, levels and prevention of crime in post-intervention societies