The Case Against Police Militarization

Militarization and Aggressive Policing

Events in Ferguson and Baltimore in the United States in the past 3 years have brought to light issues related to the militarization of police and adverse police–citizen interactions. Through federal programs and grants, local law enforcement agencies have been able to acquire surplus military items to combat terrorism and drug activity. The acquisition of these items has accelerated over the p...

Mediation and Strategic Militarization

This paper challenges the received wisdom that mediation is a weak institution. Much of this perspective is supported by variations of three arguments. First, mediators often do not have access to privileged information, beyond what is relayed to them by disputants. Second, mediators recommendations need to be self-enforcing as they are not backed by appropriate enforcement institutions. Third,...

International Police Operations Against Online Child Pornography

Online child pornography is an unintended aspect of the widespread adoption of information and communications technologies. Child pornography involves the sexual abuse of children on a global basis. It appears that a once limited trade has seen remarkable growth, with the potential to intrude into the homes and workplaces of all those connected to the internet. Occasionally, exposure to this fo...

Police Role: A Case of Diversity, The

Strategic Militarization, Deterrence and Wars∗

We study countries choosing armament levels and then whether or not to go to war. We show that if the costs of war are not overly high or low, then all equilibria must involve dove, hawk, and deterrent strategies and the probability of war is positive (but less than one) in any given period. Wars are between countries with differing armament levels and the frequency of wars is tempered by the p...