Radovan Karadžić sentenced to 40 years, but peace is still a work in progress

Jasna Dragovic Soso, Goldsmiths, University of London
Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadžić has been sentenced to 40 years in prison by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY).
The court found the former president of the Bosnian Serb republic guilty of one count of genocide and nine war crimes, all relating to the war in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. He is criminally responsible for the Srebrenica massacre in 1995.
This marks the final chapter in three interlinked stories of hubris, war and retribution in Europe at the turn of the millennium.
The first of these stories is a personal journey of an ambitious intellectual – a psychiatrist and a poet who rose from poverty and obscurity to eventually join the political elite. It’s the story of a man who went on to lead a nationalist movement responsible for some of the most heinous crimes seen on the continent since 1945.
Karadžić held political authority over the Bosnian Serb forces that perpetrated the crimes for which he was charged by the ICTY. Ousted from power after the conclusion of the Dayton Peace Agreement, he remained a fugitive until 2008. He was found living on the outskirts of Belgrade disguised as a new-age healer. It’s a tale that could have been taken from a Yugoslav surrealist film.
He will undoubtedly spend the remainder of his life in prison – an apt ending to this extraordinary trajectory.
The intriguing question that remains is how an apparently tolerant and convivial man, who worked and associated with Bosnians of different religious backgrounds and exhibited no particular nationalist leanings prior to 1990, became a ruthless political ideologue who oversaw a policy of mass murder, torture, rape and the forced removal of non-Serb populations for the sake of creating an “ethnically cleansed” Serbian state in Bosnia.

A new kind of justice

The second story is that of the international tribunal itself. Set up by the UN in 1993 to investigate the war crimes that took place in the Balkans in the 1990s, the ICTY has undergone several metamorphoses over its 20-year existence.
The tribunal began as an ineffectual and underfunded institution. It was unable to press Western governments into capturing the more important war criminals. But from 2001 it went on to score some remarkable successes. All its indictees were eventually arrested, including the big fish, such as Serbia’s former president Slobodan Milošević and the Bosnian Serb political and military leaders Karadžić and Ratko Mladić (who is currently on trial).
This success was due largely to new governments coming to power in the post-Yugoslav states and the West’s policy of making financial aid and accession to the EU conditional on co-operation with the tribunal.

A woman visits the memorial to the people who died in the Srebrenrica massacre. EPA/Fehim Demir

The ICTY has provided impressive evidence of the worst crimes committed in the Yugoslav wars. It identified those involved and charted the chains of command. It set some important milestones in international law, paving the way to the creation of a permanent International Criminal Court. Without the ICTY, it is unlikely that some of the worst perpetrators in the Yugoslav wars would have been brought to justice or that we would have such detailed knowledge about the conduct of those wars.
However, the tribunal has been very controversial in the region. It has ultimately made little headway in its mission of contributing to reconciliation.
Nationalist politicians have sought to portray the ICTY as victimising their individual national groups. They present the indictments of their own former political or military leaders as disproportionate and unjust.
The tribunal has remained insular and remote from the region, making little attempt to explain its indictments, procedures and judgements to the war-ravaged and traumatised populations for which it was meant to provide justice.
Often relatively short sentences issued for capital crimes have rankled with victims and some of those tried by the tribunal have now returned home and were welcomed as war heroes.
The acquittals of high ranking military and security figures from Croatia and Serbia in 2012 and 2013 produced consternation even among the greatest champions of the tribunal. Even some ICTY judges publicly protested.

An international journey

The Karadžić judgment (along with those pending for Mladić and a few others) also marks the end of a third story – that of external involvement in the region’s reckoning with its legacy of war.

Karadzic and Milosevic with UN special envoy Yasushi Akashi in 1994. EPA/Srdjan Suki

Without international intervention, there would probably have been little justice. However, the actions of external actors sometimes had counterproductive effects, undermining the reformist political forces seeking genuine change in their countries. And, ultimately, real reckoning with a difficult past cannot be orchestrated from outside.
If the Karadžić judgment is to have any longer-term resonance in the region, it will need to be part of a sustained internal and introspective process in those states where the crimes were perpetrated.
That usually implies the presence of both genuine political commitment and a propitious socio-economic context. Unfortunately, neither of these conditions are on the horizon yet anywhere in the region.

Jasna Dragovic Soso, Senior Lecturer in International Relations, Goldsmiths, University of London
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Adam Johnson jailed for six years for child sex offences

ADAM JOHNSON

Former Sunderland and England footballer Adam Johnson has been jailed for six years for child sex offences.

The 28-year-old player, who has been stripped of his England caps by the FA, admitted grooming and sexual activity with a child last month and was convicted of a more serious charge of sexual touching after a trial. He was cleared of another offence by a jury.

Passing sentence, Judge Jonathan Rose said Johnson had shown no remorse for his actions and viewed the victim as "just another girl to get with", even though he knew she was only 15. His victim had "suffered severe psychological harm" as a result and the footballer had only himself to blame for his jail term, he added.

Johnson "showed no emotion" as Judge Rose read the sentence, reports the Daily Mail, adding: "He will be taken to spend his first night in a prison cell later today."

Earlier, prosecutor Kate Blackwell had told the court: "This is not a fleeting contact or a fleeting offence. These offences were calculated, considered and carefully orchestrated."

She added that he was "in the habit of meeting girls on the way back from training to have sex" in clandestine locations.

In mitigation, the defence claimed Johnson had developed a "disorder" due to the attention he had received from women as a footballer and also argued that he was not a "predatory paedophile".

Before the sentencing hearing, it was revealed that Johnson has lodged an appeal against his conviction.

Meanwhile, the child protection charity, the NSPCC, has said it believes the case "has wider ramifications for football" and "that many top clubs are failing to take their child protection responsibilities seriously", reports the Daily Telegraph.

"We are worried this could be a cultural problem within football as a whole and find it concerning clubs may not see incidents such as these as a child protection issue," the charity's Peter Wanless wrote in a letter to FA chairman Greg Dyke.

Wanless also criticised Johnson's former club, Sunderland, for the way it had handled the matter. The club chief executive, Margaret Byrne, resigned earlier this month after admitting she was aware that Johnson had admitted wrongdoing after being arrested yet had allowed him to continued playing.

Adam Johnson child sex trial: what he has said so far

23 February

England footballer Adam Johnson is back in court today to face cross-examination in his child sex trial.

The 28-year-old has pleaded guilty to grooming and kissing a schoolgirl, but denies two more serious charges of sexual activity involving penetration.

A statement from the girl's father, read out in court last week, said the teenager had "cried her eyes out" and said she wanted to kill herself as she revealed she had done "things" with the player. The family later went to the police.

Johnson began giving evidence in his trial at Bradford Crown Court yesterday.

Here's what he has said so far:

Behaviour was 'wholly unacceptable'

Johnson has admitted he knew the girl was 15 years old "pretty much as soon as we first started talking", but said their initial meetings were "platonic in nature". The girl was a keen Sunderland fan who hung around after matches, regularly approaching him for autographs and photographs. He admitted he "kissed her fully on the lips" on a second meeting in his car. "Considering her age, I recognise my behaviour as wholly unacceptable and therefore I withdrew from any further contact with her," he said.

'I had not been a good person'

The player admitted he had been "sexting" women in their 20s behind the back of his then-pregnant girlfriend, Stacey Flounders. He appeared to choke up with emotion as he spoke about how much he loved Flounders, reports the Daily Mirror. "I had been speaking to people I should not have been speaking to, and had not been a good person to her or our daughter," he told the jury.

'Is sexual activity like a kiss?'

When he was arrested, Johnson instantly knew who had made the allegations, he said. "That was the only girl that I knew I was talking to that was under the age of 16," he said. However, he confessed to initially lying to Flounders and police during his arrest. "I was panicking. I was just worrying about everything, my career, my family – I was honestly in turmoil," he said. Johnson told the court he was "surprised" the girl had gone to police. Their relationship was "friendly at first", but had become flirty and "inappropriate from me", he said. When asked in his first police interview if he had engaged in sexual activity with a child, he apparently asked officers: "Is sexual activity like a kiss? No sexual activity like anything other than a kiss."

Intimate photo for 'doctor'

A photograph of Johnson's penis, taken on his own phone in August 2013, was brought up in court by his barrister, Orlando Pownall, today. "It is not being suggested that this picture was taken for fun or that you were going to send it to someone," said the QC. "Did you take photos at different times of what I am going to describe as your 'nether regions'? Why?" Johnson told the court it was "to show the doctor", to which the defence lawyer replied: "We'll leave it at that."

Adam Johnson: child sex offender sacked by Sunderland

12 February

Sunderland have sacked Adam Johnson after the England footballer pleaded guilty to one count of sexual activity with a child and another of grooming. The 28-year-old winger admitted the charges at Bradford Crown Court earlier in the week and denied two other counts of sexual activity with a child.

"In light of Adam Johnson's guilty pleas, the club has today terminated his contract with immediate effect," Sunderland said in a brief statement on Thursday evening. "The club will make no further comment."

Earlier in the day, manager Sam Allardyce had said Johnson, who had been earning £50,000-a-week at the Stadium of Light, would not be selected for Saturday's match against Manchester United. But a later announcement by Adidas, the sportswear manufacturer, that it was terminating its contract with the player increased the pressure on Sunderland to act more decisively.

Johnson will today stand trial on two counts of sexual activity with the same 15-year-old and Judge Jonathan Rose has warned the jury of six men and six women that they must base their decisions on what they hear in court and nothing else.

"You may see reference to this in the press but it's the evidence in court that you will gather," he said. "This defendant has already pleaded guilty to two offences; you will hear more about them in detail when [prosecutor] Miss Blackwell opens the case to you on Friday."

The trial is expected to last two weeks. According to the Daily Mail, Johnson, who won the last of his 12 England caps in 2012, faces the prospect of a prison term "with guidelines on sentencing for the grooming offence giving a maximum of two years and six month".

Footballer Adam Johnson admits two underage sex charges

10 February

England footballer Adam Johnson has pleaded guilty to one count of sexual activity with a child and another of grooming. The Sunderland winger admitted the charges at Bradford Crown Court. He also denied two other counts of sexual activity with a child.

The offences are alleged to have taken place at two locations in County Durham between December 2014 and January 2015. The footballer has admitted "kissing a 15-year-old schoolgirl after grooming her over the internet", reports The Guardian.

Johnson is due to go on trial for the two other charges later this week. Judge Jonathan Rose warned the jury it was "very important" to ignore media reports of the case and only consider the evidence heard in the courtroom.

"The footballer, who has earned 12 caps for England, appeared in the dock at Bradford Crown Court this morning wearing a black suit and white shirt and was flanked by a female prison officer," reports The Sun.

Johnson's partner, Stacey Flounders, was also present. She gave birth to their daughter in January 2015, weeks before his arrest in March.

Johnson began his career at Middlesbrough before joining Manchester City and moving to Sunderland in 2012. The winger was suspended by the club after his arrest. He has since returned to the team but has made only four appearances this season.

Adam Johnson arrested after underage sex claim

03 March

Sunderland and England star Adam Johnson has been arrested on suspicion of engaging in sexual activity with a 15-year-old girl.

The Sun, which broke the story, spoke to a neighbour of Johnson's £1.85 million house in Castle Eden, near Hartlepool, Co Durham. He told them: "The main activity [during the arrest] was between 9.15am and 9.35am. Three undercover cars and a scenes of crime van arrived. As far as I know he lives there with his girlfriend."

Media outlets reported that the former Middlesbrough and Manchester City player, who has 12 caps for England, was taken into custody for questioning while officers conducted a search of the premises, situated in two acres of woodland.

Durham Constabulary issued a brief statement on Monday afternoon in which they said: "A 27-year-old man was arrested earlier today on suspicion of sexual activity with a girl under 16. He…is helping officers with their enquiries."

A source later told the Sun: "He has been arrested over claims he has had a relationship with a girl aged 15. There is no suggestion he had full sex with her but there was other sexual activity. The allegations include the claim that he knew she was 15."

Sunderland, who tonight play Hull City in the Premier League, confirmed that they have suspended Johnson while police investigations continue: "No further comment will be made at the present time," the club said.

Johnson, who won his first England cap against Hungary in 2010 and his last against Italy in 2012, became a father in early January when partner Stacey Flounders gave birth to a daughter.

He joined Sunderland from Manchester City for £10m in August 2012, saying subsequently that he wouldn't advise young English players to join the Sky Blues because of their galaxy of international stars.

"If was a young lad, I wouldn't go to City," he said. "It's not that you're not good enough, it's just that the likes of Yaya Toure are going to play ahead of you, no matter what you do."

Johnson was released on police bail on Monday afternoon, and a club insider told the Daily Star: "There is massive shock around the whole place…AJ is extremely popular and no-one can believe he has had anything to do with anything like his."

The Man Who Sold the Eiffel Tower. Twice.

JEFF MAYSH

“Count” Victor Lustig was America’s greatest con man. But what was his true identity?

A mugshot of "Count" Lustig (Courtesy of Jeff Maysh)


The air was as crisp as a hundred dollar bill, on April 27, 1936. A southwesterly breeze filled the bright white sails of the pleasure boats sailing across the San Francisco Bay. Through the cabin window of a ferryboat, a man studied the horizon. His tired eyes were hooded, his dark hair swept backwards, his hands and feet locked in iron chains. Behind a curtain of grey mist, he caught his first dreadful glimpse of Alcatraz Island.

“Count” Victor Lustig, 46 years old at the time, was America’s most dangerous con man. In a lengthy criminal career, his sleight-of-hand tricks and get-rich-quick schemes had rocked Jazz-Era America and the rest of the world. In Paris, he had sold the Eiffel Tower in an audacious confidence game—not once, but twice. Finally, in 1935, Lustig was captured after masterminding a counterfeit banknote operation so vast that it threatened to shake confidence in the American economy. A judge in New York sentenced him to 20 years on Alcatraz.

Lustig was unlike any other inmate to arrive on the Rock. He dressed like a matinee idol, possessed a hypnotic charm, spoke five languages fluently and evaded the law like a figure from fiction. In fact, the Milwaukee Journal described him as ‘a story book character’. One Secret Service agent wrote that Lustig was “as elusive as a puff of cigarette smoke and as charming as a young girl’s dream,” while the New York Times editorialized: “He was not the hand-kissing type of bogus Count—too keen for that. Instead of theatrical, he was always the reserved, dignified noble man.”

The fake title was just the tip of Lustig’s deceptions. He used 47 aliases and carried dozens of fake passports. He created a web of lies so thick that even today his true identity remains shrouded in mystery. On his Alcatraz paperwork, prison officials called him “Robert V. Miller,” which was just another of his pseudonyms. The con man had always claimed to hail from a long line of aristocrats who owned European castles, yet newly discovered documents reveal more humble beginnings. 

In prison interviews, he told investigators that he was born in the Austria-Hungarian town of Hostinné on January 4, 1890. The village is arranged around a Baroque clock tower in the shadow of the Krkonoše mountains (it is now a part of the Czech Republic). During his crime spree, Lustig had boasted that his father, Ludwig, was the burgomaster, or mayor, of the town. But in recently uncovered prison papers, he describes his father and mother as the “poorest peasant people” who raised him in a grim house made from stone. Lustig claimed he stole to survive, but only from the greedy and dishonest.

More textured accounts of Lustig’s childhood can be found in various true crime magazines of the time, informed by his criminal associates and investigators. In the early 1900s, as a teenager, Lustig scampered up the criminal ladder, progressing from panhandler to pickpocket, to burglar, to street hustler. According to True Detective Mysteries magazine he perfected every card trick known: “palming, slipping cards from the deck, dealing from the bottom,” and by the time he reached adulthood, Lustig could make a deck of cards “do everything but talk.”

First-class passengers aboard transatlantic ships became his first victims. The newly rich were easy pickings. When Lustig arrived in the United States at the end of World War I, the “Roaring Twenties” were in full swing and money was changing hands at a fevered pace. Lustig quickly became known to detectives in 40 American cities as ‘the Scarred,’ thanks to a livid, two-and-a-half inch gash along his left cheekbone, a souvenir from a love rival in Paris. Yet Lustig was a considered a “smoothie” who had never held a gun, and enjoyed mounting butterflies. Records show that he was just five-foot-seven-inches tall and weighed 140 pounds.

His most successful scam was the “Rumanian money box.” It was a small box fashioned from cedar wood, with complicated rollers and brass dials. Lustig claimed the contraption could copy banknotes using “Radium.” The big show he gave to victims was sometimes aided by a sidekick named “Dapper” Dan Collins, described by the New York Times as a former ‘circus lion tamer and death-defying bicycle rider.’ Lustig’s repertoire also included fake horse race schemes, feigned seizures during business meetings, and bogus real estate investments. These capers made him a public enemy and a millionaire.

America in the 1920s was infested with such confidence rackets, operated by smooth-talking immigrants like Charles Ponzi, namesake of the “Ponzi scheme.” These European con artists were professionals who called their victims ‘marks’ instead of suckers, and who acted not like thugs, but gentlemen. According to the crime magazine True Detective, Lustig was a man who “society took by one hand, the underworld by the other…a flesh-and-blood Jekyll-Hyde.” Yet he treated all women with respect. On November 3, 1919, he married a pretty Kansan named Roberta Noret. A memoir by Lustig’s late daughter recalls how Lustig raised a secret family on whom he lavished his ill-gotten gains. The rest he spent on gambling, and on his lover, Billie Mae Scheible, the buxom owner of a million-dollar prostitution racket.

Then, in 1925, he embarked upon what swindling experts call “the big store.”

Lustig arrived in Paris in May of that year, according to the memoir of U.S. Secret Service agent James Johnson. There, Lustig commissioned stationary carrying the official French government seal. Next, he presented himself at the front desk of the Hôtel de Crillon, a stone palace on the Place de la Concorde. From there, pretending to be a French government official, Lustig wrote to the top people in the French scrap metal industry, inviting them to the hotel for a meeting.

“Because of engineering faults, costly repairs, and political problems I cannot discuss, the tearing down of the Eiffel Tower has become mandatory,” he reportedly told them in a quiet hotel room. The tower would be sold to the highest bidder, he announced. His audience was captivated, and their bids flowed in. It was a scam Lustig pulled off more than once, sources said. Amazingly, the con man liked to boast of his criminal achievements, and even penned a list of rules for would-be swindlers. They’re still circulated today:

_________________________________________

LUSTIG’S TEN COMMANDMENTS OF THE CON

1. Be a patient listener (it is this, not fast talking, that gets a con-man his coups).

2. Never look bored.

3. Wait for the other person to reveal any political opinions, then agree with them.

4. Let the other person reveal religious views, then have the same ones.

5. Hint at sex talk, but don’t follow it up unless the other fellow shows a strong interest.

6. Never discuss illness, unless some special concern is shown.

7. Never pry into a person’s personal circumstances (they’ll tell you all eventually).

8. Never boast. Just let your importance be quietly obvious.

9. Never be untidy.

10. Never get drunk.

_________________________________________

Like many career criminals, it was greed that led to Lustig’s demise. On December 11, 1928, businessman Thomas Kearns invited Lustig to his Massachusetts home to discuss an investment. Lustig crept upstairs and stole $16,000 from a drawer. Such a barefaced theft was out of character for the con man, and Kearns screamed to the police. Next, Lustig had the audacity to trick a Texas sheriff with his moneybox, and later gave him counterfeit cash, which attracted the attention of the Secret Service. “Victor Lustig was [a] top man in the modern world of crime” wrote another agent called Frank Seckler, “He was the only one I ever heard of who swindled the law.”

Yet it was Secret Service agent Peter A. Rubano who vowed to put Lustig behind bars. Rubano was a heavy-set Italian-American with a double chin, sad eyes, and endless ambition. Born and raised in the Bronx, Rubano had made his name by trapping the notorious gangster Ignazio “The Wolf” Lupo. Rubano delighted in seeing his name in the newspapers, and he would dedicate many years to catching Lustig. When the Austrian entered the counterfeit banknote business in 1930, Lustig fell under Rubano’s crosshairs.

Teaming up with gangland forger William Watts, Lustig created banknotes so flawless they fooled even bank tellers. “Lustig-Watts notes were the supernotes of the era,” says Joseph Boling, chief judge of the American Numismatic Association, a specialist in authenticating notes. Lustig daringly chose to copy $100 bills, those scrutinized most by bank tellers, and became “like some other government, issuing money in rivalry with the United States Treasury,” a judge later commented.  It was feared that a run of fake bills this large could wobble international confidence in the dollar.

Catching the count became a cat-and-mouse game for Rubano and the Secret Service. Lustig traveled with a trunk of disguises and could transform easily into a rabbi, a priest, a bellhop or a porter. Dressed like a baggage man, he could escape any hotel in a pinch—and even take his luggage with him. But the net was closing in.

Lustig finally felt a tug on the velvet-collar of his Chesterfield coat on a New York street corner on May 10, 1935. A voice ordered: “Hands in the air”. Lustig studied the circle of men surrounding him, and noticed Agent Rubano, who led him away in handcuffs. It was a victory for the Secret Service. But not for long.

On the Sunday before Labor Day, September 1, 1935, Lustig escaped from the ‘inescapable’ Federal Detention Center in Manhattan. He fashioned a rope from bed sheets, cut through his bars, and swung from the window like an urban Tarzan. When a group of onlookers stopped and pointed, the prisoner took a rag from his pocket and pretended to be a window cleaner. Landing on his feet, Lustig gave his audience a polite bow, and then sprinted away ‘like a deer.’ Police dashed to his cell. They discovered a handwritten note on his pillow, an extract from Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables:

He allowed himself to be led in a promise; Jean Valjean had his promise. Even to a convict, especially to a convict. It may give the convict confidence and guide him on the right path. Law was not made by God and Man can be wrong.

Lustig evaded the law until the Saturday night of September 28, 1935. In Pittsburgh, the dashing crook ducked into a waiting car on the city’s north side. Watching from a hiding position, FBI agent G. K. Firestone gave the signal to Pittsburgh Secret Service agent Fred Gruber. The two federal officers leapt into their car and gave chase.

For nine blocks their vehicles rode neck-and-neck, engines roaring. When Lustig’s driver refused to stop, the agents rammed their car into his, locking their wheels together. Sparks flew. The cars crashed to a halt. The agents pulled their service weapons and threw open the doors. According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Lustig told his captors:

“Well, boys, here I am.”

Count Victor Lustig was hauled before the judge in New York in November 1935. “His pale, lean face was a study and his tapering white hands rested on the bar before the bench,” observed a reporter from the New York Herald-Tribune. Just before sentencing, another journalist overheard a Secret Service agent tell Lustig:

“Count, you’re the smoothest con man that ever lived.”

As soon as he stepped onto Alcatraz Island, prison guards searched Lustig’s body for concealed watch springs and razor blades and hosed him down with freezing seawater. They marched him along the main corridor between the cells—known as ‘Broadway’—in his birthday suit. There was a chorus of howls, whistles, and the clanging of metal cups against bars. “He is somewhat superficially humiliated,” Lustig’s prison record said, referring to him as ‘Miller’, “he asserts that he was accused of everything in the category of crime, including the burning of Chicago.”

Whatever his true identity, the cold weather took its toll on prisoner #300. By December 7, 1946, Lustig had made a staggering 1,192 medical requests and filled 507 prescriptions. The prison guards believed he was faking, that his illness was part of an escape plan. They even found torn bed sheets in his cell, signs of his expert rope making. According to medical reports, Lustig was “inclined to magnify physical complaints... [and] constantly complaining of real and imaginary ills.” He was transferred to a secure medical facility in Springfield, Missouri, where doctors soon realized he was not faking. There, he died from complications arising from pneumonia.

Somehow, Lustig’s family kept his death a secret for two years, until August 31, 1949. But Lustig’s Houdini-like departure from earth was not even his greatest deception. In March of 2015, a historian named Tomáš Anděl, from Lustig’s home town of Hostinné, began a tireless search for biographical information about the town’s most famous citizen. He searched through records rescued from Nazi bonfires, pored over electoral rolls and historical documents. “He must have attended school in Hostinné,” Anděl reasoned in the Hostinné Bulletin, “yet he is not even mentioned in the list of pupils attending the local primary school.” After much searching, Anděl concluded, there is not a scrap of evidence that Lustig was ever born.

We may never know the true identity of Count Victor Lustig. But we do know for certain that the world’s most flamboyant con man died at 8:30pm on March 11, 1947. On his death certificate a clerk wrote this for his occupation:

‘Apprentice salesman.’

JEFF MAYSH IS THE AUTHOR OF THE BOOK

Handsome Devil (Kindle Single)

For fans of “Catch Me if You Can” and “The Sting,” Handsome Devil is the dazzling true story of Count Victor Lustig, history’s most daring – and flamboyant – con man.

Africa: Life Histories of Violent Criminals Inform Policy

ANALYSIS

By Chandre Gould

'The lives of the men interviewed hold a mirror up to wider society - and the reflection is not a pretty sight'. This is how Professor William Dixon from the University of Nottingham describes a ground breaking new study on violent offenders in South Africa by the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) in partnership with the Department of Correctional Services (DCS).

Funded by the Open Society Foundation for South Africa, the study examines the life histories and life circumstances of repeat violent offenders to identify risks and develop interventions to reduce and prevent violent crime.

'We partnered with DCS so that this study would guide the development of appropriate policies and practices, and because DCS is deeply concerned about its role in preventing repeat offending', says Chandré Gould, author and senior research fellow at the ISS. 'The findings about why some men turn to violence can inform the understanding and work of DCS in future'.

The study shows that reasons for offending behaviour come into play long before men reach prison. Although prison programmes do help reduce the risk of re-offending, the criminal justice system cannot work in isolation. Teachers, social workers and magistrates have a critical role in preventing and breaking cycles of offending behaviour by children at risk. Truancy, for example, is an early indicator that something is wrong in a child's life. Using physical violence like beatings or corporal punishment to deal with problems encourages bad and violent behaviour in later years.

Speaking of the men Gould interviewed, Dixon says: 'The crimes these men committed are undoubtedly cruel and horrific, but they are entirely in keeping with the violence - structural and otherwise - in their lives and the lives of the families and communities in which they have grown up. They are not blameless products of a violent society but their behaviour cannot be understood unless it is set in its social context.'

Senior managers in DCS believe the study contributes important new insights into the lives of inmates and can help to inform future programming.

In addition to the monograph Beaten Bad: The life stories of violent offenders, the ISS and its partners are involved in efforts to reduce violence through positive parenting. If successful, this work can inform a policy shift towards social interventions rather than criminal justice responses to violence.

The research findings are being distributed to senior government officials, politicians and the public and will be discussed at various national and international conferences in the coming months.