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This chapter considers the role of ‘memory politics’ – understood as the combination of official and unofficial attempts to deal with the legacy of past violations – in the struggle for democratization in Central America: official initiatives can include truth commissions, amnesty dispensations, criminal investigations and prosecutions, and a range of institutional reforms aimed at redressing the previous failure of the state to guarantee human rights; unofficial initiatives developed by civil society actors to confront the past can include investigations of violations, legal actions, and different kinds of commemorative acts and exercises in collective memory. Memory politics operates at multiple levels and involves a diversity of agents, including local communities, national and international non-governmental human rights organizations (HROs), governments, the media, and, in the case of Central America, the UN; however, it is suggested here that its long-term effects in any national context depend on the interaction between official and unofficial efforts to address the legacies of the past. The experiences of memory politics analysed in this chapter are those of El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, the three Central American countries that during the 1990s undertook official processes of investigating past violations of human rights. The precise nature of memory politics and the impact it has had varied considerably in these three countries, and it is suggested that four interrelated factors are central to explaining differences between the respective national experiences: the first is the specific political and social legacies of human rights abuse in each country; the second concerns the circumstances of the transition from war to peace, specifically the prevailing balance of forces and the trade-off between truth and justice that this engendered in each case; the third is the role of local HROs and civil society in general in the politics of memory; and the fourth is the role of international governmental and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in efforts to uncover the truth about the past and to address the consequences of violations. The first three sections of the chapter compare the legacies of human rights abuses, the transitional trade-offs between truth and justice, and the role of civil society organizations and international actors in the memory politics of El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala; the final section considers the impact of memory politics on the prospects for democracy in these countries.

This chapter focuses on the first and crucial phase in ‘building a case’, that is, the criminal investigation. ‘International criminal investigation’ is defined as a process of searching, collecting, collating, and synthesizing information, which is conducted by international prosecutors against individuals who are allegedly liable for international crimes, in order to prove the guilt or innocence of those individuals in a court of law. The chapter proceeds as follows. First, it examines the particularities of an international criminal investigation. The differences with a national investigation are such that they make an international investigation a distinctive exercise. Then it considers the processing of information and the analysis of evidence. Thereafter it discusses the legal and organizational frameworks of an international investigation. Finally, it reviews the investigative practice of several international tribunals.

After almost a decade of upholding the use of narcoanalysis by criminal investigation agencies, the Indian judiciary has finally recognised and condemned its abusive nature. In Smt. Selvi & Ors v. State of Karnataka, the Supreme Court called for a ban on all involuntary administration of narcoanalysis and the withholding in court of all evidence directly obtained from even voluntary administration of the tests. The scientific validity of narcoanalysis and the reliability of its results have long been controversial. This chapter shows that the use of narcoanalysis is not only ineffective in obtaining truthful information, but also violates fundamental civil rights protected by international law and the Indian Constitution. It also argues that the test violates the rights against self-incrimination and the right to life and personal liberty.

This chapter examines the overlapping jurisdiction of federal and state prosecutors over corporate misconduct. It begins with an overview of concurrent criminal jurisdiction and the potential for multijurisdictional prosecutions before considering a variety of circumstances under which prosecutors from multiple jurisdictions initiated criminal investigations or brought formal prosecutions concerning the same corporate conduct. It then discusses the barriers or factors limiting multistate regulatory prosecutions and the incentives for cooperation or conflict in multijurisdictional prosecutions, as well as the complexities that may arise if prosecutors in multijurisdictional cases do not cooperate voluntarily. It also describes the formal mechanisms to harmonize all the prosecutorial actors involved and the informal measures by which coordination occurs.

This chapter describes some basic problems of pretrial investigation in Europe, the reasons for these problems, and whether and how they can be overcome or at least handled. It presents actual examples and tendencies of pretrial investigations in Europe, all of which belong to a context of social control. The change of social control helps explain the increasing significance of prosecutorial power within transnational procedural law, and it also draws specific attention to more general principles of law. All of these points allow reflection upon possible new orientations for a social context of criminal investigations, which have gone beyond state borders and have been integrated into a new structure of global justice.

This chapter discusses the emergence of forensic medicine and its role in criminal investigations. In the nineteenth century, historian Roger Smith pointed out that “various so-called ‘knowledge professions’ articulated a newly systematic conception of social authority dependent on expertise rather than either tradition or economic power.” These include law and medicine, but their “knowledges” could both overlap and conflict with each other when staking claims to interpreting the evidence in court. Peter the Great brought the two together in Russia with his Military Statute of 1716, which required doctors to perform autopsies in cases of violent deaths and to enter their reports into the legal record. Subsequently, a medical council formed in 1803 set rules for forensic procedures that were codified in 1828. Moreover, forensic medicine became a part of the curricula of law schools, where practicing doctors lectured to prospective attorneys.

This chapter details the judicial reforms of 1864. Tsar Alexander II signed the declaration of independence for the Russian judiciary on November 20, 1864, with the promise to make justice “swift, righteous, and benevolent.” Rather than changing laws or punishments, however, the Statutes of Criminal Procedure promulgated in 1864 restructured the ways in which crimes were investigated and prosecuted. Indeed, central to the reform of the judiciary was the transfer of criminal investigations away from the police to the office of the judicial investigator. As their education in jurisprudence was required, the investigators were judicial personnel who swore an oath of office and could not be fired without legal cause. With regards to prosecution, the reformers provided protection for defendants in that the judge had to “give the accused every possible means for acquittal.”

This chapter chronicles an unprecedented wave of criminal investigations and trials of central political figures, which occurred after Aharon Barak was appointed chief justice and Benjamin Netanyahu elected prime minister. Every prime minister who has served from 1996 to the present—Benjamin Netanyahu, Ehud Barak, Ariel Sharon, and Ehud Olmert—has come under criminal investigation, in some cases multiple times. On top of that, there has been a long list of criminal investigations of cabinet ministers and other public officials. At times there was justifiable cause for an investigation, but in many cases the impression has been that the suspicions were baseless or trivial, involving the kinds of deeds that hardly called for a criminal investigation and certainly not for criminal punishment. As such, most of these cases demonstrated prosecutorial overreach and raised the question of why and how could this have happened. The chapter also points out that in numerous cases the investigations and prosecutions were directed against personalities considered inimical to the legal revolution.

This chapter reviews the police studies literature on detectives and criminal investigations in order to provide a platform on which to consider the ethnographic exploration of those specialist detective units that focus their efforts on detecting and investigating drug offences and bringing the offenders to justice. It analyses the nature of detective work, from the origins of the police detective through to the current context of criminal investigation, attends to some of the key themes and concepts that underpin the subject matters under discussion, and begins to examine key issues associated with changing the ways in which investigations are conceived, conducted, and controlled. It also explains why police organizations set up specialist squads to deal with certain forms of criminality and pays particular attention to the special features of detective work in the field of drug control.

This chapter provides an account of the everyday realities of the war on drugs by examining the dynamics and dilemmas of how drug investigations are planned, authorized, and carried out after a case becomes operational. Attention is given to drug warrants, covert surveillance, and test purchase operations—the tactical resolutions that were used time and again for taking care of business. It focuses on the occupational perspective and practices of detectives, how they interpreted, made sense of, and manipulated the rules of the drug game, and the ways in which they used intelligence, gathered evidence, exercised power, and defined success.

This chapter studies the participation of victims in international criminal tribunals. Victim participation in international criminal trials has been uneven. Historically, prosecutors often have side-lined victim testimony in favour of documentary or physical evidence or assumed that justice for victims equated to retributive punishment of offenders. In recent decades, however, victims have become more active contributors in criminal investigations and proceedings. Victim participation at all stages of the Hissène Habré trial, for example, suggests a growing trend towards greater victim inclusion in international and national criminal trials. As such, it is incumbent on court personnel, as well as international justice researchers and practitioners, to better understand the diverse needs of victims and how they can be best supported before, during, and after trials.

This chapter explores efforts to fight corruption and impunity by sharing sovereign authority over domestic criminal investigation. It focuses on the UN International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), the pioneering venture in this domain, and shows how a confluence of political factors led the Guatemalan government to agree in 2007 to outsource authority over certain complex criminal investigations to UN personnel. CICIG was then able to earn strong public and international legitimacy through its performance. Nevertheless, a backlash within some circles of the Guatemalan political elite eventually led to CICIG’s closure in 2019, leaving its legacy of reform in peril.

This chapter focuses on the external review of the application of the principle of proportionality. The chapter first considers judicial review of the application of proportionality. Two kinds of review are compared: the ex ante review applied by courts before an action is taken and the ex post review, including criminal investigations. The authors suggest that both kinds of judicial review are ineffective ways to apply the principle of proportionality. An alternative approach is then considered: creating permanent Humanitarian Law Commissions, with the authority to investigate possible violations of the principle of proportionality. Humanitarian Law Commissions could monitor the propriety of criminal or disciplinary investigations conducted by the military; but, more importantly, they could also engage in policy review—that is, they could review ex post whether a specific policy or operation was conducted in accordance with international law, and issue recommendations for future military actions. Such recommendations may help clarify for the military some of the more complex norms they are required to implement.

This chapter focuses on the limited success of the police in improving public safety in most countries of the region, showing that in most countries law enforcement agencies have been unable to lead effective anti-crime programs. Police structures and crime-fighting strategies are surveyed, and it is argued that police forces generally reacted slowly and erratically against rising crime, that they did not develop strong information systems to fight organized crime, and that they have lacked the support of citizens due to the past repression and corruption. Using arrest, survey, and administrative data this text underscores two variables that correlate with rising criminality: a) the failure to incorporate modern, large-scale policing techniques, particularly those that make use of information and intelligence, and b) the failure of police to adjust to new standards after transitions to democracies, undermining bonds of trust between police and citizens.

This chapter begins with a review of the academic literature in order to explore the police informer/handler relationship and attempts to reform the use and regulation of police informers. Particular attention is paid to the moral dilemmas and practical problems of this covert policing strategy, as well as the changes introduced by the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA). These changes include the establishment of authorization procedures and dedicated source units. The chapter then presents and discusses empirical findings on the role of informants in drug investigations and examines how drug detectives perceived and operated within the regulatory constraints of the police informer system.

This chapter makes the case for the need to develop a universal set of standards (Universal Protocol) for non-coercive investigative interviewing methods and associated legal and procedural safeguards. The purpose of this instrument will be to assist law enforcement officers and other authorities in carrying out their duties effectively, and in full compliance with fundamental human rights obligations. The Universal Protocol will promote an evidence-based, non-coercive model of investigative interviewing that operationalizes the presumption of innocence and ensures that no person under questioning is subjected to torture, ill-treatment, or coercion, including any forms of violence, duress, or threat. The authors elaborate on the legal, ethical, scientific, and practical arguments for the development of the Universal Protocol. Recognizing that all persons—whether suspects, victims, or witnesses—interviewed by authorities during criminal investigations may be confronted with the entire repressive machinery of society, the authors explain why the development of the Universal Protocol is necessary from the perspective of the prohibition of torture and other ill-treatment. They provide an explanation of how the use of coercive questioning techniques leads to false confessions, wasted resources, results in adverse operational consequences for law enforcement, and ultimately gives rise to more crime and insecurity. The chapter then provides an overview of the envisioned scope and substance of the Universal Protocol, which is expected to (1) elaborate on an evidence-, rapport-based, and empirically-founded investigative interviewing model that centers on the pursuit of truth (as opposed to the pursuit of confessions); and (2) enumerate a set of fundamental legal procedural safeguards designed to protect the physical and mental integrity of all persons during questioning. The authors conclude by discussing the international expert-driven process that is underway to develop the Universal Protocol, and reflect on strategic and substantive progress achieved to date. A call for the support of the development, endorsement, and implementation of the Universal Protocol is also issued by the authors.

This chapter details the string of criminal investigations into Ehud Olmert’s affairs during his term as the sitting prime minister. He had been the target of multiple investigations which were mostly unconnected to each other, some of which were outright frivolous. The results of the Second Lebanon War made Olmert highly unpopular and vulnerable and the volley of investigations has further weakened his position. Olmert, chafing under the wave of investigations against him and the public atmosphere it created, became highly critical of the state comptroller, Micha Lindenstrauss. This proved to be a tactical error, as Olmert’s position was further undermined following the Winograd Commission’s report. The drama of Olmret’s investigations reached its climax when Morris (Moshe) Talansky, an American businessman gave an early testimony in court in one of Olmert’s pending investigations. These, along with further tensions brewing within the Kadima Party, eventually led to Olmert’s resignation and to elections that were held in February 2009.

The book ends with the climax of Harry’s story, written as a slice-of-life account in the first person—from a perspective only he can tell. Bringing readers to the present time, Boeri narrates a criminal investigation and a court case to illustrate in dramatic detail the continuing saga of the drug war, racial injustice, and mass incarceration.