Crime Archive

Mexico’s new administration recently announced it would create a new national intelligence agency as part of a broader reform of the country’s security sector. In an email interview, Agnes Gereben Schaefer, a senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation, explained the need for a new Mexican intelligence agency. WPR: What has been the state of Mexico’s intelligence apparatus in recent years? Agnes Gereben Schaefer: In recent years, Mexico’s intelligence apparatus has been splintered across many agencies, including 1,661 local, state and federal police agencies; the military; the attorney general’s office; the Ministry of Interior; the former Ministry of Public Security; […]

Protests have erupted in Northern Ireland in response to a vote by the Belfast City Council to fly the United Kingdom’s flag, with its trademark Union Jack symbol, above City Hall only on designated days, rather than every day of the year as has been the tradition for the past century. But what began as peaceful protests soon became violent riots that authorities have attributed to extremists exploiting the situation for their own purposes. “A small number of committed people can always create problems for a peaceful democratic majority,” Neil Jarman, director of the Institute for Conflict Research in Belfast, […]