Criminal innovation

Over at my other blog, I ask whether the region's criminals are being out-innovated by the Chinese. There are Chinese companies manufacturing complex counterfeit electronic parts, something not done in this region.

That said, we shouldn't look down on the criminal innovation in this region. They build submarines, from scratch, in the jungle! That's pretty impressive. It's worth asking whether it's possible to turn that technical knowledge into a more legitimate and yet still profitable business.

Innovation is often done in a grey market with a hacking and DIY mentality. It's the sort of thing that should be encouraged in Latin America, if only it could be directed away from groups that illegally traffic, kidnap and extort. Experts want to see more innovation in the region? Part of it is happening in the black market. They should be thinking about how to legalize criminal innovations so they become a benefit for the region instead of a drawback.

Robotic drug subs

Wired's Danger Room blog covers the US Navy push to build robotic submarines. The current models aren't quite up to what the Navy needs. However, the technology is getting close to what is needed by illicit traffickers, who are only going to be a few steps behind anything done by military contractors.

Traffickers just need to get across the Caribbean or up the Pacific coast. Then they need to cross the Atlantic to Africa or Europe to get drugs or other contraband to those markets.

For the traffickers, it's an issue of technology and then scalability. They need the tech to be cheap enough so that the contraband pays for the transportation plus they can absorb some seizures and lost items. The technology and cost are not there yet. However, I bet we see the first robotic underwater drone used by a criminal group inside a decade, at least as a test run.

Solve murder cases

Currently, there are numerous countries in Latin America and the Caribbean with absurdly high impunity rates. Less than 10% of murders and other violent crimes are solved in some countries, and there are several countries where reaching a 90% impunity rate would be a significant improvement. Nearly every expert agrees that one key step to reducing the rates of violent crime is to reduce impunity.

This is an area where the region should aim big. There is no reason to believe that this problem is unsolvable. Let's flip the current number around and make the goal for every country in the region that 75% of new homicide cases are investigated and prosecuted. Set the timeline at 10 years. 

I'm tempted to say "solve every murder," because the thought of allowing one out of four killers go free is rather depressing. I also hate to say "new homicide cases" because that leaves a lot of cold cases open from the past. Still, I want to set something that is both ambitious and yet still achievable if a significant effort is taken.

Even in the US today, only about 60% of murders are solved according to national police statistics, and in some urban areas that number is under 30%. The US should be a part of this program and would be measured against whether they could reach the goal as well.

Beyond political will, what would it take to get 75% of all new homicide cases solved and prosecuted? I think some of the basics are recommendations that most analysts already know:

1) More and better police

2) More and better prosecutors and judges

3) Improved witness protection programs

4) Improved statistics on violent crime

5) Information sharing within countries and across countries

6) Forensics labs

7) Better technology

8) Etc. I'm sure I'm missing several items

Many of those recommendations are already being nominally implemented by countries, at times with the help of the US and other international donors. I'm sure the first criticism some will have of this post is that "We're already doing x!" One problem here is of scale and ambition. Sure, Mexico (with its impunity rate around 97% according to independent analysts) just funded a new forensics lab and has new police training programs, but does anyone think the resources currently being spent by Mexico and the US will help the country reach 75% of murders solved within 10 years? No. I think setting the ambitious goal should help us realize that the current level of resources spent on these recommendations is nowhere near enough. More needs to be done in all of these areas.

Additionally, the challenge is making these recommendations effective in an environment where corruption is an ever-present problem. To counter this, I'm going to make a more unorthodox recommendation: The hemisphere needs a regional crime-solving unit working in parallel with national authorities. While others have recommended a group similar to the CICIG for Honduras, El Salvador or for the Central American Northern Triangle, I'm recommending setting up a region-wide group that any country can work with. This regional group should include police, investigators, prosecutors, scientists, IT people and some very gutsy leadership. Rather than wait for approval of one or more countries, the hemisphere's leaders (specifically, the US, Mexico and Brazil) should build the group first and give it the resources to start investigations, which should encourage countries to join in.

To summarize:

1) We need to set the ambitious goal to end impunity. My suggestion is 75% of all new homicide cases solved within ten years.

2) We need to collect and allocate the resources to match the goal.

3) We need to organize and fund a regional organization that can investigate violent crimes, preferably in coordination with other governments.

Swarm robot trafficker

If the hemisphere's criminal groups had long term plans and major R&D investments, they'd be looking at the field of swarm robotics right now.

As the US and allies have gotten better at seizing large shipments of cocaine and other trafficked items, criminal groups have moved towards more numerous, smaller shipments. Add another 50 (or 20?) years of technology and take that logic to an extreme, and the criminal groups could consider sending small shipments inside of thousands of robotic boats that swarm towards the coast of the US. That sort of move would overwhelm the current maritime defenses that the US has in place and guarantee that a certain amount reaches shore.

For that to be economical, the robots must be cheap, scalable and available for purchase or building by criminal groups in the region. That's not going to happen in the next decade, but will almost certainly occur this century.

Cash and crime

Slate tackles a topic I was considering writing on: would eliminating physical money change or reduce crime?

While saying that electronic funds would simplify tracking and auditing certain crimes for government authorities, the article offers this anecdote from the region:

Latin America already offers a glimpse of one such substitute mechanism in action. As its economy grows ever more fluid (most South and Central Americans bank on their phones, using mobile apps that offer accounting and brokerage services), people have turned to “stored value cards,” which hold a fixed amount of money and can be bought or sold like any other good. Since they don’t draw from a bank account—funds and data are maintained by the card issuers and accessed by scanning a magnetic stripe—these cards are much harder to track. In a cashless world, SVCs might join precious metals and gems as currencies favored for illegal transactions.

There are still too many people in Latin America lacking access to basic identity documents much less bank accounts to make a cashless society possible. But the presence of bank accounts and credit cards has reduced the amount of hard currency. 

There is probably a middle ground on this question that Latin America is approaching. For example, Mexico has banned large cash purchases to avoid drug money being used to buy cars, yachts and property. It's far from the cashless society and every cup of coffee being tracked electronically, but it's a reasonable policy given today's technology and the access the average citizen has to it.

Will 3d printers beat the illegal organ trafficking market?

Organ trafficking isn't as big of a problem in the Western Hemisphere as it is in parts of Asia, but it still does happen. It's an awful illicit market. Some victims have their organs forcibly removed. Others choose to sell their organs due to dire poverty, but that doesn't necessarily make it an ethical or medically sound thing to occur.

This could change with scientists working to print synthetic organs on 3d printers. Having a an ethical alternative that is eventually the same cost or even cheaper than the illegal market should destroy trafficking in illegal organs. It's one victory in the fight against organized crime that we should be able to thank technology for in the next 20 years.

Tech changes to finding criminals

A shift in some urban crime will come via three technologies: gunfire locator, ubiquitous video, facial recognition.

Several Latin American cities have already invested in acoustic and other gunfire locator technology, which allows police to instantly identify the location of a gunshot to within a block or less of the shooting. This technology was intended for high crime areas so that police could be dispatched immediately.

However, the increasing presence of video cameras, both government and private run, means that the time of gunshots can be matched up to videos of the location. Add in facial recognition technology, and there should be a movement towards identifying all urban shooters.

Criminals can adapt by using silencers, wearing masks and moving their crimes indoors. However, that requires a level of planning that does not go into the indiscriminate or street violence that is a cause of a significant number of murders in many neighborhoods.

Legal systems will need to adapt to collect evidence and use it in court. Politicians will need some levels of control to avoid the big brother implications that will bother citizens about these technologies being used in combination. In spite of civil liberty concerns, citizens in many countries affected by high violence will likely be happy to have a new deterrent in place.

This technology doesn't solve all the violence nor does it attack the problem at its root causes. Still, most of it is possible today and Latin American countries are going to increasingly invest in these technologies as part of the anti-crime efforts.

Partial legalization leads to privateering

One consequence of a single or small number of legalized drug economies in Latin America while the US remains with prohibition could be the rise of a form of privateering. 

Private security organizations or rival criminal groups could organize around the goal of seizing drugs, weapons and money from drug cartels and then delivering them to the legalized state. At that point, they could "launder" the drugs and move them into a semi-legal market. Then find a way to move them in to the US.

This would create a violent criminal and criminal warfare situation outside of the legalized state and potentially within it as well, neutralizing any advantages gained from removing prohibition.

The country that built prisons

The general recommendation by most analysts is that there is no way to build enough prisons and jail enough criminals to end the violent crime problem in Latin America. The issue must be resolved more strategically. That's my opinion too. However, that does not mean no country will attempt precisely that.

Picture a scenario in ten years in which a mano dura leader comes to power who believes that he can build enough prisons. He will not only imprison tens of thousands more people in his own country, every person who has committed a crime, but also take on some of the overrun from neighboring countries who face overcrowding in their prisons. What if that country can actually make a profit though the system by charging neighbors for using the prisons?

There are a lot of ugly human rights issues in doing this and it may be a huge strategic mistake. For me, this falls under the worst case scenarios heading. However, if it could be accomplished logistically and if the region cooperated to create this sort of country with a prison specialty, it certainly might be attempted. Mano dura has a cyclical appeal in parts of Latin America and this prison building would ease one of the major effects of such a policy.

The next evolution of semi-submersibles

Many US analysts, particularly in the military, point to the evolution of semi-submersibles for cocaine trafficking as one of the important trends in the past decade. At this point, they are starting to see the beginnings of fully submersible and self-contained submarines. It's a statement for how much money the criminals can make if they can build and lose subs.

So what's the next evolution? Asked that, my answer is weapons. I think in the next five years we will see some sort of weapons system on semi-subs and subs that are used by criminals. I don't think these will be highly technical torpedo systems, like exist on military subs. Rather, I think the criminal groups will start with some modification to a gun or grenade that allows the criminals to use them while inside the sub.

Could you imagine a system that allows them to float under a navy boat and release a grenade that rises to the surface and then explodes. Or one that allows them to fire guns at ships when they surface.

Right now, the crew of these vessels generally surrenders or runs as soon as they can, usually while simultaneously sinking the sub to lose the evidence. That's certainly a good problem to have compared to what may be next. If the criminals start innovating to fight back when they face capture, it create a new dynamic for the navies and coast guards of this hemisphere, one for which they are probably quite unprepared.

The country that legalized piracy

Legalize, regulate, create economic activity, tax the profits, reduce the black market and associated violent crime.

What if some country in Latin America or the Caribbean decided to legalize, not drugs, but the piracy of intellectual property. The government would allow for the legal stealing and creation of copies of music, movies, books, art, software, pharmaceuticals and patented inventions. It would create an entire industry on selling the IP online and manufacturing and shipping counterfeit items abroad.

Some may argue that this already exists in some countries (ahem, China). But that's a case of the government refusing to enforce regulations or lying about the issue. I'm talking about a country deciding that its official policy is that intellectual property rights don't exist there. They make the economic decision that they will earn more economic gains from the legalized piracy than they will lose in facing international sanctions from the rest of the world.

In fact, the government goes so far as to promote the industry, providing R&D funding to companies that set up shop and serving as a sort of pirate tourism or haven for foreigners. They could refuse to extradite criminals of intellectual property law and grant them all asylum.

It would almost certainly lead to a massive global trade battle. The country would face unprecedented trade sanctions. Its ships would be blocked from ports. Borders would get extra protection. New internet laws would be created to block that country's websites (and the country would find new ways to get around those blocks). Private companies would need to double down to separate real from counterfeit goods.


This could be a huge economic boom for some country that currently ranks low on the economic development scale. Would any country actually take the risk and consider the policy?