David Brown

Murder Rates Highest in Countries that Lack Due Process

Anonymous — Tue, 17 Jul 2018 14:26:23 +0000

Murder Rates Highest in Countries that Lack Due Process Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 07/17/2018 - 08:26

Lisa Marshall

Governments that do the best job protecting the rights of the accused have the lowest murder rates, while those that neglect due process have the highest, according to a five-year study of 89 countries by CU Boulder political scientists.

The research, published this month in Political Research Quarterly, comes as homicide rates are soaring across Latin America and U.S. cities like Baltimore and Chicago, leaving law enforcement agencies and policymakers scrambling to curb the trend.

“This study suggests that how the government treats people in its effort to provide security matters,” says co-author David Brown, divisional dean for social sciences. “When there is a lack of trust in the state, people tend to take matters into their own hands and there are real-world consequences.”

For the study, co-authored with political science instructor Erin Huebert, the researchers looked at murder rates from 2009 to 2014 across Eastern Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and Asia using data from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

They then used statistical analysis to determine how variables like income, the size of the young male population, the presence of the death penalty and the country’s degree of due process predicted murder rates.

They defined due process as “the presumption of innocence and opportunity to submit evidence, freedom from arbitrary arrest, detention, torture, and abusive treatment, and access to legal counsel and translators.”

The researchers found that Honduras has the highest homicide rate in the world, with 85 homicides per hundred thousand people per year, followed by Jamaica, South Africa, Brazil and Tanzania.

Japan has the lowest, with one homicide per hundred thousand per year.

Between 2009 and 2014, the United States had one of the highest homicide rates in the world—third-worst among 29 developed countries, with rates double that of all the others except Lithuania and Estonia. The United States ranked 25th out of 89 countries for which due process data is available.

The highest murder rates occurred in countries with large young male populations. Little correlation existed between the death penalty and homicide rates. And whether a country was democratic or authoritarian had little predictive value, with some authoritarian countries like Singapore having very low murder rates, where some democratic countries like Brazil had higher ones.

“Having elections doesn’t necessarily solve the homicide problem,” said Brown.

David Brown (Credit: CU Boulder)

Surprisingly, one strong linear trend emerged across the board: Countries with more due process have significantly less murder.

For instance, Nigeria, which is ranked low for due process, has about 15 homicides more per 100,000 people than Sweden, which ranked high for due process.

“In a country of 10 million people, 1,500 lives could be saved each year” by improving due process, Brown said.

The authors note that in Latin America, where homicide rates are now three times higher than the global average, many regimes have taken an iron-fisted approach to fighting crime, using militaristic tactics and arresting people without charges. The Philippines has also taken a violent, hardline approach.

“Our findings suggest that this is the wrong approach - that if you want to prevent further crime you need the citizenry to trust and cooperate with you and that happens through fairness,” said Huebert.

Mexico recently revamped its judicial system, providing the accused with access to an attorney and oral trial. Additional research by Huebert suggests crime rates are going down in some regions.

While the new study did not look at data at the city or state level in the United States, Brown says there could be takeaways for policy makers here as they grapple with rising crime.

“It may not be a matter of funding more police and creating more jails. It appears you can make significant progress by focusing on due process.”

Source: CU Boulder Today

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Land occupations and deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon.

Anonymous — Wed, 19 Apr 2017 21:32:56 +0000

Land occupations and deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 04/19/2017 - 15:32

Brown DS, Brown JC, Brown C. LAND USE POLICY. 54 (July 01, 2016): 331-338.

Abstract
Researchers are increasingly interested in understanding the impact of contentious social processes on land change. In the Brazilian Amazon, there are often contentious interactions between landholders defending private property rights and squatters who have the right to occupy land that is deemed unproductive. Previous studies suggest that the contentious social processes inherent in the Brazilian land tenure and land reform system cause a significant amount of deforestation. An environment of insecure land title, and policies that value deforested land over forested land, among other factors, encourage both landholders and squatters to deforest more land than is necessary for pasture or crop production. This paper examines the impact that land occupations have on deforestation at the municipal scale across the Brazilian Legal Amazon, from 2000 to 2009. We show that land occupations have a direct influence on deforestation. We use spatial analysis as well to show that land occupations have a spatial component in the effect on deforestation: occupations in one municipality affect deforestation in adjacent areas.

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Meet Dr. David Brown

Anonymous — Tue, 06 Sep 2016 15:55:51 +0000

Meet Dr. David Brown Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 09/06/2016 - 09:55

Casey Van Divier

Chair, Department of Political Science...and Broncos Quarterback?

What do you need to know about CU’s political science chair? Ask him yourself, and you may get an answer like this:

“I’ve got something in common with Peyton Manning.” David Brown, who works as both the political science department chair and a professor at CU, sustained plantar fasciitis last year – just like the former Broncos quarterback.

“I’m getting over it, but I look to Peyton Manning for inspiration,” he said.

Beyond his similarities to Peyton Manning, David Brown brings his personality, intelligence, and unique experiences to the department. First as a student and then as an educator, Brown fostered vast knowledge in the areas of Latin American studies and the politics of economic development.

“I thought I wanted to do a Latin American studies and business degree at UCLA, but I quickly decided that the business school was not for me. I was too underdressed,” said Brown. In place of business classes, he chose to take courses in history, economics, and political science.

“It was the political science classes that were asking the most interesting questions,” he said.

While majoring in political science and Latin American studies, Brown learned Portuguese in order to fulfill a requirement. To give himself some context, he took a class on Brazil’s history, which inspired him to go to Brazil for his dissertation in 1992.

Brown joined the CU faculty ten years later, but even as a professor, he’s always learning new things and applying them to his work.

“The most important change that I’ve had here is when I took the stats class that I’m teaching and I flipped it,” he said. “It’s active, we have in-class assignments, and people are getting into groups.”

Brown hopes to find a way to incorporate these newfound values into different classes throughout the department.

“It’s really changed the way I think about teaching,” he said, “and I’m having a ball doing it.”

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