Barter of Russians in prison for prisoners in Russia--Redemption of Captives

 Barter is alive and well in diplomacy, as evidenced by yesterday's multi-country multi-party prisoner swap.  Among the highlights was a journalist for a hitman.

The Washington Post has the story, with multiple headlines.

Biden: Prisoner swap ‘a feat of diplomacy’. U.S. reporter, others freed in complex, landmark, multicountry exchange with Russia

U.S., Germany trade convicted assassin to Russia for political prisoners in major swap The landmark prisoner swap freed Russians jailed in the West, including a convicted killer, . for U.S. journalist Evan Gershkovich, dissident Vladimir Kara-Murza and others. By Shane Harris, Yasmeen Abutaleb, Mary Ilyushina and Souad Mekhennet, August 1, 2024

"In the largest prisoner exchange since the height of the Cold War, officials of the United States, Russia, Germany and other countries met on an airfield in Ankara, Turkey, on Thursday and swapped at least 24 people — capping months of painstaking diplomacy involving negotiations at the highest levels of nine governments.

"Those released included a Russian assassin convicted of murder in Berlin; the American journalist Evan Gershkovich, who was accused of espionage without any known evidence; and several Russian dissidents whose only misdeed was demanding freedom and democracy or criticizing the war in Ukraine, including Vladimir Kara-Murza, a Washington Post Opinions contributor.

"White House officials called it the largest and most complicated international prisoner exchange in decades, and one of the biggest diplomatic accomplishments of Joe Biden’s presidency... But the deal was also fraught, raising questions about the West’s willingness to deal with authoritarian regimes that imprison innocen..t people for negotiating leverage."

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All the exchanged prisoners were serving time, so this could be viewed as a bizarre variety of the time swaps in yesterday's post.

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Pidyon shvuyim (Hebrew: פִּדְיוֹן שְׁבוּיִים, literally: Redemption of Captives) is a religious duty in Judaism to free hostages. Historically, many captives have been redeemed, as when Jewish refugees were brought out from behind the Iron curtain with payments to the governments preventing them from emigrating.  (At equilibrium, this means Jews are often taken hostage, as  in the Hamas attack on October 7.)

Prison gangs, in Latin America and in the U.S.

 It's one thing to be able to capture and confine prisoners. When gangs are involved, it's quite another thing to control the prisons, or the ability of prisoners to continue to control gang activity outside of prison.

The NYT has the story, from Latin America:

In Latin America, Guards Don’t Control Prisons, Gangs Do. Intended to fight crime, Latin American prisons have instead become safe havens and recruitment centers for gangs, fueling a surge in violence. By Maria Abi-Habib, Annie Correal and Jack Nicas

"Inside prisons across Latin America, criminal groups exercise unchallenged authority over prisoners, extracting money from them to buy protection or basic necessities, like food.

"The prisons also act as a safe haven of sorts for incarcerated criminal leaders to remotely run their criminal enterprises on the outside, ordering killings, orchestrating the smuggling of drugs to the United States and Europe and directing kidnappings and extortion of local businesses.

"When officials attempt to curtail the power criminal groups exercise from behind bars, their leaders often deploy members on the outside to push back.

“The principal center of gravity, the nexus of control of organized crime, lies within the prison compounds,” said Mario Pazmiño, a retired colonel and former director of intelligence for Ecuador’s Army, and an analyst on security matters.

“That’s where let’s say the management positions are, the command positions,” he added. “It is where they give the orders and dispensations for gangs to terrorize the country.”

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I wrote a related post in November (see below) about a Brazilian prison gang, and received an illuminating email from Professor David Skarbek of Brown University, saying

"I enjoyed your blog post about the PPC Brazilian prison gang. I thought that you might be interested to know that the same phenomenon exists in the US as well. I'm attaching a piece I published in the American Political Science Review on the Mexican Mafia in Southern California."

Here's the link to that article:

Skarbek, David. "Governance and prison gangs." American Political Science Review 105, no. 4 (2011): 702-716.

Abstract: How can people who lack access to effective government institutions establish property rights and facilitate exchange? The illegal narcotics trade in Los Angeles has flourished despite its inability to rely on state-based formal institutions of governance. An alternative system of governance has emerged from an unexpected source—behind bars. The Mexican Mafia prison gang can extort drug dealers on the street because they wield substantial control over inmates in the county jail system and because drug dealers anticipate future incarceration. The gang's ability to extract resources creates incentives for them to provide governance institutions that mitigate market failures among Hispanic drug-dealing street gangs, including enforcing deals, protecting property rights, and adjudicating disputes. Evidence collected from federal indictments and other legal documents related to the Mexican Mafia prison gang and numerous street gangs supports this claim.

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Earlier

Tuesday, November 21, 2023

Balance of violence: prison-based criminal cartels, the case of Brazil's PCC.

Balance of violence: prison-based criminal cartels, the case of Brazil's PCC.

The vexed relationship between banned markets and black markets is perhaps nowhere clearer than when prison based gangs of convicted drug dealers are able to extend their empires outside of prisons. While national authorities are able to capture, convict and imprison gang leaders, those gangs retain the ability to organize violence not only inside prisons but outside of them, and hence operate national and international black markets as well.

The Guardian has the story:

How a Brazilian prison gang became an international criminal leviathan  by Tom Phillips

"The PCC – First Capital Command – arose in the country’s notoriously brutal penitentiaries 30 years ago but now controls a billion-dollar drug trade supplying much of Europe’s cocaine,

...

"For much of its 30-year existence the PCC has been considered a jailhouse fraternity, which recruited incarcerated “brothers” such as the Venezuelan by offering them protection within Brazil’s violent, overcrowded prisons. Created in August 1993, it grew into Brazil’s most feared criminal faction, conquering drug markets, smuggling routes, shantytowns and prisons across Brazil, including in far-flung corners of the Amazon. It also became a major player in other South American countries such as neighbouring Paraguay where the group has been blamed for multimillion-dollar armed robberies and bombings and targeted assassinations.

But over the past five years, investigators say the PCC – which the US now calls one of the world’s most powerful organized crime groups – has morphed into an even more formidable force after forging lucrative alliances with partners ranging from Bolivian cocaine producers to Italian mafiosi. Today, the group boasts tens of thousands of members and has a growing portfolio of interests, including illegal goldmines in the Amazon. It controls one of South America’s most important trafficking routes – linking Bolivia and Brazil to Europe and Africa – and is partly responsible for a tsunami of cocaine that has brought car bombings, assassinations and gunfights to parts of Europe.

...

"During the 1990s, the PCC tightened its grip on São Paulo’s prison system but largely flew under the radar until thousands of guards and visitors were captured during a massive 2001 uprising. Five years later the group again made headlines, bringing São Paulo to a virtual standstill with a wave of coordinated attacks on police that caused hundreds of deaths.

...

"Having dominated much of Brazil’s domestic drug market – and established a monopoly over São Paulo’s crime scene – Gakiya said the PCC began looking overseas in late 2016. Deals were struck with Italy’s most powerful mafia group, the ’Ndrangheta, as well as Serbian and Albanian mafias, and the PCC began shipping tonnes of cocaine from Brazilian ports to Europe.

...

"Marcola, 55, who is serving a 342-year prison sentence for murder, robbery and drug trafficking, is also not a man to be crossed. In late 2018, Gakiya decided to transfer him to a high-security federal prison after the discovery of an audacious multimillion-dollar plot to free him with the help of foreign mercenaries, helicopters and anti-aircraft guns. “I knew it might change my life but I also realized it needed doing,” the prosecutor said, admitting he did not consult his family first.

Gakiya was no stranger to death threats, but moving Marcola turned his life upside down. PCC leaders issued a “decree” calling for the prosecutor’s assassination, condemning Gakiya to a reclusive existence he compared to the life of Giovanni Falcone, the anti-mafia crusader assassinated in 1992. “I hope, of course, not to share the same fate as Falcone,” added Gakiya..."

Donate blood or organs to pay a traffic fine or shorten a prison term?

I spend a lot of my time thinking and writing about repugnant transactions and controversial markets, and some of that intersects with my work on blood and organ donation and transplantation (particularly on the controversial issue of compensation for donors, and how that might intersect with varieties of coercion). But today's post is about two proposals that mix all these things together. (My guess is that many people will find them differently repugnant: think of them as a quick test of your own views.)

In Argentina, a municipal judge proposes blood donation to pay traffic fines, and in Massachusetts several legislators co-sponsor a bill to allow bone marrow (blood stem cell) donation or organ donation to reduce prison sentences.

First, blood donation and traffic fines:

 Mario Macis points me to this story in La Nacion, about a city in the Argentine province of Salta:

En una ciudad de Salta las multas de tránsito se pueden pagar con una donación de sangre  [In a city of Salta, traffic fines can be paid with a blood donation]  (English from Google Translate)

"In the city of Tartagal, Salta, it is possible to pay a traffic ticket with a blood donation . The measure, taken two months ago, generates both support and questioning.

...

"The judge of the Court of Misdemeanors of the Municipality of Tartagal, Farid Obeid , proposed in a ruling last August that those who had traffic fines could pay them with their own blood donation or from third parties on behalf of the offenders.

"It was then determined that donations be made in hospitals, voluntarily and only once; that is to say that repeat offenders cannot opt ​​for blood donation.

...

"The ruling received support and criticism, the latter basically from the health sector. Oscar Torres, president of the Argentine Association of Hemotherapy, Immunohematology and Cellular Therapy , sent a letter to the Deliberative Council of Tartagal indicating that the measure removes the "spirit of solidarity and altruism from blood donation" 

Here's a related story about the ongoing debate (also using Google translate):

Controversy over an unusual municipal project: they claim that fines can be paid with blood. "This controversial project was presented to the Deliberative Council of Tartagal, and criticism has already begun"

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And here's the new bill proposed in Massachusetts (don't hold your breath waiting for it to be passed into law). It's in English, so the phrase about the necessary "amount of bone marrow and organ(s) donated to earn one’s sentence to be commuted" isn't a translation error; I think it's just awkward (i.e. not meant to be chilling). (But the discussion of donated "organ(s)" makes me think of Kazuo Ishiguro's novel "Never Let Me Go"). 

Bill HD.3822, 193rd (Current), An Act to establish the Massachusetts incarcerated individual bone marrow and organ donation program

"Section 170. (a) The Commissioner of the Department of Corrections shall establish a Bone Marrow and Organ Donation Program within the Department of Correction and a Bone Marrow and Organ Donation Committee. The Bone Marrow and Organ Donation Program shall allow eligible incarcerated individuals to gain not less than 60 and not more than 365 day reduction in the length of their committed sentence in Department of Corrections facilities, or House of Correction facilities if they are serving a Department of Correction sentence in a House of Corrections facility, on the condition that the incarcerated individual has donated bone marrow or organ(s). 

...

"The Bone Marrow and Organ Donation Committee shall also be responsible for promulgating standards of eligibility for incarcerated individuals to participate and the amount of bone marrow and organ(s) donated to earn one’s sentence to be commuted. Annual reports including actual amounts of bone marrow and organ(s) donated, and the estimated life-savings associated with said donations, are to be filed with the Executive and Legislative branches of the Commonwealth. All costs associated with the Bone Marrow and Organ Donation Program will be done by the benefiting institutions of the program and their affiliates-not by the Department of Correction. There shall be no commissions or monetary payments to be made to the Department of Correction for bone marrow donated by incarcerated individuals."

Simultaneous HT to Ron Shorrer, Kim Krawiec, Akhil Vohra

The market for prison beds and prisoners

 Kim Krawiec points me to this article about prison space for rent, from the Brennan Center at NYU:

A Market for Holding Humans: The Correctional and Detention Bed Trade, by Lauren-Brooke Eisen and Ram Subramanian

"For decades, sher­iffs, correc­tions agen­cies, and for-profit firms have sought to alle­vi­ate prison and jail over­crowding by offer­ing avail­able beds to other juris­dic­tions in need of space. And the need is great. Despite the over­all decline in impris­on­ment rates since 2009, many places still have too many people to safely house. The same goes for deten­tions by U.S. Immig­ra­tion and Customs Enforce­ment.

"This market can be a much-needed source of revenue for local­it­ies. In Louisi­ana, for example, ICE pays $74 per day — nearly three times what the state prison system reim­burses local sher­iffs. Midland County, Michigan, where the local budget depends on jail bed rent­als, charges $45 per bed per day to other counties and $35 to the state.

...

"At one point, a website called Jail­Bed­Space.com covered 48 states, serving more than 150 agen­cies. The company matched jail admin­is­trat­ors with empty beds in facil­it­ies in other counties or states. Other so-called “bed brokers” have popped up over the years, all receiv­ing fees for each bed they rent out.

...

"The detained people bear the cost as they are shuttled across juris­dic­tional lines, hundreds or even thou­sands of miles from their famil­ies, friends, and communit­ies. Addi­tional miles and state lines present finan­cial and prac­tical barri­ers to retain­ing these import­ant ties. One man incar­cer­ated in Vermont who was moved in the middle of the night to Kentucky without warn­ing said, “This prac­tice of trans­fer­ring inmates out-of-state is horrendous. You’re taking people who, whatever support network they may have, is gone. . . . you’re alone. You’re isol­ated.”

Texas inmate asks to delay execution for kidney donation

 For all you practical ethicists out there, here's a story by the AP that has divided my email correspondents:

Texas inmate asks to delay execution for kidney donation By JUAN A. LOZANO

"A Texas inmate who is set to be put to death in less than two weeks asked that his execution be delayed so he can donate a kidney.

...

"In a letter sent Wednesday, Gonzales’ lawyers, Thea Posel and Raoul Schonemann, asked Republican Gov. Greg Abbott to grant a 30-day reprieve so the inmate can be considered a living donor “to someone who is in urgent need of a kidney transplant.”

...

"Gonzales’ attorneys say he’s been determined to be an “excellent candidate” for donation after being evaluated by the transplant team at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. The evaluation found Gonzales has a rare blood type, meaning his donation could benefit someone who might have difficulty finding a match.

“Virtually all that remains is the surgery to remove Ramiro’s kidney. UTMB has confirmed that the procedure could be completed within a month,” Posel and Schonemann wrote to Abbott.

"Texas Department of Criminal Justice policies allow inmates to make organ and tissue donations. Agency spokeswoman Amanda Hernandez said Gonzales was deemed ineligible after making a request to be a donor earlier this year. She did not give a reason, but Gonzales’ lawyers said in their letter that the agency objected because of the pending execution date.

...

"In a report, the United Network for Organ Sharing, a nonprofit that serves as the nation’s transplant system under contract with the federal government, listed various ethical concerns about organ donations from condemned prisoners. They include whether such donations could be tied to prisoners receiving preferential treatment or that such organs could be morally compromised because of their ties to the death penalty."

HT: Frank McCormick

Matching prisoners to jails: peer effects are of first order importance

 Akhil Vohra points me to this very interesting matching problem, which is apparently quite far from a good solution:

RIKERS ISLAND: City Jails Scrap Last Remnants of Pricey Consultant Plan as Deaths Mount BY  REUVEN BLAU, May 18, The City

"In 2018, the city Department of Correction began using a new detainee classification process created at great expense by consulting group McKinsey & Company. 

"The de Blasio administration had paid the white-shoe firm $27.5 million to create the system that used an algorithm based on a host of factors — including age, possible gang affiliation, and any prior history in jail — to determine where to house people behind bars with the least risk for confrontation. 

"On Tuesday, jail Commissioner Louis Molina announced that the pricey system — widely criticized for failing to reduce violence — will be formally scrapped after just four years as part of the department’s court-mandated overhaul plan. 

...

"jail officials have long struggled where to place new detainees to reduce the likelihood of fights. Top jail supervisors have traditionally tried to avoid creating housing units based on gang affiliation, according to current and former jail insiders. 

"Units made up of just one gang tend to get along with each other but also have the ability to gang up on the officers in the area and are more likely to join forces to ignore basic orders, jail experts say. 

"Housing units mixed with people from at least two different gangs as well as some people who are totally unaffiliated are considered the golden standard, according to criminologists. 

"But other factors are also important such as a person’s prior criminal history, age, and possible previous record in jail. 

...

"“It’s a revolving door of stupidity and poor decisions,” one high-ranking jail official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told THE CITY. 

“We changed from that system because it wasn’t working, now we are reverting back to it,” the jail insider said. 

...

"Jail officials said the result was part of the chaos that has led to a massive spike in the number of stabbings and slashings among detainees and assaults on staff."

"Execution by organ procurement: Breaching the dead donor rule in China," by Matthew P. Robertson, and Jacob Lavee in the AJT

 Prior to 2015, it was legal in China to transplant organs recovered from executed prisoners. When I visited China in those days to talk about kidney transplantation from living donors, it was sometimes pointed out to me that, as an American, I shouldn't object to the Chinese use of executed prisoner organs, because we also had capital punishment in the US, but we "wasted the organs."  I replied that in the US we had both capital punishment and transplantation, but were trying to limit one and increase the other, and that I didn’t think that either would be improved by linking it to the other.  

So here's a just-published retrospective paper looking at Chinese language transplant reports prior to 2015, which identifies at least some instances that it regards as "execution completed by organ procurement."

Execution by organ procurement: Breaching the dead donor rule in China, by Matthew P. Robertson1, and Jacob Lavee2, American Journal of Transplantation, Early View, First published: 04 April 2022 https://doi.org/10.1111/ajt.16969

1 Australian National University |  Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, Washington, D.C., USA

2 Heart Transplantation Unit, Leviev Cardiothoracic Center, Sheba Medical Center, Faculty of Medicine, Tel Aviv University, Ramat Gan, Israel

Abstract: The dead donor rule is fundamental to transplant ethics. The rule states that organ procurement must not commence until the donor is both dead and formally pronounced so, and by the same token, that procurement of organs must not cause the death of the donor. In a separate area of medical practice, there has been intense controversy around the participation of physicians in the execution of capital prisoners. These two apparently disparate topics converge in a unique case: the intimate involvement of transplant surgeons in China in the execution of prisoners via the procurement of organs. We use computational text analysis to conduct a forensic review of 2838 papers drawn from a dataset of 124 770 Chinese-language transplant publications. Our algorithm searched for evidence of problematic declarations of brain death during organ procurement. We find evidence in 71 of these reports, spread nationwide, that brain death could not have properly been declared. In these cases, the removal of the heart during organ procurement must have been the proximate cause of the donor's death. Because these organ donors could only have been prisoners, our findings strongly suggest that physicians in the People's Republic of China have participated in executions by organ removal.

"how should we understand the physician's role in a context where executed prisoners are the primary source of transplant organs? Might the transplant surgeon become the de facto executioner? Evidence suggestive of such behavior has emerged over many years from the People's Republic of China (PRC).8-14 To investigate these reports, this paper uses computational methods to examine 2838 Chinese transplant-related medical papers published in scientific journals, systematically collecting data and testing hypotheses about this practice. By scrutinizing the clinical procedures around intubation and ventilation of donors, declaration of brain death, and commencement of organ procurement surgery, we contribute substantial new evidence to questions about the role of PRC physicians in state executions.

...

"The data we rely on in this paper involves transplant surgeries from 1980 to 2015. During this period, there was no voluntary donation system and very few voluntary donors. According to three official sources, including the current leader of the transplant sector, the number of voluntary (i.e., non-prisoner) organ donors in China cumulatively as of 2009 was either 120 or 130,30-32 representing only about 0.3% of the 120 000 organs officially reported to be transplanted during the same period (on the assumption that each voluntary donor gave three organs).18, 33, 34 The leader of China's transplant sector wrote in 2007 that effectively 95% of all organ transplants were from prisoners.35 According to official statements, it was only in 2014 that a national organ allocation system could be used by citizens.36

...

"Procuring vital organs from prisoners demands close cooperation between the executioner and the transplant team. The state's role is to administer death, while the physician's role is to procure a viable organ. If the execution is carried out without heed to the clinical demands of the transplant, the organs may be spoiled. Yet if the transplant team becomes too involved, they risk becoming the executioners.

"Our concern is whether the transplant surgeons establish first that the prisoners are dead before procuring their hearts and lungs. This translates into two empirical questions: (1) Is the donor intubated only after they are pronounced brain dead? And (2) Is the donor intubated by the procurement team as part of the procurement operation? If either were affirmative the declaration of brain death could not have met internationally accepted standards because brain death can only be determined on a fully ventilated patient. Rather, the cause of death would have been organ procurement.

...

"We define as problematic any BDD in which the report states that the donor was intubated after the declaration of brain death, and/or the donor was intubated immediately before organ procurement, as part of the procurement operation, or the donor was ventilated by face mask only.

...

"The number of studies with descriptions of problematic BDD was 71, published between 1980 and 2015. Problematic BDD occurred at 56 hospitals (of which 12 were military) in 33 cities across 15 provinces. 

...

"We have documented 71 descriptions of problematic brain death declaration prior to heart and lung procurement. From these reports, we infer that violations of the DDR took place: given that the donors could not have been brain dead before organ procurement, the declaration of brain death could not have been medically sound. It follows that in these cases death must have been caused by the surgeons procuring the organ.

"The 71 papers we identify almost certainly involved breaches of the DDR because in each case the surgery, as described, precluded a legitimate determination of brain death, an essential part of which is the performance of the apnea test, which in turn necessitates an intubated and ventilated patient. In the cases where a face mask was used instead of intubation48, 49—or a rapid tracheotomy was followed immediately by intubation,50 or where intubation took place after sternal incision as surgeons examined the beating heart44—the lack of prior determination of brain death is even more apparent.

"If indeed these papers document breaches of the DDR during organ procurement from prisoners as we argue, how were these donors prepared for organ procurement? The textual data in the cases we examine is silent on the matter. Taiwan is the only other country we are aware of where death penalty prisoners’ vital organs have been used following execution. This reportedly took place both during the 1990s and then once more in March 2011.51, 52

...

"The PRC papers we have identified do not describe how the donor was incapacitated before procurement, and the data is consistent with multiple plausible scenarios. These range from a bullet to the prisoner's head at an execution site before they are rushed to the hospital, like Tsai's description, or a general anesthetic delivered in the operating room directly before procurement. Paul et al. have previously proposed a hybrid of these scenarios to explain PRC transplant activity: a lethal injection, with execution completed by organ procurement. 

...

"We think that our failure to identify more DDR violations relates to the difficulty of detecting them in the first instance, not to the absence of actual DDR violations in either the literature or practice. Our choice to tightly focus only on papers that made explicit reports of apparent DDR violations likely limited the number of problematic papers we ultimately identified.

...

"As of 2021, China's organ transplant professionals have improved their reputation with their international peers. This is principally based on their claims to have ceased the use of prisoners as organ donors in 2015."

Enticing new graduates to become prison guards, British edition

In the U.S., new college graduates are tempted into teaching in under-served schools through Teach for America, and in Britain through Teach First.  Here's a program for prison guards: Unlocked Graduates

Here's a story from The Guardian:

The graduates training as prison officers: 'People think we just turn keys and shout orders'
These are volatile times for prisons in England and Wales, with overcrowding and record levels of violence. Can a new scheme that aims to do what Teach First did in schools change things from the inside?

"Jack is one of the first cohort of Unlocked Graduates, a new, two-year prison-officer training programme modelled on the phenomenally successful Teach Firstscheme, which takes ambitious graduates and, after minimal training, parachutes them into inner-city schools where they are tasked with raising the aspirations of some of the most deprived children in the country.

"Teach First has been the biggest graduate recruiter for the past three years, training more than 1,400 graduates each year. Almost 60% remain in teaching with the rest going out into the world, tasked with building a movement of people leading efforts to tackle educational inequality in schools and beyond. About a fifth of teachers in low-income schools are now Teach First graduates, around 70%of them from elite Russell Group universities. Unlocked Graduates works in the same way and hopes to mirror Teach First’s success inside prisons – and outside, too.

The prison system is, without question, in urgent need of help. Two-thirds of prisons in England and Wales are overcrowded, with the population rising by more than 1,200 places in the 13 weeks since May. It is now higher than at any other point in the past four years. Ministry of Justice (MoJ) figures show 68% of prisons are housing more inmates than their “certified normal accommodation” – the limit for ensuring a “good, decent standard”, with some more than 50% over capacity.

"According to a report last month by the HM Inspectorate of Prisons, prisoners are living in cells that are too small, with inadequate ventilation, damaged furniture and unscreened, unhygienic toilets, for up to 23 hours a day. And with almost half of all prisoners returning to prison within a year of release, it is clear that more needs to be done to break the cycle of reoffending."