No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the author.
Insurgent citizens: the manufacture of police records in post-Katrina New Orleans and its implications for human rights
Abstract
Inquiries into allegations of human rights abuses require a reliable corpus of evidence to proceed and hold violators accountable for their actions. The following article analyzes the 2005 police shootings that occurred on New Orleans’ Danziger Bridge in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, a case that illustrates the challenges confronting investigations into human rights violations in the USA. By examining an investigative police report, two survivors’ civil complaints, and federal court filings, the article argues that the methodical nature in which several police officers in post-Katrina New Orleans conspired to document the use of deadly force against several unarmed citizens demonstrates that police records created in the context of officer-involved shootings inhibit accountability processes as much as they facilitate them. The deliberate creation of such records, the article concludes, impairs the ability of a democratic nation to ensure human rights and bring their violators to account.
... Going a step further, scholars of colonial archives such as Jeannette Allis Bastian (2005) and J. J. Ghaddar (2016) reveal how colonial authorities create records and assemble archives as a means of silencing their subjects and exercising power. Similarly, Drake (2014Drake ( , 2018 has examined the role of records creation and manipulation in white supremacist state violence. ...
Through analysis of data from interviews with people who shared their stories with two community archives, Texas After Violence Project (TAVP) and South Asian American Digital Archive (SAADA), this article examines how records creators imagine future use and users. Our findings reveal that people create records with concrete ideas of who might access their record and how they might use it. In keeping with community archives research that troubles the sharp delineation between record creator and user, we find that community archives creators are motivated by the need for representational belonging, radical empathy for their communities, and reciprocal archival imaginaries. Many of the participants in our research also describe their story's potential use as a tool for activism and advocacy. Sharing their stories with these uses in mind, participants in our research engaged in what we call prefigurative record creation, a term we use to describe how participants enacted the future they imagine for their communities by sharing their story in the present. Prefigurative record creation constitutes a political act in opposition to the misrepresentation, erasure, and violence that marginalized communities encounter in society. Recognition of prefigurative records creation as such is crucial to helping community archives understand and meet the expectations of their donors.
... En la misma perspectiva de los archivos activistas se inscriben aquellos acervos que testimonian las luchas de las comunidades Queer en Estados Unidos (Wakimoto, Bruce y Partridge, 2013); el activismo de los movimientos de izquierda (Sellie et al., 2015), las acciones de los movimientos anti-gentrificación en Londres (Pell, 2015); los archivos de los pueblos indígenas (Gooda, 2012;McKemmish, Faulkhead, y Russell, 2011;Mckemmish et al., 2012); o los documentos que evidencian los abusos de la represión policial en Nueva Orleans después del desastre natural que dejó a su paso el huracán Katrina (Drake, 2014). ...
Con base en la idea de que los archivos son vehículos para la construcción de las memorias del pasado en el presente, Archivos vivos. Documentar los derechos humanos y la memoria colectiva en Colombia indaga por las prácticas, los sentidos y los usos de los archivos que documentan la violencia desde la perspectiva de los sobrevivientes. El libro parte de los fundamentos teóricos sobre los archivos, la memoria histórica y su relación con los derechos humanos, para luego abordar los casos de cuatro archivos no oficiales (dos personales y dos comunitarios) cuya labor de documentación de violaciones a los derechos humanos en Colombia es emblemática. Este estudio sobre los archivos producidos por la sociedad civil en relación con el conflicto armado interno colombiano llama la atención sobre la preservación de estos acervos como elemento clave para fortalecer la democracia y mantener abiertos los canales de participación ciudadana
... En la misma perspectiva de los archivos activistas se inscriben aquellos acervos que testimonian las luchas de las comunidades Queer en Estados Unidos (Wakimoto, Bruce y Partridge, 2013); el activismo de los movimientos de izquierda (Sellie et al., 2015), las acciones de los movimientos anti-gentrificación en Londres (Pell, 2015); los archivos de los pueblos indígenas (Gooda, 2012;McKemmish, Faulkhead, y Russell, 2011;Mckemmish et al., 2012); o los documentos que evidencian los abusos de la represión policial en Nueva Orleans después del desastre natural que dejó a su paso el huracán Katrina (Drake, 2014). ...
Si bien a Colombia se le diagnostica a menudo como un país con amnesia histórica, donde las políticas del olvido parecen haber surtido efecto, es necesario reconocer que la sociedad civil ha generado un número cada vez mayor de iniciativas de memoria del conflicto, que se materializan en distintos artefactos, entre ellos los archivos. Ante esta realidad cabe preguntarse: ¿qué prácticas documentales desarrollan los sobrevivientes? ¿Qué sentidos les asignan a esas prácticas? ¿Para que usan los documentos? ¿Cómo los archivos les ayudan configurar sus vidas y definir sus identidades? Estas preguntas me han guiado en el estudio de cuatro archivos no oficiales, un conjunto de huellas documentales producidos por personas y asociaciones de víctimas que han interpelado al Estado y a la sociedad, demandando verdad y justicia. En el análisis utilizo un andamiaje teórico-metodológico interdisciplinar con el fin de mostrar las conexiones entre archivos, derechos humanos y memoria colectiva.
... Consider, for example, the July 2017 request from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) to destroy detainee records related to in-custody deaths, sexual assault, and the use of solitary confinement (Washington 2017). Or the manufacturing of police records by the New Orleans Police Department in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina to justify the use of deadly force against unarmed citizens (Drake 2014). Even when state-generated records are not physically manipulated or destroyed, the frequent use in ' official' narratives of phrases such as 'justifiable homicide,' 'response to resistance,' 'failure to obey police orders,' and ' excited delirium' linguistically manipulates and destroys records of state violence. ...
This essay explores symbolic annihilation in the context of state violence, including policing, incarceration, and the death penalty in the US. Using auto-ethnography to reflect on the work of the Texas After Violence Project (TAVP) and other community-based documentation and archival projects, I argue that the personal stories and experiences of victims and survivors of state violence are critical counter-narratives to dominant discourses on violence, criminality, and the purported efficacy of retributive law enforcement and criminal justice policies and practices. They also compel us to engage with complex questions about victimhood, disposability, and accountability. Building on the work of activists and archivists engaged in liberatory memory work, I also argue that counter-narratives of state violence confront and challenge the social, cultural, and ideological power of symbolic annihilation. Because these counter-narratives are under constant threat of being suppressed, co-opted, or silenced, they are forms of endangered knowledge that must be protected and preserved. Finally, I reflect on ‘archives of survival,’ repositories of stories and other ephemera of tragedy that contribute to envisioning and achieving transformative justice.
... Drake concluded, "The ways in which state agents create and use records in the society-especially for the expressed intent to justify the deprivation of life or imprisonment of innocent civilians-inevitably impacts those who are charged with the responsibility of ensuring their preservation and access." 25 Archivists, then, must contend with the reality that records in their care have been created for the express purpose of exercising oppressive power. In the three years since Michael Brown's murder in Ferguson, Missouri, the country has seen police brutalize black and brown people over and over again, with those responsible almost never seeing any consequences. ...
This article examines the relationship between reparations campaigns and archives. It argues that this relationship requires archivists to take on the role of reparations activists, particularly in the campaign for black reparations in the United States. The article takes the form of a literature review, analyzing selected articles to establish the theoretical connection between archives and reparations, to demonstrate this connection through case studies, and to show that archivists have a particular obligation when it comes to reparations for racial discrimination and violence against black people in the United States. Finally, the article explores the ways that archival practices can be turned toward reparative justice. This is a call for American archivists to recognize their complicity in systemic racism and in so doing, become activists for reparations.
Homeless services systems provide unhoused individuals access to emergency shelter, subsidized housing, and other life-sustaining resources. In this paper, we present a qualitative study that draws on the experiences of fifteen social service workers to examine how recordkeeping practices sustain homeless services systems and unite a tangled web of institutions and actors, including public housing systems, nonprofit agencies, and local governments. We address the following research questions: How is the infrastructure of homeless services sustained by recordkeeping? How are social service workers affected by increasing recordkeeping demands? In what ways do social service workers work against or ‘find the play’ in this system? To address these questions, we collected interviews and conducted artifact walkthroughs with our study participants. We analyzed the data using an infrastructural lens and found that current recordkeeping practices within homeless services systems comprise an "infrastructure of last resort" that functions logistically, prioritizing efficiency and speed. We also found that social service workers “speak back” to logistification by making the homeless services infrastructure more legible to their unhoused clients through mediation and acts of translation that help to produce better resource outcomes. Our findings show how structuring recordkeeping in ways that privilege efficiency and speed disrupts social service work and interferes with social service workers’ ability to provide care for vulnerable individuals facing life-altering and life-threatening hardships.
Both traditional recordkeeping and radical empathy frameworks ask us to carefully consider: the presence of sensitive information within digital content; those who created, are captured by, and are affected by a record (or the absence of that record); and the consequences of retaining or discarding that information. However, automated digital archiving workflows – in order to handle the scale and volume of digital content – discourage contextual and empathetic decision-making in favour of preselected decisions. This paper explores the implications on labor and privacy of the common practice to “take and keep it all” within the context of radical empathy. Practices which promote retention of complete disk images and encourage the creation of access copies with redacted sensitive data are vulnerable. The decision to discard must be deliberate and, often, must be enacted manually, outside of the workflow. The motivation for this model is that the researcher, archivist, curator, or librarian can always return to the original disk image in order to demonstrate authenticity, allow for emulation or access, or to generate new access copies. However, this practice poses ethical privacy concerns and does not demonstrate care. We recognize that the resources necessary to review disk images and make contextual decisions that balance both privacy and authenticity are sizable due to the manual nature of this work: this places strain and further labor on staff and practitioners using current digital archival and preservation tools. We proffer that there is a need to develop tools which aid in efficient and explicit redaction, but also allow for needed contextual and empathetic decision-making. Further we propose that more staff time is required to make these decisions and if that staff time is not available, then the institution should consider itself incapable of ethically stewarding the content and protecting those affected. Pre-print first published online 01/24/2021
Social work professions are increasingly studied as key sites for understanding precarity, affective labor, and the future of care work. However, little research has explored social workers' recordkeeping practices. This study expands on existing research on records and documentation through engaging with users of “R/Socialwork,” a subforum on the internet forum Reddit.com. Utilizing a multimodal approach drawing on participant observation, in‐depth interviewing, and discourse analysis, this research sought to answer the following research question: How do social workers understand their use of and interaction with records? Findings indicated widespread frustration with documentation paradigms in the profession, with variation based on sub‐field and proximity to clinical practice. Users expressed this frustration in a variety of ways, with some utilizing the forum to support entrepreneurial approaches to problems in the field, while others used the site as an alternative form of recordkeeping, documenting their emotional responses.
On July 14th, 2017, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) posted a notice in the Federal Register that U.S Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was seeking permission to destroy eleven types of records related to people detained by ICE. These include records of sexual abuse and assault, escapes, deaths, solitary confinement, and complaints made to a hotline by those in ICE custody. ICE requested timelines for the destruction of these records ranging from three to twenty years and in late August 2017, NARA granted preliminary approval of this request. This perspective essay seeks to shed light on the vast array of arguments asserting the value of these records to the people in ICE detention. Moreover, it attempts to weigh the evidence of ICE’s recordkeeping practices, the preponderance of which points to ICE’s inability and aversion to accurate, truthful and accessible documentation surrounding its operation. This exploration ultimately considers this historical moment as one in which archives can show their value as resources for government accountability, historical research and communities of migrants and refugees to argue that it is incumbent upon archivists to seize the opportunity.
O que torna um documento de arquivo um "documento de direitos humanos"? Quais tipos de documentos se enquadram nesse termo genérico? Como e por que podemos desenvolver uma tipologia desses documentos? O que está em jogo – eticamente, teoricamente e na prática – quanto às formas e razões pelas quais definimos e classificamos documentos como tal? Este artigo procura responder a essas questões delineando uma proposta de tipologia de documentos de direitos humanos, apresenta revisão de literatura que explora a história das definições de documentos de direitos humanos em estudos arquivísticos, bem como a discussão atual mais ampla na Ciência da Informação sobre as políticas de organização da informação. Em seguida, delineia a metodologia para a análise conceitual descrevendo as formas pelas quais essa metodologia será empregada para construir a categoria “documento de direitos humanos”. Conclui com uma proposta de tipologia dos documentos de direitos humanos, postulando que tais documentos de arquivo podem ser examinados de acordo com cinco vetores interligados: quem os criou, por que e quando; onde estão atualmente custodiados e como estão sendo usados, com base na análise de dois exemplos importantes de documentos que retratam eventos de violações de direitos humanos usando a tipologia proposta. Finalmente, tece considerações sobre as implicações éticas, políticas e profissionais da tipologia proposta sugerindo formas de utilização dessa proposta no futuro.
The chapter provides an overview of research in the archival multiverse, reviewing and reflecting upon historical developments, current trends and future directions. It chronicles the rapid diversification and expansion of archival and recordkeeping research over the past three decades with the development of important research and education infrastructure. It presents philosophical and theoretical frameworks that have been drawn from archival science and other fields, particularly those that support the exploration of records and recordkeeping as they exist in multiple cultural and social contexts. Common and emergent methodological stances are discussed and archival and recordkeeping research methods and techniques are identified and defined, including those derived and adapted from other disciplines The purpose is to promote their rigorous application, and provide sources for the teaching of research methods for professional and research careers. The chapter concludes with recommendations for how to sustain and extend archival and recordkeeping research to address the needs of our societies, organisations and communities. © 2018 Anne J. Gilliland and Sue McKemmish. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Archivists have long recognized the inherent historical and social mandate in preserving stories of those who endured violence at the hands of the state. Examples of this responsibility include archivists who recorded public tribunals in post-apartheid South Africa, documented stories of Japanese Americans forced into internment camps during World War II, and acquired collections of 1960s civil rights activists who experienced military intervention while fighting to end segregation. These endeavors align with the historian Howard Zinn's call for archivists to "compile a whole new world of documentary material" about the lived experiences of marginalized populations and communities. Drawing upon Zinn's charge as well as scholarly literature around community archives, social justice, and human rights, this article describes the joint effort of community organizers and professional archivists who collaborated to establish a community archive for victims of police violence in Cleveland, Ohio. The archive, A People's Archive of Police Violence in Cleveland, provides a sustainable, autonomous means for Cleveland residents to share their first-hand accounts of police violence in the region. The authors will narrate the archive's conception and development as well as advance the archive as a post-custodial model for other grassroots organizations protesting various forms of state violence.
This paper investigates how the production of police records was linked to the policies of repression and violence during Guatemala’s civil war. We provide empirical evidence from the Historical Archive of the Guatemalan National Police that the police used language, terminology and codes to record deaths in ways that produced silences about the level of violence during the height of repressive military rule. Using a dataset derived from a statistically valid sample of police records together with qualitative archival analysis, we find evidence of profound changes in the terminology used to record and report on deaths—changes that follow a pattern consistent with the policies of information control and concealment of the three different military regimes that ruled Guatemala between 1978 and 1985. We argue that researchers will need to consider the silences created through the selective use of terminology in documents when using archives to produce historical knowledge. Detecting and intercepting silence will be especially important as state records are increasingly sought in service of ongoing pursuits for truth and justice about past atrocities.
This study contributes to the body of knowledge of police–citizen contacts by investigating perceptions and behaviors during encounters that result in physical resistance and force. The authors use the accounts literature as a way to understand police–citizen interactions. The data include interviews with citizens who resisted or were accused of resisting lawful police commands and those officers who used force to control these citizens. The goals are to understand the dynamics of police–citizen interactions that use force, to make sense of the actors’ perspectives, and, finally, to examine the processes within the deference–resistance continuum. The data show that officers and citizens focus on different issues when interacting and justify their behavior by the identification and maintenance of their self-prescribed roles.
Peter Gabriel and other allies created WITNESS nearly 20 years ago – shortly after the Rodney King incident in Los Angeles. At the time, our founders asked: ‘What if every human rights worker had a camera in their hands? What would they be able to document? What would they be able to change?’ Since 1992 WITNESS has engaged with the risks, opportunities and possibilities for action that emerge from the power of moving images – training and supporting human rights activists worldwide to create real change through our methodology of ‘video advocacy’. Yet now an increasing number of people worldwide have cameras. Participants, witnesses and perpetrators are all filming. Videos (particularly mobile video) make it possible to document and publicize human rights struggles – from monks marching for freedom in Rangoon and the election protestors in Tehran, to individual voices speaking out against injustice on YouTube. However, despite the growing online circulation of images of human rights violations, of victims and survivors, there is limited discussion of crucial safety, consent and ethical concerns – particularly for people who are filmed. Issues around consent, representation and re-victimization and retaliation have emerged even more clearly in an open and networked online environment. Video is being reworked, remixed and recirculated by many more people. New possibilities for action by a global citizenry have arisen, but these carry with them real dangers. The human rights and technology communities can help lead the way in confronting these challenges. The article concludes with suggestions for approaches based on norms, technology solutions, and other ideas that could be deployed to begin to address these emerging issues.
This article argues that human rights organizations, international agencies and foundations, and other nongovernmental organizations need to prioritize archival preservation of primary materials relating to human rights abuses. To make this point, the article examines the state of documentation relating to human rights abuses under military rule in three Southern Cone countries-Chile (from 1973 to 1990), Argentina (from 1976 to 1983), and Uruguay (from 1973 to 1984)-and discusses the political, social, technical, and financial challenges that face advocates of archival preservation. The article is, in part, a result of the author's visits with each of the HRNGOs discussed in this article, as well as interviews with members of these HRNGOS; scholars; human rights experts; social scientists; lawyers from Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay; and bibliographers and library experts from major research libraries and national library systems. Ultimately, the article is meant to be a call for action in a sphere of activity that is sometimes neglected in human rights discourse.
This article analyzes the adequacy of The Uniform Electronic Evidence Act, twelve years after its adoption, in dealing with the complexity of the records created, used, or stored in the digital environment. In the face of rapidly changing technology, the authors believe that the nature and characteristics of electronic records cannot be accounted for by simple modifications to the existing law of evidence, but require a new enactment following upon a close collaboration among records professions, legal and law enforcement professions, and the information technology profession. The new rules, comprehensively encompassing issues of relevance, admissibility, and weight of electronic documentary evidence, must be based on the body of knowledge of each profession, on the findings of interdisciplinary research, and on existing records-related standards. The enactment of such rules would help the courts make accurate findings of fact, based on electronic records that are created in a reliable environment and preserved in an authentic form for as long as they might be needed, and would alleviate ongoing confusion about the admissibility and use of electronic records in litigation.
It is undisputed that Blacks are disproportionately represented among the victims of police shootings. In a comprehensive review of the literature on police use of deadly force, James Fyfe reports that every study that has examined this issue [has] found that blacks are represented disproportionately among those at the wrong end of police guns. Although Blacks represent approximately 13 percent of the population in the United States, in parts of the country they constitute 60 to 85 percent of the victims of police shootings. On average, Blacks are more than six times as likely as Whites to be shot by police, and in large cities are killed by police at least three times more often than Whites. Latinos (or Hispanics) are about twice as likely as Whites, but only half as likely as Blacks, to be shot and killed by police. There is a noticeable lack of data regarding police use of force against other non-Black minorities, such as Asian Americans, Arab Americans, South Asians and Native Americans. However, reports by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch suggest that, in relation to their representation in society at large, these other minorities are also disproportionately on the receiving end of police force. While widespread consensus exists that racial minorities are disproportionately represented as victims of police shootings, the reason for this disproportion is hotly disputed. Most people who have an opinion on the subject fall within one of two camps which John Goldkamp, in his study of race and police shootings, calls Belief Perspective I and Belief Perspective II. Proponents of Belief Perspective I believe racism on the part of police officers and police departments results in one trigger finger for racial minorities and another for Whites. According to this view, police officers intentionally single out racial minorities for harsher treatment. Proponents of Belief Perspective II, in contrast, contend that race does not influence the average police officer's decision to use force. According to this perspective, Blacks and other non-Whites are disproportionately represented as victims of police shootings because they disproportionately commit armed robberies, carry firearms, and engage in behavior that police officers are likely to find threatening, such as resisting arrest. The problem with Goldkamp's two belief perspectives theory is that it frames the problem in all-or-nothing terms. Either police officers are bigots who intentionally target racial minorities (Belief Perspective I) or they are completely unbiased and color-blind (Belief Perspective II). The truth more likely lies somewhere between these two extremes. In this essay, I offer a third way to explain the disparate treatment respective segments of the population experience at the hands of police officers - an explanation that accommodates both the lived experiences of persons of color and the belief that police officers use force more often against persons of color because such individuals appear to be more threatening to the officer. Borrowing from Charles Lawrence's theory of unconscious racism, I suggest that racial stereotypes operate at a subconscious level to influence the police officer's decision to use deadly force. The police officer may not consciously decide to use deadly force because of the suspect's race, but the suspect's race nonetheless influences the officer. Racial stereotypes thus may alter the officer's perception of danger, threat, and resistance to authority. A simple question, Officer, why am I being stopped? may be perceived as behavior challenging the officer's authority when asked by someone who is Black. Police officers may also see danger more readily when dealing with a person of color. Just as racial and ethnic stereotypes influence private citizens' decisions to use force in self-defense, such stereotypes can also influence police officers' decisions to use force. I review recent social science studies which provide support for my theory and provide examples of how racial stereotypes can affect perception through actual cases. Finally, I suggest a race-switching jury instruction as a means to help de-bias juror decision making.
Results of experiments employing the minimal group paradigm (MGP) (Tajfel et al., 1971) have provided evidence that mere categorization can—at least on average—lead to in-group favoritism, i.e., allocating more resources to in-group members than to out-group members. This effect is often explained by sociomotivational processes in which persons favor their own group in order to enhance their social self-esteem (e.g., Tajfel & Turner, 1986). However, in-group favoritism in the MGP can alternatively be explained by assuming that persons simply follow social norms or scripts that are currently accessible and provide behavioral prescriptions for the task at hand. This explanation was tested by experimentally varying the accessibility of behavior scripts with a priming procedure within a MGP. As expected, priming of “loyalty” compared to priming of “equality” led to (a) higher perceptions that loyalty is expected by in-group members, (b) increased in-group favoritism, (c) increased expression of in-group identification. Moreover, while self-esteem ratings were positively correlated with in-group favoritism after priming of loyalty, this relation was reversed after priming of equality.
This book explores the promises and limitations of holding individuals accountable for violations of international human rights and humanitarian law. It analyses the principal crimes under international law, such as genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes, and appraises both prosecutorial and other key mechanisms developed to bring individuals to justice. After applying their conclusions in a detailed case study, the authors offer a series of compelling conclusions on the prospects for accountability. This fully updated new edition contains expanded coverage of national trials under universal jurisdiction, international criminal tribunals including the International Criminal Court, new hybrid tribunals in Cambodia and elsewhere, truth commissions, and lustration. It also explores individual accountability for terrorist acts and for abuses committed in the name of counter-terrorism policy.
A team of expert contributors provides an in-depth exploration of police use of force, firearms, and less-than-lethal weapons from a dozen countries across five continents. Police Use of Force: A Global Perspective is a fascinating, international exploration of police use of force, firearms, and less-than-lethal weapons in nations around the world. The book is comprised of three sections: the first focuses on the use of force generally, the second explores firearms and deadly force, and the final section considers less-than-lethal weapons, including pepper spray, TASERs, and other emerging technologies currently on the horizon. The essays gathered here will provide readers with an understanding of the vast differences in how police use force in various countries, as well as why police use force differently under different forms of government. Topics covered include use-of-force definitions, training procedures, policy issues, abuse of police authority, use of force during interrogations, and the use of firearms by armed and unarmed police forces. Finally, there is an essay focusing on how shooting and killing a suspect impacts an officer in the months and years that follow.
In the last ten years, influential voices within and on the periphery of the record keeping community have succeeded in establishing the preservation of “evidence” as the governing purpose of contemporary archival theory and methods development. Afterglow offers a critique of the concept of evidence in archival discourse. Its main contention is that one can put records into evidence; one cannot set out to put evidence into records. The argument rests on the following assertions: (1) current discussions of evidence rest on a blindness to certain contradictions embedded in claims that record keeping principally involves evidence keeping, or “evidence management”; (2) a politics of temporality, under which an interplay of disciplinary knowledge claims and professional interest is discernible, helps to account for the contemporary rhetoric describing the relationship between “record” and “evidence”, and (3) the late-twentieth century legal, political, and cultural climate, along with the technological environment, explain the increasing prominence of “evidence” in these knowledge claims and professional ambitions. The essay concludes with recommendations for addressing these issues.
The National Archives of Canada holds an extensive group of archival government records that document the uprooting of the Japanese Canadian community during the Second World War and its aftermath. This article explores the use of the archival records that caused the community to question the fairness of their treatment, to seek an apology from the government, and request compensation for their losses. Usage of the archival record in subsequent publications also helped to build cultural memory. The existence of such archival documents is essential for citizens to hold democratic government accountable for its policies, decisions, and actions. The example of the Japanese Canadians' efforts to seek recognition of, and restitution for, past injustices illuminates the important role played by a national archives in protecting the rights of citizens through its appraisal and transfer decisions.
During the past several decades, the international human rights movement has had a crucial hand in the struggle against totalitarian regimes, cruelties in wars, and crimes against humanity. Today, it grapples with the war against terror and subsequent abuses of government power. InThe International Human Rights Movement, Aryeh Neier--a leading figure and a founder of the contemporary movement--offers a comprehensive and authoritative account of this global force, from its beginnings in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to its essential place in world affairs today. Neier combines analysis with personal experience, and gives a unique insider's perspective on the movement's goals, the disputes about its mission, and its rise to international importance. Discussing the movement's origins, Neier looks at the dissenters who fought for religious freedoms in seventeenth-century England and the abolitionists who opposed slavery before the Civil War era. He pays special attention to the period from the 1970s onward, and he describes the growth of the human rights movement after the Helsinki Accords, the roles played by American presidential administrations, and the astonishing Arab revolutions of 2011. Neier argues that the contemporary human rights movement was, to a large extent, an outgrowth of the Cold War, and he demonstrates how it became the driving influence in international law, institutions, and rights. Throughout, Neier highlights key figures, controversies, and organizations, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, and he considers the challenges to come. Illuminating and insightful,The International Human Rights Movementis a remarkable account of a significant world movement, told by a key figure in its evolution.
The shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes at Stockwell underground station in 2005 raised acute issues about operational practice, legitimacy, accountability and policy making regarding police use of fatal force. It dramatically exposed a policy, referred to popularly as 'shoot to kill', which came not from Parliament but from the non-statutory ACPO (Association of Chief Police Officers). This vital and timely book unravels these often misunderstood matters with a fresh look at firearms practice and policy in a traditionally 'unarmed' police service. It is essential reading for all those interested in the state's role in defining coercion and in policing a democracy.
Evidence is an important concept for archivists at the same time that it is a hard one to pin down in so many words. Our understanding tends to suffer from a general assumption that the notion is somehow self-evident (that we know what we mean without having to spell it out), as well as from a narrow conceptualization that inextricably links the notion with legal rules, accountability, and corporate memory. With the renewed interest in and debate surrounding the subject in recent years (especially since the advent of electronic records), it is important for archivists to clarify and elaborate on our ideas of evidence and to work towards formulating our own concept with a meaning expressed and explored in archival terms. This paper seeks to do so by tracing an archival concept of evidence as a relation between record and event (drawn from legal conceptions of evidence as a relation between two facts), by considering the concept's various assertions about the nature of records and certain archival processes, and by imagining the possible applications and implications of the concept as a term of archival thought and practice. In the end, this paper does not seek to offer a singular archival meaning of evidence so much as to begin a line of inquiry that hopefully opens up our understanding of evidence and leads to different discussions of some of the key ideas informing and shaping our individual and collective practice.
The first book to focus on the problem of police violence in India as well as other major countries Extrajudicial executions by law enforcement officers have blighted parts of the world for generations, but criminological coverage has been superficial and selective. It has often been presented as a problem specific to countries associated with military rule, dictatorial regimes and colonial heritage. Permission to Shoot?: Police Use of Deadly Force in Democracies brings a new dimension to the problem of police abuse of deadly force by concentrating on the social and political settings in India and the United States, both large democracies and vibrant superpowers. The research in the book is based on primary sources-interviews with police officers of varying ranks: with those who are involved in the killings; with those who facilitate such operations, and with those who are mute spectators. The book deals with universal, fundamental themes such as: · Why is it that in a democratic country the abuse of police powers can appear to be overtly and tacitly encouraged? · What motivational techniques and justifications are used to override social norms governing moral conduct, centring on the sector of society mandated to use deadly force against civilians? · What makes ordinary, decent human beings do horrible things? Permission to Shoot? seeks to provide broad guidelines and recommendations for reforms in policing policy and practice. The research peels back the opaque communication that often surrounds this issue, but more than that it shows how that kind of communication acts to support the practice itself. © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010 All rights reserved.
Did the Washington Post bring down Richard Nixon by reporting on the Watergate scandal? Did a cryptic remark by Walter Cronkite effectively end the Vietnam War? Did William Randolph Hearst vow to "furnish the war" in the 1898 conflict with Spain? In Getting It Wrong, W. Joseph Campbell addresses and dismantles these and other prominent media-driven myths-stories about or by the news media that are widely believed but which, on close examination, prove apocryphal. In a fascinating exploration of these and other cases-including the supposedly outstanding coverage of New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina-Campbell describes how myths like these can feed stereotypes, deflect blame from policymakers, and overstate the power and influence of the news media.
Over the past twenty to twenty-five years international human rights has become a major force in world affairs. This development has stemmed primarily from the work of international human rights non-governmental organizations (NGOs), which since the Second World War have acted as the primary agents for advancing and defending new international norms of conduct. NGOs have built their prestige and influence on their ability to investigate, document, and publicize violations of human rights and humanitarian law. Given the significance of human rights fact-finding in international affairs, the manner in which NGOs credibly produce and shape documentary evidence and the constraints and challenges they face in doing so are important issues. NGOs may confront many obstacles that necessitate the formulation of specific fact-finding strategies, which directly affect what types of credible evidence or records are produced to substantiate alleged rights abuses. How these organizations document, corroborate, and report the facts to the international community says much about why human rights NGOs are one of the most important chroniclers of our times and why the imperative exists to preserve their records.
As civilization develops, both socially and technologically, the laws that govern human action must change accordingly. This paper examines the current legal debate over the nature of electronic records and their legal admissibility as evidence in light of past debates on the admissibility of microfilm, photocopies, and written documents themselves. The author sees contemporary judicial thinking as following the historical trend of relying on personal testimony and "dependable systems" to ensure documentary veracity and validity. The conclusion stresses the impact of the legal status of electronic records on records management programs and the need for records managers to be aware of the foundations of current legal thought.
This essay argues that archival paradigms over the past 150 years have gone through four phases: from juridical legacy to cultural memory to societal engagement to community archiving. The archivist has been transformed, accordingly, from passive curator to active appraiser to societal mediator to community facilitator. The focus of archival thinking has moved from evidence to memory to identity and community, as the broader intellectual currents have changed from pre-modern to modern to postmodern to contemporary. Community archiving and digital realities offer possibilities for healing these disruptive and sometimes conflicting discourses within our profession.
Katrina unveiled countless civil and human rights abuses and showed the nation the faces of those left behind when the disaster struck. Thirteen examples illustrate what is yet not done on the agenda to make liberty and justice for all a reality. This civil and human rights perspective on Katrina indicates that the people left behind when Katrina hit are being left behind again now. The recovery, such as it is, prioritizes property owners, privatizes public service, and is allowing the institutions needed for the common good to deteriorate through demolition by neglect. Unless there is massive change, the families left behind will never return.
Police use of deadly force first became a major public issue in the 1960s, when many urban riots were precipitated immediately by police killings of citizens. Since that time scholars have studied deadly force extensively, police practitioners have made significant reforms in their policies and practices regarding deadly force, and the United States Supreme Court has voided a centuries-old legal principle that authorized police in about one-half the states to use deadly force to apprehend unarmed, nonviolent, fleeing felony suspects. This essay reviews and interprets these developments.
International criminal courts will be judged by their fairness
to defendants as well as to victims. In a very practical way, such
claims will hinge, inter alia, on the ability of prosecutors
and defendants to have reasonable access to probative evidence. But
international criminal courts depend on states to provide them with
evidence or access to evidence. The obligation of states to cooperate
with international criminal tribunals in the production of evidence
was at issue in the recent decision of the International Criminal
Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in the Blaskic case
(1997). That judgment and the provisions of the Rome Statute of the
International Criminal Court (1998) that address judicial assistance
deserve investigation. Do the rules propounded in Blaskic
and in the Rome Statute create the right conditions for the institution
of fair trials in international criminal courts in our world today? Are
such rules possible? The author argues that the diplomats in Rome failed
to establish a procedure for the production of evidence that will lead
to the goal of a fair and effective trial. This is cause for concern if
and when an International Criminal Court comes into being.
Human Rights Quarterly 18.2 (1996) 492-506
In May 1995, General Manuel Contreras, head of Chilean intelligence during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, was sentenced to seven years in prison for ordering the 1976 assassination, in Washington, D.C., of former Chilean Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier. The assassination was allegedly the work of "Operation Condor," a secret network that reportedly connected the intelligence services of the military dictatorships that ruled South America's Southern Cone during the 1970s and into the 1980s. Using this network (purportedly masterminded by Contreras), these repressive regimes exchanged information on "subversive" groups or individuals operating within their countries; and ultimately coordinated the detention, deportation, torture, and killing of political prisoners. In addition to this exchange of information and prisoners, Operation Condor also served as a source of international hit squads (such as the one that killed Letelier) that struck at enemies of the participating regimes -- Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Uruguay, Brazil, and Paraguay. The recent discovery in Paraguay, of a huge archive of government documents -- known as the "Archive of Terror"--from the years of Alfredo Stroessner's dictatorship (1954-1989) sheds light on this "internationalization" of repression and offers clues as to the existence and dimensions of Operation Condor. No comparable cache of publicly available documents exists in any of the other countries of the Southern Cone from this period of military rule. Therefore, the Paraguayan archive provides the best source of official documentation for analyzing the coordination of this repression and the functioning of Operation Condor.
The information in the archive also could prove crucial to future cases brought against former officials of the Southern Cone dictatorships by victims of this network of repression. The number of such cases is likely to increase following the Contreras ruling. In view of this fact, it is important that the exact contents of the archive materials pertaining to Operation Condor be brought to light.
What follows is an examination of this documentation, researched in Paraguay over a three-month period in the spring 1995. During this time, I was granted unprecedented access to the archive and to other important information housed at the Palacio de Justicia in Asunciis an examination of this documentation, researched in Paraguay over a three-month period in the spring 1995. During tThe following analysis describes the relevant information found in the government archive pertaining to Operation Condor and attempts to address some of the human rights issues it raises. Through a presentation and description of relevant documents, this article attempts to ascertain the design and scope of Operation Condor from the perspective of the documents found in the Paraguayan archive. The goal is a legal, "textual" analysis of an international convention on repression, divorced as much as possible from the generalized speculation that has surround this issue for the past twenty years.
The discovery and general contents of the "Archive of Terror" have been discussed elsewhere; therefore, this article describes neither in detail. In December 1992, a group of Paraguayan jurists, led by Judges José Augustín Fernández and Luís María Benítez Riera, raided the Dirección de Producción of the Policía de la Capital (DIPC) located in the Asunción suburb of Lambare. The judges were acting under the habeas data provisions of Article 135 of the new post-Stroessner Paraguayan constitution, adopted in 1992, which provides citizens with the right to access information about themselves held by the state. A writ of habeas data had been issued to former political prisoner (and current leader of the Paraguayan human rights movement) Martín Almada, who had been imprisoned from November 1974 until his expulsion from Paraguay in 1977. While in exile in Paris, Almada had been told of the existence of the archive by the disgruntled wife of one of Stroessner's henchmen. The judges found almost two tons of documents concerning the activities of the DIPC, the center of Stroessner's repression apparatus. The documents were immediately transferred to the Palacio de Justicia in Asunción where the archive is currently located.
The archive itself contains a wide variety of documentation: detention and release data on all political prisoners held...
It has long been understood by disaster researchers that both the general public and organizational actors tend to believe in various disaster myths. Notions that disasters are accompanied by looting, social disorganization, and deviant behavior are examples of such myths. Research shows that the mass media play a significant role in promulgating erroneous beliefs about disaster behavior. Following Hurricane Katrina, the response of disaster victims was framed by the media in ways that greatly exaggerated the incidence and severity of looting and lawlessness. Media reports initially employed a “civil unrest” frame and later characterized victim behavior as equivalent to urban warfare. The media emphasis on lawlessness and the need for strict social control both reflects and reinforces political discourse calling for a greater role for the military in disaster management. Such policy positions are indicators of the strength of militarism as an ideology in the United States.
Accountability forums need authentic digital records to reconstruct actions and decisions of government organizations and officials. In this paper, case studies are used to explore the relations between ICTs, authentic records and accountability. The empirical research indicates that whether accountability forums perceive (digital) records to be authentic does not just depend on technological and organizational safeguards but also on institutional safeguards. Norms, values and cognitive scripts regarding recordkeeping in public organizations create safeguards for the preservation of authentic digital records. For the design of recordkeeping systems this means that organizations should create integral arrangements of technological, organizational and institutional safeguards.
This paper argues that archives play a significant role in fostering three elements essential to Cambodia’s recovery: accountability,
truth, and memory. First, archives have an enduring power to hold the regime accountable because they were the catalyst for
an international human rights tribunal, as shown by the relentless activism of the archives’ director, international efforts
to preserve Khmer Rouge records, and the correlation between indictments and documentary evidence. Secondly, this paper posits
that archives make a significant contribution to the establishment of truth because they have epistemological validity over
the testimony of survivors, as seen repeatedly throughout the tribunal. Finally, this paper argues that the archives are succeeding
in constructing memory of the Khmer Rouge era because it is forcing Cambodia to deal with its uncomfortable past by giving
voice to survivors, creating textbooks, and conducting outreach. This paper is rooted in the field of archival studies within
the discipline of library and information science, but draws on history, Cambodian studies, and legal studies. Employing transcripts
of the ongoing tribunal, NGO reports, and newsletters as primary sources, the paper argues that while archives have been successful
in holding the Khmer Rouge accountable, establishing truth, and creating memory, only a tribunal can administer justice.
KeywordsKhmer Rouge archives-Human rights-Cambodian archives-Memory-Justice-Accountability-Evidence-Documentation Center of Cambodia
In the last ten years, influential voices within and on the periphery of the record keeping community have succeeded in establishing
the preservation of “evidence” as the governing purpose of contemporary archival theory and methods development. Afterglow
offers a critique of the concept of evidence in archival discourse. Its main contention is that one can put records into evidence;
one cannot set out to put evidence into records. The argument rests on the following assertions: (1) current discussions of
evidence rest on a blindness to certain contradictions embedded in claims that record keeping principally involves evidence
keeping, or “evidence management”; (2) a politics of temporality, under which an interplay of disciplinary knowledge claims
and professional interest is discernible, helps to account for the contemporary rhetoric describing the relationship between
“record” and “evidence”, and (3) the late-twentieth century legal, political, and cultural climate, along with the technological
environment, explain the increasing prominence of “evidence” in these knowledge claims and professional ambitions. The essay
concludes with recommendations for addressing these issues.
Far from being a simple reflection of reality, archives are constructed windows into personal and collective processes. They
at once express and are instruments of prevailing relations of power. Verne Harris makes these arguments through an account
of archives and archivists in the context of South Africa's transition from apartheid to democracy. The account is deliberately
shaped around three themes — race, power, and public records. While he concedes that the constructedness of memory and the
dimension of power are most obvious in the extreme circumstances of oppression and rapid transition to democracy, he argues
that these are realities informing archives in all circumstances. He makes an appeal to archivists to enchant their work by
engaging these realities and by turning always towards the call of and for justice.
The mass devastation and suffering left in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in the US Gulf Coast brought the intersection of media and community into sharp focus. The news media played a pivotal role in almost every aspect of the disaster and its aftermath, and was harshly criticized for its depiction of minorities and for sensationalizing a human and environmental disaster. The literature suggests that media often represents minorities in a negative light, ultimately reinforcing existing social inequalities. This paper examines the portrayal of minority groups in the media during and after the storm. Data were coded from news media broadcasts to determine the nature of minority representation. Interviews were conducted with individuals from New Orleans who survived the disaster to understand issues related to media trust, the accuracy of media reports and perception of the media's portrayal of minorities. The results indicate that minorities are disproportionately shown in a passive or 'victim' role and are rarely shown in positions of expertize. Further, storm survivors indicated a misrepresentation of minorities in media coverage of the disaster, as well as reporting low levels of media trust and accuracy. The broader implications of these findings in relation to media reinforcement of social inequities and media responsibility are discussed.
The UN Special Rapporteur on Torture (SRT) is mandated to investigate and assess the situation of torture worldwide. He takes up complaints by torture victims and sends communications to Governments; he addresses specific factual and legal issues related to torture and other cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment and, most importantly; upon the invitation of Governments, he carries out fact-finding missions to specific countries. These country visits aim to establish a dialogue with the Government and to assess the situation of torture and ill-treatment in a given country. The preparation of a country visit may last up to several years, since sometimes long negotiations are necessary before a Government extends an invitation to the SRT accepting the SRT's terms of reference for fact-finding missions. These include full freedom of inquiry, unrestricted freedom of movement throughout the country as well as confidential interviews with victims, witnesses, human rights defenders, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Because torture takes place behind closed doors, torture fact-finding and the assessment of the general conditions of detention require unannounced visits to places of detention and individual and confidential interviews with persons deprived of their liberty. It is essential that interviews with detainees only take place with their informed consent and that necessary precautionary measures against reprisals are taken. The mission reports that are drafted on the basis of information received from the Government, NGOs, lawyers, and detainees are presented and discussed in the Human Rights Council. The SRT's recommendations included in the report should help the Government in its efforts to eradicate torture in the respective country. Additionally, the reports are essentially background materials for the Universal Periodic Review of the Human Rights Council and can serve as an important advocacy tool for NGOs and other actors.
Bridge over troubled waters and passageway on a journey to justice: national lessons learned about justice from Louisiana’s response to Hurricane Katrina
- Allen-Bell Aa
- AA Allen-Bell
The Los Angeles County Sherriff’s Department, 30th semiannual report
- M J Bobb
Shoot to kill-how far is too far in protecting citizens?: a comparative discussion of the shoot-to-kill orders given in London after the subway bombings and those given in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Penn St Int
- A M Gregg
- AM Gregg
Re: investigation of the New Orleans Police Department
- T E Perez
The sad death of Kimani Gray and society’s bad choices
- S Walshe
Police use of force: a global perspective
- G B Morrison
- GB Morrison
Bearing witness: the art and science of human rights fact-finding
- D F Orentlicher
- DF Orentlicher
Cops and auditors: the rhetoric of records
- J Van Maanen
- B T Pentland
- J Maanen Van