The future of violence and its prevention in Latin America and the Caribbean

Speakers

Thomas Abt is a Senior Research Fellow with the Center for International Development at Harvard University. He is a member of the Campbell Collaboration Criminal Justice Steering Committee and the Advisory Board of the Police Executive Programme at the University of Cambridge. He also serves as a Senior Fellow to the Criminal Justice Policy Program at Harvard Law School and the Igarapé Institute in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Before joining Harvard, Abt served as Deputy Secretary for Public Safety to Governor Andrew Cuomo in New York. Before that, he served as Chief of Staff to the Office of Justice Programs at the US Department of Justice. He received a BA in Economics from the University of Michigan and a law degree with honors from the Georgetown University Law Center.

Claudio Beato is Coordinator of the Center for Studies in Crime and Public Safety at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG) in Brazil. He is also a professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at UFMG. He received his Ph.D. in Sociology from the Rio de Janeiro Research Institute University in Brazil. He was also visiting Scholar at the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University of Harvard. During the 2017-18 academic year, he is serving as the Cardoso Visiting Professor at Columbia University in New York City.

Anne Simmons-Benton leads ASU’s International Development Office in Washington, D.C.  She liaises with development partners and the USG to leverage ASU’s capabilities to contribute to global impact. Anne Simmons-Benton recently served as the Project Director of the $46 million USAID Jordan Competitiveness Program focusing on bringing innovation to Jordan for clean energy, technology, and medical services.  Previously she served as the Global Practice Leader at DAI, where she led two practice areas in the Solutions Group – one focused on trade and regulatory reform and one on gender.   Prior to joining DAI in March 2011, Anne managed and led the Trade Portfolio for Booz Allen Hamilton’s Foreign Affairs Business. There, she conducted assessments of countries’ business environments and created a diagnostic tool to assess the business enabling environment for women.  Anne worked for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) as Senior Trade Advisor and the U.S. Department of Commerce as Senior Counsel where she specialized in assisting Less Developed Countries (LDCs) join the World Trade Organization and benefit from trade.  She served at the World Trade Organization as the Donor representative to the Integrated Framework and was successful in bringing in the private sector for the first time to accelerate linkages between business and development.  Anne has been a licensed attorney since 1984 and worked in law firms for the first part of her career.  She holds a J.D. from the Antioch School of Law in Washington, D.C., a Change Management Advance Practitioner Certificate from Georgetown’s McDonough School of Business and a Bachelor of Science in Foreign Service from Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service.

Robyn Braverman has been working in the development field for over 20 years. She has worked directly in Honduras, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Haiti, and Cuba, Jamaica, Guatemala. Nicaragua, Bolivia, and Ecuador for more than 20 years. She has provided technical leadership and overall management of complex youth development and violence prevention programs in Central and South America and the Caribbean, focusing on influencing change with a wide array of actors- from community based to state duty bearers.  Ms. Braverman has successfully managed large and complex programs focusing on violence reduction, and is currently chief of party for the USAID funded violence reduction program Proponte Mas in Honduras.

Guillermo Cespedes was appointed Los Angeles Deputy Mayor and Director of the Mayor’s Office of Gang Reduction and Youth Development (GRYD), to date the largest and most comprehensive gang violence reduction municipal initiative in the United States.  Mr. Cespedes conceptualized and implemented the GRYD placed based comprehensive which grounded in family systems theory and practice.  His contributions to the City of Los Angeles includes the design and implementation oversight of the seven phase family systems secondary prevention approach.  The GRYD strategy comprised of primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention combined with community policing is touted as responsible for reducing 9 categories of gang related crimes including homicides by 50% during the Cespedes tenure (2009 to 2014).   At a US domestic level Mr. Cespedes has been a technical advisor on violence reduction strategies to the Department of Justice, the US Conference of Mayors, the Center for Disease Control, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.  In 2014 Mr. Cespedes joined Creative Associates International and is currently the Deputy Chief of Party for the USAID funded Proponte Mas program in Honduras. Cespedes is in in charge of the technical direction of 56 family counselors that are using the seven phase approach developed in Los Angeles with families at a secondary and tertiary level of risk in 5 of the most violent municipalities in Honduras.  Mr. Cespedes provides technical assistance to Creative Associates International programs in Central America, the Caribbean, and North Africa.  He is a highly sought after keynote presenter at domestic and international violence reduction conferences.

Scott H. Decker is a Foundation Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Arizona State University. The American Society of Criminology awarded Decker the title of "Fellow" in 2012 for his scholarly contribution to the intellectual life of the discipline and his substantial role in the career development of other criminologists. Prior to becoming the inaugural director of the ASU School of Criminology and Criminal Justice (2006- 2013), he was Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at UM-St. Louis, where he received the Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Research in 1989 and in 2001, was named Curators' Professor. He was named a Fellow of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences in 2007 and was the Hindelang Lecturer at the University at Albany in 2009. In March 2011 he won the Bruce Smith Award from the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences. Dr. Decker is the author of 15 books, over 150 articles and chapters, and more than one hundred presentations in the US, Canada, Europe and Central America. His research has been funded by the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, the National Science Foundation, U.S. Department of Justice, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and National Institute on Drug Abuse. Professor Decker's primary research focus has been on criminal justice policy, gangs, violence, and the offender’s perspective. Four of his books have won major awards: Life in the Gang: Family, Friends and Violence, (Cambridge University Press, 1996), Burglars on the Job: Streetlife and Residential Burglary (Northeastern University Press, 1994), Lessons from the Inside: Drug Smugglers on Drug Smuggling (Temple, 2008) and European Street Gangs and Troublesome Youth Groups (Alta Mira, 2005).

Stephen Feinson leads ASU International Development’s efforts in identifying and pursuing large scale global development opportunities for Arizona State University. In this capacity he oversees a team that is building relationships and exploring opportunities with international development agencies and implementers, and matching ASU’s capabilities to meet project and partner goals. Under Stephen’s leadership, ASU International Development has realized an innovative new conceptualization for how universities can engage with international development priorities. In less than five years, Stephen has dramatically expanded ASU’s international footprint, and has led the university to successful bids on multi-million dollar USAID awards and team positions on billion-dollar-plus IQC and IDIQ contracts.  Prior to arriving at ASU Stephen served as Deputy Director of Columbia University’s Center for Science, Policy and Outcomes in Washington, D.C., and before that as Project Director for the Jeffersonian Science Project at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. Stephen holds a master’s degree in law and diplomacy from the Fletcher School at Tufts University.

Andrew M. Fox is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Criminology at California State University, Fresno. He received his Ph.D. from Arizona State University in Criminology and Criminal Justice. His research interests include social network analysis, gangs, crime prevention, mental health and communities. Fox is currently serving as the Research Partner on a number of federal initiatives, including Strategies for Policing Innovation, Innovative Prosecution Solutions and the Police-Prosecution Partnership. His work has been published in the Pan American Journal of Public Health, Crime and Delinquency, Justice Quarterly, Police Quarterly and the American Sociological Review.

Anthony Harriott is a Professor of Political Sociology and Director of the Institute of Criminal Justice and Security at the University of the West Indies. He is the author/ co-author of several books, scholarly articles and technical reports - primarily on the issues of violence, organised crime and policing in Caribbean societies. His current research interests include a mapping of the processes that are associated with the development of persistently high rates of homicide and, police reform. He serves on a number of boards and committees that are engaged with matters of crime reduction and justice including the Police Oversight Authority of Jamaica. He was also a member of the commission of inquiry into the Christopher Coke extradition matter in which the armed conflict between Coke’s organized crime network and the security forces of the Jamaican state resulted in a high death toll.

Antonio Iskandar’s interest in public affairs, government, and public policy started early in his career when he worked as Director of Municipal Affairs in the Ministry of the Interior, where he was tasked with mediating and coordinating security, elected officials, and citizen organizations to generate security agendas in the city of Caracas. His job was to analyze complex governance issues that impacted governance in his native Venezuela. Twenty years later, he has worked in more than 15 countries designing and implementing democracy and governance programs with emphasis on local governance, decentralization, anticorruption, and citizen security.

He has led the implementation of several complex U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)-funded projects in Albania, Bolivia, Macedonia, and most recently, Mexico; conducted short-term technical assessments; and championed several winning proposals. Inspired by the success of his last assignment leading the USAID Crime and Violence Prevention program in Mexico, he returned to DAI in September 2016, after 15 years, to build the Citizen Security Practice under the Governance Sector. In that role, Antonio is leading DAI’s efforts to position in the Citizen Security area by supporting business development efforts, the generation of knowledge and technical products, and the successful implementation of projects within that practice.

Charles Katz is the Watts Family Director of the Center for Violence Prevention and Community Safety and is a Professor in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Arizona State University. Much of his work focuses on police transformation and strategic responses to crime.  From 2004 to 2010 he worked under contract with the Ministry of National Security of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago to develop a comprehensive strategic plan to reform the Trinidad and Tobago Police Services.  Since then he has completed a project funded by the United Nations Development (UNDP) program to assess citizen insecurity throughout the Caribbean; and completed work for the Eastern Caribbean’s Regional Security System (RSS) to diagnose the gang problem in nine Caribbean nations and developing a regional approach to responding to gangs.  He has also completed several research projects for the US Department of Homeland Security and USAID in El Salvador and is currently working in Honduras on issues involving the police and an evaluation of a violence prevention and intervention program.

Jonathan GS Koppell is the dean of the Watts College of Public Service and Community Solutions and the Lattie and Elva Coor Presidential Chair in the School of Public Affairs. Professor Koppell has focused on preparing students for lives of community engagement and public service while promoting use-inspired research by faculty and research centers aimed at making our communities more prosperous, healthy and resilient. He has emphasized the transcendent focus on "public goods" that unifies the specializations of college’s four distinct schools (criminal justice, community development, public administration and policy, and social work) while connecting the college to the broad range of relevant ASU programs.

Ted Lawrence is USAID/Eastern and Southern Caribbean’s (ESC) General Development Office Director. He oversees USAID/ESC's Youth, Citizen Security, Climate Change, Disaster Relief, Education, and Governance programs covering Barbados, St. Kitts and Nevis, Dominica, Antigua and Barbuda, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and Grenada, Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, and Suriname. The USAID/ESC General Development Office's five-year, $120 million, portfolio supports four White House priorities: the Caribbean Basin Security Initiative (CBSI), Global Climate Change, Caribbean Energy Security Initiative, and Basic Education. It also includes marine biodiversity conservation, democratic strengthening in Guyana, and juvenile justice reform. Mr. Lawrence also serves as the Mission Disaster Relief Officer (MDRO) with responsibility for the United States Government’s response to natural disasters in the region. Mr. Lawrence has worked for USAID for more than 13 years. Prior to joining USAID/ESC in 2014, he served in Ecuador, Afghanistan, Washington D.C., Morocco, and Ghana. Before joining USAID, Mr. Lawrence worked for various international development organizations, working in East Timor, Indonesia, Zimbabwe, Liberia, Angola, Haiti, Sierra Leone, India, and Kenya.

Kenneth Sebastian Leon is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at George Washington University, where he also serves as the Interim Director of the GW Law & Society Minor. Leon holds a Ph.D. in Justice, Law, and Criminology from the School of Public Affairs at American University (2017). His research interests are anchored around the politics of crime control and corruption in the U.S. and Latin America. Previously, Leon served as a contracted researcher at the National Institute of Justice, contributing to the portfolios on human trafficking and transnational organized crime (2016-2017). In the fall of 2018, Leon will join the Rutgers University faculty as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Latino & Caribbean Studies, where he will also contribute to the Criminal Justice Program.

Edward Maguire is a professor of criminology and criminal justice at Arizona State University, where he also serves as associate director of the Center for Violence Prevention and Community Safety. Professor Maguire’s research focuses primarily on policing and violence. His previous externally funded research included a six-year study of violent crime in Trinidad & Tobago, a four-year study of human trafficking in the Philippines, and three national studies of police organization and innovation in the U.S.  He is currently leading three externally funded research projects: a national study of protest policing in the U.S., a study of Salvadoran gangs in El Salvador and the U.S., and an evaluation of the CureViolence initiative in Trinidad & Tobago. Professor Maguire has lectured or carried out research in 20 nations on five continents. 

Ambassador John F. Maisto led U.S. diplomacy at the Organization of American States as U.S. permanent representative from July 2003 to December 2006.  In 2003, he was also named by President George W. Bush to be the U.S. coordinator for the Summit of the Americas, and he coordinated the president's participation in summits in Monterrey, Mexico, in 2004 and Mar del Plata, Argentina, in 2005.  Ambassador Maisto served as special assistant to President Bush and senior director for Western Hemisphere Affairs for National Security Advisor Dr. Condoleezza Rice from January 2001 to April 2003. He served as foreign policy advisor at the U.S. Southern Command from 2000 to 2001. As ambassador to Venezuela from 1997 to 2000, he led energy diplomacy with the U.S.'s fourth largest oil provider, established working relations with newly-elected President Hugo Chavez and directed a U.S. $11-million flood and mudslide disaster relief effort. He previously served as Ambassador to Nicaragua from 1993 to 1996. Ambassador Maisto was deputy assistant secretary of state for Central America from 1992 to 1993 and deputy U.S. representative to the Organization of American States from 1990 to 1992. Earlier, he served as deputy chief of mission in Panama and director of the State Department's Office of Philippine Affairs.  Since beginning his career as a Foreign Service Officer in 1968, Ambassador Maisto has also worked in American embassies in Manila, San Jose, and La Paz and in the U.S. Information Agency in Argentina and Bolivia. Ambassador Maisto has spoken and written extensively on U.S. policy in the Americas, U.S.-Philippine relations, democratic transition, hemispheric security, democracy, human rights, competitiveness, trade, economic development and education.  He is a director of the Miami-based U.S. Education Finance Group and a board member of the Washington-based International Student Exchange Program.  He is a member of the board of advisors of the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington, D.C., and the Democracy Practitioners Network of the Organization of American States.

Lidia E. Nuño is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Politics, Administration, and Justice at California State University, Fullerton. Lidia holds undergraduate and graduate degrees from Arizona State University. Over the past 10 years, Lidia has collaborated with numerous law enforcement agencies throughout the United States and has worked with active and incarcerated offenders, and at-risk youth in the United States, Central America, and the Caribbean. She has also served as project manager, project director, and lead analyst for United States Agency for International Development (USAID), United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and National Institute of Justice (NIJ) funded research projects. Recently, in collaboration with the Eastern Caribbean Regional Security System (RSS), Lidia was the project director of a USAID funded study that examines gang prevalence in seven Eastern Caribbean nations, Guyana, and Trinidad and Tobago. Currently, she is part of the research team evaluating Proponte Más, a secondary prevention program implemented in Honduras. Her most recent work has appeared in Deviant Behavior and Police Practice and Research. Her research interests include policing, gangs, risk and protective factors for youth delinquency, and immigration.

Alex R. Piquero is an Ashbel Smith Professor of Criminology and Associate Dean for Graduate Programs in the School of Economic, Political, and Policy Sciences at the University of Texas at Dallas. Professor Piquero is an Adjunct Professor in the Key Centre for Ethics, Law, Justice, and Governance at Griffith University in Brisbane Australia, a Life Course Centre Fellow at the University of Queensland, a Fellow of the University of Cincinnati Corrections Institute, and a Faculty Affiliate of the Center for Violence and Injury Prevention in the George Warren Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis. Professor Piquero was Co-Editor of the Journal of Quantitative Criminology from 2008 to 2013. Prior to arriving at UT-Dallas, he was a faculty member of John Jay College of Criminal Justice/City University of New York, Florida State University, Northeastern University, Temple University, University of Florida, and the University of Maryland. He has published over 400 peer-reviewed articles in the areas of criminal careers, crime prevention, criminological theory, and quantitative research methods, and has collaborated on several books including Key Issues in Criminal Careers Research: New Analyses from the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development (Cambridge University Press, co-authored with David P. Farrington and Alfred Blumstein) and Handbook of Quantitative Criminology (Springer, co-edited by David Weisburd). His work has been cited over 30,000 times (h-index=94) and he has been ranked as the #1 criminologist in the world since 1996 in terms of scholarly publications in elite criminology/criminal justice journals.

Enrique Roig leads Creative Associate’s global Citizen Security practice area. In this role, he develops and implements Creative’s integrated approach to creating safer communities, providing alternatives to at risk youth susceptible to recruitment by gangs, criminal and extremist organizations, and promoting security sector reform.  He oversees major operations in Central America, the Caribbean, and North Africa on crime and violence prevention and provides support to countering violent extremism efforts worldwide.

With more than 20 years of experience in 23 countries focused on governance and human rights, crime and violence prevention and conflict resolution, Enrique is an expert at working with different stakeholders to provide communities in peril with appropriate solutions. Most recently he was the Senior Citizen Security Specialist and Coordinator for the Central America Regional Security Initiative at the U.S. Agency for International Development. While at USAID, he collaborated with interagency teams to manage the strategic direction of the Central America Regional Security Initiative and provided technical support to USAID missions. He has also led international political development and citizen security initiatives in Colombia, Panama and Serbia, as well as leading USAID’s place-based initiative to reduce homicides in Central America.

Enrique is a sought out expert on human rights, citizen security, and political development and has served as keynote speaker and panelist for the Wilson Center, Global Initiative Against Transnational Crime, Stanford University, Harvard Kennedy School, Los Angeles Gang Prevention and Intervention Conference, World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, and Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute. Enrique holds a Master in International Relations from The American University in Washington, D.C., and a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from Westmont College in Santa Barbara, California.

Debra Wahlberg is an international development professional with more than 30 years of diverse technical experience, including with at-risk youth, and multi-country program management.  She has more than 10 years of experience working in the Caribbean, including in Saint Lucia, St. Kitts and Nevis, Guyana, Antigua, Dominica and Jamaica, as well as in East and Southern Africa, the Balkans and Central and Eastern Europe.  Debra’s technical expertise includes private enterprise development that incorporates at-risk and vulnerable youth, administrative and regulatory reform, partnerships with lead firms to create business and employment opportunities, grants management and capacity building.  As Chief of Party for the USAID funded Community, Family and Youth Resilience (CFYR) Program, Debra leads a team of 40 people in the program’s three country offices of Saint Lucia, St. Kitts and Nevis and Guyana. CFYR supports family networks, communities, service providers, and government agencies to implement successful approaches to reduce crime and violence and increase opportunities for at-risk youth age 10 to 29 in 15 communities. The program’s place-based strategy concentrates prevention activities in set geographic areas to boost overall community resilience and empower local stakeholders and government institutions to shape the next generation of youth and family interventions. CFYR’s overarching goals are to ensure that youth become productive citizens and are empowered to make positive contributions to society. Debra holds Master of Science from the University of Pennsylvania in Energy Management and Policy and a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and Middle East Studies from the State University of New York at Albany. 

Vincent Webb is a Professor of Practice in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Arizona State University, where he also serves as a Professor of Practice in the Center for Violence Prevention and Community Safety. He received his Ph.D. in Sociology from Iowa State University and has held several faculty and university administrative positions including directing and developing research centers as well as educational programs in criminology and criminal justice. His international work includes that implementation of the International Self-Report Delinquency Survey (ISRD) in China and more recently the analysis of findings from the 2015 El Salvador Youth Survey. Dr. Webb is co-developer of the Arizona Violence Prevention Academy, which targeted school-based crime, violence, and disorder. He has extensive experience in evaluation research and research related to the reduction of gang and youth crime and violence. Related work includes implementing a variant of the Arizona Violence Prevention Academy in several of the high-risk schools in Trinidad and Tobago. His research has also focused on a variety of police-related topics including community perceptions of police performance and attitudes toward police and the police response to gangs Dr. Webb has published numerous journal articles and research reports on a variety of criminal justice policies and practices and is the co-author five books including the award-winning Policing Gangs in America (University of Cambridge Press).