TY - JOUR
T1 - Policing Heritage Crime in Latin America
AU - Oosterman, Naomi
AU - Yates, Donna
N1 - Funding Information:
In Argentina, the Departamento Protección del Pa-trimonio Cultural (DPPL) of the Federal Police is the primary agency responsible for the policing of heritage crime. The DPPL has three main methods through which they work. First, they focus on the active prevention and policing of heritage-related crimes, both national and international. There is a strong focus on combatting the illicit trafficking of cultural objects, specifically within the MERCOSUR network13. Second, the DPPL organises and participates in (inter-)national conferences and courses to disseminate knowledge concerning art crime policing to international, national, provincial, and municipal stakeholders. Third, the DPPL maintains the Programa de Protección de Patrimonio Cultural that collects information on missing and stolen cultural objects in a central database. Currently, this contains 5,500 cultural objects. This national registry is supported by Interpol and the Ministerio de Seguridad and Ministerio de Cultural of Argentina.
Funding Information:
We would like to thank the respondents who took the time to carefully respond to our questions during this project. We would also like to thank Diana Berzina for her support in producing this paper and Camila Ma-lig Jedlicki for her assistance with translating. This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement n° 804851).
Funding Information:
One of these cooperation efforts that factors in heritage crime is El PACcTo (Europa Latinoamérica Progra-ma de Asistencia contra el Crimen Transnacional Organizado), which is an international programme that focuses on enhancing and facilitating international cooperation against organised crime between the European Union and Latin American countries. Additionally, it aims to share best practices and provide and enhance technical assistance. The program is funded by the European Union and runs from 2017 to 2022. Unique to El PACc-To is that it focuses on the entire criminal justice system in the associated countries, meaning it concerns law enforcement agencies, justice systems, and penitentiary systems. In June 2020, 11 member countries10 participated in a webinar concerning illicit trafficking of cultural property in Latin America, discussing how to investigate and combat the organised crime associated with it. Besides representatives of Latin American countries, European law enforcement specialists from Spain (Gru-po de Patrimonio Histórico) and Italy (Carabinieri per la Tutela del Patrimonio Culturale), as well as Interpol and UNI-DROIT, were present. The recommendations of the webinar are six-fold11: 1) development of uniform regulations for the protection of cultural heritage, especially concerning the restitution of objects, 2) improvement of international judicial cooperation, 3) implementation of databases specifically concerning cultural property, 4) increase of formal and informal cooperation between countries, 5) increased use of specialist investigation techniques and 6) obligatory recording of items by those parties involved in the selling and buying of artworks. Many of the discussed law enforcement agencies in this article are active within El PAcCTO.
Funding Information:
12 Grant agreement n° 804851. Ethical clearance for this research was provided by the Maastricht University ERCIC and the European Research Council Ethics Review Panel. All respondents are granted anonymity in accordance with our ethical guidelines.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 Centro Universitario de Brasilia. All rights reserved.
PY - 2020
Y1 - 2020
N2 - Artefacts from Latin America are popular on international art markets, however their supply is closely linked to heritage crimes such as looting, illegal excavations, and theft. This results in a wide and ongoing circulation of artefacts with illicit origins, despite Latin American states claiming ownership. Regulation and policy responses are continuously developed to address the opaque market structures and criminal networks facilitating this illicit trade in Latin America, with policing as the first line of defence against heritage crimes. Despite increasing research into the illicit trafficking of cultural artefacts in the region, specific strategies and interregional cooperation within heritage crime policing in Latin America has rarely been discussed. Therefore, we examine the policing, prevention, and legislation tactics in twelve Latin American countries as a state-by-state survey, and provide an overview of the current regional and international collaborations concerning the policing of heritage crime. We conclude that there is significant collaboration between Latin American countries, but that improvements could be made regarding the number of dedicated specialists within police and government agencies. This lack of economic resources and specialists within relevant agencies has been recorded in locations beyond Latin America, and we assert that this is the primary weakness in regional and global efforts to police heritage crimes.
AB - Artefacts from Latin America are popular on international art markets, however their supply is closely linked to heritage crimes such as looting, illegal excavations, and theft. This results in a wide and ongoing circulation of artefacts with illicit origins, despite Latin American states claiming ownership. Regulation and policy responses are continuously developed to address the opaque market structures and criminal networks facilitating this illicit trade in Latin America, with policing as the first line of defence against heritage crimes. Despite increasing research into the illicit trafficking of cultural artefacts in the region, specific strategies and interregional cooperation within heritage crime policing in Latin America has rarely been discussed. Therefore, we examine the policing, prevention, and legislation tactics in twelve Latin American countries as a state-by-state survey, and provide an overview of the current regional and international collaborations concerning the policing of heritage crime. We conclude that there is significant collaboration between Latin American countries, but that improvements could be made regarding the number of dedicated specialists within police and government agencies. This lack of economic resources and specialists within relevant agencies has been recorded in locations beyond Latin America, and we assert that this is the primary weakness in regional and global efforts to police heritage crimes.
U2 - 10.5102/rdi.v17i3.7030
DO - 10.5102/rdi.v17i3.7030
M3 - Article
SN - 2236-997X
VL - 17
SP - 274
EP - 290
JO - Brazilian Journal of International Law
JF - Brazilian Journal of International Law
IS - 3
ER -