Book Review: The para-state: An ethnography of Colombia’s death squads

• Author: Olaoluwa Olusanya
• Date: 01 June 2017
• Published date: 01 June 2017
• DOI: 10.1177/1057567717696720
• Subject Matter: Book Reviews

This is followed by Chapter 6, which is about the law and courts that are supposed to regulate and

control financial crime. Chapter 7 explores enforcement of control through the Communist Party

system, the criminal justice system, and regulation by government bureaucracies and regulatory

agencies that are all ultimately under CCP’s control. Chapter 8 examines financial business ethics

and professionalization. It suggests that financial crime in China is primarily guided by the anomic

social climate fostered by the country’s rapid economic and social changes, which ignores existing

regulations and business ethics. Chapter 9 concludes the book with a discussion of CCP’s dilemma

of a market economy coexisting with the one-party regi me, its impact on financial crime, and

conversely, the overall effect of financial crime on China’s economic and political landscape. It

is here that Dr. Cheng also brought in the topic of the world competition for which most intellectual

or “elite” Chinese care a lot these days. Dr. Cheng warns that “China’s competence to replace the

USA as the world leader is critically challenged by its environment of endemic and destructive

financial crime in a one-party system of governance” (p. 169).

I comment this conclusion. The current system in China is one without any protection of whistle-

blowers, the media is the voice of the ruling party, and the party’s disciplinary committees work

behind closed doors. All effective mechanisms for preventing corruption and financial crime that

serve a democratic regime well are missing in China’s one-party system. The CCP continues to rely

on the 1,000 years’ old mechanism of drastic measures to demonstrate their will to deal with it.

These highly suppressive measures, including the capital punishment, are usually too little and too

late in stopping and/or in preventing the massive and widespread financial crime. Unfortunately, this

system of control shows few signs of fundamental change in any foreseeable future.

In my first book review written for International Criminal Justice Review in 1995, I stated that

“no one with any interest in corruption can afford to ignore The Politics of Corruption in Contem-

porary China: An Analysis of Policy Outcome” (1994). Dr. Cheng’s book has ignored it and con-

sequently, his analysis, while insightful and more focused on one aspect of corruption, has failed to

build on the existing literature. Although the final recommendations are similar, these suggestions

would have sounded stronger and more persuasive had they built on the other. The two books also

share a similar weakness: All cases mentioned in Dr. Cheng’s book, as in Dr. Gong’s book 22 years

ago, are the so-called dead pigs (si-zhu)—officially concluded cases of corruption or financial crime.

None of current or controversial cases are discussed or explored. Dr. Cheng’s book, however, kept

this reviewer’s attention throughout. A few typos escaped from the copy editor’s eyes, but overall

it’s a good and captive read.

Civico, A. (2015).

The para-state: An ethnography of Colombia’s death squads.

Oakland, CA: University of California Press. 264 pp. $29.95. ISBN 978-0520288522

Reviewed by: Olaoluwa Olusanya, Aberystwyth University, Wales, United Kingdom

DOI: 10.1177/1057567717696720

For decades, people in Colombia have endured an internal armed conflict that has pitted the

security forces acting in collaboration with paramilitaries and drug cartels against a variety of

guerrilla groups. Civilians have borne the brunt of the violence. The internal war has resulted in

tens of thousands of deaths, widespread and systematic sexual violence, and large-scale forced

dispossession and displacement. Columbia is considered to be one of the most dangerous

150 International Criminal Justice Review 27(2)