United States Institute of Peace

"This handbook offers policymakers and practitioners an invaluable combination of breadth of coverage, pragmatic focus, and wealth of experience. Brimming with experience and brilliantly edited, this volume is truly a useful tool."

"Fragile states with weak institutions often provide ample opportunity for criminal organizations, particularly those with international ties, to deepen and expand instability, violence, and lawlessness. This book is compelling reading for those interested in how efforts to establish the rule of law and develop justice institutions can counter such threats—and, more broadly, help nations to emerge both strong and free after critical moments of transition."

—William R. Brownfield, Assistant Secretary, Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement, US Department of State

"Fighting Serious Crimes provides us with reliable and analytical information covering many different facets of the problem of serious crimes. It also presents practical steps that we can take to build the rule of law in our countries."

—Surendra B. Shah, Additional Inspector General of the Nepal Police

"Organized crime networks pose a serious and growing threat to security. That is because those networks cooperate with hostile states and terrorist organizations. And those networks perpetuate state and institutional weakness that frustrates efforts to improve security and foster development. Fighting Serious Crimes offers exactly what we need: firsthand accounts of what has worked in the past, expert assessments of current threats, descriptions of new tools, and explanations of how to apply those tools effectively."

—General H. R. McMaster, author, Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam

Elaine Banar

Elaine Banar is currently managing director and Global AML Head for Guggenheim Partners in New York where she manages the firm’s anti-money laundering and anti-bribery compliance program. Her public service included twelve years as an assistant U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of New York, where she served as chief of Asset Forfeiture and as deputy chief of Asset Forfeiture and Narcotics. Previously, Banar was a special agent with the U.S. Customs Service specializing in international money laundering and weapons smuggling investigations, and also worked undercover. In 2001, she was appointed as the special legal adviser on organized crime matters for the UN Mission in Kosovo, where she spearheaded a group of international lawyers and police officials who drafted laws to address serious and organized crime. She was also instrumental in establishing the first witness protection program in the Balkans, persuading both U.S. and UK government officials to provide financial support to build a safe site for high-risk witnesses. From 2002 to 2004, Banar was asked to join a U.S. Department of Defense and Department of State law enforcement training team that worked with police and prosecutors in the Balkans to develop investigations and prosecutions using undercover and controlled delivery operations.

Adalbert Gross

Adalbert Gross is a senior police officer of the state of North-Rhine-Westphalia in Germany. Before retiring from official duties in 2014 after forty-four years, he worked as lecturer and course director for the College of European Police and taught senior police management to serve in EU-Missions. Previously, Gross was deployed as UN Mission in Kosovo Police Deputy Commissioner Operations in Kosovo from 2001 to 2002— managing the introduction of the euro, civil unrest in various hot spots of the province, and the first arrests of high-profile Albanian criminals— and then served as interim police commissioner before returning to his home police force. From 1997 to 1998, Gross worked for the UN International Police Task Force in Sarajevo as head of Local Police Development Section, where he was responsible for the organization of local police structures under the Dayton Peace Accord. Gross holds an BA and an MA in law enforcement.

Michael E. Hartmann

Michael E. Hartmann has been director of rule of law for the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan since 2013. Previously, in 2012 and 2013, he served as senior crown prosecutor (barrister) and war crimes coordinator for Australia’s Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands. From 2008 to 2010, he was criminal justice program manager for the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and from 2005 to 2007 adviser to the attorney general of Afghanistan for the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs Justice Sector Support Program. The first UN-appointed international prosecutor for Kosovo, Hartmann served in that capacity from 2000 to 2005, appealing before Kosovo’s Supreme Court and investigating and prosecuting trials of genocide, war crimes, terrorism, corruption, assassinations, rape, and ethnic hate crimes. From 1998 to 2000, he was team leader for the UN Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Judicial System Assessment Program and Bosnia field representative for UNODC’s anticorruption project. In 2003, he was a senior fellow at the United States Institute of Peace and in 1996 was the Senior Fulbright Law Scholar in Pakistan. From 1983 to 1998, Hartmann was an assistant district attorney in San Francisco.

Deborah Isser

Deborah Isser is lead governance specialist in Africa at the World Bank. An author of the World Development Report 2017: Governance and the Law, Isser joined the World Bank in 2011, where she has served as program manager of the Justice for the Poor program and governance focal point for fragile and conflict-affected states. Previously, Isser worked at USIP directing projects on legal pluralism and on land and conflict. She served as senior policy adviser at the Office of the High Representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and special adviser on peacekeeping at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations. She is the editor of Customary Justice and the Rule of Law in War-Torn Societies (2011), and author of several reports, articles and book chapters on law, justice and development. An adjunct faculty member at Georgetown and George Washington Law Schools, Isser holds degrees from Harvard Law School, the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, and Columbia University.

Andrew Mackay

Major General Andrew Mackay (ret.), CEO and founder of Complexas Ltd. and APPLIform Ltd., has been involved in the stabilization of fragile and conflict afflicted states throughout his career. His expertise includes security sector reform, governance, rule of law, sustainable development, and fair elections. Since retiring from active military service in 2011, Mackay has worked predominantly in Africa on a wide variety of infrastructure and trade-enabling projects with governments, the World Bank, the African Development Bank, and multinational companies. Previously, he commanded British Forces in Afghanistan in 2007 and 2008, designing and delivering interagency programs to more fully understand and benefit alienated communities, offering them a stake in the future of their district, province, and the Afghan state. Joining the British Army in 1981, Mackay then served in Northern Ireland, Bosnia, Kosovo, Lebanon, Iraq, and Afghanistan. In Bosnia, he worked within the OSCE as the deputy director of the Joint Elections Operation Centre. In Kosovo, he served in the UN Mission Team as head of the Advisory Unit on Security. In Baghdad, he set up and commanded the Civilian Police Assistance Training Team, creating a budget of $1.5 billion to organize, train, equip, and mentor the nascent Ministry of Interior and more than 150,000 Iraqi police. Mackay is coauthor of Behavioural Conflict: Why Understanding People and Their Motivations Will Prove Decisive in Future Conflict (2012).

Vivienne O'Connor

Vivienne O'Connor is an independent rule of law consultant with fifteen years of experience in the field. She heads TransformLaw, an interdisciplinary consulting firm that provides strategic advice on how to facilitate transformative legal change processes in conflict-affected and developing countries. From 2007 until 2016, Vivienne worked for USIP as a senior rule of law adviser and as director of the International Network to Promote the Rule of Law. She has engaged in rule of law projects in numerous countries that include Afghanistan, Burma, Haiti, Liberia, Nepal, and Syria. Vivienne has trained hundreds of rule of law practitioners through the “Rule of Law Practitioner’s Course” that she designed and delivered for USIP, the UK Department for International Development, and the Australian government. Vivienne holds a bachelor’s degree in civil law, a master’s degree in international human rights law (LLM), and a PhD in law from the National University of Ireland, Galway. She is the author of several books, including volumes 1 and 2 of Model Codes for Postconflict Criminal Justice. She is currently writing a monograph titled Transformative Rule of Law: Theory and Practice.

David C. Ralston

Major General David C. Ralston (ret.) is president of Government Secure Solutions CGI Inc. He served in the U.S. Army for more than thirty years, retiring from active service in 2007 as a major general. Over the course of his Army career, he served in a variety of command and staff positions throughout the United States, Germany, the Netherlands, and Kosovo. His positions included deputy chief of staff for operations and intelligence, Kosovo Force; director of force management, Office of Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations and Plans, Headquarters Department of the Army; and commanding general, U.S. Army Field Artillery Center and Fort Sill, Oklahoma. Ralston still serves as the Army’s senior facilitator for the “How the Army Runs” course presented to all new army general officers. He holds a Harvard fellowship in national security, a master of arts in public administration, and a bachelor of science in business administration.

Thomas Stevenson

Thomas Stevenson is the founder of Strata Consulting, a firm offering expertise in peace negotiations, transitional justice, and strengthening the rule of law in postconflict states. Based in Bogotá, Colombia, he also supports the country’s ongoing peace process as chief of reporting for the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Program of Alliances for Reconciliation and as professor of negotiation at the postgraduate academy for the Colombian police. Previously, he lived in China and Cambodia, where he helped the United Nations and various human rights NGOs maximize the effectiveness of their outreach and advocacy campaigns.