Newton RCUK-CONACYT - Mobile Solutions to the Mexican Kidnapping Epidemic: Beyond Elite Counter-Measures Towards Citizen-Led Innovation

绑架已成为墨西哥社会不安全的一个主要来源，2013年公共当局记录了1698起绑架事件。然而，尽管这是有记录以来的最高数字，但官方统计数据只反映了一小部分事件，大多数绑架事件没有上报。警察串通一气；高度有罪不罚；未能维护法治：所有这些都削弱了公众对国家打击这一非法做法的能力的信心。在这方面，绑架带来的不安全感弥漫在墨西哥社会，这种威胁的所谓“民主化”确保了暴露的不再只是富人。这种犯罪现象也体现在域外，因为它的分支渗透到美国和墨西哥的边境。我们的项目将绘制墨西哥绑架流行不断变化的地形，并研究出现的各种应对它的“移动解决方案”。这些战略包括：内部/外部移徙；跨境安全服务；护送安全；以及个人定位芯片。然而，我们的雄心超越了这些多重流动性和对富裕精英的保护，参与到创新的“公民主导”的回应中。与维权人士、非政府组织和人权捍卫者合作，我们的跨国学术合作将通过开发一系列反绑架资源来建设墨西哥的能力。我们将共同努力为关键问题提供答案：在无法获得私人解决方案或无法依赖国家的情况下，如何打击绑架？通过与活动人士和受害者团体的参与性行动研究(PAR)，我们将探索以下资源的潜力：反绑架手册；绑架受害者家属的支持网络；以及作为秘密警报系统和安全报告机制开发的手机应用程序。利用新技术资源的潜力--最著名的是大赦国际的“恐慌按钮”应用程序--我们将探索新的方法，以促进点对点安全规划战略，加强受害者的独立性，并提高他们帮助他人的能力。将新技术融入公民主导的反绑架行动中，我们将努力带来亟需的社会变革。我们还将鼓励项目参与者使用新技术记录他们对这一非法现象的叙述，从而为‘绑架日记’数据库做出贡献。尽管在学术辩论中，安全和技术之间的联系通常是从社会或流动控制的角度来框架的，但我们的研究采取了另一种方法。我们考察了技术如何促进而不是限制流动，以及它如何保护人权和那些捍卫人权的人。通过向参与者提供智能手机技术，并在大赦国际最近开发的‘PanicButton’应用程序中对他们进行培训，我们将启动一个反馈过程，以调整这款应用程序以应对墨西哥绑架的具体挑战。通过与开发该应用程序的专家合作，我们的项目处于独特的地位，可以利用他们的专业知识和PAR的变革潜力来创新技术以产生社会影响；在这种情况下，公民领导的反绑架。我们的项目雄心勃勃，不仅寻求追踪这种跨越墨西哥社会阶层和领土边界的非法现象，而且利用对绑架的更深入了解，为公民提供信息和创新应对措施。通过将反绑架措施从面向精英的企业级私人安全解决方案扩展到通过公民主导的行动获得更广泛的社会利益，我们开创了关于如何在国家未能维护法治的情况下保障安全的新思维。此外，由于绑架是整个拉丁美洲的一个地区性问题，我们的研究建立了墨西哥的能力，但也提供了一个可以适应其他情况的模板。

Kidnapping has emerged as a major source of societal insecurity in Mexico, with public authorities recording 1,698 kidnappings in 2013. However, despite this being the highest number on record, official statistics reflect only a small fraction of incidents and the majority of kidnappings go unreported. Police complicity; high levels of impunity; failure to uphold the rule of law: all have eroded public confidence in state capacity to combat this illicit practice. In this context, the insecurity born of kidnapping pervades Mexican society and the so-called 'democratization' of this threat ensures that it is no longer just the rich who are exposed. This criminal phenomenon also manifests extra-territorial reach as its ramifications seep across the US-Mexico border.Our project will chart the shifting topography of the Mexican kidnapping epidemic and examine various 'mobile solutions' that have emerged to counter it. These include strategies such as: internal/external migration; cross-border security services; escort security; and, personal locator-chips. However, our ambitions extend beyond these multiple mobilities and the protection of wealthy elites, to engage with innovative 'citizen-led' responses. Working with activist-citizens, NGOs and human rights defenders, our transnational academic collaboration will build capacity within Mexico by developing a portfolio of counter-kidnapping resources. Together we will work to provide answers to the key question: how do you counter kidnapping when you cannot access private solutions or rely on the state?Through Participatory Action Research (PAR) with activists and victims' groups, we will explore the potential of the following resources: a counter-kidnapping handbook; a support-network for the families of kidnap victims; and, a mobile-phone 'app' developed as both a secret alerting system and a secure reporting mechanism. Harnessing the potential of new technological resources -most notably Amnesty International's 'Panic Button' app- we will explore new means to foster strategies of peer-to-peer security planning, to strengthen victims' independence and to improve their capacities to assist others. Integrating new technology into citizen-led counter-kidnapping we will work to bring forth much needed social change. We will also encourage project participants to contribute to a database of 'kidnapping diaries' by recording their narratives of this illicit phenomenon using new technology.Whilst the connection between security and technology is often framed in terms of social or mobility control in academic debates, our research takes an alternate approach. We examine how technology can facilitate, rather than restrict, mobility, as well as how it can both protect human rights and those who defend them. By making smartphone technology available to participants and training them in Amnesty International's recently developed 'PanicButton' app, we will initiate a feedback process to calibrate this app towards the specific challenges of kidnapping in Mexico. Through collaboration with those experts who developed the app, our project is uniquely placed to harness both their expertise and the transformative potential of PAR to innovate technology for social impact; in this case citizen-led counter-kidnapping.Our project is ambitious in seeking not only to track this illicit phenomenon across Mexico's social classes and territorial boundaries, but also to harness deeper understanding of kidnapping to both inform and innovate citizen responses. By extending counter-measures against kidnapping beyond entrepreneurial private security solutions for elites towards wider societal benefit through citizen-led action, we pioneer new thinking on how to guarantee security when states fail to uphold the rule of law. Furthermore, as kidnapping is a regional problem across Latin America, our research builds Mexican capacity but also provides a template that can be adapted for other contexts.