How do people get stuck in jail? Received this from a friend? SUBSCRIBE [[link removed]] CRITICAL STATE Your weekly foreign policy fix. If you read just one thing…

… read about how people get stuck in jail.

Around the world, one of the most common ways for people to get mired in the carceral system is through pretrial detention. That process, in which accused criminals are jailed before they face a judge or jury to determine their guilt, is meant to ensure that the accused will actually be around to appear in court when their trial begins. Yet busy court dockets and funding crunches often lead to trial delays, meaning that people languish in jail without a day in court. Today, roughly one in three incarcerated people are in pretrial detention, and have not been convicted of a crime. Researchers Javier Osorio, Michael Weintraub, and Andrés Ham tried to help reduce the number of people in pretrial detention in El Salvador through an intervention in which they trained public defenders in how to better take advantage of existing laws that offer pretrial release to certain defendants. In a new paper [[link removed]], they report that even this modest increase in resources for public defenders led to a nearly 5% increase in pretrial release, with more experienced public defenders securing release for even more of their clients. The study points to first steps in creating a more just criminal justice system, but it is also yet more evidence showing that resource inequality — rather than the law — determines many criminal justice outcomes.

Of old boys and new men

Do you ever read the long, comprehensive official bios [[link removed]] of military officers and wonder, “who cares where a general served as a platoon leader?” The person who cares, it turns out, is political scientist Dan Mattingly. In an effort to better understand promotion strategies within the Chinese military, Mattingly combed through [[link removed]] official bios for 1,231 People’s Liberation Army officers.

Mattingly’s database of officers allowed him to measure how political connections are balanced against competence in determining promotions in the Chinese military.

He found that, for the most part, Chinese leaders try to promote the best-trained officers while still ensuring that officers to whom they have a personal connection make their way up the ranks. In times of acute domestic insecurity, however, Chinese leaders promote from within their personal networks at a much higher rate, regardless of training.

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] Carbon competitive advantage

The journal International Organization announced the winner of its prize for best article of 2020 written by a non-tenured scholar last week, with the prize going to political scientist Amanda Kennard’s article [[link removed]] on why some carbon-emitting companies actually lobby in favor of emission-reducing regulations.

Though none of their plans are exactly progressive, Kennard found significant differences in how companies within emitting industries from aluminum to oil approach climate advocacy. Some actively pursue forms of added emission restraints, while others try to prevent any shift from the profitable status quo.

Kennard explains those divergences primarily by highlighting differences between firms in the cost of complying with modest emission reduction plans. Even in a global economy, firms that can comply at a lower cost than their domestic competitors can gain a significant competitive advantage from new regulations.

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] DEEP DIVE Family in conflict: Part II

Last week on Deep Dive, we looked at how family networks shape the decisions of combatants in civil wars. This week we’ll zoom out beyond the immediate conflict zone to look at new research on how family networks allow people who migrate to escape conflict to survive in their new homes.

Before the Syrian civil war drove millions of Syrians to emigrate to avoid the conflict, many rural Syrian families maintained a more stable set of international migration patterns. As Syria shifted away from socialism and toward mechanized agriculture, employment opportunities in the countryside dried up and people were forced to look elsewhere to support themselves. Syrians made up a large proportion of the migrant labor force in the Middle East in the 2000s. For families who sent sons and daughters to work abroad — on construction sites in Beirut or restaurants in Riyadh, for example — remittances made up half their annual income on average.

The Syrian civil war threw those networks of migratory work into chaos, but many of the connections forged by migratory work became crucial for rural Syrians who were now forced to live abroad full time rather than just as seasonal workers. In a recent article [[link removed]] in the Journal of Refugee Studies, anthropologist Ann-Christin Zuntz describes the role family networks rooted in migratory labor play in helping Syrian refugees living in Jordan find work.

The most substantial effect of the civil war on the migratory work system was that it removed the hub of the wheel. Syrians who had long moved back and forth between their homes and foreign employment opportunities suddenly could not go home again. Indeed, they often could not go anywhere, and found themselves stuck in either formal or informal refugee settlements. For the many Syrians who have gotten stuck in Jordan, the issue of employment is paramount. Jordan has issued very few work permits to Syrian refugees, and, with everyone looking for work, wages for available jobs are low.

Yet, among Syrians who have pre-war experience working in Jordan, the lack of jobs creates some opportunities. Some Syrians with pre-existing connections in Jordan have become brokers, connecting former employers with Syrian workers. Others use kinship ties to form connections with NGOs, securing volunteer opportunities that can turn into jobs. People who once existed on the periphery of family networks that were centered in Syria now find themselves at the hub of those networks in Jordan, giving them significant power to improve quality of life within their extended families.

Remittances have also changed since the war. While substantial funds once flowed from workers outside Syria to their families in the country, today remittances serve as an emergency backstop between refugees in the same family networks. Refugees who have made it to Europe or found work in Gulf states send small sums to family members in Jordan and, in times of need, often receive funds from those same family members.

Even as war has scattered and slowed the movement of Syrian migrant workers, the family networks that drive the migratory work system have lived on. Today, those networks extend further and fulfill more needs than they did before the war, but they are still shaped by families’ pre-war experiences.

LEARN MORE [[link removed]]

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Thomas Suitt discussed [[link removed]] his research on high suicide rates among US veterans of post-9/11 wars. More than four times as many active duty service members and veterans of those wars have died by suicide since 9/11 than have been killed in combat in the same period. The problem is getting worse — the suicide rate among young veterans is 50% higher than it was ten years ago, and over twice as high as for non-veterans in the same age cohort. Even active duty members of the military — who have long had lower suicide rates than the population at large — have been more likely to die by suicide than in combat since 2012.

Marco Werman spoke [[link removed]] to Iranian environmental expert Kaveh Madani about the ongoing water crisis in southwestern Iran. There have been protests in Khuzestan province following severe water shortages. Madani said that Iran has not managed its water resources well, leading to a drought that has been exacerbated by public policy failures. With no water conservation plan in place, even less arid parts of the country like Khuzestan have seen reservoirs run dry. Climate change, Madani added, has likely made the crisis worse.

Cat Haseman and Luke Walker made a case [[link removed]] against the US leading with militarism in its competition with China. The pair cautioned that US policy toward China is trending in the direction of its policy toward the Middle East of the last two decades — alarmist, with a heavy dose of military buildup. There are major areas of disagreement between the US and China, but working under the assumption that those disagreements will lead to war can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Instead, they urged the US to pursue competition in the field of domestic investments, thereby increasing its resilience to a range of challenges from China and elsewhere.

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] WELL PLAYED

When everyone [[link removed]] on [[link removed]] Twitter [[link removed]] is making the same joke, public affairs officers get a little wary.

Both sides prefer [[link removed]] to engage in off-shire balancing [[link removed].].

The obsession with Spartans in certain parts of the US military and veteran community only gets funnier the more you learn [[link removed]] about Sparta.

What… what was in “Nutty Environmentalist [[link removed]]”?

The only [[link removed]] good vanity plate.

The US record of democracy promotion in the 21st century is pretty weak, but it did forge new approaches for spreading hereditary monarchy [[link removed]].

When journalism runs [[link removed]]in the family.

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Critical State is written by Sam Ratner and is a collaboration between The World and Inkstick Media.

The World is a weekday public radio show and podcast on global issues, news and insights from PRX and GBH.

With an online magazine and podcast featuring a diversity of expert voices, Inkstick Media is “foreign policy for the rest of us.”

Critical State is made possible in part by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

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