Desmond E. Arias, Deputy Director

Desmond Arias is deputy director of the Bildner Center

for Western Hemisphere Studies and Associate Professor

of Political Science at John Jay College of Criminal

Justice, City University of New York. He is also a member

of the faculty of the doctoral program in Criminal Justice

at the Graduate Center.

His research focuses on security and politics in developing

societies. His research on criminal organization, human

rights, and democratic order is based on field work in Rio

de Janeiro, Brazil, Kingston, Jamaica, and Medellín, Colombia. In 2006, the University of North Carolina Press

published Professor Arias' book, Drugs and Democracy in Rio de Janeiro: Trafficking, Social Networks, and Public Security.  The volume examines the politics of crime and violence in Rio de Janeiro shantytowns.  He has published articles on the politics of crime, policing, NGOs, social mobilization, and human rights in Comparative Politics, Latin American Politics and Society, Qualitative Sociology, and The Journal of Latin American Studies. Professor Arias’ work has received funding from Fulbright, National Center for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Tinker Foundation, and the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation. He has served as a consultant to the Ford Foundation and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.