‘An ounce of prevention’ – Benjamin Franklin and private fire companies

by J Michael Waller / Serviam / February 2, 2009. Out-of-control wildfires out West show the severe limits on government’s ability to protect society from one of nature’s weapons of mass destruction. Federal and state officials waited for more than a half-million acres to burn last June and July before calling the National Guard for … Read more

To Russia, with cash

by J Michael Waller, Reader’s Digest, June 1996 Nearly five years after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the unthinkable is occurring: The Community Party once again dominates the Russian parliament. Free-market reformers in Boris Yeltsin’s government have been purged, and Yeltsin has distances himself from the West. Yevgeny Primakov, a former chief of foreign intelligence … Read more

Russia’s Great Criminal Revolution: The Role of the Security Services

by Victor Yasmann and J Michael Waller, Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice, December 1995. Summary Russian law enforcement agencies, security organs, and intelligence services, far from being reliable instruments in the fight against organized crime and corruption, are institutionally part of the problem, due not only to their co-optation and penetration by criminal elements, but to … Read more