Without an army: How ICC indictments reduce atrocities
| Published date | 01 July 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/00223433221088692 |
| Date | 01 July 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Regular Articles |
Without an army: How ICC indictments
reduce atrocities
Andrew Cesare Miller
Department of Political Science, United States Naval Academy
Abstract
Do International Criminal Court (ICC) indictments reduce atrocities? The ICC convicting only ten perpetrators
since its founding in 2002 has generated skepticism of the court’s ability to prevent attacks against civilians. Drawing
on the criminal violence literature, this article applies the concept of assurance to explain how the ICC reduces
atrocities despite its limited capacity. As with criminal organizations facing domestic indictments, armed groups
affiliated with ICC indictees often (mis)perceive that the indictments come with assurance: that is, inductee-affiliated
groups believe that they can alleviate the costs imposed by indictments if they refrain from further attacks. I test the
effect of ICC indictments on violence using the weighted regression method generalized synthetic control to mitigate
empirical challenges posed by endogeneity and data unreliability. The results indicate that indictments lead to a
substantial initial decline in attacks against civilians by armed groups affiliated with indictees, but the attacks return
to pre-indictment levels when indictees face sustained punishment from the court. Descriptive cases of ICC indict-
ments against alleged perpetrators in Uganda and Kenya are used to illustrate the role of assurance. These findings
imply that the ICC might reduce violence by engaging in plea bargains and other negotiated settlements – tools
commonly employed by domestic prosecutors fighting criminal organizations.
Keywords
criminal violence, international criminal court, international justice, mass atrocity crimes, plea bargaining
The International Criminal Court’s (ICC) mandate to
prevent ‘grave crimes’ far exceeds its capacity to do so
through the arrest and conviction of perpetrators alone
(e.g. Ainley, 2011). The ICC’s struggle to convict per-
petrators has generated skepticism of the court’s effec-
tiveness since its inception (Zvobgo, 2019). A European
diplomat is said to have exclaimed sarcastically, ‘Where is
your army?’ when ICC prosecutors expressed their intent
to arrest the court’s first indictees, the leadership of the
Ugandan-based Lord’s Resistance Army (Moreno-
Ocampo, 2014).
At first glance, skepticism of the court’s ability to
reduce atrocities appears warranted. Since its 2002
founding, the ICC has convicted just ten individuals –
a small fraction of the perpetrators under the court’s
jurisdiction. The ICC’s struggle to apprehend and con-
vict indictees undercuts the basic deterrence model that
the court’s architects envisioned: preventing atrocities by
convicting those involved in the crimes. ‘My mission,’
the ICC’s first lead prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo
explained, ‘is to end impunity for these crimes in order
to contribute to the prevention of future crimes’ (Krcma-
ric, 2018).
Despite the ICC’s struggles implementing a
deterrence-through-convictions model, it has reduced
atrocities by armed groups affiliated with the court’s
indictees. The ICC has succeeded in dissuading perpe-
trators from continued abuses – a dynamic international
relations scholars term ‘specific deterrence ’ (or recidi-
vism, in criminal justice parlance). Drawing on the expe-
rience of domestic law enforcement with criminal
organizations, this study helps explain this puzzle by
introducing the concept of ‘assurance’ – a variable that
Corresponding author:
millera@usna.edu
Journal of Peace Research
2023, Vol. 60(4) 573–587
ªThe Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/00223433221088692
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