The Eastern Caribbean faces maritime threats from transnational criminal organizations, that take advantage of the region’s porous borders to traffic illicit firearms, drugs, and people. To support the member states of the Regional Security System (RSS)—including Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines—to develop a unified operational approach for confronting maritime crime, Strategic Capacity Group (SCG) designed and delivered a project to build the capacity of the RSS and its member states to conduct maritime law enforcement operations and investigations, dismantle transnational organized crime, and streamline criminal justice procedures.

In the aftermath of Tunisia’s transition to democratic rule, senior female law enforcement officers created the Tunisian League of Women Police (TLWP), Tunisia’s first women’s police association, to promote the role of women in law enforcement, provide professionalization opportunities for its members, and further the provision of democratic security in Tunisia. By working to enhance the representation of women in Tunisia’s security forces, the TLWP supports the reform efforts of the Government of Tunisia and the Tunisian Ministry of Interior to improve security provision for all Tunisians.

The United States and its allies continue to struggle with how to design and deliver programs that achieve their intended outcome in the short term and provide lasting impacts in the long term. SCG has learned from engaging with policymakers, planners, and program managers that inflexible funding authorities, urgent security and front office priorities, programmatic stovepipes, and uneven donor and interagency coordination hamper sustainable strategic capacity building. Many planners and program managers have never been trained on program design or provided with the proper tools to implement a sustainable and strategic capacity building approach.

Building trust in public institutions remains a challenge in Liberia. Internal security organizations like the Liberian National Police (LNP) are working to learn new skills and effectively respond to threats without instilling fear within communities. The LNP needs the tools and skills to better communicate with the public about their mission and the constraints they face in meeting that mission. Building the LNP capacity for positive messaging and information dissemination is essential to fostering trust within the communities they serve.

Among the many ways that service provision can be improved in countries transitioning from democratic rule is to strengthen how the police investigate themselves, hold their officers accountable, and incentivize model service provision. Although Tunisia’s Ministry of Interior has undertaken numerous initiatives to reform service provision since the country’s transition to democratic rule nearly a decade ago, the General Inspection Offices for the National Police and National Guard have human, institutional, and technical capacity gaps that their leaderships are seeking to address. Human capacity constraints limit the number of cases that the General Inspection Offices are able to investigate, and investigators are keen to learn new skills in line with international standards and best practices.

Strategic Capacity Group (SCG) has been working closely with the governments of St Lucia, the Bahamas, the Dominican Republic, Trinidad and Tobago, and Guyana to build the capacity of their respective criminal justice sector institutions to more effectively combat trafficking, violence, and corruption associated with transnational organized crime and localized gangs since 2020. SCG provides training, advisory, and mentoring support (in-person and remotely) to partner forensic laboratories and other forensics specialists, including investigators and other law enforcement personnel, prosecutors, and judges in obtaining and using forensic evidence according to international standards in support of criminal prosecutions. The program, which is designed to contribute to wider regional security objectives by increasing the use of these labs by other Caribbean countries, also includes the use of study tours, workshops, and other knowledge exchange mechanisms.