ADMINISTRATIVE AND LEGAL PARADIGMS OF WITNESS PROTECTION PROGRAMS: CENTRALIZED AND NETWORKED-MODULAR MODELS
Abstract
The article offers a comparative exposition of administrative and legal models of witness protection, focusing on the centralized “full-cycle” paradigm (exemplified by the U.S. WITSEC program) and European networked-modular configurations, with particular attention to the conversion of an individual risk assessment into resource-backed managerial actions. Methodology. The study rests on a dialectical approach to the cognition of socio-legal phenomena and procedures, supplemented by systems analysis of the institutional architecture of protection programs, a legal-historical approach to tracing the genesis of security instruments, and a comparative-law method for juxtaposing regulatory and managerial solutions in the United States and European Union. Results. It is shown that the operational causality of centralized systems reduces time lags and enhances decision reproducibility through standardized SOPs, vertical accountability, and budgetary autonomy; by contrast, the procedural causality of network models attains an equivalent protective effect via dense compensatory safeguards, judicial oversight, and horizontal coordination. The article substantiates a two-tier panel of indicators – technical metrics (timeliness, leak incidents, repeat victimization) and procedural metrics (sufficiency of compensatory safeguards and the quality of the administration of justice) – and argues for a measurement codebook to ensure data reproducibility. It is demonstrated that functional equivalence of outcomes is attainable without identical institutional design, provided that networked systems maintain minimum coordination standards (shared registries, SLAs, and logging of security-relevant events and decisions) and centralized systems implement a formal proportionality test subject to external audit. The findings yield an applied framework for evaluating protection programs and for guiding subsequent empirical research.
References
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