By Wim Bernasco*, Marre Lammers, Barbara Menting, Stijn Ruiter

The interpretation of research findings based on self-reported delinquency requires knowledge of how response rates depend on the attributes of potential respondents, including their prior offending. The purpose of the present study was to quantify the extent to which, in a sample of offenders, the two main determinants of non-response – non-contact and refusal – depend on prior offending frequency. We used binomial and multinomial regression models to assess whether frequent offenders are more difficult to contact and less willing to participate in online surveys. These hypotheses are tested on a sample of offenders who were invited by regular mail to participate in the Online Activity Space Inventory Survey (OASIS), an online survey on mobility and safety. Controlling for gender and age as potential confounders, our findings do not confirm that frequent offenders are less likely to be successfully contacted, but they do confirm that, if contacted, they are less likely to participate. Response rates in offender-based research are selective and thus potentially biased towards infrequent offenders. They generally favour conservative estimates and conclusions, implying that any associations found between crime and its predictors are likely stronger in reality.

European Journal of Criminology, Volume 19, Issue 6, November 2022, Pages 1403-1420

By Aaron Chalfin and Brittany Street

This paper reviews and distills a wide array of recent social science literature and offers an evidence-based vision for how public safety can be maintained while relying less on the use of incarceration. We offer the following lessons from the literature. First, while interventions that increase economic opportunities have been shown to be effective in reducing criminal behavior, particularly income generating crime, interventions which change how people think appear to be even more effective at reducing the types of crimes that most frequently lead to incarceration. Second, a wide variety of investments targeted towards children in disadvantaged neighborhoods appear to be effective and likely pay for themselves over time. Third, while there is a natural concern that diverting criminal defendants from traditional prosecution will erode the deterrence value of criminal sanctions, the evidence suggests that for first-time and younger offenders, individuals who have been diverted – either through a formal program or informally via “non-prosecution” – tend to be less likely to be rearrested in the future. Fourth, the evidence suggests that law enforcement can play an important role in reducing the use of incarceration when police are visible and engage in high-value activities that deter crime or focus their arrest powers more intensively on violent and/or high-volume offenders; in doing so, they have the ability to reduce crime through deterrence and focused incapacitation without increasing the footprint of the justice system. Finally, there is potential to meaningfully reduce incarceration levels through sentencing reforms without compromising public safety – so long as the reforms are structured in such a way as to target the least criminally productive offenders, while retaining in custody those offenders who are most likely to commit the costliest offenses or who are likeliest to offend in high volumes.

Institute for the Quantitative Study of Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity,, 2023. 69p

By Jacob Kaplan · Aaron Chalfn

Observational evidence suggests that better ambient lighting leads people to feel safer when spending time outdoors in their community. We subject this finding to greater scrutiny and elaborate on the extent to which improvements in street lighting affect routine activities during nighttime hours. We report evidence from a survey experiment that examines individual's' perceptions of safety under two different intensities of nighttime ambient lighting. Brighter street lighting leads individuals to feel safer and over half of survey respondents are willing to pay an additional $400 per year in taxes in order to finance a hypothetical program which would replace dim yellow street lights with brighter LED lights. However, poor lighting does not change people’s willingness to spend time outdoors or to engage in behaviors which mitigate risk. Results suggest that street lighting is a means through which policymakers can both control crime and improve community well-being.

Security Journal (2022) 35:694–724

By Rebecca Hubble

The Learning Disabilities and Challenge (LDC) suite are accredited offending behaviour programmes delivered by His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) in custody and the community for adults assessed as having mild impairments in intellectual and adaptive functioning. There are four programmes within the suite: Becoming New Me Plus (BNM+), New Me Strengths (NMS), Living as New Me (LNM), and the Heathy Sex Programme (HSP). Our interim outcome evaluation attends to BNM+ and NMS only. This is because LNM and HSP are secondary programmes, i.e., they are intended to be delivered after completion of a primary programme. BNM+ is for men with LDC assessed as high or very high risk of reoffending, who present with at least one or more strong criminogenic needs across multiple domains and have a general violence, intimate partner violence and/or sexual offending conviction(s). NMS is designed for people with any offence convictions, who have been assessed as medium or above risk of reoffending, with sufficient levels of criminogenic need addressed by the programme. The aim of this interim outcome evaluation was to determine whether BNM+ and NMS participants were making positive progress against programme targets reflected in the Success Wheel Measure (SWM). The SWM, designed by HMPPS, is the core metric for measuring participant progress against programme targets for participants of BNM+ and NMS. The assessment domains are: (1) Managing Life’s Problems, (2) Healthy Thinking, (3) Positive Relationships, (4) Healthy Sex (for those with a sexual offence conviction only), and (5) Sense of Purpose (desistance from crime). The research also aimed to identify if individual (relating to the person) or programme delivery factors affected changes in SWM scores, and whether these changes varied between assessment domains.

Ministry of Justice Analytical Series 2024

London: Ministry of Justice, 2024. 48p.

By New York City. Office of the Comptroller General

In the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic, a series of high-profile, random, and tragic acts of violence have heightened New Yorkers’ attention to people living on the streets and subways with serious mental illness. Following the killing of Michelle Go in January 2022 by an individual with a long history of psychosis, 37 more people were pushed off subway platforms in just over a year. In November 2023, New York Times reporters highlighted nearly 100 random attacks by mentally ill, homeless New Yorkers “failed by a system that keeps making the same errors.”

In recent weeks, the sense of crisis has been amplified by more heartbreaking incidents. On November 18, 2024, Ramon Rivera – who cycled on and off the streets with serious mental illness for years – went on a stabbing spree, killing 3 people in broad daylight in midtown Manhattan. On December 9, a jury acquitted Daniel Penny of the killing of Jordan Neely, whose failures by the system were legion. On Sunday, December 22, 2024, Debrina Kawam who was herself homeless was cruelly burned to death on an F train at the Coney Island station. On New Year’s Eve, another New Yorker was pushed onto the tracks into an oncoming train. New Yorkers’ sense of safety on subways and in their own neighborhoods has plummeted.

In response to mounting safety concerns, New York City and State have launched a slew of initiatives and legislative efforts to confront the issue of street homelessness for people with serious mental illness. But the efforts are piecemeal. People continue to fall through the cracks and there is little public confidence that things will change.

The Adams Administration has ineffectively coordinated a Continuum of Care (CoC) – and the results are devastating. Outreach teams lose track of clients. Hospitals release patients back to the street after a few hours because there aren’t enough inpatient beds to treat them. Judges cannot refer people into programs proven to reduce recidivism and increase adherence to treatment because there are no slots.[9] Jails place just 3% of discharged people with serious mental health challenges into supportive housing.

An audit by the Comptroller’s office in 2024 of the City’s Intensive Mobile Treatment (IMT) program for homeless New Yorkers with the most severe histories of mental illness found that the City inadequately measured whether the program was decreasing incarceration because of a lack of coordination among City agencies, that outcomes and treatment measures were inconsistent, and that placements into stable housing had declined precipitously.

Despite these persistent failures, evidence from other cities – and indeed, even from New York City – argues strongly that this crisis can be solved with more diligent leadership.

Data shows that there are approximately 2,000 people with serious mental illness at risk for street homelessness cycling through City streets, subways, jails, and hospitals. At that scale, a better-coordinated system is within the grasp of a city with the resources and capacity of New

York. Indeed, the City is already spending billions on outreach, police overtime, city jails, shelters, and emergency hospitalizations, but City Hall has continuously failed to coordinate these efforts effectively to solve the problem.

At the heart of that better-coordinated system, this report centers a “housing first” approach, which evidence shows has had great success in Philadelphia, Houston, Denver, other cities throughout the United States and around the world, and even in New York City. Housing first combines existing housing vouchers and service dollars to get people off the street and directly into stable housing with wraparound services.

Data shows that 70-90% of people experiencing street homelessness with serious mental illness will accept permanent housing with a coordinated outreach strategy, and that it will keep them stably housed, off the street, and better connected to the mental health services that will stabilize them.

Of course, a strategy that is 70-90% effective does not work 10-30% of the time. For those instances, New York City will need better processes for mandated treatment. Sometimes, individuals need to be hospitalized, either voluntarily or involuntarily when they are a danger to themselves or others. For an effective continuum of care, New York should thoughtfully amend its laws to allow a wider range of medical professionals to place or keep individuals in hospitalization and required the consideration of an individual’s full medical and behavioral history.

On any given day, there are approximately 1,400 people with serious mental illness detained in NYC jails, including Rikers Island. There is an urgent need to ensure these individuals are provided with adequate mental health care while they are in detention, and before they are discharged and return back to their communities. Instead, the City releases most of these individuals without receiving mental health treatment and without placement into housing, increasing the likelihood of returning to unsheltered homelessness. In addition, individuals assigned by court order to “assisted outpatient treatment” (AOT) face significant challenges including homelessness. Without stable housing, adherence to the required treatment plans becomes more difficult, undermining the effectiveness of AOT programs.

In all these cases, ultimately individuals need to be connected to stable housing – when they are discharged from jail, when they leave the hospital, or while they are in AOT – or else they will simply return to the street, where they are far more likely to go without treatment and continue in a declining spiral. That’s why a housing first approach is a central element of any effective plan.

With better coordination and management from City Hall, with a “housing first” approach that evidence suggests will work most of the time, and with more effective mandated treatment options when it doesn’t, New York City can dramatically reduce – and even effectively end – street homelessness of people with serious mental illness.

New York: New York City Office of the Comptroller General, 2025. 99p.

By Jerzy Sarnecki · Amber L. Beckley · Sofa Wikman · Lars Westfelt · My Lilja6 · Hernan Mondani · Emy Bäcklin · Amir Rostami

Global evidence indicates minimal connection between immigration and crime. Nordic research, however, has been generally carried out on individuals and shows that immigrants are over-represented in crime. This has led to claims that high crime rates are due to immigration. We directed our study towards these claims by analyzing immigrant population prevalence, defined as the percent of foreign-born individuals, and violent crime in Swedish municipalities between 2000 and 2020. Nearly all municipalities had higher violent crime rates in 2020 relative to 2000. To discern whether drastic increases in municipality-level crime rates could be connected to municipality-level immigrant population prevalence, a retrospective case–control design was used to select 20 municipalities with the highest increase in reported violent crime rates and 20 municipalities with the lowest increase in reported violent crime rates. Immigrant population prevalence had little association with high rates of reported violent crime. The

average association between immigrant population prevalence and violent crime rates calculated from all municipalities was also weak and non-significant (p>0.05). Municipalities with a high increase in crime tended to have more crime correlates than municipalities with a low increase in crime. However, more research is needed on the impact of migration in small towns, especially those that have experienced economic and social stagnation.

Int. Migration & Integration (2025).

By Lydia Bates, et al.

Why this guide? A wide variety of forms of misogyny and genderbased bigotry have spiked in recent years.1 This includes a documented rise in forms of male supremacist violence that are now recognized as part of the spectrum of domestic violent extremism, including threats, plots and attacks from misogynist incels. 2 3 Everyday forms of misogyny and hostile sexism, especially online, have also increased, with one study showing that misogynistic tweets positively predict domestic and family violence in the United States.4 Further, anti-feminist sentiments have been rising among Generation Z boys and young men.5 This rise in gender-based bigotry includes a surge of anti-LGBTQ+ ideas and beliefs, evidenced through the hundreds of discriminatory bills introduced across the United States in 2024.6 At the intersection of anti-Black racism, anti-LGBTQ+ hate and misogyny, Black women, girls and transgender women experience an outsized amount of harm and violence. On the community level, these harms manifest from harassment at Pride month events and attacks on LGBTQ+ friendly businesses to unequal reproductive health care access and deadly transmisogynist violence. These surges are partially explained by the sheer breadth of online spaces where gender-based hate is fostered and thrives, such as video game chats, comment trolls on mainstream social media sites, and dedicated Reddit pages focused on ways to manipulate and denigrate women. Because hateful comments, memes and short-form videos are often infused with irony, satire or other forms of humor, gender-based hate online is sometimes disguised as “just a joke” or hidden behind the excuse of having two different meanings. Hate and policing individuals’ gender have also been legitimized and normalized by politicians, elected officials, and online influencers who peddle supposed success stories of wealth and status that rely on the exploitation and domination of women. And extremist groups who embrace racism and political violence, like the Proud Boys, have joined the fray by directly targeting bookstores that host Drag Story Hours and demonstrations advocating for abortion rights. Falsely linking drag performances and LGBTQ+ people with sexual predation, sometimes called “grooming,” they have sought new ways to build sympathy among mainstream conservatives.7 Collaboration & Scope A collaborative team of experts from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and the Polarization & Extremism Research & Innovation Lab (PERIL) drafted this guide. It is part of a broader public health approach for the prevention of violence and harm stemming from extremism, manipulative disinformation and dehumanizing rhetoric. Our organizations root our development of this approach in communities’ needs and by centering support for targeted individuals and survivors. And our approach is necessarily noncarceral, so that we can emphasize education and prevention over monitoring, surveillance and other security-based approaches. This guide is a resource for caregivers who surround and support young people – parents and relatives, teachers and educators, counselors and therapists, coaches and youth mentors, and more. It includes an overview and introduction to the concepts, trends and risks related to gender-based bigotry alongside the tools to build resilience and awareness, as well as ways to intervene. It also provides strategies and resources to support survivors and targeted individuals and communities. While this guide cannot cover every harm that young people will encounter related to gender-based bigotry, we aim for as wide a breadth as possible.

Montgomery, AL: Southern Poverty Law Center, 2024.

Edited by Marisa J. Fuentes and Deborah Gray White  

The 250th anniversary of the founding of Rutgers University is a perfect moment for the Rutgers community to reconcile its past, and acknowledge its role in the enslavement and debasement of African Americans and the disfranchisement and elimination of Native American people and culture. Scarlet and Black documents the history of Rutgers's connection to slavery, which was neither casual nor accidental-nor unusual. Like most early American colleges, Rutgers depended on slaves to build its campuses and serve its students and faculty; it depended on the sale of black people to fund its very existence. Men like John Henry Livingston, (Rutgers president from 1810-1824), the Reverend Philip Milledoler, (president of Rutgers from 1824-1840), Henry Rutgers, (trustee after whom the college is named), and Theodore Frelinghuysen, (Rutgers's seventh president), were among the most ardent anti-abolitionists in the mid-Atlantic. Scarlet and black are the colors Rutgers University uses to represent itself to the nation and world. They are the colors the athletes compete in, the graduates and administrators wear on celebratory occasions, and the colors that distinguish Rutgers from every other university in the United States. This book, however, uses these colors to signify something else: the blood that was spilled on the banks of the Raritan River by those dispossessed of their land and the bodies that labored unpaid and in bondage so that Rutgers could be built and sustained. The contributors to this volume offer this history as a usable one-not to tear down or weaken this very renowned, robust, and growing institution-but to strengthen it and help direct its course for the future. The work of the Committee on Enslaved and Disenfranchised Population in Rutgers History.

New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2017. 222p.

By China Scherz,  George Mpanga, and Sarah Namirembe

Higher Powers draws on four years of collaborative fieldwork carried out with Ugandans working to reconstruct their lives after attempting to leave behind problematic alcohol use. Given the relatively recent introduction of biomedical ideas of alcoholism and addiction in Uganda, most of these people have used other therapeutic resources, including herbal aversion therapies, engagements with balubaale spirits, and forms of deliverance and spiritual warfare practiced in Pentecostal churches. While these methods are at times severe, they contain within them understandings of the self and practices of sociality that point away from models of addiction as a chronic relapsing brain disease and towards the possibility of release. Higher Powers offers a reconceptualization of addiction and recovery that may prove relevant well beyond Uganda.

Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2024.  156p.

ByThomas D. Akoensi, Justice Tankebe

Using an experimental vignette design, the study inves-tigates the effects of criminal records on the hiring deci-sions of a convenience sample of 221 human resource(HR) managers in Ghana. The HR managers were ran-domly assigned to read one of four vignettes depicting job seekers of different genders and criminal records:male with and without criminal record, female with and without criminal record. The evidence shows that a criminal record reduces employment opportunities for female offenders but not for their male counter-parts. Additionally, HR managers are willing to offer interviews to job applicants, irrespective of their crim-inal records, if they expect other managers to hire ex-convicts. The implications of these findings are dis-cussed.

The Howard Journal of Crime and Justice, online first, May 2024

By Frances Thomson, Patrick Meehan & Jonathan Goodhand (02 Apr 2024):

his article and the forum it introduces examine illicit drug crop (IDC) economies from agrarian perspectives. Examining IDCs as a group implies analysing how prohibition distinguishes them from other (licit) crops. We identify seven mechanisms through which prohibition shapes the agrarian political economy of IDCs and explore how these mechanisms and their effects generate distinctive patterns of development and political action amongst ‘illicit peasantries’. We also examine connections between illicit and licit crops, including how licit crop crises and illicit crop booms intertwine. We argue that IDC economies provide a bulwark for smallholders but are by no means peasant idylls.

The Journal of Peasant Studies. 2024. 39p.

By Matthew Bonn, Chelsea Cox, Marilou Gagnon. et al.

The International Guidelines on Human Rights and Drug Policy recommend that States commit to adopting a balanced, integrated, and human rights-based approach to drug policy through a set of foundational human rights principles, obligations arising from human rights standards, and obligations arising from the human rights of particular groups. Following two years of consultation with stakeholders, including people who use drugs, NGOs, legal and human rights experts, UN technical agencies and Member States, the Guidelines “do not invent new rights. Rather, they apply existing human rights law to the legal and policy context of drug control to maximise human rights protections, including in the interpretation and implementation of the drug control conventions.” In respect of the Guidelines and its obligations under UN human rights treaties, Canada must adopt stronger and more specific commitments for a human rights-based, people centered and public health approach.3 This approach must commit to the removal of criminal penalties for simple possession and a comprehensive health-based approach to drug regulation.

Ottawa, ONT: Royal Society of Canada, 2024. 52p.

By Ben Grunwald and Jeffrey Fagan

In 2000, the Supreme Court held in Illinois v. Wardlow that a suspect’s presence in a “high-crime area” is relevant in determining whether an officer has reasonable suspicion to conduct an investigative stop. Despite the importance of the decision, the Court provided no guidance about what that standard means, and over fifteen years later, we still have no idea how police officers understand and apply it in practice. This Article conducts the first empirical analysis of Wardlow by examining data on over two million investigative stops conducted by the New York Police Department from 2007 to 2012. Our results suggest that Wardlow may have been wrongly decided. Specifically, we find evidence that officers often assess whether areas are high crime using a very broad geographic lens; that they call almost every block in the city high crime; that their assessments of whether an area is high crime are nearly uncorrelated with actual crime rates; that the suspect’s race predicts whether an officer calls an area high crime as well as the actual crime rate; that the racial composition of the area and the identity of the officer are stronger predictors of whether an officer calls an area high crime than the crime rate itself; and that stops are less or as likely to result in the detection of contraband when an officer invokes high-crime area as a basis of a stop. We conclude with several policy proposals for courts, police departments, and scholars to help address these problems in the doctrine.

California Law Review 345-404 (2019

By Damon L. Perry

In Britain, no one has the right not to be offended. Words or actions that are taken by some as offensive – whether they relate to religion, sexuality or race – are not criminal as long as they are not intentionally hostile and meant, or likely, to incite hatred. The statutory guidance on Non Crime Hate Incidents, revised in March 2023, is consistent with the law in this regard. It states: “Fundamentally, offending someone is not, in and of itself, a criminal offence. To constitute an offence under hate crime legislation, the speech or behaviour in question must be threatening, abusive or insulting and be intended to, or likely to, stir up hatred”. Yet, this does not seem to be fully acknowledged in Britain’s schools. As this revealing survey of over a thousand teachers from YouGov and Policy Exchange demonstrates, since the Batley Grammar School protests, a small but significant proportion of British teachers have self-censored to avoid offence on religious grounds – 16%. (That proportion is slightly higher for teachers of certain subjects, including almost a fifth of all English teachers and art teachers – 19%). In areas with the largest Muslim populations, around 10% fewer teachers do not self-censor than those in areas with the smallest Muslim populations. A worrying proportion believe that – regardless of a teacher’s intentions – images of the prophet Muhammad should never be used in classrooms, even in the teaching of Islamic art or ethics: In addition to the 55% of teachers that would not personally use an image of Muhammad independently from the Batley Grammar School protests, an additional 9% said they personally were less likely to use it as a result of the events in Batley. The case of the teacher at Batley Grammar who went into hiding after death threats thus appears to have had a significant impact on teachers’ confidence and willingness to use materials that fall within the scope of the law. Alarmingly, half of British teachers believe that if blasphemy-related protests led by activist and advocacy groups occur outside their schools, there would be a risk to their physical safety. Despite most teachers thinking that headteachers get the balance right – between supporting them to use materials that are on the right side of the law but which might offend, and ensuring no offence is caused – they are clearly in need of greater confidence in the support they can expect from their headteachers and, in the case of activist-led protests outside their school gates, the police. Recent events have given further impetus to concerns regarding the physical safety of teachers and the security at schools. On 13 October, 2023, in Arras, France, a literature teacher, Dominque Bernard, was killed in a knife attack; the suspect, an Islamist extremist, was looking for teachers  of history or geography. The case has been compared to that of Samuel Paty, the teacher who was killed three years ago by an Islamist extremist for showing cartoons of Muhammad to a class on freedom of expression. Both teachers have been described by President Macron as champions of the values of the French republic. Although this tragic incident took place across the Channel, France’s battle with Islamist extremism is one shared with the UK. Closer to home, in the wake of the Hamas terrorist attacks on hundreds of civilians in Israel on 7 October, protests on the streets of the UK against Israeli reprisals in the name of the Palestinian “resistance” have demonstrated alarming levels of hateful extremism and antisemitism.5 Some Jewish schools were forced to close on 13 October, when Hamas called for a “Global Day of Jihad”, and several Jewish schools were vandalised with red paint. The atmosphere has been fraught. The Department for Education wrote to school leaders “to ensure that any political activity from pupils in response to the crisis does not create an ‘atmosphere of intimidation’”  etc.

London: Policy Exchange, 2024. 51p.

By Mary Louise Frampton, Ian Haney Lopez, and Jonathan Simon

Since the 1970s, Americans have witnessed a pyrrhic war on crime, with sobering numbers at once chilling and cautionary. Our imprisoned population has increased five-fold, with a commensurate spike in fiscal costs that many now see as unsupportable into the future. As American society confronts a multitude of new challenges ranging from terrorism to the disappearance of middle-class jobs to global warming, the war on crime may be up for reconsideration for the first time in a generation or more. Relatively low crime rates indicate that the public mood may be swinging toward declaring victory and moving on.
However, to declare that the war is over is dangerous and inaccurate, and After the War on Crime reveals that the impact of this war reaches far beyond statistics; simply moving on is impossible. The war has been most devastating to those affected by increased rates and longer terms of incarceration, but its reach has also reshaped a sweeping range of social institutions, including law enforcement, politics, schooling, healthcare, and social welfare. The war has also profoundly altered conceptions of race and community.
It is time to consider the tasks reconstruction must tackle. To do so requires first a critical assessment of how this war has remade our society, and then creative thinking about how government, foundations, communities, and activists should respond. After the War on Crime accelerates this reassessment with original essays by a diverse, interdisciplinary group of scholars as well as policy professionals and community activists. The volume's immediate goal is to spark a fresh conversation about the war on crime and its consequences; its long-term aspiration is to develop a clear understanding of how we got here and of where we should go.

New York; London: NYU Press, 2008.256p

By  James B. Jacobs and Kerry T. Cooperman

In 1988, Manhattan U.S. Attorney Rudy Giuliani brought a massive civil racketeering suit against the leadership of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT), at the time possibly the most corrupt union in the world. The lawsuit charged that the mafia had operated the IBT as a racketeering enterprise for decades, systematically violating the rights of members and furthering the interests of organized crime. On the eve of trial, the parties settled the case, and twenty years later, the trustees are still on the job.

Breaking the Devil’s Pact is an in-depth study of the U.S. v. IBT, beginning with Giuliani’s lawsuit and the politics surrounding it, and continuing with an incisive analysis of the controversial nature of the ongoing trusteeship. James B. Jacobs and Kerry T. Cooperman address the larger question of the limits of legal reform in the American labor movement and the appropriate level of government involvement.

New York; London: NYU Press, 2011. 320p.

By The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe

This report offers empirical evidence and case studies from across the OSCE area on how women are recruited into organized crime groups, their roles within them, and how and why they exit these groups. It demonstrates that the role of women in organized crime is nuanced. Evidence shows that while women are often exploited and victimized by organized crime groups, they can also be important actors. Yet persistent gender stereotypes mean that women’s agency in organized crime is often not recognized by criminal justice practitioners. Failing to recognize women’s agency in organized crime impedes the understanding in participating States of the complexity of the organized crime landscape, and hampers their ability to combat transnational organized crime or support women to leave organized crime groups.

Vienna: OSCE, 2023. 72p.

 By David C. Pyrooz, John Leverso, Jose Antonio Sanchez, and James A. Densley

For more than three decades, developmental and life-course criminology has been a source of theoretical advancement, methodological innovation, and policy and practice guidance, bringing breadth and depth even to well-established areas of study, such as gangs. This review demonstrates how the developmental and life-course perspective on gangs can be further extended and better integrated within broader developments in criminology. Accordingly, we structure this review within the fourfold paradigm on human development that unites seemingly disparate areas in the study of gangs: (a) historical time and place, or the foregrounding of when and where you are; (b) linked lives, or the importance of dynamic multiplex relationships; (c) timing, or the age-grading of trajectories and transitions; and (d) human agency, or taking choice seriously. We conclude by outlining a vision that charts new directions to be addressed by the next generation of scholarship on gangs.

Annual Review of Criminology, Volume 7, Page 105 - 127

Edited by Nick Gill and Anthony Good

Drawing on new research material from ten European countries, Asylum Determination in Europe: Ethnographic Perspectives brings together a range of detailed accounts of the legal and bureaucratic processes by which asylum claims are decided. The book includes a legal overview of European asylum determination procedures, followed by sections on the diverse actors involved, the means by which they communicate, and the ways in which they make life-and-death decisions on a daily basis. It offers a contextually rich account that moves beyond doctrinal law to uncover the gaps and variances between formal policy and legislation, and law as actually practiced. The contributors employ a variety of disciplinary perspectives – sociological, anthropological, geographical, and linguistic – but are united in their use of an ethnographic methodological approach. Through this lens, the book captures the confusion, improvisation, inconsistency, complexity, and emotional turmoil inherent to the process of claiming asylum in Europe.

Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. 346p.

By Joe Mathewson

This book makes the case for the news media to take the lead in combatting key  threats to American society including racial injustice, economic disparity and climate change by adopting an “ethics of care” in reporting practices. Examining how traditional news coverage of race, economics and climate change has been dedicated to straightforward facts, the author asserts that journalism should now respond to societal needs by adopting a moral philosophy of the “ethics of care,” opening the door to empathetic yet factual and fair coverage of news events, with a goal to move public opinion to the point that politicians are persuaded to take effective action. The book charts a clear path for how this style of ethics can be applied by today’s journalists, tracing the emergence of this empathy-based ethics from feminist philosophy in the 1980s. It ultimately urges ethical news organizations to adopt the ethics of care, based on the human emotion prioritized by Scottish Enlightenment philosopher David Hume, and to pursue a more proactive, solutions-seeking coverage of current events.  

Abingdon, OXON, UK: New York: Routledge, 2022.199p.