BY Lyn Mikel Brown

For some time, reality TV, talk shows, soap-operas, and sitcoms have turned their spotlights on women and girls who thrive on competition and nastiness. Few fairytales lack the evil stepmother, wicked witch, or jealous sister. Even cartoons feature mean and sassy girls who only become sweet and innocent when adults appear. And recently, popular books and magazines have turned their gaze away from ways of positively influencing girls' independence and self-esteem and towards the topic of girls' meanness to other girls. What does this say about the way our culture views girlhood? How much do these portrayals affect the way girls view themselves?

In Girlfighting, psychologist and educator Lyn Mikel Brown scrutinizes the way our culture nurtures and reinforces this sort of meanness in girls. She argues that the old adage “girls will be girls”—gossipy, competitive, cliquish, backstabbing— and the idea that fighting is part of a developmental stage or a rite-of-passage, are not acceptable explanations. Instead, she asserts, girls are discouraged from expressing strong feelings and are pressured to fulfill unrealistic expectations, to be popular, and struggle to find their way in a society that still reinforces gender stereotypes and places greater value on boys. Under such pressure, in their frustration and anger, girls (often unconsciously) find it less risky to take out their fears and anxieties on other girls instead of challenging the ways boys treat them, the way the media represents them, or the way the culture at large supports sexist practices.

Girlfighting traces the changes in girls' thoughts, actions and feelings from childhood into young adulthood, providing the developmental understanding and theoretical explanation often lacking in other conversations. Through interviews with over 400 girls of diverse racial, economic, and geographic backgrounds, Brown chronicles the labyrinthine journey girls take from direct and outspoken children who like and trust other girls, to distrusting and competitive young women. She argues that this familiar pathway can and should be interrupted and provides ways to move beyond girlfighting to build girl allies and to support coalitions among girls.

By allowing the voices of girls to be heard, Brown demonstrates the complex and often contradictory realities girls face, helping us to better understand and critique the socializing forces in their lives and challenging us to rethink the messages we send them.

New York; London: NYU Press, 2003. 259p.

By Cindy D. Ness

In low-income U.S. cities, street fights between teenage girls are common. These fights take place at school, on street corners, or in parks, when one girl provokes another to the point that she must either “step up” or be labeled a “punk.” Typically, when girls engage in violence that is not strictly self-defense, they are labeled “delinquent,” their actions taken as a sign of emotional pathology. However, in Why Girls Fight, Cindy D. Ness demonstrates that in poor urban areas this kind of street fighting is seen as a normal part of girlhood and a necessary way to earn respect among peers, as well as a way for girls to attain a sense of mastery and self-esteem in a social setting where legal opportunities for achievement are not otherwise easily available.
Ness spent almost two years in west and northeast Philadelphia to get a sense of how teenage girls experience inflicting physical harm and the meanings they assign to it. While most existing work on girls’ violence deals exclusively with gangs, Ness sheds new light on the everyday street fighting of urban girls, arguing that different cultural standards associated with race and class influence the relationship that girls have to physical aggression.

New York; London: NYU Press, 2010. 198p.

By Folahanmi Aina and John Sunday Ojo

Violent extremist organisations (VEOs) use social media platforms to promote extremist content and coordinate agendas.  The use of digital platforms to disseminate information and coordinate activities by VEOs in Nigeria has grown considerably in recent years. This report analyses the adoption of social media before and after attacks by Boko Haram, Islamic State of West Africa Province (ISWAP) and Ansaru. In the post-attack environment, Boko Haram, ISWAP and Ansaru use platforms to claim responsibility and display their strengths against the state’s security forces. By demonstrating their capacity to attack state security forces, the three groups aim to erode the public’s confidence in the state military’s capacity to safeguard national security. The key findings of this report are as follows: Boko Haram, ISWAP and Ansaru previously leveraged popular social media platforms, including YouTube, Facebook, Telegram and Instagram. These platforms were used to promote propaganda and create awareness regarding upcoming attacks. However, all three groups have now had their use of these platforms restricted or banned. ISWAP has switched to using WhatsApp as a secure platform for communication before, during and after attacks. Rocket.Chat and Telegram have also been instrumental in ISWAP’s information dissemination. Boko Haram uses Telegram to share its activities in the pre-attack and post-attack environments. Ansaru has yet to appear on social media platforms due to its underground activities, which are hard to monitor. The recent acquisition of high-speed satellite internet has enhanced ISWAP’s communication with its audience and enabled coordinated attacks. Combating the exploitation of social media platform by VEOs requires a multidimensional approach. Effective collaboration with technology companies becomes imperative to identify extremist content. Building technological infrastructure for the state requires synergistic collaboration with the military and intelligence agencies to enable the removal of extremism from social media platforms. Devising multilingual and specialised algorithms to detect coded extremism messages and audio-visual content is essential for effective counter-extremism digital architecture. Investing in current technology through research and algorithm development must be prioritised to identify violent extremist content in Nigeria and beyond.

London: Global Network on Extremism & Technology, 2023. 30p.

Editor(s): D. Asher Ghertner, Hudson McFann, Daniel M. Goldstein

Security is a defining characteristic of our age and the driving force behind the management of collective political, economic, and social life. Directed at safeguarding society against future peril, security is often thought of as the hard infrastructures and invisible technologies assumed to deliver it: walls, turnstiles, CCTV cameras, digital encryption, and the like. The contributors to Futureproof redirect this focus, showing how security is a sensory domain shaped by affect and image as much as rules and rationalities. They examine security as it is lived and felt in domains as varied as real estate listings, active-shooter drills, border crossings, landslide maps, gang graffiti, and museum exhibits to theorize how security regimes are expressed through aesthetic forms. Taking a global perspective with studies ranging from Jamaica to Jakarta and Colombia to the U.S.-Mexico border ;Futureproof expands our understanding of the security practices, infrastructures, and technologies that pervade everyday life.

Contributors: Victoria Bernal, Jon Horne Carter, Alexandra Demshock, Zaire Z. Dinzey-Flores, Didier Fassin, D. Asher Ghertner, Daniel M. Goldstein, Rachel Hall, Rivke Jaffe, Ieva Jusionyte, Catherine Lutz, Alejandra Leal Martínez, Hudson McFann, Limor Samimian-Darash, AbdouMaliq Simone, Austin Zeiderman

Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2020. 312p.

By Amber Evans, Strategy & Insight Manager | Fernanda Reynoso-Serna, Analyst | Freya Smith, Analyst | Dr Ellie Brown, Head of Strategy | Sophie Davis

Most people are more worried about being affected by online fraud than other crimes, such as knife crime, burglary and sexual offences, according to a new large-scale survey – which also highlights the emotional impact of being an online fraud victim. The research, funded by the Dawes Trust, was based on a nationally representative sample of over 3,313 adults across England and Wales as part of a survey conducted by data organisation WALR. The vast majority of those polled, 92%, said online fraud was a very big or quite big problem in the UK. When asked what crimes they were most worried about being affected by, 55% said online fraud, 44% burglary and 47% knife crime. The poll also found that younger people (aged 18-34) were most likely to be affected by online fraud, with 32% reporting having been a victim in the last twelve months compared to 16% of over-35s. However, half of those questioned believed the elderly were most at risk. Of those who had been victims of online fraud: 20% said their physical health had suffered, 32% reported a psychological impact, 42% were affected financially, 47% experienced an emotional impact, including feeling embarrassed, angry or ashamed. 23% of all victims said they had experienced anxiety, 12% experienced disturbed sleep and 11% experienced depression as a result of the online fraud. The survey also shows that just over half of victims reported the fraud to either the police or Action Fraud. Victims were more likely to contact their bank (41%) than to go to the police (32%) or Action Fraud (28%), the UK’s national fraud reporting centre.

London: Crest Advisory, 2023. 32p.

By: Ksenia Ermoshina and Francesca Musiani

Concealing for Freedom: The Making of Encryption, Secure Messaging and Digital Liberties sets out to explore one of the core battlegrounds of Internet governance: the encryption of online communications. Current debates around encryption have fundamental implications for our individual liberties and collective presence on the Internet. Encryption of communications at scale and in increasingly usable ways has become a matter of public concern, especially since Edward Snowden’s 2013 revelations. A new cryptographic imaginary is taking hold, which sees encryption as a necessary precondition for the formation of networked publics. At the same time, there have been major evolutions and accelerations in the field of secure communications, prompted in part by the cryptography community’s renewed efforts to create next-generation secure messaging protocols and applications. It is vital that we unveil the very recent, and sometimes less recent history of these protocols and their key applications. The book takes on this task, in order to show how the opportunities and constraints they provide to Internet users came about, and how both developer communities and institutions are working towards making them available for the largest possible audience. It explores how efforts towards this goal are built upon interwoven stories about technical development and architectural choices, about community-building – and about Internet governance and politics. In doing so, the book focuses on the experience of encryption in a wide variety of contemporary secure messaging protocols and tools, and looks at the implications of these endeavors for the “making of” digital liberties on the Internet. Concealing for Freedom provides two key empirical and theoretical contributions. Firstly, it enriches a social sciences-informed understanding of encryption. It does so by examining how different solutions of cryptography for secure communications are created, developed, enacted, and governed, and what this diverse experience of encryption, operating across many different sites, means for online civil liberties. Secondly, it contributes to understanding the social and political implications of particular design choices when it comes to the technical architecture of digital networks, in particular their degree of (de-)centralization. The book explores developers’ actions and their interactions with other stakeholders, for instance users, security trainers, standardising bodies, and funding organizations. It also examines their interactions with the technical artifacts they develop, in which a core common objective is to create tools that “conceal for freedom” even as how this objective is met differs according to technical architectures, the user publics being targeted and the tools’ underlying values and business models.

Manchester, UK: Mattering Press, 2022. 274p.

By Adam Baird

Belize has one of the highest homicide rates in the world; however, the gangs at the heart of this violence have rarely been studied. Using a masculinities lens and original empirical data, this article explores how Blood and Crip “gang transnationalism” from the United States of America flourished in Belize City. Gang transnationalism is understood as a “transnational masculinity” that makes cultural connections between local settings of urban exclusion. On one hand, social terrains in Belize City generated masculine vulnerabilities to the foreign gang as an identity package with the power to reconfigure positions of subordination; on the other, the establishment of male gang practices with a distinct hegemonic shape, galvanized violence and a patriarchy of the streets in already marginalized communities. This article adds a new body of work on gangs in Belize, and gang transnationalism, whilst contributing to theoretical discussions around the global to local dynamics of hegemonic masculinities discussed by Connell and Messerschmidt (2005) and Messerschmidt (2018).

Men and Masculinities Volume 24, Issue 3. 1-21 , 2019

By A. Bukten , I. Skjærvø , M.R. Stavseth

Introduction: Despite a high prevalence of opioid use disorder (OUD) among people in prison, there is little knowledge of how many receive the recommended opioid agonist treatment (OAT) and what characterizes those who receive OAT and those who do not when it comes to mental health comorbidities. We aimed to describe people with OUD in Norwegian prisons over a ten-year period and their OAT status, and to investigate comorbidity of mental health disorders stratified by gender.

Methods: Data from the PriSUD study, including all people (≥19 years old) imprisoned in Norway between 2010 and 2019, linked to national patient registry data, including ICD-10 codes. We calculated the prevalence (1-year and 10-year) of OUD and OAT, and mental health comorbidity stratified on OAT-status and gender.

Results: Among the cohort (n=51,148), 7 282 (14.2%) were diagnosed with OUD during the period of observation. Of those, 4 689 (64.4%) received OAT. People with OUD had high levels of comorbidity, including other drug use disorders (92.4% OAT, 90.3% non-OAT), alcohol use disorder (32.1% OAT, 44.4% non-OAT) and any other mental health disorders (61.6% OAT, 68.2% non-OAT). The proportion receiving OAT among people with OUD increased markedly during the ten years of observation; from 35.7% in 2010–70.9% in 2019.

Conclusion. People with OUD, both receiving OAT and not, had substantially more mental health comorbidities than the non-OUD population. Understanding how the prison population changes over time especially in terms of mental health needs related to OUD, is important for correctional health service planning.

Drug and Alcohol Dependence. Volume 250, 1 September 2023, 110896

By the United States Government Accountability Office; Triana McNeil

Since 1999, more than 800,000 people have died from a drug overdose in the United States, with over 86,000 occurring during the 12-month period ending in July 2020, according to the most recent provisional data available from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics. In recent years, some states have enacted Good Samaritan and Naloxone Access laws to help reduce overdose deaths and respond to opioid overdoses. The Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act of 2016 included a provision for GAO to review these laws. This report addresses the following: (1) the efforts ONDCP has taken to collect and disseminate information on Good Samaritan and Naloxone Access laws, (2) the extent to which states, territories, and D.C. have these laws and the characteristics of them, and (3) what research indicates concerning the effects of Good Samaritan laws. To answer these questions, GAO collected and reviewed ONDCP documents and interviewed agency officials. GAO also reviewed and analyzed selected characteristics of jurisdictions’ Good Samaritan and Naloxone Access laws. Further, GAO conducted a literature review of empirical studies published from 2010 through May 2020 that examined the effects of Good Samaritan laws. GAO provided a draft of this report to ONDCP for comments. ONDCP provided technical comments which we incorporated, as appropriate.

Washington, DC: U.S. Government Accountability Office, 2021. 57p.

By The Council for Court Excellence

What follows is an edited transcript of a virtual public forum held on September 15, 2021, by the Council for Court Excellence (CCE) and the Office of the District of Columbia Auditor (ODCA), highlighting issues presented by the partial legalization of marijuana in the District of Columbia. This event was the last of four forums focused on timely criminal justice issues in the District. Each forum featured a panel of experts, local stakeholders and impacted individuals brought together to address barriers to effective policy, explore whether community needs are being addressed, and review options for action on each forum topic. Here we share the discussion from the fourth forum, “Confusion and Exclusion: Impacts of the Hazy State of D.C. Marijuana Legalization on People with Criminal Records,” focused on marijuana law and policy in D.C., the risks and barriers posed to people with criminal records, and the opportunities to transform our system moving forward. Participants provided thought-provoking commentary, constructive criticisms, and concrete policy proposals. The edited transcript allows readers to consider the nuances of each expert’s perspective and their real-time responses to one another’s ideas. Martin Austermuhle, a reporter and editor with WAMU 88.5 who frequently reports on the cannabis industry and local government, moderated the forum. The discussants included: • Queen Adesuyi, a policy manager at the Drug Policy Alliance; • Corey Barnette, owner and CEO of both District Growers LLC and Kinfolk Dispensary; • The Hon. David Grosso, a partner at Arent Fox LLP, previously served on the D.C. Council as an At-Large Member from 2013-2021 and was an early proponent of marijuana decriminalization; • Emily Gunston, Deputy Attorney General for Legislative Affairs and Policy for the D.C. Office of the Attorney General; and • Crystal Marshall, returning citizen and member of the Community Family Life Services Speakers Bureau. The panelists opened by discussing the history of cannabis law and policy in the District, and the jurisdictional issues presented by Congressional oversight. Each year since 2014, the House of Representatives has included a budget rider forbidding the D.C. Council from enacting any tax or regulatory structure related to recreational marijuana use, which has prevented the District from fully legalizing the sale of cannabis. D.C. is left in limbo: possession and private use of small amounts of marijuana are legal but purchasing and selling marijuana remain illegal. Plus, because the federal government controls D.C.’s pre-trial supervision, probation, parole, and supervised release, people under correctional supervision are still at risk of violating the terms for their supervision for legal use of cannabis. D.C. was one of the first jurisdictions in the United States to legalize medical marijuana use. Given the devastating impact of the “War on Drugs” on Black and Brown individuals, families, and communities, panelists noted that D.C. was at the forefront of social- and racial-justice oriented cannabis laws passed over the last 20 years. Panelists discussed the ways in which the District has prioritized Black and Brown people and communities in the medical cannabis industry including those who are patients and those who own, operate, and staff dispensaries. The discussants agreed that the racial equity goals of marijuana laws—to close wealth gaps among racial groups, to reinvest in those communities of color hit hardest by the “War on Drugs,” and to ultimately end discrimination in enforcement of drug laws more broadly—have not yet been met. Several panelists mentioned the necessity of a tax-and-regulate structure that would enable D.C. to collect proceeds from marijuana sales and, most importantly, reinvest those proceeds in social, educational, employment, and other programs to support members of historically marginalized Black and Brown communities. A particular focus of this discussion was the impact of D.C.’s perplexing marijuana laws on people in the District who have criminal records including marijuana-related charges. The panel described the personal toll that such confusion can take: it can lead those with criminal records to fear any interaction with cannabis, even interactions that are legal in D.C., because of the potential an arrest or conviction poses to their housing, employment, or immigration status. The disproportionately Black and poor District residents with criminal records are also prohibited under the current law from participating in the medical cannabis industry, depriving them of the opportunity to capitalize on economic benefits that other D.C. residents are free to pursue. Panelists also discussed the ways in which the Metropolitan Police Department’s enforcement of the complicated laws can impact crime, safety, and the economy. Participants cited cause for optimism, however, and shared their views on proposed legislation that would change the status of legal cannabis in D.C.: the MORE Act and the Cannabis Administration and Opportunity Act in Congress, and two bills proposed by Mayor Muriel Bowser and by Chairman Phil Mendelson of the D.C. Council. The panelists agreed that any new law should prioritize investment in Black and Brown communities and preserve the robust medical marijuana industry that has grown in D.C. Specific suggestions included removing the Congressional rider on the D.C. budget; establishing designated “use sites” for those in public housing or other housing that prohibits marijuana use; granting special business licenses to individuals who were directly harmed by the War on Drugs; funding industry training specifically for people with criminal records; and reframing marijuana as a medical and recreational aid, rather than a vice. The bibliography provides further reading on marijuana law and policy, local control of the District’s criminal justice system, the impacts of both on people with criminal records, and other issues discussed throughout the forum. Biographies of the discussants are also included at the end of this report. Finally, a full video of the panel can be found at: https://youtu.be/uFV6SNeuHv0. The transcript in this report has been lightly edited for length and clarity

Washington, DC: Office of the DC Auditor, 2021. 40p.

By Michael Jendrykea, , Stephen C. McClure

From time to time the popular media draws attention to hate crimes and hate groups, evoking images of NaziGermany and the rise of fascism. The geographic association between hate groups and hate crimes is uncertain. In this research we ask whether hate crimes are co-located and correlated to the presence of hate groups to explore a potential association between these two phenomena. Publicly available point level data on hate crimes and hate groups collected by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) were aggregated to unitary framework of hexagonal grid cells of a Discrete Global Grid System (DGGS) at multiple scales for consistent analysis. We explore the effects of proximity by interpreting a co-location map, deploying a Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR) for count data, and apply a Spatial Lag Model (SLM) at multiple scales, to ascertain the effects of the size of the aggregation units on the relationship between hate groups and hate crimes. Controlled or uncontrolled for spatial dependence, at all scales, the Spatial Lag Model (SLM) shows that an average of 39.5% of the hate crimes was correlated with hate groups. These results are consistent with the existing research but show that in most instances spatial dependence was present, regardless of the size of the aggregation unit or the distance to neighboring cells. Our future research will consider additional racial, economic and social variables using a DGGS.

Applied Geography. Volume 111, October 2019, 102072

By Brian Levin, James Nolan, and Kiana Perst

When prejudice-related data are combined and analyzed over time, critical information is uncovered about overall trends, related intermittent spikes, and less common sharp inflectional shifts in aggression. These shifts impact social cohesion and grievously harm specific sub-groups when aggression escalates and is redirected or mainstreamed. These data, so critical to public policy formation, show that we are in such a historic inflection period now. Moreover, analysis of the latest, though partial Federal Bureau of Investigation hate crime data release, when overlaid with available data from excluded large jurisdictions, reveals hate crimes hit a record high in 2021 in the United States that previously went unreported. This Essay analyzes the most recent national data as well as various numerical and policy milestones that accompanied the historic, yet incomplete, implementation of hate crime data collection and related statutes over recent decades. This analysis of emerging trends in the United States is undertaken in the context of bigoted aggression broken down over time.

112 J. CRIM. L. & CRIMINOLOGY 749 (2023)

By Linda M. Williams, April Pattavina, Alison C. Cares, and Nan D. Stein

Given the considerable changes in federal legislation and the pressing requirements that colleges and universities develop policies and practices that meet the needs of victims and of those accused of sexual assault, there is a critical need to document and understand how colleges are handling these demands and coordinating campus approaches to investigation and adjudication of sexual assaults. In 2015, the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) funded a project to commence January 2016, designed to examine the variations in policies and practices and understand more about challenges and emerging best practices. The research reported here was designed to identify the range and scope of policies and practices related to the investigation and adjudication of sexual assault on college campuses in the U.S. The Wellesley Centers for Women (WCW) with the assistance of an expert panel of advisory board members has documented and classified the current landscape (the breadth and differences) of campus approaches to investigations and adjudication of sexual assault. Our first step, informed by a victim-centered focus, was a web-based search of a randomly selected sample of four year colleges and universities (Institutions of Higher Education, IHEs) on policies and practices for investigation and adjudication of sexual assault reports. This web search was a systematic broadbased environmental scan designed to examine the policies and practices promulgated to the public and, most importantly, made available to students by IHEs. This environmental scan was followed by interviews with Title IX coordinators to develop a clearer understanding of the challenges and successes of these policies.

Washington, DC: U.S. National Institute of Justice, 2020. 91p.

By Elisabet le Roux, Sandra Iman Pertek

In this ground-breaking volume, the authors explore two sides of religion: the ways in which it contributes to violence against women and girls (VAWG) and the ways it counters it. Recognising the very real impact of religion on the lives of women and girls, it prioritises experiences and learnings from empirical research and of practitioners, and their activities at grassroots-level, to better understand the nature and root causes of VAWG. Drawing on research done in Christian and Muslim communities in various fragile settings with high religiosity, this book avoids simplistically assigning blame to any one religion, instead engaging with the commonalities of how religion and religious actors influence norms and behaviours that impact VAWG. If the sustainable development goal of ending all forms of VAWG is to be achieved, how should actors in the international development sector engage with religion and religious actors? This book unpacks the nature of religion and religious actors in relation to VAWG, with the aim of giving greater clarity on how to (and how not to) engage with this crucial issue.

Combining cutting-edge research with case studies and pragmatic recommendations for academics, policymakers and practitioners, this concise and easily accessible volume helps instigate discussion and engagement with the incredibly important relationships between religion and VAWG.

London; New York: Routledge, 2022. 194p.