By DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE NEW ZEALAND

“…The study includes statistical information to the extent that it is available. The law and administrative procedures are described and where appropriate psychological and sociological factors are discussed. This factual background is essential for informed consideration of the criminal scene. Inevitably interpretations are made and a variety of opinion is offered. It was not the purpose of the Department to produce a colourless official document devoid of all contentious matter. Although there has been a measure of co-ordination, diversity of opinion and spontaneity remain. It would therefore be difficult to agree with everything that is said or suggested.”

Ministry of Justice. New Zealand. 1968. 410p.

By Rumbi Matamba and Chwayita Thobela

Over the past decade, the GI-TOC has documented a staggering 108% increase in targeted killings in South Africa. While South Africa has long grappled with high levels of violence, as evidenced by a per capita murder rate of 45 per 100,000 in 2022/23, or approximately 70 murders a day, targeted killings have notably escalated, particularly political killings at local municipal level. Hitmen have become more daring, incidents more public and victims more high-profile. Coupled with the deficiencies in South Africa’s overburdened criminal justice system, where only about 15% of all murders are solved, the picture that emerges is one of a situation that is barely contained.

GI-TOC recorded 131 targeted killings in South Africa in 2023, just ten fewer than in 2022. The 131 cases were grouped into four categories: organized-crime related (46 cases or 35% of incidents), minibus taxi-industry related (45 incidents, or 34%), political assassinations (31 incidents, or nearly 24%) and personal assassinations (9 incidents, or nearly 7%). While every effort is made to ensure that the data is robust and accurate, this is almost certainly an undercount as the database draws on publicly available information such as press reports, media statements from affected families, court records, and media statements by the criminal justice sector.

This report is framed in the context of South Africa’s 2024 general elections. Previous analysis has shown that there are always spikes in political assassinations during election years, particularly in long-contested provinces such as KwaZulu-Natal. The 2024 elections, the sixth national election in the country’s 30 years of democracy, have been earmarked as a potential watershed moment.

Political violence and assassinations pose a very real threat to the country’s democracy. They are not an isolated phenomenon and they intersect with organized crime and criminal networks. The intertwining of criminal networks and political assassinations in South Africa underscores the urgent need for comprehensive strategies to tackle organized crime and stop targeted killings.

Geneva, SWIT: Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, 2024. 32p.

By David Pyrooz

Between 1990 and 2021, for adult offenders, Colorado punished felony murder with a mandatory minimum sentence of life without parole. Felony murder was classified as a class 1 felony, along with other theories of first-degree murder, such as after-deliberation and extreme indifference murder, as well as first-degree kidnapping, until Governor Jared Polis signed Senate Bill 124, effective September 15, 2021, reclassifying the offense to a class 2 felony. As a result, felony murder is now punishable by a sentence of 16-48 years.

The purpose of this study is to provide a statistical portrait of people who have been convicted of felony murder between 1990 and 2021. Data were acquired through open records requests from the Colorado Department of Corrections (“CDOC”) and the State Court Administrator’s Office (“SCAO”), along with public data from the Colorado State Demography Office. This study’s primary unit of analysis is a criminal case, meaning a criminal case identifiable by a single case number in which a person was found guilty. With respect to felony murder, a felony murder case means one with one or more felony murder convictions where no other theory of first-degree murder was proven with respect to that or those homicide(s).

Unpublished paper, 2023.

By Hannah Miles and Samantha Bricknell

The National Homicide Monitoring Program is Australia’s only national data collection on homicide incidents, victims and offenders. This report describes 232 homicide incidents recorded by Australian state and territory police between 1 July 2022 and 30 June 2023. During this 12-month period there were 247 victims of homicide and 260 identified offenders

Statistical Report no. 46. Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology, 2024. 49p.

By Ernesto Lopez, Robert Boxerman and Keley CundiffEErnes

Since shortly after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Council on Criminal Justice has tracked changing rates of violent and property crime in large cities across the United States. The pandemic, as well as the social justice protests during the summer of 2020 and other factors, have altered the motives, means, and opportunities to commit crimes.

Prepared for the Council on Criminal Justice’s Crime Trends Working Group, this report focuses on trends in shoplifting, a subset of retail theft which, in turn, is a subset of overall larceny-theft. The FBI defines larceny-theft as the unlawful taking of property without force, violence, or fraud.

The report looks at shoplifting patterns from before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic through mid-year 2023. To date, attempts to measure changes in retail theft, including organized retail theft, have relied on retail industry data5 or have been limited to one state.

The city-specific data included in this report are drawn from open-data sources from 24 cities that, over the past five years, have consistently reported specific shoplifting data. Additional data come from the U.S. Justice Department’s National Incident-Based Reporting Program (NIBRS).7 The NIBRS data include a sample of 3,812 local law enforcement agencies. The analyses examine the changing frequency of reported shoplifting, trends in other property offenses, changes in the value of stolen goods, offenses that co-occur with shoplifting, and the number of people involved in each incident.

This report does not discuss in detail shoplifting data from the National Retail Federation’s Retail Security Survey.8 The 2021 survey (data ending in 2020) was the last year the survey reported figures on the number of incidents and the value of stolen goods. Because of this change, data from the survey could not be included.

Due to a lack of available data, this report does not examine factors that could be influencing the trends. Potential factors include changes in retailers’ anti-theft measures and changes in how retailers report shoplifting to law enforcement, which could be based on their perceptions of the extent to which local police or prosecutors will apprehend suspects and pursue criminal charges. Because these data rely on reported incidents, they almost certainly undercount total shoplifting. The findings presented here should be viewed with these considerations in mind.

Washington, DC: Council on Criminal Justice, 2023. 8p.

By Lucy Bryant

Figures from the UK Office for National Statistics (2021a) suggest that alcohol-related violence in England and Wales has been declining – both as a total figure (1,001,000 in 2009/10 to 525,000 in 2019/20) and as a proportion of all violent incidents (54% in 2009/10 to 42% in 2019/20). ■ This decline remains unexplained and generally unexamined – however, there are existing bodies of research that might offer insight into this trend. ■ This report examines possible explanations for the decline seen in alcohol-related violence – drawing on existing literature exploring: changing patterns in violence (e.g., Farrell et al. 2014), alcohol’s relationship with violence (e.g., Graham & Livingston 2011), and the measurement of violence (e.g., Reiner 2016). ■ Changing patterns in youth drinking might contribute to this violence decline. It is younger, rather than older age groups, who predominantly engage in violence in night-time economy settings (Finney 2004). Youth drinking in England has seen a recent downturn (e.g., Oldham et al. 2018), corresponding to some degree with declines in alcohol-related violence.

■ A steeper decline in alcohol-related violence relative to violence overall appears to be accounted for by shi s in alcohol-related stranger and acquaintance violence. Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) data show that the proportion of stranger and acquaintance violence incidents that were alcohol related fell between 2009/10 and 2019/20, whilst the proportion of domestic violence incidents which were alcohol-related generally remained stable. ■ It is possible data artefacts such as counting errors contained in national statistics form some part of the trend investigated here. While the CSEW is a widely respected data source (Tilley & Tseloni 2016), limitations in its capturing of violent incidents have been previously identified (e.g., Walby et al. 2016). It is important to consider the impact any such data artefact might have on alcohol related violence trends – investigation of the production of these National Statistics should be undertaken to assess this.   

London: Institute of Alcohol Studies, 2023. 21p.

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 Bruce A. Jacobs, and Michael Cherbonneau

Carjacking is a violent crime with a broad motivational landscape related to the unique opportunities that a motor vehicle, as the item targeted, makes available to offenders once it is stolen. Although carjacking is technically a form of robbery, carjacking is a hybrid offense because it draws from elements of both regular robbery and motor vehicle theft. Nuanced in its etiology and expression, carjacking boasts a structure and process that require offenders to navigate multiple challenges under considerable time pressure and uncertainty. The fact that carjacking is so often opportunistic yet simultaneously requires a fair amount of calculation makes the offense even more subtle in its complexity. The purpose of this review is to examine these nuances through the lens of official data and existing empirical research. Nascent but growing, this research provides insight into the scope of the problem, the method and manner of the crime's commission, and the challenges of curbing a clear urban menace.

Annual Review of Criminology, v. 6. 2023, 24pg

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By N. Prabha Unnithan

Criminology and criminal justice is in its infancy in India. This book attempts to examine India's crime problem in detail and document if and how its criminal justice system has responded to emerging challenges and opportunities. The objective is to move beyond mere observations and thoughtful opinions, and make contributions that are the next steps in the development of an empirical (or evidence-based) criminology and criminal justice on this vast and diverse country-by focusing on research that is both balanced and precise. This book brings together a diverse set of 32 academics from India, the US, and the UK who have authored 19 chapters on many aspects of crime and justice in India. The organizational components or sectors of the criminal justice system are the police, the courts, and corrections. The studies collected here provide balanced coverage of the entire criminal justice system and not just one component of it. The first section of this book consists of overviews of several major issues that affect the entire criminal justice system. Section Two considers topics related to the gateway of the criminal justice system, policing. Section Three takes up the operational problems of criminal law and courts and Section Four deals with the difficult question of punishment and correction, the last part of the criminal justice system.

SAGE, 2013, 476 pages

By Adam Clark

This briefing provides an overview of cybersecurity in the UK. It explains the nature of the cyber threat, including how cyber attacks work. It describes the policy and regulatory frameworks, as well areas of reform such as 'ethical hacking'.

Research Briefing

London: House of Commons Library, 2024. 68p.

By The Violence Policy Center

For the past 25 years, the Violence Policy Center (VPC) has published its annual study When Men Murder Women. Released for Domestic Violence Awareness Month in October, the studies analyzed data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) Supplementary Homicide Reports (SHR) and ranked the states by their rates of females killed by males in single victim/single offender incidents. In addition to ranking the states by this homicide victimization rate, the studies also offered information on the age and race of these female homicide victims, victim to offender relationship, circumstance, and weapon type. The most recent edition (released in 2022 and which analyzed 2020 SHR data), was the final report to be published by the VPC using SHR data. In January of 2021, the FBI changed the way crime data are collected and reported, which has impacted the reliability of subsequent data. That year, the FBI retired the SHR system and replaced it with the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS). While NIBRS will eventually provide much more comprehensive and robust crime data compared to the SHR, transitioning law enforcement agencies to the new data collection and reporting system has been slow and burdensome. Indeed, many law enforcement agencies did not transition to NIBRS by January of 2021, which has had a significant impact on the reliability of 2021 crime data. After a careful analysis of that year’s crime data, the VPC has determined that current NIBRS data are not reliable for state-by-state gun violence research as required by When Men Murder Women. 

As a result, for the time being the VPC is unable to continue researching and publishing When Men Murder Women, although we hope that we will be able to resume publication of the report in the future. Though other national data sources contain information about homicides, these data sources do not contain the detailed information that was collected and publicly reported by the SHR (for example, sex of offender, type of firearm, relationship, and circumstance).b Over its 25-year publication history, the findings of the report have: led to the passage of laws that protect women and children from domestic violence, including legislation focused specifically on removing guns from the hands of domestic violence offenders; resulted in statewide public education campaigns; spurred the establishment of domestic homicide review boards; and, been repeatedly cited in the support of legislation and policies that protect women and children, including the federal Violence Against Women Act (VAWA).   

Washington, DC: Violence Policy Center, 2023. 21p.

By Terra Wiens

In 2001, the United States experienced a historic demographic change. For the first time, Hispanics became the largest minority group in the nation, exceeding the number of Black residents.2 With a population in 2020 of 62.1 million, Hispanics represent 18.7 percent of the total population of the United States.3 This study is intended to report on Hispanic homicide victimization and suicide in the United States, the role of firearms in homicide and suicide, and overall gun death figures. Recognizing this demographic landscape, the importance of documenting such victimization is clear. Indeed, studies have found that Hispanic individuals are more likely to die by firearm homicide compared to white, non-Hispanic individuals.  

Washington, DC: Violence Policy Center, 2023. 23p.

By Marty Langley and VPC Executive Director Josh Sugarmann.  

To educate the public and policymakers about the reality of black homicide victimization, each year the VPC releases Black Homicide Victimization in the United States (follow this link to download the study as a pdf). This annual study examines black homicide victimization at the state level utilizing unpublished Supplementary Homicide Report data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The study ranks the states by their rates of black homicide victimization and offers additional information for the 10 states with the highest black homicide victimization rates.

Washington, DC: Violence Policy Center, 2023. 18p.

By Stephanie Holmes Didwania

Fraud is one of the most prosecuted crimes in the United States, yet scholarly and journalistic discourse about fraud and other financial crimes tends to focus on the absence of so-called “white-collar” prosecutions against wealthy executives. This Article complicates that familiar narrative. It contains the first nationwide account of how the United States actually prosecutes financial crime. It shows—contrary to dominant academic and public discourse—that the government prosecutes an enormous number of people for financial crimes and that these prosecutions disproportionately involve the least advantaged U.S. residents accused of low-level offenses. This empirical account directly contradicts the aspiration advanced by the FBI and Department of Justice that federal prosecution ought to be reserved for only the most egregious and sophisticated financial crimes. This article argues, in other words, that the term “white-collar crime” is a misnomer.

To build this empirical foundation, the Article uses comprehensive data of the roughly two million federal criminal cases prosecuted over the last three decades matched to county-level population data from the U.S. Census. It demonstrates the history, geography, and inequality that characterize federal financial crime cases, which include myriad crimes such as identity theft, mail and wire fraud, public benefits fraud, and tax fraud, to name just a few. It shows that financial crime defendants are disproportionately low-income and Black, and that this overrepresentation is not only a nationwide pattern, but also a pattern in nearly every federal district in the United States. What’s more, the financial crimes prosecuted against these overrepresented defendants are on average the least serious. This Article ends by exploring how formal law and policy, structural incentives, and individual biases could easily create a prosecutorial regime for financial crime that reinforces inequality based on race, gender, and wealth.

Northwestern Law & Econ Research Paper Forthcoming, outhern California Law Review, Vol. 97, 2024, 54 pages

By U.S. Government Accountability Office

   The U.S. and its global partners are experiencing the effects of a massive cybercrime wave, which is growing in frequency and scale. In 2021, the Federal Bureau of Investigation received a record number of cybercrime complaints, over 840,000, with potential losses exceeding $6.9 billion. Further, in 2022, the intelligence community noted an increase in ransomware attacks by transnational criminals, which threaten to cause disruptions of critical services worldwide. GAO was asked to review federal efforts to build the capacity of allies and partner nations to combat cybercrime. This report’s specific objectives were to (1) describe challenges in building global capacity to combat cybercrime, and (2) determine actions selected federal agencies are taking to build foreign nations’ capacity to combat cybercrime and the extent to which they are evaluating the effectiveness of their efforts. GAO interviewed agency officials and convened a panel of experts representing entities focused on capacity building to combat global cybercrime. GAO also analyzed documentation from State, DOJ, and DHS, which provide the majority of U.S. capacity building assistance. What GAO Recommends GAO is making one recommendation to State to conduct a comprehensive evaluation of capacity building efforts to counter cybercrime. State concurred with the recommendation. 

 Washington, DC: GAO, 2023. 49p.

By Michael J. Frith  , Kate J. Bowers  , Shane D. Johnson 

Introduction: In response to COVID-19, governments imposed various restrictions on movement and activities. According to the routine activity perspective, these should alter where crime occurs. For burglary, greater household occupancy should increase guardianship against residential burglaries, particularly during the day considering factors such as working from home. Conversely, there should be less eyes on the street to protect against non-residential burglaries. Methods: In this paper, we test these expectations using a spatio-temporal model with crime and Google Community Mobility data. Results: As expected, burglary declined during the pandemic and restrictions. Different types of burglary were, however, affected differently but largely consistent with theoretical expectation. Residential and attempted residential burglaries both decreased significantly. This was particularly the case during the day for completed residential burglaries. Moreover, while changes were coincident with the timing and relaxation of restrictions, they were better explained by fluctuations in household occupancy. However, while there were significant decreases in non-residential and attempted non-residential burglary, these did not appear to be related to changes to activity patterns, but rather the lockdown phase. Conclusions: From a theoretical perspective, the results generally provide further support for routine activity perspective. From a practical perspective, they suggest considerations for anticipating future burglary trends 

Journal of Criminal Justice, v. 82, 2022

By Muhammad Amien Ibrahim, Samsul Arifin and Eko Setyo Purwanto

Social media moderation is a crucial component to establish healthy online communities and ensuring online safety from hate speech and offensive language. In many cases, hate speech may be targeted at specific gender which could be expressed in many different languages on social media platforms such as Indonesian Twitter. However, difficulties such as data scarcity and the imbalanced gender-based hate speech dataset in Indonesian tweets have slowed the development and implementation of automatic social media moderation. Obtaining more data to increase the number of samples may be costly in terms of resources required to gather and annotate the data. This study looks at the usage of data augmentation methods to increase the amount of textual dataset while keeping the quality of the augmented data. Three augmentation strategies are explored in this study: Random insertion, back translation, and a sequential combination of back translation and random insertion. Additionally, the study examines the preservation of the increased data labels. The performance result demonstrates that classification models trained with augmented data generated from random insertion strategy outperform the other approaches. In terms of label preservation, the three augmentation approaches have been shown to offer enough label preservation without compromising the meaning of the augmented data. The findings imply that by increasing the amount of the dataset while preserving the original label, data augmentation could be utilized to solve issues such as data scarcity and dataset imbalance.

United States, Journal Of Computer Science. 2023, 9pg

By Bridget Harris & Delaine Woodlock

This project explored the impact of technology on victim–survivors of intimate partner violence in regional, rural or remote areas who are socially or geographically isolated. Specifically, it considered the ways that perpetrators use technology to abuse and stalk women, and how technology is used by victim–survivors to seek information, support and safety. Interviews and focus groups with 13 women were conducted in regional, rural and remote Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland. The findings showed that perpetrators used technology to control and intimidate women and their children. While this impacted women and children’s lives in significant ways, causing fear and isolation, the use of technology was often not viewed as a serious form of abuse by justice agents. 

Australia, Institute of Criminology. 2022, 81pg

By: Christopher k. Huhn

From the thesis: "This thesis addresses the problems of rapidly rising cyber-enabled fraud and concomitant money laundering by focusing on romance scam victims who evolve into willing partners in money laundering schemes, known as 'witting money mules.' This thesis explores how and why individuals become money mules after victimization in online romance scams. The thesis employs a grounded theory approach and investigates data from over 134,000 historical text messages between three offenders and 22 victims, as well as three participant interviews with romance scam victims. The data resulted in a grounded theory that a romantically lonely victim who persistently engages online with an offender that strategically repeats scheme-relevant premises in the guise of a romantic partner can result in the victim acceding to the offender's exploitative requests and the eventual decision to co-offend. This theory also explains how a person can simultaneously be a victim and offender and why they would intentionally choose to help the romance scammer launder money. The literature and data similarly support a suggested definition for 'grooming' in the context of romance scams. As a whole, this thesis provides insight into romance scams and money mules as a strategic pivot point that, if disrupted, can simultaneously impact a criminal organization's ability to profit from romance scams and launder the proceeds of cyber-enabled fraud."

Monterey, CA: Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.). Center for Homeland Defense and Security, 2023. 182p.