By Tobias Kammersgaard  , Kristian Relsted Fahnøe  , Nanna Kappel  , Katrine Schepelern Johansen , Esben Houborg 

Based on a survey (n = 249) and qualitative interviews (n = 38) with marginalized people who use drugs (PWUDs) in Copenhagen, Denmark, we investigate the experiences of this group with the police in a context where drug possession had been depenalized in and around drug consumption rooms (DCRs). Our findings point to positive experiences with the police, especially with the local community police in the depenalization zone, who refrained from drug law enforcement and practiced ’harm reduction policing.’ However, marginalized PWUDs also reported that they were still targeted for drug possession by other sections of the police despite the depenalization policy. Specifically, the drug squad of the police would continue to confiscate illicit drugs for investigatory purposes to counter organized drug crime, as well as continue to target user-dealers who were not formally included in the depenalization policy. The findings illustrate how marginalized PWUDs still found themselves in a precarious legal situation without any legal rights to possess the drugs that they were dependent on, even though possession of drugs had been depenalized in and around DCRs.

International Journal of Drug Policy 127 (2024) 104393 

By  C. M. Hoeboer, · W. M. Kitselaar,  · J. F. Henrich3 E,. J. Miedzobrodzka6, · B. Wohlstetter, · E. Giebels9 E. W. Kruisbergen,· M. Kempes,  · M. Olff1,·  · G. Meynen,  · C. H. de Kogel

COVID-19 caused a great burden on the healthcare system and led to lockdown measures across the globe. These measures are likely to influence crime rates, but a comprehensive overview of the impact of COVID-19 on crime rates is lacking. The current study aimed to systematically review evidence on the impact of COVID-19 measures on crime rates across the globe. We conducted a systematic search in several databases to identify eligible studies up until 6–12-2021. A total of 46 studies were identified, reporting on 99 crime rates about robberies (n = 12), property crime (n = 15), drug crime (n = 5), fraud (n = 5), physical violence (n = 15), sexual violence (n = 11), homicides (n = 12), cybercrime (n = 3), domestic violence (n = 3), intimate partner violence (n = 14), and other crimes (n = 4). Overall, studies showed that most types of crime temporarily declined during COVID-19 measures. Homicides and cybercrime were an exception to this rule and did not show significant changes following COVID-19 restrictions. Studies on domestic violence often found increased crime rates, and this was particularly true for studies based on call data rather than crime records. Studies on intimate partner violence reported mixed results. We found an immediate impact of COVID-19 restrictions on almost all crime rates except for homicides, cybercrimes and intimate partner violence.

 Am J Crim Just 49, 274–303 (2024).

By Pablo Ruiz, Sergio Cabrales, Andrés Medaglia, Olga Sarmiento

Bicycle theft and robbery affect the number of bicycle users because since repetitive occurrence of these crimes may stop victims from bicycling. Interest in studying these particular crimes has grown in the past few years and studies have focused on analyzing preventive measures. Criminology theories have been the base for these studies as they associate different factors of the environment and social behavior with the occurrence of criminal activities. This paper aims to analyze bicycle theft and robbery in the city of Bogotá, Colombia using a fixed effects Poisson model for panel data between 2014 and 2017. Different environmental factors such as violent crimes, public amenities, land use features, and socioeconomic attributes, were evaluated against the occurrence of these incidents within specified areas that divide the city. Results show that violent areas increase the risk of bicycles being stolen, as well as areas with a high number of bicycle racks and bus stations. Additionally, results show that there is no significant evidence that socioeconomic differences are determinants to the occurrence of these crimes. The results of this study are relevant to potential policy measures regarding bicycle theft and robbery prevention, which range from security measures in certain areas given the evident relation that violence has on these crimes, crime hot spot intervention and environmental design towards crime prevention. 

Unidas, 2018. 

By Barrett Wallace Montgomery, Arnie Aldridge, Dara Drawbridge, Ira Packer, Gina M Vincent, Rosa Rodriguez-Monguio

Individuals within the criminal justice system are at greater risk of substance use–related morbidity and mor tality and have substantial healthcare needs. In this quasi-experimental study, we assessed utilization patterns of Massachusetts Medicaid Program (MassHealth) services and associated expenditures among drug court probationers compared to a propensity score–matched sample of traditional court probationers. Risk of reoffending, employment status, age, and living arrangement data were used to calculate propensity scores and match probationers between the two court types, producing a final sample of 271 in each court (N=542). Utilization of services and associated expenditures were analyzed using a two-part model to address the skewed distribution of the data and to control for residual differences after matching from the perspective of the payer (i.e., MassHealth). The largest categories of MassHealth spending were prescription pharmaceuticals, hospital inpatient visits, and physician visits. In the unadjusted analysis, drug court probationers exhibited greater MassHealth services utilization and expenditures than traditional court probationers. However, drug courts enrolled more females, more people at higher risk of reoffending, and more people with opioid use disorders. After controlling for differences between the two court types, the difference in MassHealth services utilization and associated expenditures did not reach statistical significance. Drug court probationers were more likely to engage with healthcare services but did not incur significantly greater expenditures than traditional court probationers after controlling for differences between the samples.  

Drug and Alcohol Dependence Reports 12 (2024) 100258

By Olivia Mercier, Sarah Yu Fu, Rachel Filler, Alexie Leclerc, Kari Sampsel, Karine Fournier, Mark Walker, Shi Wu Wen, Katherine Muldoon

Background: Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a prevalent global health problem. IPV that occurs before pregnancy often continues during the perinatal period, resulting in ongoing violence and many adverse maternal, obstetrical, and neonatal outcomes.

Objectives: This scoping review is designed to broadly capture all potential interventions for perinatal IPV and describe their core components and measured outcomes.

Search Methods: We conducted a search for empirical studies describing IPV interventions in the perinatal population in June 2022. The search was conducted in MEDLINE, EMBASE, PsycInfo, CINAHL, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, Web of Science, Applied Social Sciences Index & Abstracts, ClinicalTrials.gov and MedRxiv. Hand-searching of references from select articles was also performed.

Selection Criteria: Included studies described an intervention for those experiencing IPV during the perinatal period, including 12 months before pregnancy, while pregnant or in the 12 months post-partum. The search encompassed January 2000 to June 2022 and only peer-reviewed studies written in either English or French were included. Included interventions focused on the survivor exposed to IPV, rather than healthcare professionals administering the intervention. Interventions designed to reduce IPV revictimization or any adverse maternal, obstetrical, or neonatal health outcomes as well as social outcomes related to IPV victimization were included.

Data Collections and Analysis: We used standard methodological procedures expected by The Campbell Collaboration.

Main Results: In total, 10,079 titles and abstracts were screened and 226 proceeded to full text screening. A total of 67 studies included perinatal IPV interventions and were included in the final sample. These studies included a total of 27,327 participants. Included studies originated from 19 countries, and the majority were randomized controlled trials (n = 43). Most studies were of moderate or low quality. Interventions included home visitation, educational modules, counseling, and cash transfer programs and occurred primarily in community obstetrician and gynecologist clinics, hospitals, or in participants' homes. Most interventions focused on reducing the revictimization of IPV (n = 38), improving survivor knowledge or acceptance of violence, knowledge of community resources, and actions to reduce violence (n = 28), and improving maternal mental health outcomes (n = 26). Few studies evaluated the effect of perinatal IPV interventions on obstetrical, neonatal, or child health outcomes.

Authors' Conclusion(s): The majority of intervention studies for perinatal IPV focus on reducing revictimization and improving mental health outcomes, very few included obstetrical, neonatal, and other physical health outcomes. Future interventions should place a larger emphasis on targeting maternal and neonatal outcomes to have the largest possible impact on the lives and families of IPV survivors and their infants.

Campbell Systematic Reviews, Volume 20, Issue 3, September 2024

By U.S. Department of Homeland Security

Deepfakes, an emergent type of threat falling under the greater and more pervasive umbrella of synthetic media, utilize a form of artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML) to create believable, realistic videos, pictures, audio, and text of events that never happened. Many applications of synthetic media represent innocent forms of entertainment, but others carry risk. The threat of Deepfakes and synthetic media comes not from the technology used to create it, but from people’s natural inclination to believe what they see, and as a result, deepfakes and synthetic media do not need to be particularly advanced or believable in order to be effective in spreading mis/disinformation. Based on numerous interviews conducted with experts in the field, it is apparent that the severity and urgency of the current threat from synthetic media depends on the exposure, perspective, and position of who you ask. The spectrum of concerns ranged from “an urgent threat” to “don’t panic, just be prepared.” To help customers understand how a potential threat might arise, and what that threat might look like, we considered a number of scenarios specific to the arenas of commerce, society, and national security. The likelihood of any one of these scenarios occurring and succeeding will undoubtedly increase as the cost and other resources needed to produce usable deepfakes simultaneously decreases - just as synthetic media became easier to create as non-AI/ML techniques became more readily available. In line with the multifaceted nature of the problem, there is no one single or universal solution, though elements of technological innovation, education, and regulation must comprise part of any detection and mitigation measures. In order to have success there will have to be significant cooperation among stakeholders in the private and public sectors to overcome current obstacles such as “stovepiping” and to ultimately protect ourselves from these emerging threats while protecting civil liberties.

Washington, DC: DHS, 2021.  47p.

By Andres Ham Gonzalez, Juanita Ruiz

We estimate the effects of drug-related violence on individual labor market outcomes in a transit country. Transit countries do not have enough market power to determine the global supply or demand of drugs yet must deal with the consequences of drug trafficking activities. We implement a Bartik-type instrumental variables strategy which assumes that violence in Honduran municipalities located along drug transport routes changes when coca production in Colombia grows or contracts. Our results show that drug-related violence has negative effects on extensive and intensive margin labor market outcomes for transit country workers and has greater effects on women than men.

IZA Working Paper 17126, Bonn: Institute of Labor Economics - IZA, 2024. 

By Sanna Bergvall, Núria Rodríguez-Planas:

Most empirical studies indicate that becoming a mother is an augmenting factor for the perpetration of intimate partner violence (IPV). Using rich population-wide hospital records data from Sweden, we conduct a stacked DiD analysis comparing the paths of women two years before and after the birth of their first child with same-age women who are several quarters older when giving birth to their first child and find that, in contrast to the consensus view, violence sharply decreases with pregnancy and motherhood. This decline has both a short-term and longer-term component, with the temporary decline in IPV covering most of the pregnancy until the child is 6 months old, mimicking a temporary decrease in hospital visits for alcohol abuse by the children's fathers. The more persistent decline is driven by women who leave the relationship after the birth of the child. Our evidence is not supportive of alternative mechanisms including suspicious hospitalizations, an overall reduction in hospital visits or selection in in seeking medical care, mothers’ added value as the main nurturer, or mothers’ drop in relative earnings within the household. Our findings suggest the need to push for public health awareness campaigns underscoring the risk of victimization associated with substance abuse and to also provide women with more support to identify and leave a violent relationship

Bonn: Institute of Labor Economics - IZA, 2024

By Christopher S. Carpenter and Hai V. Nguyen

Bans on menthol cigarettes have been adopted throughout the European Union, proposed by the US Food and Drug Administration, and enacted by legislatures in Massachusetts and California. Yet there is very limited evidence on their effects using real-world policy variation. We study the intended and unintended effects of menthol cigarette bans in Canada, where seven provinces banned them prior to a nationwide ban in 2018. Difference-in-differences models using national survey data return no evidence that provincial menthol cigarette bans affected overall smoking rates for youths or adults. Although menthol cigarette smoking fell for both youths and adults, youths increased nonmenthol cigarette smoking, and adults shifted cigarette purchases to unregulated First Nations reserves. Our results demonstrate the importance of accounting for substitution and evasion responses in the design of stricter tobacco regulations

Cambridge, MA:  NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH, 2020. 66p.

By Matthew J. Lindquist,  Eleonora Patacchin, Michael Vlassopoulos., Yves Zenou 

We study spillover effects within co-offending networks by leveraging the deaths of co-offenders for causal identification. Our results demonstrate that the death of a co-offender significantly reduces the criminal activities of other network members. We observe a decaying pattern in the magnitude of these spillover effects: individuals directly linked to a deceased offender experience the most significant impact, followed by those two steps away, and then those three steps away. Moreover, we find that the death of a more central co-offender leads to a larger reduction in aggregate crime. We also provide evidence consistent with a new theoretical prediction suggesting that the loss of a co-offender shrinks the future information set of offenders, altering their perceptions of the probability of being convicted and consequently affecting their criminal behavior. Our findings highlight the importance of understanding spillover for policymakers seeking to develop more effective strategies for crime prevention.  

  Bonn:: Institute of Labor Economics - IZA, 2024.

By Julia Tolmie, Rachel Smith, and Denise Wilson

How intimate partner violence (IPV) is conceptualized affects what we see when we look at situations involving IPV and what we think the solutions to the problem of IPV are—either in individual cases or in the development of broader legal and policy responses. In this article, it is suggested that while conceptualizing IPV as coercive control is an improvement over previous understandings, it does not go far enough. Coercive control must be located within a broader conceptualization of IPV as a form of social and systemic entrapment if it is not to operate in a harmful manner for victim-survivors.

Violence Against WomenVolume 30, Issue 1, January 2024, Pages 54-74

By Ido Kilovaty

The Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack, which shut down gas supply to the entire East Coast back in May 2021, has sparked debate as to the regulation of the pipeline’s cybersecurity. After ten years of inaction on the matter, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has issued two mandatory directives on pipeline cybersecurity. This Article delves into the propriety of the TSA as a pipeline security regulator, as well as the incomplete and ineffective approach currently laid out in the TSA’s pipeline cybersecurity directives. This Article argues that there may be other agencies more suitable for the task, such as the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, acting under the auspices of the Department of Energy. It also provides specific recommendations as to the substance of any prospective pipeline cybersecurity regulation, such as the creation of more open-ended and flexible cybersecurity objectives as opposed to the current approach of prescriptive standards.

Houston Law Review, Vol. 60, 2023, Kilovaty, Ido, Cybersecuring the Pipeline (March 29, 2022). Houston Law Review, Vol. 60, 2023,

By Ido Kilovaty

Generative AI platforms, like ChatGPT, hold great promise in enhancing human creativity, productivity, and efficiency. However, generative AI platforms are prone to manipulation. Specifically, they are susceptible to a new type of attack called “prompt injection.” In prompt injection, attackers carefully craft their input prompt to manipulate AI into generating harmful, dangerous, or illegal content as output. Examples of such outputs include instructions on how to build an improvised bomb, how to make meth, how to hotwire a car, and more. Researchers have also been able to make ChatGPT generate malicious code. This article asks a basic question: do prompt injection attacks violate computer crime law, mainly the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act? This article argues that they do. Prompt injection attacks lead AI to disregard its own hard-coded content generation restrictions, which allows the attacker to access portions of the AI that are beyond what the system’s developers authorized. Therefore, this constitutes the criminal offense of accessing a computer in excess of authorization. Although prompt injection attacks could run afoul of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, this article offers ways to distinguish serious acts of AI manipulation from less serious ones, so that prosecution would only focus on a limited set of harmful and dangerous prompt injections.

Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review, Vol. 58, 2025, Kilovaty, Ido, Hacking Generative AI (March 1, 2024). Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review, Vol. 58, 2025,