By Nicholas Maple

A new understanding of state-based refugee reception that reflects the complex dynamics of contemporary refugee arrival. It is no longer realistic (if it ever was) to understand persons who flee across a border as a homogeneous group whose movement abruptly ends once they arrive in a host state or refugee camp. Through a comparative analysis of the politics surrounding the welcome afforded to refugees, this book offers an original perspective on refugee hosting in Southern Africa. Using the cases of Zambia and South Africa, the book explores why some countries maintain encampment reception policies for refugees, and others use more liberal ‘free settlement’ approaches, whereby refugees are granted freedom of movement and permitted to settle in cities and towns. While state-based reception is frequently framed as one-off moments, such as registration, Refugee Reception in Southern Africa examines reception as a complex and ongoing process of negotiations between refugees and state, with reception policies vital in shaping a refugee’s ability to settle and engage with local communities and labour markets. With its new ‘refugee reception’ framework and in-depth case studies full of concrete examples, this book is a significant theoretical and methodological contribution to migration studies more broadly.

London: University of London Press, 2024.

By  Rafael Duarte Villa, Camila de Macedo Braga1 and Marcos Alan S. V. Ferreira

In several Latin American countries, social violence has risen to warlike levels. Nevertheless, little attention has been paid to the extent of social violence and the new (informal) forms of governance generated by the so-called violent nonstate actors (VNSAs). Where a state’s forces fail to provide for the physical protection and social security of its citizens, some areas are governed by a mix of formal (vertical) and informal (horizontal) forms of governance, mixing state and nonstate actors. In these socially bounded spaces, nonstate actors produce and distribute public goods similarly as the state does. In this article, we explore how hybrid governance has appeared in the South American region, considering the operation of two regional VNSAs, the Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC) in Brazil and the Bandas Criminales (BACRIM) in Colombia. We show that such VNSAs are significant agents for security governance, as they challenge preconceived notions of state authority (legitimacy)  

2021, Latin American Research Review

By Patricio Domínguez Kenzo Asahi 

This paper studies the effect of ambient light on crime, taking advantage of the daylight saving time (DST) policy, which imposes exogenous variations in daylight exposure at specific hours of the day. The paper uses a rich administrative database managed by Chile’s national police, a centralized agency that collects detailed information regarding each crime incident. A 20% decrease (increase) in crimes is found when the DST transition increases (decreases) the amount of sunlight by one hour during the 7-9 p.m. period. Importantly, no significant response is detected induced by DST associated with a plausible demand-side response such as the population’s commuting time pattern, and no substantial short-term displacement is found. Most of the changes in property crime due to the DST policy are driven by robbery in residential areas.

Washington DC: IBD, 2019. 73p.

By Patricio Domínguez 

This paper models crime rates as a function of the interaction between potential offenders and victims. In particular, the paper studies robbery of bus drivers, a crime that remains common in cities throughout the world. Exploiting the timing of a significant reform introduced in Chile in the public transportation sector and detailed administrative data on crime incidents, the paper shows how victims' propensity to resist an attack can alter the level and nature of criminal activity. The paper also finds a large decline in crime after the implementation of a technological innovation that eliminated cash transactions on buses. The results suggest a strong relationship between victims incentives, cash presence, and crime.

Washington DC: IDB, 2020. 70p.

By Spencer Chainey Nathalie Alvarado Rodrigo Serrano–Berthet

Hot spots policing (HSP) is an effective approach for decreasing crime. This guide is designed to help police agencies better understand and make practical use of this policing strategy. The guide explains how HSP works in helping to decrease crime, and describes the processes involved in implementing a successful program in Latin American and the Caribbean (LAC). It also offers practical advice on how to address many of the challenges involved in implementing HSP, how to evaluate its impact, and how to complement it with other policing approaches to help sustain decreases in crime. Included throughout the publication are case studies from the region that help illustrate how HSP is applied. The guide also answers questions that are often asked about HSP, such as issues associated with the displacement of crime.

Washington, DC: Inter-American Development Bank - IDB 2024. 149p.

By Simone Cecchini and Jorge Martínez Pizarro

In Latin America and the Caribbean, where every country is a country of origin, destination, return or transit, international migration is becoming ever more complex and intensive. Migratory flows are increasingly characterized by irregularity; and migrants represent one of the most vulnerable population groups, as victims of stigmatization, discrimination, xenophobia and racism. However, migrants contribute to sustainable development through work, entrepreneurship, remittances and tax payments, in addition to their culture. To enhance these contributions, public policies and migration governance are needed at the multilateral, national and local levels, based on the interaction between migration and development and fulfilment of the countries’ human rights obligations.

CEPAL Review No. 141 • December 2023

By Kellen R. Funk & Sandra G. Mayson

How did criminal bail work in the Founding era? This question has become pressing as bail, and bail reform, have attracted increasing attention, in part because history is thought to bear on the meaning of bail-related constitutional provisions. To date, however, there has been no thorough account of bail at the Founding. This Article begins to correct the deficit in our collective memory by describing bail law and practice in the Founding era, from approximately 1790 to 1810. In order to give a full account, we surveyed a wide range of materials, including Founding-era statutes, case law, legal treatises, and manuals for magistrates; and original court, jail, administrative, and justice-of-the-peace records held in archives and private collections.The historical inquiry illuminates three key facts. First, the black-letter law of bail in the Founding era was highly protective of pretrial liberty. A uniquely American framework for bail guaranteed release, in theory, for nearly all accused persons. Second, things were different on the ground. The primary records reveal that, for those who lived on the margins of society, bail practice bore little resemblance to the law on the books, and pretrial detention was routine. The third key point cuts across the law and reality of criminal bail: both in theory and in practice, the bail system was a system of unsecured pledges, not cash deposits. It operated through reputational capital, not financial capital. This fact refutes the claim, frequently advanced by opponents of contemporary bail reform, that cash bail is a timeless American tradition. The contrast between the written ideals and the actual practice of bail in the Founding era, meanwhile, highlights the difficulty of looking to the past for a determinate guide to legal meaning.

Harvard Law Review, VOLUME 137, ISSUE 7, MAY 2024

By Nina Jankowicz, Isabella Gomez-O’Keefe, Lauren Hoffman and Andrea Vidal Becker

Technology facilitated gender-based violence (TFGBV) is not an in­tractable problem. But it must no longer be the responsibility solely of women’s advocacy groups. Others – technology companies, governments, civil society organizations, law enforcement, businesses, schools – must step up and work in unison to combat TFGBV in order to to reflect its main­streamed effects on society. This report, drawing on a case study around the online harassment of Australian eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant, assesses the state of research on TFGBV as well as recent global policy progress made on this issue, and offers a number of practical solutions to make women and girls safer online. The authors argue that TFGBV must be mainstreamed to be mitigated, centering women’s experiences in broader policy debates. Technology companies, governments, civic tech organizations, law enforcement, employers, schools, and others must mainstream their work to combat TFGBV to reflect its mainstreamed effects on society. To this end, the authors recommend a number of practical solutions to the specific and pressing issues that women and girls face online today. Addressing the urgent changes described here will not only make women and girls safer and ensure their voices are heard, but also improve the safety and free expression for everyone who uses the internet, building more robust, representative democracies.

The recommendations are presented under the following themes:

• Ensuring platform accountability and action

• Urgently addressing deepfake image-based sexual abuse

• Supporting victims and survivors of TFGBV

• Deepening research and mainstreaming advocacy.

New York: Columbia University, Institute of Global Politics, 2024. 41p.

By Jai Gupta

This article aims to explore the relationship between weather and crime by answering the question: To what extent does the weather in cities with varying year-round temperatures have different relationships with both property and violent crime? The current literature has found a significant correlation between the increase in outside temperature with the increase in crime. However, this relationship has not been compared between warm and cold cities with relatively similar city variables, such as demographics, poverty rates, and others. The researcher performed a quantitative, correlational, ex post facto study to address this gap in the literature. The researcher examined three weather variables: average average temperature, average high temperature, and average low temperature across six cities. These six cities were split into three pairs, each pair having a warm and cold city. The researcher found four principle findings: cities with colder year-round temperatures had a more significant correlation between weather and crime; of the weather variables examined, the average low temperature had the strongest relationship with crimes across all cities; between violent and property crime, property crime had a stronger correlation with all weather variables on average; and lastly, as temperature increases across all weather variables, crime, on average, also increased. While more research should be conducted, these findings hope to serve local policy makers and law enforcement on better predicting crime.

Unpublished paper,  (April 30, 2024).

By  Aika Hui , Paul Salkovskis, Joshua Rumble-Browne

The current systematic review aimed to critically examine the growing body of literature proposing that there is an ‘intergenerational cycle’ of violence, whereby victims of abuse during childhood are posited to have a higher propensity of becoming perpetrators during adulthood. Specifically, this review examined whether there is quality evidence supporting the relationship between childhood sexual abuse victimisation and interpersonal violence perpetration (sexual/physical) in adult men. 20 studies published between 1992 and 2022 were included in this review. The quality of studies was systematically assessed to provide a weighted conclusion to the primary research question. Overall, there was limited evidence to confidently support or reject the link between childhood sexual abuse and physical and/or sexual violence in adulthood for men. The current review found that whilst there were studies that found associations on a univariate and multivariate level between childhood sexual abuse and interpersonal violence in adult men, only 25 % of the papers included in this review were deemed high-quality and significant methodological issues limit the validity of conclusions made. Addi tionally, a sizeable proportion of high-quality studies at both univariate and multivariate levels of analysis suggest mixed results or did not find a significant relationship. Implications for future research studies in this area in terms of the encouragement of a more critical stance towards the assumption of ‘intergenerational cycles’ of violence as well as recommendations for methodological improvements of studies were discussed.  

Aggression and Violent Behavior Volume 78, September–October 2024, 101928

By Alex Armand, Paul Atwell, Joseph Gomes, Giuseppe Musillo, Yannik Schenk

This paper investigates the role of mass media in shaping racial tolerance and advancing civil rights in the post-WWII United States. We study the first attempt in the history of mass media to use a radio broadcast targeted at children to promote an inclusive American society. In 1946, amid persistent racial divisions, the popular radio series The Adventures of Superman launched Operation Intolerance, a sequence of new episodes promoting equality, rejecting racial discrimination, and exposing the KKK's bigotry. Using digitized historical data on U.S. radio stations and state-of-the-art radio propagation models, we compute geographic exposure to the broadcasts. Exploiting exogenous exposure to the broadcasts, we employ a cohort study design to analyze individual-level data from 1964 to 1980–a crucial period for civil rights activism and legislation in the United States. We find lasting impacts on those exposed as children, including increased support for civil rights, improved interracial relations, and more progressive political attitudes. These effects translate into greater alignment with the Civil Rights Movement, evidenced by increased support for protests and diminished institutional trust, and further manifested by reduced participation in the Vietnam War. Additionally, county-level panel data illustrate how areas covered by the broadcast in 1946 evolve towards less segregationist attitudes, a lower presence of the KKK, and an increase in civil rights activism and prominence in discourse.

Bonn: Institute of Labor Economics, 2024.

By The  Institute for Strategic Dialogue

The rapidly evolving online extremist landscape in New Zealand means new strategies for intervention are needed. This playbook – developed in consultation with New Zealand’s rich tapestry of civil society, communities, and practitioners engaged in prevention – offers practical frameworks for projects promoting positive online interventions to tackle online extremism. Based on an analysis of the rapidly evolving landscape of online extremism, the playbook takes stock of established and emerging intervention models. It brings together domestic and international best practices and suggests potential avenues for new positive intervention approaches. Finally, it reflects on practical considerations for programming, including monitoring and evaluation, safeguarding, operational security, and ethical considerations. This playbook examines the shift from violent groups to online extremism, highlighting digital literacy, audience communication, and proactive engagement with at-risk individuals.

London: Institute for Strategic Dialogue, 2024. 37p.

By Clara Martiny, Terra Rolfe, Bilen Zerie, Aoife Gallagher and Helena Schwertheim

ISD sought to understand how Online Gender-Based Violence (OGBV) affects South African women, focusing on the experience of women politicians, candidates, and political figures during one of South Africa’s most historic general elections in May 2024. ISD analysts used a combination of qualitative and quantitative analytical methods, interviews with experts, and knowledge drawn from online and in-person workshops. Specifically, three online case studies looked at abusive content, gendered disinformation, and harassment targeting women politicians on TikTok, X (formerly Twitter), and Facebook.

ISD’s analysis found that South African women in politics often face abuse online in the form of replies or comments to their posts or content about them. Misogynistic actors tend to target their physical attributes, intelligence, and ability to lead. They also often engage with gendered disinformation narratives that sexualize or objectify women. While the legislative frameworks in South Africa are progressive and comprehensive, enforcement is difficult and many women are unaware of the resources available to them. Social media platforms also have policies that address OGBV and gendered disinformation but their enforcement is weak, especially outside of English language content.

Amman Berlin London Paris Washington D C: Institute for Strategic Dialogue, 2024. 37p.

By Asian Racing Federation

The ARF’s latest compendium of 2 major reports and 18 articles collates the Council’s latest research on the threat of illegal betting markets to the integrity of racing and other sports. From February 2023to April 2024, the ARF Council's Bulletins have been shedding light on the ways technological breakthroughs can be exploited by organized crime, all of which are now included in one edition.

Hong Kong: Asian Racing Federation, 2024. 192p.

By Asian Racing Federation

This report examines Mainland China’s crackdown on illegal betting from 2018 to mid-2021, its background, purpose and impact. It is based on official announcements and statistics, 315 Mainland Chinese media articles related to illegal betting, and English-language reports. The report details:

·         Why China is so concerned about illegal betting

·         Insights into the scale of the problem

·         The crackdown’s impact on wider illegal betting in Asia

·         Notable shared characteristics of illegal betting operations

·         Why China’s crackdown is relevant to other jurisdictions

Hong Kong: Asian Racing Federation, 2021. 14p.

By Erica Gaston and Fiona Mangan

Reconceptualize peace operation tools in ways that would better respond to transnational organized crime, including elevating it as a priority task or considering transnationally operational missions. Position UN entities and missions for more informed political economy-focused responses, including through cultivating staff expertise related to anti-corruption and financial crime, and improving whole-of-mission intelligence capacity. Protect and reinforce transnational monitoring and enforcement tools, including revamping sanctions regimes, protecting and buttressing panels of experts, and supporting civil society or private sector information flows and watchdog activities. Consider issues related to organized crime and trafficking in prevention and peacebuilding, including national prevention strategies, mediation and good offices, and peacebuilding forums and programming  

 New York: United Nations University, Centre for Policy Research, 2024. 15p.  

By Kevin Brookes and Édouard Hesse

Bringing new and innovative ideas to light and advancing liberal reforms is the core mission of the European Liberal Forum. We do not do this alone but in close cooperation with a network of member and partner organizations across Europe. The present English translation of an original report by the French liberal think-tank GenerationLibre is part of this broader effort. Through this collaboration, we hope that the report’s important messages will reach a wider audience, in Europe and beyond. What better topic to start our collaboration than cannabis, as plans for the liberalization of the drug unfold across the continent. In December 2021, Malta became the first EU Member State to legalize the cultivation and personal consumption of cannabis. The new German government is contemplating similar legalization, and other countries could follow suit. Legalizing is a difficult endeavor, as this report shows, but a necessary one since the detrimental consequences of criminalization have never been felt more clearly. Prohibition is a failure. It has not managed to stem the rise in cannabis consumption rates, either in Europe or worldwide; it has failed to protect users from the most acute forms of harm; and it has contributed to the growth of criminal networks. This can be seen in Europe, where entire swathes of our cities are under the control of organized crime, whose main revenues originate from the illegal cannabis business. Those who prohibition should in theory protect the most, youngsters who are most at risk of harm when using the drug, are the main victims, sometimes literally, from the current situation. Prohibition is also at odds with our liberal values. The state should inform and provide a helping hand to those who err but should not prosecute and imprison people who have freely decided to engage in risky practices. The law should refrain from expressing moral judgments and only prohibit behaviors that bring significant harm to others or society. From this perspective, there is only a weak basis for prohibiting cannabis, a substance far less problematic for public health than alcohol and tobacco  Fully legalising cannabis is the only way forward. But decriminalization is only a first step towards the inclusion of cannabis in the normal legal channels of the economy. It would not only constitute a significant reform of our police and criminal justice systems, but it would also enable public authorities to devise an effective public health policy, targeting youngsters especially. It would also allow an entirely new economic sector to flourish, creating hundreds of thousands of jobs across Europe and generating a considerable amount of revenue for the public purse. Based on a systematic and thorough review of past and current experiences in cannabis legalization, this report shows, perhaps unsurprisingly, that, as in many other areas, free market solutions are superior to state planning and state monopolies. Only a legal solution that is sufficiently cheap and competitive can replace the black market and bring the benefits expected from legalization. The state should regulate the product and ensure that those who participate in the cannabis business offer sufficient guarantees but it should not arbitrarily set prices or restrict distribution channels – to do so would run the risk of having legalized ‘for nothing’. Europe has all the cards in hand to be at the forefront of drug policy reform and show the rest of the world that another path is possible. Courage and method are all we now need  

Brussels:  European Liberal Forum EUPF , 2022. 53p.

By Institute for Strategic Dialogue

From mainstream to extreme, from far left to far right, and large platforms to fringe ecosystems, antisemitism on social media is a universal challenge. For many years and across different events, geographies, and languages, ISD has sought to understand, track, and analyze online antisemitism. This document aims to synthesize ISD’s findings, providing a summary of relevant literature as a tool for informing the work of ISD’s Coalition to Counter Online Antisemitism.

London: Institute for Strategic Dialogue, 2024. 17p.

By The Institute for Strategic Dialogue

In the last year, a loose network of actors from Bordeaux to Toulouse to Paris targeted drag events aimed at all-ages audiences for protest, harassment, and abuse. The behaviors and dynamics observed among these actors echo and mirror those observed in other parts of the world, particularly the US. While anti-drag action in France remains marginal compared to the activity witnessed in the US, UK, and Australia, it nonetheless emerged as a phenomenon from a standing start in 2022. March 2023 saw the nation’s first in-person protest at an all-ages drag event in Paris, and two months later a far-right group protested with banners and a smoke bomb outside of a library hosting a drag queen story hour (DQSH) for children in the small village of Saint-Senoux. A seemingly unlikely group of actors is leading this charge. The French anti-gender movement, which was at the heart of the movement against equal marriage in the early 2010s, has been joined by far-right parties and politicians, extremist groups, COVID-19 skeptics, and assorted conspiracy theorists. All are seeking to cancel drag events through tactics of protest, petitions, harassment, misinformation, and intimidation. This briefing provides an in-depth analysis of five cases of anti-drug mobilization in the period December 2022 – May 2023, using a combination of ethnographic methods and social media data analysis to examine activity related to each case. The first was in Bordeaux, the second in Lamballe-Armor, the third in Toulouse, the fourth in Paris, and the fifth in Saint-Senoux. While the earlier campaigns largely manifested online with limited in-person mobilization, the two most recent events saw increased offline activity. This report aims to summarise the key narratives, tactics, and actors involved in anti-drag action in France, and how these mobilizations are tied to anti-LGBTQ+ activity in France more broadly. However, given the small number of instances of anti-drug activism in France, the conclusions of this report are indicative and tentative.

London: Institute for Strategic Dialogue, 2024. 24p.

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