By CARLY GARCIA

As the world regains normalcy following a global pandemic, intercountry adoption has taken a hit. Intercountry adoption within the United States reached its peak in 2004, with 22,988 children placed with families. Since 2004, the United States has seen a drastic decrease in intercountry adoption rates. In 2020, only 1,622 international adoptions took place in the United States; slightly increasing in 2021, with 1,785 children adopted. There are multiple causes for the decline in adoptions. For example, origin countries, such as Russia and Guatemala, have terminated their international adoption programs with the United States. More recently, the leading cause of this decrease is the COVID-19 pandemic. Many countries, including China, placed adoptions on hold as the coronavirus took over the world. In contrast, other countries such as Colombia and Bulgaria, relaxed their visitation rules to allow international adoptions to continue.

The current intercountry adoption laws and treaties protect children’s rights and prevent illicit adoption practices. The Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Cooperation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption (“Hague Convention”) and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (“UNCRC”) established safeguards to ensure that intercountry adoptions occur in the “best interest of the child.” However, protection for adoptive parents and birth parents is left to the laws of the country in which they reside. For example, in the United States, the federal statute governing intercountry adoption is the Intercountry Adoption Act of 2000 (“IAA”). Unfortunately, despite the multiple treaties and statutes implemented to prevent illicit adoption practices, fraud still occurs

California Western International Law Journal, Vol. 53, No. 2 [2023], Art. 11

By Alana M. Vivolo-Kantor; Christine L. Mattson, Maria Zlotorzynska,

Ketamine, a Schedule III controlled substance* that is Food and Drug Administration (FDA)–approved for general anesthesia, can produce mild hallucinogenic effects and cause respiratory, cardiovascular, and neuropsychiatric adverse events (1). In 2019, a form of ketamine (esketamine) was approved by FDA for use in treatment-resistant depression among adults† (2). Ketamine use, poison center calls for ketamine exposure, and ketamine drug reports from law enforcement have increased through 2019 (3), but recent trends in ketamine involvement in fatal overdoses are unknown. Data from CDC’s State Unintentional Drug Overdose Reporting System (SUDORS) were analyzed to describe characteristics of and trends in overdose deaths with ketamine detected or involved during July 2019–June 2023.

MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep 2024;73:1010–1012

By Callie H. Burt

Over the past several decades, Gottfredson & Hirschi's self-control theory (SCT) has dominated research on self-control and crime. In this review, I assess the current state of self-control knowledge and encourage the field to move beyond SCT, as its peculiar conceptualization of self-control and the causal model present challenges for integrative scholarship. Drawing heavily on scholarship outside criminology, I clarify the definition of self-control; describe the malleable nature of trait self-control; highlight its situational variability as state self-control; and consider the multiplicity of contextual, situational, and individual factors that affect its operation in relation to crime. This specification of contingencies and the interplay between impulse strength and control efforts in the process of self-control is intended as a springboard for research moving beyond SCT and its key premise that self-control (ability) is sufficient to explain individual variation in crime (i.e., is tantamount to criminality). Finally, I address what I see as important areas for further study in light of current knowledge.

Annual Review of Criminology, Vol. 3:43-73, 2020

By Jesse Cale, Thomas Holt, Benoit Leclerc, Sara Singh and Jacqueline Drew

This review synthesises empirical studies from the past decade investigating child sexual abuse material (CSAM) production and distribution to gain insight into crime commission processes involved in these crimes. The findings highlight overlaps in risk factors for child sexual abuse and CSAM production and distribution, and possible unique risk factors specific to the latter. A substantial amount of CSAM is produced in family contexts, and there are different motivations and strategies for producing CSAM. Taken together, the findings provide important foundational information about the variety of crime commission processes involved in CSAM production and distribution, helping the development of effective prevention and intervention strategies for this increasingly prolific type of crime.

Trends & issues in crime and criminal justice no. 617. Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology. 2021. 22p.

By: Helen Toner, John Bansemer, Kyle Crichton, Matthew Burtell, Thomas Woodside, Anat Lior, Andrew Lohn, Ashwin Acharya, Beba Cibralic, Chris Painter, Cullen O’Keefe, Iason Gabriel, Kathleen Fisher, Ketan Ramakrishnan, Krystal Jackson, Noam Kolt, Rebecca Crootof, and Samrat Chatterjee

The concept of artificial intelligence systems that actively pursue goals—known as AI “agents”—is not new. But over the last year or two, progress in large language models (LLMs) has sparked a wave of excitement among AI developers about the possibility of creating sophisticated, general-purpose AI agents in the near future. Startups and major technology companies have announced their intent to build and sell AI agents that can act as personal assistants, virtual employees, software engineers, and more. While current systems remain somewhat rudimentary, they are improving quickly. Widespread deployment of highly capable AI agents could have transformative effects on society and the economy. This workshop report describes findings from a recent CSET-led workshop on the policy implications of increasingly “agentic” AI systems.

In the absence of a consensus definition of an “agent,” we describe four characteristics of increasingly agentic AI systems: they pursue more complex goals in more complex environments, exhibiting independent planning and adaptation to directly take actions in virtual or real-world environments. These characteristics help to establish how, for example, a cyber-offense agent that could autonomously carry out a cyber intrusion would be more agentic than a chatbot advising a human hacker. A “CEO-AI” that could run a company without human intervention would likewise be more agentic than an AI acting as a personal assistant.

At present, general-purpose LLM-based agents are the subject of significant interest among AI developers and investors. These agents consist of an advanced LLM (or multimodal model) that uses “scaffolding” software to interface with external environments and tools such as a browser or code interpreter. Proof-of-concept products that can, for example, write code, order food deliveries, and help manage customer relationships are already on the market, and many relevant players believe that the coming years will see rapid progress.

In addition to the many potential benefits that AI agents will likely bring, they may also exacerbate a range of existing AI-related issues and even create new challenges. The ability of agents to pursue complex goals without human intervention could lead to more serious accidents; facilitate misuse by scammers, cybercriminals, and others; and create new challenges in allocating responsibility when harms materialize. Existing data governance and privacy issues may be heightened by developers’ interest in using data to create agents that can be tailored to a specific user or context. If highly capable agents reach widespread use, users may become vulnerable to skill fade and dependency, agents may collude with one another in undesirable ways, and significant labor impacts could materialize as an increasing range of currently human-performed tasks become automated.

To manage these challenges, our workshop participants discussed three categories of interventions:

• Measurement and evaluation: At present, our ability to assess the capabilities and real-world impacts of AI agents is very limited. Developing better methodologies to track improvements in the capabilities of AI agents themselves, and to collect ecological data about their impacts on the world, would make it more feasible to anticipate and adapt to future progress.

• Technical guardrails: Governance objectives such as visibility, control, trustworthiness, as well as security and privacy can be supported by the thoughtful design of AI agents and the technical ecosystems around them. However, there may be trade-offs between different objectives. For example, many mechanisms that would promote visibility into and control over the operations of AI agents may be in tension with design choices that would prioritize privacy and security.

• Legal guardrails: Many existing areas of law—including agency law, corporate law, contract law, criminal law, tort law, property law, and insurance law—will play a role in how the impacts of AI agents are managed. Areas where contention may arise when attempting to apply existing legal doctrines include questions about the “state of mind” of AI agents, the legal personhood of AI agents, how industry standards could be used to evaluate negligence, and how existing principal-agent frameworks should apply in situations involving AI agents.

While it is far from clear how AI agents will develop, the level of interest and investment in this technology from AI developers means that policymakers should understand the potential implications and intervention points. For now, valuable steps could include improving measurement and evaluation of AI agents’ capabilities and impacts, deeper consideration of how technical guardrails can support multiple governance objectives, and analysis of how existing legal doctrines may need to be adjusted or updated to handle more sophisticated AI agents.

Center for Security and Emerging Technology, October 2024

By: Yasmin Afina and Sarah Grand-Clément

Data plays a critical role in the training, testing and use of artificial intelligence (AI), including in the military domain. Research and development for AI-enabled military solutions is proceeding at breakneck speed, and the important role data plays in shaping these technologies has implications and, at times, raises concerns. These issues are increasingly subject to scrutiny and range from difficulty in finding or creating training and testing data relevant to the military domain, to (harmful) biases in training data sets, as well as their susceptibility to cyberattacks and interference (for example, data poisoning). Yet pathways and governance solutions to address these issues remain scarce and very much underexplored.

This paper aims to fill this gap by first providing a comprehensive overview on data issues surrounding the development, deployment and use of AI. It then explores data governance practices from civilian applications to identify lessons for military applications, as well as highlight any limitations to such an approach. The paper concludes with an overview of possible policy and governance approaches to data practices surrounding military AI to foster the responsible development, testing, deployment and use of AI in the military domain.

CIGI Papers No. 308 — October 2024

By: Kacper Choromański

Currently, there are over a thousand unsolved homicide cases in Poland. Up to this point, numerous, mostly popular science, research papers have been focusing on the individual units in charge of these difficult cases. This paper, however, is an attempt to represent the current state of investigations that were discontinued due to the fact that the perpetrators could not be found, hereinafter referred to as Cold Case Homicides. This paper depicts both the researcher's perspective and the statistical side of such conduct. Furthermore, it presents the first results of a pilot study conducted among the prosecutors, concerning the problem of Cold Case Homicides from their perspective, the possibility of cooperation with the academics, and their opinion on the idea of complex research, concerning the reconstruction of events in this specific area of crime.

International Journal of Legal Studies No 2(8)2020

By: Jennifer Tang, Tiffany Saade, and Steve Kelly

Cutting-edge advances in artificial intelligence (AI) are taking the world by storm, driven by a massive surge of investment, countless new start-ups, and regular technological breakthroughs. AI presents key opportunities within cybersecurity, but concerns remain regarding the ways malicious actors might also use the technology. In this study, the Institute for Security and Technology (IST) seeks to paint a comprehensive picture of the state of play— cutting through vagaries and product marketing hype, providing our outlook for the near future, and most importantly, suggesting ways in which the case for optimism can be realized.

The report concludes that in the near term, AI offers a significant advantage to cyber defenders, particularly those who can capitalize on their "home field" advantage and firstmover status. However, sophisticated threat actors are also leveraging AI to enhance their capabilities, making continued investment and innovation in AI-enabled cyber defense crucial. At this time of writing, AI is not yet unlocking novel capabilities or outcomes, but instead represents a significant leap in speed, scale, and completeness.

This work is the foundation of a broader IST project to better understand which areas of cybersecurity require the greatest collective focus and alignment—for example, greater opportunities for accelerating threat intelligence collection and response, democratized tools for automating defenses, and/or developing the means for scaling security across disparate platforms—and to design a set of actionable technical and policy recommendations in pursuit of a secure, sustainable digital ecosystem.

The Institute for Security and Technology, October 2024

By: Nur Hasyim, Aditya Putra Kurniawan, and Elli Nur Hayati

This reports investigates the issue of violence against women using a different perspective, as opposed to studying women as the victims, the current study presents a perspective from the perpetrators of violence, namely men. The study explores how Indonesian men perceive themselves, and based upon the elaborations from the sources of the study, a strong value of male patriarchy is present among Indonesian males. With patriarchal values strongly embedded within most Indonesia men, it becomes plausible to assume that Indonesian men are susceptible to conduct violence against women. On the other hand, male hegemonic awareness becomes a large problem for men when they observe a situation that contradicts their assumptions, for example when women demonstrate to become more advanced in their education and career. In this context, men that are tied up in patriarchal cultures will view such events as threats or even a disaster.

Jambon IV Kompleks Jatimulyo Indah Yogyakarta 55242. 2011

By: Tracey Michelle Pyscher

As a society, we do not openly discuss domestic violence and yet its reality is front and center for children and youth whose lives are deeply shaped by it. At best, the school landscape is bleak for many, if not all, HDV youth (i.e. youth with histories of domestic violence and youth currently living with domestic violence). We know little to nothing about how HDV youth navigate school from their perspectives—how they engage with and resist educational discourses and practices and thus take up subject positions. What we do know from popular, psychological literature is that HDV youth are often objectified as troubled and deficient and this shapes their identities and experiences in school.

In this study, I discuss the challenges HDV youth face when they navigate normative and hegemonic interactions in school. I also analyze the resistive identities and performances HDV youth take up in response to interactions perceived as violating. The study is situated in a public, urban middle school and outlines how HDV youth make sense of their daily interactions with school peers and staff. The study is told through the subjective voices of three female middle school HDV youth—Jen, Mac, and Shanna. Their stories along with the voices of their caregivers offer a counter-narrative to the dominant discourses often shaping the representations of HDV youth.

Data analysis is grounded in the theoretical conceptions of critical sociocultural theory (Lewis, Enciso, & Moje, 2007), resistive ambivalence (Pyscher, 2015; Pyscher & Lozenski, 2014), and Scott’s (1990) conceptualization of hidden and public transcripts. I seek to better understand and theorize the intersections of actions, identities, practices, and discourses that HDV youth use in educational interactions. The methodological foundation of this study is fourfold: critical discourse studies (Gee, 2014), critical ethnography (Emerson, Fretz, & Shaw, 1995), geosemiotics (Scollon & Scollon, 2003), and mediated discourse analysis (Jones & Norris, 2005). Implications include the possibility of creating more liberating educational practices for youth with histories of domestic violence and marginalized youth in general. I conclude by suggesting that we consider creating more transgressive and humane school cultures that embody carnivallike practices.

University of Minnesota, March 2016

By: Suellen Murray and Anastasia Powell

In August 2009, in response to an attack upon a federal member of parliament by her male partner, then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was reported in the Melbourne Age as saying that ‘acts of violence against women are cowardly acts by men and have no place in modern Australia’. In the same article, the Minister for Women, Tanya Plibersek, said domestic violence ‘remained a serious problem despite changing attitudes’. Nearly 30 years earlier, the 1981 report of the New South Wales Task Force on Domestic Violence – one of the first initiatives taken in Australian public policy in this area – had identified domestic violence as ‘a deep-seated national problem’.3 What then has happened in the past 30 years?

Advertising campaigns in the intervening years have advised us to say ‘no’ to violence and explained where, if we experienced domestic violence, we could get assistance. Such campaigns have assisted in raising awareness and bringing about changes in attitudes. Self-evidently, domestic violence has not been eliminated – the attack on the member of parliament is just one of many examples – but has it been reduced? And what policies and programs have been put in place to tackle the problem of domestic violence?

This book provides some answers to these questions. We are particularly interested in how Australian governments have responded to domestic violence over the past 30 years, that is, the period roughly from 1981 to 2011. The central purpose of this book is to critically review the range of public policy responses to domestic violence (legal, welfare and prevention responses at both federal and state levels).4 We consider how domestic violence has been understood and the approaches that have been taken, as well as the impact on groups targeted by these responses (children, women, men, and Australian Indigenous peoples). The book includes up-to-date policy and legislative case studies from Australia to illustrate these responses, and also places this work within international debates.

In this book we argue that there have been significant changes in understandings of domestic violence over the past 30 years, resulting in – and to some extent produced by – heightened policy activity in this area. These policy shifts built on the campaigns and lobbying of the women’s refuge movement from the 1970s and the subsequent activities of feminist bureaucrats in Australian state, territory, and federal governments. During the 1980s, all Australian states and territories investigated the nature and extent of domestic violence. Out of these investigations came government commitments to address domestic violence in more than the ad hoc ways of previous decades. Since then, regardless of their political persuasion, governments across all states, territories and federally have maintained an interest in domestic violence, although their approaches have varied, with more or less attention paid to gendered or feminist analyses of domestic violence.

Despite the policy shifts and service developments around domestic violence across numerous key agencies, according to 2004 data, over a third of Australian women reported experiencing at least one form of violence from an intimate male partner during their lifetime. These findings reflect those published in the national 1996 Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Women’s Safety Survey, in which 36 percent of women surveyed reported experiencing some form of physical or sexual violence since the age of 15 years. Over 75 percent of these incidents were at the hands of a current or previous partner or boyfriend. Similarly, a decade later, in the 2006 Australian Personal Safety Survey, 40 percent of women reported experiencing at least one incident of physical or sexual violence since the age of 15 years. While men who experience violence are most likely to be physically assaulted by a male stranger, women remain most likely to be assaulted by a current or former partner or family member.

Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2011

By Catherine Bates, Graham Huggan, Milena Marinko, and Jeffrey Orr

In the March 28, 2006 edition of The Guardian, two news items stand out on Canada. One, a short article by Duncan Campbell, concerns the growing number of US army deserters who have crossed recently into Canada and have sought political asylum there, claiming that they had been tricked by the US military into serving in a manifestly unfair war in Iraq (Campbell 2006, 17). "It’s really great here”, says one successful escapee: “Generally people have been very hospitable and understanding, although there have been a few who have been for the war” (Campbell 2006, 17). The other items, a protest letter signed by, among others, the Conservative MP Ann Widdecombe, decries the annual mass cull of seal pups off the shores of northwest Canada, “shot and skinned alive by hunters … [in] one of the largest and most brutal slaughters of marine mammals on the planet” (Banks et al 2006, 31). In response, Widdecombe et al call for a UK trade ban on Canadian products as a way of sending “Canada a signal that enough is enough - we can halt the vicious slaughter on the ice” (Banks et el 2006, 31). The Guardian offers no particular comment here, but a double-page spread in the same edition unambiguously features a black-clad hunter out on the ice in front of his vessel, cudgel poised above an inert seal, with the punning caption “Fate sealed” and the mock-dispassionate reading: “Sealers watch from the deck of their boat as a seal is clubbed off the coast of Newfoundland, on the second day of the annual seal hunt” (Cook 2006, 18-19).

The Central European Association for Canadian Studies, 1st edition, 2007

By: Steven Kohm and Michael Weinrath

This volume of essays was drawn from the conference “Practicing Justice: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Crime, Law and Justice” held over three days in May 2010. “Practicing Justice” was the second annual justice-themed event hosted by the Centre for Interdisciplinary Justice Studies (CIJS) at the University of Winnipeg Criminal Justice department. Our hope was to provide a forum for open and intellectual discus sion about justice in all its forms. To this end, we assembled a diverse group of participants including practitioners from the various justice agencies, Honours students from our own program, graduate students from a number of universities across Canada, local researchers, and academics from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds in Canada and the United States. What united all these participants was an interest in the elusive concept of ‘justice.’

The objective of the conference was to examine justice from a variety of standpoints. The practice of justice is all too often characterized by rigid dichotomies and entrenched rivalries: practitioners versus academics; applied researchers versus theoretical scholars; and community versus university. “Practicing Justice” was envisioned as an inclusive forum that might close the gap that separates often divergent perspectives on justice. We firmly believe that in order to understand justice and move toward the practice of justice – however defined – we must first be able to hear and understand others who bring different perspectives to the table.

We must acknowledge the hard work of Professor Richard Jochelson and Kelly Gorkof who a year earlier initiated a bold dialogue across the disciplines which culminated in our inaugural justice-themed conference “Theorizing Justice: Interdisciplining the Divide”. their goal was to “bridge the gap between disciplines, community agents, and institutional forces ... to identify the division between disciplines and to build an inclusive approach. hey cited the words of our keynote speaker Professor John P. Crank – who writes: “one must gather together liberals and conservatives, professionals and academicians, federal and local justice organizations, judges, defence counsel, prosecutors, sworn officers, managers... they all bring something to the table... they all bring a commitment to justice” (Crank, 2003).

The present volume of essays showcases a diversity of perspectives on justice. We are pleased to present submissions from practitioners of justice, Honours and graduate students, and academics of divergent disciplinary backgrounds. The essays that follow both critique conventional understandings of justice and suggest ways to better practice justice, however defined. Some works are highly theoretical and abstract, while others are more hands-on and applied. What unites all these submissions, however, is their commitment to and passion for justice.

Centre for Interdisciplinary Justice Studies (CIJS), Volume 1, Fall 2010

By: Roy Light, Clarie Nee, and Helen Ingham

Most car thieves started in their early to mid-teens, influenced by peers, boredom, and excitement[^1^][1]. Many had extensive criminal careers and came from socially disadvantaged backgrounds. Initial motivations included excitement, financial gain, and a passion for driving. Over time, financial incentives became more prominent. Effective prevention requires early intervention, better car security, and diversionary programs that offer similar excitement to car theft. Offenders often underestimated the likelihood of being caught and the severity of non-custodial penalties. Custodial sentences were seen as a potential deterrent, but not always effective.

ASU Center for Problem-Oriented Policing, HOME OFFICE RESEARCH STUDY NO. 130, 1993

By: The National Association of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine

Following a series of natural disasters, including Hurricane Katrina, that revealed shortcomings in the nation's ability to effectively alert populations at risk, Congress passed the Warning, Alert, and Response Network (WARN) Act in 2006. Today, new technologies such as smart phones and social media platforms offer new ways to communicate with the public, and the information ecosystem is much broader, including additional official channels, such as government social media accounts, opt-in short message service (SMS)-based alerting systems, and reverse 911 systems; less official channels, such as main stream media outlets and weather applications on connected devices; and unofficial channels, such as first person reports via social media. Traditional media have also taken advantage of these new tools, including their own mobile applications to extend their reach of beyond broadcast radio, television, and cable. Furthermore, private companies have begun to take advantage of the large amounts of data about users they possess to detect events and provide alerts and warnings and other hazard-related information to their users.

More than 60 years of research on the public response to alerts and warnings has yielded many insights about how people respond to information that they are at risk and the circumstances under which they are most likely to take appropriate protective action. Some, but not all, of these results have been used to inform the design and operation of alert and warning systems, and new insights continue to emerge. Emergency Alert and Warning Systems reviews the results of past research, considers new possibilities for realizing more effective alert and warning systems, explores how a more effective national alert and warning system might be created and some of the gaps in our present knowledge, and sets forth a research agenda to advance the nation's alert and warning capabilities.

ISBN 978-0-309-46737-7 | DOI 10.17226/24935

By Ramesh Subramanian, Eddan Katz

The Internet has been integral to the globalization of a range of goods and production, from intellectual property and scientific research to political discourse and cultural symbols. Yet the ease with which it allows information to flow at a global level presents enormous regulatory challenges. Understanding if, when, and how the law should regulate online, international flows of information requires a firm grasp of past, present, and future patterns of information flow, and their political, economic, social, and cultural consequences.

In The Global Flow of Information, specialists from law, economics, public policy, international studies, and other disciplines probe the issues that lie at the intersection of globalization, law, and technology, and pay particular attention to the wider contextual question of Internet regulation in a globalized world. While individual essays examine everything from the pharmaceutical industry to television to “information warfare” against suspected enemies of the state, all contributors address the fundamental question of whether or not the flow of information across national borders can be controlled, and what role the law should play in regulating global information flows.

New York: NYU Press, 2011.

By Liam Michaud a b, Gillian Kolla c d, Katherine Rudzinski e, Adrian Guta 

The ongoing overdose and drug toxicity crisis in North America has contributed momentum to the emergence of safer supply prescribing and programs in Canada as a means of providing an alternative to the highly volatile unregulated drug supply. The implementation and scale-up of safer supply have been met with a vocal reaction on the part of news media commentators, conservative politicians, recovery industry representatives, and some prominent addiction medicine physicians. This reaction has largely converged around several narratives, based on unsubstantiated claims and anecdotal evidence, alleging that safer supply programs are generating a “new opioid epidemic”, reflecting an emerging alignment among key institutional and political actors. Employing situational analysis method, and drawing on the policy studies and social science scholarship on moral panics, this essay examines news media coverage from January to July 2023, bringing this into dialogue with other existing empirical sources on safer supply (e.g. Coroner's reports, program evaluations, debates among experts in medical journals). We employ eight previously established criteria delineating moral panics to critically appraise public dialogue regarding safer supply, diverted medication, and claims of increased youth initiation to drug use and youth overdose. In detailing the emergence of a moral panic regarding safer supply, we trace historic continuities with earlier drug scares in Canadian history mobilized as tools of racialized poverty governance, as well as previous backlashes towards healthcare interventions for people who use drugs (PWUD). The essay assesses the claims of moral entrepreneurs against the current landscape of opioid use, diversion, and overdose among youth, notes the key role played by medical expertise in this and previous moral panics, and identifies what the convergence of these narratives materialize for PWUD and healthcare access, as well as the broader policy responses such narratives activate.

International Journal of Drug Policy Volume 127, May 2024, 104423

By Romi Sigsworth 

Artificial intelligence (AI) offers innovative solutions for addressing a range of illegal activities that impact Africa’s environment. This report explores how AI is being used in Africa to provide intelligence on organised environmental crime, craft tools to assess its impact, and develop methods to detect and prevent environmental criminal activities. It discusses the challenges and opportunities AI poses for policing environmental crime in Africa, and proposes recommendations that would allow AI-powered policing to make a real difference on the continent. Recommendations • African governments and organisations should invest in gathering large, local data sets to allow AI models to produce appropriate and relevant solutions. • Investments in digital and communication infrastructure need to be made across Africa to improve and expand access to and affordability of AI solutions. • Police forces across Africa should include technology and AI skills capacity building into their basic and professional development training curricula. • Guardrails should be established through legislation to protect data, ensure privacy where necessary, and regulate the use of AI. • Public-private partnerships must be strengthened for law enforcement agencies across Africa to receive the technology and training they need to effectively embed AI tools into their methodologies to combat environmental (and other) organised crime

Enact Africa 2024. 28p.

By: Eden Kamar, David Maimon, David Weisburd and Dekel Shabat

Although the typical end goal of an online grooming event is to lure a minor into performing sexual activity (either online or offline), no previous study has examined the relevance of targets’ sexual knowledge on the progression of these events. To address this gap, we deployed two honeypot chatbots which simulated young female users in a sample of twenty-three online chatrooms, over a period of three months. The first chatbot simulated a sexually knowledgeable target while the second chatbot simulated a sexually naïve target. Findings from 319 online grooming events indicate that an online grooming event is more likely to progress in the presence of a sexually knowledgeable target. Moreover, we find that online grooming events with sexually knowledgeable targets lasted longer than online grooming events with sexually naïve targets. Finally, we found that sexually knowledgeable targets were more likely to be solicited for offline encounters than sexually naïve targets.

Justice Quarterly, 41(3), 452–473. 2023 https://doi.org/10.1080/07418825.2023.2241540

By: Basnama Ayaz, Graham Dozois, Andrea L. Baumann, Adam Fuseini, and Sioban Nelson

In healthcare settings worldwide, workplace violence (WPV) has been extensively studied. However, significantly less is known about gender-based WPV and the characteristics of perpetrators. We conducted a comprehensive scoping review on Type II (directed by consumers) and Type III (perpetuated by healthcare workers) gender based-WPV among nurses and physicians globally. For the review, we followed the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic and Meta Analyses extension for Scoping Review (PRISMA-ScR). The protocol for the comprehensive review was registered on the Open Science Framework on January 14, 2022, at https://osf.io/t4pfb/. A systematic search in five health and social science databases yielded 178 relevant studies that indicated types of perpetrators, with only 34 providing descriptive data for perpetrators’ gender. Across both types of WPV, men (65.1%) were more frequently responsible for perpetuating WPV compared to women (28.2%) and both genders (6.7%). Type II WPV, demonstrated a higher incidence of violence against women; linked to the gendered roles, stereotypes, and societal expectations that allocate specific responsibilities based on gender. Type III WPV was further categorized into Type III-A (horizontal) and Type III-B (vertical). With Type III WPV, gendered power structures and stereotypes contributed to a permissive environment for violence by men and women that victimized more women. These revelations emphasize the pressing need for gender-sensitive strategies for addressing WPV within the healthcare sector. Policymakers must prioritize the security of healthcare workers, especially women, through reforms and zero-tolerance policies. Promoting gender equality and empowerment within the workforce and leadership is pivotal. Additionally, creating a culture of inclusivity, support, and respect, led by senior leadership, acknowledging WPV as a structural issue and enabling an open dialogue across all levels are essential for combating this pervasive problem.

PLOS Global Public Health, Sept. 2024.