By  James Porteous

This report examines human trafficking linked to organised crime groups involved in illegal betting and related criminal activity in four key regions in Southeast Asia. Research was primarily via desktop information gathering conducted in 2022/23, supplemented by the expertise and existing knowledge of the Mekong Club and the Asian Racing Federation Council on Anti-Illegal Betting and Related Financial Crime in human trafficking and illegal betting, respectively. Key findings are: • Tens of thousands of people are being held in modern slavery conditions to work in organised illegal betting and cyber-scam operations across Southeast Asia. • These operations, which are run by individuals with long histories of involvement in illegal betting and organised crime across Asia, are estimated to make at least USD 40 to 100 billion a year in illicit profits from such activity. • Some individuals are recruited on false job advertisements, have their passports removed and are kept in dormitories attached to fully contained casino compounds as forced labour to promote illegal betting websites and engage in industrial-scale cyber-fraud such as “pig butchering”, romance scams, and cryptocurrency Ponzi schemes. • Workers are typically not permitted to leave without paying large ransoms to their captors, and can be sold and traded between organised crime groups. Fines for breaking rules or failing to hit monetary targets are added to victims’ ransoms. • Reports on victim testimony and online video shows “staff” being beaten with iron bars, shocked with cattle prods, tied up, and subject to other forms of torture. Female victims have been forced into sex work for failing to meet targets. • The groups running such operations have been active in organising and promoting gambling across Asia since at least the 1990s. Because many of the core activities in this business (e.g., movement of money across borders, violent debt collection, bribery of local officials, provision of related “entertainment” such as narcotics and sex), are illicit, such operations have by necessity been closely associated with, or directly run by, individuals with organised crime backgrounds. • In the early 2000s, this business was supercharged by the development of online gambling (both casino games and sports betting), run directly out of existing casinos or related properties, which massively increased the target market, and has grown to be a trillion dollar illegal industry funding organised crime. • Attempts to profit from this by governments in Southeast Asia, typically by licensing operators for a fee, have led to the spread of such operations across the region and had major negative impacts, including widespread corruption. It has also concentrated operations in self-contained compounds and so-called special economic zones which local police are often unwilling or unable to enter or investigate. • Hundreds of thousands of workers are required to serve the industry in marketing, customer recruitment, funds transfers, tech support and related fields. • Pre-pandemic, demand for workers was usually satisfied by voluntary means, although an unknown percentage of “voluntary” arrivals were held in modern-slavery like conditions, and there were related human trafficking aspects such as trafficking of sex workers to serve the industry. • This began to change in 2018 as a result of China’s growing concern over cross-border illegal betting, and change was accelerated massively by travel restrictions due to the pandemic, which cut off the supply of workers. • At the same time, the organised criminal groups had a key business line – land-based casinos – essentially closed down because of travel restrictions. As a result, they greatly expanded and developed existing cyber-scam operations, leveraging their expertise and technology in areas such as social media marketing, customer recruitment and cryptocurrency, which were in place from their online illegal betting operations. • Now, as the pandemic recedes, the organised crime groups running these operations have, in effect, hugely increased their potential revenue by complementing illegal betting with cyber-scam operations of comparable scale. • The success of such operations has been an enormous financial boon to organised crime, for whom cyber scams and illegal betting are just two of many illicit business lines that include money laundering as a service, illicit wildlife trafficking and production and distribution of methamphetamine and heroin. • The vast profits from such operations have provided plentiful ammunition to corrupt local authorities, and the operations in this group are frequently protected by powerful politicians and/or armed militias. • Global attention on the issue has not eliminated this activity, just displaced it into even more vulnerable jurisdictions, leading some to fear the industry could lead to geopolitical instability.   

Hong Kong: Asian Racing Federation, 2023. 39p.

By Oluwaseun Kugbayi and Adeleke Adegbami

Many towns and villages in Nigeria have been experiencing bandits activities, vis-à-vis kidnapping, armed robbery, murder, rape, cattle-rustling, and violent actions in recent years. These activities have continued to escalate despite the presence of security agencies such as – the Nigerian Army, the Nigerian Navy, the Nigerian Air Force, the Nigerian Police, the State Security Service, the National Intelligence Agency, and the Defence Intelligence among others. The unabated bandits' activities in part of the country depict a picture of ungoverned spaces, which suggests that there are territories that are experiencing a vacuum of political order. The study for that reason examines the connections between banditry and the ungoverned spaces, as well as, analyses the effects of bandits' activities on Nigeria and Nigerians. Using the discourse analysis that relies on secondary sources, the paper argues that the inability to govern some territories adequately in Nigeria has created a vacuum for bandits’ activities to thrive.
Law Research Review Quarterly, (4), 399-418. https://doi.org/10.15294/lrrq.v9i4.71054

MAY CONTAIN MARKUP

EDIYED BY TED ROBERT GURR

VIIOLENCE IN AMERICA VOL.2. PROTEST, REBELLION, REFORM dives deep into the complex tapestry of societal upheaval within the United States. This compelling volume explores the multifaceted nature of violence in various forms, from protests to rebellions, and the calls for reform that echo through the nation. Through a collection of thought-provoking essays and analytical pieces, this book sheds light on the struggles, triumphs, and challenges that define contemporary American society. A must-read for those seeking a comprehensive understanding of the current landscape of dissent and transformation in the United States.

NEWBURY PARK. SAGE. 1989. 372p.

MAY CONTAIN MARKUP

EDITORS Michael R. Gottfredson and Travis Hirschi

The philosophy of positivism in criminology -- the belief in a scientific approach to the study of crime -- has been widely challenged. In Positive Criminology leading proponents respond to the criticisms and assert the validity and value of the positivist paradigm. The contributors define modern positive criminology and discuss important criminological issues from a positivistic perspective. They demonstrate the value of this paradigm for understanding crime and solving the many problems it presents.

CA. Sage. 1987, 189p.

MAY CONTAIN MARKUP

By Vincent F. Sacco and Leslie W. Kennedy

Sacco/Kennedy is a concise, economical text that offers a unifying element to aid student understanding of the material presented. The organizing tool ('the criminal event') presents crime as consisting of many facets, and it shows the relationships between the various facets of crime. With an emphasis on spatial analysis, the authors examine crime from all sides, what motivates people to commit crime, who suffers and how, and how society should respond.

Wadsworth/Thomson Learning, 2002, 180 pages

By Rúna í Baianstovu and Sofia Strid

Summary: It is widely accepted that honor-based violence is a lived reality and a serious problem. However, honor-based violence is also a contested academic and political field, characterized by a polarized debate about whether or not the violence comprises stereotyping images of immigrants. This article asks how honor-based violence can be understood in light of this polarization, and what consequences it may have for clients and social workers. It is based on interview data with 235 adults with either professional (n = 199) or personal experiences (n = 36) of honor-based violence in Sweden. The data has been thematically coded and analyzed using the concepts of culturalization and intersectionality.

Findings: Honor-based violence is simultaneously a lived reality and teeming with stereotypes that are constructed by culturalizing images of nation, gender, age, religion, and sexuality. These stereotypes constitute forms of violence themselves and decrease clients’ trust in society and its institutions. Hence, the stereotypes become obstacles to social workers’ capacity to support those exposed to violence. At a general level, the stereotypes contribute to retaining the exposed in violence. In contrast, intersectional approaches to understanding honor-based violence have the potential to capture clients’ self-perceived and complex formulations of the causes of, and the character of, their situation, and thus increase the possibilities for adequate support.

Applications: The article's findings can support social workers’ understanding of the complexity of honor-based violence and strengthen their possibilities and capacities to develop antiracist and nonviolent communicative practices and, thus, acknowledge clients’ varying experiences and individual needs.

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By GAIL WILLIAMS O'BRIEN

On February 25, 1946, African Americans in Columbia, Tennessee, averted the lynching of James Stephenson, a nineteen-year-old, black Navy veteran accused of attacking a white radio repairman at a local department store. That night, after Stephenson was safely out of town, four of Columbia's police officers were shot and wounded when they tried to enter the town's black business district. The next morning, the Tennessee Highway Patrol invaded the district, wrecking establishments and beating men as they arrested them. By day's end, more than one hundred African Americans had been jailed. Two days later, highway patrolmen killed two of the arrestees while they were awaiting release from jail.

Drawing on oral interviews and a rich array of written sources, Gail Williams O'Brien tells the dramatic story of the Columbia "race riot," the national attention it drew, and its surprising legal aftermath. In the process, she illuminates the effects of World War II on race relations and the criminal justice system in the United States. O'Brien argues that the Columbia events are emblematic of a nationwide shift during the 1940s from mob violence against African Americans to increased confrontations between blacks and the police and courts. As such, they reveal the history behind such contemporary conflicts as the Rodney King and O. J. Simpson cases.

University of North Carolina Press, 1999, 334 pages

Edited by Jessica Goodman and Olivier Ferret

"In 1760, the French playwright Charles Palissot de Montenoy wrote Les Philosophes – a scandalous farcical comedy about a group of opportunistic self-styled philosophers. Les Philosophes emerged in the charged historical context of the pamphlet wars surrounding the publication of Diderot and d’Alembert’s Encyclopédie, and delivered an oblique but acerbic criticism of the intellectuals of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, including the likes of Diderot and Rousseau. This book presents the first high-quality English translation of the play, including critical apparatus. The translation is based on Olivier Ferret’s edition, and renders the text into iambic pentameter to preserve the character of the original. Adaptations are further provided of Ferret’s introduction and notes. This masterful and highly accessible translation of Les Philosophes opens up this polemical text to a non-specialist audience. It will be a valuable resource to non-Francophone scholars and students working on the philosophical exchanges of the Enlightenment. Moreover, this translation – the result of a year-long project undertaken by Jessica Goodman with six of her undergraduate French students – expounds the value of collaboration between scholar and student, and, as such, provides a model for other language tutors embarking on translation projects with their students."

Open Book Publishers, 2021. 234p.

By Shirin Zia, Jannatul Ferdous Antu, Mahfuz Al Mamun, Kausar Parvin, and Ruchira Tabassum Naved

Despite the abundance of literature, longitudinal studies evaluating the factors associated with domestic violence (DV) at different stages and over longer periods of women’s lives are rare. We evaluated factors associated with physical and sexual DV during pregnancy, at 10-year, and 18-year follow-ups after pregnancy and within a 19-year period of life using a cohort of women (n= 1,126) who participated in the Maternal and Infant Nutrition Interventions, Matlab trial in rural Bangladesh. Data on women’s experience of DV, social and economic characteristics, empowerment, and family condition were recorded in a similar manner during pregnancy and at 10- and 18-year follow-ups, using standard questionnaires. Multivariate logistic regression models and generalized estimating equations were used to evaluate factors associated with women’s experience of physical and sexual violence at each discrete time point and over a period of 19 years, respectively. During pregnancy, women were more likely to experience violence if they were members of microcredit programs/non-governmental organizations (NGOs), living in an extended family and had lower wealth status. At the 10- and 18-year follow-ups, higher levels of decision-making and higher wealth status were protective against the experience of violence. At the 18-year follow-up, women with larger age differences from their husbands were less likely to experience violence, while membership in microcredit programs/NGOs was associated with higher odds of experiencing violence among women. Within a period of 19 years, a higher level of education, living in an extended family, higher decision-making level and higher wealth index were protective against the experience of violence, while membership in microcredit programs/NGOs was a risk factor. In conclusion, this study showed that correlates of violence might change at different time points in women’s life. Thus, policies and programs should consider the stage of women’s lives while planning interventions for addressing violence against women.

Stockholm, Sweden: Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 2023. 22p.

By Jennifer E. Storey, Afroditi Pina, and Cherise S. Williams

Victims of stalking suffer severe and varied impacts requiring assessment and treatment. Research to inform support is limited. This study examines a national sample of stalking victims to identify the types and prevalence of impact reported and the predictors of impact. A secondary analysis of 258 stalking cases reported to a stalking charity was conducted. Four categories of victim reported impact were coded; psychological and substance abuse, physical health, practical impact on life, and impact on others. Stalking duration, severity, the diversity of stalking behaviors, and the relationship between the victim and perpetrator were investigated as predictors of impact. In all, 48 types of impact were identified with victims experiencing an average of four types. Psychological impact was the most prevalent (91.5%). Several new forms of impact were identified including a variety of impacts on persons known to the victim (e.g., children, friends) in 35.3% of the sample. Increased diversity of stalking behavior was predictive of impact in all models (explaining 11% of the variance in total impact scores), except for physical impact which was not analyzed due to low prevalence. Stalking impact was prevalent and varied, suggesting that victims (and potentially those close to them) require trauma-informed support from clinicians. Future research should include the development of a stalking impact index to improve the consistency of research and clinical assessment of need.

Canterbury, UK: Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 2023. 26p.

By Gena K. Dufour, Charlene Y. Senn, and Nicole K. Jeffrey

Accurate measurement of sexual violence (SV) victimization is important for informing research, policy, and service provision. Measures such as the Sexual Experiences Survey (SES) that use behaviorally specific language and a specified reference period (e.g., since age 14, over the past 12 months) are considered best practice and have substantially improved SV estimates given that so few incidents are reported to police. However, to date, we know little about whether estimates are affected by respondents’ reporting of incidents that occurred outside of the specified reference period (i.e., reference period errors). The current study explored the extent, nature, and impact on incidence estimates of reference period errors in two large, diverse samples of post-secondary students. Secondary analysis was conducted of data gathered using a follow-up date question after the Sexual Experiences Survey–Short Form Victimization. Between 8% and 68% of rape and attempted rape victims made reference period errors, with the highest proportion of errors occurring in the survey with the shortest reference period (1 month). These errors caused minor to moderate changes in time period-specific incidence estimates (i.e., excluding respondents with errors reduced estimates by up to 7%). Although including a date question does not guarantee that all time period-related errors will be identified, it can improve the accuracy of SV estimates, which is crucial for informing policy and prevention. Researchers measuring SV within specific reference periods should consider collecting dates of reported incidents as best practice.

Ontario, Canada: Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 2023. 26p.

By Sergi D. Bray , Shane D. Johnson and Bennett Kleinberg

Deepfakes’ are computationally created entities that falsely represent reality. They can take image, video, and audio modalities, and pose a threat to many areas of systems and societies, comprising a topic of interest to various aspects of cybersecurity and cybersafety. In 2020, a workshop consulting AI experts from academia, policing, government, the private sector, and state security agencies ranked deepfakes as the most serious AI threat. These experts noted that since fake material can propagate through many uncontrolled routes, changes in citizen behaviour may be the only effective defence. This study aims to assess human ability to identify image deepfakes of human faces (these being uncurated output from the StyleGAN2 algorithm as trained on the FFHQ dataset) from a pool of non-deepfake images (these being random selection of images from the FFHQ dataset), and to assess the effectiveness of some simple interventions intended to improve detection accuracy. Using an online survey, participants (N = 280) were randomly allocated to one of four groups: a control group, and three assistance interventions. Each participant was shown a sequence of 20 images randomly selected from a pool of 50 deepfake images of human faces and 50 images of real human faces. Participants were asked whether each image was AI-generated or not, to report their confidence, and to describe the reasoning behind each response. Overall detection accuracy was only just above chance and none of the interventions significantly improved this. Of equal concern was the fact that participants’ confidence in their answers was high and unrelated to accuracy. Assessing the results on a per-image basis reveals that participants consistently found certain images easy to label correctly and certain images difficult, but reported similarly high confidence regardless of the image. Thus, although participant accuracy was 62% overall, this accuracy across images ranged quite evenly between 85 and 30%, with an accuracy of below 50% for one in every five images. We interpret the findings as suggesting that there is a need for an urgent call to action to address this threat. 

Journal of Cybersecurity, 2023, 1–18 

By Robert J. Sampson and L. Ash Smith

The social transformations of crime and punishment in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries challenge traditional conceptions of criminal propensity and character. A life-course framework on cohort differences in growing up during these times of social change highlights large-scale inequalities in life experiences. Entire cohorts of children have come of age in such different historical contexts that typical markers of a crime-prone character, such as being a chronic offender or having an arrest record, are as much a function of societal change as of an individual’s early life propensities or background characteristics, including classic risk factors emphasized in criminology. When we are thus matters as much as, and perhaps more than, who we are—despite law, practice, and theory privileging the latter. Because crime over the life course is shaped by changing socio-historical conditions, it must be studied as such. Multi-cohort studies provide a key strategy for doing so, inspiring a reconsideration of criminal propensity and policies premised on unchanging predictors of future criminality. Developmental and life-course criminology should elevate the study of cohort differences in social change and, ultimately, societal character.

Crime and Justice, Volume 50, 2021

By Julia A Dilley, Susan M Richardson, Beau Kilmer, Rosalie Liccardo Pacula, Mary B Segawa, Magdalena Cerdá

Methods| The Washington Healthy Youth Survey (HYS) 2 is an anonymous, school-based survey of 8th, 10th, and 12th graders and the state’s primary source of information about health behavior among youths. The HYS has been implemented in the fall of even-numbered years since 2002, using a simple random sample of public schools to generate a state-representative sample. Response rates (incorporating school and student response) in 2016 were 80% for 8th grade, 69% for 10th grade, and 49% for 12th grade. The study was approved by the Washington State Institutional Review Board, whose general policy waives informed patient consent when data are de-identified. We Generated Covariate-adjusted prevalence estimates, modeling as closely as possible to Cerdá et al. Prevalence was based on modeled estimates (ie, SUDAAN predMARG [RTI International] postestimation command). Because the the MTF is not designed to provide state-representative estimates, the article generated covariate-adjusted modeled prevalence estimates for each state. The article suggested complex association between legalization and cannabis use among youths: increases in prevalence among Washington 8th and 10th graders, but not among 12th graders, relative to use in states without legalization of recreational marijuana.

The authors noted that, “the sample design may lead to discrepancies between MTF results and those found in other large-scale surveillance efforts.”1(p148) The purpose of the present study was to assess whether trends in cannabis use prevalence among youths from Washington’s state-based youth survey are consistent with findings from the MTF.

JAMA pediatrics, 173(2) 2019

By Tara N. Richards; Justin Nix; Bradley A. Campbell; Emily Wright; Caralin C. Branscum; Sheena L. Gilbert; Michaela Benson-Goldsmith; Emily K. Meinert

This final report for the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) Award 2019-MU-MU-0095 describes a research project that used a variety of methods to evaluate the activities undertaken by stakeholders in the Minnesota Sexual Assault Initiative (MN SAKI) project, including the following four goals: eliminating untested sexual assault kits (SAKs); building capacity for criminal justice agencies to test SAKs, pursuing all investigatory leads, providing victim referrals, and prosecuting cases resulting from testing; and strengthening victim services. The authors also completed a cost-benefit analysis of MN SAKI Project’s SAK testing efforts. The report provides details and outcomes regarding each of the project goals; it discusses SAK outcomes, costs, and benefits, and discusses the project findings and implications. The document's appendixes provide the following documents: Bureau of Criminal Apprehension Report on the MN Law Enforcement Agency Survey of Untested Rape Kits as Required by SF0878; MDT Interview Questions; Stakeholder Informed Consent Form; Victim Reaction Form; Victim-Survivor Experiences Interview Guide; Victim-Survivor Informed Consent Form; ViCAP Interview Guide; Minnesota Track-Kit Patient Guide; and Minnesota SAKI Victim-Survivor Notification Guide. 
Final report to the U.S. National Institute of Justice, 2023. 218p.

Edited by Ivan Sammut, Jelena Agranovska

This book is the result of an academic project, funded by the Hercules Programme of the European Commission to study legislation dealing with crimes against the Financial Interest of the EU awarded to the Department of  European and Comparative Law within the Faculty of Laws of the University of Malta. The study deals with the notion of criminal law at the European Union level as well as the relationship between the EU legal order and the national legal order. The focus of the study is on the development of EU criminal legislation aimed at protecting the financial interests of the EU, with a focus on cybercrime, fraud and public spending. It starts with the current legal basis in the TFEU, followed by the development of EU legislation in the area as well as the legislation of relevant bodies, such as EPO, OLAF and EUROPOL. The study tackles how this legislation is being received by the national legal orders, whereby eleven EU Member States are selected based on size, geography and legal systems. These Member States are France, Ireland, Croatia, Estonia, Germany, Italy, Malta, Spain, Latvia, Greece and Poland. A comparative study is made between those sections of EU criminal law dealing with the financial interests of the EU in these Member States to analyse the current legislation and propose future developments. The study, which is led by the editors based at the University of Malta, examines the subject from a European perspective. Besides the European perspective, the  study focuses on national case-studies, followed by a comparative analysis.

The Hague: Eleven International Publishing, 2020. 340p.

By Indhu Rammohan, Tommi Gaines, Ayden Scheim, Ahmed Bayoumi, Dan Werb

Supervised consumption services (SCS) prevent overdose deaths onsite; however, less is known about their effect on population-level overdose mortality. We aimed to characterise overdose mortality in Toronto, ON, Canada, and to establish the spatial association between SCS locations and overdose mortality events.

Canada, Lancet Public Health. 2024, 9pg

By Gillian Isabelle Foster

Childhood maltreatment (CM) is known to affect an individual’s intimate relationships during adulthood. While previous reviews have focused on providing insight regarding the association between CM and various factors, there are still components that need to be updated in the literature. This systematic review provided young adults and researchers with accumulative, empirical evidence and updated the information in the existing literature regarding how childhood maltreatment consequently has an influence on IPV, depression, and intimacy problems in intimate relationships during adulthood. Platforms were systematically searched between the years 2019 and 2022. An initial search revealed a total number of 106 studies and thirty-one articles were included in the current systematic review. A mixed-methods approach was used for the analysis of the study. Results show that CM has a positive association with IPV, depression and intimacy problems. More studies need to focus on the following factors: neglect, narrower dynamics, and potential mediators.

Canada, University of Manitoba. 2024, 34pg

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 Kristin M. Tennyson, Lindsey Jeralds, Julie Zibulsky

Congress requires courts to consider several factors when determining the appropriate sentence to be imposed in federal cases, among them the “history and characteristics of the defendant.” The sentencing guidelines also specifically authorize judges to consider an offender’s age when determining whether to depart from the federal sentencing guidelines. In this report, the Commission presents information on a relatively small number of offenders who were aged 50 or older at the time they were sentenced in the federal system. In particular, the report examines older federal offenders who were sentenced in fiscal year 2021 and the crimes they committed, then assesses whether age was given a special consideration at sentencing. This report specifically focuses on three issues that could impact the sentencing of older offenders: age and infirmity, life expectancy, and the risk of recidivism.

Washington, DC: United States Sentencing Commission, 2022. 68p.