By Hannah R. Johnson

The ritual murder accusation is one of a series of myths that fall under the label blood libel, and describes the medieval legend that Jews require Christian blood for obscure religious purposes and are capable of committing murder to obtain it. This malicious myth continues to have an explosive afterlife in the public sphere, where Sarah Palin's 2011 gaffe is only the latest reminder of its power to excite controversy. Blood Libel is the first book-length study to analyze the recent historiography of the ritual murder accusation and to consider these debates in the context of intellectual and cultural history as well as methodology. Hannah R. Johnson articulates how ethics shapes methodological decisions in the study of the accusation and how questions about methodology, in turn, pose ethical problems of interpretation and understanding.

Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2012. 250p

By Grace S. Liu, et al.

Problem/Condition: In 2020, approximately 71,000 persons died of violence-related injuries in the United States. This report summarizes data from CDC’s National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS) on violent deaths that occurred in 48 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico in 2020. Results are reported by sex, age group, race and ethnicity, method of injury, type of location where the injury occurred, circumstances of injury, and other selected characteristics.

Period Covered: 2020.

Description of System: NVDRS collects data regarding violent deaths obtained from death certificates, coroner and medical examiner records, and law enforcement reports. This report includes data collected for violent deaths that occurred in 2020. Data were collected from 48 states (all states with exception of Florida and Hawaii), the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. Forty-six states had statewide data, two additional states had data from counties representing a subset of their population (35 California counties, representing 71% of its population, and four Texas counties, representing 39% of its population), and the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico had jurisdiction-wide data. NVDRS collates information for each violent death and links deaths that are related (e.g., multiple homicides, homicide followed by suicide, or multiple suicides) into a single incident.

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  Results: For 2020, NVDRS collected information on 64,388 fatal incidents involving 66,017 deaths that occurred in 48 states (46 states collecting statewide data, 35 California counties, and four Texas counties), and the District of Columbia. In addition, information was collected for 729 fatal incidents involving 790 deaths in Puerto Rico. Data for Puerto Rico were analyzed separately. Of the 66,017 deaths, the majority (58.4%) were suicides, followed by homicides (31.3%), deaths of undetermined intent (8.2%), legal intervention deaths (1.3%) (i.e., deaths caused by law enforcement and other persons with legal authority to use deadly force acting in the line of duty, excluding legal executions), and unintentional firearm deaths (<1.0%). The term “legal intervention” is a classification incorporated into the International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision, and does not denote the lawfulness or legality of the circumstances surrounding a death caused by law enforcement.

  Demographic patterns and circumstances varied by manner of death. The suicide rate was higher for males than for females. Across all age groups, the suicide rate was highest among adults aged ≥85 years. In addition, non-Hispanic American Indian or Alaska Native (AI/AN) persons had the highest suicide rates among all racial and ethnic groups. Among both males and females, the most common method of injury for suicide was a firearm. Among all suicide victims, when circumstances were known, suicide was most often preceded by a mental health, intimate partner, or physical health problem or by a recent or impending crisis during the previous or upcoming 2 weeks. The homicide rate was higher for males than for females. Among all homicide victims, the homicide rate was highest among persons aged 20–24 years compared with other age groups. Non-Hispanic Black (Black) males experienced the highest homicide rate of any racial or ethnic group. Among all homicide victims, the most common method of injury was a firearm. Description text goes here

Washington DC. National Violent Death Reporting System, 2020.

By Alice M Ellyson , Emma L Gause , Sabrina Oesterle , Margaret R Kuklinski , John S Briney , Elizabeth H Weybright , Kevin P Haggerty , Vivian H Lyons , Julia P Schleimer , Ali Rowhani-Rahbar  

This study found distinct patterns of handgun carrying from adolescence to young adulthood in rural settings. Findings suggest that promoting handgun safety in rural areas should start early. Potential high-risk trajectories, including carrying at high frequencies, should be the focus of future work to explore the antecedents and consequences of handgun carrying in rural areas.

JAMA Netw Open. 2022 Apr 1;5(4):e225127. doi: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2022.5127. PMID: 35377427; PMCID: PMC8980900.

By Julia P Schleimer, Emma Gause , Kimberly Dalve , Alice Ellyson, Ali Rowhani-Rahbar

This cross-sectional study found that associations of interpersonal violence with handgun carrying were stronger in relative terms in urban areas than in rural areas; however, a higher percentage of rural than urban adolescents carried handguns, resulting in a greater absolute prevalence of handgun carrying associated with violence in rural areas than in urban areas. These findings suggest opportunities for preventing handgun carrying-related harms may differ between rural and urban

communities. 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.1153. PMID: 36853603; PMCID: PMC9975933

By Pitcavage, Mark

From the document: "[1] Every year, individuals with ties to different extreme causes and movements kill people in the United States; the ADL [Anti-Defamation League] Center on Extremism (COE) tracks these murders. Extremists regularly commit murders in the service of their ideology, in the service of a group or gang they may belong to, or even while engaging in traditional, non-ideological criminal activities. [2] In 2022, domestic extremists killed at least 25 people in the U.S., in 12 separate incidents. […] [3] The 2022 murder totals would have been much lower if not for two high-casualty extremist-related shooting sprees. Only 10 of the 25 deaths occurred outside of those sprees--and one of those 10 deaths occurred in a less lethal mass shooting attempt. [4] The issue of extremist-related mass killings is of growing concern and is the subject of a special section of this report. […] The Center on Extremism has identified 62 extremist-connected mass killing incidents since 1970, with 46 of them being ideologically motivated. […] [5] In 2022, 18 of the 25 extremist-related murders appear to have been committed in whole or part for ideological motives, while the remaining seven murders either have no clear motive or were committed for a non-ideological motive. [6] All the extremist-related murders in 2022 were committed by right-wing extremists of various kinds, who typically commit most such killings each year but only occasionally are responsible for all (the last time this occurred was 2012). […] [7] White supremacists commit the greatest number of domestic extremist-related murders in most years, but in 2022 the percentage was unusually high: 21 of the 25 murders were linked to white supremacists." This document includes charts, tables, and graphs to illustrate the text.

Anti-Defamation League. 2022

Edited by Carol Block and Richard Block

Papers examining recent and long-term trends in homicide in the United States discuss the relationships among youth violence, guns, and drug law offenses; age patterns in homicide; arrest trends and the impact of demographic changes; and the use of econometric forecasting to correct for missing data. Papers on international and regional violence patterns discuss trends in violence and homicide in the Netherlands and the southern subculture of violence. Nine papers on high-risk groups focus on violence and homicide against women and youth and in different types of workplaces, particularly convenience stores. Five papers focus on intervention strategies based on data analysis; topics include criminal justice sanctions for domestic assault, gun-related violence, violence in public schools in Atlanta, the impacts of exposure to violence on the behavior of inner-city youths and the impact of guidance and employment for adolescents. Further papers consider the use of the National Incident-Based Reporting System and the violence surveillance activities of the Centers for Disease Control. Figures, tables, sample data collection instruments and forms, footnotes, reference lists, and appended conference agenda and lists of participants and working group members

Washington D.C. US Department of Justice. Atlanta, Georgia. 1995. 349p.

By Harsha Moraliyage; Vidura Sumanasena; Daswin De Silva; Rashmika Nawaratne; Lina Sun; Damminda Alahakoon

The dark web has been confronted with a significant increase in the number and variety of onion services of illegitimate and criminal intent. Anonymity, encryption, and the technical complexity of the Tor network are key challenges in detecting, disabling, and regulating such services. Instead of tracking an operational location, cyber threat intelligence can become more proactive by utilizing recent advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) to detect and classify onion services based on the content, as well as provide an interpretation of the classification outcome. In this paper, we propose a novel multimodal classification approach based on explainable deep learning that classifies onion services based on the image and text content of each site. A Convolutional Neural Network with Gradient-weighted Class Activation Mapping (Grad-CAM) and a pre-trained word embedding with Bahdanau additive attention are the core capabilities of this approach that classify and contextualize the representative features of an onion service. We demonstrate the superior classification accuracy of this approach as well as the role of explainability in decision-making that collectively enables proactive cyber threat intelligence in the dark web. 

IEEE Access, vol. 10, pp. 56044-56056, 2022,

By Saiba Nazah; Shamsul Huda; Jemal Abawajy; Mohammad Mehedi Hassan

The Dark Web is one of the most challenging and untraceable mediums adopted by the cyber criminals, terrorists, and state-sponsored spies to fulfil their illicit motives. Cyber-crimes happening inside the Dark Web are like real world crimes. However, the sheer size, unpredictable ecosystem and anonymity provided by the Dark Web services are the essential confrontations to trace the criminals. To discover the potential solutions towards cyber-crimes evaluating the sailing Dark Web crime threats is a crucial step. In this paper, we will appraise the Dark Web by analysing the crimes with their consequences and enforced methods as well as future manoeuvres to lessen the crime threats. We used Systematic Literature Review (SLR) method with the aspiration to provide the direction and aspect of emerging crime threats in the Dark Web for the researchers and specialist in Cyber security field. For this SLR 65 most relevant articles from leading electronic databases were selected for data extraction and synthesis to answer our predefined research questions. The result of this systematic literature review provides (i) comprehensive knowledge on the growing crimes proceeding with Dark Web (ii) assessing the social, economic and ethical impacts of the cyber-crimes happening inside the Dark Web and (iii) analysing the challenges, established techniques and methods to locate the criminals and their drawbacks. Our study reveals that more in depth researches are required to identify criminals in the Dark Web with new prominent way, the crypto markets and Dark Web discussion forums analysis is crucial for forensic investigations, the anonymity provided by Dark Web services can be used as a weapon to catch the criminals and digital evidences should be analysed and processed in a way that follows the law enforcement to make the seizure of the criminals and shutting down the illicit sites in the Dark Web. 

 IEEE Access, vol. 8, pp. 171796-171819, 2020, 

Javeriah Saleem, Rafiqul Islam and Muhammad Ashad Kabir   

The dark web is a section of the Internet that is not accessible to search engines and requires an anonymizing browser called Tor. Its hidden network and anonymity pave the way for illegal activities and help cybercriminals to execute well-planned, coordinated, and malicious cyberattacks. Cyber security experts agree that online criminal activities are increasing exponentially, and they are also becoming more rampant and intensified. These illegal cyber activities include various destructive crimes that may target a single person or a whole nation, for example, data breaches, ransomware attacks, black markets, mafias, and terrorist attacks. So, maintaining data privacy and secrecy is the new dilemma of the era. This paper has extensively reviewed various attacks and attack patterns commonly applied in the dark web. We have also classified these attacks in our unique trilogies classification system. Furthermore, a detailed overview of existing threat detection techniques and their limitations is discussed for anonymity providing services like Tor, I2P, and Freenet. Finally, the paper has identified significant weaknesses that make the dark web vulnerable to different attacks.

 IEEE Access, vol. 10, pp. 33628-33660, 2022

By Abhineet Gupta 

The internet can broadly be divided into three parts: surface, deep and dark among which the latter offers anonymity to its users and hosts. The dark web has become notorious in the media for being a hidden part of the web where all manner of illegal activities take place. The more restrictions placed upon the free exchange of information, goods and services between people the more likely there exist hidden spaces for it to take place. The ‘black market’ of the internet – the dark web - represents such a hidden space. This review looks at the purposes it is widely used for with an emphasis on cybercrime, and how the law enforcement plays the role of its adversary. The review describes these hidden spaces, sheds light on their history, the activities that they harbour – including cybercrime, the nature of attention they receive, and methodologies employed by law enforcement in an attempt to defeat their purpose. More importantly, it is argued that these spaces should be considered a phenomenon and not an isolated occurrence to be taken as merely a natural consequence of technology. The review is conducted by looking at existing literature in academic journal databases. It contributes to the area of the dark web by serving as a reference document and by proposing a research agenda.  

Melbourne: University of Melbourne, 2018.  46p.

By Eric Hobsbawm

“Two brief methodological notes. First, it will be clear that I have tried to explain why social banditry is so remarkably uniform a pheno­menon throughout the ages and continents. Can this explanation be tested? Yes, insofar as it predicts, broadly speaking, how bandits will act and what stories people will tell about them in areas hitherto un­studied. The present essay elaborates the ‘model’ originally sketched out in my Primitive Rebels, which was based exclusively on European - mostly Spanish and Italian - material, but does not, I hope, conflict with it. Still, the wider the generalization, the more likely it is that individual peculiarities are neglected. Second, I have relied largely on a rather tricky historical source namely poems and ballads. So far as the facts of banditry are concerned, these records of public memory and myth are of course quite unreliable, however remotely based on real events, though they give much inci­dental information about the social environment of banditry, at least insofar as there is no reason why this should be distorted. But there is a more serious difficulty. How far does the ‘myth' of banditry throw light on the real pattern of bandit behaviour? In other words, how far do bandits live up to the social role they have been assigned in the drama of peasant life ? There is plainly some connection. I hope that in formulating it I have not gone beyond the bounds of common sense.”

London. George Wedenfield & Nicolson Ltd. 1969. 157p.

By Rachel Delafave

This Article empirically illustrates that red flag laws—laws which permit removal of firearms from a person who presents a risk to themselves or others—contribute to a statistically significant decrease in suicide rates, but do not influence homicide rates. I exploit state-level variation across time in the existence of red flag laws between 1990 and 2018 and find that the existence of a risk-based law reduces firearm-related suicides by 6.4% and overall suicides by 3.7%, with no substitution to non-firearm suicides. Red flag laws are not associated with a statistically significant change in homicides rates. Policymakers should consider red flag laws an effective tool to prevent firearm-related suicide, one of the most prevalent preventable causes of death in the United States. In light of this evidence, red flag laws should be more politically successful in the current partisan environment than other forms of gun control legislation because of their targeted nature and potential to balance the interests of gun owners against the negative externalities of gun violence.

52 Loy. U. Chi. L. J. 867 (2021)

By Richard Rosenfeld and Ernesto Lopez:   National Commission on COVID-19 and Criminal Justice

This study is the fifth in a series of reports exploring pandemic-related crime changes for the National Commission on COVID-19 and Criminal Justice. Updating that earlier work, this analysis reveals both increases and decreases in crime rates in a sample of United States cities during the first quarter of 2021 compared with the first quarter of 2020. Homicides, aggravated and gun assaults, and motor vehicle thefts increased, while residential burglaries, nonresidential burglaries, larcenies, and drug offenses fell. The timing of the declines in burglaries, larcenies, and drug crimes coincided with the stay-at-home mandates and business closings that occurred in response to the pandemic. Quarantines reduced residential burglary. When businesses are closed, there is no shoplifting. Selling drugs on the street is more difficult when there are fewer people on the street, and drug arrests fall when police reduce drug enforcement because they have prioritized other activities. Our findings show that there was a 26% increase in motor vehicle thefts in the first quarter of 2021 compared to the same period in the previous year, even as other property crimes declined. Motor vehicle thefts may have risen during the pandemic as more people left their vehicles unattended at home rather than in secure parking facilities at work.  

Washington, DC: Council on Criminal Justice, 2021. 

By The International Crisis Group

Criminal groups in Mexico and the Northern Triangle of Central America (El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras) have been quick to absorb the shock of the COVID-19 pandemic and seize new opportunities provided by lockdowns, distracted states and immiserated citizens. At first, trade disruptions and movement restrictions forced some criminal outfits to slow illicit activities. But the lull has not lasted. Exchange of illicit goods already appears to be swinging back to normal, while extortion rackets are resurging. As the region’s recent history shows, quick fixes to rein in organised crime and official corruption are very likely to be counterproductive. Instead, governments should concentrate their limited resources to aid the most violent regions and vulnerable people, ideally through regional programs to curb impunity and create alternatives to criminal conduct. After months of lockdowns of varying severity, with disease transmission still uncontrolled and poised to spike again, the threat of rising crime across the region is manifest. Mexico has been afflicted for years by transnational criminal organisations that feed off a lack of economic opportunity and corruption in the state and security forces. The new force in the underworld, the Jalisco Cartel New Generation, has bared its teeth during the pandemic in fights for control of illicit markets such as drug trafficking and “taxing” legal commodities. It has also displayed its paramilitary might in the media. Myriad criminal groups have claimed to be lifelines for local people, largely in bids to widen their support base. Across the north of Central…..

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  America, street gangs that have lorded it over their economically struggling strongholds for years have also found ways to take advantage of the pandemic. After the outbreak, they advertised themselves as champions of communities under lockdown, handing out food baskets and forgiving protection payments. Due to COVID-19 movement restrictions, violence fell briefly in Honduras and Guatemala. But it is now back to or above pre-pandemic levels, while extortion rackets in both countries appear set to intensify. El Salvador is an outlier in that murder rates have stayed close to historical lows for reasons that remain disputed. The government says its security plan has kept violent gangs at bay, while Crisis Group has suggested that gang and government leaders may have struck an informal agreement to scale back violence. But, if such a pact exists, neither side has acknowledged it in public, and sudden spates of killings underline that gangs’ commitment to peace is far from robust. Behind concerns about deteriorating security in Mexico and northern Central America is the realisation that the pandemic (and counter-measures) will worsen the economic and institutional ills underlying the crime wave. The incidence of COVID-19 varies from country to country, but it is hard to imagine that any will avoid a negative impact on livelihoods, public services and the popular mood. Mexico ranks fourth worldwide with its officially reported death toll of over 90,000 – which the government admits is an undercount – while rates of infection in northern Central America stand around the Latin American average. Nonetheless, all four countries are now facing one of the most severe economic contractions in decades, made worse in Central America by the recent devastation left by Hurricane ETA. Expected falls in 2020 GDP, reaching close to 10 per cent in Mexico and El Salvador and causing unemployment to soar across the region, are set to reverse advances in reducing inequality and poverty, weaken public services in poor areas, intensify criminal rivalries and sharpen officials’ motives for consorting with illicit business. 

Brussels:  International Crisis Group, 2020. 37p.

By Larrea-Schiavon, Silvana, Lina López-Lalinde, Isabel Vieitez Martínez, Ricardo Regules, Juan Pablo Gutiérrez, René Nevárez, Cristina Mac Gregor, Pablo López, Nicole Haberland, and Thoai Ngô

This report presents findings from the baseline survey of the Violence Outcomes in COVID-19 Era Study (VOCES-19). The study, conducted by Population Council Mexico in collaboration with the National Institute of Youth and the National Center for Gender Equity and Reproductive Health aims to understand the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and accompanying mitigation measures on the experience and perception of violence among 15–24-year-olds living in Mexico, as well as its effects on other social, economic, and health, related outcomes. The primary objectives for this first survey round were to gather baseline information on several outcomes of interest, assess differential effects by gender, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status, and establish a cohort of adolescents and young adults to measure the impact of the pandemic on young people in Mexico over time.

Mexico: Population Council, 2021. 153p.

By Matthew Simonson, Matthew Lacombe, Jon Green, and James Druckman

The last decade has given rise to substantial concern about democratic backsliding in the U.S. Manifestations include decreased trust in government, conspiratorial beliefs, contentious protests, and support for political violence. Surprisingly, prior work has not explored how these attitudes and behaviors relate to gun-buying, an action that provides people with the means to challenge the state. The researchers address this topic by focusing on individuals who took part in the unprecedented gun buying surge during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using a survey with over 50,000 respondents, they find that— relative to other Americans—pandemic gun buyers are more likely to distrust government, believe in conspiracies, protest, and support political violence. Moreover, the authors find that gun buyers who hold anti-government views and attend protests are especially likely to say they bought guns for political reasons. The researchers’ findings highlight a crucial dynamic underlying the recent spike in gun sales with consequences for American democracy.

Evanston, IL: Northwestern University, Institute for Policy Research, 2022. 62p.

By The City of Chicago

We know a great deal about the nature of violence in Chicago. An overwhelming number of homicides in the city are gun-related and victims are disproportionately African American and Latinx males. Most shootings and homicides happen outdoors in public spaces. In 2019, the median age of homicide victims was 271, and 50 percent of the city’s shooting victimizations occurred within 10 community areas that comprise 15 percent of the city’s population. These neighborhoods are located on the South and West sides of Chicago where poverty, low educational attainment, and poor health outcomes including shorter life expectancy are concentrated. While Chicago’s homicide and shooting numbers have ebbed and flowed in recent years, since 2016, which was the year of the recent peak in Chicago homicides, they have consistently exceeded those of New York City and Los Angeles, two cities larger and more populous. Since January 1, 2016 through August 16, 2020, 2,978 people have been killed and there have been 12,387 non-fatal shooting victims, with 11 percent of them being young people under the age of 18. Although most of Chicago’s shootings and homicides happen in public places, domestic violence is also pervasive. In the United States, 25 percent of women will experience severe physical violence by an intimate partner during their lifetime and at least 35 percent of female homicides are perpetrated by intimate partners. Gun violence and domestic violence, while often treated as distinct, are very much related. Not only are some domestic violence incidents gun

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  violence and vice versa, but we also know that many communities and families experience both. Thus, the approaches to reducing gun violence and domestic violence must be coordinated to maximize impact.

Chicago: City of Chicago, 2020. 108p.

By Ames C. Grawert, Adureh Onyekwere, and Cameron Kimble

This report analyzes available crime data from police departments in the 30 largest U.S. cities. It finds that across the cities where data is available, the overall murder and crime rates are projected to decline in 2018, continuing similar decreases from the previous year.

New York: Brennan Center for Justice, 2019. 10p. 

By María Alejandra and Chávez Báez

This paper examines how trust in institutions and organizations are shaped according to age and exposure to violence during La Violencia. It also evaluates how people's actual trust on different groups (out-group trust) changes in municipalities that were exposed to violence in comparison to municipalities that were not exposed. From 1950's to the mid 1960's, Colombia experienced a period of intense civil wars and conflicts between social classes known as La Violencia. Using evidence on the index of violence built by Guzman et al. (2006) during this period and the Political Culture Survey of 2019, the main objective of this paper is to find whether people trust on State's institutions and people from different groups in municipalities that were mostly affected by violence. To complement the analysis, I analyzed press articles and news by the newspaper El Tiempo from 1950 to 1990 to find how is the perception of the State's legitimacy. After gathering information on 13,413 interviewees, I found that people who live during La Violencia trust less on government institutions and more on certain groups of people (neighbours). Moreover, people over 84 years-old living in municipalities that were exposed to La Violencia trust less on strangers and immigrants than younger people living in the same municipalities. These findings are supported in two mechanisms: deficient government-citizens relationship over time and risk aversion. That is, people who live in municipalities affected by violence during the bipartisan conflict are more risk averse and therefore show less trust on different groups of people.

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  The revision of press articles suggest that there is a tendency of mistrust on State's actions, at least among highly educated individuals.

Bogotá: Universidad de los Andes, 2021. 53p.

By Amanda Ward, Christopher Donner, David Olson, Alexandre Tham and Kaitlyn Faust

To address escalating street and gun-violence in Rockford, Illinois, Winnebago County’s Criminal Justice Coordinating Council piloted the Focused Deterrence Intervention (FDI) between January of 2018 and November of 2019. The intervention utilized a “focused deterrence” or “pulling-levers” framework to identify and deter members of the community who are at a heightened risk of committing future acts of street and gun violence. Loyola University Chicago’s Center for Criminal Justice Research, Policy and Practice collaborated with Winnebago County’s Criminal Justice Coordinating Council to support the development, implementation and evaluation of the Focused Deterrence Intervention. The present report reviews FDI’s pilot years, with a focus on evaluating FDI processes key to the program design.

Chicago: Center for Criminal Justice Research, Policy & Practice, Loyola University Chicago, 2020. 50p.