By Amanda R. Witwer; Lynn Langton; Michael J. D. Vermeer; Duran Banks; Dulani Woods; Brian A. Jackson

This report defines TFA as "acts or courses of conduct facilitated through digital means that compromise the victim's privacy and causing emotional, physical, and social harm to the victim." Among the forms of TFA are cyber stalking, non-consensual pornography, and "sextortion." After discussions, workshop participants identified and prioritized 48 potential strategies for addressing TFA, 21 of which were deemed to be high priority (Tier 1). The high-priority strategies reflect four key themes: 1) implementing public education and TFA prevention efforts; 2) promoting awareness of TFA among criminal justice practitioners; 3) improving criminal justice practices and policies for addressing TFA, and 4) mitigating harm and empowering TFA victims. Regarding criminal justice priorities, the workshop participants noted the lack of both investigative and legal means to address TFA cases effectively. Developing standards and training for the identification, collection, and processing of digital evidence and establishing specialized TFA units would enable law enforcement to conduct thorough investigations of TFA crimes. Instituting statutes specific to TFA behaviors, accompanied by sentencing guidelines that acknowledge the harms to and vulnerabilities of TFA victims, would enable prosecutors to ensure that TFA sentences are commensurate with the harms caused and the services victims receive.

Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2020. 26p.

By Marc-André Argentino, Adnan Raja & Aoife Gallagher

Since QAnon’s rise to prominence, several high-profile celebrities have found themselves at the centre of the movement’s conspiratorial narratives, and therefore, the focus of coordinated harassment campaigns, brigading, dogpilling, slander and hate. This has led researchers who examine the digital information ecosystem to ask whether QAnon-coordinated harassment operates like other forms of targeted hate and harassment online, and specifically, whether vulnerable identity groups are faced with particularly egregious experiences. In this report, based on analysis conducted in early 2021, and examining upwards of 9 million posts and mentions across Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, we examine the role of gender-based violence against celebrities who were of particular significance to the QAnon community’s conspiracy theories in late 2019 and into the end of 2020: Chrissy Teigen, Tom Hanks, Ellen DeGeneres, Anderson Cooper, Jussie Smollett and Oprah Winfrey. The resulting analysis confirmed the suspicion that the most prominent type of harassment came in the form of brigading individual targets with accusations and slanderous mentions of paedophilia, often with graphic and disturbing language in their accusations.

Amman: Berlin: London: Paris: Washington DC: Institute for Strategic Dialogue, 2022. 32p.

By The Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime

In the 21st century, so far thousands of criminal assassinations have been committed worldwide. Although all the victims are privately remembered, most are publicly forgotten. This project features the profiles of 50 individuals who lost their lives due to their role as journalists, activists, police officers, community leaders and other work that exposed illegal activity or disrupted the status quo. Through these stories, we can begin to paint a broader picture of the assassinations phenomenon and the wide-ranging impact it has on countries, communities and families.

Geneva: Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, 2020. 232p,

Sexual Assault Unit Assessment: New York Police Department: Final report

By James Markey, Hannah Feeney, Kevin Strom, Amy Durall

Law enforcement’s response to sexual assault directly impacts the ability to deliver justice for victims through the criminal justice system and prevent future crimes. Creating a comprehensive, sustainable practice for addressing sexual assault can improve an agency’s investigative response and case outcomes, which, in turn, can benefit individual victims and their communities. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) is responsible for providing public safety services for 8 million citizens across five boroughs (Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, and Staten Island), as well as the city’s many visitors. The NYPD strives to provide a consistent process that coordinates agency-wide efforts across the boroughs and designated patrol precincts. The NYPD has numerous community and government partners including District Attorney’s offices in each borough, as well as medical providers and advocacy agencies. In 2021, the NYPD contracted with RTI International to assess its response to sexual assault. Through this project, RTI finalized plans to provide NYPD with an independent and comprehensive review of the agency’s response and investigation of adult sexual assault cases. All assessment activities took place between April 2021 and September 2021. This report details the observations, findings, and recommendations identified by the RTI International Assessment Team. The RTI International Assessment Team (hereinafter referred to as the Assessment Team) examined in detail the processes and procedures in place for investigating and prosecuting adult sexual assault cases by NYPD, including the use of victim-centered and trauma-informed practices. As part of the assessment, the team conducted a thorough examination of the sexual assault investigative process, both within and outside the law enforcement domain. This assessment included: 1) review of policies pertaining to sexual assault response and investigation, in-service training, and academy training curriculum; 2) investigative case file analysis; and 3) personnel and stakeholder interviews. These methods were used to develop findings and recommendations, with the intention of promoting organizational transformation to better serve adult victims of sexual assault .

Research Triangle Park, NC: RTI International, 2021. 785p

By Nina Kaysser and Ana Paula Oliveira

In July 2021, the assassination of Haitian president Jovenel Moïse made headlines. The media reported that a large number of foreign nationals had been involved in the murder, including 13 suspected Colombian contract killers, but the identity of those who ordered the killing remains unknown and is still the subject of investigation. Although the case received widespread international coverage, employing hitmen to carry out the assassination of prominent figures is not 2 a new phenomenon. All over the world, thousands of people are assassinated yearly, in silence. In many countries, assassinations have become a daily occurrence. Assassinations, or contract killings, are frequently used by criminal networks to achieve their political, economic and criminal interests. They enable criminal actors to maintain control over communities, allowing them to take over lucrative markets or infiltrate public institutions. They are also a way of silencing those who take a stand and threaten to challenge the status quo, or those who investigate and dismantle criminal activities. The negative impacts of this crime are severe, weakening society and the economy, and undermining democratic processes. Despite the harm they cause, assassinations are an understudied topic, and in particular how they link to organized crime. The GI-TOC has developed a unique and novel database on contract killings worldwide. The Global Assassination Monitor, a disaggregated data-collection project that is part of the GI-TOC’s Assassination Witness initiative, records hits and attempted hits. (To be classified as contract killings, the murders need to meet two criteria: they target specific individuals and they involve some form of contract, with the perpetrators receiving a reward for the killing.) The database draws on extensive research of international and national media sources, and the results of this analysis will be presented in the forthcoming report ‘Killing in silence: Monitoring the role of organized crime in contract killings’. The data indicates that assassinations are highly clustered in several ways. They are clustered geographically, with high concentrations in the Americas (accounting for 37% of all recorded cases) closely followed by Asia (which accounted for 33%). Africa accounted for 24% of cases while Europe accounted for only 6%. The data suggests that contract killings tend to flourish in environments where there is a strong presence of organized crime, power struggles, corruption and violence. Assassinations are also found to be deployed to target certain groups, especially activists, community leaders and politicians. And they cluster around specific motives or drivers, often related to political or economic interests. The findings point to the strength of the criminal groups who order these contract killings, and the way in which organized crime is often embedded in political and economic institutions. Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, with its restrictive measures in the form of lockdowns and border closures, contract killings continued unabated in 2020. In fact, the measures taken to contain the virus would appear to have created opportunities for assassinations to increase, at least in some areas. The findings highlighted in this research not only uncover the sheer magnitude of global organized-crime-related assassinations, but also help understand how this criminal phenomenon gravely impacts the social fabric of communities the world over. This initiative provides a first stepping stone in highlighting areas for further research and better responses to this crime, such as investigating links between the illicit firearms trade and how it relates to assassinations, strengthening investigatory and adjudicatory capacities, bolstering corporate responsibility, engaging with civil society and providing protection for activists.

Geneva: Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, 2021. 112p.

By Jocelyn Frye, Shilpa Phadke, Robin Bleiweis, Maggie Jo Buchanan, Danielle Corley, and Osub Ahmed

In 2006, Maricruz Ladino, a farmworker at a California lettuce-packing plant, was repeatedly harassed by her supervisor. She rebuffed his lewd requests and comments, but he was unrelenting. Eventually, as they were heading back from a day’s work in the fields, he took her to another location and raped her. She was afraid to come forward, but after several months, she finally mustered the courage to complain about what had happened. Instead of taking action against her supervisor, her employer fired her. She later filed a civil suit against the company and, in 2010, the company agreed to a settlement. When reflecting on her traumatic experience several years later, Ladino would explain how she found the courage to come forward, saying, “I have daughters, I have sisters. And I have to stop this from happening to them, too. That’s what gave me strength to speak out.”2 The prevalence of gender-based violence (GBV) in the United States has become the focus of a national conversation. Whether it is the meteoric rise and resilience of the #MeToo movement, originally launched by activist Tarana Burke more than a decade ago; a seemingly endless list of public figures involved in allegations of sexual misconduct; a U.S. Supreme Court nomination fight made contentious in part by sexual assault allegations; President Donald Trump’s dismissive attacks on survivors’ stories and more than two dozen women alleging his own misconduct over decades; or Trump administration policies that increasingly degrade, disparage, and dehumanize women and gender minorities, all have elevated the discussion about how well GBV claims are handled and what responses are needed to combat it.3 In the wake of this attention, people from across the country have stood up and spoken out. They have told their personal stories and made clear that a status quo that tolerates sexual misconduct is unacceptable and must change. Many policymakers have been quick to profess support for survivors and reject all forms of GBV,

from sexual harassment to sexual assault and more, yet concrete legislative action to address these issues has been slow in coming. Even when policymakers do engage, they often focus on piecemeal measures as a quick fix rather than a more holistic response to address the full range of underlying problems. Lost in the discussion are the interwoven issues that collectively perpetuate GBV—particularly the systemic biases around race, sex, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, national origin, and disability that shape survivors’ diverse experiences. Overly narrow views and definitions around sex and gender identity that leave out women of color and gender minorities risk ignoring critical aspects of the problem and perpetuating a broader public narrative that elevates some groups over others and leaves out some survivors altogether. Furthermore, too little attention has focused on the connections between GBV and other abusive or violent behaviors, such as research showing high rates of domestic violence and misogynistic attacks among perpetrators of mass shootings.4 Dissecting how all of these issues relate to each other is crucial and long overdue 

Washington, DC: Center for American Progress, 2019. 70p.

By Beatriz Magaloni, Krist´of Gosztonyi, and Sarah Thompson

The monopoly of violence in the hands of the state is conceived as the principal vehicle to generate order. A problem with this vision is that parts of the state and its law enforcement apparatus often become extensions of criminality rather than solutions to it. We argue that one solution to this dilemma is to “opt out from the state.” Using a multimethod strategy combining extensive qualitative research, quasi-experimental statistical analyses, and survey data, the paper demonstrates that indigenous communities in Mexico are better able to escape predatory criminal rule when they are legally allowed to carve a space of autonomy from the state through the institution of “usos y costumbres.” We demonstrate that these municipalities are more immune to violence than similar localities where regular police forces and local judiciaries are in charge of law enforcement and where mayors are elected through multiparty elections rather than customary practices.

Stanford, CA: Stanford University, Department of Political Science, 2021. 44p.

By Jenna Russo

While all UN multidimensional peacekeeping operations are mandated to prevent and respond to conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV), the missions in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and South Sudan, as well as in the Central African Republic, are also mandated to protect civilians from sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV). While SGBV is often used and understood interchangeably with CRSV, SGBV is broader in scope, as it encompasses nonsexual forms of gender-based violence and need not be connected to armed conflict.

This report examines how missions are implementing their mandates to protect civilians from SGBV, including CRSV, and assesses good practices, gaps, and opportunities for improvement. The report draws on lessons learned from the UN missions in South Sudan (UNMISS) and the DRC (MONUSCO). It considers how the complexities of preventing and responding to SGBV necessitate a whole-of-mission approach to the protection of civilians (POC) that encompasses not only physical protection from violence but also activities that address cultural norms related to gender, strengthen the rule of law, and enhance women’s participation. This report thus considers a range of protection activities carried out by missions, as well as structures and processes that promote the effective integration of gender into mission planning and activities.

The paper concludes with several recommendations for UN peacekeeping missions, the UN Department of Peace Operations (DPO), and member states on the Security Council to strengthen work on SGBV.

New York: International Peace Institute, 2022. 33p.

By Kristina Amerhauser ̵and Walter Kemp

As the space for civil society appears to be shrinking in the Western Balkans, with organizations being under pressure from governments and increasingly concerned about their security, this report looks at organized crime and corruption in the region from a civil society perspective. It aims to give an overview of how civil society organizations in the Western Balkans deal with issues related to organized crime and corruption and highlights their main activities and concerns.

Geneva: Global Initiative Against Organized Crime, 2021. 33p.

By EIGE -  European Institute for Gender Equality

The recent COVID-19 pandemic has contributed to increasing our reliance on digital technologies in our everyday activities, consolidating internet access as a new fundamental human right. Digital platforms have often been celebrated for allowing equal opportunities for public self expression, regardless of one’s identity and status. Yet, not everyone is welcome in the cyberspace. The digital arena has become a breeding ground for a range of exclusionary and violent discourses and beliefs, expressed and disseminated in a context of anonymity and impunity. Both women and men can be victims of cyber violence. However, evidence shows that women and girls are highly exposed to it. Not only are they more likely to be targeted by cyber violence; they can also suffer from serious consequences, resulting in physical, sexual, psychological or economic harm and suffering. Women and girls often end up withdrawing from the digital sphere, silencing and isolating themselves and eventually losing opportunities to build their education, professional career and support networks. Cyber violence against women and girls (CVAWG) is often dismissed as an insignificant and virtual phenomenon. However, as digital (online) and face-to-face (offline) spaces become more and more integrated, CVAWG often amplifies (or is a precursor for) violence and victimisation in the physical world. CVAWG is not a private problem and does not exist in a vacuum: it is an integral part of the continuum of violence against women and girls. Just like any other form of gender-based violence, CWAWG is deeply rooted in the social inequality between women and men that persists in our world. CVAWG is an intersectional form of violence with different patterns and levels of vulnerability and risk among specific groups of women and girls. It can be exacerbated when it is committed on the grounds of gender in combination with other factors, including age, ethnic or racial origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, religion or belief. Combating CVAWG: aims and scope of this report The aim of this report is to provide an in-depth investigation into the phenomenon of cyber violence and to examine how it affects women and girls specifically.  

Vilnius LITHUANIA: EIGE, 2022. 110p.

By The YWCA

Police killings of Black people and the ensuing nation-wide protests that swept across the United States during the spring and summer months of 2020 are certain to be recorded as defining elements of an unprecedented year. Like Tamir Rice, Eric Garner, and so many others before them, the names of the people of color killed by police in 2020 are now seared into our national consciousness: George Floyd. Rayshard Brooks. Tony McDade. Breonna Taylor. Their deaths unleashed a national fury and ignited a long overdue reckoning with racial violence by police against people of color.

But as so often happens, women and girls of color are again being left out of the story. Their experiences? Overlooked and erased by a media and policy narrative that overwhelmingly focuses on men and boys of color.

Washington, DC: YWCA, 2020. 49p.

By Laura Ávila and Alicia Flórez 

This investigation exposes gender-based violence in Tibú, a Colombian town located on the border with Venezuela that serves as a drug trafficking corridor for several illegal armed groups. In 2021, at least 13 women were killed and dozens more were forced to flee the municipality amid one of the worst waves of violence ever seen in the area.  

Washington, DC: InSight Crime, 2022.  30p.

By Sebastian Dahlström,

In a world where drug use is on the rise and new variants are frequently discovered and produced, the need for effective prevention is stronger than ever. At the same time, preventive strategies and initiatives for battling the crisis are not in short supply. The challenge, however, is to choose the right initiatives.To strengthen collaboration within the research field and to present new research and new prevention initiatives, Nordic organisations and experts met in Oslo, Norway, on 28 September 2022, under the heading of Alcohol and drug prevention in the Nordic countries.The first half of the conference centred around the meaning of substance use today, and why prevention is needed. The latter half of the conference focused on the characteristics and practical implementations of evidence-based prevention initiatives. Both theory and practical examples were presented. This report summarises the main themes and ideas presented at the conference.

Helsinki: Nordic Welfare Centre, 2023. 25p.

By Thomas Grisaffi

Bolivia is a centre for drug production and trafficking and yet it experiences far less drug-related violence than other countries in Latin America that form part of cocaine’s commodity chain. Drawing upon more than three years of ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2005 and 2019, this article presents evidence from the Chapare, a coca-growing and drug processing region in central Bolivia, to consider why this is the case. Building from the literature on embedded economies and the subsistence ethic of peasant communities, the article demonstrates that the drug trade is part of a local moral order that prioritizes kinship, reciprocal relations and community well-being, facilitated by the cultural significance of the coca leaf. This has served to limit possibilities for the violence that is often associated with drug production and trafficking. In addition, coca grower agricultural unions act as a parallel form of governance, providing a framework for the peaceful resolution of disputes and working actively to exclude the state and criminal actors.

Development and Change Volume53, Issue3: 576-599, 2022.

By Elizabeth Eggins, Lorelei Hine, Angela Higginson and Lorraine Mazerolle

Drawing on the Global Policing Database (GPD), this review assesses the impact of supplier arrests and seizures on drug crime, drug use, drug price, drug purity, and drug harm outcomes. Just 13 impact evaluation studies (reported in 18 documents) met inclusion criteria. An evidence and gap map was constructed, showing that research to date relates primarily to drug harms, followed by drug crime and drug price, and that there are significant gaps in the impact evaluation literature. The results of this review demonstrate the limited amount of high-quality scientific evidence that can be used to examine the impact of supplier arrest and seizure on a range of drug-related outcomes.

Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology, 2020. 16p.

By Lorraine Mazerolle, Elizabeth Eggins and Angela Higginson

The Global Policing Database is used to update a 2007 systematic review of the impact of street-level law enforcement interventions on drug crime and drug-related calls-for-service. A total of 26 studies (reported in 29 documents) were eligible for this updated review. Eighteen of the 26 studies reported sufficient data to calculate effect sizes.

We find that, overall, street-level policing approaches are effective in reducing drug crime, particularly those involving partnerships. We also find that geographically targeted law enforcement interventions are more effective in reducing drug crime than standard, unfocused approaches. Approaches that target larger problem areas for intervention are more effective for reducing drug crime (but not calls-for-service) than approaches that focus on micro problem places.

Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology, 2020. 20p.

By Beatriz Magaloni, Gustavo Robles, Aila M. Matanock, Alberto Díaz-Cayeros, Vidal Romero

Why do drug trafficking organizations (DTOs) sometimes prey on the communities in which they operate but sometimes provide assistance to these communities? What explains their strategies of extortion and cooptation toward civil society? Using new survey data from Mexico, including list experiments to elicit responses about potentially illegal behavior, this article measures the prevalence of extortion and assistance among DTOs. In support of our theory, these data show that territorial contestation among rival organizations produces more extortion and, in contrast, DTOs provide more assistance when they have monopoly control over a turf. The article uncovers other factors that also shape DTOs’ strategies toward the population, including the degree of collaboration with the state, leadership stability and DTO organization, and the value and logistics of the local criminal enterprise.

Comparative Political Studies 1–51 © The Author(s) 2019

By Itzel De Haro Lopez

The global increase in the demand for avocados has attracted the attention of rent-seeking criminal organizations in Mexico. As a result, farmers and packing houses have become the targets of drug trafficking organizations (DTOs). This paper aims to answer whether declining drug revenues have motivated cartels to target licit businesses, such as avocado farms, rather than continue specializing in the production and distribution of illicit drugs. To do this, I exploit exogenous variation in the demand for pure heroin in the U.S. between 2011 and 2019. In particular, I use the introduction of Fentanyl in the U.S. as a proxy for the reduction in the demand for pure heroin in Mexico to answer whether this led to an increase in homicides and cartel presence in avocado- and poppy-growing municipalities. Using municipal level data, I show that the decrease in the demand for heroin increased homicide rates (including those of agricultural workers) in avocado-growing municipalities. I find no evidence of higher cartel presence in these municipalities, suggesting that, while DTOs do not seem to be moving into these municipalities, they have become more violent toward civilians. Furthermore, I find that the fall in the demand for heroin led to a decrease in cartel presence and homicide rates in poppy-growing municipalities. Overall, this paper provides evidence of inter-sector spillovers resulting from drug demand changes.

Madison, WI: Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics, University of Wisconsin–Madison: 2022. 58p. Working Paper.

By John Walsh

More than half a century after the advent of a global drug prohibition regime and the launch of the U.S. “war on drugs,” the results have been disastrous for Latin America and the Caribbean, and for the United States itself. Even worse, prohibition’s consequences are exacerbating other grave problems—corruption and organized crime, violence perpetrated with impunity, forest loss and climate change, and displacement and migration—making solutions to these challenges even more difficult to achieve. The Biden administration’s historic embrace of harm reduction represents an enormous, lifesaving advance for U.S. drug policy. But even with harm reduction services, moves to decriminalize drug possession, and shifts underway to legally regulate recreational cannabis, the brunt of drug prohibition remains intact and the drug war rages on in the Americas. The principal victims of government repression in the name of drug control and of the predations of organized crime have always been and continue to be the most impoverished and marginalized communities. At the same time, the illegal drug trade constitutes an economic survival strategy for millions of people in Latin America and around the world—a de facto social safety net of the sort that national elites and governments themselves have proven unwilling or incapable of providing.   

Washington, DC: Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), 2022. 28p.

Karen Duke, Helen Gleeson, Susanne MacGregor, Betsy Thom

This article explores the factors contributing to drug-related deaths in English and Welsh prisons between 2015 and 2020. Based on content analysis of all Prison and Probation Ombudsman ‘other non-natural’ fatal incident investigation reports, descriptive statistics were generated. Qualitative analysis explored the circumstances surrounding deaths and key risk factors. Most deaths were of men, whose mean age was 39 years. Drug toxicity was the main factor in causing death, exacerbated by underlying physical health conditions and risk-taking behaviours. A variety of substances were involved. New psychoactive substances became more important over time. A high proportion had recorded histories of substance use and mental illness. During this period, the prison system was under considerable stress creating dangerous environments for drug-related harm. This study highlights the process of complex interaction between substances used, individual characteristics, situational features and the wider environment in explaining drug-related deaths in prisons. Implications for policy and practice are discussed.

J Community Psychol. 2023;1–22