By Nanzi Zheng, Karen M. Abram,  Leah J. Welty; et alDavid A

Importance  Youths, especially Black and Hispanic males, are disproportionately affected by firearm violence. Yet, no epidemiologic studies have examined the incidence rates of nonfatal firearm injury and firearm mortality in those who may be at greatest risk—youths who have been involved with the juvenile justice system.

Objectives  To examine nonfatal firearm injury and firearm mortality in youths involved with the juvenile justice system and to compare incidence rates of firearm mortality with the general population.

Design, Setting, and Participants  The Northwestern Juvenile Project is a 25-year prospective longitudinal cohort study of 1829 youths after juvenile detention in Chicago, Illinois. Youths were randomly sampled by strata (sex, race and ethnicity, age, and legal status [juvenile or adult court]) at intake from the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center. Participants were interviewed at baseline (November 1995 to June 1998) and reinterviewed as many as 13 times over 16 years, through February 2015. Official records on mortality were collected through December 2020. Data analysis was conducted from November 2018 to August 2022.

Main Outcomes and Measures  Participants self-reported nonfatal firearm injuries. Firearm deaths were identified from county and state records and collateral reports. Data on firearm deaths in the general population were obtained from the Illinois Department of Public Health. Population counts were obtained from the US census.

Results  The baseline sample of 1829 participants included 1172 (64.1%) males and 657 (35.9%) females; 1005 (54.9%) Black, 524 (28.6%) Hispanic, 296 (16.2%) non-Hispanic White, and 4 (0.2%) from other racial and ethnic groups (mean [SD] age, 14.9 [1.4] years). Sixteen years after detention, more than one-quarter of Black (156 of 575 [27.1%]) and Hispanic (103 of 387 [26.6%]) males had been injured or killed by firearms. Males had 13.6 (95% CI, 8.6-21.6) times the rate of firearm injury or mortality than females. Twenty-five years after the study began, 88 participants (4.8%) had been killed by a firearm. Compared with the Cook County general population, most demographic groups in the sample had significantly higher rates of firearm mortality (eg, rate ratio for males, 2.8; 95% CI, 2.0-3.9; for females: 6.5; 95% CI, 3.0-14.1; for Black males, 2.5; 95% CI, 1.7-3.7; for Hispanic males, 9.6; 95% CI, 6.2-15.0; for non-Hispanic White males, 23.0; 95% CI, 11.7-45.5).

Conclusions and Relevance  This is the first study to examine the incidence of nonfatal firearm injury and firearm mortality in youths who have been involved with the juvenile justice system. Reducing firearm injury and mortality in high-risk youths and young adults requires a multidisciplinary approach involving legal professionals, health care professionals, educators, street outreach workers, and public health researchers.

JAMA Netw Open. 2023;6(4):e238902. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.8902

By The Anti-Defamation League Center on Extremism

Every year, individuals with ties to different extreme causes and movements kill people in the United States; the ADL Center on Extremism (COE) tracks these murders. Extremists regularly commit murders in the service of their ideology, to further a group or gang they may belong to, or even while engaging in traditional, non-ideological criminal activities.

In 2023, domestic extremists killed at least 17 people in the U.S., in seven separate incidents. This represents a sharp decrease from the 27 extremist-related murders ADL has documented for 2022—which itself was a decrease from the 35 identified in 2021. It continues a trend of fewer extremist-related killings after a five-year span of 47-79 extremist-related murders per year (2015-2019). One reason for the trend is the decrease in recent years of extremist-related killings by domestic Islamist extremists and left-wing extremists.

The 2023 murder totals include two extremist-related shootings sprees, both by white supremacists, which together accounted for 11 of the 17 deaths. A third shooting spree, also by an apparent white supremacist, wounded several people but luckily did not result in fatalities.

All the extremist-related murders in 2023 were committed by right-wing extremists of various kinds, with 15 of the 17 killings involving perpetrators or accomplices with white supremacist connections. This is the second year in a row that right-wing extremists have been connected to all identified extremist-related killings.

Two of the incidents from 2023 involved women playing some role in the killing or its aftermath. This report includes a special section that examines the role played by women in deadly extremist violence in the United States by analyzing 50 incidents from the past 20 years in which women were involved in some fashion in extremist-related killings

New York: ADL, 2024. 36p.

By Julia Deeb-Swihart

Human trafficking is a serious crime that continues to plague the United States. With the rise of computing technologies, the internet has become one of the main mediums through which this crime is facilitated. Fortunately, these online activities leave traces which are invaluable to law enforcement agencies trying to stop human trafficking. However, identifying and intervening with these cases is still a challenging task. The sheer volume of online activity makes it difficult for law enforcement to efficiently identify any potential leads. To compound this issue, traffickers are constantly changing their techniques online to evade detection. Thus, there is a need for tools to efficiently sift through all this online data and narrow down the number of potential leads that a law enforcement agency can deal with. While some tools and prior research do exist for this purpose, none of these tools adequately address law enforcement user needs for information visualizations and spatiotemporal analysis. Thus to address these gaps, this thesis contributes an empirical study of technology and human trafficking. Through in-depth qualitative interviews, systemic literature analysis, and a user-centered design study, this research outlines the challenges and design considerations for developing sociotechnical tools for anti-trafficking efforts. This work further contributes to the greater understanding of the prosecution efforts within the anti-trafficking domain and concludes with the development of a visual analytics prototype that incorporates these design considerations.

Dissertation. Atlanta: Georgia Institute of Technology, 2022.

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.

By Courtney Semisch

This publication provides data on the broad variety of economic crime sentenced under §2B1.1.  The Commission undertook a project to systematically identify and classify the myriad of economic crimes sentenced under §2B1.1 using offenders' statutes of conviction and offense conduct. The Commission used this two-step methodology to assign the 6,068 offenders sentenced under §2B1.1 in fiscal year 2017 to one of 29 specific types of economic crime. This publication provides, for the first time, data from this new project as well as a brief description of the study's methodology.

Washington, DC: United States Sentencing Commission, 2019. 87p.

By Courtney Semisch

For the first time, this report provides in-depth criminal history information about federal economic crime offenders, combining the most recently available data from two United States Sentencing Commission projects. Key findings are that the application of guideline criminal history provisions differed among the different types of economic crime offenders. Also, The extent of prior convictions differed among the different types of economic crime offenders. Federal economic crime offenders did not “specialize” in economic crime. The severity of criminal history differed for offenders in the specific types of economic crime. Only about one-quarter of federal economic crime offenders with prior convictions were not assigned criminal history points under the guidelines.

Washington, DC: United States Sentencing Commission, 2020. 56p.

By Tracey Kyckelhahn, Tiffany Choi

This study expands on prior Commission research by examining the geographic mobility of federal offenders. For this report, mobility is defined as having convictions in multiple states, including the location of the conviction for the instant offense. This report adds to the existing literature on offender criminal history in two important ways. First, the report provides information on how mobile federal offenders are, as measured by the number of offenders with convictions in multiple states. Second, the report provides information on the proportion of offenders with convictions in states other than the state in which the offender was convicted for the instant offense. The report also examines the degree to which out-of-state convictions in offenders’ criminal histories contributed to their criminal history score and their Criminal History Category.

Washington, DC: United States Sentencing Commission, 2020.  24p.

By Harjeev Kour Sudan, Andy Man Yeung Tai, Jane Kim, and Reinhard Michael Krausz

Introduction: The Dark Web is a subsection of the Internet only accessible through specific search engines, making it impossible to trace users. Due to extensive anonymity, the drug trade on the Dark Web makes regulation complicated. We sought to uncover the scope of the online drug trade on the Dark Web and the impact it may have on the dynamics of global drug trafficking.

Methods: We conducted a literature review to elucidate the availability and distribution of drugs on the Dark Web based on data reported in existing literature (n = 14) between September 2012 and June 2019. We simultaneously collected data about substances and listings from Dark Web cryptomarkets (n = 13) active between August 2022 and January 2023. Data from the literature review and the Dark Web scrape were combined to draw trends in the chronological availability and distribution of drugs between 2012 and 2023.

Results: The data collected from 13 cryptomarkets between late 2022 and early 2023 showed a relative change in substance distribution compared to 2012–2019, with a decrease in prescription drugs (from >20% to <5%) and a doubling of opioid listings (from 5.5% to 9.25%), while no major changes were observed on average during 2012–2019 according to literature.

Conclusions: The Dark Web warrants more attention in the analysis of the global drug trade. Understanding Dark Web drug markets can inform targeted interventions and strategies to reduce drug-related harms, while ongoing research is necessary to anticipate and respond to future changes in the landscape of the illicit drug trade.

Drug Science, Policy and Law Volume 9 January-December 2023

By Scott W. Duxbury and Dana L. Haynie

Although economic sociology emphasizes the role of social networks for shaping economic action, little research has examined how network governance structures affect prices in the unregulated and high-risk social context of online criminal trade. We consider how over-embeddedness—a state of excessive interconnectedness among market actors—arises from endogenous trade relations to shape prices in illegal online markets with aggregate consequences for short-term gross illegal revenue. Drawing on transaction-level data on 16 847 illegal drug transactions over 14months of trade in a ‘darknet’ drug market, we assess how repeated exchanges and closure in buyer– vendor trade networks nonlinearly influence prices and short-term gross revenue from illegal drug trade. Using a series of panel models, we find that increases in closure and repeated exchange raise prices until a threshold is reached upon which prices and gross monthly revenue begin to decline as networks become over-embedded. Findings provide insight into the network determinants of prices and gross monthly revenue in illegal online drug trade and illustrate how network structure shapes prices in criminal markets, even in anonymous trade environments.

Socio-Economic Review, 2023, Vol. 21, No. 1, 25–50

By Ojasi Gopikrishna

What are the economics of the cyber drug trade that is rampant across the globe? What are the impacts that an illicit online drug trade can have on the economy? How does the economy take into consideration the unreported transactions on the dark side of the internet and what are the positive and negative implications of a widespread trade like this in these globalizing times? This research paper aims to analyze various data and information to find and conclude how the darknet drug trade has had significant economic impact on the international financial sector. This paper also elaborates on why the black market is highly prevalent in the current times and what are the ill-effects of Darknet, in particular, drug trade on the Darknet. The analysis of economic consequences of unreported dealings is also taken into consideration and elaborated on. The paper sheds light on the bleak and disturbing statistics of involvement of various countries in the online drug ring marketplace with countries like the United States, India and Turkey dealing heavily in the illegal Darknet drug markets. A statistical analysis to determine the economic calculations of the drug trade is depicted and conclusions about the economical structure of the dark net drug trade and markets and its impact through the times is elaborated upon. The ill-effects of the Darknet drug trade are highlighted and conclusions drawn in the paper depict the fluctuating condition of the online illegal drug trade market.

Unpublished paper, 2022.

By Andrew Scourfield, Catherine Flick, Jack Ross, David M. Wood, Natalie Thurtle, Darryl Stellmach & Paul I. Dargan

Changes in legislation have affected supply routes of new psychoactive substances such as synthetic cannabinoids with evidence of supply over the darknet. We identified darknet drug markets using an index database and Tor Browser to access markets. We identified SC in product listings using a custom-programmed script. We collected data at bimonthly intervals (August 2016–April 2017). Eleven darknet markets listed SC for sale, the largest number from China, UK, US, Netherlands, and Germany. Formulations available were high purity powder/crystal, smoking preparations and vape preparations. The top five listed compounds from China across the time points were FUB-AMB, ABD-FUBINACA, 5F-NPB-22, MAB-CHMINACA, and NM-2201. 5F-CUMYL4CN-PINACA was unavailable at early time points but emerged during the study. Cost of high purity formulations from China ranged from 1.3 to 3.1 Euro per gram for quantities 1000 g. Europe and North America accounted for 99% smoking preparations predominantly in small packages (<50 g). SC are widely available on the darknet with availability changing over time. High purity formulations are predominantly available from China in quantities up to kilograms with price per gram reducing with increased quantity. Small packages of ready-made smoking mixtures are available from Europe and North America.

Toxicology Communications, 3:1, 7-15, DOI: 10.1080/24734306.2018.1563739 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.10 , 2019.

By Alexandra Karden; Julian Strizek

Over the last decade, drug sales through cryptomarkets located on the so-called darknet have received increasing attention. This paper considers how web surveys might be used to provide insights concerning those people who purchase drugs on cryptomarkets. First, it analyses data from the European Web Survey on Drugs (EWSD), with a view to identifying differences between respondents who buy drugs on cryptomarkets and those who acquire drugs from other sources. The study shows that people using cryptomarkets as a usual source of supply were a small group of users in most participating countries, but that proportions differ significantly, and that buyers were more likely to be male and consume more substances on average. Second, the sampling of web survey respondents on the darknet is discussed based on a sampling strategy tested in Austria, highlighting the challenges and opportunities involved in undertaking survey recruitment on the darknet. The paper highlights the importance of building trust, establishing credibility and guaranteeing anonymity, since awareness of privacy issues is seemingly higher among darknet users than surface web users. By doing so, the authors show how people who buy drugs on cryptomarkets might be reached to improve their representation in future web surveys for drug data collection.

Lisbon: European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction. 2022. 9p.

By Mark Tunick

In an age of smartphones, Facebook and YouTube, privacy may seem to be a norm of the past. This book addresses ethical and legal questions that arise when media technologies are used to give individuals unwanted attention. Drawing from a broad range of cases within the US, UK, Australia, Europe, and elsewhere, Mark Tunick asks whether privacy interests can ever be weightier than society’s interest in free speech and access to information. Taking a comparative and interdisciplinary approach, and drawing on the work of political theorist Jeremy Waldron concerning toleration, the book argues that we can still have a legitimate interest in controlling the extent to which information about us is disseminated. The book begins by exploring why privacy and free speech are valuable, before developing a framework for weighing these conflicting values.　By taking up key cases in the US and Europe, and the debate about a ‘right to be forgotten’, Tunick discusses the potential costs of limiting free speech, and points to legal remedies and other ways to develop new social attitudes to privacy in an age of instant information sharing. This book will be of great interest to students of privacy law, legal ethics, internet governance and media law in general.

Abington, Oxon, UK; New York: Routledge, 2015. 229p.

By Amber Evans, Strategy & Insight Manager | Fernanda Reynoso-Serna, Analyst | Freya Smith, Analyst | Dr Ellie Brown, Head of Strategy | Sophie Davis

Most people are more worried about being affected by online fraud than other crimes, such as knife crime, burglary and sexual offences, according to a new large-scale survey – which also highlights the emotional impact of being an online fraud victim. The research, funded by the Dawes Trust, was based on a nationally representative sample of over 3,313 adults across England and Wales as part of a survey conducted by data organisation WALR. The vast majority of those polled, 92%, said online fraud was a very big or quite big problem in the UK. When asked what crimes they were most worried about being affected by, 55% said online fraud, 44% burglary and 47% knife crime. The poll also found that younger people (aged 18-34) were most likely to be affected by online fraud, with 32% reporting having been a victim in the last twelve months compared to 16% of over-35s. However, half of those questioned believed the elderly were most at risk. Of those who had been victims of online fraud: 20% said their physical health had suffered, 32% reported a psychological impact, 42% were affected financially, 47% experienced an emotional impact, including feeling embarrassed, angry or ashamed. 23% of all victims said they had experienced anxiety, 12% experienced disturbed sleep and 11% experienced depression as a result of the online fraud. The survey also shows that just over half of victims reported the fraud to either the police or Action Fraud. Victims were more likely to contact their bank (41%) than to go to the police (32%) or Action Fraud (28%), the UK’s national fraud reporting centre.

London: Crest Advisory, 2023. 32p.

By Chad Whelan, David Bright, and James Martin

The concept of organised cybercrime has been the subject of much debate over the last decade. Many researchers who have applied scholarly definitions of organised crime to cyber-criminal groups have concluded that such groups are not “organised criminal groups” and do not engage in “organised crime”. This paper adopts a different perspective to argue that certain cyber-criminal groups involved in ransomware can and should be considered organised crime if a more contemporary and flexible framework for conceptualising organised crime is adopted. We make this argument using three primary domains of organised crime first described by von Lampe: criminal activities, offender social structures, and extra-legal governance. We narrow in on the concepts of violence and extra-legal governance in particular as they have been interpreted to hold significant differences for criminal groups operating in physical and digital domains. The paper argues that it is time to move on from criminological debates regarding whether organised cybercrime can exist to focus on the many rich questions that researchers can take from organised crime scholarship and apply to cyber-criminal groups. We put forward a reconceptualisation of organised cybercrime towards this end.

Journal of Criminology, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/26338076231199793, Preprint 2023.

By Jonathan Lusthaus, Jaap van Oss, and Philipp Amann

The relative glut of data on cybercriminal forums has led to a growing understanding of the functioning of these virtual marketplaces. But with a focus on illicit online trading, less attention has been paid to the structures of groups that carry out cybercrimes in an operational sense. In economic parlance, some such groups may be known as ‘firms’. This concept has been a significant part of the literature on more traditional forms of organised crime, but is not widely discussed in the cybercrime discourse. The focus of this article is, by way of a case study of the Gozi malware group, to explore the applicability of the concept of firms to the novel environment of cybercrime.

European Journal of Criminology, 20(5), 1701-1718. https://doi.org/10.1177/14773708221077615

By John Aloysius, Ankur Arora, Viswanath Venkatesh

Purpose: Retailers are implementing technology-enabled mobile checkout processes in their stores to improve service quality, decrease labor costs and gain operational efficiency. These new checkout processes have increased customer convenience primarily by providing them autonomy in sales transactions in that store employee interventions play a reduced role. However, this autonomy has the unintended consequence of altering the checks and balances inherent in a traditional employee-assisted checkout process. Retailers, already grappling with shoplifting, with an estimated annual cost of billions of dollars, fear that the problem may be exacerbated by mobile checkout and concomitant customer autonomy. The purpose of this paper is to understand the effect of mobile checkout processes in retail stores on cybercrime in the form of shoplifting enabled by a technology transformed the retail environment. Design/methodology/approach The authors conducted an online survey of a US sample recruited from a crowdsourced platform. The authors test a research model that aims to understand the factors that influence the intention to shoplift in three different mobile checkout settings − namely, smartphone checkout settings, store-provided mobile device checkout settings, and employee-assisted mobile checkout settings − and compare it with a traditional fixed location checkout setting. Findings: The authors found that, in a smartphone checkout setting, intention to shoplift was driven by experiential beliefs and peer influence, and experiential beliefs and peer influence had a stronger effect for prospective shoplifters when compared to experienced shoplifters; in a store-provided mobile devices checkout setting, experiential beliefs had a negative effect on shoplifters’ intention to shoplift and the effect was weaker for prospective shoplifters when compared to experienced shoplifters. The results also indicated that in an employee-assisted mobile checkout setting, intention to shoplift was driven by experiential beliefs and peer influence, and experiential beliefs had a stronger effect for prospective shoplifters when compared to experienced shoplifters. Originality/value: This study is the among the first, if not first, to examine shoplifters’ intention to shoplift in mobile checkout settings. We provide insights into how those who may not have considered shoplifting in less favorable criminogenic settings may change their behavior due to the autonomy provided by mobile checkout settings and also provide an understanding of the shoplifting intention for both prospective and experienced shoplifters in different mobile checkout settings.

Information Technology and People, April 2019, 32(5):1234-1261

By  Anna Sergi

This project involved qualitative primary research into criminality within seaports, by observing how ports, as microcosmic realities run through formal and informal relationships and have specific security vulnerabilities, which facilitate different types of illegal or deviant behaviours. Research has been carried out in two European ports (Liverpool and Genoa) and three non-European ones (Montreal, New York and Melbourne), which are either targets of, or transit zones for, criminal activities and criminal networks.  The main aim of this comparative research project was to improve policy understanding of how the complex relationships within ports act as conduits or facilitators in how criminal networks operate in the territory of and around the ports. With specific attention to the changing geopolitical conditions surrounding the port of Liverpool within the Brexit scenario, the study has looked at what could be learned in the British experience from international ones both in terms of security and in terms of transnational risk assessments. 

London: University of Essex, 2020.    230p.

By David Lewis

Despite Ukraine's ongoing counter-offensive, in September 2023 Russia still controlled around 17% of Ukrainian territory, an area roughly the size of Denmark. Russia's occupation of these Ukrainian territories relied primarily on repression and violence, but economic levers also played an important role in consolidating Russian rule. This paper details Russia's illicit economic activity in the occupied territories and calls for more international attention to this aspect of Russia's invasion. Since Russia occupied large parts of south-eastern Ukraine in March 2022, it has worked rapidly to incorporate these regions into Russia's economic and financial system. Key elements in this 'economic occupation' include: • The seizure of many Ukrainian businesses and assets. The occupation authorities 'nationalised' many companies and re-registered them as Russian businesses with new management. • The imposition of the Russian currency, financial and tax system, and the forced closure of Ukrainian banks. • The forcible takeover of farms or pressure on farmers to cooperate with the occupation authorities. Russian officials oversaw the illegal export of Ukrainian grain from the occupied territories. • The reconstruction of cities such as Mariupol, the city destroyed by Russian forces in spring 2022, in a multi-billion-dollar government programme that is profiting well-connected Russian companies. These acts were all illegal under Ukrainian law and some may constitute potential war crimes under international law. There should be more attention paid to these economic crimes internationally – with clear warnings for Russian business about the consequences under international law of seizing Ukrainian businesses and assets. Although international sanctions have targeted many officials in the Russian occupation structures, the approach should be more coordinated and systematic to raise the costs of Russian occupation. More international attention now would also assist in eventual reintegration and reconstruction of these regions. For example, a database of business seizures and economic crimes in the occupied territories would help to resolve legal issues and ensure business restitution in the aftermath of the war, while also serving as a potential basis for sanctions and eventual prosecutions. The economic aspects of occupation also raise complex questions of transitional justice for those who lived under Russian occupation. Ukrainian society is discussing how to define and respond to acts of collaboration in the occupied territories. International experience could help to inform legal and political solutions that meet the needs of justice but also seek to unite post-war Ukrainian society  

SOC ACE Research Paper No 20. 

Birmingham, UK: University of Birmingham , 2023. 43p.