By J.R. Mailey

Sudan’s current conflict, which erupted in April 2023, is the latest chapter in a story of rival predatory networks competing for control over formal and illicit economies, the information environment and the use of organized violence.

As the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) and Rapid Support Forces (RSF) spread death and destruction across the country, fuelling a humanitarian crisis, their battle is driven by the desire to preserve their vast economic empires and the systems that support them.

This report explores the intricate web of illicit networks, armed conflicts, and the devastating impact on Sudan’s socio-political landscape. It explores how predatory networks commoditize violence, exploit strategic industries, and manipulate state institutions for their gain. From the militarization of the economy to the instrumentalization of criminal markets, this investigation sheds light on the arc of state collapse and the urgent need for comprehensive peacebuilding strategies.

The paper is the first in a series focusing on Sudan, aiming to present an overview about the competition for control of Sudan’s security services, civilian bureaucracy and strategic industries. The following reports will explore the people, institutions, networks and transactions that have underpinned the enduring ecosystem of crime and corruption in Sudan that ultimately gave way to the current civil war.

Geneva, SWIT: Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, 2024. 28p.

By The International Crisis Group Latin America and Caribbean

What’s new? The assassination in July of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse, perpetrated with no apparent resistance from his elite security detail, and a bout of natural disasters weeks later have further destabilised an already fragile Haiti and intensified its humanitarian crisis at a time of extreme insecurity. Why does it matter? Coming amid intersecting political, human rights, economic and humanitarian crises, Moïse’s killing and other recent events have exposed the chronic failings of state authorities and difficulties in ensuring that foreign support is deployed effectively. Growing insecurity is also driving instability and increased migrant flows within and outside the country. What should be done? Funnelling aid to vulnerable people hit by recent natural disasters, preferably through local civil society, is the imperative. International back ing for prosecuting high-level crimes, police reform and support for a broad-based representative and inclusive interim government stand a better chance than a rush to elections of helping restore stability.

Bogotá/New York/Brussels, The International Crisis Group, 30 September 2021 24p.

By United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC); Robert Muggah, et al.

KEY FINDINGS

• Increasingly sophisticated and high-calibre firearms and ammunition are being trafficked into Haiti amid an unprecedented and rapidly deteriorating security situation.

• Haiti remains a trans-shipment country for drugs, primarily cocaine and cannabis, which mostly enter the country via boat or plane, arriving through public, private and informal ports as well as clandestine runways.

• Haiti’s borders are essentially porous, and the challenges of patrolling 1,771 kilometres of coastline and a 392-kilometre land border with the Dominican Republic are overwhelming the capacities of Haiti’s national police, customs, border patrols and coast guard, who are severely under-staffed and under-resourced, a variety of sources with their attendant limitations, including unverified media reports, to take account of recent developments. It opens with a cursory overview of the criminal context in which firearms and drug trafficking are occurring. The second section considers the basic infrastructure that facilitates trafficking, especially seaports, roads and airstrips. Sections three and four examine patterns of trafficking of both firearms and drugs into and out of Haiti. The final section summarizes global, regional and national measures to address related challenges, alongside knowledge gaps warranting deeper investigation. Given the evolving circumstances, any attempt to document firearms and drug trafficking trends in Haiti will be fragmented and partial. Even so, certain tendencies and patterns can be discerned. Very generally, firearms and ammunition typically enter Haiti via land and sea, and drugs usually transit Haiti from seaports, airports and across poorly monitored border points. Most weapons are sourced in the US and make their way to gang members and private residents through intermediaries, often through public and private ports and porous checkpoints. Whether they are interdicted or not, most drugs passing through Haiti are produced in Colombia (cocaine) or Jamaica (cannabis) and shipped directly from source, or pass via Bahamas, Turks and Caicos, and Venezuela. From Haiti they are shipped onward to the Dominican Republic, Western Europe and, primarily, the US. and increasingly targeted by gangs.

• Heavily armed criminal gangs are targeting ports, highways, critical infrastructure, customs offices, police stations, court houses, prisons, businesses and neighbourhoods.

• Virtually every metric of insecurity, from homicide, sexual violence and kidnapping to the killing of police and migration out of the country – is trending upward.

• International, regional and national responses have underscored the importance of increasing support to law enforcement and border management. Comprehensive approaches encompassing investments in community policing, criminal justice reform and anti-corruption measures are crucial to delivering sustainable peace and stability in Haiti.

Haiti is in the grip of multiple, interlocking, and cascading crises. If unattended, there are serious risks of further destabilization from a myriad of increasingly powerful criminal armed groups. The risks of regional spill-over and contagion are widely acknowledged: The United Nations Security Council has repeatedly raised concerns about the country’s “protracted and deteriorating political, economic, security, human rights, humanitarian and food security crises” and “extremely high levels of gang violence and other criminal activities”. 1 A particular preoccupation relates to the contribution of illegal firearms and drug trafficking in fuelling Haiti’s deepening security dilemmas. This assessment provides an overview of the scope, scale and dynamics of firearms and drug trafficking in Haiti, including sources, routes, vectors and destinations. It is based on published and unpublished information and 45 interviews conducted by UNODC with representatives of the Haitian government, bilateral and multilateral agencies, subject matter experts, and Haitian civil society.2 The situation in the country is deteriorating rapidly, and this assessment has drawn upon

Vienna: UNODC, 2023. 47p.

By Insa Koch, Patrick Williams, and Lauren Wroe

Government policies relating to dealers in ‘county lines’ drugs trafficking cases have been welcomed as a departure from punitive approaches to drugs and ‘gang’ policing, in that those on the bottom rung of the drugs economy of heroin and crack cocaine are no longer treated as criminals but as potential victims and ‘modern slaves’ in need of protection. However, our research suggests not so much a radical break with previous modes of policing as that the term ‘county lines’ emerged as a logical extension of the government’s racist and classist language surrounding ‘gangs’, knife crime and youth violence. Policies implemented in the name of safeguarding the vulnerable also act as a gateway for criminalisation not just under drugs laws but also modern slavery legislation. The government’s discovery of, and responses to, ‘county lines’ hinge on a moral crisis in the making, which ultimately deepens the state’s pre-emptive and violent criminalisation of the ‘Black criminal other’ at a time of deep political crisis.

First published online November 15, 2023., Race & Class, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/03063968231201325

By The U.K. Home Office

Purpose - This note provides country of origin information (COI) and analysis of COI for use by Home Office decision makers handling particular types of protection and human rights claims (as set out in the Introduction section). It is not intended to be an exhaustive survey of a particular subject or theme. It is split into 2 parts: (1) an assessment of COI and other evidence; and (2) COI. These are explained in more detail below. Assessment This section analyses the evidence relevant to this note - that is information in the COI section; refugee/human rights laws and policies; and applicable caselaw - by describing this and its inter-relationships, and provides an assessment of, in general, whether one or more of the following applies:

• A person is reasonably likely to face a real risk of persecution or serious harm

• That the general humanitarian situation is so severe that there are substantial grounds for believing that there is a real risk of serious harm because conditions amount to inhuman or degrading treatment as within paragraphs 339C and 339CA(iii) of the Immigration Rules/Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR)

• That the security situation is such that there are substantial grounds for believing there is a real risk of serious harm because there exists a serious and individual threat to a civilian’s life or person by reason of indiscriminate violence in a situation of international or internal armed conflict as within paragraphs 339C and 339CA(iv) of the Immigration Rules

• A person is able to obtain protection from the state (or quasi state bodies)

• A person is reasonably able to relocate within a country or territory

• A claim is likely to justify granting asylum, humanitarian protection or other form of leave, and

• If a claim is refused, it is likely or unlikely to be certifiable as ‘clearly unfounded’ under section 94 of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002. Decision makers must, however, still consider all claims on an individual basis, taking into account each case’s specific facts.

London: Assets Publishing Service, 2022. 84p.

By Emma Louise Blondes, Emma Disley, Shann Corbett, Fook Nederveen, Jirka Taylor, Ilia Gaglio, Antonino Sorrenti, Francesco Calderoni

This study looks at three ‘tools’ that Member States can deploy in the fight against serious and organised crime. First, this study assesses whether the Council Framework Decision 2008/841/JHA – legislation that aims to ensure that all Member States criminalise participation in a criminal organisation – has achieved its objectives, supports effective cooperation to tackle cross-border serious organised crime and is fit for purpose. Second, this study assesses the extent to which the current legislative framework on the use, protection and handling of crown/principal witnesses and collaborators of justice supports effective cooperation to tackle cross-border serious organised crime. Third, this study explores whether Member States have operational and strategic approaches to identify the links between offences that are ‘enablers’ of serious organised crime (money laundering, document fraud, online trade in illicit goods/services, and corruption) and the broader picture of serious organised crime. Based on interviews, an EU-wide survey, workshops and a document review, the study describes the state of play in relation to these topics and outlines possible policy solutions to the address key challenges identified.

Brussels, Belgium: Publications Office of the European Union, and RAND Europe, 2022. 

By Daniel Egel, Gabrielle Tarini, Raymond Kuo, Eric Robinson, Anthony Vassalo

The mystery surrounding the so-called Havana Syndrome — an unexplained illness first experienced by U.S. Department of State personnel stationed in Cuba in late 2016 — illustrates the challenge of mustering a response to a national security threat when the threat, the underlying method, and the actor behind the threat are not understood with certainty. This report explores the applicability of existing concepts for deterrence and compellence using brief case studies. In addition to Havana Syndrome, the authors explore the SolarWinds cyberattack, in which hackers linked to Russian intelligence conducted a massive cyberattack against American companies and government agencies, and the Chinese Communist Party's connections to organized crime syndicates around the world.

The core finding is that few of the standard response options are effective against these types of threats. Without certainty about who is conducting the actions, strategies that rely on threats of punishment, normative taboos, or rallying of international condemnation are largely ineffective. Denial-by-defense strategies are thus likely to be the most effective but may be difficult to design effectively if the method underlying the attacks is poorly understood.

Key Findings

The ability of the United States to respond effectively to a threat is limited when the attribution, nature, and method of the threat are ambiguous.Maintaining this level of ambiguity likely constrains the scale at which U.S. adversaries can deploy these approaches, but the costs the approaches impose can be large.Despite the appeal of other deterrence or punishment strategies, denial-by-defense is likely to be the only approach capable of reducing the efficacy of these threats.

Santa Monica, Ca: RAND, 2023. 20p.

by Laura L. Miller, Dmitry Khodyakov, Joachim O. Hero, Lisa Wagner, Coreen Farris, Katie Feistel, Emily Dao, Julia Rollison, Rosemary Li, Jamie Ryan, et al.

Domestic abuse is among many harmful behaviors of concern to the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) because of its consequences for military personnel, their families, and military readiness. RAND's National Defense Research Institute is conducting a multi-year research effort, requested by Congress in Section 546C of the Fiscal Year 2021 National Defense Authorization Act, to study domestic abuse from a variety of perspectives.

In the first phase of this study, the RAND team focused its work on identifying strategies that can help DoD and the Services prevent domestic abuse among service members and their spouses or partners before it occurs and strategies that could be effective in the military environment for outreach and communication to individuals who might have risk factors for domestic abuse.

The prevention and outreach strategies highlighted in this research were synthesized from recommendations made by 80 experts — domestic abuse survivor experts and advocates, military program or service providers and practitioners, military leaders, and domestic abuse scholars — and a scoping review of relevant literature published in the past two decades.

Key Findings

• Both the expert panel and scoping review results pointed to the need for prevention strategies to address not only individual and relationship risk factors but also the broader social, cultural, and systemic factors, such as social isolation and perceived tolerance of domestic abuse.

• A comprehensive prevention approach would include strategies that fall outside the primary purview of DoD's Family Advocacy Program (FAP) and would require contributions from, for example, the Office of Force Resiliency, the Military Health Agency, training commands, military leaders, community organizations, and military offices tasked with preventing other problematic behaviors.

• Experts cautioned against risk factors being treated as excuses or causal factors for domestic abuse, domestic abuse material becoming too diluted by other content, and non-subject-matter experts addressing sensitive domestic abuse topics.

• Across discussions of strategies, experts noted that existing installation-level staffing, expertise, and resources were insufficient to implement some recommendations. This concern encompassed not only the capacity of FAP but also other potential key actors, such as counselors and medical staff.

• Nearly half of the research studies in this scoping review focused on domestic abuse prevention strategies to educate and teach skills to individuals, couples, and families, and those focused on relationship and individual skills were the most common. Most studies of relationship skills strategies showed a positive impact on reducing the occurrence of domestic abuse.

Recommendations

• Teach safe and healthy relationship skills by developing a military-specific domestic abuse prevention curriculum for service members and their spouses or partners, expanding the types of services available to support individuals and couples struggling with relationship and parenting issues, and addressing abusive leadership behaviors in the workplace and providing guidance on military-appropriate leadership skills that are not well-suited at home.

• Engage influential community members by (1) preparing military leaders to actively participate in prevention activities and conveying the expectation that leaders will participate and (2) engaging peers and survivors in planning, implementing, and assessing domestic abuse prevention education, training, and information awareness campaigns.

• Create protective environments by focusing on spouse and partner supports and community integration to counter isolation and dependency risk factors, and improve prevention by increasing efforts to hold perpetrators convicted of the crime of domestic violence and leaders accountable for their actions or inaction following a domestic violence conviction.

• Strengthen economic supports for families by coordinating and promoting efforts to help relieve economic risk factors for domestic abuse and reduce economic control in relationships.

• Strengthen the prevention system by increasing the number of prevention and education specialists and providers to increase capacity to focus on prevention before domestic abuse occurs and integrating domestic abuse prevention activities within other violence prevention programs to reduce risk factors.

• Measure, monitor, and evaluate prevention activities by collecting data on domestic abuse prevention activities and resources and conduct surveys with service members, spouses or partners, and users of domestic abuse prevention resources.

Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2023. 107p.

by David M. Adamson, Annie Brothers, Sasha Romanosky, Marjory S. Blumenthal, Douglas C. Ligor, Karlyn D. Stanley, Peter Schirmer, Julia Vidal Verástegui

Social media and other sophisticated communications technology have enabled a new kind of crime: cyberstalking. Cyberstalking involves using communications technology in threatening ways to stalk, harass, or share embarrassing information about victims, and it often involves the threat of intimate partner violence. As online platforms and messaging technologies have multiplied, cyberstalking has become more prevalent. Yet the problem has been understudied, and its dynamics are not well known.

In this report, the authors enhance the understanding of cyberstalking by offering the first empirical analysis on federal cyberstalking cases: In particular, they analyze the number of federal cyberstalking cases filed over time, the characteristics of these cases, and the outcomes of these cases. The results of in-depth interviews with prosecutors, law enforcement officials, and victims' advocacy representatives are also presented.

Key Findings

• The number of federally prosecuted cyberstalking cases has grown steadily since 2014, reaching a peak of 80 cases filed in 2019 (then falling slightly in 2020), with 412 total cases filed between 2010 and 2020.

• In the majority of federally prosecuted cyberstalking cases, the victim knew the offender.

• The legal system is underprepared to handle cyberstalking cases: Law enforcement is seldom able to prioritize or allot substantial resources to cyberstalking, and many agents and officers lack training in how to investigate the crime or help victims.

• A major challenge in prosecuting cyberstalking cases involves tying the digital evidence to the offending individual or group because tech-savvy offenders can be sophisticated at hiding digital tracks.

Recommendations

• Update awareness campaigns regarding online safety beyond antiquated notions of "stranger danger," and develop better warnings and indicators of potentially harmful online activities.

• Clarify cyberstalking legal statutes by removing the "intent to harm" clause from the federal cyberstalking law because it unintentionally protects some harmful behaviors.

• Recognize the complicated nature of working with victims and promote ways of improving trust between victims and the criminal justice system.

• Increase resources and information on emerging technology and investigative strategies available to law enforcement.

Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2023.

By Marcos Alan Ferreira, Oliver P. Richmond

This article analyses how criminal governance creates blockages that prevent peace formation in Latin America. Two blockages emerge where criminal governance prevails: criminal structures do not reduce violence and also take advantage of cultural and structural violence; their legitimacy pushes the state away from citizens. Consequently, civil society usually responds in two ways: promoting alternative forms of political praxis against violence; fostering dialogue between political actors and civil society while building broader networks. Our argument shows that local agency has potential competences and the knowledge necessary to address criminal governance discursively, but its capacity to effect structural change is limited in direct terms.

Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding Volume 15, 2021 - Issue 2

By Oluwole Ojewale

This study examines the governance framework for regulating fishing generally in the Republic of the Congo. Specifically, it analyses the drivers and enablers of illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) shark fishing and the networks engaged in the criminal economy. The illicit activities linked to shark fishing and fin trading negatively impact ocean biodiversity, the local and national economies. New ways of thinking are needed for effective responses to IUU shark fishing in the country. Key findings • The illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing of sharks is driven by local and international demand for shark products. It is further enabled by a lack of state capacity to oversee and enforce legislation and control. • Actors in the criminal supply chain of shark products include artisanal fisherfolk, foreign industrial trawlers, middlemen traders from African countries and Asia, and local women. • The exploitation of shark species negatively impacts environmental biodiversity and has disrupted the ecosystem in the Republic of the Congo’s ocean. • Overfishing of sharks is resulting in juvenile catches, especially of species of conservational concern 

ENACT Africa, 2024. 29p.

By Renato De Almeida Arão Galhardi

Historically, Mexicans deported from the United States tend to be overwhelmingly adult men, where the Mexican borderscape of Tijuana is and continues to be the primary site (and sight) where the majority of deported Mexicans are sent to when deported from the United States. Consequently, the semiotic social topography of Tijuana is peopled through the experiences of deportation. How, then, do Mexican deportees negotiate, mediate and articulate their lived experiences of migration? Working with my ethnographic research in Tijuana, during August 2021 and March 2022, I address the ontopological conditioning of living as a deportee in a borderscape such as Tijuana, assessing how their phenomenographic experiences are shaped by the bordering of the Border, and how Mexican deported men are often “unjustly suffering” and enduring “the bare life.” Through discussions on coloniality of Being, I build off Nicolas de Genova’s “border spectacle,” and argue that deportation is better described through its own “spectacle,” the “deportation spectacle,” highlighting how deportees perform and negotiate their agency between the tensions of suffering and resiliency as a consequence of the practices of imposed by deportation. I posit that deportation is not the end of a process, but reshapes migrancy continuity within new constraints, challenges and obstacles. Finally, I conclude by emphasizing the need to recognize misrepresented, misinterpreted and misdiagnosed populations such as deportees in borderscapes such as Tijuana, in order to better attend to the challenges that deportation creates. (Working Paper)

Toronto: Toronto Metropolitan Centre for Immigration and Settlement (TMCIS) and the CERC in Migration and Integration 2023. 23p.

By KPMG Australia  

The Modern Slavery Act 2018 (Cth) set a new standard for modern slavery disclosures in Australia. The Act required entities with a consolidated annual revenue of $100 million or more to disclose their efforts in identifying and addressing modern slavery risks within their operations and supply chain. The objective of the Act was to provide a framework to assist with proactively and effectively addressing modern slavery. 

The 2023 independent review of the Modern Slavery Act, commissioned by the Australian Government (Review), found that the Act had not resulted in meaningful change for people affected by modern slavery.  The review made 30 recommendations to strengthen modern slavery obligations for reporting entities, including the introduction of a positive requirement to conduct due diligence and the introduction of a federal Anti-Slavery Commissioner. The Government has highlighted that many of the Review’s recommendations are in line with key election commitments and introduced a Bill in November 2023 to establish an Anti-Slavery Commissioner. 

KPMG Australia, 2024. 31p.

By Lucía Dammert and Mary Fran T. Malone
In a region plagued by high rates of violent crime and repressive policing practices, Nicara-
gua has earned a reputation as exceptional. Despite poverty, inequality, and a historical legacy

 of political violence and repression, Nicaragua has defied regional trends. It has regis-
tered low rates of violent crime while deploying policing practices that emphasized preven-
tion over repression. April 2018 marked an end to this exceptionalism. Police attacked anti-
government protestors, and launched a sustained campaign against dissidents that continues
to the present day. While the Nicaraguan police had long cultivated a reputation as commu-
nity-oriented and non-repressive, they appeared to quickly change into a repressive, political
force. In this paper, we trace how the Nicaraguan police have evolved over time. Relying
upon longitudinal data from 1996-2019 from the Latin American Public Opinion Project, we
trace the process of police reform in Nicaragua, and analyse public attitudes towards the
police as these reforms unfolded. 

European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies / Revista Europea de Estudios Latinoamericanos y del Caribe, No. 110 (July-December 2020), pp. 79-99 (21 pages)

By Wilson Hernández, Lucía Dammert, and Lilian Kanashiro

Latin America is a violent region where fear of crime is well spread but still not fully understood. Using multilevel methods for a large and subnational representative household survey (N = 271,022), we assess the determinants of fear of crime in Peru, the country with the highest fear of crime and crime victimization in the region. Our results show that body-aimed victimization (physical or sexual abuse from a member of their household, and sexual offenses) is the strongest driver of fear of crime, even higher than armed victimization. Moreover, safety measures based on social capital are negatively related to fear of crime, suggesting that they are palliatives rather than real protections. Finally, our study shows that people in a higher socioeconomic status are more likely to fear more because they have more (resources) to lose. Policy implications address Latin America as a whole and punitive policies against crime are common in the region, while evidence-based decisions are scarce.  Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology 2020, Vol. 53(4) 515–535

By  Mary Fran T. Malone & Lucia Dammert 

 Over the past two decades, most Latin American countries have struggled to create or reform their police forces while simultaneously confronting sharp increases in violent crime. Reformers have gravitated towards community-oriented policing practices, which aim to rely on preventive tactics and build closer ties between police officers and the public. The implementation of such policing practices can be daunting, particularly for countries with authoritarian histories of policing and/or military repression. When confronting rising crime rates, some new democracies are tempted to revert to authoritarian policing practices and circumvent constitutional safeguards on human rights and civil liberties. Still, some countries have resisted such temptations, and seriously invested in community-oriented policing practices. However, do these communityoriented policing practices lead citizens to trust the police more? Or does public trust depend more heavily on results – particularly in countries undergoing crises in public security? To answer these questions, we analyze public trust in the police in 17 Latin American countries through a series of regression analyses of the Latin American Public Opinion Project’s (LAPOP) 2016–2017 survey data. We find that community-oriented policing practices tend to garner more public trust, but that perceptions of police effectiveness are equally important.  

POLICING AND SOCIETY, 2020.  

By Alejandra Luneke, Lucia Dammert,  Liza Zuñiga  

Crime increase in Latin America has occurred in parallel with a change in police policy in territories. Along with the processes of militarization and police repression, strategies of co-production have been inspired by community policing, but the articulation of both in urban margins has been understudied. Our hypothesis affirms the coexistence and ambivalence of both social assistance and abusive practices against the city's poor. Qualitative methods conducted in Santiago, Chile, show police policy involves both dimensions, which are strongly rooted in identity elements of the military tradition of the region's police forces.

Dilemas, Rev. Estud. Conflito Controle Soc. – Rio de Janeiro – Vol. 15 – no 1 – JAN-ABR 2022 – pp. 1-26  

By Renato de Almeida Arão Galhardi 

  Historically, Mexicans deported from the United States tend to be overwhelmingly adult men, where the Mexican borderscape of Tijuana is and continues to be the primary site (and sight) where the majority of deported Mexicans are sent to when deported from the United States. Consequently, the semiotic social topography of Tijuana is peopled through the experiences of deportation. How, then, do Mexican deportees negotiate, mediate and articulate their lived experiences of migration? Working with my ethnographic research in Tijuana, during August 2021 and March 2022, I address the ontopological conditioning of living as a deportee in a borderscape such as Tijuana, assessing how their phenomenographic experiences are shaped by the bordering of the Border, and how Mexican deported men are often “unjustly suffering” and enduring “the bare life.” Through discussions on coloniality of Being, I build off Nicolas de Genova’s “border spectacle,” and argue that deportation is better described through its own “spectacle,” the “deportation spectacle,” highlighting how deportees perform and negotiate their agency between the tensions of suffering and resiliency as a consequence of the practices of imposed by deportation. I posit that deportation is not the end of a process, but reshapes migrancy continuity within new constraints, challenges and obstacles. Finally, I conclude by emphasizing the need to recognize misrepresented, misinterpreted and misdiagnosed populations such as deportees in borderscapes such as Tijuana, in order to better attend to the challenges that deportation creates.   

Working Paper No. 2023/07 September 2023  

Toronto: Metropolitan University, 2023. 23p.

By Min-Taec Kim and George Karystianis (UNSW)
AIM To construct a measure of coercive control behaviours from free-text narratives recorded by the NSW Police Force for each domestic violence event, and to assess how useful this measure might be in detecting coercive control behaviours when combined with existing measures and/ or predicting which events are followed by violence within 12 months. METHOD We developed a text-mining system to capture a (non-exhaustive) set of behaviours that could be used to exert coercive control. Our text mining system consisted of a set of rules and dictionaries, with our definition of ‘coercive control behaviours’ drawn from Stark (2007). We concentrated on behaviours that were not already well captured by fixed fields in the police system. We applied this text mining system across all police narratives of domestic violence events recorded between 1 January 2009 and 31 March 2020, and used this data to construct our measure of coercive control behaviour. We then compared the incidence of coercive control behaviours using our measure against existing incident categories (where they exist). Finally, we estimated a gradient boosted decision tree (xgboost) model three times (once with standard predictors, once with just our coercive control measure, and once with both sets of variables included) and compared the performance of each model. This allowed us to estimate the contribution of our measure for improving the prediction of future violence. RESULTS There were 852,162 behaviours extracted by the text-mining system across 526,787 domestic violence events, with 57% of these events having at least one coercive control behaviour detected and 8% having three or more distinct subcategories of coercive control behaviours. These events were associated with 223,645 unique persons of interest. Our text mining system agreed with the pre-existing police incident categories (where they exist) in 80 to 99% of cases, with the text mining approach identifying an additional 30 to 60% of events that were not identified using the police incident categories, depending on the behaviour. The inclusion of the text mining variables did not improve the performance of our predictive model. CONCLUSION Our text mining system successfully extracted coercive control behaviours from police narratives, allowing us to identify how often these events are recorded in police narratives and supplement existing police categories of DV behaviours. Use of our measure in conjunction with existing incident categories significantly expands our ability to identify coercive control behaviours, however it does not improve our ability to predict which events are followed by further domestic violence.  

Crime and Justice Bulletin No. CJB260. No. 26o
Sydney:  NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research. 2023. 28p.

By Stephanie Ramsey, Min-Taec Kim and Jackie Fitzgerald  
AIM This paper describes the significant rise in incidents of domestic violence-related stalking and intimidation recorded in NSW over the 10 years to 2021 and their passage through the criminal justice system. METHOD Characteristics of stalking/intimidation incidents from 2012 to 2021 were collated from the NSW Police and Criminal Courts databases. We focus on those flagged as ‘domestic violencerelated’. Additional information about these incidents was obtained through text mining 12,676 police domestic violence-related stalking/intimidation narratives. RESULTS Key findings: • Domestic violence-related stalking/intimidation incidents recorded by NSW Police increased 110 per cent from 2012 to 2021 (from 8,120 to 17,063). • Police legal proceedings for domestic violence-related stalking/intimidation incidents increased 163.8 per cent from 2012 to 2021 (from 4,469 to 11,789). • Domestic violence-related ‘stalking/intimidation’ typically involves threats, intimidation and verbal abuse (not stalking). • Court appearances including a domestic violence-related stalking/intimidation charge increased 63.8 percent from 2014 to 2021 (from 3,562 to 5,836). • Courts consider domestic violence-related stalking/intimidation seriously, with one in eight offenders sentenced to a custodial penalty. The number of custodial sentences increased 96.1% from 2014 to 2021 (from 311 to 610). • The increase in stalking/intimidation has had a pronounced effect on Aboriginal people who accounted for 28% of court finalisations and 52% of custodial penalties in 2021. The number of Aboriginal people receiving a custodial penalty increased 101% in eight years from 158 in 2014 to 317 in 2021. CONCLUSION The substantial increase in stalking/intimidation offences in the criminal justice system seems more likely to reflect changes in the police response to domestic violence rather than a change in criminal behaviour. 
  (Bureau Brief No. 159).
 Sydney: NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, 2022. 19p.