By Julia Kupper and Reid Meloy

This pilot study examines the correlation of online and on-the-ground behaviours of three lone-actor terrorists prior to their intended and planned attacks on soft targets in North America and Europe: the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter, the Buffalo supermarket shooter and the Bratislava bar shooter. The activities were examined with the definition of the proximal warning indicator energy burst from the Terrorist Radicalization Assessment Protocol (TRAP-18), originally defined as an acceleration in frequency or variety of preparatory behaviours related to the target. An extensive quantitative and qualitative assessment of primary and secondary sources was conducted, including raw data from different tech platforms (Gab, Discord and Twitter–now X) and open-source materials, such as criminal complaints, superseding indictments and court trial transcripts. Preliminary findings of this small sample suggest an inverse relationship between the online and offline behaviours across all three perpetrators. The average point of time between the decision to attack and the actual attack was five months, with an elevation of digital activities in the three months leading up to the incident, along with some indications of offline planning. In the week prior to the event, social media activity decreased–specifically on the day before the acts of violence with two subjects going completely dark–while terrestrial preparations increased. On the actual day of the incident, all assailants accelerated their tactical on-the-ground actions and resurfaced in the online sphere to publish their final messages in the minutes or hours prior to the attack. It appears that the energy burst behaviours in the digital sphere and the offline actions can be measured in both frequency and variety. Operational implications of this negative correlation are suggested for intelligence analysts, counter-terrorism investigators and threat assessors.

London: The Global Network on Extremism and Technology (GNET), 2023. 36p.

By Nafees Hamid and Cristina Ariza

Question: Are those radicalised offline or online more of a threat? Which group is harder to detect, more successful in completing attacks, and more lethal when they do so? Is the pattern different for youth versus older perpetrators and for men versus women? This report investigates these questions. Database: We created a database containing 439 perpetrators involved in 245 attacks between 1 January 2014 and 1 January 2021. It includes every publicly known completed attack and an extensive sampling of thwarted attacks. Attacks were all jihadist‑linked in eight Western countries: Australia, Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States. Type of radicalisation: In our database, radicalisation primarily happens offline; over half the individuals in our database had been radicalised via offline networks. Success and lethality: Individuals who were radicalised offline were three times more likely than individuals radicalised online to complete an attack successfully. Those radicalised offline are 18 times more lethal than individuals in the online category. Those radicalised online are almost eight times more likely to fail than to succeed. Group attacks: Individuals who were radicalised offline are almost three times more likely to attack or plot in groups than individuals radicalised online. Success of group attacks: While groups were more likely to be thwarted by the police than to succeed (regardless of how individuals had been radicalised), successful groups of people radicalised offline were more lethal than their lone actor counterparts (15%). Family and friends: Some 87% of those with radicalised friends and 74% with radicalised relatives plotted or attacked together. Foreign fighters: Foreign terrorist fighters (FTFs), who were mostly radicalised offline, have the same success rate as non‑FTFs. But success rate increases if they have spent more than a year in a terrorist training location. Age: Online radicalisation is on the rise for young people (born from the 2000s onwards), although most individuals, including young people, are still radicalised offline. Gender: Women appear to be more likely to have been radicalised online. Bottom line: Those radicalised offline are greater in number, more successful in completing attacks and more deadly than those radicalised online.  

London: International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation, King’s College London. 2022. 40p.

By Marcial A. G. Suarez, Luís Antônio Francisco de Souza, Carlos Henrique Aguiar Serra

This paper discusses the deadly use of violence as a public security agenda, focusing on police lethality and military interventions. Through a literature review to understanding concepts – such as “war,” for example – used in public security policy agendas, the study seeks to frame the notion of political violence, mainly referring to the policies designed to combat violence in Brazil. The objective is to problematize the public security policy based on the idea of confrontation, which adopts the logic of war and the notion of “enemy”. The paper is divided into three parts. The first is a conceptual approach to violence and war, and the second is the analysis of the dynamic of deadly use of force. Finally, the third part is a contextual analysis of violence in Rio de Janeiro, its characteristics, and central actors, using official statistics on violence in the region.

Brazil: Oñati Socio-Legal Series, 2021. 22p.

By Reynell Badillo-Sarmiento & Luis Fernando Trejos-Rosero 

This article explores how organized criminal organizations exercise criminal governance over other organized and non-organized criminals using public messaging, lethal and extra-lethal violence. Drawing on extensive fieldwork, over 350 press reports, and an original database on inter-criminal lethal violence, we show, in line with recent literature on organized crime, that while these organizations use violence to build their reputation as actors willing to use force, they also provide benefits to other criminals such as financing and protection from state and competitors. This article contributes to the literature on criminal governance by elaborating on the mechanisms shown in recent work and by detailing an unexplored case study in Barranquilla (Colombia).

Colombia: Trends in Organized Crime, 2023. 27p.

By Jakiyah Bradley

In recognition of Black History Month, this TMI brief examines the ramifications of attempts by anti-truth groups to remove or whitewash our nation’s history and legacy of racism from K-12 public school classrooms. The Legal Defense Fund (LDF) fights tirelessly for safe, inclusive, and high-quality education, and we believe that proper education requires an honest, accurate, and comprehensive understanding of our past to create a more just and inclusive future. The current efforts to silence discussions on race and its intersections with inequalities based on sexuality and gender are not the first attempts to distort and erase U.S. history. This is a centuries old war on truth that continues to evolve. Today’s attacks on truth are born out of a broader history where a small minority tries to use their power and privilege to eclipse racial justice progress. One way in which truth is attacked is through controlling the narratives told in children’s history textbooks, a practice dating back to the U.S. Civil War.

New York: NAACP Legal Defense Fund , Thurgood Marshall Institute, 2023, 12p

By Rebecca A. Delfino

Deepfakes—audiovisual recordings created using artificial intelligence (AI) technology to believably map one person’s movements and words onto another—are ubiquitous. They have permeated societal and civic spaces from entertainment, news, and social media to politics. And now deepfakes are invading the courts, threatening our justice system’s truth-seeking function. Ways deepfakes could infect a court proceeding run the gamut and include parties fabricating evidence to win a civil action, government actors wrongfully securing criminal convictions, and lawyers purposely exploiting a lay jury’s suspicions about evidence. As deepfake technology improves and it becomes harder to tell what is real, juries may start questioning the authenticity of properly admitted evidence, which in turn may have a corrosive effect on the justice system. No evidentiary procedure explicitly governs the presentation of deepfake evidence in court. The existing legal standards governing the authentication of evidence are inadequate because they were developed before the advent of deepfake technology. As a result, they do not solve the urgent problem of how to determine when an audiovisual image is fake and when it is not. Although legal scholarship and the popular media have addressed certain facets of deepfakes in the last several years, there has been no commentary on the procedural aspects of deepfake evidence in court. Absent from the discussion is who gets to decide whether a deepfake is authentic. This Article addresses the matters that prior academic scholarship on deepfakes obscures. It is the first to propose a new addition to the Federal Rules of Evidence reflecting a novel reallocation of fact-determining responsibilities from the jury to the judge, treating the question of deepfake authenticity as one for the court to decide as an expanded gatekeeping function under the Rules. The challenges of deepfakes—problems of proof, the “deepfake defense,” and juror skepticism—can be best addressed by amending the Rules for authenticating digital audiovisual evidence, instructing the jury on its use of that evidence, and limiting counsel’s efforts to exploit the existence of deepfakes.

Hastings Law Journal, 2023. 57p.

By Taurus Myhand

The proliferation of deepfake videos has resulted in rapid improvements in the technology used to create them. Although the use of fake videos and images are not new, advances in artificial intelligence have made deepfakes easier to make and harder to detect. Basic human perception is no longer sufficient to detect deepfakes. Yet, under the current construction of the Federal Rules of Evidence, trials judges are expected to do just that. Trial judges face a daunting challenge when applying the current evidence authentication standards to video evidence in this new reality of widely available deepfake videos. This article examines the gatekeeping role trial judges must perform in light of the unique challenges posed by deepfake video evidence. This article further examines why the jury instruction approach and the rule change approaches proposed by other scholars are insufficient to combat the grave threat of false video evidence. This article concludes with a discussion of the affidavit of forensic analysis approach, a robust response to the authentication challenges posed by deepfakes. The AFA approach preserves most of the current construction of the Federal Rules of Evidence while reviving the gatekeeping role of the trial judge in determining the admissibility of video evidence. The AFA will provide the trial judges with the tools necessary to detect and exclude deepfake videos without leaving an everlasting taint on the juries that would have otherwise seen the falsified videos.

Widener Law Review, 2023. 19p.

By Michele Goodwin

On August 31, 2017, The New York Times published a provocative news article, “The Incarcerated Women Who Fight California’s Wildfires.” California is particularly known for its wildfires.1 The dry-air, hot-weather conditions that persist much of the year and limited rainfall create the conditions that make pockets of the state ripe for devastating wildfires. Strong winds, often referred to as the Diablo (or the devil), radiate in the northern part of the state, exacerbating the already vulnerable conditions. The Santa Ana winds do the same in southern counties. Fighting these fires can be a matter of life or death. In fact, Shawna Lynn Jones died in 2016, only hours after battling a fire in Southern California. She was nearly done with a three-year sentence—barely two months remained of her incarceration. However, the night before, at 3 a.m., she and other women had been called to put out a raging fire. Tyquesha Brown recalls that the fire that night required traversing a steep hillside of loose rocks and soil.2 This made their task even more challenging. Another woman told a reporter that Jones struggled that night—the weight of her gear and chain  made it difficult for her to establish footing to hike up the hill where the fire blazed.3 However, she and the other women of Crew 13-3 performed their duties, holding back the fire so that it did not “jump the line.”4 By doing so, they saved expensive properties in Malibu. However, Jones was dead by 10 a.m. the next morning.5 For “less than $2 an hour,” female inmates like Shawna Jones and Tyquesha Brown “work their bodies to the breaking point” with this dangerous work.6 The women trudge heavy chains, saws, medical supplies, safety gear, and various other equipment into burning hillsides surrounded by intense flames. On occasion, they may arrive “ahead of any aerial support or local fire trucks,”7 leaving the prisons in the peak of night, when it is pitch black, arriving before dawn to the color of bright flames and intense heat. Sometimes the women are called upon to “set the line,” meaning they clear “potential fuel from a six-foot-wide stretch of ground” between the source of the fire (or whatever is burning) and the land or property in need of protection.8 They dig trenches, moving toward the fire with tools in hand, keeping about ten feet apart from each other while calling out conditions.9 The women cut wood, clearing it before the flames lick at its brittle brush. After, they scrape or shovel—all in syncopation—while clouds of smoke envelope them. For protection, thin bandanas or yellow handkerchiefs cover their mouths. They operate in a frightening rhythm of sorts: saw, hook, shovel, and rake charred earth, trees, or whatever remains from the blazing fire. To the naked eye, the women could appear to represent progress. For too long, state, federal, and local agencies excluded women from professions that demanded the service of their bodies at the front lines of anything other than childbearing, motherhood, and domestic duties. Women waged legal battles to become firefighters and police officers.10 Thus, a glance at the women battling California’s fires might convey a message of hope and that the only battles left are the fires themselves—and not the persistent claims of institutional and private discrimination,11 such as colleagues urinating on their beds,12 sexual harassment,13 and retaliation for performing their jobs well.

New York: Cornell Law Review, 2019.

By Tasha Perdue a, Robert Carlson b, Raminta Daniulaityte c, Sydney M. Silverstein b, Ricky N. Bluthenthal d, Avelardo Valdez e, Alice Cepeda

The purpose of this study is to describe opioid initiation within each of the three waves from the perspective of people who use illicit opioids, with a focus on emerging pathways into fentanyl use. We noted supply-side changes as influencing trajectories in all three waves. However, we also noted differences in the experiences of prescription opioid and heroin initiation, with these trajectories influenced by pharmacological effects, pain management, curiosity, intergenerational use, pricing, and peers. In comparison, most participants were unaware that they were initiating fentanyl, and many reported overdosing with their first use of fentanyl. We identified a trajectory into fentanyl with limited to no prior heroin use among a few participants.

Social Science & Medicine Volume 340. January 2024, 11pg

By Peter Leasure and Hunter M. Boehme

This study examined whether public perceptions of police traffic stops and searches varied when participants were randomly assigned to receive various traffic stop and search statistics derived from research. We utilized an experimental information provision survey sent to head of households in South Carolina with an associated email address. Respondents were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: 1) a condition where respondents were presented statistics on contraband hit rates (i.e., rate at which contraband is found during a stop), 2) a condition where respondents were presented statistics on racial disparities in traffic stops, or 3) the control condition. Results from roughly 4,600 respondents indicated that research on traffic stops and searches could impact public opinion regarding whether the police should conduct more stops and searches. Statistically significant differences were found with the contraband versus the racial disparity conditions and with the racial disparity versus control conditions. Looking at the overall probabilities (without regard to the p-values for the differences), respondents who received the racial disparity condition were the least likely to agree that police should conduct more traffic stops and searches, while respondents who received the contraband condition were most likely to agree that police should conduct more traffic stops and searches. However, it should be noted that probabilities for all conditions ranged from approximately 32% to 38%, meaning that most respondents did not agree that more traffic stops and searches should be conducted.

Drug Enforcement and Policy Center. February 2024, 20pg

By Peter Leasure

Nearly all states, including Ohio, have laws increasing punishments for drug trafficking in or near schools, though there are long-standing concerns for how these laws function. With a novel inquiry of school leaders, the current study explores whether Ohio schools displayed signage that was viewable by the general public stating that drug traffickers could face enhanced penalties if the conduct occurred on or near school premises. The current study also sought to gauge school principal perception about the deterrence effectiveness of such signs and whether enhanced penalty laws should explicitly require that individuals know they are on or near school premises to receive a penalty enhancement. The results of this survey of Ohio school principals suggested that the vast majority of Ohio schools lack any signage seeking to notify individuals of enhanced penalties for drug trafficking or that generally seek to deter drug trafficking. The results also showed that a majority of Ohio principals believed that the Ohio Revised Code should require that individuals know they are on or near a school's premises to receive increased penalties for drug trafficking (e.g., selling drugs) on or near school premises. Policy recommendations informed by the above findings are discussed.

Drug Enforcement and Policy Center. March 2024, 11pg

By Elizabeth Simpson

Technology-facilitated violence (TFV) such as doxing, swatting, or cyberstalking is a cybercrime that harms victims via use of the internet and mobile technology. This publication is a resource that will assist state, local, tribal, and territorial (SLTT) agencies in addressing these issues. It begins with an overview of TFV crimes, including definitions and examples of offenses. It also presents tools to identify and measure the problem at a local level, as well as strategies for crime prevention and crime investigation. Finally, it includes data and resources to illustrate the complexity of cybercrimes and violence against vulnerable populations, with a focus on victim-centered response.Washington DC: Office of Community-Oriented Policing Services, 2024. 40p.

Edited by Pablo Baisotti

New Global Cities in Latin America and Asia: Welcome to the Twenty-First Century proposes new visions of global cities and regions historically considered “secondary” in the international context. The arguments are not only based on material progress made by these metropolises, but also on the growing social difficulties experienced (e.g., organized crime, drug trafficking, slums, economic inequalities). The book illustrates the growth of cities according to these problems arising from the modernity of the new century, comparing Latin American and Asian cities. This book analyzes the complex relationships within cities through an interdisciplinary approach, complementing other research and challenging orthodox views on global cities. At the same time, the book provides new theoretical and methodological tools to understand the progress of “Third World” cities and the way of understanding “globality” in the 21st century by confronting the traditional views with which global cities were appreciated since the 1980s. Pablo Baisotti brings together researchers from various fields who provide new interpretative keys to certain cities in Latin America and Asia.

Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2022. 364p.

By Dalia Ghanem 

In Algeria, state formation remains an evolving process, as evidenced by the situation in the country’s northeastern border regions. With Algerian officials in these areas permitting smuggling of petrol and certain other commodities over the border with Tunisia and smugglers weeding out security threats even as they go about their illicit trade, the two ostensibly adversarial parties complement each other. This unusual relationship furthers the intrusion of the state into citizens’ livelihoods even as it manipulates state authority.

Key Themes

• The interplay between law enforcement and smugglers calls into question much of the conventional wisdom regarding centralized authority in a modern unitary state. In Algeria, smuggling has emerged as an integral part of the (ongoing) process of state formation.

• State neglect and a shortage of jobs have kept most localities in Algeria’s northeastern “borderlands” poor and underdeveloped. As a result, smuggling has taken root, and for some families it is a career bequeathed from one generation to the next.

• Long tolerated by law enforcement officials, cross-border smuggling has over time created a parallel economy. Today, it accounts for most trade between Algeria and Tunisia.

Findings

• For Algerian borderland communities, smuggling contraband into and from Tunisia is a job prospect at once justifiable and lucrative. Smugglers themselves view the border not as the end of their country and the beginning of another, but as an artificially erected barrier that it is necessary to circumvent.

• From the perspective of local authorities, smuggling functions as a safety valve that relieves some of the economic pressure felt by the inhabitants of Algeria’s neglected eastern provinces. Moreover, smugglers enhance the security services’ efforts to keep the dreaded triple threat of drugs, weapons, and jihadis at bay.

• In the immediate sense, the tacit alliance forged between smugglers and local authorities blurs the distinction between legal and illegal and erases points along the border between Algeria and Tunisia. In the larger picture, it grants otherwise marginal actors, whether shadowy smugglers or lowly border officials, the ability to circumvent state policy in a manner both organized and sustained.

Washington DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2020. 23p.

By Manne Gerell, Joakim Sturup, Mia-Maria Magnusson, Kim Nilvall, Ardavan Khoshnood & Amir Rostami

Gun violence is a serious issue in many countries across the globe. It has been shown that there is an elevated risk for a further shooting nearby within a short time span of a shooting incident, so-called near-repeat patterning. The present study presents new evidence on near-repeat patterning in Sweden, with a focus on neighbourhoods which the police have labelled as ‘vulnerable’–deprived neighbourhoods where criminal networks have a large impact on local communities. Such neighbourhoods tend to have open drug markets, and to have high levels of gun violence. The present paper analyses the association of open drug markets and vulnerable neighbourhoods with gun violence and near-repeat patterning of gun violence in two Swedish cities. Our findings suggest that gun violence is strongly concentrated on open drug markets in vulnerable neighbourhoods, and that those locations in addition exhibit high risks for repeat shootings after an initial shooting event. We propose that the police can use this knowledge to improve practices to prevent or disrupt gun violence.
Journal of Policing, Intelligence and Counter Terrorism, ISSN 1833-5330, E-ISSN 2159-5364, Vol. 16, no 3, p. 233-244

Hernan Mondani a,b,c,* , Amir Rostami  

In this study we investigate organized crime by studying the degree of criminal organization. We use population-level register data on criminal suspicions between 2011 and 2016 to analyze the territoriality of Swedish street gangs in terms of geographical mobility, their collaboration in crime through their co-offending network's clustering and community structure, and their crime versatility. Although Swedish street gangs exhibit varying degrees of geographical mobility and criminal collaboration, overall, they have limited reach along these dimensions, characterized by low clustering and limited crime specialization. Violence seems to become a necessary tool only when a gang reaches a certain degree of organization. By unbraiding criminal mobility and its association with other organizational elements such as criminal collaboration in different settings, we provide insights into the structure and dynamics of criminal organizations and contribute to a richer understanding and conceptualization of how crime is organized.

  Social Science Research 103: 2022.

By Jack Mark Whittaker, Matthew Edwards, Cassandra Cross & Mark Button

  Online shopping has now become very common, with consumers increasingly opting to purchase products on the World Wide Web instead of visiting traditional “bricks and mortar” stores, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. This has, however, also provided significant opportunities for offenders to abuse the inherent trust- based nature of online shopping, whereby consumers typically do not see the products physically prior to purchasing them. As such, this article sets out to examine the actions and behaviors that individuals take to prevent online shopping fraud and what, if any, discrepancy exists between prevention messaging and consumer behavior. To accomplish this, the study utilizes secondary survey data (n = 3478 respondents) obtained from a private-sector initiative called ScamAdviser. The results find that many respondents do not use appropriate behaviors to reduce their risk when shopping online and that furthermore there is reason to believe that consumers are not served well by the online safety advice that they are given. The paper argues that there is scope to increase guardianship through better prevention advice being communicated to online shoppers.
Victims & Offenders 

An International Journal of Evidence-based Research, Policy, and Practice

Volume 18, 2023 - Issue 7: Special Thematic Issue: Scams, Cons, Frauds, and Deceptions; Guest Editors: Sean Byrne and James Byrne

By Steven Kemp, David Buil-Gil, Asier Moneva, Fernando Miró-Llinares, and Nacho Díaz-Castaño

  The unprecedented changes in routine activities brought about by COVID-19 and the associated lockdown measures contributed to a reduction in opportunities for predatory crimes in outdoor physical spaces, while people spent more time connected to the internet, and opportunities for cybercrime and fraud increased. This article applies time-series analysis to historical data on cybercrime and fraud reported to Action Fraud in the United Kingdom to examine whether any potential increases are beyond normal crime variability. Furthermore, the discrepancies between fraud types and individual and organizational victims are analyzed. The results show that while both total cybercrime and total fraud increased beyond predicted levels, the changes in victimization were not homogeneous across fraud types and victims. The implications of these findings on how changes in routine activities during COVID-19 influenced cybercrime and fraud opportunities are discussed in relation to policy, practice, and academic de  

 Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice 2021, Vol. 37(4) 480 –501

By Europol

  Due to their intrusive nature, financial and economic crimes are among the most challenging criminal activities to investigate and tackle. A fragmented landscape sees different criminal actors interact with one another, making criminal operations more complex and tangled. Key players typically remain anonymous and operate independently from established criminal structures, often from criminal safe havens. Meanwhile, their techniques and tools advance rapidly. Some recent investigations, including those exploring encrypted communications among criminals, gave unprecedented insight into the system that sustains the finances of organised crime. While law enforcement is untangling the complexity of this underground financial ecosystem, information sharing, investigative focus on key criminal actors, development of technical knowledge and expertise, and public-private partnerships are essential tools for winning the fight against financial and economic crimes. The European Financial and Economic Crime Threat Assessment describes the complexities of financial and economic crimes, and the criminal ecosystem that virtually sustains and links all other criminal activities. The report analyses all financial and economic crimes affecting the EU, such as money laundering, corruption, fraud, intellectual property crime, and commodity and currency counterfeiting. It also illustrates the power of asset recovery in the fight against financial and economic crimes. The analytical findings of this report rely on a combination of operational insights and strategic intelligence contributed to Europol by EU Member States and Europol’s partners, who provided crucial information regarding the criminals’ business models. The report is intended to capture the pervasiveness and destructiveness of financial and economic crimes affecting the EU, and to support all relevant stakeholders in untangling the large variety of financial and economic crimes.   

Publications Office of the European Union, Luxembourg., 2023. 58p.

By Cassandra Cross ,  Matthew Edwards , Mark Button , Jack Whittaker

Online fraud includes dating or romance scams, deceptive sales of products and services, dishonest investment schemes, lottery or inheritance scams, working from home scams or lottery fraud involving false prize draws or sweepstakes. These frauds are costly not only in their financial impact on business and government, but also because of the detrimental impact they have on victims. To gain a better understanding of online consumer fraud, the Australian Institute of Criminology worked with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to compare a matched sample of victims and non-victims. This study aimed to identify and quantify the factors that make some individuals more vulnerable to consumer fraud than others. It was found that greater familiarity with online activities resulted in a reduced likelihood of victimisation and that victims were more likely to have used money wire transfers and electronic funds transfers to send money in response to scam invitations than other forms of payment. These findings support the development of targeted awareness-raising campaigns focusing on the online behaviour most likely to lead to fraud victimisation. It offers policymakers and consumer affairs organisations opportunities to better target fraud prevention and education initiatives.

Research Report no. 16. 

Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology, 2019. 98p.