Edited by Henrietta Wilson, Olamie Samuel, and Dan Plesch

How did a journalist find out who was responsible for bombing hospitals in Syria from his desk in New York? How can South Sudanese monitors safely track and detail the weapons in their communities and make sure that global audiences take notice? How do researchers in London coordinate worldwide work uncovering global corruption? What are policymakers, lawyers, and intelligence agencies doing to keep up with and make use of these activities? In the age of Google, threats to human security are being tracked in completely new ways. Human rights abuses, political violence, nuclear weapons, corruption, radicalization, and conflict are all being monitored, analyzed, and documented. Although open source investigations are neither easy to conduct nor straightforward to apply, with diligence and effort, societies, agencies, and individuals have the potential to use them to strengthen security. This interdisciplinary book presents 18 original chapters by prize-winning practitioners, experts, and rising stars, detailing what open source investigations are and how they are carried out, and examining the opportunities and challenges they present to global transparency, accountability, and justice. It is essential reading for current and future digital investigators, journalists, and scholars of global governance, international relations, and humanitarian law, as well as anyone interested in the possibilities and dangers of this new field.

Singapore: World Scientific Publishing Europe Ltd, 2024. 

By Asian Racing Federation

This Handbook highlights the risks to the integrity of horse racing and other sports from illegal betting-related sports corruption and provides practical guidance to administrators and other key stakeholders for mitigating against and combatting such corruption. Practical guidance in the Handbook includes an overview of major issues around illegal betting, how to conduct bet monitoring and betting analysis, intelligence gathering and analysis, how to conduct illegal betting investigations, and how to engage stakeholders to combat illegal betting and related corruption.

Hong Kong: Asian Racing Federation, 2020. 130p.

By Australia. Parliament. Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs References Committee

This inquiry was established to investigate the higher-than-population average statistics of missing and murdered First Nations women and children in Australia. The final report of the inquiry is organized by the following chapters.

Chapter 1 - Introduction
Chapter 2 - Current data
Chapter 3 - Causes of and factors driving violence
Chapter 4 - Police culture and practices
Chapter 5 - Acknowledging and responding to the crisis
Chapter 6 - Commonwealth government leadership
Chapter 7 - Conclusions and Recommendations

The report notes from the outset that every year, First Nations women and children are murdered or reported missing throughout Australia. The statistics are alarming and all Australians should rightly be concerned and outraged. It is important to remember that the statistics represent real people—sisters, mothers, aunties, grandmothers, children, grandchildren, siblings, and cousins—who were and continue to be loved. It is time to acknowledge and end the violence.

The report makes 10 recommendations including:

• that federal, state, and territory governments codesign with First Nations families and communities, and on behalf of all Australians, a culturally appropriate and nationally significant way in which to recognize and remember the First Nations women and children who have been murdered or disappeared.

• to review existing police practices in each jurisdiction, consider the learnings from each jurisdiction, and aim to implement and harmonize best police practices across Australia

• that the Australian government empowers First Nations women to lead the design and implementation of services and supports that address violence in their communities reflecting the principles contained in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People.

• and further recommendations relating to: trauma-informed healing, including the recommendations made by the Healing Foundation and White Ribbon Australia; implementation of a violence prevention framework for men and boys; development of Aboriginal community-based support programs for men; and initiatives that promote a sense of individual and community responsibility for the issue of male violence against Aboriginal women.

Canberra: Australian Parliament, 2024.227p.

By Alex Armand, Paul Atwell, Joseph F. Gomes, Giuseppe Musillo, Yannik Schenk

We document the influence of media narratives in counteracting racial prejudice by exploring the emergence of socially inclusive narratives in post-WWII U.S. media. We exploit an unprecedented experiment that created exogenous exposure to these narratives: in 1946, amid widespread racial divisions, the popular children’s radio series The Adventures of Superman suddenly decided to promote equality by reframing its fictional stories. We find that exposure to these narratives significantly contributed to the advancement of civil rights in subsequent decades. Specifically, we uncover increased support for civil rights and civil rights organizations, deeper racial assimilation, and more progressive political positions.

Unpublished paper

By Michael T. Light

Leveraging the Computerized Criminal History System (CCH), which provides case processing information for all arrests recorded in Texas between 2011 and 2018, this study explores the relationship between unauthorized immigration, crime, and recidivism. The first section compares the criminality of undocumented immigrants to legal immigrants and native-born U.S. citizens between 2012 and 2018 in Texas. The second section establishes the foundational empirics for general criminological literature on the immigration-homicide nexus. Key findings include: 1) Immigrants generally exhibit lower rates of serious violent crime in California and Texas. This is true for overall rates of violence and homicide. 2) Violent crime rates among immigrants in California are lower than among immigrants in Texas, and the relative gap between native and foreign-born individuals is considerably larger in California. 3) In both states, there is substantial heterogeneity in the immigration-homicide relationship by race/ethnicity and national origin. Generally speaking, immigrants from Asian countries have especially low rates of homicide offending. 4) Relative to the U.S.-born population, the criminal histories of immigrants arrested for violent crimes are both less extensive and less severe. Section 3 answers important questions about the extent to which immigrant criminality changed during the Trump administration. The authors find no evidence, descriptive or otherwise, to suggest that the transition from the Obama administration to the Trump administration had a meaningful effect on immigrant criminality, whether measured as violence, property, drug, or traffic offenses. Section 4 examines recidivism among the undocumented population and details the data limitations that caution against strong conclusions on this issue. Most notably, criminal justice databases rarely have information as to whether the defendant was eventually deported. As a result, researchers do not know if an individual restrains from recidivating or is simply removed from the country and is thus no longer at risk of recidivating.

Madison WI: University of Wisconsin 2022. 79p.

By Astghik Mavisakalyan, Vladimir Otrachshenko, Olga Popova:

This paper examines the dynamic impact of natural disasters on the individual acceptance of a physical form of intimate partner violence (IPV). Based on a global sample of individual survey data and historical geo-referenced records of natural disasters at a subnational level, we show that natural disasters have long-lasting effects on IPV acceptance, increasing it in the short- (0-4 years) and medium- (10-14 years) run. Furthermore, heterogeneity analyses reveal that lower educated people are affected more relative to higher educated people, men are affected more than women, as are older cohorts relative to younger cohorts, while there are no differences between the effects of disasters on IPV attitudes of people with high and low income. Drawing on theories of IPV, we also uncover that likely mechanisms that may link disasters to the increased acceptance of IPV are psychological distress and economic insecurity fears.

IZA DP No. 17172 Bonn, Institute of Labor Economics, 2024.

By Alex Armand, Paul Atwell, Joseph Gomes, Giuseppe Musillo, Yannik Schenk

This paper investigates the role of mass media in shaping racial tolerance and advancing civil rights in the post-WWII United States. We study the first attempt in the history of mass media to use a radio broadcast targeted at children to promote an inclusive American society. In 1946, amid persistent racial divisions, the popular radio series The Adventures of Superman launched Operation Intolerance, a sequence of new episodes promoting equality, rejecting racial discrimination, and exposing the KKK's bigotry. Using digitized historical data on U.S. radio stations and state-of-the-art radio propagation models, we compute geographic exposure to the broadcasts. Exploiting exogenous exposure to the broadcasts, we employ a cohort study design to analyze individual-level data from 1964 to 1980–a crucial period for civil rights activism and legislation in the United States. We find lasting impacts on those exposed as children, including increased support for civil rights, improved interracial relations, and more progressive political attitudes. These effects translate into greater alignment with the Civil Rights Movement, evidenced by increased support for protests and diminished institutional trust, and further manifested by reduced participation in the Vietnam War. Additionally, county-level panel data illustrate how areas covered by the broadcast in 1946 evolve towards less segregationist attitudes, a lower presence of the KKK, and an increase in civil rights activism and prominence in discourse.

Bonn: Institute of Labor Economics, 2024.

By Institute for Strategic Dialogue

From mainstream to extreme, from far left to far right, and large platforms to fringe ecosystems, antisemitism on social media is a universal challenge. For many years and across different events, geographies, and languages, ISD has sought to understand, track, and analyze online antisemitism. This document aims to synthesize ISD’s findings, providing a summary of relevant literature as a tool for informing the work of ISD’s Coalition to Counter Online Antisemitism.

London: Institute for Strategic Dialogue, 2024. 17p.

By The Institute for Strategic Dialogue

In the last year, a loose network of actors from Bordeaux to Toulouse to Paris targeted drag events aimed at all-ages audiences for protest, harassment, and abuse. The behaviors and dynamics observed among these actors echo and mirror those observed in other parts of the world, particularly the US. While anti-drag action in France remains marginal compared to the activity witnessed in the US, UK, and Australia, it nonetheless emerged as a phenomenon from a standing start in 2022. March 2023 saw the nation’s first in-person protest at an all-ages drag event in Paris, and two months later a far-right group protested with banners and a smoke bomb outside of a library hosting a drag queen story hour (DQSH) for children in the small village of Saint-Senoux. A seemingly unlikely group of actors is leading this charge. The French anti-gender movement, which was at the heart of the movement against equal marriage in the early 2010s, has been joined by far-right parties and politicians, extremist groups, COVID-19 skeptics, and assorted conspiracy theorists. All are seeking to cancel drag events through tactics of protest, petitions, harassment, misinformation, and intimidation. This briefing provides an in-depth analysis of five cases of anti-drug mobilization in the period December 2022 – May 2023, using a combination of ethnographic methods and social media data analysis to examine activity related to each case. The first was in Bordeaux, the second in Lamballe-Armor, the third in Toulouse, the fourth in Paris, and the fifth in Saint-Senoux. While the earlier campaigns largely manifested online with limited in-person mobilization, the two most recent events saw increased offline activity. This report aims to summarise the key narratives, tactics, and actors involved in anti-drag action in France, and how these mobilizations are tied to anti-LGBTQ+ activity in France more broadly. However, given the small number of instances of anti-drug activism in France, the conclusions of this report are indicative and tentative.

London: Institute for Strategic Dialogue, 2024. 24p.

By The  Institute for Strategic Dialogue

The rapidly evolving online extremist landscape in New Zealand means new strategies for intervention are needed. This playbook – developed in consultation with New Zealand’s rich tapestry of civil society, communities, and practitioners engaged in prevention – offers practical frameworks for projects promoting positive online interventions to tackle online extremism. Based on an analysis of the rapidly evolving landscape of online extremism, the playbook takes stock of established and emerging intervention models. It brings together domestic and international best practices and suggests potential avenues for new positive intervention approaches. Finally, it reflects on practical considerations for programming, including monitoring and evaluation, safeguarding, operational security, and ethical considerations. This playbook examines the shift from violent groups to online extremism, highlighting digital literacy, audience communication, and proactive engagement with at-risk individuals.

London: Institute for Strategic Dialogue, 2024. 37p.

By Clara Martiny, Terra Rolfe, Bilen Zerie, Aoife Gallagher and Helena Schwertheim

ISD sought to understand how Online Gender-Based Violence (OGBV) affects South African women, focusing on the experience of women politicians, candidates, and political figures during one of South Africa’s most historic general elections in May 2024. ISD analysts used a combination of qualitative and quantitative analytical methods, interviews with experts, and knowledge drawn from online and in-person workshops. Specifically, three online case studies looked at abusive content, gendered disinformation, and harassment targeting women politicians on TikTok, X (formerly Twitter), and Facebook. ISD’s analysis found that South African women in politics often face abuse online in the form of replies or comments to their posts or content about them. Misogynistic actors tend to target their physical attributes, intelligence, and ability to lead. They also often engage with gendered disinformation narratives that sexualize or objectify women. While the legislative frameworks in South Africa are progressive and comprehensive, enforcement is difficult and many women are unaware of the resources available to them. Social media platforms also have policies that address OGBV and gendered disinformation but their enforcement is weak, especially outside of English language content.

Amman Berlin London Paris Washington D C: Institute for Strategic Dialogue , 2024. 37p.

 Edited by Joseph B. Walther and Ronald E. Rice

This book explores the social forces among and between online aggressors that affect the expression and perpetration of online hate. Its chapters illustrate how patterns of interactive social behavior reinforce, magnify, or modify this expression. It also considers the characteristics of social media that facilitate social interactions that promote hate and facilitate relationships among haters. Bringing together a range of international experts and covering an array of themes, including woman abuse, antisemitism, pornography, radicalization, and extreme political youth movements, this book examines the specific social factors and processes that facilitate these forms of hate and proposes new approaches for explaining them. Cutting-edge, interdisciplinary, and authoritative, this book will be of interest to sociologists, criminologists, and scholars of media, communication, and computational social science alike, as well as those engaged with hate crime, hate speech, social media, and online social networks.

London; New York: Routledge, 2025.

By Joe Caluori, Violette Gadenne, Elen Kirk, and Beth Mooney

The National Crime Agency published its first intelligence assessment of county lines in 2015.  Ever since, there has been a growing interest in county lines from the media, public policy, and the world of research. Crest Advisory has published research that has contributed to the body of evidence, among other things, on the socio-economic determinants of individual vulnerability to exploitation, shining light on ways to mitigate those risks. This project, however, takes a different approach, by honing in on the specific role played by technology in county lines. In this report, ‘technology’ is used to refer to electronic or digital devices or services predominantly those used for personal communication. By including devices and services in our definition we incorporate both physical hardware such as mobile phones or smartwatches, and software such as applications provided by social media platforms. Technology plays an ever-increasingly important role in our day-to-day lives. Data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show that the proportion of adults who use the internet daily has increased from 35 percent of the UK population in 2006 to 89 percent in 2020. The nature of this usage has also changed dramatically, with social media increasing in influence significantly over the years. In 2021 TikTok, a social media platform designed for sharing short videos, overtook Google for the first time as the most popular site worldwide.5 Just as modern technologies are now an essential aspect of modern society, technology is intrinsic to the county lines model. The mobile phone, or the ‘line’ it facilitates, enables communications between those running the lines, those distributing the drugs, and those buying and using the drugs. Current approaches to disrupting county lines rely heavily on mobile communications technology (e.g. cell site analysis, or digital forensics gained from burner phones, personal smartphones, or other digital devices). However, the role of technology as an enabler of child criminal exploitation (CCE) is both under-represented and poorly understood in published research and literature. The Government has announced an intention to “cut the head off the snake” of county 6 lines. To understand what is required to do this, it is necessary to explore the dynamics of the country lines model, as well as examine its weaknesses. There is an acute need to better understand and monitor technological evolutions within county lines and analyze their implications for CCE. Only by understanding and responding to the role of technology can the Government and law enforcement leaders produce an effective national plan to ‘cut the head off the snake’ of county lines. Recent public policy developments have put the role technology plays in enabling crime in sharp focus. Social media and online platforms have seen perhaps the most dramatic rise in interest. Even though at the time this report is being drafted, the Online Safety Bill has been put on hold, much ink has been spilled on its value, its potential impact on privacy, and what should be included in such legislation. High-profile cases, such as the events leading to the 6th January attack on the United States Capitol in 2021, have shown the potential harm that can be caused by online communication. More generally, as we become more and more dependent on tech for all aspects of our lives, it is crucial that law enforcement keeps pace with its development concerning crime

London: Crest Advisory, 2022. 37p.

By John D. Elliott

Femicide is the most extreme form of violence against women. Around the world, as in the Western Hemisphere, the rate of femicide remains stubbornly high. Up-to-date statistics are hard to find, but the Global Burden of Armed Violence 2014 database shows that between 2007 and 2012, on average, 60,000 women were killed violently. The Western Hemisphere, and in particular Latin America, has the highest rate of gender-based sexual violence in the world. This document provides a comprehensive overview of statistics and recent history relating to the subject, as well as providing high-profile cases from many countries.

4th Edition: 2021-01-31 30p.

By Pablo Ruiz, Sergio Cabrales, Andrés Medaglia, Olga Sarmiento

Bicycle theft and robbery affect the number of bicycle users because since repetitive occurrence of these crimes may stop victims from bicycling. Interest in studying these particular crimes has grown in the past few years and studies have focused on analyzing preventive measures. Criminology theories have been the base for these studies as they associate different factors of the environment and social behavior with the occurrence of criminal activities. This paper aims to analyze bicycle theft and robbery in the city of Bogotá, Colombia using a fixed effects Poisson model for panel data between 2014 and 2017. Different environmental factors such as violent crimes, public amenities, land use features, and socioeconomic attributes, were evaluated against the occurrence of these incidents within specified areas that divide the city. Results show that violent areas increase the risk of bicycles being stolen, as well as areas with a high number of bicycle racks and bus stations. Additionally, results show that there is no significant evidence that socioeconomic differences are determinants to the occurrence of these crimes. The results of this study are relevant to potential policy measures regarding bicycle theft and robbery prevention, which range from security measures in certain areas given the evident relation that violence has on these crimes, crime hot spot intervention and environmental design towards crime prevention. 

Unidas, 2018. 

By Olivia Mercier, Sarah Yu Fu, Rachel Filler, Alexie Leclerc, Kari Sampsel, Karine Fournier, Mark Walker, Shi Wu Wen, Katherine Muldoon

Background: Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a prevalent global health problem. IPV that occurs before pregnancy often continues during the perinatal period, resulting in ongoing violence and many adverse maternal, obstetrical, and neonatal outcomes.

Objectives: This scoping review is designed to broadly capture all potential interventions for perinatal IPV and describe their core components and measured outcomes.

Search Methods: We conducted a search for empirical studies describing IPV interventions in the perinatal population in June 2022. The search was conducted in MEDLINE, EMBASE, PsycInfo, CINAHL, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, Web of Science, Applied Social Sciences Index & Abstracts, ClinicalTrials.gov and MedRxiv. Hand-searching of references from select articles was also performed.

Selection Criteria: Included studies described an intervention for those experiencing IPV during the perinatal period, including 12 months before pregnancy, while pregnant or in the 12 months post-partum. The search encompassed January 2000 to June 2022 and only peer-reviewed studies written in either English or French were included. Included interventions focused on the survivor exposed to IPV, rather than healthcare professionals administering the intervention. Interventions designed to reduce IPV revictimization or any adverse maternal, obstetrical, or neonatal health outcomes as well as social outcomes related to IPV victimization were included.

Data Collections and Analysis: We used standard methodological procedures expected by The Campbell Collaboration.

Main Results: In total, 10,079 titles and abstracts were screened and 226 proceeded to full text screening. A total of 67 studies included perinatal IPV interventions and were included in the final sample. These studies included a total of 27,327 participants. Included studies originated from 19 countries, and the majority were randomized controlled trials (n = 43). Most studies were of moderate or low quality. Interventions included home visitation, educational modules, counseling, and cash transfer programs and occurred primarily in community obstetrician and gynecologist clinics, hospitals, or in participants' homes. Most interventions focused on reducing the revictimization of IPV (n = 38), improving survivor knowledge or acceptance of violence, knowledge of community resources, and actions to reduce violence (n = 28), and improving maternal mental health outcomes (n = 26). Few studies evaluated the effect of perinatal IPV interventions on obstetrical, neonatal, or child health outcomes.

Authors' Conclusion(s): The majority of intervention studies for perinatal IPV focus on reducing revictimization and improving mental health outcomes, very few included obstetrical, neonatal, and other physical health outcomes. Future interventions should place a larger emphasis on targeting maternal and neonatal outcomes to have the largest possible impact on the lives and families of IPV survivors and their infants.

Campbell Systematic Reviews, Volume 20, Issue 3, September 2024

By Sanna Bergvall, Núria Rodríguez-Planas:

Most empirical studies indicate that becoming a mother is an augmenting factor for the perpetration of intimate partner violence (IPV). Using rich population-wide hospital records data from Sweden, we conduct a stacked DiD analysis comparing the paths of women two years before and after the birth of their first child with same-age women who are several quarters older when giving birth to their first child and find that, in contrast to the consensus view, violence sharply decreases with pregnancy and motherhood. This decline has both a short-term and longer-term component, with the temporary decline in IPV covering most of the pregnancy until the child is 6 months old, mimicking a temporary decrease in hospital visits for alcohol abuse by the children's fathers. The more persistent decline is driven by women who leave the relationship after the birth of the child. Our evidence is not supportive of alternative mechanisms including suspicious hospitalizations, an overall reduction in hospital visits or selection in in seeking medical care, mothers’ added value as the main nurturer, or mothers’ drop in relative earnings within the household. Our findings suggest the need to push for public health awareness campaigns underscoring the risk of victimization associated with substance abuse and to also provide women with more support to identify and leave a violent relationship

Bonn: Institute of Labor Economics - IZA, 2024

By Benjamin Artz and  David M. Welsch:

We employ a unique 10-year panel dataset from California to examine both the effect crime has on homelessness as well as the effect homelessness has on crime. Our main estimator accounts for endogeneity by incorporating dynamics, controlling for time-invariant unobserved heterogeneity, and relaxing the strict homogeneity assumption for our key variables of interest. We find strong evidence that regions experiencing increases in property crime, but not violent crime, should expect a practically significant, 2024. 69p..in homelessness, whereas increases in homelessness increase the number of violent crimes, but not property crimes. Robustness and falsification checks confirm the results.

Bonn:  Institute of Labor Economics - IZA, 2024. 49p.

By Julia Tolmie, Rachel Smith, and Denise Wilson

How intimate partner violence (IPV) is conceptualized affects what we see when we look at situations involving IPV and what we think the solutions to the problem of IPV are—either in individual cases or in the development of broader legal and policy responses. In this article, it is suggested that while conceptualizing IPV as coercive control is an improvement over previous understandings, it does not go far enough. Coercive control must be located within a broader conceptualization of IPV as a form of social and systemic entrapment if it is not to operate in a harmful manner for victim-survivors.

Violence Against WomenVolume 30, Issue 1, January 2024, Pages 54-74

By Ido Kilovaty

The Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack, which shut down gas supply to the entire East Coast back in May 2021, has sparked debate as to the regulation of the pipeline’s cybersecurity. After ten years of inaction on the matter, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has issued two mandatory directives on pipeline cybersecurity. This Article delves into the propriety of the TSA as a pipeline security regulator, as well as the incomplete and ineffective approach currently laid out in the TSA’s pipeline cybersecurity directives. This Article argues that there may be other agencies more suitable for the task, such as the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, acting under the auspices of the Department of Energy. It also provides specific recommendations as to the substance of any prospective pipeline cybersecurity regulation, such as the creation of more open-ended and flexible cybersecurity objectives as opposed to the current approach of prescriptive standards.

Houston Law Review, Vol. 60, 2023, Kilovaty, Ido, Cybersecuring the Pipeline (March 29, 2022). Houston Law Review, Vol. 60, 2023,