By Garan Ho/mqvist 

Crime is an increasingly worrying social phenomenon in the developing world in general and in Latin America in particular. As shown in Figure 1~, the crime rate (measured by homicide lOO 000, as reported to the UN crime surveys by national police authorities) has virtually exploded since the mid-1980s in Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Eastern Europe. Latin America stands out as an exceptional case. Annually in Latin America, approximately 140,000 people are murdered (Londono & Guerrero 1999:27). Using other sources does not change this picture. Figure 2 confirms the exceptional position of Latin America, where the source in mortality statistics is collected from national health authorities instead of the police. Indicators of crime other than homicide are less reliable for international comparison, but estimates point in the direction of Latin America being way above the average for any other region of the world (Bourguignon 1999, Table 1). It has been estimated that 28 million Latin American families are victims of theft or robbery every year (Londono & Guerrero 1999:3). Crime and violence are now viewed as a development issue of importance, which was probably not the case two decades ago. Development agencies such as the World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) have quite recently initiated ambitious research projects on crime and violence. Projects directed to the judicial system or police authorities have increased their share in the project portfolio of multilateral as well as bilateral development cooperation agencies. More importantly, crime is becoming a major concern in the daily lives of an increasing number of citizens in the developing world, manifesting itself in national political agendas, in higher crime-related expenditures, and, not the least, in human suffering. There are several reasons to regard crime as a social phenomenon with strong and complex ties to the development process in general. In Latin America, crime is a potential threat to what most people would regard as encouraging development trends, especially after ''the lost decade" of the 1980s, in terms of democratization and resumed growth. The following examples may illustrate how continuous progress in these areas is being made more difficult by the increasing crime levels: 

 Iberoamericana. Nordic Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies Vol. XXX: 2 2000,pp. 23-53

By Paul Jeffrey Brantingham, George E. Tita,  and George Mohler 

The onset of extreme social distancing measures is expected to have a dramatic impact on crime. Here, we examine the impact of mandated, city-wide social distancing orders aimed at limiting the spread of COVID-19 on gang-related crime in Los Angeles. We hypothesize that the unique subcultural processes surrounding gangs may supersede calls to shelter in place and allow gang-related crime to persist. If the normal guardianship of people and property is also disrupted by social distancing, then we expect gang violence to increase. Using autoregressive time series models, we show that gang-related crime remained stable and crime hot spots largely stationary following the onset of shelter-in-place. Policy Implications: In responding to disruptions to social and economic life on the scale of the present pandemic, both police and civilian organizations need to anticipate continued demand, all while managing potential reductions to the workforce. Police are faced with this challenge across a wide array of crime types. Civilian interventionists tasked with responding to gang-related crime need to be prepared for continued peacekeeping and violence interruption activities, but also an expansion of responsibilities to deal with “frontline” or “street level” management of public health needs. 

Criminology & Public Policy. 2021;20:423–436. 

By Mario Peucker, Thomas J Fisher, Jacob Davey

The media does not enjoy a high level of trust among Australians, as many people question the commitment of mainstream media to objective and nonpartisan reporting. While this mistrust is widespread, it manifests in particularly antagonistic ways within far-right milieus, where mainstream media is often seen through a conspiratorial lens as the ‘enemy of the people’ who actively conspire against the wellbeing of ‘ordinary’ or ‘white’ people. This almost unanimously hostile perception, however, does not stop people within far-right online spaces from posting mainstream media outputs to convey ideological messages in their online communities. Context This research report presents key findings from an analysis of far-right online communities on Facebook and the alt-tech fringe platform Gab, which has been described as a ‘right-leaning echo chamber’ (Lima et al. 2018:1). The study was conducted by researchers at the Institute for Sustainable Industries & Liveable Cities at Victoria University (VU), in collaboration with the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), within the research stream ‘Dynamics of Violent Extremism’ at the Centre for Resilient and Inclusive Societies (CRIS). What we did The research combines quantitative and qualitative methods. We analyzed around 11,000 Facebook posts and 45,000 Gab posts by Australian-based accounts and users who meet our working definition of far-right (see section 2). This quantitative analysis offers insights into the prevalence of mainstream media sources in their far-right online messaging and which outlets are particularly frequently shared. In addition, we conducted a qualitative multimodal in-depth analysis of a quasi-random sample of 224 Facebook and 298 Gab posts that contained an outbound link to a URL domain associated with a mainstream media outlet. This qualitative analysis allowed us to identify how mainstream media are (re)framed and (mis)appropriated within these far-right online space to deliver certain ideological messages.    

Melbourne; The Centre for Resilient and Inclusive Societies. August 2022. 26p.

By Craig McGarty

An analysis of Twitter content from Victoria in 2020 found low levels of racial vilification of Asians. This surprising low level of public online racism is consistent with reanalysis of survey data. Racism directed against Asian Australians and others is an ongoing source of harm. There is not, however, good reasons to believe that hatred of Asians was successfully mobilized and exacerbated in Victoria in 2020 by mass online means. Racism needs to be confronted wherever it occurs, but the uncritical acceptance of media narratives is unlikely to help the cause of confronting it.     

Melbourne: Centre for Resilient and Inclusive Societies, 2023; 36p. 

By Leke de Vries

The association between crime and place is one of the most empirically supported notions in criminology. However, less is known about whether the internet has impacted the environmental conditions that contribute to crime in physical space. To address this gap, this dissertation examines the intersection of crime, place, and networks in the context of online promoted illicit massage businesses (IMBs). IMBs are establishments that host a wide variety of crimes and deviancies, and have recently gained attention due to their connection to human trafficking operations. While commercial sex and sex trafficking in IMBs are promoted through online classifieds and review boards, the illicit behaviors still require an offline act or transaction in stationary locations such as storefronts. Therefore, IMBs offer a compelling case to understand whether a criminology of place perspective applies to online-promoted crimes. Using innovative data and robust, quantitative and computational methods, this study shows that the geography and use of IMBs are driven by environmental conditions that are central to criminological theory about crime and place. However, the findings also suggest subtle changes to the geography of online-promoted crimes. In particular, IMBs and clientele demand were identified in neighborhoods that on the one hand feature aspects of social disorganization and crime opportunity theories, and on the other hand were theoretically unanticipated (e.g. in advantaged areas). Moreover, many clientele traversed neighborhood boundaries to frequent IMBs, connecting both spatially proximate and distant neighborhoods in patterns of crime. Lastly, the findings show the limitations of current policing models that are challenged by the locational flexibility of IMBs. Overall, these findings raise questions about a criminology of place in the digital age, call for theoretical integration, and a response model that engages online and offline domains and involves partnerships within and outside of the criminal justice system. 

 Boston: College of Social Sciences and Humanities of Northeastern University  202o. 124p

By: Alexandra Lysova

Homicide statistics are often seen as the most reliable and comparable indicator of violent deaths around the world. However, the analysis of Russian homicide statistics challenges this understanding and suggests that international comparisons of homicide levels can be hazardous. Drawing on an institutionalist perspective on crime statistics, official crime-based homicide statistics in Russia are approached as a social construct, a performance indicator and a tool of governance. The paper discusses several incentives to misrepresent official homicide data in contemporary Russia, including politicization of homicide statistics as a legacy of the Soviet’ era’s falsified crime statistics and the role of policing. Mainly, the paper identifies and describes the exact legal, statistical and country-specific substantive mechanisms that allow homicide statistics to be distorted in Russia. By considering legal mechanisms alone, the more accurate homicide rate may be at least 1.6 times higher than that reported in the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime Global Study on Homicide 2013.

European Journal of Criminology 1 –21

By: Dr. Arshad M. Khan

If there is a mass shooting and anyone is asked where, the answer is likely to be the United States. The reason of course is the easy availability of guns, even guns that fire like machine guns. The Second Amendment allows the 'right to bear arms' -- to prevent tyranny say the proponents. Yet, the world has moved beyond guns for the tyranny we face today is a tyranny not of guns but of the mind.

Modern Diplomacy Oct 07, 2017

By: António Castanho

This report concerns the review of a domestic violence homicide situation that was the subject of case No. 2892 / 15.9JAPRT of the Comarca of Porto Este, whose final decision resulted from a judgment of the Court of Appeal of Porto, 22.2.2017.

In this case, B, a male, aged 60, was convicted of qualified homicide [articles 131 and 132, paragraphs 1 and 2 b), e) and i) Criminal Code] and attempted qualified homicide (art. 22, 23, 73, 131, 132, paragraphs 1 and 2 (a), (c), (e) and (h) Criminal Code) and sentenced to 23 years and 10 months’ imprisonment.

• The events occurred on September 27, 2015.

• The victim of the murder was his wife - M who was 58 years old.

• The victim of the attempted murder was the father of the attacker - J, aged 87.

The report includes:

• a) The presentation of as much information as is known about the incident, the behaviour patterns of the perpetrator, the factors that influenced him, as well as the responses and support provided to the victims and the perpetrator; and

• b) Analysis of the above with the aim of extracting lessons from this case so that changes are made to reduce the risk of further homicides.

Agency contact and involvement with the victims and perpetrator were considered from 2010 and included justice, police and health.

The review process began on 04/17/2017; the preliminary report was drawn up on 9/1/2017; the review meetings were convened on 9/9/2017, 27/9 and 10/25/2017.

The Domestic Homicide Review Team (EARHVD) was composed of its permanent members plus a non- permanent member representing the Republican National Guard (Territorial Command of Porto), the police force that had jurisdiction in the area in which the events occurred.

Case no1/2017-AC

By: Kacper Choromański

Currently, there are over a thousand unsolved homicide cases in Poland. Up to this point, numerous, mostly popular science, research papers have been focusing on the individual units in charge of these difficult cases. This paper, however, is an attempt to represent the current state of investigations that were discontinued due to the fact that the perpetrators could not be found, hereinafter referred to as Cold Case Homicides. This paper depicts both the researcher's perspective and the statistical side of such conduct. Furthermore, it presents the first results of a pilot study conducted among the prosecutors, concerning the problem of Cold Case Homicides from their perspective, the possibility of cooperation with the academics, and their opinion on the idea of complex research, concerning the reconstruction of events in this specific area of crime.

International Journal of Legal Studies No 2(8)2020

By: Dr. Jeffrey L. Edleson

The purpose of this manual is to help you make informed decisions about doing evaluation, and to provide you with concrete ideas for evaluating a specific program or group of programs.

In a clear and simple style, the issues, elements, and procedures of beginning evaluation are examined. You will learn how to develop goals and outcome objectives that will focus your program and facilitate productive evaluation. Benefits and drawbacks of program evaluation are laid out, along with guidelines for assessing your agency’s ability to conduct an evaluation. The basic evaluation process is mapped out in step-by-step fashion, complete with sample forms and questionnaires. Throughout this manual you are encouraged to focus on how your study results will be used. Finally, you will learn the most effective ways to present your findings to various audiences when your evaluation is finished.

If you are being asked to cooperate with an outside evaluator, this manual will help you know what questions to ask about the proposed evaluation. It will give you a basis on which to decide, if you have a choice, whether to open your program to the evaluation. If you don’t have a choice, you will gain insights that will help you determine whether you are being fairly judged by an outside evaluation and how to gain some control over the process.

Evaluating Domestic Violence Programs is based on 14 years of a unique collaboration between research and services. Whether your program is new or long established, you can gain a more intimate knowledge of it through the kind of evaluation explained in this manual. This knowledge can help you increase your effectiveness as an administrator.

Domestic Abuse Project 1997

By: Mugisho Ndabuli Theophile

This book highlights that there is a wide room for women victims of rape during war and those who are expelled from their families because they have been raped for empowerment. In this vein, the book portrays the different possibilities the Congolese Females Action for Promoting Rights and Development (COFAPRI) is exploring in order to empower rural women victims of war rape and domestic violence in the rural villages of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo). The aim of this emancipation is to help these victims to scar up both their physical and moral wounds in order to reshape the meaning of their lives, as well as their FKLOGUHQ¶V and then trace a peaceful way toward a future that gives hope and confidence in their hearts.

COFAPRI is a women’s grassroots organization that is operating in remote and dangerous villages of the eastern DR Congo. The villages of this part of the world are still a hub for militia and hooligans who are intimidating, raping, killing pitilessly women, children and the ecosystem. The organization is closely and tirelessly working with rural women who are victims of local discriminatory traditions in order to empower them for a better future. Such liberation aims to break these discriminatory traditions that reduce women and girls to nothing, making them second class people who have no word in families and in the country.

Biased traditions remain alarming and worse in remote villages where most girls and women are illiterate. In these areas, these mores are men’s invention and they [traditions] are vigorously protected by the same men for their personal interests. The main reason behind this safeguard is that the DR Congo is a strong paternalistic system that protects by all costs these traditions, making the women to be subjugated to men and remain eternal second class people who must live in total obedience of and dependence on men.

The situation of these victims worsened with the advent of warfare that added more weight on their natural plights of cultures. The women and girls, no matter their age and status, have been raped since 1996 (for more than 20 years today) when the unending wars started. Since the target of the fighters were women and girls, rape has then been used in different contexts, sometimes the victims were raped in the eyes of their relatives, children, husband, friends and neighbors. Through such terror, rape became an easy arm of war used by the rapists. The evil doers have been directing rape toward women and girls of all ages. In this period of cyclic wars has never been discriminatory, as it applied to women, girls, men and boys. With focus on women and girls victims, the aim of the rapists was but to hurt the victim physically and morally by dehumanizing her, cutting her off of her family and her community in order to weaken her properly, and so she can die while alive.

This did cause the victim unbearable shame and moral death. The victims were killed twice while alive. Rape caused the victims moral and physical open wounds and ultimate detachment from families and communities. These women have been raped and some of them contaminated HIV/AIDS and STDs (Sexually Transmitted Diseases); many others got pregnancies that delivered fatherless children.

The children born of rape never knew their fathers. As earlier stated, the DR Congo is a patriarchal community where women follow blindly all decisions made by the masters of traditions. So, children born of rape become detached from the family of the mother and that of the husband of the mother. Not having a family because one has no father totally isolates and discriminates the innocent child, which sometimes traumatizes them.

It is in this context that COFAPRI initiated some ways that these victims can walk in order to reach the other side of the tunnel. As a way of remaking their lives, these victims are involved in various income generating activities in their different villages. The activities include, among others, sewing, animal rearing, knitting, beading and small business. In addition, they also involve in basic reading and writing in order to better involve in their developmental activities. The women also get hygienic education in order to improve on their life conditions. All these activities are done in teams where participants exchange on different issues regarding their lives in home and in community. In their teams, and in turns, each member is at the same time a learner and a teacher. All in all, this aims to promote the rights of women and children, as well as supporting them along their new life in order to overcome trauma and poverty.

The children born of rape also suffer protracted discrimination in their families since they are wrongly believed to be social cast and burden. COFAPRI helps these children to remake their lives for a harmonious future by facilitating them to get school enrolment. The children are also accompanied by the same organization in their studies; they are paid school fees and equipment. Being fatherless and social cast has often created a negative personal consideration in the minds of these children, which ultimately pushes them to join local militia or other gangs associations in order to revenge, which makes the cycle of wars become repeated and perpetual. This makes more women and girls to be raped, and more fatherless children to be born. Such children, due to the social disrespect they experience, decide to join local militia with the aim of revenging. The above mentioned organization is doing everything they can for the moment in order to hinder children from linking with the militia as this will certainly make them act the same way as their anonymous fathers behaved. It is in this context that the children are getting support from this incredible organization that is operating in the remote and dangerous villages of the DR Congo.

The writer of this book collected information via desk research along with data from the organization. The book is part of details from a video conference that the Co-Founder and Executive Secretary of COFAPRI presented to Red Hila, in their last meeting in Colombia in 2014. In order to support the story, some quotes from the women and the children we work with have been inserted in the story, along with some of their pictures. The women gave us full permission to use their photos and quotes, and we got consent, as well, from the mothers of the children. In the minds of the women and the children, using their pictures and stories will hugely contribute to spreading the word in the world about the quandaries they are living while confined to their remote villages in the eastern DR Congo. They also think this is a way the world can equally learn of the steps they have already walked toward developmental empowerment.

The different wars the country has been plunged in have caused moral harm, as well as physical one to the victims. Basing on this, the organization is also empowering the abusers and the victims to forgive each other in order to reach social harmony. By forgiving, the victims want the reality on how they were raped be told with assurance. This will help both the abuser and the abused as their morals will be stable. If the women victims are forgiving their abusers, harmony can settle in the hearts of the people and so they can work together as a united team that has a common goal.

The organization is also committed to educate the population at large on ways of scaling down the effects of traditional discriminatory rules that have negatively affected women and children in their areas. In the same vein, it focuses on making the victims of rape and domestic violence be confident and remake their lives after the predicament of warfare they have endured within themselves, in their homes and in families, as well as in the wider community. Through education, COFAPRI believes a new horizon can still work for these innocent victims. Education is so powerful that it can generate hope in hopeless minds, it can rebuild broken hearts by making women and children pillars of their families, communities and the nation in the future. This is eventually supported by Sydney J. Harris, as he states “the whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows”.

LAP Lambert Academic Publishing 2016

By: Leslie Tutty, Jennifer Koshan, Deborah Jesso, Cindy Ogden, Jacqueline G. Warrell

The serious nature of intimate partner violence and the harm to women and their children has been acknowledged in numerous documents (Statistics Canada, 2005; Tutty & Goard, 2002). The costs to society for charging abusive partners and providing treatment in the hope of stopping domestic violence are substantial (Bowlus, McKenna, Day & Wright, 2003; Greaves, Hankivsky, & Kingston-Reichers, 1995; Healey, Smith, & O‘Sullivan, 1998).

The criminal justice system is an institution that deals with a high number of cases of domestic assaults yearly. While there is no separate domestic violence offence, abusers are subject to a variety of charges, from common assault to uttering threats to murder, that would apply to anyone regardless of the relationship between the victim and the perpetrator. Nevertheless, the dynamics and the intimate relationship between the accused and the victims in domestic violence cases, has severely challenged the criminal justice response that typically deals with crimes committed by strangers.

Beginning with the development of the court in Winnipeg in 1991, specialized domestic violence courts have become increasingly available across Canada with the goal of more effectively addressing the criminal justice response to domestic violence. The extensive effort involved in creating such specialized justice responses should be acknowledged. To date, however, few evaluations have been published that assess whether these initiatives make a difference, exceptions being the work of Ursel in Winnipeg, the Yukon Domestic Violence Treatment Option (Hornick, Boyes, Tutty & White, 2005: funded by NCPC), some courts in Ontario (Moyer, Rettinger & Hotton (2000), cited in Clarke, 2003; Dawson & Dinovitzer, 2001), and Tutty and Ursel in the Canadian prairie provinces (Ursel, Tutty, & LeMaistre, 2008).

Calgary‘s model developed in early 2000 with the input of key players from not only the criminal justice institutions such as police services, the Crown Prosecutor offices, probation, Legal Aid and the defence bar, but also community agencies that offer batterer intervention programs and support, shelter and advocacy for victims. The model was innovative, with the initial emphasis on a specialized domestic violence docket court with the aim of speeding up the process for those charges with domestic abuse offences to both allow low risk offenders to take responsibility for their actions and speed their entry into treatment.

Such actions were thought to better safeguard victims, both because their partners were mandated to treatment much earlier, and to prevent repercussions to victims who, if the case proceeded to court, might be required to testify. Crisis intervention theory has long posited that the sooner one receives intervention, the more likely the counselling will be effective (Roberts & Everly, 2006). Also, the safety and wishes of the victims are taken into consideration by the court team early on in the process, while the assault is still fresh in their minds and they are not influenced by the accused to the same extent as they might be later on.

RESOLVE Alberta, March 2011

By Ciarán O’Connor

This report investigates the activities of the Irish Channel, a website, and associated social media accounts that have emerged as a highly active hub of misinformation in Ireland. The website gained notoriety in June 2024 following its publication of an article containing fabricated quotes and false claims alleging election interference during the local elections.1 This ‘election interference’ narrative reflected other baseless conspiracies alleging voter fraud was a threat to election integrity in the country. The Irish Channel website is part of the Premier Content Network which is run by the Digital Publishing Company. Its primary form of content across its range of websites is embedded YouTube videos, likely with the aim of driving traffic to its site and boosting ad revenue. Yet, as this analysis details, this may violate YouTube’s terms of service. This report profiles how original content produced by the Irish Channel contains inaccuracies and falsehoods, as well as content that is supportive of far-right ideologies including hateful anti-immigrant rhetoric. Analysis by ISD also indicates some of this content appears to have been generated using AI, with basic factual errors and non-existent citations being found on more than one article on the Irish Channel website. Accounts on social media and messaging platforms linked to the Irish Channel were found to feature white supremacist conspiracy theories, antisemitic hate, and support for Adolf Hitler. Additionally, the report highlights how the Irish Channel has forged close ties with the Irish Freedom Party and has, over time, become a key media distribution and broadcasting arm for the party. Many of the most egregious instances of false, misleading, and inflammatory claims found in this analysis originated from content published in conjunction with Irish Freedom Party-linked entities and hosted and promoted by the Irish Channel. This Irish Channel case study illustrates how small, far-right political parties can use digital media platforms and social media accounts to develop alternative media networks, promote their ideology, and grow their.

London :  Institute for Strategic Dialogue 2024. 18p.

By Lucy Cooper and Kevin D. Reyes

Once considered a mere novelty app, TikTok is now a certified force in the information ecosystem.  

The short form video giant is now being used by 14% of Americans as a news platform, according to a Pew Research Centre from 2023, an amount four times more than in 2020.  The impact of the platform, once best known for dance crazes and being a tastemaker for online trends, cannot be ignored. To better understand the impact that TikTok has, in 2023 ISD analysts gathered and analyzed data on trends in hate speech and extremist content on TikTok, and how effectively they were being moderated by the platform. The results, which center on a particular moment in time, have come to inform a series of studies – the first two of which focus on white supremacist content, and anti-migrant and -refugee content. While TikTok appears to have taken measures to improve content moderation practices since ISD’s 2021 study on extremism and hate speech on the platform, this new series demonstrates that TikTok is still ineffective in removing violative content. For example, data for the white supremacy content study was collected during one week in mid-August 2023 and indicates that such content was alive and well on the platform: 70 of the 108 video samples studied were uploaded to TikTok within the most recent three months at the time of collection. Of those 108 videos, the median number of views at the time of analysis was 6,097, a significant increase from ISD’s 2021 report where the median across 1,030 videos was 503 views. The last nine months have been tumultuous for TikTok as a company. In April 2024, President Joe Biden signed a bill that could result in a nationwide ban of the app should TikTok’s parent company, the Beijing-based ByteDance, not sell the platform within 12 months. As part of an ongoing legal fight over the possible ban, the Justice Department, according to the Associated Press, this summer alleged that TikTok was gathering bulk information on users’ “views on divisive social issues like gun control, abortion, and religion,” and harvesting data in violation of children’s online privacy law. As TikTok’s future remains undecided, content moderation issues on the platform persist. In July 2024, ISD published a report detailing the millions of views garnered by a network of neo-Nazi accounts on the platform. Just a month earlier, however, TikTok had published an updated transparency report in which they claimed that in the first four months of this year, moderators proactively removed 97.7% of violative content. Of that same sample, 89.8% were removed within 24 hours, down .1% from that same period in 2023. Despite TikTok’s statements, ISD and similar organizations consistently find content in clear violation of the platform’s policies

London: Institute for Strategic Dialogue 2024. 

By Ciarán O’Connor and Jared Holt

Once considered a mere novelty app, TikTok is now a certified force in the information ecosystem.  

The short-form video giant is now being used by 14% of Americans as a news platform, according to a Pew Research Centre from 2023, an amount four times more than in 2020.  The impact of the platform, once best known for dance crazes and being a tastemaker for online trends, cannot be ignored. To better understand the impact that TikTok has, in 2023 ISD analysts gathered and analyzed data on trends in hate speech and extremist content on TikTok, and how effectively they were being moderated by the platform. The results, which center on a particular moment in time, have come to inform a series of studies – the first two of which focus on white supremacist content, and anti-migrant and -refugee content. While TikTok appears to have taken measures to improve content moderation practices since ISD’s 2021 study on extremism and hate speech on the platform, this new series demonstrates that TikTok is still ineffective in removing violative content. For example, data for the white supremacy content study was collected during one week in mid-August 2023 and indicates that such content was alive and well on the platform: 70 of the 108 video samples studied were uploaded to TikTok within the most recent three months at the time of collection. Of those 108 videos, the median number of views at the time of analysis was 6,097, a significant increase from ISD’s 2021 report where the median across 1,030 videos was 503 views. The last nine months have been tumultuous for TikTok as a company. In April 2024, President Joe Biden signed a bill that could result in a nationwide ban of the app should TikTok’s parent company, the Beijing-based ByteDance, not sell the platform within 12 months. As part of an ongoing legal fight over the possible ban, the Justice Department, according to the Associated Press, this summer alleged that TikTok was gathering bulk information on users’ “views on divisive social issues like gun control, abortion, and religion,” and harvesting data in violation of children’s online privacy law. As TikTok’s future remains undecided, content moderation issues on the platform persist. In July 2024, ISD published a report detailing the millions of views garnered by a network of neo-Nazi accounts on the platform. Just a month earlier, however, TikTok had published an updated transparency report in which they claimed that in the first four months of this year, moderators proactively removed 97.7% of violative content. Of that same sample, 89.8% were removed within 24 hours, down .1% from that same period in 2023. Despite TikTok’s statements, ISD and similar organizations consistently find content in clear violation of the platform’s policies.  

London Institute for Strategic Dialogue (2024). . 15p.

By Luke Baumgartner

Tracing its origins back to the 19th century, the Black Hebrew Israelite (BHI) movement is ideologically and organizationally highly fragmented. At its core, it believes that modern African Americans are descendants of the Israelites in the Bible’s Old Testament, but some currents adopt variations of BHI ideology. While most adherents to the movement are peaceful, over the last few years, several individuals associated with BHI ideology participated in high-profile violent crimes targeting Jews in the United States, including the targeting of the JC Kosher Supermarket in Jersey City, New Jersey,[1] and a Hanukkah celebration in Monsey, New York, in December 2019.[2] While the attackers had little to no formal or institutional participation in the movement, their extremist interpretation of BHI’s core beliefs contributed to their radicalization, mobilization of violence, and, ultimately, their target selection. Moreover, violent attacks by adherents of the BHI ideology stretch back as far as 1974, when Marcus Wayne Chenault, a student of Hananiah E. Israel, shot Alberta Williams King–the mother of slain civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr.[3] In 2022, the Program on Extremism released a report–one of the first of its kind–analyzing BHI’s ideology and relations to violence.[4] Despite its ample use of social media and track record of violence, little is known about how the broader BHI movement uses the internet to spread its message. In light of this research gap, this report examined 180 Facebook pages with large followings close to the more extreme sections of the BHI movement, further evaluating their scope, reach, longevity, activity, geographic location, typology, and major narratives. This study finds that: • Facebook pages are an especially popular way for extremist adherents of the BHI movement to reach a significant audience without being subject to content removal, takedowns, and strict service enforcement. Facebook’s record of success has several discrepancies, especially regarding enforcement against broader antisemitic narratives beyond Holocaust denial and with lesser-known hate groups and movements. • BHI extremist pages examined in this study are administrated across four continents and, on average, can maintain a presence on Facebook and avoid account removal for over five years, allowing them ample time and opportunity to accrue thousands of followers. The ability to establish a long-term presence on a major platform like Facebook increases the potential for audience engagement and opportunities to recruit and radicalize new members. • BHI pages consistently publish a range of antisemitic content and narratives, the most common of which consistently refers to white Jews as “impostors,” emphasizes the connection between Jews and Satan and adds a modern twist on traditional conspiracies of blood libel, arguing Jews are responsible for large-scale organ trafficking operations—among others. While the number of BHI pages posting antisemitic content decreased after October 7, the overall popularity of these pages continued to increase. These contradictory changes signal an improvement in Facebook’s ability to take down easily recognizable antisemitic content, such as Jews worship Satan, or recycled Nazi propaganda. Still, Facebook struggles to remove content that excludes explicit calls to violence or, alludes to conspiracies of blood libel or comparing Jews to rats, parasites, and others. • The frequency, longevity, and large follower bases of BHI extremist pages that publish antisemitic and other hateful content targeting protected classes such as the LGBTQ+ community suggest gaps in Facebook’s enforcement of its Community Standards, particularly its anti-hate speech and Dangerous Organizations and Individuals (DOI) policies. These findings suggest that antisemitic content congruent with extremist interpretations of the BHI ideology has a haven on Facebook–a social media platform with over 3 billion active monthly users.[5]  

Washington DC:  Program on Extremism at George Washington University, 2024. 52p.

By Ania Moroz and Tamar Dinisman 

“Looking back now, I wouldn’t have gone to the police, because it is one of the hardest things you can ever do in your whole life. I can’t even sum up in words what it does to you mentally and physically. You can be the world’s strongest person ever in the world, but going to court can break you. It’s awful.” Victim-survivor It is estimated that 1 in 4 women and 1 in 18 men have been subjected to some form of sexual violence since the age of 16 and that 1 in 6 children have been sexually abused.1 The majority of victim-survivors will not report the offense to the police. Of those who do report it, a very low proportion will receive a charge and have their case go to court. The number of victim-survivors of sexual violence who give evidence in the trial is not openly available. Nevertheless, the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) data shows that in the year ending June 2023, 11,506 defendants were proceeded against for sexual offences2, and, in 2022–23, 3,004 defendants were charged with rape-related offenses.3 This report focuses on the experience of sexual violence victim-survivors where the defendant has been charged and their case has gone through the court process. It focuses on the three main stages of this experience – before, during, and after giving evidence – and highlights the main challenges victim-survivors face at each stage. This report also makes recommendations for changes in policy and practice to address these challenges. To meet the aims of the research, a multimethod approach, combining qualitative and quantitative methods, was used. These include 12 semi-structured interviews with victim-survivors; focus groups and interviews with Victim Support sexual violence practitioners; and Victim Support sexual violence cases analysis.

Cardiff::Victim Support, 2024.   

By: Lauren R. Stienstra, Diana P. Horn. Erica A. Lee, Bruce R. Lindsay, William L. Painter, and Elizabeth M. Webster

Before midnight on September 26, 2024, Hurricane Helene made landfall as a Category 4 major hurricane in northwestern Florida in the Big Bend area of the Gulf Coast, later bringing heavy rain and floods to many states in the southern Appalachian region.

President Biden had issued emergency declarations under the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act (the Stafford Act, P.L. 93-288, as amended; 42 U.S.C. §§5121 et seq.) for Florida, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia authorizing Public Assistance (PA) for emergency protective measures to support mass care, and Individual Assistance (IA) for Florida, North Carolina, and South Carolina.

Beginning on Sept. 29th, President Biden began issuing major disaster declarations superseding many of these earlier emergency declarations, as follows:

• Florida Hurricane Helene (DR-4828-FL), authorizing IA; PA for emergency protective measures and debris removal; and Hazard Mitigation Assistance;

• North Carolina Tropical Storm Helene (DR-4827-NC), authorizing PA for debris removal, emergency protective measures, and repair and replacement of eligible public and nonprofit facilities, and Hazard Mitigation Assistance;

• South Carolina Hurricane Helene (DR-4829-SC), authorizing IA; PA for emergency protective measures and debris removal; and Hazard Mitigation Assistance;

• Georgia Hurricane Helene (DR-4830-GA), authorizing IA; PA for emergency protective measures and debris removal; and Hazard Mitigation Assistance;

• Virginia Tropical Storm Helene (DR-4831-VA), authorizing IA; PA for emergency protective measures and debris removal; and Hazard Mitigation Assistance; and

• Tennessee Tropical Storm Helene (DR-4832-TN) authorizing IA; PA for emergency protective measures and debris removal; and Hazard Mitigation Assistance

The situation remains dynamic; additional declarations, including for other states and designated areas (counties), or additional forms of assistance may be forthcoming. Existing major disaster declarations and potential major disaster declarations for Hurricane Helene may authorize FEMA to provide a suite of disaster assistance programs, including Individual Assistance, Public Assistance, and Hazard Mitigation Assistance.

Information about state and county disaster assistance authorizations is published in FEMA’s declaration database.

FEMA’s Hurricane Helene webpage provides information on and directions to apply for disaster assistance.

Congressional Research Service, 2024

By Mihir Mysore, Tim Ward, and Tom Dohrmann and David Bibo

Weather and climate disasters are becoming more frequent, wide-ranging, severe, and costly. While consequences for life and health are always at the forefront, one way to measure disaster impact is through estimates of economic impacts. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) estimates that from 2019 to 2023, the U.S. experienced more than 100 $1 billion disasters, with total costs in excess of $0.5 trillion. This is four times the average number of $1 billion disasters and more than double the costs of any other five-year period since 2000. In 2023 alone, there were 28 $1 billion disasters, the highest number recorded since 1980 (when data became available). And these disasters affected 46 states, almost twice the number of states affected by $1 billion disasters in 2000. Indeed, the number of states experiencing $1 billion disasters has steadily risen year over year since 2000.

More and worsening disasters across a broader swath of the country means more lives and livelihoods placed in harm’s way and more communities likely facing intertwined economic and social consequences. Given current trends, state and local leaders are seeking ways to help their communities recover and rebuild effectively in the wake of disaster, restoring not only infrastructure and homes but economic competitiveness and social well-being. To help inform state and local recovery planning efforts, we examined quantitative and anecdotal evidence from U.S. communities that have demonstrated robust resilience in the face of disasters—what we termed leading recoveries—as well as for communities that experienced lower resilience where we saw lagging recoveries.

Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs | September 2024

By: Jennifer Tang, Tiffany Saade, and Steve Kelly

Cutting-edge advances in artificial intelligence (AI) are taking the world by storm, driven by a massive surge of investment, countless new start-ups, and regular technological breakthroughs. AI presents key opportunities within cybersecurity, but concerns remain regarding the ways malicious actors might also use the technology. In this study, the Institute for Security and Technology (IST) seeks to paint a comprehensive picture of the state of play— cutting through vagaries and product marketing hype, providing our outlook for the near future, and most importantly, suggesting ways in which the case for optimism can be realized.

The report concludes that in the near term, AI offers a significant advantage to cyber defenders, particularly those who can capitalize on their "home field" advantage and firstmover status. However, sophisticated threat actors are also leveraging AI to enhance their capabilities, making continued investment and innovation in AI-enabled cyber defense crucial. At this time of writing, AI is not yet unlocking novel capabilities or outcomes, but instead represents a significant leap in speed, scale, and completeness.

This work is the foundation of a broader IST project to better understand which areas of cybersecurity require the greatest collective focus and alignment—for example, greater opportunities for accelerating threat intelligence collection and response, democratized tools for automating defenses, and/or developing the means for scaling security across disparate platforms—and to design a set of actionable technical and policy recommendations in pursuit of a secure, sustainable digital ecosystem.

The Institute for Security and Technology, October 2024