By Katharine Neill Harris, Christopher F. Kulesza

Roughly half of the U.S. population now lives in a state that permits recreational cannabis use and sales. Still, the criminal legal system continues to play a primary role in determining who receives treatment for cannabis use. It remains the single largest treatment referral source, and in 2019 more than 100,000 people who were admitted to treatment for cannabis use were referred by a legal entity. This raises questions regarding the extent to which individuals who interact with the legal system are monitored and punished for cannabis use in the post-legalization era. Moreover, the issue has not been addressed by state legalization measures. We examined trends in legal system referrals to treatment for cannabis use in legal and nonlegal states from 2007 to 2019. We also tested the relationship between recreational cannabis legalization and legal system treatment referrals for Black, Hispanic, and white adults and juveniles. The legal system’s practice of requiring individuals to participate in drug treatment warrants scrutiny because of its potentially negative and long-lasting consequences. While mandated treatment may be appropriate in some cases, the legal system often requires treatment participation from individuals who do not meet the criteria for a substance use disorder, and it does a poor job of connecting those who do have substance use disorders with appropriate care. The legal system’s limited efficacy in this arena is problematic because mandated treatment carries the possibility of additional legal consequences if program expectations are not met. The harmful effects of legal involvement include fewer education and employment prospects, reduced earning potential, destabilized family structures, negative mental and physical health outcomes, and diminished quality of life. Communities of color are disproportionately targeted by drug enforcement and disproportionately impacted by its collateral consequences. Recreational cannabis legalization (RCL) is intended to remedy, in part, the harmful and racially disparate effects of cannabis prohibition. However, the continuation of compulsory treatment for cannabis use, and the legal involvement it entails, is a potential pathway through which the systemic harms and inequities of cannabis prohibition can persist. The problematic nature of this arrangement is enhanced when it occurs alongside a commercial cannabis industry that profits from greater levels of cannabis use 

Houston, TX: The Baker Institute, 2023. 44p.   

By Katharine Neill Harris

There were a lot of reasons to think that 2021 would be a pivotal year for criminal justice reform in Texas: widespread popularity of relaxing cannabis laws, public support for addressing police violence and systemic racism in the justice system, and the pandemic turning overcrowded jails from a simmering public health risk into a crisis too big to ignore. Two weeks after a Minneapolis police officer killed George Floyd, a Houston native, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott indicated there was a bipartisan appetite for reform when he floated the idea of a “George Floyd Act, to make sure that we prevent police brutality like this from happening in the future in Texas.” Calling Floyd’s death “the most horrific tragedy [he had] ever personally observed,” the governor insisted that those “who have suffered because of racism for far too long” would lead the way on reform.1 During the 87th legislative session, not only did Governor Abbott neglect these concerns, he actively worked against them, opposing modest proposals to improve the justice system and prioritizing legislation that further harms the very communities he claimed to support. As other states work to address justice system inequities, recent developments in Texas expose the persistent challenges to ending the war on drugs and other policies that propagate systemic racism.

Houston, TX: The Baker Institute, 7p.

By Mark Shaw | Ian Tennant Ana Paula Oliviera | Daren Brookbanks

In 2000, the United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime (UNTOC), also known as the Palermo Convention, was adopted in a milestone moment for fostering global cooperation to combat organized crime. With 192 state parties, the convention and its protocols have provided a crucial legal framework for addressing types of crime such as human trafficking, migrant smuggling, and firearms trafficking. However, as transnational criminal networks continue to expand, new challenges are emerging, and the global community must take decisive action to ensure the UNTOC reaches its full potential. Our latest report highlights key obstacles to effective implementation: inconsistencies in national legislation, a lack of centralized data, and delays and restrictions in the convention’s Independent Review Mechanism (IRM). While the UNTOC’s widespread ratification is an achievement, these gaps hinder its ability to deliver impactful results. Without timely evaluations and better international cooperation, the global response to organized crime remains fragmented and insufficient. We believe that strengthening the UNTOC requires more robust data collection, greater transparency, and deeper engagement with civil society. Our report recommends the creation of an independent research center to monitor organized crime trends and track the convention’s progress. Additionally, we call for increased political will and resources to accelerate the IRM, ensuring that the UNTOC becomes a more powerful tool in the fight against evolving criminal markets.

Geneva: Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime. 2024. 48p.

By Pauline Moore, Melissa Kay Diliberti, Brian A. Jackson

Violent incidents, such as shootings, and threats of such violence, have become relatively common occurrences in kindergarten through grade 12 (K–12) schools across the United States. One common way that schools help their staff and students train for the possibility of an active shooter or other threats is by conducting practice drills. The prevalence of these drills — combined with the mixed results of how these drills affect staff and students' feelings of preparedness, safety, fear, and stress — highlights the need for more research. To better understand what teachers across the United States think about school safety generally and active shooter drills in particular, RAND researchers administered a survey to a randomly selected sample of 1,020 K–12 teachers using the American Teacher Panel. The survey focused on teachers' perceptions of school safety, including their main safety concerns and their experiences with incidents of gun violence, and with drills designed to prepare students and staff for school shootings and other violent incidents. The survey specifically asked whether such drills made teachers feel more or less safe and prepared to respond to active assailant events and teachers' perceptions of their students' feelings about such drills, as well as whether support was available to students and staff during and following drills. Survey results indicate that more work is needed to understand the impact of drills on staff and students and what schools can do to better support the well-being of students and staff who are required to participate in these activities.

Key Findings

• One in six K–12 teachers nationally works in a district that has been touched by gun violence since the 2019–2020 school year.

• Relative to the previous school year, teachers reported more concern in 2023–2024 about being victims of an attack at their schools and were even more concerned for their students.

• In the 2023–2024 school year, a greater share of female teachers than male teachers (27 percent versus 14 percent, respectively) reported fear of being harmed or attacked at school. In the previous year, female teachers were no more likely than male teachers to report such fears.

• Variability in the elements and response actions involved in drills highlights the need for more standardized implementation.

• Schools do not typically announce when an active shooter drill will occur to students and parents, and many schools are not providing support to help students and staff manage any stress or anxiety that such drills might cause.

• Teachers are split on whether participation in drills makes them feel more prepared to respond to active shooter incidents: Slightly less than half said that drills make them feel more prepared, and half perceived drills as having no impact on preparedness. A slight majority of teachers (54 percent) reported that drills make students feel more prepared to respond to such incidents.

• Most teachers (69 percent) indicated that participating in active shooter drills has no impact on their perceptions of safety at school, and only one-fifth said that drills make them feel safer.

Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2024. 36p.

By Lina Jakob, Caroline Anderson

This summary presents findings from research that estimates that childhood maltreatment causes up to 40 percent of common mental health disorders and highlights the need to address the underlying drivers of child maltreatment. A University of Sydney study, published in JAMA Psychiatry, found that childhood maltreatment causes up to 40 per cent of common, life-long mental health conditions. It is the first research in Australia to estimate the proportion of mental health conditions directly caused by childhood maltreatment, independent from other influences such as genetics and social environments. 

State of New South Wales 2024.

By Lenny Roth, Tom Gotsis, Christine Lamerton, Ali Rabbani

Government policy to address the use of illicit drugs is a topic of ongoing debate. 

The purpose of this paper is to provide an update on key policy developments since the report of the NSW Special Commission of Inquiry into the Drug Ice in January 2020. The paper summarises the former government's response to the inquiry recommendations and notes progress that has been made since then. Significant reforms in other states and territories are outlined and the decriminalisation of personal drug use in three overseas jurisdictions is also discussed.

Key points

• The NSW Special Commission of Inquiry into the Drug Ice was established in 2018 to investigate and advise on how best to tackle use of amphetamine-type stimulants. Its report was released in January 2020 and made 109 recommendations.

• The former government’s response to the inquiry supported 86 of these recommendations. The government announced a $500 million funding package over 4 years including $358 million for health-related programs and $140 million to expand justice initiatives. 

• Recommendations that the government rejected included decriminalising the personal use of illicit drugs, introducing pill testing, and expanding supervised drug consumption facilities.

• In February 2024 NSW Health provided an update on progress in implementing the recommendations that the government had supported. 

• A new police diversion program for possessing small quantities of illicit drugs commenced in February 2024 (the Early Drug Diversion Initiative). Critics have argued that police are diverting only a small proportion of those who are eligible for the program. 

• In 2023 the ACT enacted laws to decriminalise personal use of small amounts of various illicit drugs. Pill testing services have continued in the ACT, were introduced in 2024 in Queensland, and will commence in Victoria in the summer of 2024–25. 

• Oregon decriminalised the personal use of illicit drugs in 2021 and British Columbia also did so in 2023. In 2024 Oregon reinstated criminal penalties while recent changes in British Columbia have restricted the public places where personal drug use is legal. 

• In 2022–23 most respondents to Australia’s Drug Strategy Household Survey did not support legalising the personal use of illicit drugs but most respondents did support pill testing and regulated injecting centres.

NSW Parliamentary Research Service, 2024

By Oliver Bennett MBE, Ali Shalchi

The precise scale of economic crime in the UK is unknown, but it could run to tens or hundreds of billions of pounds per year. The extent of these crimes – which include money laundering, fraud, and corruption – led the Intelligence and Security Select Committee in its July 2020 report on Russia to note that London is considered a ‘laundromat’ for corrupt money. In December 2019 the Treasury Committee found various regulatory and legislative failings in the way in which these crimes are being tackled. It urged the Government to make improvements to the supervisory system and to introduce new powers to combat economic crime. A February 2022 Treasury Committee follow-up report concluded that the Government was still not prioritizing economic crime sufficiently. In 2019 The Financial Action Task Force (the global money laundering and terrorist financing watchdog) praised the UK’s efforts on the issue, but also found failings and identified a lack of resources for investigating these crimes. The Economic Crime Plan The Government agrees about the need to tackle economic crime, which it says causes “much harm to individuals and communities and damage to legitimate business and the UK’s reputation.” It set out its overall approach to tackling the issue in its July 2019 Economic Crime Plan. The Plan covers the years 2019-2022 and draws together all the work being conducted by the public and private sector. A number of the 52 actions contained in the plan may involve future legislative reforms, including changes to: • the Proceeds of Crime Act to improve how the proceeds of crime can be confiscated; • corporate criminal liability, to punish and prevent economic crimes when committed on behalf of or in the name of companies; • block company stock exchange listings on national security grounds; • improve transparency over UK property ownership; • Companies House powers to enable it strike off from its register dissolved or inactive limited partnerships. Progress with the Plan In February 2022, the Royal United Services Institute said that 40% of actions in the Plan had been completed, 17% were in progress, 23% were overdue, and 19% of actions had no due date. The Government says it is “on course to deliver 49 of the 52 actions” in the Plan. The Treasury Committee has recommended that the Plan be adapted and renewed for a further three years.   

London: UK Parliament, House of Commons Library, 2022. 22p.

By Dorothy Dillard, Howard Henderson,  Johnny Rice II, Amy D. Goldstein, Maurice Mangum,

In this article, we explore the responses of 357 African American men between 15- and 24 years old living in four high-crime violence cities to better understand their perception of their environment and its impact on community violence. We focus on study participants’ perceptions of their cities, explanations of violence, and their perceived contribution to the level of violence. Respondents describe their cities in grim terms with few opportunities. And, from their perspective, the dangerous environment in which they live necessitates gun possession, potentially perpetuating community violence. Our findings affirm that as with any other public health issue, the perception of place matters in understanding community violence. Further, our findings underscore the importance of seeking and responding to the lived experience of those most likely to be victims and perpetrators of community violence in crafting and implementing interventions 

Delaware Journal of Public Health, 2024.

By Gareth Mott, James Shires, Jen Ellis, James Sullivan and Jamie MacColl

Commercial cyber tools and services have many legitimate applications, from corporate penetration testing (an authorised simulated cyber attack on an IT system) to law enforcement and national security operations. But they are also subject to misuse and abuse, when they are used in ways that are contrary to national or international law, violate the human rights of their targets, or pose risks to international security. Some states are currently grappling with this policy challenge. Meanwhile, collective international initiatives for action are underway. For example, there is the US’s 2023 Joint Statement on Efforts to Counter the Proliferation and Misuse of Commercial Spyware and the UK- and France-led Pall Mall Process of 2024. Ultimately, one aim of these initiatives is to enable states to harmonise their policy interventions where possible. To inform principles and policies for intervention at national and international levels, it is necessary to understand the dynamics that encourage or facilitate offensive-cyber proliferation. This paper identifies a range of ‘non-state proliferating factors’ (NPFs) and ‘state permissive behaviours’ (SPBs), and its findings draw on desk-based research on the international commercial offensive-cyber market. These findings were supplemented by a data validation and consultative workshop with industry stakeholders held in person at Chatham House in March 2024. This half-day validation workshop drew on the expertise and insights of 44 participants predominantly based in the UK, the US and Western Europe. To facilitate candid discussion, remarks made at the workshop are not attributable, and the identities of participants are not referenced here.

In this paper, NPFs and SPBs are categorised into five areas:

1. Regulation of corporate structure and governance.

2. Legal frameworks for product development, sale and transfer.

3. Diplomatic support and engagement.

4. Development of cyber-security ecosystem and workforce.

5. Integration with defence and security industrial base.

Using these categories, this research analyses the roles of both state and non-state actors. It identifies critical inter-relationships between different SPBs and NPFs that serve to facilitate or enable potentially irresponsible offensive-cyber proliferation. This is one of two papers. A second paper, authored by the researchers and published by Chatham House in October 2024, draws on the findings in this paper and identifies a range of ‘principles’ that could be used to build a code of conduct to counter irresponsible offensive-cyber proliferation.

London: Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies - RUSI and The Royal Institute of International Affairs, 2024. 39p.

By Martina Prpic with Melissa Eichhorn

Violence against children takes various forms and occurs in different contexts. It can have serious, harmful consequences in both the short and long term, and estimates of the scale of the problem are alarming. Resulting from a complex interaction of various risk factors, this violence can nevertheless be avoided through effective prevention policies. Several international instruments have been adopted to safeguard and promote children's rights. The cornerstone in this framework of instruments is the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, Article 19 of which lays down the right of a child to be protected from all forms of violence and the obligation on states to take all appropriate measures to protect children. With the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty, the protection of children's rights has been explicitly recognized as an objective that the EU has an obligation to pursue. While child protection systems fall mainly within the responsibility of the EU Member States, the EU itself plays an important role too. Its actions have a direct impact on laws and policies implemented at the national level. Enhanced cooperation between all stakeholders and the exchange of best practices are the routes taken to address the issue.

EPRS | European Parliamentary Research Service 2024. 31p.

By Sergio Salazar Araya

The article reconstructs and critically analyses two main contemporary discursive formations associated with migrants disappearing in transit through Mexico: the official state discourse and the social discourse of organizations searching for missing persons along the migratory route. This article discusses how the two discourses contradict each other, disputing how to represent a phenomenon occurring at the intersection of diverse, complex forms of violence. This exposes collusion between states and criminal organizations, as well as the scattered duplications and continuities between legal and illegal dynamic forces producing regional social order. Disappearance is a technique specific to actors who are battling one another in a broader field of transnational mobility and circulation. In addition, both discourses hinge on social value forms that go beyond the strictly pecuniary and situate people’s systematic disappearance as a central feature of regional power networks. The empirical data was collected during fieldwork in Mexico and Central America and collated with data published in recent reports (state and non-governmental) on migrants’ disappearance in Mexico. 

  European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies Revista Europea de Estudios Latinoamericanos y del Caribe December, pp. 159-178  2020.

By Romain Le Cour Grandmaison

This article explores the construction – or reconstruction – of brokerage channels by violent actors in Mexico. It focuses on the construction of the Autodefensas de Michoacán (SelfDefense Groups of Michoacán) and studies the process that put illegal armed leaders in active dialogue with the Mexican federal government, but also how they became brokers capable of controlling access to strategic political resources, economic markets, and the connections that tie local citizens and the central state. Through the concept of political intermediation, I investigate how coercion, as a skill and resource, has become central to governance in Mexico; and how this leads to consolidating intermediaries that participate in reproducing local, violent political order. This article shall contribute to the understanding of brokerage in contexts of violence, and shed new light on the political logic fueling the dynamics of violence in Mexico’s war on drugs. Keywords: drug cartels, brokerage, Mexico, war on drugs, state, violence

European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies Revista Europea de Estudios Latinoamericanos y del Caribe 2021.

By Cirenia Chávez, Victor Cebotari, María José Benítez, Dominic Richardson, Chii Fen Hiu and Juliana Zapata

The prevalence of school-related violence and bullying is a global issue that impacts educational outcomes negatively. Furthermore, bullying can have emotional and physical effects on the children experiencing it, both in the short- and long term. Although the evidence regarding bullying from low- and middle-income countries is less extensive in comparison to evidence on the effects of bullying from high-income countries, some findings from the Latin American and Caribbean regions show similar results connecting lower reading scores with a high prevalence of bullying victimization. This working paper uses data from UNESCO’s Third Regional Comparative and Explanatory Study to determine the correlation between bullying and learning outcomes in 15 countries of the LAC region. It also looks at ways to mitigate the impacts of violence.

Innocenti Working Paper WP-2021-02 New York: UNICEF, United Nations Children's Fund, 202. 68p.

By: Marc Champagne

On September 11, 2010, after presenting selected technical aspects of a Randian ethic at a prominent academic conference, I was confronted with the following objection, somewhat belligerent in tone: “But what about suicide bombers?” What about them? Despite the objection’s contextual timeliness, my initial reaction was to question its topical relevance. So I politely requested that the criticism be further unpacked. My interlocutor duly obliged, and I eventually gleaned that murder-suicide (say, in the name of some otherworldly posit) was being adduced as a supposed counterexample to the rational egoist account of values I had just expounded.

I don’t recall my exact response, only that I was dissatisfied with it afterwards. The audience member clearly thought he had unearthed a powerful criticism, and the objection, though crude, had the rhetorical merit of brevity. Such an intuitively attractive “sound bite,” I later thought, deserves to be answered in kind.

The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies 11, no. 2 (Issue 22, December 2011): 233–36.

By: Jason Manning

This article focuses on intimate partner killings to address the question of why some killers subsequently commit suicide whereas others do not. Utilizing Blackian theories of conflict management and Manning’s theory of suicide, it advances hypotheses about when intimate partner conflict will result in homicide-suicide rather than homicide alone. These hypotheses propose that differing amounts of status superiority and relational distance predict and explain different patterns of lethal violence. The hypotheses are illustrated and supported with data taken from a study of intimate partner homicides in the state of West Virginia. The article concludes by arguing for a micro-structural model that addresses suicide, homicide, and homicide-suicide.

Homicide Studies 1 –20

By: Ethan Trinh

This autohistoria, or “a personal essay that theorizes,” is a special piece to me. It is spiritual, poetic, political, and dialogic. This essay thus delves deeper into the mourning, the fear, the tears, the pain, the loneliness, the strength of a Vietnamese queer immigrant in a state of Nepantla in order to relate with other queers of color in the dark (i.e., in suicidal process). “Living in Nepantla, the overlapping space between different perceptions and belief systems, you are aware of the changeability of racial, gender, sexual, and other categories rendering the conventional label-ling obsolete.” In this space, I attempt to use the concept of Nepantla to describe and understand stages of pre- and post-suicide attempt that I experienced. Then, I will conclude with a call for policy change to ask for attention to those who live in the life-death margins and in between and among worlds as mine.

LGBTQ Policy Journal

By: D J Williams, Michael Arntfield, Kaleigh Schaal, Jolene Vincent

Over the past several years, an online community of self‐described “incels,” referring to involuntary celibates, has emerged and gained increased public attention. Central to the guiding incel ideology and master narrative are violent misogynistic beliefs and an attitude of entitlement, based on male gender and social positioning, with respect to obtaining desired and often illusory sexual experiences. While violence and hate speech within the incel community are both common, there exists a notable subset of incels who have been willing to act on those violent beliefs through the commission of acts of multiple murder. This study explores the demographic, cognitive, and other characteristics of seven self‐identified incels who have attempted and/or successfully completed homicide. The findings suggest that although self‐perceptions tend to reflect either grandiosity or self‐deprecation, homicidal incels share similar demographic characteristics and dense common clusters of neutralization techniques, cognitive distortions, and criminal thinking errors.

Behav Sci Law. 2021;1–16.

By: Ecaterina Balica

Objective. The present paper analyses the relation between the number of blows, location of wounds and the length between homicide and suicide in homicide-suicide (HS) cases committed in Romania in the timeframe 2002-2013. At the same time, the study presents the correlation between three types of HS (intimate partner homicide-suicide (IPH-S), filicide- suicides (FS), familicides-suicides (Fam-S) and the above mentioned variables.

Method. The data regarding the number of blows, location of wounds and length between homicide and suicide were extracted from the Homicide-suicides in Romania 2002-2013 database (N=132). The database includes information regarding all HS committed in Romania and the data were collected from the recordings of the Criminal Investigations Services, from criminal files in prosecutors’ custody and from articles published in online newspapers. The data analysis was done by using SPSS 22.0.

Results. More than a half of the suicides occurred immediately after the aggressor committed the homicide (N=71; 53.8%). In approximately two thirds of the cases (N=56; 57.1%), the death of the victim resulted from a great number of blows. Many aggressors preferred to hit their victims in the head area (21.5%) or neck area (22.3%) only. The most common suicide method recorded in HS cases was by hanging (34.8%).

Conclusions. The prevention of the HS seems to be a difficult task after the aggressor initiated the first act of aggression (the homicide). Therefore, prevention and intervention have to be focused on the initial phases of the acts of violence that precede HS.

Rom J Leg Med [26] 308-313 [2018]

By: David B. Johnson and Joshua J. Robinson

We explore the relationship between gun prevalence and homicides in the United States from 2003–2019. Unlike previous research, which typically uses an indirect, state-level measure of gun prevalence, we use a direct measure of guns in a narrow geographic area: gun dealers. We find an increase in gun dealer density is significantly and positively associated with increased homicides in subsequent years. We compare estimates from our preferred measure, the number of dealers per 100 square miles in a local area, to those found using other gun prevalence measures and find our preferred measure to be more consistent in magnitude across three different estimation methods and two different data sources. We additionally show the effect of gun dealer density is limited mostly to counties that have a high percent of Black residents. We propose that the so-called “Ferguson Effect”—a sharp increase in violent crime in urban and Black communities after 2014—might be partially explained by an influx of gun dealers in Black communities, rather than just a change in the propensity of Black residents to call the police or changes in police behavior.

October 1, 2021

By: Jesem Douglas Yamall Orellana, Geraldo Marcelo da Cunha, Bárbara Christie de Souza Brito, Bernardo Lessa Horta

Objective: to identify characteristics, magnitude and factors associated with homicide in Manaus-AM, Brazil.

Methods: cross-sectional study, with data from the Mortality Information System (SIM); homicide rates and odds ratio (OR) were estimated, comparing to other external causes, for 2014; logistic regression was used.

Results: of the 1,657 violent deaths, 913 were due to homicide; homicide rate was of 55.8/100 thousand inhabitants (95%CI 52.1;59.7); odds ratio was higher among males (OR 3.4; 95%CI 2.3;5.1) when compared with females; among single (OR 1.6; 95%CI 1.1;2.5) and widowed individuals (OR 4.1; 95%CI 1.1;15.6), when compared with married individuals; at night/early hours (OR 2.1; 95%CI 1.6;2.9) and in the afternoon (OR 1.7; 95%CI 1.2;2.4), when compared with the morning period; the probability was higher among individuals under 35 years, with less schooling.

Conclusion: homicide mortality in Manaus was high, especially among males and young individuals with less schooling.

Epidemiol. Serv. Saude, Brasília, 26(4), Oct-Dec 2017