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The Fifth Wave: Organized Crime in 2040

By Phil Williams

By 2040, organized crime may thrive like never before, exploiting climate crises, geopolitical conflicts, and technological advancements. Our latest report reveals a chilling forecast where criminal networks operate as shadow governments, shielded by authoritarian regimes and empowered by rapid technological evolution.

This “fifth wave” of organized crime, as coined by author Phil Williams, will capitalize on scarcity markets, leveraging disruptions in essential resources like water, minerals, and energy caused by climate change. Criminal networks are expected to infiltrate legitimate markets, blurring lines between lawful and illicit activities and using scarcity as a driving force for growth.

The report suggests that by leveraging emerging tools such as artificial intelligence, autonomous vehicles, and 5G technology, criminal organizations will achieve new levels of sophistication, making it difficult for law enforcement to counter their reach and resilience. Meanwhile, geopolitical tensions are likely to exacerbate the situation, as some authoritarian regimes utilize criminal networks as extensions of state power, offering them safe havens and strategic support in exchange for destabilizing activities abroad.

The findings raise urgent questions about global readiness to combat organized crime’s possible evolution. “The Fifth Wave” challenges policymakers, law enforcement agencies, and international organizations to rethink their approach to organized crime in a rapidly shifting world. It underscores the importance of proactive strategies that go beyond traditional crime-fighting tactics, advocating for comprehensive international collaboration, adaptive policy-making, and innovative technology to address this deeply entrenched threat.

As crime increasingly infiltrates legal economies, emerging as a powerful economic and social force, international collaboration and innovative strategies will be vital to mitigate this emerging threat. This threat requires an unprecedented global response.

Geneva: Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, 2024. 30p.

Temporal and Spatial Trends of Fentanyl Co-Occurrence in The Illicit Drug Supply in The United States: a Serial Cross-Sectional Analysis

By Tse Yang Lim , Huiru Dong , Erin Stringfellow , Zeynep Hasgul , Ju Park , Lukas Glos , Reza Kazemi , Mohammad S Jalali 

Fentanyl and its analogs contribute substantially to drug overdose deaths in the United States. There is concern that people using drugs are being unknowingly exposed to fentanyl, increasing their risk of overdose death. This study examines temporal trends and spatial variations in the co-occurrence of fentanyl with other seized drugs.

Methods

We identified fentanyl co-occurrence (the proportion of samples of non-fentanyl substances that also contain fentanyl) among 9 substances or substance classes of interest: methamphetamine, cannabis, cocaine, heroin, club drugs, hallucinogens, and prescription opioids, stimulants, and benzodiazepines. We used serial cross-sectional data on drug reports across 50 states and the District of Columbia from the National Forensic Laboratory Information System, the largest available database on the U.S. illicit drug supply, from January 2013 to December 2023.

Findings

We analyzed data from 11,940,207 samples. Fentanyl co-occurrence with all examined substances increased monotonically over time (Mann-Kendall p < 0.0001). Nationally, fentanyl co-occurrence was highest among heroin samples (approx. 50%), but relatively low among methamphetamine (≤1%), cocaine (≤4%), and other drug samples. However, co-occurrence rates have grown to over 10% for cocaine and methamphetamine in several Northeast states in 2017–2023.

Interpretation: 

Fentanyl co-occurs most commonly with heroin, but its presence in stimulant supplies is increasing in some areas, where it may pose a disproportionately high risk of overdose.

Lancet Reg Health Amicas, 2024 Sep 27;39:100898. doi: 10.1016/j.lana.2024.100898

Social Media: The Root Cause of Rising Youth Self‐Harm or a Convenient Scapegoat?

By Helen Christensen, Aimy Slade, Alexis Whitton

Recent events have reignited debate over whether social media is the root cause of increasing youth self‐harm and suicide. Social media is a fertile ground for disseminating harmful content, including graphic imagery and messages depicting gendered violence and religious intolerance. This proliferation of harmful content makes social media an unwelcoming space, especially for women, minority groups, and young people, who are more likely to be targeted by such content, strengthening the narrative that social media is at the crux of a youth mental health crisis. However, the parallel rise in social media use and youth mental health problems does not imply a causal relationship. Increased social media use may be a correlate, exacerbating factor, or a consequence of rising trends in youth self‐harm, which may have entirely separate causes. Despite its potential negative impacts, social media is also a source of information and support for young people experiencing mental health problems. Restricting young people's access to social media could impede pathways for help‐seeking. This complexity highlights the need for a considered approach.

Recommendations  

  • Understand why some individuals are more susceptible to social media harms.

  • Assess alternative explanations for youth self-harm trends.

  • Mitigate artificial intelligence (AI)-related risks.

  • Evaluate interventions that restrict social media and ensure they are evidence-based.

Medical Journal of Australia Volume221, Issue10 November 2024 Pages 524-526

Unauthorized Access: The Crisis in Online Privacy and Security

By Robert H. Sloan • Richard Warner

 Going beyond current books on privacy and security, Unauthorized Access: The Crisis in Online Privacy and Security proposes specific solutions to public policy issues about online privacy and security. Requiring no technical or legal expertise, the book explains complicated concepts in clear, straightforward language. The authors two renowned experts on computer security and law explore the well-established connection between social norms, privacy, security, and technological structure. This approach is the key to understanding information security and informational privacy, providing a practical framework to address ethical and legal issues. The authors also discuss how rapid technological developments have created novel situations that lack relevant norms and present ways to develop these norms for protecting informational privacy and ensuring sufficient information security. Bridging the gap among computer scientists, economists, lawyers, and public policymakers, this book provides technically and legally sound public policy guidance about online privacy and security. It emphasizes the need to make trade-offs among the complex concerns that arise in the context of online privacy and security.

Boca Raton, FL;  London; New York;  CRC Press, 2017. 401p.

The Philosophy of Online Manipulation

Edited By Fleur Jongepier, Michael Klenk

Are we being manipulated online? If so, is being manipulated by online technologies and algorithmic systems notably different from human forms of manipulation? And what is under threat exactly when people are manipulated online? This volume provides philosophical and conceptual depth to debates in digital ethics about online manipulation. The contributions explore the ramifications of our increasingly consequential interactions with online technologies such as online recommender systems, social media, user-friendly design, microtargeting, default settings, gamification, and real-time profiling. The authors in this volume address four broad and interconnected themes: What is the conceptual nature of online manipulation? And how, methodologically, should the concept be defined? Does online manipulation threaten autonomy, freedom, and meaning in life, and if so, how? What are the epistemic, affective, and political harms and risks associated with online manipulation? What are legal and regulatory perspectives on online manipulation? This volume brings these various considerations together to offer philosophically robust answers to critical questions concerning our online interactions with one another and with autonomous systems. The Philosophy of Online Manipulation will be of interest to researchers and advanced students working in moral philosophy, digital ethics, the philosophy of technology, and the ethics of manipulation.

London; New York: Routledge, 2022. 425p.

“I wanted them all to notice” Protecting children and responding to child sexual abuse within the family environment

By The Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel

This report describes very shocking things about the lives, distress and pain of children who had horrific abuse perpetrated on them, by adults who should have cared for them and kept them safe. What is even more disturbing is that safeguarding agencies were unable to listen, hear and protect these children. This report, and the evidence on which it is based, stands as both an invitation and a challenge to government and professionals, to respect and recognise the voices and experiences of the children at the heart of this review, so that children in the future might receive the help and protection that should be their undeniable right. Forty years on from the publication of the Cleveland Report (1988), we must ask why the sexual abuse of children in the family environment provokes undoubted and profound professional unease, and in so doing, systematically silences and shuts out children from the protection and support they need. More recently the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) evidenced the countless ways in which organisations, professionals and government have too often denied and deflected attention from the realities of child sexual abuse. This was powerfully demonstrated in the courageous testimonies of adult survivors in IICSA’s Truth Project. Over the past 20 years or so, the light on the sexual abuse of children within families has gradually dimmed. We have witnessed a worrying evaporation of the skills and knowledge that professionals (leaders and practitioners) must have to work confidently and sensitively in this complex area of practice. This dilution of focus and expertise may be partly explained by the greater public and professional attention on the sexual abuse of children in institutions, by ‘famous’ people and on the sexual exploitation of children outside their home. This was undoubtedly urgently required, but it may also have drawn our eyes away from the more common experience for children, of sexual abuse in their families. Despite commonalities between different types of sexual abuse, the ‘othering’ and moral outrage that can accompany media attention on extra-familial sexual abuse has perhaps distracted attention from the more commonplace nature of familial abuse. In turning our attention away from the latter, we have undermined the confidence and capability of professionals to identify and respond to sexual abuse in families.

In over a third of the reviews, the people who harmed children (98% of whom were men) were known to pose a risk of sexual harm. The risk of harm was known (and often over many years) but ignored, denied or deflected. Therefore, it is often not a matter of professionals not knowing about the risk of abuse, but rather of a system that simply does not see, notice and comprehend this type of risk. The review highlights too that shame, fear and concern about betraying their families means that children struggle to tell others what is happening. A profound change is overdue in how professionals, in their different roles, engage with and talk to children about abuse. This involves wholesale change in training, supervision and leadership. These challenges are not about the failings of individuals or one agency to do their job. They are systemic and of a multi-agency nature. This is emphasised by the fact that in 2022/23 just 3.6% of children on child protection plans were there because of a primary concern about child sexual abuse (and tellingly this is at its lowest for a very long time). This may be because of institutionalised avoidance and disinclination to name sexual abuse as a concern, and also because safeguarding agencies are failing to notice when children are at risk of this form of harm. It may also reflect a system that too often is criminal justice led. A national strategic response, led by government, is needed. This will involve investment in better working together, not only between the trinity of safeguarding partners (local authorities, police and health) but also with schools and other education providers, with the criminal and family justice system (including probation), and with the third sector. The voices and testimonies of the children at the heart of this report make plain that we cannot turn our minds away from acknowledging the reality of sexual abuse for too many children. The child whose quote forms this review’s title reminds us of our responsibilities to notice what is happening to children. If we do not, then those perpetrating abuse will continue to wield their corrosive and abusive power in many children’s lives.

London: Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel, 2024. 139p.

Anti-Social Norms

By Leopoldo Fergusson, José-Alberto Guerra, and James Robinson

Since formal rules can only partially reduce opportunistic behavior, third-party sanctioning to promote fairness is critical to achieving desirable social outcomes. Social norms may underpin such behavior, but they can also undermine it. We study one such norm the “don’t be a toad” norm, as it is referred to in Colombia that tells people to mind their own business and not snitch on others. In a set of fairness games where a third party can punish unfair behavior, but players can invoke the “don’t be a toad” norm, we find that the mere possibility of invoking this norm completely reverses the benefits of third-party sanctioning to achieve fair social outcomes. We establish this is an anti-social norm in a well-defined sense: most players consider it inappropriate, yet they expect the majority will invoke it. To understand this phenomenon we develop an evolutionary model of endogenous social norm transmission and demonstrate that a payoff advantage from adherence to the norm in social dilemmas, combined with sufficient heterogeneity in the disutility of those who view the norm as inappropriate, can generate the apparent paradox of an anti-social norm in the steady-state equilibrium. We provide further evidence that historical exposure to political violence, which increased the ostracization of snitches, raised sensitivity to this norm.

Chicago: University of Chicago, The Becker Friedman Institute for Economics (BFI) , 2024. 57p.

Crypto Tax Evasion

By Tom G. Meling, Magne Mogstad, and Arnstein Vestre

We quantify the extent of crypto tax noncompliance and evasion, and assess the efficacy of alternative tax enforcement interventions. The context of the study is Norway. This context allows us to address key measurement challenges by combining de-anonymized crypto trading data with individual tax returns, survey data, and information from tax enforcement interventions. We find that crypto tax noncompliance is pervasive, even among investors trading on exchanges that share identifiable trading data with tax authorities. However, since most crypto investors owe little in crypto-related taxes, enforcement strategies need to be well-targeted or cheap for benefits to outweigh costs.

Chicago: University of Chicago, The Becker Friedman Institute for Economics (BFI) , 2024. 69p.

Criminal Record Stigma in the Labor Market for College Graduates: A Mixed Methods Study

By Michael Cerda-Jara and David J. Harding

One of the primary ways in which contact with the criminal legal system creates and maintains inequality is through the stigma of a criminal record. Although the negative effects of the stigma of a criminal record are well-documented, existing research is limited to the low-wage labor market. Through a job application audit design, this study examines the role of criminal record stigma in the labor market for recent college graduates across Black, Latino, and white men. We find that criminal record stigma has a large effect among white college-educated men but not among Black or Latino men and find no evidence that earning a college degree after the record mitigates criminal record stigma. In-depth interviews with college-educated men with a criminal record show that the criminal record stigma has effects beyond the initial application stage, as many reported provisional job offers being rescinded following a criminal background check, leading participants to limit the jobs to which they applied

Sociological Science 11: 42-66.2024

Dirty Money: Assessing the vulnerability of financial institutions in the Balkans to illicit finance

By Dardan Kocani

Despite efforts to prevent illicit finance – such as the adoption of international frameworks, Financial Action Task Force (FATF) standards and the EU’s anti-money laundering (AML) directives – financial institutions in the Western Balkans remain highly vulnerable to sophisticated criminals and the inherent risks in the formal financial system. Financial institutions such as banks, microfinance institutions, cryptocurrency services and money transfer services are frequently exploited by criminals to move illicit money across borders.

This report delves into the structural weaknesses and vulnerabilities that facilitate money laundering in the Western Balkans. One major insight is the impact of cryptocurrency, where regulatory shortcomings enable anonymous, cross-border transactions that are hard to trace. Financial technology, while promising innovation, also introduces fresh risks, especially where compliance and monitoring frameworks have yet to catch up. With no centralized registry for politically exposed persons (PEPs) or beneficial owners, financial institutions often lack critical information, inadvertently providing cover for criminal actors.

The study identifies specific methods used to launder money, such as smurfing through bank accounts, taking out suspicious bank loans, engaging in real estate purchases, and employing frontmen. Notable cases in the region expose systemic vulnerabilities in banks, where criminal actors leverage insider support or regulatory gaps to move substantial amounts undetected. Furthermore, public-private partnerships in AML enforcement remain insufficient, creating weak links that are frequently exploited.

This report provides strategic recommendations for governments, financial institutions and non-state actors in the region to address these gaps, emphasizing the need for robust inter-agency collaboration, stronger regulatory frameworks, and consistent training for AML officers. The region needs a heightened, collaborative effort to prevent local financial institutions from becoming conduits for transnational organized crime and dirty money laundering.

Geneva: Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC)’s Observatory of Illicit Economies in South Eastern Europe. 2024. 40p.

Mapping of Programmes for Perpetrators of Domestic Violence in Central Asia

By Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe

This publication was prepared as part of the Organization for Security and Co-operation’s (OSCE) Gender Issues Programme project “WIN for Women and Men: Strengthening Comprehensive Security through Innovating and Networking for Gender Equality”, in co-operation with the United Nations Population Fund’s (UNFPA) Regional Office for Eastern Europe and Central Asia. This mapping is based on a combination of a desk review and interviews with key stakeholders in each of the five countries in Central Asia. The results of the mapping are presented first as regional trends and tendencies, followed by findings per country. Programs aimed at changing the violent behaviour of perpetrators are important elements in preventing gender-based violence and ending impunity. The aim of this document is to look into existing programs and trends and offer a set of recommendations for further engagement in Central Asia.

Vienna: OSCE, 2024. 27p.

A scoping study of crime facilitated by the metaverse

By Juliana Gómez-Quintero, Shane D. Johnson, Hervé Borrion, and Samantha Lundrigan

The metaverse is an emerging convergence of technologies (e.g., virtual reality and blockchains) that enables users to experience mixed/extended realities for various legitimate purposes (e.g., gaming, tourism, manufacturing and education). Unfortunately, the crime and security implications of emerging technologies are often overlooked. To anticipate crimes that the metaverse might facilitate, we report the findings of a nominal group technique (NGT) study, which involved a state-of-the-art scoping review of the existing literature and elicitation exercises with two groups of experts (one a diverse group from the UK and Europe, the other representing international law enforcement) with a wide range of expertise. A total of 30 crime threats were identified in the literature or by participants. The elicitation exercises also explored how harmful, frequent, achievable and defeatable participants anticipated that the crimes identified would be. Ratings for these aspects were largely consistent across the two samples, with crimes of a sexual nature (e.g., child sexual abuse material), and crimes against the person (e.g., hate crime) being rated as presenting the highest future risks (i.e. being high harm and high frequency) and being the most difficult to address. The findings illuminate understanding of the most (and least) harmful and likely crime threats the metaverse could facilitate and consequently help stakeholders to prioritise which offences to focus on. In discussing how the crime threats might be addressed, we consider roles and responsibilities and how theory about the management of physical places might inform crime prevention in the metaverse(s).

Futures, Volume 157, March 2024, 103338

Profiling consumers who reported mass marketing scams: demographic characteristics and emotional sentiments associated with victimization

By Marguerite DeLiema and Paul Witt

We examine the characteristics of consumers who reported scams to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission. We assess how consumers vary demographically across six scam types, and how the overall emotional sentiment of a consumer’s complaint (positive, negative, neutral/mixed) relates to reporting victimization versus attempted fraud (no losses). For romance, tech support, and prize, sweepstakes, and lottery scams, more older than young and middle-aged adults reported victimization. Across all scam types, consumers classified as Black, Hispanic, and Asian/Asian Pacific Islander were more likely than non-Hispanic white consumers to report victimization than attempted fraud. Relative to complaints categorized as emotionally neutral or mixed, we find that emotionally positive complaints and emotionally negative complaints were significantly associated with victimization, but that these relationships differed by scam type. This study helps identify which consumer groups are affected by specific scams and the association between emotion and victimization.

Security Journal (2024) 37:921–964

Identifying trends and patterns in offending and victimization on Snapchat: A rapid review

By Kelly Huie, Michelle Butler, & Andrew Percy

Few studies have examined crime on Snapchat despite its popularity and growing accounts of victimization occurring on the application. This study addresses this gap in knowledge by conducting a rapid review of crime on Snapchat across 18 databases. The findings indicate this area is under-researched, with only 35 articles eligible for inclusion and fve focusing solely on crime on Snapchat. Nevertheless, eleven types of crimes were identified as occurring on Snapchat, including: blackmail; the sharing of private, sexual material without consent; grooming/solicitation of minors; stalking; posting threatening, intimidating or harassing material; hate crime; sharing offensive, menacing or obscene content; obtaining illicit goods; identity theft; fraud; and hacking. The findings additionally revealed some patterns in offending and victimization that are also discussed.

Security Journal (2024) 37:903–920

Foundations and trends in the darknet‑related criminals in the last 10 years: A systematic literature review and bibliometric analysis

By: Hai Thanh Luong

After the Silk Road closure, many studies started focusing on the trend and patterns of darknet-related crimes in the 2010s. This frst study combined a systematic literature review and bibliometric analysis in the feld. This study clarifes 49 articles in criminology and penology among 1150 publications relating to the darknet on the Web of Science database to review and analyze the research evolutions of this topic in the last decade. The main fndings point out (1) almost all leading authors with their most infuential papers came from the Global South with predominant contributions; (2) unbalancing publications between regional scholars and their institutions and countries although the darknet-related criminals occurred and operated without border; and (3) some specialized themes have identifed to call further extensive research such as policing interventions in the darknet and fows of the cryptocurrency in cryptomarkets, among others.

Security Journal (2024) 37:535–574

Don’t call it a comeback! Revictimization and the cycle of violence at micro‑places

By Cory Schnell

This study presents a new perspective on the influence of time and the reoccurrence of crime problems at micro-places. I examined 342,690 aggravated assault incidents reported to the Chicago Police Department from 2001 to 2020 using a longitudinal repeat and near-repeat research design combined with cumulative incidence graphs across different temporal windows. There are two distinct periods to observe the revictimization of violence at micro-places. There is immediate risk after an incident within a week followed by a longer period with lower risk across 2 to 4 years when crime often routinely circles back to the same locations. Future research should continue to refine understanding of cyclical patterns or the “life course” of crime at micro-places to enhance the efficacy of place-based crime prevention strategies.

Security Journal (2024) 37:1483–1508

Social and health characteristics of mothers involved in family court care proceedings in England

By Georgina Ireland, Linda Wijlaars, Matthew A Jay, Claire Grant, Rachel Pearson, Johnny Downs and Ruth Gilbert

This study aimed to determine the risk of mothers being involved in public law family court care proceedings and their social and health characteristics by analysing linked administrative family court and healthcare records. Involvement in care proceedings reflects serious concerns for the care or safety of a child. Local Authority (LA) social care departments can bring care proceedings under Section 31 of the Children Act 1989 due to concerns about significant harm, or risk of significant harm to the child attributable to care given by the parents or the child being beyond parental control. Each year, around 10,000 mothers in England are involved in care proceedings. In 80% of these proceedings, the child is placed with friends or family, unrelated foster carers, in residential care or for adoption. One fifth remain with one or both birth parents, with or without a supervision order.

Recent developments in national and regional linkages of administrative health data to family court or social services data have contributed insights into maternal health needs in Wales, Sweden and Canada, but evidence is lacking for England (5-15). Similar linked data for England would contribute new insights due to the population size, the regional and ethnic variation in England, and variability in determinants of service access and outcomes across different population subgroups. From a policy and practice perspective, evidence from linked data on the health of parents involved in family court care proceedings could inform how and when healthcare and related services could intervene to improve parental health and support, and thereby prevent or mitigate child maltreatment, and in some cases, avoid care proceedings.

Aims and objectives

This study aimed to address the evidence gap in England on the health of mothers involved in care proceedings compared with their peers. We conducted two sub-studies:

  1. In the first, we studied all first-time mothers between 2007-19 in the English NHS, including those involved in care proceedings, to:

  • Create a database of first-time mothers using hospital admission data, linked to care proceedings in England and assess linkage accuracy.

  • Estimate the 10-year risk of care proceedings for first-time mothers in England and describe differences in maternal social and health characteristics at a first birth.

  • Compare the number of births within 10 years to first-time mothers involved and not involved in care proceedings.

  • Assess maternal and birth characteristics associated with recurrent care proceedings.

  • Estimate differences in mortality among mothers involved and not involved in care proceedings.

2. Second, we studied mothers involved in care proceedings and other women using mental health service records in four LAs in south London to:

  • Create a research database that linked records of mothers involved in care proceedings in south London to mental health service data and assess linkage accuracy.

  • Compare the characteristics of mental health service use among mothers involved in care proceedings and other women using mental health services.

  • Compare the risk of death among mothers involved in care proceedings with other women using mental health services.

  • Evaluate patterns of mental health service use before and after start of care proceedings.

London: Nuffield Foundation, 2024. 63p.

Improving lives – The power of better data in the family justice system

By Aliya Saied-Tessier

Every day, judges and magistrates make decisions in family courts that have substantial bearing on children’s lives, including where a child should live, who they should spend time with and who should have parental responsibility for them. The main consideration of every decision is the welfare of the child (s.1 Children Act 1989). Yet the family justice system has been described as ‘operating in the dark’ (Curtiss 2019, 25 June)1 without the necessary data to demonstrate that professionals, and the decisions they make, actually help children involved in proceedings.

This paper sets out the significance of data within the context of the family justice system, current limitations, and opportunities and recommendations for improvement. It covers all parts of the family justice system, from children’s social care involvement to family courts, including both public and private law proceedings.

Key points

  • The family justice system has been described as ‘operating in the dark’, with fundamental data problems including a fragmented system of data owners and users, and significant data gaps.

  • While professionals are working to improve data and its supporting infrastructure (and there are examples of positive innovations such as data linking e.g. Administrative Data Research (ADR) UK’s Data First family court dataset), it remains the case that the family justice system lags far behind other public services in terms of data availability and quality.

  • A coherent plan involving all data owners and users in the system could seek to build on data improvement work, fill data gaps, publish more aggregate data, increase safe data linking, and raise standards of data literacy and use.

  • The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) is best placed to oversee a data improvement plan and coordinate the rest of the system, building on the data mapping exercise undertaken by the National Centre for Social Research (NatCen).

London: Nuffield Family Justice Observatory. 2024. 25p.

Data in the Family justice system: What is available and to whom

By Terry Ng-Knight, Nandita Upadhyay and Kostas Papaioannou

The evaluation of the first three transparency pilot sites, undertaken by NatCen, was published in July. The report explores the availability and accessibility of data within the family justice system in England and Wales. The findings show there are data gaps, inconsistent data collection and limited accessibility with recommendations to develop a full data strategy for the Family Justice system.

London: The National Centre for Social Research (NatCan): 2024. 28p.

The Fragility of Freedom: Online Holocaust Denial and Distortion

By Alina Bricman, Guenther Jikeli, Ada Baumkotter, Linus Kebba Pook, Grischa Stanjek, Karolina Placzynta, Yfat Barak-Cheney, Hannah Maman

Reflecting on the months since the recent October 7 attack, rarely has the theme of Holocaust Memorial Day 2024, ‘The Fragility of Freedom’, felt so poignant. Communities globally experienced the shattering of presumed security, and antisemitic incidents responsively spiked. Antisemitism rose across both mainstream and fringe social media platforms, and communities resultantly reported a rise in insecurity and fear. CCOA constituent countries have recorded significant rises in antisemitic incidents, including an immediate 240% increase in Germany, a three-fold rise in France, and a marked increase in Italy. The antisemitism landscape, including Holocaust denial and distortion, had shifted so drastically since October 7 that previous assumptions and understands now demand re-examination. In the run up to Holocaust Memorial Day 2024, this research compilation by members of the Coalition to Counter Online Antisemitism offers a vital contemporary examination of the current and emergent issues facing Holocaust denial and distortion online. As unique forms of antisemitism, denial and distortion are a tool of historical revisionism which specifically targets Jews, eroding Jewish experience and threatening democracy. Across different geographies and knowledge fields, this compilation unites experts around the central and sustained proliferation of Holocaust denial and distortion on social media.

Amman | Berlin | London | Paris | Washington DC: Institute for Strategic Dialogue,  2024. 34p.