By Benjamin Havers, Kartikeya Tripathi, Alexandra Burton, Sally McManus, Claudia Cooper

Background - Younger people are more likely to report cybercrime than older people. As older people spend more time online, this may change. If similarly exposed, risk factors including social isolation and poor health could make older adults disproportionally susceptible. We aimed to explore whether cybercrime risks and their predictors vary between age groups. Methods - We analysed responses from 35,069 participants aged 16+ in the 2019/20 Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW). We investigated, among people who have used the internet in the past year, risks of experiencing any cybercrime, repeat victimisation and associated financial loss across age groups. Results - Despite being at lower risk of reporting any cybercrime in the past year, people aged 75+ were more likely to report financial loss resulting from cybercrime victimisation (OR 4.25, p = 0.037) and repeat cybercrime victimisation (OR 2.03, p = 0.074) than younger people. Men, those from Mixed or Black ethnic groups, more deprived areas, managerial professional groups, and with worse health were at greater cybercrime risk. Discussion - While younger adults are more at risk from cybercrime, older adults disclosed more severe cases (repetitive victimisation and associated financial loss), perhaps due to lesser awareness of scams and reporting options. As most people experience declining health as they age, greater understanding of why poor health predicts cybercrime could inform prevention initiatives that would particularly benefit older age groups and mitigate risks of growing internet use among older adults. Health and social care professionals may be well positioned to support prevention.

PLOS ONE | December 18, 2024

By Grahame Allen, Helen Wong

Knife-related crime (knife crime) is a crime involving an object with a blade or sharp instrument. Knife crime data is published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), government departments, police forces and the NHS. This briefing focuses on knife crime statistics for England and Wales. Some of the statistics go up to March 2024, whereas others only go up to March 2023. Further information on knife crime in England and Wales: possession offences, rules for retailers and efforts to prevent serious violence can be found in the Library briefing: Knives, offensive weapons and serious violence

Offences involving a knife The ONS publishes data on crimes recorded by police involving a knife or sharp instrument for a selection of serious violent offences. In the year ending March 2024, there were around 50,500 offences involving a sharp instrument in England and Wales (excluding Greater Manchester). This was 4.4% higher than in 2022/23 and 2.8% lower than in 2019/20.

Homicide offences In the year ending March 2023, Home Office data shows there were 244 homicides (the killing of one person by another) using a sharp instrument, including knives and broken bottles. This meant sharp instruments were used in 41% of the 594 homicides that occurred in England and Wales in 2022/23. Knife crime by police force area ONS data shows that in 2023/24, West Midlands Police recorded the highest rate of 178 offences per 100,000 population. In contrast, Dyfed-Powys Police recorded the lowest rate of 29 offences per 100,000 population. Proven offences and offenders Sentencing statistics from the Ministry of Justice show that in the year ending March 2023, there were almost 18,500 cautions and convictions made for possession of a knife or offensive weapon. Juveniles (aged 10 to 17) were the offenders in around 17.3% of cases. Hospital admissions Police and courts crime data depends on offences being reported to the authorities; this won’t capture all instances of knife crime because some offences may not be reported. It is therefore useful to supplement this information with alternative sources such as NHS hospital data. Data from NHS Digital shows there were 3,900 “hospital episodes” recorded in English hospitals in 2023/24 due to assault by a sharp object. This was a 3.3% increase compared 2022/23, and a 7% increase compared to 2014/15. Scotland and Northern Ireland The data above are for England and Wales. Data for Scotland on the number of crimes involving the possession of an article with a blade or point can be found in table A8 of the Recorded Crime in Scotland 2023-24 publication. Table 7 of Homicide in Scotland 2023-24 shows the victims of homicide by main method of killing, including those where a sharp instrument was used.

Statistics on knife crime in Northern Ireland can be found in the latest Police Recorded Crime Statistics Monthly update from the Police Service of Northern Ireland.

London: House of Commons Library, 2025. 30p.

By Dan Whitten, Eleanor Neyroud & Peter Neyroud 

Research question - 

Sexual Risk Orders (SRO) have been advocated as a means to prevent Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG). This is despite significant detriment to the fundamental rights of the legally innocent and a lack of empirical assessment that can speak to preventative efficacy. This study asks; do SROs serve to prevent sexual-harm?

Data - 

The Police National Computer (PNC) was used to identify two samples of SRO subjects. Legal Services’ data from the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) was used to construct a counterfactual group, for whom SRO was considered but not obtained. PNC was used to identify arrests as a proxy for offending and a harm index applied.

Methods - 

Before-after and between-group comparisons are used, along with an interrupted-time-series analysis, to assess the relationship between SRO and sexual-harm prevention. Rank-ordering of harm caused by alleged sexual-offenders in London enables an estimate of how precisely SROs are used against the highest-harm offenders.

Findings - 

SROs are associated with a significant 84.5% reduction in sexual-harm. This increases to a 93.1% reduction in the case of high-harm offenders, controlling for time incarcerated. Despite this, SROs are rarely used and are not systematically targeted against the most harmful offenders.

Conclusions - 

Within the limitations of the methodology we conclude that the evidence supports SRO use as a primary tactic to counter VAWG. Preventative impact may be maximised by increasing use, actively targeting SROs at the highest-harm offenders and considering use at an earlier stage of a subjects sexual-offending. A randomised trial is the next logical step to augment causal inference.

Camb J Evid Based Polic 9, 1 (2025, 19 p.

By Matthew Chidozie Ogwu, MalikMatěj Malík, Pavel Tlustoš, Jiří Patočka

Fenethylline (street name, captagon) is a synthetic amphetamine-type stimulant that is emerging as a significant public health and security concern, particularly in the Middle East. This systematic review synthesizes original research articles, epidemiological studies, systematic reviews, policy analyses, and case reports to provide a comprehensive analysis of fenethylline’s health impacts, addiction potential, and dynamics of illicit trade. Initially developed for therapeutic use, fenethylline illicit production and use have escalated, raising concern about its physiological, psychological, and socio-economic impacts. This stimulant profoundly affects the central nervous system, enhancing wakefulness, concentration, and physical stamina while inducing euphoria. These effects come at the cost of serious adverse health outcomes, particularly with prolonged or heavy use, including cardiovascular complications, neurological damage, and addiction. The dependence-forming nature of captagon contributes to escalating substance use disorders, placing a burden on healthcare systems. Beyond its biomedical implications, fenethylline trafficking has become a global issue, with supply chains deeply intertwined with politically unstable regions where illicit economies thrive. The geopolitical dimensions of captagon’s trade amplify its global security threat, influencing international relations and regional stability. This paper underscores the urgent need for systematic data collection and coordinated efforts to regulate illicit fenethylline production and distribution. Strategies such as improved surveillance, public health interventions, and international cooperation are essential to mitigate its escalating risks. Addressing this issue requires a multidisciplinary approach, integrating public health, law enforcement, and policy development to curb its impact on global health and security.

Drug and Alcohol Dependence Reports, March 2025, 39 p.

By Sarah Anderson

Focus on the interconnection of interpersonal violence, adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), trauma and justice-involvement has increased interest internationally among policymakers and practitioners working within criminal justice contexts for ‘trauma-informed’ approaches and interventions which facilitate recovery. This article discusses limitations of employing these concepts to make sense of the lives of criminal-justice involved people. Drawing on UK-based research using interviews and collage-workshops to gather autobiographical narratives of 16 repeatedly-criminalised men, a case vignette is presented to show the institutional and structural contexts of interpersonal violence, and the critical role of the criminal justice system (CJS) in obscuring and perpetuating violence. This raises doubt about the CJS's capacity to respond to trauma. The contribution of this article is to integrate theoretical conceptualisations of violence and empirical findings to critique the possibility of trauma-informed practice (TIP) within a criminal justice context.

Howard J. Crim. Justice. 2025;64:24–43 pages

By Patrick Lussier and Evan McCuish

Objectives

There is empirical evidence that sexual recidivism rates have been dropping for several decades, but it remains unclear whether this drop is an artifact of changing research methodologies over the years. The current study, therefore, examines whether the sexual recidivism drop is robust while accounting for various methodological factors.

Method

The study is based on a systematic review and a quantitative meta-analysis of 468 empirical studies published between 1940 and 2019 that reported sexual recidivism rates. A total of 626 estimations (n = 388,994) of sexual recidivism were retrieved for the study period and of those, 238 were independent observations (n = 196,651). A series of sensitivity analyses were conducted using a meta-regression approach.

Results

A series of meta-regression analyses show that, even after accounting for various methodological factors (e.g., study settings, follow-up length, recidivism criteria), there has been a sexual recidivism rate drop of about 45–60% since the 1970s.

Conclusions

The study findings confirm the presence of a sexual recidivism drop while recognizing that sexual recidivism rates are sensitive to methodological details.

Journal of Criminal Justice

Volume 92, May–June 2024, 102188, p. 16

By Isabella Voce and Anthony Morgan

The cost of cybercrime is often expressed in terms of the financial loss to individuals, businesses and governments. This report argues that in order to invest the necessary financial, human and technical resources in prevention and response, perceived harm must be widened to include practical, health, social, financial and legal impacts.

The authors propose a harm index for victims, using a novel approach that draws on victim self-report data collected through the Australian Cybercrime Survey. The index provides a measure of the relative severity of each of 17 types of cybercrime, calculated based on victim reports of the prevalence and severity of each harm.

Key findings

Nearly half of all respondents had been a victim of at least one type of cybercrime in the 12 months prior to the survey.

Cybercrime victims experience a range of harms arising from their victimisation. Practical, social and health impacts were the most common harms experienced, followed by financial and legal difficulties.

Most cybercrime harm (71%) is concentrated among victims who did not lose any money in the most recent incident (82% of victims).

Harm can be reduced when incidents are successfully disrupted or steps are taken to minimise the impact on victims.

Certain groups are over-represented as victims, with this over-representation even more pronounced when the level of harm is taken into account.

Repeat victimisation is also common: 11% of individuals accounted for 58% of the harm reported in the survey.

There was a significant relationship between a victim’s total harm score and their likelihood of seeking help from the police.

Trends & issues in crime and criminal justice 706

Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology, 2025. 21p.

By Sandra Aguilar-Gómez and Andrea Salazar-Díaz

Every year, 245 million women are victims of intimate partner violence (IPV). Climate change is hypothesized to exacerbate this figure through its disruptive impact on household livelihoods, among other channels. However, little causal evidence exists on this aspect of the climate-gender nexus, partly due to measurement challenges that have contributed to gaps in the literature. In this paper, we use three different IPV data sources to examine the effect of drought in Mexico and the role of agricultural vulnerability in intensifying these effects. We find robust evidence of increases in all measures of IPV in response to local precipitation deficits: as unanticipated exposure to days without rain in the previous month rises, more injuries linked to IPV are recorded in the public health system, police reports increase, and more 911 calls related to IPV are made. The effects are stronger in regions highly dependent on agriculture, particularly when the shock occurs during the growing season. In a country where most agricultural income and land are controlled by men, our results align with theoretical predictions from male-backlash IPV models and extractive violence models. We also find that the impact of drought on IPV is more pronounced in municipalities with low state capacity, though potential differences in reporting behavior between IPV measures complicate comparisons. Our findings underscore the need to design gender-sensitive disaster relief policies, strengthen trust in reporting mechanisms and helplines, and reduce the social acceptability of IPV

WORKING PAPER No IDB-WP-1653, Inter-American Development Bank Gender and Diversity Division . 2025. 43p.

By Jacob Phelps, Steven Broad, Jennifer Mailley 

  KEY TAKEAWAYS 1. Illegal wildlife trade (IWT) persists in contravention of laws specifically aimed to address negative impacts of over‐exploitation of nature, one of the most critical threats to the world’s biodiversity. 2. By reducing and otherwise negatively impacting populations of wildlife species, IWT undermines the functioning of ecosystems, with significant potential to harm related natural processes – including those affecting climate.    3. The causal chains that demonstrate and explain these links are diverse, complex, and little researched and they are important to long‐term climate stability and mitigation of climate change impacts.    4. Some key pathways linking IWT, ecosystems and climate:

IWT is both a reflection of weak environmental governance, and an exacerbating factor to it. It is often associated with ineffective regulation, 6. Given the importance of climate stability and the long‐term persistence of carbon stocks, adopting broader time horizons and a more holistic view that considers biodiversity is important to climate mitigation and stability. Adopting this type of longer, broader view that recognizes the centrality of biodiversity to many ecosystem processes highlights the clear need for improved governance of wildlife resources and recognizes the need for strong justice system responses to environmental crimes.   7. It is critical to keep in mind that this relationship works in both directions. As climate change impacts take shape, natural resource conflicts will worsen as people and wild species adapt to evolving living conditions. It is very likely that this will lead to new incentives for and patterns of illegal wildlife trade, and in turn new interventions to contain the resulting environmental harm. 8. The links between IWT, biodiversity and climate are still under researched and not well understood. This Research Brief is the first effort to frame these linkages, which are important to understand how policies aimed at addressing IWT, biodiversity and climate can be better integrated.   

Vienna: United Nations Office on Drugs and Drime. 2022. 20p.

By The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC)

Crimes that affect the environment are among the most profitable and fastest growing types of international criminal activity. In resolution 10/6, adopted in 2020, the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime expressed its alarm at research indicating that crimes that affect the environment had become some of the most lucrative transnational criminal activities and were often closely interlinked with different forms of crime and corruption, and that money-laundering and the illicit financial flows derived from them may contribute to the financing of other transnational organized crimes and terrorism. It affirmed that the Organized Crime Convention constitutes an effective tool and an essential part of the legal framework for preventing and combating transnational organized crimes that affect the environment and for strengthening international cooperation in this regard and requested the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, subject to the availability of extrabudgetary resources, and within its mandate, to provide technical assistance and capacity-building to State parties, upon request, for the purposes of supporting their efforts to effectively implement the Convention in preventing and combating transnational organized crimes that affect the environment. In 2019, the Conference of the States Parties to the United Nations Convention against Corruption, in its resolution 8/12, noted with concern the role that corruption can play in crimes that have an impact on the environment and expressed concern that money-laundering may be used to disguise and/or conceal the sources of illegally generated proceeds, as well as to facilitate crimes that have an impact on the environment. In 2021, the Fourteenth United Nations Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice adopted the Kyoto Declaration on Advancing Crime Prevention, Criminal Justice and the Rule of Law: Towards the Achievement of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, in which it reiterated the United Nations commitment to adopt effective measures to prevent and combat crimes that affect the environment, including, among other crimes, illicit trafficking in hazardous and other wastes, by making the best possible use of relevant international instruments and by strengthening legislation, international cooperation, capacity building, criminal justice responses and law enforcement efforts aimed at, inter alia, dealing with transnational organized crime, corruption and money-laundering linked to such crimes, and illicit financial flows derived from such crimes, while acknowledging the need to deprive criminals of proceeds of crime.2 In the same year, the General Assembly, in its resolution 76/185, urged Member States to take these same measures. 

Vienna: UNODC, 2022. 133p.

By The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).  UNODC Regional Office for Southeast Asia and the Pacific

  This report presents the results of the twenty-second Myanmar opium survey, covering the 2023/2024 opium growing and harvesting season. The last three surveys in Myanmar covering the 2020/2021, 2021/2022, and the 2022/2023 seasons showed an increase at the national level in both areas under opium poppy cultivation and opium production. The 2023 survey reported an 18% increase in the area under cultivation to an estimated 47,100 hectares. For the first time in three years the 2024 survey shows a modest decline in the area under cultivation by 4% to 45,200 hectares, indicating a possible stabilization at recent high levels. Three consecutive years of expanding cultivation followed by a year of limited decline could indicate some degree of saturation in regional heroin markets supplied by Myanmar. Declining prices of fresh opium in Myanmar and declining purity adjusted prices of heroin in regional markets could have dissuaded a further increase of production in Myanmar in 2024. However, information from the field suggests that the stagnation in productivity could also be related to the ongoing internal conflict. While instability and conflict, and their impact on the rule of law have traditionally been seen as a driver of illicit crop cultivation, the expansion of the conflict and shifts in the territorial control of armed actors, especially in the growing areas of Shan and Kachin, have limited the mobility of rural population, and likely prevented farmers from accessing cultivation areas further away from their villages. The dynamics of internal conflict might also explain the uneven development across Myanmar’s states in regions, with some areas showing declines in cultivation and others continued growth. In October 2024, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) estimated that there were some 3 million people internally displaced across the country, with Shan and Kachin in particular seeing escalating tensions and clashes in late 2023 and early 2024. The 2024 survey shows decreases in illicit opium cultivation in half of the geographic areas observed, including South Shan which traditionally experienced the most extensive opium cultivation. Eastern Shan, Chin, and Kayah had modest increases between survey years. Overall, cultivation in Shan State, which continues to be the centre of opium production in Myanmar at 88% of total cultivation area, decreased by 4% to 39,700 ha, with decreases in South and North Shan (-9% and -4% respectively) while East Shan increased by 10%. Cultivation in Kachin saw a moderate decrease of 10%, a change from past trends when above-average increases were observed. Estimates for Chin and Kayah, where the overall area remained small in comparison to other areas, showed an 18% and 8% increase, respectively. Overall potential opium production decreased at greater rates than cultivation due to a decline in opium yield. In 2024, average yield declined by 4% from 22.9 kg per hectare to 22kg per hectare, resulting in an estimated opium production of 995 (700-1,580) metric tons, or 8% less than in 2023. Nevertheless, both yield and production remain at high levels across the last decade. The decrease in cultivation and production coincided with a decrease in farmgate prices of both fresh and dry opium in USD terms, by 4% and 8%, respectively. In 2024, fresh opium traded at just over US$300 per kilogram, down from US$317 the year before, although it remained high compared to the last low point in 2021 when it stood at US$131 per kilogram. In combination with lower production, nationally farmers earned slightly less income than the previous year, between US$230 – US$518 million in 2024 (US$271 - US$613 million in 2023). The farmgate value only represents a small share of the overall opiate economy, with heroin manufacture and export making up a larger share. Wholesale prices of heroin in the region declined even more, contributing to a much larger decrease in the value of the total national opiate economy of about 40%, now ranging between US$589 million and US$1.57 billion, representing between 0.9 – 2.4% of Myanmar’s 2023 GDP  

Thailand: UNODC Regional Office for Southeast Asia and the Pacific 2024. 88p.

By The Research and Trend Analysis Branch, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC),

Now entering its second year of enforcement, the ban continues to hold. In 2024, the area under cultivation was estimated at 12,800 ha, or 19% more than in 2023 (10,800 ha) . Despite the increase, opium poppy cultivation is still far below the priorban levels. In 2022 an estimated 232,000 ha were cultivated. The increase in cultivation came with a geographical shift. The South-western provinces of the country were long the center of cultivation up to and including 2023. In 2024, this changed and now 59% of all cultivation took place in the North-east, particularly in Badakhshan. The rapid and currently sustained decline in poppy cultivation and opium production has important and wide-ranging implications for the country and opiate markets long supplied by product from Afghanistan. Questions remain as to how the country will cope with the continued reduction in opiate income and how opiate markets downstream will react. Farmers that lack sustainable alternatives face a more precarious financial and economic situation and need alternative economic opportunities to become resilient against picking up poppy cultivation in the future. Distributors and dealers closer to destination markets, as well as consumers, are likely to experience supply constraints in the coming years, should the ban remain in place. Following a major hike in 2022 and 2023, dry opium prices stabilized slightly in the first half of 2024 to around US$730. These prices are several times higher than the long-running pre-ban average of US$100 per kilogram. Extremely high farmgate prices and questions about dwindling opium stocks may encourage a resumption in poppy cultivation, especially in places outside of traditional cultivation centers, including neighboring countries. 

Vienna: UNODC, 2024. 20p.

By Vasiliki Georgoulas-Sherry & Hanna Hernandez

This report analyzes COVID-19 impacts on criminal justice data. Specifically, it focuses on the differences amongst adult and juvenile arrests, adult sentencing and juvenile dispositions, adult and juvenile carceral admissions between 2020 and previous years. This type of analysis can help support state and federal policymakers in determining potential next steps in addressing the pandemic’s impact on the criminal justice system – both in the short-term and in the long-term. This report will also help future researchers better understand the anomalies and a more accurate assessment of the pandemic that occurred in the criminal justice datasets during the years impacted. The Washington Statistical Analysis Center (SAC) applied for and received the 2021 State Justice Statistics Grant from Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS). Among other projects, the SAC sought the grant to evaluate the impact of COVID-19 on criminal justice data. Main conclusions from this report: 1. Overall, counts of arrests in Washington State, regardless of category, showed mixed findings with increased from 2017 to 2018 and then 2019 to 2020; but decreased from 2018 to 2019 and then again 2020 to 2021. From 2020 to 2021, there was an overall 3% decrease in arrests in Washington State. 2. For adult arrests in Washington State, from 2019 to 2020 and then 2020 to 2021, there was an overall 17.8% and 13.9% decrease, respectively. For juvenile arrests, from 2019 to 2020 and then 2020 to 2021, there was an overall 39.1% and 33.2% decrease, respectively. 3. Superior court filings decreased from 16.2% in 2018-2019, to 21.4% in 2019-2020, to 15.7% in 2020-2021. Additionally, felony jail sentences decreased throughout the years, from 2017 to 2021. Furthermore, while the overall average prison sentences also saw a decrease from 2017 to 2021, in 2019 to 2020, murder, sex crimes, robbery, and drug crimes saw rises. 4. Juvenile dispositions showed substantial decreases from 2019 to 2020 and from 2020 to 2021 by 7.3% and by 28.8%, respectively. 5. Adult prison admissions saw a decline in all admissions (new, re-admit, and other) . from 2019 to 2021 6. From 2019 to 2020,DOC juvenile admissions and new admissions increased by 126.9% and 11.7%, respectively. 2020 to 2021 presented with decreases in all juvenile admissions.

Olympia: Washington State Statistical Analysis Center, 2022. 213p.

By Hanna Hernandez, M.A. & Vasiliki Georgoulas-Sherry

This report analyzes COVID-19 impacts on criminal justice data. Specifically, it focuses on reported National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) offenses and Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs (WASPC) arrests and bookings. This type of analysis supports state and federal policymakers to determine the actions needed to address the pandemic’s impact on the criminal justice system. This will also help future researchers define the anomalies that occurred in the criminal justice datasets, specifically the longitudinal studies that include the years impacted by COVID-19. Researchers can provide a more accurate assessment of the impact that the pandemic may have on the criminal justice system and its associated datasets. The Washington Statistical Analysis Center (SAC) applied for and received the 2021 State Justice Statistics Grant from Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS). Among other projects, the SAC sought the grant to conduct this report to evaluate the impact of COVID-19 on criminal justice data. Main conclusions: 1. There was a decrease in 2018 to 2019 (3.0%) and 2019 to 2020 (9.3%) in NIBRS incidents reported. 2. There was a decrease in 2018 to 2019 (0.5%) and 2019 to 2020 (19.1%) in WASPC arrests. 3. There was a decrease in 2018 to 2019 (24.7%) and 2019 to 2020 (12.4%) in WASPC bookings.

Olympia: Washington State Statistical Analysis Center, 2022. 23p.

By The United Office on Drugs and Crime

  In the Sahel countries and their neighbours, the high prevalence of infectious diseases, including malaria, coupled with challenges in terms of the availability and affordability of and access to healthcare, creates an environment in which the demand for medical products and services is not fully met through formal channels. The disparity between the demand for and supply of regulated pharmaceutical products leaves room for trafficking, provides an incentive for the involvement of organized criminal groups and fuels the ongoing threat to public safety and public health in the Sahel countries. Between January 2017 and December 2021, at least 605 tons of different medical products were seized in West Africa during international operations.  While there are no reliable estimates of the overall quantities of medical products that are trafficked in different ways and forms in the Sahel countries, studies point to a percentage of substandard and falsified medicines in the medical market of between 19 and 50 per cent. Some 40 per cent of the substandard and falsified medical products reported in the Sahel countries between 2013 and 2021 was discovered in the regulated supply chain. Just as regulated medical products can be diverted, illicitly manufactured medical products can find their way into authorized pharmaceutical outlets, which shows how much the regulated (legal) and unregulated (illicit) supply chains are interconnected. The Sahel countries rely heavily on imports of medical products because their pharmaceutical industries are still in the early stages of development. Of total pharmaceutical expenditure in sub-Saharan Africa in 2019, imports represented as much as 70 to 90 per cent (roughly 14 billion United States dollars ($)). Medical products diverted from the legal supply chain often originate in the main exporting countries of medical products to the Sahel countries, in particular Belgium and France, and to a lesser extent China and India. Others are manufactured in neighbouring countries, including in North Africa and the Gulf of Guinea. The seaports in the Gulf of Guinea, Conakry (Guinea), Tema (Ghana), Lomé (Togo), Cotonou (Benin) and Apapa (Nigeria) can be identified as major entry points for medical products destined for the Sahel countries. Trafficking by air, using postal shipments or carried out by commercial air passengers, is employed for smuggling smaller quantities of medical products. Once in West Africa, trafficked medical products reach the Sahel countries through smugglers who follow traditional trafficking routes using buses, trucks and private cars. Investigations have revealed the involvement of a wide range of opportunistic actors in trafficking in medical products in the Sahel countries, from employees of pharmaceutical companies, public officials, law enforcement officers and health agency workers to street vendors, all motivated by potential financial gain. Despite terrorist groups and non-state armed groups being commonly associated with trafficking in medical products in the Sahel, most reported cases in the region show that the involvement of such groups is limited and mainly revolves around consuming medical products or levying "taxes" on them in the areas under their control. In sub-Saharan Africa, as many as 267,000 deaths per year are linked to falsified and substandard antimalarial medicines. In addition, up to 169,271 are linked to falsified and substandard antibiotics used to treat severe pneumonia in children.     

Vienna: UNODC, 2022. 28p.

By Vasiliki Georgoulas-Sherry. & Hanna Hernandez

The global 2020 coronavirus pandemic has had an unprecedented impact on the operations and actions of local, state, and national governments across all areas of criminal justice. The unique characteristics of this pandemic trend toward short- and long-term consequences as significant changes to criminal justice and legal outcomes. To respond to these impacts, the Washington Statistical Analysis Center (SAC) applied for and received the 2022 State Justice Statistics (SJS) grant from the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS). The SAC sought the grant to increase access to statistical data and create new metrics and indicators to enhance the integrated criminal justice database — the Justice Data Warehouse (JDW) — in efforts to strategically and analytically evaluate the pandemic’s impacts in criminal justice. Through this grant, the Washington SAC leveraged and built upon the JDW to expand the data variables by creating COVID-19 metrics and indicators to help assess and account for COVID-19 impacts in the criminal justice and legal system.

Olympia: Washington State Statistical Analysis Center. 2024. 49p.

By Kaitlyn Rines

This report summarizes law enforcement reports of sexual assault offenses for the State of Ohio during the years 2016-2023. We also summarize characteristics of crime incidents, victims and suspects. We provide sexual assault rates throughout this report, and it is important to understand how we calculated them and what they mean. First, we calculate offense totals by counting the number of sexual assault victimizations documented within each law enforcement incident report. Sexual assault victim totals do not necessarily represent unique victims. For example, law enforcement could report that a suspect sexually assaulted an individual more than once during a single incident. Further, a suspect could assault the same individual during a different incident. Therefore, it is almost certain that the sexual assault offense total is larger than the number of individuals who were victims of sexual assaults. Next, we calculate the rate of sexual assault by dividing the sexual assault total by the population total and then multiplying the resulting number (the quotient) by 100,000. This yields a sexual assault crime rate per 100,000 persons. We provide Ohio’s overall sexual assault crime rates over time, and we also compare rates of sexual assault for Ohio’s standard demographic groups (e.g., age, sex, race). Rates can vary significantly depending on how many victimizations a group experienced as well as the size of one group versus another. For example, the sexual assault crime rate is much higher for female Ohioans than males, largely because the number of female sexual assaults is much larger than male. Further, most sexual assault victims are White females because most of Ohio is White. However, Black females have the highest victimization rate because their sexual assault total is large while their overall population size is small.

Columbus:; Ohio Department of Public Safety, Office of Criminal Justice Services. 2024. 62p.

By Jennifer McDonald

Across the country, law enforcement agencies routinely seize currency from individuals using civil forfeiture—a legal process that allows agencies to take and keep property without ever charging owners with a crime, let alone securing a conviction. Studies examining civil forfeiture have found it to be a multibillion-dollar industry that punishes people without proving they have done anything wrong. This study is the first to examine how U.S. Department of Homeland Security agencies—U.S. Customs and Border Protection, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the U.S. Secret Service, and the U.S. Coast Guard—use civil forfeiture to take and keep currency from often unsuspecting travelers at airports across the country. DHS agencies are just a few of the many government agencies that conduct airport seizures, but newly available data give fresh insight into their activity. This study, covering 2000 through 2016, quantifies just how often DHS agencies have seized currency at airports—and just how much currency has flowed into the federal government’s coffers as a result.

Arlington, VA: Institute for Justice, 2020. 32p.

By The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime

The ratio of registered vehicles to people in the Sahel countries is low and per capita daily gasoline consumption is estimated to be among the lowest in the world. Nevertheless, an average at-pump price of $1 per litre would result in a combined annual total market value of at least 5 billion United States dollars ($) for both legal and illegal fuel in the region. Despite some of them producing oil, the Sahel countries rely on fuel imports from Algeria, Libya and Nigeria, where fuel is heavily subsidized. It appears that the low fuel prices in Algeria, Libya and Nigeria are among the most significant drivers of fuel trafficking in the Sahel. In addition to fuel trafficking, cheap gasoline and diesel also fuel the activities of illegal non-state armed groups, including groups deemed “terrorist” by the international community. Moreover, there are some indications that there may be deeper linkages to other forms of smuggling, such as trafficking in medical products, drugs and firearms. There are four major fuel trafficking flows into the Sahel countries: from Nigeria via Benin to Burkina Faso and Mali; from Nigeria via the Niger to Mali; from Algeria to Mali; and from Libya to the Niger and Chad. A large portion of the market for trafficked fuel in the Sahel countries appears to be informally organized. However, recent investigations have revealed the involvement of structured groups with links to prominent individuals with interests in retail fuel companies, financial institutions and corrupt law enforcement officials. This highlights the importance of the formal trade in laundering smuggled fuel. Companies associated with individuals under United Nations Security Council sanctions are also reported to be involved in fuel smuggling from the Niger to Mali. The introduction of fuel subsidies and licensing policies has led to the emergence of powerful business elites in the Sahel countries with sufficient political influence to protect fuel smuggling activities. Opportunities to earn illegal revenue indirectly from fuel trafficking through bribery and other forms of corruption compromise the level of repression that the Sahel countries can exercise on the illicit fuel trade. Issues with, and gaps in, the rule of law in some areas, owing to a combination of a high level of insecurity and vast, porous borders, constitute a key enabling

factor for fuel trafficking in the Sahel. The lack of state presence in remote areas gives room for the proliferation of criminal activities.

Vienna: UNODC, 2022. 24p.

By Natascha Eichinger, Ekaterina Spassova, Murat Yildiz, et al.

The continued global demand for opiates, and the conditions that sustain opiate production in Afghanistan, pose a threat to public health, governance, and security at regional and global

level. This is likely to continue following the change of regime in Afghanistan in August 2021. Afghan opiates are trafficked to almost every continent worldwide. In 2021, the income from opiates in Afghanistan amounted to some USD 1.8–2.7 billion: however, much larger sums are accrued by international Drug Trafficking Organizations (DTOs) along illicit drug supply chains outside Afghanistan. While most opiates trafficked from Afghanistan are trafficked by land methods, a proportion of the opiates produced in South-West Asia are also trafficked by maritime methods to global destinations.

� Some of the opiates produced in Afghanistan and South-West Asia are trafficked via the southern route by maritime means. Seizures of opiates – and methamphetamine – have been increasing in the Indian Ocean, the result of sustained interdictions by national authorities and international maritime coalitions including the Combined Maritime Forces (CMF) and the EU Naval Force – Somalia (EUNAVFOR). � Drug packages seized in the Indian Ocean are marked with a wide range of stamps including hand pressed and hand-written markings. These stamps are made up of several elements consisting of sequential and non-sequential numbers, names, locations, and different objects. The stamps can provide some detail on the manufacturers and traffickers involved in the production and transport of drugs to international markets. � Stamps can often be used for branding purposes in a similar way to brand logos used with legitimate goods or can be used to identify or alternatively conceal the producers of a batch of heroin. The number of different stamps marked on a package of heroin can be an indicator of how many producers or traffickers were involved with that package. � Stamps are chosen by individual Drug Trafficking Organisations (DTOs). They appear to be well known amongst DTOs and usually can not be copied by other traffickers. However, in some cases a “franchising” process is possible, with smaller traffickers purchasing the right to use stamps associated with larger DTOs. � Dates printed on heroin packages generally indicate the production year. However, there is less clarity when two dates are stamped on a package. In some cases, the second year may indicate when heroin manufacture continued by the same lab, or alternatively can be the expiry date of the heroin or the date when the package was distributed to international markets. Printed dates can also be updated by hand-written markings. � Sequential and non-sequential numbers stamped on heroin packages are generally seen as being coded communications between heroin manufacturers and traffickers, although the specific messages are not known. Sequential numbers (for example 555 or 777) have been found in both the Indian Ocean between 2017 and 2021, and in Central Asia and the Russian Federation in 2012. By comparison, nonsequential numbers (for example 355 or 787) seized in the Indian Ocean are not seen in Central Asia and are only infrequently seized in the Indian Ocean. It is possible that sequential numbers may be associated with relative purity of the heroin contained in the packages stamped with these numbers. � Words stamped on heroin packages appear to be an indicator of where the heroin was produced. Heroin produced in southern Afghanistan is reportedly stamped with Pashto words, while heroin produced in northern Afghanistan and the Islamic Republic of Iran is more likely to be stamped with Farsi words. Heroin produced in eastern and western Afghanistan often has words in English, Farsi and Pashto, while heroin produced in Pakistan is labelled with words in English and Urdu. � Heroin and methamphetamine manufactured and trafficked by the same DTO may be stamped with the same or very similar stamps. In some cases, heroin packages are stamped with images of

animals which may be an indicator of relative purity of the heroin or an indicator of the location of the manufacturer. � Although some conclusions can be drawn from the analysis of heroin stamps seized in the Indian Ocean, there is still a lack of clarity on the meaning and purpose of some stamps – even among the drug traffickers interviewed in Afghanistan. Further analysis is required, including the analysis of drug stamps seized in locations outside of the Indian Ocean. It would be advantageous to develop a database of the different markings of heroin stamps to aid such analysis.

Vienna: United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 2022. 36p.