By Susan Dewey and Patty Kelly

Mónica waits in the Anti-Venereal Medical Service of the Zona Galactica, the legal, state-run brothel where she works in Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Mexico. Surrounded by other sex workers, she clutches the Sanitary Control Cards that deem her registered with the city, disease-free, and able to work. On the other side of the world, Min stands singing karaoke with one of her regular clients, warily eyeing the door lest a raid by the anti-trafficking Public Security Bureau disrupt their evening by placing one or both of them in jail.

Whether in Mexico or China, sex work-related public policy varies considerably from one community to the next. A range of policies dictate what is permissible, many of them intending to keep sex workers themselves healthy and free from harm. Yet often, policies with particular goals end up having completely different consequences.

Policing Pleasure examines cross-cultural public policies related to sex work, bringing together ethnographic studies from around the world—from South Africa to India—to offer a nuanced critique of national and municipal approaches to regulating sex work. Contributors offer new theoretical and methodological perspectives that move beyond already well-established debates between “abolitionists” and “sex workers’ rights advocates” to document both the intention of public policies on sex work and their actual impact upon those who sell sex, those who buy sex, and public health more generally.

New York; London: NYU Press, 2011. 240p.

By William Garriott

In its steady march across the United States, methamphetamine has become, to quote former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, “the most dangerous drug in America.” As a result, there has been a concerted effort at the local level to root out the methamphetamine problem by identifying the people at its source—those known or suspected to be involved with methamphetamine. Government-sponsored anti-methamphetamine legislation has enhanced these local efforts, formally and informally encouraging rural residents to identify meth offenders in their communities.
Policing Methamphetamine shows what happens in everyday life—and to everyday life—when methamphetamine becomes an object of collective concern. Drawing on interviews with users, police officers, judges, and parents and friends of addicts in one West Virginia town, William Garriott finds that this overriding effort to confront the problem changed the character of the community as well as the role of law in creating and maintaining social order. Ultimately, this work addresses the impact of methamphetamine and, more generally, the war on drugs, on everyday life in the United States.

New York; London: NYU Press, 2011. 201p.

United States. Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency; United States. Federal Bureau Of Investigation; United States.

From the document: "Foreign malign influence operations refer to hostile efforts by or on behalf of foreign governments to shape U.S. policies, decisions, and discourse. These operations may occur overtly or covertly, taking many forms and using a variety of tactics and techniques to accomplish their goals. Foreign malign influence operations are not new; however, technology developments have enabled actors to conduct operations while more effectively hiding their identities. To help critical infrastructure stakeholders increase the resilience of the elections process to foreign malign influence operations, CISA [Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency] publishes materials, such as this guide, to explain the tactics used by these operations, such as the potential for malicious use of generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools. Generative AI tools enable or support large-scale creation of more realistic fake videos, images, audio, and text for foreign malign influence operations. Several of the tactics outlined [in the document] can be powered by generative AI tools to increase the scale of foreign malign influence operations. In addition, the tactics covered [in the document] can also be utilized by domestic actors to spread disinformation."

Office Of The Director Of National Intelligence 2024. 8p.

By Simone Drake, Katrina Lee, Kevin Passino, and Hugo Gonzalez Villasanti

Over-use of force by law enforcement officers in the United States persists, along with a resulting state of crisis in Black communities. In 2021, the Authors launched a project, funded by a grant from The Ohio State University’s Seed Fund for Racial Justice, that sought to intervene in traditional diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) training at the Columbus Division of Police. Scholars of law, critical race and gender studies, and engineering, the Authors took a multidisciplinary-team problem-solving approach to the crisis, with a focus on police training. With the aim of developing an innovative software program that augments in-person police training related to DEI, the project’s methodology included using real-life policing scenarios, software design, site visits, and engagement by students in the “Antiracist Technology” engineering course at The Ohio State University. The Authors sought to explore how technology can enhance in-person instructional training related to DEI and cultural competency while simultaneously reducing resistance to and resentment of DEI training. The project featured a collaborative focus on negotiation and critical race and gender studies. Ultimately, the goal is to use technology, together with research on structural and institutional systems of oppression, to improve relations between law enforcement and Black civilians. This Article begins with an historical overview, in two parts: Race and Policing, and Police Training. It then outlines project methodology and describes the beginning stages of this antiracist-technology project.

 Ohio State Legal Studies Research Paper. 2023, 20pg

By Aliza Hochman Bloom

In December of 2019, a woman was robbed in Jersey City, and she quickly reported it to a 911-dispatcher. When the dispatcher asked her whether the suspect was “Black, white or Hispanic,” she responded that she did not know. But when relaying the description to a police officer, the dispatcher improperly added to the woman’s account that the suspect was a “Black male.” This error appears to have been inadvertent, a mistake reflecting the pernicious implicit bias linking Blackness with criminality. William L. Scott subsequently challenged the constitutionality of the police stop leading to his arrest, arguing that the improper injection of race into the be-on-the-lookout (BOLO) description violated New Jersey’s constitutional guarantee of equal protection under the law. The appellate court agreed, emphasizing the importance of “deterring discriminatory policing in all of its permutations,” and suppressed all evidence obtained from the unlawful stop.

Though purporting to prohibit racial discrimination in policing, Equal Protection doctrine has not halted the racialized selection process funneling our criminal legal system. Meanwhile, the Fourth Amendment has been interpreted in a way that facilitates racially disproportionate policing. Scholars have hoped that courts could allow selective enforcement claims that include officers’ implicit racial bias. Within this treacherous doctrinal landscape, Sate v. Scott did just that.

Scott is the first court to hold that evidence of implicit racial bias in policing establishes a prima facie case of racial discrimination justifying the exclusion of evidence. But the remedy that it used to deter future police misconduct—suppression of evidence—is unlikely to deter implicit bias. And the court’s praiseworthy desire to halt racist policing rests on unproven assumptions—including that bias training could ameliorate implicit racial bias. Recognizing that present doctrine permits policing decisions that yield systemically racist outcomes, this article argues that courts should adopt an outcome focused approach, where discretionary policing decisions that result in consistently racialized results are scrutinized without requiring proof of discriminatory intent.

University of Illinois Law Review (forthcoming 2025), 50pg