By Peer Schouten and James Barnett

Contemporary banditry in northwest Nigeria is a multifaceted phenomenon that encompasses a wide spectrum of violence waged by heavily militarised yet loosely organised rural gangs. These groups engage in everything from cattle rustling to kidnapping for ransom and extortion of peasant communities, with bandits becoming important de facto authorities in swathes of rural northwest Nigeria. 

Underpinning the contemporary bandit conflict, we argue, is an ongoing ‘battle for the bush’ — a struggle over land, governance and rural livelihoods. Historically, the bush functioned as a shared space for farmers and pastoralists. However, land use data shows that the expansion of cropland farming has gradually overtaken grazing lands, reducing pastoral mobility and generating increasing conflicts. The state’s failure to mediate these tensions or provide equitable land policies, coupled with the breakdown of traditional conflict resolution mechanisms, has allowed grievances to fester. In response, bandits have violently reclaimed and reshaped the governance of the bush, not only as a refuge but as a domain of coercive rule, imposing levies on farming and controlling access to land and cattle.

We examine the historical drivers of this transformation and analyse how opportunistic criminals and social bandits have evolved into de facto rural rulers. Along the way, the trend of cropland expansion is being reversed. Yet instead of reestablishing a pastoral idyll, banditry is reproducing the very conditions that gave rise to it, further undermining rural livelihoods in the northwest. This has compounded rural poverty and food insecurity while depriving pastoralist youths’ access to government services and education that could provide for a better future. Our analysis implies that the crisis cannot be solved through military interventions alone but requires a rethinking of rural governance.

Schouten, P., & Barnett, J. (2025). Battle for the bush: banditry and violent agrarian change in northwest Nigeria. 

Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS). DIIS Working Paper Vol. 2025 No. 12

2025. 34p.

By JOHN KELLNER & ERIK GAMM

Colorado could spare itself a reputational headache and hefty fines if it were to invest in criminal incompetency restoration, but it would need to cut mental health operating costs to make the effort worthwhile. When criminal defendants are declared incompetent, they may also be declared “restorable,” meaning they could, with counseling and mental healthcare, restore a level of mental capacity that could carry culpability. The backlog of criminal defendants waiting for mental health services has risen in the last year, as has the length of time they need to wait for an available bed. In the meantime, high-visibility cases have highlighted a pervasive problem in Colorado relating to incompetency to stand trial. This situation has been created over the last five years. In March 2019, the Colorado Department of Human Services (CDHS) resolved an eight-year federal lawsuit regarding excessive wait times for courtordered competency services. The settlement, filed as a consent decree, required CDHS to expand community-based services, speed up inpatient admissions, and provide treatment for people in jail awaiting competency services. CDHS faces up to $12 million annually in fines if it fails to meet new service deadlines. The agreement comes after years of rising demand: since 2000, inpatient competency evaluation orders increased nearly 600%, and restoration service orders rose more than 1,200%. Disability Law Colorado reopened the lawsuit after CDHS failed to meet previous settlement deadlines. In subsequent years, the backlog has not only ceased to disappear but grown. The state of Colorado has not paid the fine threshold each year but has in some, an outlay that has added to the state’s deficit. In the meantime, judges have less discretion regarding when to release accused criminals who are mentally incompetent back into the public to await restoration.

KEY FINDINGS • Since 2000, inpatient competency evaluation orders increased nearly 600%, and restoration service orders rose more than 1,200%. • As of June 2025, there are 368 Colorado inmates on the wait list to receive court-mandated competency restoration. • There are 673 total beds reserved for incompetency restoration treatment. They are always occupied, creating a wait list referred to as the state’s “backlog.” • Over the last year, 930 inmates have been referred for restoration and have spent, or will spend, an average near 110 days each on the wait list. • The Colorado Department of Human Services (CDHS) pays a fine between $100 and $500 per day for keeping an inmate ordered to undergo competency restoration waitlisted for longer than 28 days. In Fiscal Year 24, CDHS paid $12 million, which is the cap under the consent decree. • If the consent decree had not included a cap, the fines would have cost $65.2 million. • To bring wait times below 28 days, the state would need to add 209 new beds. These resources would save the state $12 million (plus annual adjustments to the cap) per year by eliminating the fines and $11.9 million per year by reducing the amount of time that inmates spend in public facilities while on the wait list. • HB22-1303 budgeted $6.2 million per year to staff and operate 16 new beds at the Colorado Mental Health Hospital in Fort Logan. At $388,279 per bed, 209 new beds would require $81.2 million of additional state spending per year. • State accreditation standards require that mental institutions dedicate about 3.7 FTE of staff to each restoration bed; this requirement alone generates 74% of the total cost per unit. • Inpatient restoration is almost seven times more expensive than incarceration, which costs just $58,000 per inmate annually. • In total, the state would face an annual cost of $57.2 million to comply with the 2019 consent decree.

Greenwood Village, CO: Common Sense Institute, 2025. 13p.

By Richard Ashby Wilson

In the years that followed the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, the US federal government, cities, and states enacted sweeping reforms of the police and criminal justice system. To counter the narrative of racialized police violence and promote community policing, these included new hate crime statutes and dedicated bias-crime task forces. This article reviews the literature on the enforcement of hate crime, evaluates post-2020 antibias initiatives, and advises realistic expectations about the long-term impact of reform efforts. For starters, hate crimes are massively underreported. Even when reported, police often fail to accurately identify and charge a hate crime. Police officers exercise wide discretion, often accord hate crimes low priority, struggle to prove the bias motive of the offender, and come under political pressure to drop bias-motivated charges. Even when charged, few defendants are convicted of a hate crime because prosecutors frequently dismiss the hate crime charge. Prosecutors are expected to resolve cases quickly and may use a hate crime charge as leverage in plea bargaining. Media coverage, political pressure, and the involvement of victims and civil rights groups predict prosecutorial pursuit of a hate crime conviction. Hate crime policing and prosecutions may be enhanced by specialized hate crime units in police departments and prosecutors’ offices; clear policies that define terms and investigatory procedures; and enhanced communication between police, prosecutors, and target communities.

Annu. Rev. Law Soc. Sci. 2025. 21:449–67

By Oliver Rollins, Julien Larregue, and Hannah Pullen-Blasnik

Technologies play a central role in decision-making processes within criminal legal systems, creating what we call technologies of criminalization. These tools are based on the idea of calculated truths about future riskiness, but they often reinforce structural biases that underlie the concept of criminality. Their development and use demonstrate efforts to define the abstract criminal: a notion that embodies the presumed natural realities and discoverable aspects of criminality believed to be objectively discoverable and statistically predictable. This perspective neglects the socially constructed nature of criminality and the impact of human biases in the design and implementation of these technologies. Three interlinked processes drive their adoption: quantification, prediction, and pathologization. By examining neuroscientific, genomic, and algorithmic technologies, we critically assess their social impacts and the risks of exacerbating social inequalities under the facade of technical neutrality. Finally, we emphasize the increasing involvement of private industries in criminalization processes.

Annu. Rev. Law Soc. Sci. 2025. 21:469–87

 By Benjamin van Rooij, Malouke E. Kuiper, and Alex R. Piquero

Punishment plays a major function in preventing crime. Punishment can potentially shape criminal conduct through at least 13 different mechanisms: 5 have a positive effect, reducing crime, and 8 have a negative effect, stimulating offending. This article explains what these 13 potential effects of punishment are and how they have been theorized. It further reviews the body of available empirical evidence for each of these mechanisms. It finds that for many mechanisms there is mixed and inconclusive evidence with major methodological challenges. The article further analyzes the conditions under which punishment affects crime, including the type of crime, offender, and underlying causes and correlates of crime. It also explores the time frames through which punishment affects crime, as well as the ways in which different behavioral effects of punishment interact. The conclusion develops ideas about how this body of empirical work can come to shape criminal justice practice.

Annu. Rev. Law Soc. Sci. 2025. 21:509–26

By R. Evan Ellis

The security environment in Mexico is characterized by a dangerous fragmentation of and competition among criminal groups that pushed the nation’s homicide rate to a record high of 22.5 per 100,000 in 2017, a 27.5 percent increase over the prior year.1 The nation, whose security and prosperity strongly impacts the United States through geographic proximity and associated flows of people, money, and goods (both licit and illicit), is at a critical juncture in its fight against transnational organized crime. Since Mexican President Felipe Calderón launched the “war against the cartels” in December 2006 with the deployment of the Mexican army into the state of Michoacán, the nation’s security forces have taken down the leaders of multiple powerful criminal groups and debilitated their organizations.2 In the process, the Mexican military, police, and other security institutions have evolved their institutional structures, modified both their strategy and their doctrine, and strengthened their ability to combat transnational organized crime. Yet as with the experience of the United States in combatting terrorist groups in Iraq and Afghanistan, Mexico’s fight against the cartels, both despite and because of its successes, has created a more chaotic criminal landscape, with both a higher level of violence and a broader range of criminality. Complicating Mexico’s security challenge is the disposition of the Trump administration to act aggressively against illegal immigration from Mexico (among other countries) into the United States, along with U.S. renegotiation and possible abandonment of the North American Free Trade Agreement. These actions increase stressors on Mexico, including the prospect of expanded deportations of immigrants to Mexico, the loss of remittance income, and impeded access by Mexican producers to the U.S. market. The Trump administration’s actions, magnified by rhetoric that many Mexicans perceive as an insult to their country and people, have combined with Mexican frustration over the persistence of violence and corruption to create the real prospect that leftist populist candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador could win the July 2018 presidential election, potentially taking Mexico on a course of more distant political relations and decreased security cooperation with the United States and expanded engagement with extra-hemispheric rivals of the United States such as Russia and China.

Army University Press, 2019. 12p.

By Ailie Rennie In partnership with the Building Futures programme

This report forms part of the Prison Reform Trust’s Building Futures programme, funded by the National Lottery Community Fund, that since 2020 has been exploring the experiences of people serving longterm prison sentences. The programme has defined its long-term cohort to include men who spend 10 or more years in prison and women who spent eight years or more. This report is based on in-depth interviews with 20 people who have been released from prison and returned to the community after serving long-term prison sentences. This report aims to: • Understand more about the experience of release, re-entry, and resettlement for those who serve the longest periods in custody, including the challenges they face and their experiences of being on licence or under supervision. • Explore the availability of pre- and post-release support and assistance offered to people released from long prison sentences, highlighting both evidence of good practice and identifying areas for improvement. • Develop insights and ideas that will inform policy and practice through-the-gate in line with the Prison Reform Trust’s vision of a just, humane, and effective penal system. The report and its context Despite the common understanding that most prisoners – even those who are serving long-term and indeterminate periods of imprisonment – will eventually be released back into the community, there is currently very little known about the experiences of release for such individuals. We know strikingly little about the process of release itself as it exists in England and Wales, the challenges it presents, and the ways in which people begin to create a life for themselves after having spent many years separated from the outside world. Similarly, we know very little about what support might be available to assist people on their re-entry journeys or how the challenges they face might change over time. Given the increasing number of people subject to long-term sentences, the likely subsequent rise in people being released from them, and the staggeringly high current rate of recall, this is problematic as we may be failing to understand the unique re-entry needs of this population and providing insufficient support, setting them up to fail. The need to understand individuals’ experiences of release from long sentences is also particularly relevant given policy changes that have occurred in recent years wherein release and progression to open conditions have been severely curtailed. In 2022, for example, the then justice secretary Dominic Raab introduced controversial changes that limited the transfer of indeterminate prisoners from closed to open conditions and introduced new ministerial powers to refuse the release of the ‘highestrisk prisoners’. In effect, these procedural changes sought to keep a greater number of individuals imprisoned for longer by making it harder for specific types of prisoners to be released. Despite the reversal of Dominic Raab’s policy changes by Alex Chalk in 2023, many long-term and indeterminately sentenced prisoners are still denied the opportunity to access open prisons and progress towards release. For example, in 2024, more than 100 indeterminate prisoners were blocked from moving to open conditions by justice secretary Shabana Mahmood, despite their transfers being approved by the Parole Board.1 Without the opportunity to access the benefits of open conditions, including release on temporary licence, and to demonstrate how they have lowered their risk, more people serving long-term and indeterminate sentences are likely to stay in prison for longer beyond the expiry of their tariff, further increasing pressures on the prison population. The importance of these changes, for the purposes of this report, is to highlight the achievements of those who were granted release within this context, including participants in this study. Whilst most of the participants were released before these policy changes came into effect, just under half were released – or rereleased – in accordance with these frameworks. Those who were released prior to this, however, also experienced a series of policy changes both prior to and post-release which impacted their progress, including the declining use of release on temporary licence, Transforming Rehabilitation, and the increased length of supervision from four to 10 years. As the entire Building Futures programme has sought to demonstrate, being sentenced to and progressing through long-term imprisonment is a tumultuous process of navigating complex – and often contradictory – policy changes without knowing when they could change again. The intention of this report is to detail how the ‘rollercoaster’ of policy changes also impact the release and resettlement processes, continuing long after an individual exits the prison gates

London: Prison Reform Trust, 2025. 84p.

By Sara Giunti, Andrea Guariso, Mariapia Mendola, Irene Solmone 

In advanced economies, increasing population diversity often fuels hostile attitudes toward immigrants and political polarization. We study a short educational program for highschool students aimed at promoting cultural diversity and improving attitudes toward immigration through active learning. To identify the impact of the program, we designed a randomized controlled trial involving 4,500 students from 252 classes across 40 schools in northern Italy. The program led to more positive attitudes and behaviors toward immigrants, especially in more mixed classes. In terms of mechanisms, the intervention reduced students’ misperception and changed their perceived norms toward immigration, while it had no impact on implicit bias, empathy, or social contacts. Our findings suggest that anti-immigrant attitudes are primarily driven by sociotropic concerns rather than individual intergroup experience, and that educational programs combining critical thinking with cross-group discussion can correct them. 

  IZA DP No. 17978

Bonn:  IZA – Institute of Labor Economics , 2025. 71p.

By Michael K. Dzordzormenyoh

This study examines the determinants of public attitudes towards immigrants in Africa, using the contact hypothesis as its framework. This study evaluated how neighbourhood violence affects the acceptance of immigrants using three distinct sample groups: a full sample, a group with no foreign exposure and a group with foreign exposure. This study draws on data from 28 African countries, encompassing 28,685 respondents. Binary logistic regression analysis was employed to investigate the relationship between the independent variables and public acceptance of immigrants. The results indicate that concerns about neighbourhood violence significantly predicted negative attitudes towards immigrants in both the full sample and the group without foreign exposure but not in the sample with foreign exposure. Higher levels of education, especially post-secondary education, were found to be strong predictors of more favourable attitudes towards immigrants across all samples. Notable regional variations were observed, with the western, southern, and northern areas generally exhibiting more negative attitudes. The nation's current economic state negatively influenced attitudes in the full and no-foreign-exposure groups, whereas individual financial circumstances had a positive impact. Border control consistently emerged as a negative predictor across the samples, whereas immigration enforcement demonstrated a positive relationship in certain models. These findings offer crucial insights into the multifaceted elements that shape the public opinion of immigrants in African nations and have substantial theoretical and practical implications. This study contributes to the broader literature on public attitudes towards immigrants and the contact hypothesis from an African perspective

International Migration, Volume63, Issue 4, 

August 2025

By The 

Greater Manchester Immigration Aid Unit

Over recent years, thousands of children have been wrongly treated as adults by the Home Office. These children are in the UK on their own seeking asylum. Following decisions made by UK border officials that they are “significantly over 18” they have been sent alone to adult asylum accommodation, usually hotels. This is a report about children housed in adult hotels after these decisions at the border, based on Greater Manchester Immigration Aid Unit’s legal and place-based expertise and experience, and on the experiences that the children we work with have shared.  EXECUTIVE SUMMARY “You can’t stop feeling sad. You have to feel sad and angry when someone says you are a liar. It is in your heart.” Between January 2024 and February 2025, at least 296 children were wrongly sent to adult asylum accommodation, usually hotels, in the North West. This is a report about what children experience in asylum hotels, how theyare sentthere,andthe supportthey needtoget out. We are sounding the alarm – as others have done before us – that these children are being put at significant risk. Much harm has already been done, and must be acknowledged; and the government, local authorities andaccommodationprovidersmustact now topreventfurther harm. We are sounding the alarm – as others have done before us – that these children are being put at significant risk. Much harm has already been done, and must be acknowledged; and the government, local authorities and accommodation providers must act now to prevent further harm.

Our recommendations:

To the Home Office:

• The Home Office must admit children are wrongly treated as adults at the border and suspend all “significantly over 18” decisions until investigated.

• Repeal recent changes to age assessments introduced by the Nationality and Borders Act, and end the for-profit asylum housing model.

• Meanwhile, the Home Office should notify local authorities when children are placed in hotels and publish clearer data on age disputes.

To accommodation providers:

• Immediately refer to the local authority when staff become aware that a potential child is in adult asylum accommodation.

• Take all possible measures to safeguard potential children.

• Update training for hotel staff so they are aware of the high likelihood of children being treated as adults.

To local authorities: 

• Ensure social workers’ decisions and training include an understanding of the child’s experience in the UK, including being traumatised by Home Office age assessment practice.

• Ensure that potential children are not held to higher thresholds in assessments when local authority capacity is stretched.

• Do not refer children to the National Age Assessment Board (NAAB).

Manchester, UK: Greater Manchester Immigration Aid Unit, 

2025. 49p.

By Barna Konkolÿ Thege, Chaz Robitaille, Lujayn Mahmoud, Eden A. Kinzel, Rameen Qamar, Jamie Hartmann-Boyce, Olivia Choy

Aggressive/antisocial behaviors in children and youth may result in impairments in family, social, or academic functioning and lead to long‐term negative consequences for both the individual and society as a whole. The potential of healthy diet and nutritional supplements to reduce aggression and antisocial behavior is an active area of study in nutritional mental health sciences. The goal of this systematic review is to (1) investigate the effectiveness/efficacy of nutritional interventions(dietary manipulation, fortification or supplementation) in reducing excessive aggression, antisocial behaviors, and criminal offending in children/youth (systematic review and meta‐analysis); and (2) provide an overview of implementation barriers and facilitators regarding nutritional interventions in children/youth (qualitative/narrative synthesis). After consulting theCampbell Collaboration's methodological guidelines, a comprehensive search for published and unpublished papers on controlled intervention studies was performed (up to February 26, 2024) using both electronic databases (MEDLINE,Embase, Cochrane Library, APA PsycInfo, Scopus, and the Allied and Complementary Medicine Database) and other resources (e.g., Google Scholar, reference list of included studies and other reviews, websites of public health agencies). This study focuses on children and youth (up to the age of 24) presenting with an above‐average level of aggression/antisocial behavior. In terms of the intervention, we considered both dietary manipulation and nutritional supplementation with aduration long enough (minimum of 1 week) that a significant change in the individual's nutritional status could be expected.We included studies with a controlled design if, for outcomes, they reported on (1) behavioral‐level violence/aggression toward others in real‐life (non‐simulated) settings, (2) antisocial behaviors, or (3) criminal offending. Initial screening,checking for eligibility criteria, data extraction from, and risk of bias assessment for each eligible study were conducted independently by two reviewers. To perform the meta‐analysis, data from each original report were standardized(transformed into Hedges' g) so that results across studies could be meaningfully combined and interpreted. Data con-versions, computation of pooled effect sizes, and estimation of publication bias were conducted using the ComprehensiveMeta‐analysis software (Version 4). Altogether, 51 reports (describing 50 individual studies) met our inclusion criteria, and72 effect sizes were extracted from these reports. Nutritional interventions with a broad target (e.g., broad‐spectrummicronutrient supplementation or general improvement in diet quality) had the most consistent and largest intervention

Campbell Systematic ReviewsVolume 21, Issue 3Sep 2025

By Christine Mitchell, Renae A. Badruzzaman

  When you witness someone in crisis — a mental health emergency or other escalating situation — what are your options to intervene? For most, the only available option is to call 911. And in most places, the 911 system is directly tied to the police department, making police involvement essentially inevitable. But police are not a source of safety, especially for Black, Indigenous, disabled, and people with mental health needs. Policing in the US is a system rooted in violence and punishment, not care. Calling the police can escalate a crisis, turning calls for distress into arrest, violence, or death. Without trusted, community-led alternatives, we are left with a wrenching dilemma: stay silent and unsupportive in moments of crisis, or risk escalation, criminalization, and compounded trauma and violence. Because of this, many communities across the US are working to interrupt police violence against people with mental health needs by building up community-based, community-led, non-police crisis response programs. While more evaluations of each of these types of programs are needed, there is already a body of literature that suggests these alternative models are both more effective at meeting the needs of people in crisis and more trusted by the community. One such program is Mental Health First (MH First), a project of the Anti Police-Terror Project (APTP) launched in 2020 in Oakland and Sacramento, CA. MH First is a community-led crisis response hotline outside of the 911 and police system that community members can call when they, or someone in their community, is experiencing a crisis. The program’s guiding principles include autonomy, healing justice, abolition, intersectionality, disability justice, and harm reduction. This evaluation — conducted while the program is on a strategic planning hiatus — takes a close look at MH First’s first four years of operation to assess how the program is working, what impacts it’s had, and what is needed to grow its reach and deepen effectiveness. Using a mixed-methods process evaluation, we conducted 29 interviews with key stakeholders, and analyzed 167 survey responses from community members in Oakland and Sacramento. Our evaluation focuses on community perceptions of MH First, program strengths, and areas for growth. In particular, we examined the program’s current structure and operations, perceived impact, and potential for deepening and increased services to the Oakland and Sacramento communities Overall, interviewees and survey respondents were very positive about and appreciative of the program. Interviewees noted that the program is trusted by and rooted in the local communities it serves, an essential part of providing appropriate and accessible care to those who call. Trust is further increased by the clear, transparent values of community, autonomy, and abolition that guide MH First’s work. Importantly, MH First is building power and self-efficacy in the local and national community through their trainings, technical assistance, and volunteer recruitment — through which they have trained thousands of volunteers to staff the program. On the national level, interviewees named that MH First provides a strong model that indicates that non-police mental health crisis response programs are practical and possible. Relative to other forms of mental health crisis response, including police and co-response models, MH First is highlighted as more appropriate and more effective at meeting community needs. Our evaluation also identified areas where MH First could grow and improve to better serve the Oakland and Sacramento communities. Interviewees expressed a desire for MH First to increase reliability by expanding their hours of operation to 24/7, rather than during select hours of the week. Some also suggested that MH First transition from a volunteer-only service, to include at least some paid staff. Finally, interviewees felt that MH First should focus on preventative measures and follow-up care, not just crisis management and intervention. In order to be able to meet these areas of growth, interviewees offered suggestions for expanding the program’s reach, including through policy change, a clear narrative and communications strategy, more trainings to build community capacity, and long-term sustainable investment in the program. Two big picture questions remain for the program’s consideration: First, how can MH First avoid the co-optation of their principles and strategy by entities that dilute or stray from MH First’s values and purpose? Interviewees spoke of the inevitability of co-optation and shared strategies for how to reframe or leverage co-optation to expand the program, while still maintaining control over the narrative of the program’s practice. Second, should MH First remain an entity outside of local, county, or state government, or should it be housed under a governmental office or supported with government funds — or some combination of both? Our interviewees had strong opinions on this question, with some feeling that operating within the government and social safety net would allow MH First to be more sustainable and accessible, and others believing that moving under a government agency would cause the program to lose its current spirit and vision. Our evaluation concludes with six recommendations for MH First: 1: Continue to prioritize being deeply rooted in and led by community members in Oakland and Sacramento, particularly Black, Indigenous, Latine, and disabled community members who are most impacted by policing 2: Publicly share more stories of success, including robust qualitative and quantitative data analysis 3: Provide preventative care in order to interrupt pathways to crisis situations and follow-up care in order to ensure people have what they need following crisis 4: Expand hours of operation as much as possible to ensure the hotline is accessible and reliable 5: Increase resources and funding for the program, including considerations of whether MH First is willing and able to receive government funding 6: Pass policy and budget allocations that shift money from the carceral state to non-police grassroots response, including to MH First   

Berkeley, CA: Mental Health First, July 2025.  72p.

By: Kristan Russell, Marly Zeigler, Moriah Taylor

Implementing best practices in child welfare court cases is critical to ensuring positive outcomes for youth and families. However, it is also essential that courts are assessed for their fidelity to implement these practices and whether they are having the intended impacts. This article outlines findings from a pre/post evaluation examining the impacts of the implementation of the Enhanced Resource Guidelines (ERGs) in three urban jurisdictions. The findings from this study yield valuable insights regarding the extent to which ERGs implementation positively impacts key outcomes in court practices and case processing. Implications for ongoing practice and future research are discussed. From Volume 76, Issue 2.

Pittsburgh: National Center for Juvenile Justice, National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges,, 2025. 18p.

By Josh Rovner

  Following decades-long declines, incarceration disparities between Latino youth and their white peers recently increased. As of 2023, the most recent year for which data are available, Latino youth were 25% more likely to be placed (i.e., detained or committed) in juvenile facilities as their white peers. Juvenile facilities held 29,314 youth as of October 2023. This includes placement in one of our nation’s 1,277 detention centers, residential treatment centers, group homes, and youth prisons. These numbers do not include the 437 people under age 18 in adult prisons at year-end 2022 or the estimated 2,000 people under 18 in adult jails at midyear 2023. • Nationally, the youth placement rate was 87 per 100,000 youth. • Latino youth were placed at a rate of 65 per 100,000, compared to the white youth rate of 52 per 100,000. Among the 48 states and the District of Columbia with a population of at least 5,000 Latino youth between ages 10 and 17, a cutoff that allows for meaningful comparisons, Latino youth were at least twice as likely to be in custody than white youth in 11 states.

Washington, DC: The Sentencing Project 2025. 3p.

By Josh Rovner

  Incarceration disparities between Black and white youth have remained stubbornly high over the past decade. As of 2023, the most recent data, Black youth were 5.6 times as likely to be placed (i.e., detained or committed) in juvenile facilities as their white peers. The disparity is now at an all-time high, based on data that starts in 1997. Juvenile facilities held 29,314 youth as of October 2023. This includes placement in one of our nation’s 1,277 detention centers, residential treatment centers, group homes, and youth prisons. These numbers do not include the 437 people under age 18 in adult prisons at year-end 2022 or the estimated 2,000 people under 18 in adult jails at midyear 2023. • Nationally, the youth placement rate was 87 per 100,000 youth. • Black youth were placed at a rate of 293 per 100,000, compared to the white youth rate of 52 per 100,000. • 46% of youth in placement were Black, even though Black youth comprised only 15% of all youth across the United States. In all states with a population of at least 5,000 Black youth between ages 10 and 17, a cutoff that allows for meaningful comparisons, Black youth were at least 2.5 as likely to be in custody than white youth. 

Washington, DC: The Sentencing Project, 2025. 3p.

By Luc Leboeuf

The article addresses the consequences of the externalisation of EU border policies on the legal and institutional dynamics that govern those policies. Drawing on the analysis of legal and policy documents and interviews, which were conducted with expert public servants among EU institutions and in one EU member state (Belgium), the article argues that EU border policies are increasingly governed by ‘regimes of invisibility’—which mainly involve expert public servants who cooperate with their counterparts in informal settings and through informal agreements. The article shows how the emergence of those ‘regimes of invisibility’ is deeply connected with the mainstreaming of migration through all components of the EU foreign policy. This leads to broader use of the tools from the foreign policy toolbox, which often rely on informal forms of cooperation, as well as to greater involvement of institutional actors beyond officials within interior ministries, such as diplomats. The article further makes an initial attempt to unpack these ‘regimes of invisibility’ by showing their underlying institutional tensions and dynamics. Therefore, it discusses how public servants, with different institutional background and knowledge, conflict and cooperate in shaping EU relations with third countries in the field.

International Migration, Volume 63, Issue 5Sep 2025

By Juan Cuéllar Torres, Sr. , Tracey Horan, and Adam Isacson

One year ago, on March 21, 2025, hundreds of experienced employees overseeing the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) abruptly learned that the Trump administration was firing them. The Department’s Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (CRCL), Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman (OIDO), and Office of the Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman (CISOMB), if not abolished, were to be shrunk to their “absolutely irreducible minimum.” The “Reductions in Force” came at the same time that the new administration was launching a “mass deportation” campaign, supercharging often aggressive arrests, detentions, and repatriations while dramatically increasing the capacities of the Department’s border and migration law enforcement agencies, Customs and Border Protection (CBP), Border Patrol, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). This report focuses mainly on the Civil Rights and Civil Liberties office and the Detention Ombudsman’s office, which most frequently oversaw the law enforcement agencies. A year later, including contract personnel, the first has seen its staff cut by 80 percent and the second by 96 percent. Litigation to undo the cuts continues in federal court. 

Even before the Trump administration took an axe to them, these offices were far too small and under-resourced to oversee a Department with about 240,000 employees. They lacked the authority to initiate investigations and to make their recommendations stick. As the Kino Border Initiative found during years of submitting abuse complaints on behalf of migrants arriving at its Nogales, Sonora shelter, a lack of transparency was a chronic problem. But since the agencies’ near-total dismantling on March 21, the experience has been far worse. Many complaint investigations have been halted. No new recommendations have been issued. The ability to submit new complaints—through web forms in English—has been truncated. Investigations now stop if the complainant is no longer in ICE custody. Case updates are almost impossible to obtain after receiving a sparse form email. In Nogales, over the past year, the Kino Border Initiative has experienced months of radio silence from offices that were more communicative in the past, followed by a wave of case-closure notices offering no indication that complaints were meaningfully investigated or that any recommendations resulted. 

This deep reduction in oversight could not come at a worse time, as regular front-page revelations of abuse and rights violations committed by DHS agencies, from the streets of Minneapolis to the cells of the U.S. detention network, make urgently clear. These times call for more oversight, more accountability, more transparency, and more embedding of democratic, rights-respecting values throughout the Department. This report, from two organizations with decades of combined experience monitoring human rights at the U.S.-Mexico border, contains a series of recommendations to guide a restoration of internal oversight capacity at DHS. While the March 2025 reductions in force must be reversed immediately, the Department can go further. Assisted by new authorities and appropriations from Congress, it can take a series of common-sense steps to uphold the dignity of victims, make repeated abuses less likely, and instill a culture that recognizes that respect for civil rights, civil liberties, privacy, and detainees’ rights is a necessary element of success in securing the homeland—never an obstacle. 

Kino Border Initiative (Nogales, Arizona/Sonora) and the Washington Office on Latin America (Washington, DC) 

2026. 30p.

By Ahilan Arulanantham

When can the government imprison people without trial?  That question lurks beneath many important civil rights issues of our time, from the federal government’s plans to jail and deport millions of non-citizens under the immigration laws, to the indefinite detention of people convicted of sex offenses, to the confinement of unhoused people in major American cities, and, most recently, the plan to summarily jail and deport “alien enemies” on national security grounds.  All of these involve forms of preventive detention—that is, imprisonment without trial to protect the public.

Under current doctrine, the legality of preventive detention schemes is governed by a substantive due process framework that requires courts to balance society’s interest in safety against the detained individual’s interest in liberty.  Although litigators, judges, and scholars often disagree about how to apply that framework, they have all generally assumed that it does apply.

But that framework is a modern invention.  Prior to World War II, the law took a very different approach to evaluating imprisonment without trial: the state could not preventively detain to stop conduct that could be punished under criminal law.  That framework reflected a basic normative constraint—that preventive detention should not be used to circumvent the criminal legal system.  If the conduct the state wanted to stop could be punished, the state was required to use the criminal law, rather than displacing it with a bespoke regime lacking the criminal law’s procedural and substantive protections.

That bedrock constraint began to erode during the Japanese American mass incarceration of World War II, and then disappeared over the next several decades as the Supreme Court upheld the preventive detention of non-citizen Communist Party members and then the pretrial preventive detention of people charged with federal crimes.  Since then, state power to imprison people outside the criminal legal system has grown rapidly in new ways, as the due process balancing framework has proven malleable enough to legitimate nearly every preventive detention scheme that governments have created.  As the federal government’s recent invocation of the “Alien Enemies” Act illustrates, more may soon be on the way.

In this Article, I uncover the origins of the common law doctrinal framework governing preventive detention, and then tell the story of its downfall, describing how today’s due process balancing framework took its place.  I then draw lessons from that doctrinal history for our present moment, as scholars, policymakers, litigators, and courts seek to chart the limits of preventive detention authority in the face of new demands for expanded state power.

73 UCLA L. Rev. ___ (forthcoming), UCLA School of Law, Public Law Research Paper No. 26-07

By Raoul Sumo Tayo

This report explores current and emerging maritime piracy trends and the associated flow of criminal activities in Cameroon.

Maritime piracy has become one of the most urgent security issues in the Gulf of Guinea, which is currently the second-most affected region worldwide. Cameroon’s coastline is at the centre of these dynamics, with attacks, shifting routes and an expanding set of criminal activities that both accompany and sustain piracy. Understanding these trends is essential to analysing how violence is maintained at sea, in mangrove areas and on land.

This report provides an overview of current and emerging patterns of maritime piracy and the cohabitant flows that reinforce it. It tracks the evolution of incidents on and off the Cameroonian coast, describing the methods used by individuals commonly referred to as pirates, including timing of attacks, routes, targets and operational tactics. While vessel boardings, attempted attacks, hijackings and kidnappings have generally decreased, illegal activities that generate alternative income have increased, particularly hostage-taking, extortion and illegal taxation. These criminal flows sustain pirate economies and strengthen their resilience when groups are not directly involved in kidnapping-for-ransom operations.

PretoriaL  Institute for Security Studies, 2025. 42p.

By FATF/OECD - GAFILAT 

This report summarises the AML/CFT measures in place in Brazil as at the date of the on-site visit, 13-31 March 2023. It analyses the level of compliance with the FATF 40 Recommendations and the level of effectiveness of Brazil’s AML/CFT system, and provides recommendations on how the system could be strengthened. Key Findings a) Brazil has a strong domestic coordination mechanism to address risks from money laundering, ENCCLA. Brazil has built a legal and structural framework largely enabling competent authorities to prevent and combat ML. More recently, Brazil has also improved its framework to fight terrorist financing (TF) by passing legislation criminalising the offence and enabling implementation of targeted financial sanctions (TFS). Informed by the longstanding coordination within ENCCLA and a National Risk Assessment conducted in 2021, authorities have shared and robust understanding of national ML threats, namely, corruption, drug trafficking and organised crime, environmental crimes, and tax crimes. There is a precise understanding of the ML risks and vulnerabilities linked to most threats— including informal and illicit value transfers, misuse of cash, and front companies—however, there is a lack of depth in the understanding of financial flows linked to environmental crimes. b) Through ENCCLA, since 2003, Brazil has developed and refined policies to tackle many of its higher ML risks, particularly those stemming from corruption. Brazil has taken many steps to address other higher risk areas, however, these actions are taken without longer-term, comprehensive strategies, which results in occasional disjointed efforts and misalignment of objectives and priorities (such as ML from environmental crimes where interagency cooperation is growing but limited, and where some keyauthorities lack sufficient resources). At times, structural issues inhibit effective coordination in combatting ML/TF, including cooperation between police and prosecution offices and resources to handle the complex criminal justice system. In addition, the tax authority (RFB) has a central role in the AML/CFT system given that it controls access to many pieces of relevant information, but legal obstacles frustrate its full ability to assist other authorities in tackling ML/TF and its own AML/CFT activities are not adequately prioritised. c) Brazil has successfully prosecuted high-end cases of ML, including from corruption, reflecting the capacity to conduct financial investigations and the development of supportive institutional structures. Despite important successes, there is a mismatch between the investigative input and the results seen in terms of prosecutions and convictions. Structural issues have a major impact. Among other things, ML proceedings take too long due to appeals and when convictions are obtained, sometimes a decade or more after charges, and the sanctioning regime needs major improvements. Criminal assets are generally identified and temporarily seized, and in some major cases Brazil was able to recuperate large sums of criminal money; however, there was not sufficient evidence of final confiscation and asset recovery is mainly accomplished through agreements. While there is highlevel commitment to fighting ML/TF, the resources available to competent authorities are largely insufficient, particularly those of COAF and prosecutors. Lack of resources hinders the production of deeper financial intelligence to identify a larger number of complex ML schemes and frustrate efforts to trace criminal financial networks. d) Brazil is committed to fighting terrorism and terrorist financing and has an improving understanding of its TF risks including those stemming from farright extremism. While it has expertise to investigate TF activity, the legal framework in place and the corresponding view of the authorities hinder successful prosecutions. The authorities are not always well coordinated to identify, prosecute, or prevent TF. The framework to implement targeted financial sanctions without delay for TF and proliferation financing is in place, although it remains largely untested at the time of the onsite visit as no designations had been made by Brazil and no funds or assets were frozen. Sanctions implementation by the private sector is improving particularly in the financial sector, thanks to the supervisory activity of the Central Bank of Brazil (BCB), and more slowly in other sectors. There is a lack of interagency coordination on issues related to the financing of proliferation and guidance is needed for the private sector. NPOs are not yet subject to risk-based measures specifically to prevent TF. e) As a major regional and global economy, Brazil has a large and diverse universe of financial and non-financial sectors with increasing sophistication. BCB is the key supervisor for the most material financial institutions and its long-standing risk-based activities have contributed to significantly improve the ability of financial institutions to detect and prevent ML and TF, particularly the largest ones. With few exceptions, other supervisors have not been able yet to take sufficient measures to ensure sufficient implementation of the AML/CFT framework. At the time of the on-site visit, some activities remained unregulated, notably those of lawyers and virtual asset service providers, leaving serious vulnerabilities. f) The misuse of companies is a feature in many ML schemes and Brazil has been able to detect abusers in many cases by using the information available through REDESIM to map out the company structure. Brazil has also created a requirement for companies to provide beneficial ownership (BO) information to RFB, however, this database is largely unpopulated. Moreover, declaratory BO information is considered by law to be “tax secret,” which means that LEAs need to request a court order to obtain it and that COAF and other administrative authorities (including those involved in the fight against corruption) cannot access it for their analysis. g) Brazil generally cooperates well in ML/TF areas with its international partners. As many ML schemes include the sending of money abroad, LEAs and COAF are very proactive in seeking assistance to obtain information and restrain criminal assets. As a major financial centre, Brazil also receives requests for cooperation from abroad, and competent authorities provide high quality assistance, with soon-site visit, some activities remained unregulated, notably those of lawyers and virtual asset service providers, leaving serious vulnerabilities. f) The misuse of companies is a feature in many ML schemes and Brazil has been able to detect abusers in many cases by using the information available through REDESIM to map out the company structure. Brazil has also created a requirement for companies to provide beneficial ownership (BO) information to RFB, however, this database is largely unpopulated. Moreover, declaratory BO information is considered by law to be “tax secret,” which means that LEAs need to request a court order to obtain it and that COAF and other administrative authorities (including those involved in the fight against corruption) cannot access it for their analysis. g) Brazil generally cooperates well in ML/TF areas with its international partners. As many ML schemes include the sending of money abroad, LEAs and COAF are very proactive in seeking assistance to obtain information and restrain criminal assets. As a major financial centre, Brazil also receives requests for cooperation from abroad, and competent authorities provide high quality assistance, with so on-site visit, some activities remained unregulated, notably those of lawyers and virtual asset service providers, leaving serious vulnerabilities. f) The misuse of companies is a feature in many ML schemes and Brazil has been able to detect abusers in many cases by using the information available through REDESIM to map out the company structure. Brazil has also created a requirement for companies to provide beneficial ownership (BO) information to RFB, however, this database is largely unpopulated. Moreover, declaratory BO information is considered by law to be “tax secret,” which means that LEAs need to request a court order to obtain it and that COAF and other administrative authorities (including those involved in the fight against corruption) cannot access it for their analysis. g) Brazil generally cooperates well in ML/TF areas with its international partners. As many ML schemes include the sending of money abroad, LEAs and COAF are very proactive in seeking assistance to obtain information and restrain criminal assets. As a major financial centre, Brazil also receives requests for cooperation from abroad, and competent authorities provide high quality assistance, with some improvements needed in extradition and the speed of responses.

Paris, FATF, 2023. 354p.