By Anita Say Chan

Predatory Data illuminates the connections between the nineteenth century’s anti‑immigration and eugenics movements and today’s sprawling systems of techno-surveillance and algorithmic discrimination. Historical and globally multisited, the book examines how dispossession, misrecognition, and segregation are being magnified by dominant knowledge institutions in the Age of Big Data. Technological advancement has a history, including efforts to chart a path for alternative futures. Anita Say Chan explores these important parallel stories of defiant refusal and liberatory activism, such as how feminist, immigrant, and other minoritized actors worked to develop alternative data practices. Their methods and traditions, over a century old, continue to reverberate through global justice‑based data initiatives today. Predatory Data charts a path for an alternative historical consciousness grounded in the pursuit of global justice. “Anita Say Chan highlights the power of community‑based alternatives to extractive data that are rooted in feminist, people of color, and Indigenous perspectives.

Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2025. 263p.

By Éloi Laurent

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 License. It is free to read, download and share on Elgaronline.com. This innovative book promotes a holistic, pragmatic and proactive approach to just transitions. Arguing that justice is both a goal and condition of transitions it rearticulates environmental and social challenges and rethinks the policies designed to overcome them

Cheltenham, UK · Northampton, MA: E. Elgar Press, 2024. 136p.

By Noor Huda Ismail

SYNOPSIS

The rapid spread of extremist ideologies through social media, combined with global conflicts and the manipulation of religious content, plays a significant role in online radicalisation. The emotional amplification of conflicts and the distortion of religious teachings underscore the urgent need for stronger social media regulation, enhanced digital literacy, and access to authentic religious guidance. To effectively combat radicalisation, a comprehensive and multi-faceted approach is essential to protect individuals and societies from the harmful effects of extremist ideologies in the digital age.

COMMENTARY

In November 2024, three Singaporeans, influenced by online radicalisation, were detained under the Internal Security Act for attempting to engage in armed violence overseas. Unlike the usual recruitment methods, they were self-radicalised through digital content, particularly those related to the Israel-Hamas conflict.

This incident underscores the growing role social media plays in the spread of extremist ideologies, where radicalisation occurs rapidly through videos, memes, and encrypted messages. The digital age accelerates radicalisation, often making it difficult to detect until violent actions ensue.

So, what makes the digital age uniquely dangerous in terms of radicalisation? How do global conflicts like that between Israel and Hamas contribute to this trend? And, most importantly, how is religious content being distorted to fuel extremism in this age of instant communication?

S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, NTU Singapore, 2025. 5p.

By The Australian Human Rights Commission

A study is being undertaken into the prevalence, nature and impact of racism in Australian universities for both staff and students, at the individual and systemic level. This interim report outlines how this will be done and provides initial insights reflecting stakeholder feedback, emerging themes and early issues for consideration. It highlights a range of concerns from both students and staff in relation to their experience of racism on university campuses.

Racism in universities is a long-standing problem, with research showing it is a persistent and systemic issue for students and staff from First Nations and other negatively racialised backgrounds. The severity of recent incidents of antisemitism and Islamophobia combined with other experiences of racism across different groups, creates an urgent need to act decisively.

The findings reveal trends in racism and structural discrimination with significant impacts on wellbeing, participation and performance. At the conclusion of the study, the Commission will deliver comprehensive research findings and recommendations on how to effectively address and reduce racism, in all its forms, at universities.

Key findings

First Nations students and staff – Indigenous participants report enduring structural and interpersonal racism.

Jewish students and staff – Jewish students and staff cited a rise in antisemitism including extremist propaganda, intimidation and exclusion.

Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim students and staff – participants described hostility, threats and discriminatory practices, including restrictions on cultural expression and prayer spaces.

African and Asian students and staff – African students and staff frequently encountered severe racism, often feeling the need to moderate their natural ways of expressing themselves. Asian participants reported being stereotyped as high achieving but limited to specific academic disciplines.

International students – reports of exclusion, social isolation and fears of visa repercussions were common. Many felt reduced, viewed as ‘cash cows’ for universities.

Sydney: Australian Human Rights Commission, 2024. 137p

Edited by María do Mar Castro Varela and Barış Ülker

How is tolerance reflected in urban space? Which urban actors are involved in the practices and narratives of tolerance? What are the limits of tolerance? The edited volume answers these questions by considering different forms of urban in/exclusion and participatory citizenship. By drawing together disparate yet critical writings, Doing Tolerance examines the production of space, urban struggles and tactics of power from an interdisciplinary perspective. Illustrating the paradoxes within diverse interactions, the authors focus on the conflict between heterogeneous groups of the governed, on the one hand, and the governing in urban spaces, on the other. Above all, the volume explores the divergences and convergences of participatory citizenship, as they are revealed in urban space through political, socio-economic and cultural conditions and the entanglements of social mobilities.

Verlag Barbara Budrich: Opladen • Berlin • Toronto 2020. 278p.

By Christi M. Smith

Since 2018, nearly half of states have either passed clean slate automated record-sealing laws, adopted legislation to expunge cannabis convictions, or initiated campaigns to seal certain criminal records. These efforts acknowledge the perpetual, often lifelong barriers that people with publicly available criminal records face. The collateral consequences of a record, even for people who have been arrested but not convicted, make it exceedingly difficult to obtain and maintain basic life stability. For the one in three adults with a criminal record, this often means a lifetime of poverty and negative generational outcomes for dependents.

When people are unable to establish stability or advance in life because of records-based discrimination, the public also suffers negative effects. Being unemployed, underemployed, or employed “off the books” means less money cycling back into the community and reduced tax revenue. This translates to an $87 billion per year loss to the national economy. The social cost of cyclical incarceration and increased likelihood of homelessness among this population is an estimated $1.2 trillion annually. And without legitimate opportunities to provide for oneself and one’s family—combined with a lack of affordable products—people may be disincentivized to remain law-abiding. This can result in increased crime and escalating product costs as stores attempt to reduce retail theft. Our streets are less safe when people who have paid their debt to society and remained law-abiding continue to be excluded from the basic resources they need to survive.

Explainer, Washington, DC: R Street, 2024. 2p.

By Marina Zaloznaya, Jennifer L. Glanville, Jennifer Haylett

Although men are overrepresented among the perpetrators of high-profile, white-collar crime, examinations of public-sector corruption typically reveal little-to-no gender differences in participation. Drawing from Steffensmeier's theory of gender inequality in the criminal underworld and Tomaskovic-Devey and Avent-Holt's relational theory of inequality, we argue that this apparent equality conceals systematically different patterns of engagement. We hypothesize that bureaucrats and other facilitators are more willing to collaborate with men than with women. Because public-sector corruption markets are not male dominated, we argue that “gatekeepers” of both genders systematically exclude women from lucrative illegal collaborations. We further hypothesize that patterns of gender inequality are more pronounced in riskier and more profitable public-sector corruption. We test these hypotheses with data from an original nationally representative survey conducted in Russia in 2018 using models that incorporate controls for explanations that locate gender differences in crime engagement in offender attributes. Our results demonstrate that gender differences in public-sector corruption are a function of coordination among multiple actors. These relational dynamics advantage Russian men over women in that they are more likely to use less costly types of remuneration and to engage in high-stakes exchanges with bigger material yields.

Criminology, Volume 62, Issue 4, 2024, pages 739-768

By Holly Nguyen, Lee Ann Slocum

Despite extensive theorizing on the employment–crime link, little discussion has taken place on the mechanisms through which job gains and losses affect behavior. We draw on prospect theory and the loss aversion principle, which suggests people are more sensitive to losses than gains, to assess how individuals contend with transitions in employment and income. Using fixed-effects and asymmetrical fixed-effects models, we analyze 36 months of retrospective information for a sample of incarcerated males collected as part of the Second Nebraska Inmate Study. First, we assess whether job losses are more likely than job gains to generate financial stress and find support for the loss aversion principle. Second, we explore how people might compensate for changes in job and income status by engaging in risk-taking behaviors (illegal earnings, gun carrying, and offending versatility). We find the positive relationship between job and income loss on the probability of reporting illegal earnings and crime versatility is stronger than the negative relationship between job and income gain and these behaviors. Financial stress, however, does not attenuate the relationship between losses and risk-taking behaviors. We discuss the implications for theory and policy.

Criminology, Volume 62, Issue 4, 2024, pages 799-829