By Christoph Feldhaus, Lukas Reinhardt, Matthias Sutter:

In a democracy, it is essential that citizens accept rules and laws, regardless of which party is in power. We study why citizens in polarized societies resist rules implemented by political opponents. This may be due to the rules' specific content, but also because of a general preference against being restricted by political opponents. We develop a method to measure the latter channel. In our experiment with almost 1,300 supporters and opponents of Donald Trump, we show that polarization undermines rule-following behavior significantly, independent of the rules' content. Subjects perceive the intentions behind (identical) rules as much more malevolent if they were imposed by a political opponent rather than a political ally.

Bonn:  IZA – Institute of Labor Economics, 2024. 36p.

By Sigurd S. Arntzen, Jon H. Fiva, Rune J. Sørensen

This paper assesses the effectiveness of democratic systems in preventing individuals with criminal backgrounds from holding political office. Unlike many countries, Norway has no legal restrictions against felons running for office. We analyze local election candidates from 2003 to 2019, paired with administrative records of criminal offenses. We demonstrate that individuals with criminal records are systematically penalized at every stage of their political careers. Candidates are less likely to have criminal records than the general population, with elected officials less likely to have criminal backgrounds than their unelected peers, and mayors being the most lawful. Through a series of counterfactual exercises, we demonstrate that the most significant reduction in criminal involvement occurs at the nomination stage, especially within established local party organizations.

CESifo, Munich, 2024, 49 p.

By National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine; Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education; Board on Science Education; Susan Debad, Rapporteur

The complex challenges facing society today call for new ways of doing research that bring researchers, policy makers, community leaders and members, industry stakeholders, and others together to identify evidence needs, contribute different kinds of knowledge and expertise, and use evidence to accomplish shared goals. Although momentum is building toward a research enterprise that more routinely enables and rewards this type of collaboration, the development of institutional capacities to support diverse forms of engaged research have not kept pace with the need for them.

The National Academias Press, 2001, 148 pages

By George Washington University, Program on Extremism    

This document serves as a compendium tracing the evolution of Hamas's presence and influence in the United States from its establishment in the 1980s to its current activities on college campuses. It begins by detailing how Hamas, as a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, set up infrastructure in the US through organizations like the Holy Land Foundation (HLF) and the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP) to fundraise and spread its ideology. Over time, US-based Hamas-linked activists adapted their strategies to avoid legal scrutiny, creating new entities like American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) and collaborating with groups like Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) to embed themselves in campus activism. The document also highlights how Hamas-linked networks exploit academic freedom to promote extremism under the guise of advocacy, aligning with Iranian-backed groups and leveraging rebranded narratives of "resistance" to maintain influence and avoid direct association with terrorism. This timeline illustrates the continuous evolution of Hamas’s methods, from its covert operations in the 1980s to its open advocacy on campuses today.     

Washington, DC: Program on Extremism at George Washington University 2024. 23p.

By Justin D. Strong, Keramet Reiter,  Gabriela Gonzalez, Rebecca Tublitz, Dallas Augustine, Melissa Barragan, Kelsie ChesnutI, Pasha Dashtgard, Natalie Pifer, Thomas R. Blair  

We examine how solitary confinement correlates with self-reported adverse physical health outcomes, and how such outcomes extend the understanding of the health disparities associated with incarceration. Using a mixed methods approach, we find that solitary confinement is associated not just with mental, but also with physical health problems. Given the disproportionate use of solitary among incarcerated people of color, these symptoms are most likely to affect those populations. Drawing from a random sample of prisoners (n = 106) in long-term solitary confinement in the Washington State Department of Corrections in 2017, we conducted semi-structured, in-depth interviews; Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale (BPRS) assessments; and systematic reviews of medical and disciplinary files for these subjects. We also conducted a paper survey of the entire long-term solitary confinement population (n = 225 respondents) and analyzed administrative data for the entire population of prisoners in the state in 2017 (n = 17,943). Results reflect qualitative content and descriptive statistical analysis. BPRS scores reflect clinically significant somatic concerns in 15% of the sample. Objective specification of medical conditions is generally elusive, but that, itself, is a highly informative finding. Using subjective reports, we specify and analyze a range of physical symptoms experienced in solitary confinement: (1) skin irritations and weight fluctuation associated with the restrictive conditions of solitary confinement; (2) un-treated and mistreated chronic conditions associated with the restrictive policies of solitary confinement; (3) musculoskeletal pain exacerbated by both restrictive conditions and policies. Administrative data analyses reveal disproportionate rates of racial/ethnic minorities in solitary confinement. This analysis raises the stakes for future studies to evaluate comparative prevalence of objective medical diagnoses and potential causal mechanisms for the physical symptoms specified here, and for understanding differential use of solitary confinement and its medically harmful sequelae.

PLoS ONE 15(10): e0238510.

By Sigurd S. Arntzen, Jon H. Fiva, Rune J. Sørensen   

This paper assesses the effectiveness of democratic systems in preventing individuals with criminal backgrounds from holding political office. Unlike many countries, Norway has no legal restrictions against felons running for office. We analyze local election candidates from 2003 to 2019, paired with administrative records of criminal offenses. We demonstrate that individuals with criminal records are systematically penalized at every stage of their political careers. Candidates are less likely to have criminal records than the general population, with elected officials less likely to have criminal backgrounds than their unelected peers, and mayors being the most lawful. Through a series of counterfactual exercises, we demonstrate that the most significant reduction in criminal involvement occurs at the nomination stage, especially within established local party organizations.

Munich: CESifo, Munich, 2024

By Michael J. Rosenfeld

U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board (USMSPB) surveys document a decline of more than 50 percent between 1987 and 2016 in the percentage of women working for the federal government who have been sexually harassed (narrowly or broadly defined) in the prior two years. This decline has been underappreciated due to the infrequency of USMSPB surveys and the delayed release of the USMSPB report based on the 2016 survey. The decline in workplace sexual harassment of women has taken place across all federal agencies and at all workplace gender balances. While, in 1987, there was a strong positive correlation between male predominance in the workplace and women’s reports of sexual harassment, this association was greatly diminished by 2016. The formerly substantial gender divide in attitudes toward sexual harassment was also mostly diminished by 2016. By extrapolating the USMSPB surveys of federal workers to the entire U.S. workforce, I estimate that 4.8 million U.S. women were harassed at work in 2016 (using a narrow definition of harassment) and 7.6 million U.S. women were harassed at work in 1987 when the female workforce was substantially smaller. More than 700 women were sexually harassed at work in the United States in 2016 for every sexual harassment complaint filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The observed decline in sexual harassment has implications for theories about law and social change ” 

Sociological Science 11: 934-964, 2024.

By Hsing-Fang Hsieh, Justin Heinze

Abstract. Anonymous tip lines have the potential to improve school safety by providing secure multi-modal reporting systems and enabling a coordinated response between schools, law enforcement and crisis responders. The SS-ARS, developed and implemented by the Sandy Hook Promise (SHP) Foundation, is an educational school safety initiative that trains youth, parents, schools, and communities to recognize warning signs in writing, speaking, or web content that could lead to harmful behaviors towards themselves or others, and to safely report potential threats. SS-ARS combines a school-wide violence prevention program that enhances risk recognition, empowers and engages school communities in violence prevention, and facilitates coordination between schools and law enforcement with a multi-modal ARS. SHP has implemented the Say Something program in schools across the U.S. and trained over 12 million students (Sandy Hook Promise Foundation). In a recent systematic review of anonymous reporting systems (ARS) in U.S. schools, Messman et al. (2021) identified just four empirical studies about the implementation or effectiveness of ARS, but none of these studies used experimental designs. To address this gap of research, we examined the effectiveness of the Say Something Anonymous Reporting System (SS-ARS) program in improving school safety in a cluster randomized control trial in collaboration with the Miami-Dade County Public Schools (M-DCPS). I. Major goals and objectives The current project had four major goals. Our goals for the project were to: 1. Conduct a cluster randomized control trial to test the effectiveness of the SS-ARS intervention to improve participants’ ability to recognize signs of mental duress, violent antecedents, and other risk behaviors, increase reporting of risk behaviors, and improve school community response and school climate over time; 2. Examine changes in violence in school communities (e.g., fights, bullying) and student criminal justice involvement stemming from improved recognition and reporting of risk behaviors; 3. Identify key factors associated with program fidelity, reach, adoption, and sustainability; 4. Perform a cost/effectiveness analysis. We had five main objectives under these goals. Our objectives were to: 1. Recruit 30 schools that will be randomly assigned to receive the SS-ARS program (intervention group) or to receive the usual school safety practices (control condition). 2. Conduct pre- and post-test surveys of students, teachers, and administrators attending both the intervention and control schools. Participants will be followed longitudinally over the study period (from baseline to 18-month post-test survey). 3. Conduct structured interviews with key program personnel at all treatment schools to assess program implementation factors and outcomes. 4. Extract administrative data from both intervention and control school records to assess violent incidents and school response. We will also work with the Miami-Dade Schools Police Department (M-DSPD) to extract geocoded crime data in surrounding neighborhoods.  5. Compare change over time between the intervention and control groups. Analyses will include both student and school-level data. We will examine the stability of change with three data points over 18 months post-intervention. Analyses will examine program effectiveness and the implementation factors associated with program effectiveness.

Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 2023. 41p.

By Jakob Guhl, Julia Ebner and Jan Rau

On the 8th October 2019, a 28-year old man with self-made guns and body armour attacked a synagogue and a kebab shop in Halle, killing two people. He live-streamed the attack and published a ‘manifesto’ online. His intention was to kill Jews, whom he blamed for feminism and mass migration. He introduced himself as “Anon” (anonymous), a reference to ‘imageboard’ websites such as 4chan and 8chan. Shortly after, users on 4chan cynically joked about whether the attack had lived up to similar attacks in Pittsburgh, San Diego, and El Paso in the US and Christchurch in New Zealand. In each of these attacks, the perpetrators were found to be have been immersed in far-right online sub-cultures. The presence of extremist and terrorist groups on mainstream platforms like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube has been the focus of much attention in recent years, but the attacks cited above have raised concerns about the far-right subcultures that have emerged on alternative platforms like 4chan and Telegram, chat forums like Gab, and gaming applications like Discord. With mainstream social media companies forced to make greater efforts to remove extremists and hate speech from their platforms in Germany with the NetzDG law, these alternative social platforms have become increasingly important to an international far-right community that includes anti-Muslim movements like PEGIDA, ‘Identitarian’ ethnonationalist groups like Generation Identity, and militant Neo-Nazis like the Atomwaffen Division. In addition to being places where far-right terrorists are glorified, they have also become sites for activists to strategise and spread disinformation campaigns, coordinate harassment against female politicians and create meme campaigns to influence elections and political discourse.6 ISD research in the German national, Bavarian and European Parliamentary elections showed how these groups were coordinating in particular to support the right-wing populist party Alternative for Deutchland (AfD).7 Complementing these alternative social media platforms is an ecosystem of online alternative media outlets that masquerade as ‘news’ sources. Presenting themselves as alternatives to mainstream media, many of these outlets amplify far-right, anti-migrant and anti-progressive talking points through sensationalist ‘click-bait’ stories. Taken together, this toxic far-right ecosystem is potentially contributing to a rise in far-right motivated terrorism, which has increased 320% in the past five years, whilst also giving safe spaces and providing contents for those who want to undermine democracy. Policymakers are increasingly asking what can be done, but at present too little is known about these communities. To address these issues, ISD’s Digital Analysis Unit undertook one of the most comprehensive mappings of this alternative ecosystem in Germany to date. While these platforms draw in a global audience, which we are consistently mapping and analysing to understand the international connectivity of the far-right, this report focuses specifically on the German-speaking communities within this ecosystem. The German government has been at the forefront of devising legislation to force the mainstream social media companies to remove illegal hate speech from their platforms. With the NetzDG bill, passed in 2017, social media companies face large fines if they do not remove illegal content within 24 hours. While many have criticised the NetzDG bill as infringing on free speech or being ineffective by focusing on content removal, there is also the risk that it is driving extremist groups into more closed, alternative platforms which are currently not subject to the legislation. These alternative platforms present significant challenges for regulation. They may lack the resources to effectively monitor or remove extremist communities, or they may be ideologically committed to libertarian values and free speech and thus unwilling to moderate these communities.  Drawing together ISD’s digital ethnographic work across dozens of closed forums and chat groups with the latest in machine learning and natural language processing, in this report we provide an initial glimpse into the size and nature of the far-right communities on these platforms. We present data gathered from user-generated surveys on these platforms, revealing the motivations for joining and the ideological views of those drawn to these groups. Using Method 52, a proprietary software tool for the analysis and classification of unstructured text, we trained an algorithm to identify antisemitic narratives.8 We also analyse the role of alternative ‘news’ outlets in disseminating far-right concepts, drawing on ISD’s partnership with the MIT Media Lab to create the ‘Hate Observatory’, based on its Media Cloud software, the world’s largest online database of online media, containing 1,4 billion stories from 60,000 sources, to compare the frequency and types of coverage of far-right themes in mainstream and alternative media. Based on our research findings, we make a series of recommendations for tech companies, government, civil society and researchers about how to prevent these alternative platforms from being used to further radicalise or undermine democracy. Key Findings – We identified 379 far-right and right-wing populist channels across ten alternative platforms investigated for this report. Alternative platforms with notable far-right presence included: the messaging application Telegram (129 channels), the Russian social network website VK (115 groups), video-sharing website Bitchute (79), and social networking sites Gab (38 channels), Reddit (8 groups), Minds (5 communities) and Voat (5 communities). Analysis of the community standards of these platforms shows that they can be divided into two groups. Firstly, those designed for non-political purposes, such as gaming, which have been hijacked by far-right communities. Secondly, those that are based on libertarian ideals and defend the presence of far-right communities on the basis of freedom of speech. While membership numbers in these groups were not always identifiable, our analysis suggests that there are between 15,000 and 50,000 Germanspeaking individuals with far-right beliefs using these platforms, with varying levels of activity. The channel with the most followers had more than 40,000 followers. Although we identified a few platforms that were created by right-wing populist influencers, such as video-sharing sites FreiHoch3 and Prometheus, the number of users was too small to merit inclusion in the analysis. – A spectrum of far-right groups are active on alternative platforms: while there are a greater number of anti-Muslim and neo-Nazi affiliated channels, ‘Identitarian’ groups appear to have the largest reach. Of the 379 groups and channels that we identified, 104 were focused on opposition to Islam and Muslims, immigration and refugees and 92 channels expressed overt support for National Socialism. We identified 35 channels and groups associated with Identitarian and ethnonationalist groups. 117 communities and groups did not fall neatly into any specific category but instead contained a mix of content from the categories described above. It is important to note that a larger number of channels does not necessarily equate to a larger number of people reached. For example, the largest Identitarian channel has more than 35,000 followers, which is significantly greater than the largest anti-Muslim channel (18,000) or the largest neo-Nazi channel (around 10,000). (continued)  

London, Washington DC; Beirut; Toronto:  IDS - Institute for Strategic Dialogue: 2020. 76p.

By Anne Marie Buzato

The use of private security companies (PSCs) to perform services that are traditionally associated with the state presents a challenge to regulatory and oversight frameworks. Analyzing developments leading to the International Code of Conduct for Security Providers (ICOC) and the ICOC Association, this paper argues that a multistakeholder approach to develop standards adapted for the private sector and which creates governance and oversight mechanisms fills some of the governance gaps found in traditional regulatory approaches.

London: Ubiquity Press, 2015. 51p.

By Elise Thomas

DLive is a live-streaming platform created in 2017 and acquired by BitTorrent in 2019. From late 2019 onward, the combination of lax content moderation and DLive’s in-built opportunities for monetisation1  using a blockchain-based cryptocurrency reportedly attracted2 significant numbers of extreme right and fringe streamers to the platform. In early 2021, at least nine channels are alleged to have live-streamed the January 6th incursion into the US Capitol on the platform.3 DLive has a policy of tagging channels that contain political or adult content as ‘X tag’ channels. In the wake of the events at the Capitol, DLive took the step of demonetising5  all X tag channels. They also suspended the accounts of users who had streamed the Capitol incursion, announced a content moderation review of all X tag channels with significant viewership, and temporarily suspended all use of their platform for those in the Washington DC area ahead of the Presidential Inauguration.  This briefing details the results of an ethnographic analysis of the role which DLive plays in UK extreme right-wing mobilization online, with specific attention played to the overlap between extremist use of the platform and the targeting of gamers for radicalisation. In total, we watched 13.5 hours of live-streamed content and analyzed the activity of 100 extreme right accounts. The time which ISD analysts spent scoping the platform overlapped with the removal of several high-profile extreme right-wing users of the platform. Importantly this analysis helps document how extremists are using a multi-platform strategy to avoid the negative impacts that content moderation efforts can have on their communications strategies. Key Findings • A relatively wide range of extremist influencers including British white nationalists use DLive as part of a broader strategy to broadcast extreme right ideology to their audiences. The monetization provided by DLive means that as well as providing a means to stream shows to audiences the platform offers the opportunity of netting them funds. • Extremists have an ambivalent relationship with DLive, treating it as part of a multi-platform strategy designed to circumnavigate content moderation. We found that extremists used DLive opportunistically due to the relative freedom it afforded them to broadcast content that would not be allowed on other platforms. However, this was not out of any particular affection for the platform, with extremists often streaming across multiple platforms in a bid to avoid moderation efforts. • Efforts by DLive to implement more robust terms of service appear to be having an impact on extremist activity. Several of the accounts we monitored were removed by DLive over the course of our analysis. Additionally, the users we monitored often discussed using alternative platforms like Trovo and Odysee to broadcast, which they felt provided more permissive environments for extremist activity. • We found limited evidence to suggest that the live streaming of gaming is used as a strategy by extremists to radicalize new users on DLive. Out of the 100 extremist accounts analyzed, only seven used DLive to stream gaming. Of these seven only three appeared to use gaming to advance extreme right ideology and movements. Analysing the gaming content produced by these users it appears that gaming primarily functions as a means for extreme right wing influencers to reach established audiences and strengthen existing extremist communities, rather than to radicalise and recruit new members.  

Beirut; Berlin; London; Paris; Washington DC Institute for Strategic Dialogue, 2021. 11p.

By Pierre Vaux, Aoife Gallagher, Jacob Davey

Steam is a video game supply service, described as the “single largest distribution site for PC games”. At the start of February 2021, the platform set a new record as 26.4 million users signed into the platform simultaneously, breaking its previous record of 25.4 million set only the month before. In addition to its online store and game launcher, the Steam community feature allows users to find friends and join groups and discussion forums, while also offering in-game voice and text chat. These groups serve as a means to enable connectivity around a certain subject or game, forming hubs where users with shared interests can collaborate. Often, Steam groups facilitate interaction between groups of players known as ‘clans’ who play together in one or more multiplayer games. However, several groups have been created to allow networking between people supportive of right-wing extremism. In this chapter, we provide an analysis of 45 interconnected Steam community groups associated with the extreme right. This cohort is a sample of a larger network of potentially extremist groups on the platform, and as such should be seen as a snapshot indicating broader trends on the platform, rather than a comprehensive overview of extreme right activity. Key Findings • The extreme right uses Steam as a hub for individual extremists to connect and socialize. The Steam groups examined by ISD, which often have members in common, span the extreme right ideological spectrum. This network connects supporters of far-right political parties, such as the British National Party (BNP), with groups promoting neo-Nazi organizations, like the Misanthropic Division. • Steam seems to have an entrenched and long-lasting extreme right community. Many of the groups analyzed date back to 2016 or even earlier. Steam’s permissive attitude to this harmful activity means that these communities have a haven to promote and discuss extremist ideology and content. • In addition to connecting individuals who support the extreme right, some groups also provide off-ramps to ideological content and other social media platforms, suggesting that Steam is being used to recruit to specific movements. This includes links to far-right blogs, podcasts and articles, as well as invitations to join Telegram groups and vetted Discord servers. • Some groups provide platforms for groups of individuals to engage in trolling and harassment ‘raids’ against communities deemed to be political enemies. Users were seen naming target sites and asking fellow group members to join them in raiding or spamming them, with the result that these communities are making Steam a more toxic space for other users. • Our analysis suggests that gaming seems to be largely used as a means of community building rather than as a deliberate strategy for radicalization or recruitment. Individuals who are already engaged with the extreme right appear to use Steam as a platform to connect with like-minded individuals over a shared hobby. However, we also found examples of political games, such as ‘Feminazi 3000’ being used as a means of advertising political identity, as well as historical strategy games being used as a means of living out extremist fantasies, such as winning World War II for Germany.  

  Beirut; Berlin; London; Paris; Washington DC Institute for Strategic Dialogue (2021).  14p.

By Jane Pirkis, Jason Bantjes, Rakhi Dandona, Duleeka Knipe, Alexandra Pitman, Jo Robinson, Morton Silverman, Keith Hawton 

 A public health approach to suicide prevention recognizes the powerful influence of social determinants. In this paper—the fifth in a Series on a public health approach to suicide prevention—we consider four major risk factors for suicide (alcohol use, gambling, domestic violence and abuse, and suicide bereavement) and examine how their influence on suicide is socially determined. Cultural factors and societal responses have an important role in all four risk factors. In the case of alcohol use and gambling, commercial entities are culpable. This Series paper describes a range of universal, selective, and indicated interventions that might address these risk factors and focuses particularly on key universal interventions that are likely to yield substantial population-level benefits

The Lancet Public Health Available online 10 September 2024 In Press, Corrected Proof

 By Keith Hawton, Duleeka Knipe, Jane Pirkis 

 One of the most effective public health measures to prevent suicide is the restriction of access to means used in suicidal acts. This approach can be especially effective if a method is common and readily accessible. Suicide methods vary widely, and there have been several examples where means restriction has been applied, often with considerable success. Factors contributing to the availability of suicide methods can include access to physical means as well as cognitive awareness of methods. In this paper, which is the second in a Series on a public health approach to suicide prevention, we focus primarily on examples of restricting access to physical means of suicide, such as pesticides, firearms, and medication. We also discuss restricting the cognitive availability of means through attention to media and other representations of suicide methods. There are challenges associated with restricting access to means, including resistance to measures required to change the availability of some methods (which might, in part, be commercially determined) and method substitution, whereby one suicide method is replaced by another. Nevertheless, this means restriction must be an integral part of all national and local suicide prevention strategies

The Lancet, The Lancet Public Health, Volume 0, Issue 0, Online first, Sept. 2024.

By Danielle Blunt and Ariel Wolf

This short article presents, in brief, the findings of a community-based, sex worker-led survey that asked sex workers about their experiences since the closure of Backpage and the adoption of FOSTA. It shows that the financial situation of the vast majority of research participants has deteriorated, as has their ability to access the community and screen clients. It concludes that FOSTA is just the latest example of the US government using anti-trafficking policy and restrictions on technology to police already marginalized people.

Anti-Trafficking Review, (14), 117–121

By Brian Blackwell, Colin Capara, Janey Rounteer, Robert Santillino, Dana Vanderford, Claire Battis

Homelessness continues to be a major problem in California, and new approaches to addressing it are urgently needed. This report brings to light an innovative predictive model for homelessness prevention that is showing promising results. The data reveals that this approach — being used for the first time in California and the United States — reaches individuals who are outside of the usual preventive safety net at critical junctures in their lives. Timing is everything — and the Homelessness Prevention Unit connects at-risk people to crucial services and support that could help them avoid homelessness. Consider the scope of the problem: more than 75,000 people experience homelessness in Los Angeles County on any given night in 2024. This represents a 9% increase since 2022 and a 43% increase since 2018. Long-term solutions to homelessness require not just housing people experiencing homelessness but also preventing homelessness before it occurs. A statewide survey in California revealed that most people experiencing homelessness believe that a one-time payment of $5,000 to $10,000 would have resolved their rapidly escalating financial crises and prevented them from experiencing homelessness. Existing homelessness prevention programs typically include one-time cash assistance ranging on average between $1,000 to $5,000 and short-term direct services such as legal assistance. Several studies have found this approach to be effective at reducing homelessness. Yet research also highlights how difficult it is to ensure that scarce prevention resources primarily reach people who will experience homelessness if they do not receive this help. In partnership with Los Angeles County, the California Policy Lab (CPL) is researching strategies to address this challenge, including developing a data-driven predictive model that can proactively identify people at highest risk of experiencing homelessness.  In many prevention programs, participants self-identify as being at risk of homelessness and are then screened into programs based on eligibility criteria or surveys that ask questions about risk factors. CPL’s predictive model, however, analyzes de-identified data to proactively identify people at high risk of homelessness. Our research finds that people identified by the predictive model are not connected to typical prevention programs, indicating that both approaches are valuable and reach different people. To test whether this model could be used to better target prevention resources, in 2020, Los Angeles County created the Homelessness Prevention Unit (HPU) operating out of the Housing for Health division of the Department of Health Services (DHS) in close collaboration with the Chief Information Office (CIO) and Department of Mental Health (DMH). A County seed funding investment in the HPU made it possible to pilot an innovative approach to homelessness prevention that offers flexible cash assistance and tailored case management to individuals and families predicted by CPL’s model to be at the highest risk of experiencing homelessness. Because the HPU is located within the Los Angeles County health system, CPL’s model is focused on people who recently received DHS or DMH services and who are observed as stably housed in County administrative data. This group includes nearly 100,000 people over the course of a year (the “eligible population”). CPL uses the model to produce lists multiple times a year of people with the highest risk of homelessness. The lists are anonymized and rank-ordered from highest to lowest risk of homelessness. CPL sends the high-risk lists to the CIO, where County staff match each person’s anonymized record to a County medical record ID. The CIO then transfers the lists to the HPU so that they can identify names, addresses, and contact info of the patients listed. HPU staff then screen out some people on the risk lists that other data sources indicate are currently experiencing homelessness and are therefore ineligible. For eligible individuals, HPU staff attempt to contact them, and, if they are willing, enroll them in the intervention. The HPU serves between 400 to 600 people per year. The intervention includes rapidly delivered, flexible cash assistance, tailored case management, and referrals to other services, such as mental health care, workforce development, and legal services. This policy report provides an overview of: (1) CPL’s predictive model, including data sources and engineering; (2) the equity of the predictive model; (3) outreach and enrollment in the HPU; (4) the HPU’s design and service model; and (5) how CPL will evaluate the impact of the HPU program in a randomized control trial   

Los Angeles: The California Policy Lab, 2024. 50p.

By Robert L. Hayman, Jr.

What exactly is intelligence? Is it social achievement? Professional success? Is it common sense? Or the number on an IQ test? Interweaving engaging narratives with dramatic case studies, Robert L. Hayman, Jr., has written a history of intelligence that will forever change the way we think about who is smart and who is not. To give weight to his assertion that intelligence is not simply an inherent characteristic but rather one which reflects the interests and predispositions of those doing the measuring, Hayman traces numerous campaigns to classify human intelligence. His tour takes us through the early craniometric movement, eugenics, the development of the IQ, Spearman's "general" intelligence, and more recent works claiming a genetic basis for intelligence differences. What Hayman uncovers is the maddening irony of intelligence: that "scientific" efforts to reduce intelligence to a single, ordinal quantity have persisted--and at times captured our cultural imagination--not because of their scientific legitimacy, but because of their longstanding political appeal. The belief in a natural intellectual order was pervasive in "scientific" and "political" thought both at the founding of the Republic and throughout its nineteenth-century Reconstruction. And while we are today formally committed to the notion of equality under the law, our culture retains its central belief in the natural inequality of its members. Consequently, Hayman argues, the promise of a genuine equality can be realized only when the mythology of "intelligence" is debunked--only, that is, when we recognize the decisive role of culture in defining intelligence and creating intelligence differences. Only culture can give meaning to the statement that one person-- or one group--is smarter than another. And only culture can provide our motivation for saying it. With a keen wit and a sharp eye, Hayman highlights the inescapable contradictions that arise in a society committed both to liberty and to equality and traces how the resulting tensions manifest themselves in the ways we conceive of identity, community, and merit.

New York: NYU Press, 1997.

By Mark Pittenger

Since the Gilded Age, social scientists, middle-class reformers, and writers have left the comforts of their offices to "pass" as steel workers, coal miners, assembly-line laborers, waitresses, hoboes, and other working and poor people in an attempt to gain a fuller and more authentic understanding of the lives of the working class and the poor. In this first, sweeping study of undercover investigations of work and poverty in America, award-winning historian Mark Pittenger examines how intellectuals were shaped by their experiences with the poor, and how despite their sympathy toward working-class people, they unintentionally helped to develop the contemporary concept of a degraded and "other" American underclass. While contributing to our understanding of the history of American social thought, Class Unknown offers a new perspective on contemporary debates over how we understand and represent our own society and its class divisions.

New York: NYU Press, 2012. 

By Evan K. Rose

This paper uses administrative employment and conviction data to evaluate laws that restrict access to job seekers’ criminal records. Convictions generate decreases in employment and earnings, partly due to shifts toward lower-paying industries less likely to check criminal histories. However, a 2013 Seattle law barring employers from examining job seekers’ records until after an initial screening had negligible impacts on ex-offenders labor market outcomes. The results are consistent with employers deferring background checks until later in the interview process or ex-offenders applying only to jobs where clean records are not required, a pattern supported by survey evidence.

Journal of Labor Economics, 2021

By Massimiliano Esposito, Monica Salerno, Mario Chisari, Francesco Sessa, Venerando Rapisarda, Cristoforo Pomara

The phenomenon of migration is an international issue that mainly concerns Europe. In Italy, because of its close proximity to Africa, there are many migrant landings, especially on the islands of Lampedusa and Sicily. Migrants and asylum seekers suffer torture on their journey to their destination country, however, most of the time the signs are not always recognizable. In the present study, a scene investigation was carried out in a reception center for level II immigrants in Sicily, in order to evaluate the hygiene conditions of the migrants and asylum seekers inside this center. Subsequently 26 migrants and asylum seekers, all minors and males, were examined in a clinic of the Department of Forensic Medicine of the University of Catania, with the help of a native speaker interpreter and applying the Istanbul Protocol. The scene investigation demonstrated the poor clinical conditions of the reception center and the failure to comply with emergency regulations. The physical examination of the migrants and asylum seekers demonstrated that all the torture reported had taken place in Libya. However, only 4 migrants and asylum seekers showed signs of violence consistent with torture, compatible with the Istanbul Protocol. Nine migrants and asylum seekers (34.6%) reported having  pathologies and asked to undergo a medical examination in a hospital but were not listened to by the reception center staff. Two migrants and asylum seekers reported having worn the same clothes for several weeks to the reception center staff. In particular, all the migrants and asylum seekers reported having suffered torture using blunt instruments, especially beatings with truncheons. One migrant and asylum seeker reported being detained for days without food, instead 1 migrants and asylum seekers reported being kidnapped-blindfolded-stripped naked for days, and 1 migrants and asylum seekers reported having contracted infections, including scabies, with electrical and thermal trauma. Despite the international commitment to the phenomenon of migration, migrants and asylum seekers continue to receive abuse and torture. Furthermore, most migrants and asylum seekersstudies primarily involve surveys, and few have applied the Istanbul Protocol to a sizable sample. An original aim of the study is the use of forensic tools to assess the sanitary and hygienic conditions of a migrant reception center, with the secondary aim of assessing alleged cases of torture.  

Forensic Science International, 4 November 2024, 112288