By Melissa Serafin and Anne Li

Key findings and recommendations:  Firearm owners and national experts emphasized that firearm owners themselves are the most trusted messengers, including firearm-related groups and organizations (e.g., gun shops, hunting groups, firearm safety instructors). These messengers are best suited to provide legitimacy and ensure saliency of messaging efforts. ü National experts also described the importance of actively and authentically seeking partners within the firearm-owning community to collaborate on suicide prevention efforts Frame firearm suicide prevention messaging in a way that underscores gun rights. ü Firearm owners and national experts agreed that messaging should immediately convey the legitimacy of owning firearms. ü Additionally, messaging should avoid conveying the perception of anti-gun bias, including the idea that firearm access or ownership should be restricted. ü Firearm owners and experts also emphasized the importance of considering the heterogeneity of the firearm-owning community when crafting messaging and tailoring messages accordingly. Focus on raising mental health awareness, debunking myths, and addressing stigma. ü Firearm owners and national experts identified a need to improve understanding of mental health concerns; debunk myths about suicide, mental health, and mental health services; and address stigma. Additionally, they identified a need to help people have conversations about mental health and express concerns people may have about a loved one. ü They suggested incorporating content that could improve understanding of these topics within messaging efforts. ü However, some findings indicate that this type of information needs to be carefully crafted to ensure salience, as firearm owners may not view mental health and suicide as relevant to their personal lives. Share stories of lived experience. ü Firearm owners suggested incorporating real stories related to firearm suicide, seeking mental health support, and the potential consequences of unsafe storage. Additionally, they suggested that these stories should involve people with identities that firearm owners could identify with. ü They described how storytelling may be particularly effective in ensuring messaging resonates with firearm owners and dispelling myths about mental health, suicide, and safe storage.  

St. Paul: Wilder Foundation, 2022. 41p.

MAY CONTAIN MARKUP

SUSAN CHANDLER AND JILL B. JONES

FROM the cover: : Casino Women Is A Pioneering Look At The Female Face Of Corporate Gaming. Based on extended interviews with maids, cocktail waitresses, cooks, laundry workers, dealers, pit bosses, managers, and vice presidents, the book describes in compelling detail a world whose enormous profitability is dependent on the labor of women assigned stereotypically female occupations-making beds and serving food on the one hand and providing sexual allure on the other. But behind the neon lies another world, peopled by thousands of remarkable women who assert their humanity in the face of gaming empires' relentless quest for profits.”

L.R/CORNELL PAPERBACKS. Cornell UniversityPress. 2011. 218p.

MAY CONTAIN MARKUP

BY JOHN ASHTON

Introductory: “Difference between Gaming and Gambling-Universality and Antiquity of Gambling-Isis and Osiris-Games and Dice of the Egyptians-China and India-The Jews-Among the Greeks ancl Romans-Among Mahometans Early DicingDicing in England in the r3th and 14th Centuries--In the r7th Century-Celebrated Gamblers-Bourchier-Swiss Anecdote Dicing in the 18th Century.”

LONDON. DUCKWORTH & CO. 3 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, W.C. 1898. 297p.

HO, BIANCA; DOYLE, KIERAN

From the document: "Pro-Palestine demonstrations involving students in the United States have nearly tripled from 1 to 26 April compared with all of March, ACLED [ [Armed Conflict Location and Event Data]] data show [...]. New York has been one of the main student protest battlegrounds since the Israel-Palestine conflict flared up in and around Gaza last October, and the arrest of more than 100 students at Columbia University in New York around 18 April heralded a new wave of campus demonstrations."

ARMED CONFLICT LOCATION & EVENT DATA PROJECT. 2 MAY, 2024. 5p.

CERVINI, ENZO MARIA LE FEVRE; CARRO, MARÍA VICTORIA

From the document: "Generative Artificial Intelligence's (GenAI) capacity to produce highly realistic images, videos, and text poses a significant challenge, as it can deceive viewers and consumers into accepting artificially generated content as authentic and genuine. This raises concerns about the dissemination of false information, disinformation, and its implications for public trust and democratic processes. Additionally, this phenomenon prompts critical ethical and legal inquiries, including issues surrounding the attribution of authority and accountability for the generated content. [...] This article delves into the impact of generative AI on recent and future political elections. We'll examine how deepfakes and other AI-generated content are used, along with their potential to sway voters. We'll also analyze the strategies various stakeholders are deploying to counter this growing phenomenon."

ITALIAN INSTITUTE FOR INTERNATIONAL POLITICAL STUDIES. 22 MAR, 2024. 44p.

By Gillian Shorter, Phoebe McKenna-Plumley, Kerry Campbell, Jolie Keemink, and Benjamin Scher, et al.

Overdose prevention centres can also be referred to as drug consumption rooms, safe consumption/injecting/smoking sites, and/or other relevant names. These names can reflect legal distinctions e.g. in Canada, which relate to permanency or function of the site. There are currently over 200 OPCs worldwide in 17 countries, primarily in urban areas, and they cater to a range of drug types and visitor numbers.

Overdose prevention centres can be integrated facilities with other services, specialised sites which are primarily an OPC with limited other services, mobile sites, or tent/other temporary sites. Collaboration and consultation before and after a service opens is central to successful OPCs. Potential and actual OPC users should be consulted on the design of and running of sites to support their use. Collaboration and consultation involving members of the local community, businesses, police, elected representatives, public health, or other local authority staff with OPC staff and operators can smooth over any issues before and after a service opens. Belfast, Queen's University, 2023. 188p.

pureadmin.qub.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/530629435/DS_OPC_Report_V4.pdf

By Thomas Coyne; Sean Quitzau; and Joseph W. Arnett

This publication of Zero Returns to Homelessness, the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA), and the Justice Center of the Council of State Governments, provides a reference guide on housing access for practitioners, including state leaders working to address homelessness as part of their Reentry 2030 goals. It details best practices and strategies around reentry housing, building from four essential steps that have worked in neighborhoods around the country as leaders have expanded housing opportunities for people reentering their communities: Collaborate, Assess, Connect, and Expand. Every year, tens of thousands of people experience homelessness as they return to their communities from incarceration. Gaps and barriers, such as housing policies that bar people with conviction histories from renting, persist that reduce even the limited amount of housing people can access when returning. Because of this, people returning from incarceration are almost 10 times more likely to experience homelessness and more often cycle through public systems designed to respond to emergencies and not provide long-term solutions. However, in states such as Ohio, Connecticut, and Utah, communities are making strides in preventing homelessness when people return from incarceration. These communities are working toward a bold, new vision—Zero Returns to Homelessness—which aims to ensure that all returning residents have access to a safe, permanent place to call home.

New York: The Council of State Governments (CSG) Justice Center, 2024. 65p.

edited by Kacper Rekawek, Thomas Renard and Bàrbara Molas

Russia’s influence over far-right/ racially or ethnically motivated violent extremist (REMVE) milieus in Europe is multi-faceted and complex. It involves direct activities, such as financing or political support, as well as indirect activities, such as disinformation campaigns. In some cases, Russia was associated, albeit remotely, with some far-right violent incidents in Europe, including the alleged coup attempt by the sovereign movement Reichsburger, in Germany. Recognising the increasingly confrontational policy of Russia vis-à-vis Europe, and the growing threat from far-right extremism in Europe, this book thoroughly and systematically reviews Russia’s relationship with diverse far-right actors in ten European countries over the past decade. The countries covered in this book include Austria, The Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Serbia, Slovakia, and Sweden. The chapters are authored by some of the world’s most authoritative experts on extremism and Russian influence.

Overall, this edited volume is the first such comprehensive attempt at mapping the scope and depth of Russian influence over far-right extremism in Europe, resulting in the identification of key patterns of influence and offering some possible recommendations to counter it. This book is both a leading scholarly work, as well as a wake-up call and guide for action for European policy-makers.

by Jennifer Tilton

How do you tell the difference between a “good kid” and a “potential thug”? In Dangerous or Endangered?, Jennifer Tilton considers the ways in which children are increasingly viewed as dangerous and yet, simultaneously, as endangered and in need of protection by the state.
Tilton draws on three years of ethnographic research in Oakland, California, one of the nation’s most racially diverse cities, to examine how debates over the nature and needs of young people have fundamentally reshaped politics, transforming ideas of citizenship and the state in contemporary America. As parents and neighborhood activists have worked to save and discipline young people, they have often inadvertently reinforced privatized models of childhood and urban space, clearing the streets of children, who are encouraged to stay at home or in supervised after-school programs. Youth activists protest these attempts, demanding a right to the city and expanded rights of citizenship.
Dangerous or Endangered? pays careful attention to the intricate connections between fears of other people’s kids and fears for our own kids in order to explore the complex racial, class, and gender divides in contemporary American cities.

New York; London: NYU Press, 2010; 203p.

By Carl Gutierrez-Jones

The beating of Rodney King, the killing of Amadou Diallo, and the LAPD Rampart Scandal: these events have been interpreted by the courts, the media and the public in dramatically conflicting ways. Critical Race Narratives examines what is at stake in these conflicts and, in so doing, rethinks racial strife in the United States as a highly-charged struggle over different methods of reading and writing. Focusing in particular on the practice and theorization of narrative strategies, Gutiérrez-Jones engages many of the most influential texts in the recent race debates including The Bell Curve, America in Black and White, The Alchemy of Race and Rights, and The Mismeasure of Man. In the process, Critical Race Narratives pursues key questions posed by the texts as they work within, or against, disciplinary expectations: can critical engagements with narrative enable a more democratic dialogue regarding race? what promise does such experimentation hold for working through the traumatic legacy of racism in the United States? Throughout, Critical Race Narratives initiates a timely dialogue between race-focused narrative experiment in scholarly writing and similar work in literary texts and popular culture.

New York; London: NYU Press, 2001.

By Paul Harris

In 1971, Paul Harris pioneered the modern version of the black rage defense when he successfully defended a young black man charged with armed bank robbery. Dubbed one of the most novel criminal defenses in American history by Vanity Fair, the black rage defense is enormously controversial, frequently dismissed as irresponsible, nothing less than a harbinger of anarchy. Consider the firestorm of protest that resulted when the defense for Colin Ferguson, the gunman who murdered numerous passengers on a New York commuter train, claimed it was considering a black rage defense.

In this thought-provoking book, Harris traces the origins of the black rage defense back through American history, recreating numerous dramatic trials along the way. For example, he recounts in vivid detail how Clarence Darrow, defense attorney in the famous Scopes Monkey trial, first introduced the notion of an environmental hardship defense in 1925 while defending a black family who shot into a drunken white mob that had encircled their home.

Emphasizing that the black rage defense must be enlisted responsibly and selectively, Harris skillfully distinguishes between applying an environmental defense and simply blaming society, in the abstract, for individual crimes. If Ferguson had invoked such a defense, in Harris's words, it would have sent a superficial, wrong-headed, blame-everything-on-racism message. Careful not to succumb to easy generalizations, Harris also addresses the possibilities of a white rage defense and the more recent phenomenon of cultural defenses. He illustrates how a person's environment can, and does, affect his or her life and actions, how even the most rational person can become criminally deranged, when bludgeoned into hopelessness by exploitation, racism, and relentless poverty.

New York; London: NYU Press, 1996. 306p.

By John Tehranian

Middle Easterners: Sometimes White, Sometimes Not - an article by John Tehranian
The Middle Eastern question lies at the heart of the most pressing issues of our time: the war in Iraq and on terrorism, the growing tension between preservation of our national security and protection of our civil rights, and the debate over immigration, assimilation, and our national identity. Yet paradoxically, little attention is focused on our domestic Middle Eastern population and its place in American society. Unlike many other racial minorities in our country, Middle Eastern Americans have faced rising, rather than diminishing, degrees of discrimination over time; a fact highlighted by recent targeted immigration policies, racial profiling, a war on terrorism with a decided racialist bent, and growing rates of job discrimination and hate crime. Oddly enough, however, Middle Eastern Americans are not even considered a minority in official government data. Instead, they are deemed white by law.
In Whitewashed, John Tehranian combines his own personal experiences as an Iranian American with an expert’s analysis of current events, legal trends, and critical theory to analyze this bizarre Catch-22 of Middle Eastern racial classification. He explains how American constructions of Middle Eastern racial identity have changed over the last two centuries, paying particular attention to the shift in perceptions of the Middle Easterner from friendly foreigner to enemy alien, a trend accelerated by the tragic events of 9/11. Focusing on the contemporary immigration debate, the war on terrorism, media portrayals of Middle Easterners, and the processes of creating racial stereotypes, Tehranian argues that, despite its many successes, the modern civil rights movement has not done enough to protect the liberties of Middle Eastern Americans.
By following how concepts of whiteness have transformed over time, Whitewashed forces readers to rethink and question some of their most deeply held assumptions about race in American society.

New York; London: NYU Press, 2008. 250p.

By Mark Treskon, Lily Robin

This report provides a framework for developing an equitable development theory of change for Brownsville, Brooklyn. While Brownsville is a neighborhood with significant social and economic challenges it has a strong history and presence of community activism and action. The report presents an overview of Brownsville’s economic and social context, conducts a typology review of existing studies and planning documents focused on the neighborhood, and lays out a high-level plan for a ten-year equitable development plan for the community. The plan’s framework has four main components: economic opportunity, education and youth development, housing, and the built and social environment. We discuss how this plan fits into already-existing efforts and we present recommendations for local policymakers, advocates, organizations, and the community based around three themes: ongoing research and community assessment, identification and tracking of initiatives over time, and building community and stakeholder support.

Washington, DC: Urban Institute. 2024, 45pg

By the Ransomware Task Force Combating Ransomware 

  In 2020, thousands of businesses, hospitals, school districts, city governments, and other institutions in the U.S. and around the world were paralyzed as their digital networks were held hostage by malicious actors seeking payouts. The immediate physical and business risks posed by ransomware are compounded by the broader societal impact of the billions of dollars steered into criminal enterprises, funds that may be used for the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, human trafficking, and other virulent global criminal activity. Despite the gravity of their crimes, the majority of ransomware criminals operate with near-impunity, based out of jurisdictions that are unable or unwilling to bring them to justice. This problem is exacerbated by financial systems that enable attackers to receive funds without being traced. Additionally, the barriers to entry into this lucrative criminal enterprise have become shockingly low. The “ransomware as a service” (RaaS) model, allows criminals without technical sophistication to conduct ransomware attacks. At the same time, technically knowledgeable criminals are conducting increasingly sophisticated attacks. Significant effort has been made to understand and address the ransomware threat, yet attackers continue to succeed on a broad and troubling scale. To shift these dynamics, the international community needs a comprehensive approach that influences the behavior of actors on all sides of the ecosystem, including deterring and disrupting attackers, shoring up preparation and response of potential victims, and engaging regulators, law enforcement, and national security experts. We also need international cooperation and adoption of processes, standards, and expectations. This report outlines a comprehensive framework of actions (48 in total) that government and industry leaders can pursue to significantly disrupt the ransomware business model and mitigate the impact of these attacks in the immediate and longer terms. These recommendations were collaboratively developed by the Ransomware Task Force (RTF) — a broad coalition of volunteer experts from industry, government, law enforcement, civil society, cybersecurity insurers, and international organizations — to provide a strategic framework for a systemic, global approach to mitigating the ransomware problem. While we have identified some recommendations as priorities, we strongly recommend viewing the entire set of recommendations together, as they are designed to complement, and build on each other. The strategic framework is organized around four primary goals: to deter ransomware attacks through a nationally and internationally coordinated, comprehensive strategy; to disrupt the business model and reduce criminal profits; to help organizations prepare for ransomware attacks; and to respond to ransomware attacks more effectively.

Palo Alto, CA: Institute for Security and Technology 2001. 81p.

By Nicholas Corsaro; Robin S. Engel; Ryan T. Motz; John P. Wright; M. Murat Ozer

This report aims to fill a void in scholarly research examining the potential impact of relaxed firearm carrying permit on police-citizen encounters and crime in general. The research study assessed whether, and to what extent, concealed and open carry legislation facilitates changes in behaviors related to crime and police-citizen encounters. The research also explored how officers perceive concealed and open carry legislation impacts on their daily experiences with citizen encounters. The research study examined three of the largest metropolitan geographic areas across two states that passed constitutional carry legislation in 2019: Lexington, Kentucky, and Oklahoma City and Tulsa, Oklahoma. The research methodology included a survey that was electronically administered to all sworn officers in the three participating agencies, and each of those agencies provided two things: criminal offense reports, and arrest reports including various charges. Those data were used to conduct interrupted time series analyses as a quasi-experimental design, on criminal activity. Key findings demonstrated varying attitudes across the multiple gun violence research questions in the surveys, although overall responses indicated that officers were concerned about gun violence, supportive of pro-firearm legislation as a general deterrent effect on crime, and believed that citizens should have some certification and training before carrying in public. Key findings also showed no evidence of a significant direct association between changes in serious Part I violent offences, which include rapes and aggravated assaults, and the passing of concealed and open carry legislation.

Cincinnati:  School of Criminal Justice, University of Cincinnati, 2024. 102p.

By The Global Detention Project

Hong Kong has long played a critical role in addressing migration and refugee challenges in Southeast Asia, dating back to the 1970s when it served as a primary destination for thousands of Vietnamese “boat people.” Since China assumed control of the Hong Kong “Special Administrative Region” in 1997, its immigration policies have been shaped by often competing trends, including a need for migrant labour and tensions over increasing migration flows from mainland China and neighbouring countries in Southeast Asia. Although the use of immigration detention has remained comparably low since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, detention remains a key immigration enforcement measure even as many of Hong Kong’s detention centres have been criticised for their poor conditions and complaints of mistreatment.

KEY FINDINGS

• Although immigration detention numbers have fallen since the COVID-19 health crisis, in the years preceding the pandemic the use of detention remained steadily high, with generally more than 10,000 orders annually.

• Hong Kong SAR operates four main dedicated detention facilities: Castle Peak Bay Detention Centre, Ma Tau Kok Detention Centre, Nei Kwu Correctional Institution, and Tai Tam Gap Correctional Institution. Immigration detainees can also be kept in prisons, police stations, hospital custodial wards, and juvenile centres.

• Migrants detained in Nei Kwu and Tai Tam Gap correctional facilities are under the authority of the Correctional Services Department and are governed under the Prison Rules.

• There is no maximum length of administrative migration-related detention; criminal prosecution of certain immigration offences can lead to prison sentences of up to three years.

• Vulnerable groups, including children and victims of trafficking, are not protected from detention. 

• Although the Refugee Convention is not applied in Hong Kong SAR, non-nationals can apply for non-refoulement protection—but only after they have overstayed their visa, creating a situation of “enforced illegality.”

• In 2020, the government introduced important amendments to the Immigration Ordinance, including affirming administrative detention powers, authorising the use of weapons by immigration officers, and accelerating the removal of failed non-refoulement claimants even in cases where the applicant appeals the decision.

• Detainees, NGOs, and politicians have criticised detention centres for inadequate conditions and alleged mistreatment of detainees.

• Hong Kong has a detention monitoring procedure, the Justice of the Peace (JP) system, allowing individuals appointed as JPs to visit detention facilities. However, the system has been criticised for leading to punishment of detainees who criticise detention conditions to JPs.

• In 2022, the government introduced changes to its immigration policy, including increasing the maximum length of solitary confinement to from 7 to 28 days and allowing immigration officers to conduct intimate body cavity searches at Castle Peak Bay.

• Key human rights treaties have not been signed by China and extended to Hong Kong–including the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture and the Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers.

Geneva, SWIT: Global Detention Project, 2024. 48p.

By Filippo Andrei, Giuseppe Alessandro Veltri

Background

The rise of the darknet market, supported by technologies such as the Tor Browser and cryptocurrencies, has created a secure environment in which illicit transactions can occur. However, due to the lack of government oversight in this hidden online domain, darknet markets face significant challenges in upholding social order. Hence, this study explores the social dynamics that promote social order in a darknet market, focusing on the impact of item descriptions on sales. In particular, the study examines how text contained in product listings can influence sales and contribute to social order.

Method

To conduct this analysis, we examined 4160 cocaine listings on AlphaBay, which was active from December 2014 to July 2017 and is one of the largest darknet markets in history. Using generalised additive models (GAMs), we assessed the impact of various listing description features, including content and semantic structure, on cocaine sales.

Results

The results showed that sales increased by 61.6 % when listings included delivery information in their description, compared to offers that did not. In addition, the standardised sentiment score (ranging 0,1) of the product description increased positively, and estimated sales increased by 260.5 %. We also found that international shipping reduced sales by 28.3 %. Finally, we found that listings stating the product origin increased sales for all continents except Asia.

Conclusion

The study sheds light on the characteristics of product advertising that facilitate social order within a darknet market. Listings that include delivery details in the description reduce uncertainty about a critical stage of the transaction process while using positive language increases trust. This study makes both an empirical and a theoretical contribution by demonstrating the influence of ad descriptions on sales and the intricate role of social influences in shaping market order.

International Journal of Drug Policy Volume 124, February 2024, 104328

By Amos N. Guiora, Anna M. Hall and Zev Gorfinkle

When incarcerated for crimes for which they have been convicted, prisoners do not expect to be raped by those entrusted with their care, nor to be abandoned by those who have the power and authority to help. But that is what is happening in jails and prisons across the United States. Sexual assault in female correctional institutions in the U.S. costs an estimated $1 billion per year. The sexual abuse of female inmates at Federal Correctional Institute (FCI) Dublin has been extensive, pervasive, and well-known and documented since the mid-1990’s. This article, based on extensive interactions with former inmates, psychologists, guards, and Bureau of Prison officials will take the reader into FCI Dublin. A “content warning” applies as the article contains accounts of sexual assault and sexual abuse. Through the voices of survivors, prison officials and psychologists the reader will understand how the system failed some of the most vulnerable members of our society. On their behalf, and those that suffer a similar fate, we present the argument for Congress to pass federal legislation criminalizing enablers whose role in these terrible crimes demands holding them accountable.

60 Crim. L. Bull. (forthcoming 2024)

University of Utah College of Law Research Paper Forthcoming

By  Rachel M. Kleinman and Sandhya Kajeepeta

In the United States, any arrest or conviction may come with a life sentence. While this sentence may not be served in prison, it is served in exile from the rights and opportunities afforded to other individuals, including the opportunity to be employed. And, due to the racially discriminatory underpinnings of our criminal legal system, those sentenced to a life of collateral consequences are disproportionately Black. Facing barriers to entering the workforce is but one of many collateral consequences of this country’s system of incarceration, all of which work in tandem to rob Black people of fair opportunity and full citizenship. Formerly incarcerated people and their families are forced into a “second-class citizenship” where they face lifelong racial stigmatization and legalized discrimination. These second-class citizens face barriers to voting and full participation in our electoral system. They are also often excluded from access to public benefits, housing, and credit, including student loans, and may be barred from adopting a child or running for public office. This second-class citizenship is strikingly evident in the employment space, where people with records are stigmatized, legally excluded from multiple professions due to state and local licensing schemes, and excluded from hiring opportunities by both public and private employers because of overly broad policies banning applicants with criminal records.

New York: NAACP Legal Defense Fund and Educational Fund, Thurgood Marshall Institute, 2023. 20p.

By Cara McClellan with data analysis by Megan Gall

Across the country, large numbers of Black students are pushed out of the classroom and into the juvenile or criminal justice system through the school-to-prison pipeline. National data on school-based arrests and referrals to law enforcement reveals that Black and Latinx students are disproportionately targeted for harsh punishment. Moreover, national data shows that Black girls are the fastest-growing demographic affected by school discipline, arrests, and referrals to the juvenile justice system. For Black girls, the pathways to the juvenile justice system disproportionately involve unaddressed social-emotional needs at school. Despite this reality, students’ educational experiences are often left out of conversations about juvenile or criminal justice reform—in particular, the experiences of Black girls in schools. Baltimore is beginning a substantial effort to reform policing and its criminal justice system. Still, the experiences of Black girls in Baltimore City Public School System (“BCPSS”)—and the pathways that lead to their involvement with the justice systems—have been largely overlooked in this process.

New York: NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Thurgood Marshall Institute, 2024. 48p.