By Stacey McKenna

To combat rising rates of drug overdoses, the United States government has begun to embrace a public health response that has been saving lives for decades: harm reduction. This pragmatic public health approach aims to mitigate the health risks associated with a range of behaviors rather than insisting people quit them altogether. Despite the benefits of harm reduction programs, stigma, paraphernalia laws and weak or inconsistent protections from such laws can undermine the uptake of their services. In addition, a small but growing body of evidence indicates that, despite the legalization and expansion of these programs, successful implementation may also be limited by outdated local, state and federal policy. To better understand how outdated policy might create barriers to providing optimal harm reduction services, we interviewed 10 harm reduction providers serving diverse populations across the United States. These interviews revealed two primary areas of concern that harm reduction providers perceived as hindering the services they offered, both of which relate to government overreach: the overregulation of operations and the excessive restrictions on how funding can be used. To remove these barriers and enable harm reduction organizations to save more lives, we suggest that—instead of supporting legislation that regulates the details of harm reduction practice—lawmakers support bills that emphasize organizational autonomy for these groups. Doing so would allow harm reduction providers to tailor programs as needed, remain flexible in the face of changing science and provide more effective services to their communities.

R Street Policy Study No. 262 July 2022, 9p.

By C. Jarrett Dieterle

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the concept of to-go alcohol was largely unheard of in America. Certain locales, such as New Orleans, offered so-called “go-cups” for alcoholic beverages, and a handful of municipalities across the country had open-container zones that allowed consumers to walk from restaurant to restaurant with a drink in hand. But by and large, alcohol purchased at a bar or restaurant had to be consumed inside the restaurant. When COVID-19 hit and dining inside turned into a public health liability, most restaurants and bars pivoted to a takeout and delivery model of service to keep their doors open. While food was readily convertible to this format, alcohol was not. In most states, antiquated laws governing the sale of alcoholic beverages prevented alcohol from being sold either as a curbside to-go opt-on or via delivery. In response, governors and alcohol regulatory agencies around the country issued emergency orders that granted both on-premise and off-premise establishments the ability to sell alcohol in a to-go or delivery capacity. This rapid reaction resulted in some of the fastest alcohol regulation changes in the last hundred years. To-go and delivery privileges provided a badly needed lifeline to restaurants, bars and liquor stores during an unprecedented time of government-imposed lockdowns and social distancing orders. As one example of the impact of these reforms, states that permitted to-go and delivery drinks saw higher rates of furloughed employees being hired back by restaurants during the pandemic. Given this measurable success, many states have since made the decision to legisla琀椀vely extend, or make permanent, to-go and delivery alcohol. As of last fall, 29 states had extended or made permanent to-go drinks, and 32 states had passed to-go or delivery reforms of some kind (either from on- or off-premise retailers). Despite this reform wave, opposition has begun to develop against to-go and delivery alcohol reform—specifically around concerns that it could raise the prevalence of drunk driving. This paper examines that opposition and presents research to determine if to-go alcohol has had any impact on alcohol-impaired driving fatalities over the past two years.

R Street Shorts No. 114, June 2022, 6p.

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

By Seema Choksy Pessar, Rosanna Smart, Tim Naimi, Marlene Lira, Jason Blanchette, Anne Boustead, and Rosalie Liccardo Pacula

Aims: To measure the association between state cannabis policies and use among adults and youth in the United States from 2002 to 2019, given rapid policy liberalization and complex state cannabis policy environments.

Design: Repeated cross-sectional time series analysis. Three sets of models assessed the linear association between the Cannabis Policy Scale (CPS), an aggregate measure of 17 state cannabis policy areas that weights each policy by its efficacy and implementation rating, and prevalence of cannabis use. The first included year and state fixed effects; the second added state-level controls; the third replaced state fixed effects with state random effects. Standard errors were clustered at the state level in all models.

Setting and participants - United States.

Measurements: Past-month prevalence of cannabis use is from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health Small Area Estimates, a nationally and state-representative cross-sectional survey of household population ages 12 and older for years 2002–2003 to 2018–2019. Exposure data include the CPS.

Findings: A 10 percentage-point increase in the CPS (i.e. greater cannabis policy restrictiveness) was associated with lower past-month use prevalence by 0.81 (95% confidence interval [CI] = -1.05 to −0.56) to 0.97 (95% CI = -1.19 to −0.75) percentage-points for the population ages 12 years and older. When models were stratified by age, a 10 percentage-point increase in the CPS was associated with a 0.87 (95% CI = -1.13 to −0.61) to 1.04 percentage-point (95% CI = -1.03 to −0.84) reduction in past-month use prevalence for adults ages 18 years and older, and a 0.17 (95% CI = -0.24 to −0.09) to 0.21 percentage-point (95% CI = -0.35 to −0.07) reduction for youth ages 12–17 years.

Conclusions: More restrictive US cannabis policies appear to be associated with reduced cannabis use for both adults and youth.

Addiction; Early View, 2024, 7p.

By N. Bénichou, M. Adelzadeh, J. Singh, I. Gomaa, N. Elsagan, M. Kinateder, C. Ma, A. Gaur, A. Bwalya, and M. Sultan

Fires in the wildland-urban interface (WUI) have become a global issue, with disasters taking place all over the world recently. The drivers of increasing WUI fire risk—increasing population and expansion of urban areas into wildlands, and climate change—are global-scale phenomena. In the coming decades, WUI fire risk is expected to increase both in regions with a long history of fires and in regions that have had been less affected over past decades. WUI fires can cause the ignition of many structures through the spread of flames and radiant heat and the deposition of burning embers over a short period of time. This can overwhelm protection capabilities, lead to large evacuations, and cause disasters with the potential for the total loss of hundreds of structures in a few hours.

As discussed in Chapter 1 of this Guide, over the last decade, an average of 5 533 wildfires have occurred each year in Canada, involving 2.9 million hectares of wildland area. The number of evacuations caused by wildfires increased by about 1.5 evacuations per year between 1980 and 2014, with more than 20 evacuations per year after 2010. The substantial negative impacts of WUI fires were illustrated by the Okanagan Mountain Park Fire, which affected Kelowna in 2003; the Flat Top Complex Wildfire, which destroyed significant parts of Slave Lake in 2011; and the Horse River Fire, which immensely affected Fort McMurray in 2016 and was the most costly insured loss event in Canadian history. These disasters resulted in a loss of over 2 400 structures and roughly 3 400 dwelling units. Total insured losses from these wildland fire disasters and the 2017 wildland fire catastrophic events in British Columbia are currently estimated to be $4.8 billion. Despite all efforts, wildfires pose a significant challenge to the residential population, to mitigation efforts, and to existing infrastructure when located in a WUI setting. Wildfires are likely to become more severe and frequent as a result of climate change.

National Research Council Canada: Ottawa, ON. 2021. 192 pp.

U.S. Forest Service

Under this strategy, the Forest Service will work with partners to engineer a paradigm shift by focusing fuels and forest health treatments more strategically and at the scale of the problem, using the best available science as the guide. At the Forest Service, we now have the science and tools we need to size and place treatments in a way that will truly make a difference. We will focus on key “firesheds”—large forested landscapes and rangelands with a high likelihood that an ignition could expose homes, communities, and infrastructure to wildfire. Firesheds, typically about 250,000 acres in size, are mapped to match the scale of community exposure to wildfire.

Our new management paradigm builds on the National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy, Our new management paradigm builds on the National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy, including efforts to create fire-adapted communities and other collaborative strategies for cross-boundary treatments, including Cohesive Strategy projects and Shared Stewardship agreements. We will build on our long-standing work and relationships with U.S. Department of the Interior agencies. We will work collaboratively with States, Tribes, local communities, private landowners, and other stakeholders to adapt lessons learned into a coordinated and effective program of work.

U.S. Forest Service. 2022. 35p.

By The Los Angeles County

The Los Angeles County After Action Review of the Woolsey Fire evaluates the incident’s response, identifies areas for improvement, and offers recommendations for future preparedness, focusing on agency coordination, communication, evacuation, and recovery efforts.

• The Woolsey Fire After Action Review (AAR) provides a comprehensive analysis of the event, highlighting both successes and areas for improvement.
• The AAR process involved data collection, interviews, and cross-checking to ensure a detailed account of the incident.
• Key sections of the report include an executive summary, timeline of events, findings, and recommendations.
• Recommendations are divided into near-term and longer-term policy actions, focusing on response, communication, evacuation, and recovery.
• Appendices provide historical context and background information on involved agencies and regional fire history.
• The report emphasizes planning for future disasters in areas prone to wildfires and earthquakes.
• Training and coordination among agencies, such as the County Sheriff’s Department and Public Works, are highlighted as crucial for effective disaster response.
• Historical fire data shows a repetitive fire cycle in the region, underlining the importance of preparedness and mitigation efforts.

LLos Angeles County. 2019. 203p.

By Parliament of Australia. Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs References Committee

This examination of right-wing extremists in Australia looks at the movements, motivations and international links of local groups, particularly in online spaces. The report makes recommendations focusing on social media platform regulation, law enforcement access to encrypted communications and the creation of a national hate crimes database.

The inquiry, prompted by growing concern regarding right-wing extremism globally and its impact on Australian society, sought digito define, understand and limit the harm of right-wing extremist movements. Along with the historical and ideological background, it considers modern pathways to radicalisation with a focus on the significant role of online platforms. The report considers existing measures in place to counter violent extremism and makes six recommendations to curtail the spread and limit the harm of extremist groups.

Recommendations

The Australian Government should regularly assess the effectiveness of deradicalisation and countering violent extremism programs, incorporating insights from experts, practitioners, and research organisations, both domestically and internationally.

Develop a national framework to guide engagement with young people, aiming to help them identify and reject harmful ideologies while fostering positive social connections.

Research how extremist actors, particularly those targeting young people, use online platforms, including social media and gaming platforms, to spread propaganda and recruit members.

The Office of the eSafety Commissioner should collaborate with stakeholders to develop guidelines for transparent and independent measures to ensure social media platforms are effectively removing harmful extremist content.

Consider legislation allowing law enforcement and intelligence agencies, with a warrant obtained through proper judicial process, to access encrypted communications when there is a credible national security threat.

Establish a national hate crimes database to aid in the development of effective prevention and support programs.

Canberra: Parliament of Australia. The Senate, Legal and Constitutional Affairs References Committee 2024. 223p.

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.