By The European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights

FRA’s second ‘Being Black in the EU’ report highlights experiences of people of African descent in the EU.

It shows that, despite binding anti-discrimination law in the EU since 2000 and significant policy developments since then, people of African descent continue to face racism, discrimination and hate crime:

• Racial discrimination – 45% of respondents say they experienced racial discrimination in the 5 years before the survey, an increase compared to 39% in FRA’s last survey. In Germany and Austria, it goes over 70%. Most often, they are discriminated against when looking for work or searching for accommodation. Young people and people with higher education are most affected. Yet, discrimination remains invisible as only 9% report it.

• Harassment – 30% say they experienced racist harassment but almost no one reports it. Young women, people with higher education and those wearing religious clothing are more likely to be racially harassed.

• Racial profiling – 58% say that their most recent police stop in the year before the survey was a result of racial profiling. Those who perceive their stop as racial profiling trust the police much less.

• Work – 34% felt racially discriminated against when looking for a job and 31% at work in the 5 years before the survey. Compared to people generally, they are more likely to have only temporary contracts and are over-qualified for their job.

• Housing and poverty – rising inflation and cost of living have put more people of African descent at higher risk of poverty, compared to the general population. Some 33% face difficulties to make ends meet and 14% cannot afford to keep their house warm, compared with 18% and 7% of people generally. Simply finding a place to live is a struggle for many, with 31% saying they were racially discriminated against when trying to find accommodation.

• Education – young people of African descent are three times more likely to leave school early, compared to young people generally. More parents in 2022 say that their children experienced racism at school than in 2016.

  To tackle racism and discrimination effectively, FRA calls on EU countries to:

• properly enforce anti-discrimination legislation as well as effective, proportionate and dissuasive sanctions;

• identify and record hate crimes, and consider bias motivation as an aggravating circumstance when determining

• penalties;

• collect equality data, including on ‘ethnic or racial origin’ to assess the situation and monitor progress;

• ensure that equality bodies have the necessary mandates and resources to tackle discrimination and support victims;

• take steps to prevent and eradicate discriminatory institutional practices and culture in policing, drawing on FRA’s guide on preventing unlawful profiling;

• develop specific policies to address racism and racial discrimination in education, employment, housing and healthcare.

This report is part of FRA’s third EU-wide survey looking at experiences of immigrants and descendants of immigrants across the EU.

It analyses the responses of over 6,700 people of African descent living in 13 EU countries: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Poland, Portugal, Spain and Sweden.

Vienna, Austria: European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, 2023. 8p.

By Julien Bellaiche

On 2 August 2023, a federal jury sentenced Robert Gregory Bowers to death for committing the deadliest antisemitic attack in the history of the United States. Five years earlier, on 27 October 2018, he entered the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh and opened fire on worshippers who had gathered to celebrate Shabbat, one of the most important ritual observances in Judaism. Eleven people were killed and seven more injured.

While in custody, Bowers reportedly expressed demographic conspiracy beliefs to explain his act. These narratives claim that ethnic, religious or national groups are under threat of eradication by outsiders due to demographic changes resulting from plots instigated by diverse sets of actors.

This report examines the ideological underpinnings of the Pittsburgh synagogue attack and its long-term impact on the extreme right five years later. It does so by delving into the key narratives that motivated Bowers’ act and assessing their influence on subsequent attacks and plots. It then investigates the ways in which the attack and the attacker continue to be referenced and glorified in extreme-right communities online.

Key Findings

This report traces the history of demographic conspiracy theories in the far right in the West back to the 19th and early 20th centuries, when French discourses of “replacement” resonated with fears of miscegenation in the United States. These discourses shaped alternately the figures of Jews, Muslims, immigrants and progressive forces as racialised collectives plotting the eradication of White people and/or Western cultures. Over a number of years, these discursive trends interlaced and merged to produce labelled demographic conspiracy theories, which are known today under various names such as the “White Genocide” and the “Great Replacement” theories.

An analysis of Bowers’ activity on the social media platform Gab highlights the role demographic conspiracy theories played in Bowers’ interpretations and representations of social realities. These narratives helped shape the image of Jews as enablers of an alleged invasion of migrants endangering the future of White people.

In the context of White supremacist attacks, Bowers’ influence is linked to broader conspiracy beliefs that view the alleged struggle for the survival of the “White race” against concerted annihilation attempts as central. Other attackers who cited Bowers as a role model displayed various demographic conspiracy beliefs, picked different targets, but praised one another as committed “ethno-soldiers” sacrificing themselves for the cause of preserving the “White race”.

Despite his relatively modest popularity, Bowers remains regularly commemorated and glorified within extreme-right communities online five years later. “Screw your optics, I’m going in”, his last words on Gab, turned into a popular slogan used as a catchphrase to incite violence. Bowers was also introduced into militant accelerationists’ pantheon of “saints” and was regularly promoted as a holy figure within these online communities.

London: King’s College London , Washington, DC: George Washington University, Program on Extremism,. 2023. 48p.

Amanda Y. Agan and Sonja B. Starr

Using a large field experiment, we show that racial composition of employer neighborhoods predicts employment discrimination patterns in a direction suggesting in-group bias. Our data also show racial disparities in the geographic distribution of job postings. Simulations illustrate how these patterns combine to shape disparities. When jobs are located far from Black neighborhoods, Black applicants are doubly disadvantaged: discrimination patterns disfavor them, and they have fewer nearby opportunities. Finally, building on prior work on Ban-the-Box laws, we show that employers in less Black neighborhoods appear much likelier to stereotype Black applicants as potentially criminal when they lack criminal record

University of Chicago Coase-Sandor Institute for Law & Economics Research Paper No. 916

By Kiana Cox And Khadijah Edwards

Many say key U.S. institutions should be rebuilt to ensure fair treatment. More than a year after the murder of George Floyd and the national protests, debate and political promises that ensued, 65% of Black Americans say the increased national attention on racial inequality has not led to changes that improved their lives.1 And 44% say equality for Black people in the United States is not likely to be achieved, according to newly released findings from an October 2021 survey of Black Americans by Pew Research Center.

This is somewhat of a reversal in views from September 2020, when half of Black adults said the increased national focus on issues of race would lead to major policy changes to address racial inequality in the country and 56% expected changes that would make their lives better.

At the same time, many Black Americans are concerned about racial discrimination and its impact. Roughly eight-in-ten say they have personally experienced discrimination because of their race or ethnicity (79%), and most also say discrimination is the main reason many Black people cannot get ahead (68%).

Even so, Black Americans have a clear vision for how to achieve change when it comes to racial inequality. This includes support for significant reforms to or complete overhauls of several U.S. institutions to ensure fair treatment, particularly the criminal justice system; political engagement, primarily in the form of voting; support for Black businesses to advance Black communities; and reparations in the forms of educational, business and homeownership assistance. Yet alongside their assessments of inequality and ideas about progress exists pessimism about whether U.S. society and its institutions will change in ways that would reduce racism.

These findings emerge from an extensive Pew Research Center survey of 3,912 Black Americans conducted online Oct. 4-17, 2021. The survey explores how Black Americans assess their position in U.S. society and their ideas about social change. Overall, Black Americans are clear on what they think the problems are facing the country and how to remedy them. However, they are skeptical that meaningful changes will take place in their lifetime.

Black Americans see racism in our laws as a big problem and discrimination as a roadblock to progress

WASHINGTON DC: PEW RESEARCH CENTER,

By Katie Zafft, et al.

In September 2022, the City of Duluth, with input from Duluth’s Racial Bias Audit Team (RBAT), contracted with the Crime and Justice Institute (CJI) to conduct a racial bias audit of the Duluth Police Department (DPD). CJI collaborated with the community and the Department to provide a holistic and comprehensive assessment of Department operations and interactions with the community with respect to the concerns raised about racial and ethnic disparities in police practices and operations. The scope of the audit largely reflects the status of the Department and experiences of community members within the past five years. Assessments of policies and trainings mainly represent the most recent versions of materials unless the audit team was provided materials that were previously used. The City/RBAT identified the following project scope in their request for services: • “Assess, monitor, and assist the DPD in concert with the community to uncover any aspects of implicit bias, as well as systemic and individual racial bias. • Assess the impact of enforcement operations on historically marginalized and discriminated against populations. • Provide recommendations for reforms that improve community-oriented policing practices, transparency, professionalism, non-discriminatory practices, accountability, community inclusion, effectiveness, equity and public trust. These recommendations should also consider statutory requirements, national best practices and current scientifically valid methodology, and community expectations. • Engage the community and employees of DPD to understand both experiences and expectations of interactions between both groups.”1 Assessment Goals and Objectives The scope of the audit, as directed by the audit goals developed by the Racial Bias Audit Team, focuses on eleven items that we consider to be three distinct areas of work: Department operations, Department interactions with the community, and the role of the Duluth Citizen Review Board (DCRB).

Boston: Crime and Justice Institute, 2023. 90p.

by Kilolo Kijakazi, K. Steven Brown, Donnie Charleston ,Kilolo Kijakazi ,Charmaine Runes

For most of its history, the United States excluded people of color from its main pathways of opportunity and upward mobility. This history of discriminatory policies and institutional practices created deep inequities across social and economic domains. But we envision a more equitable future in which the policies, programs, and institutional practices that produced inequitable outcomes are corrected and the effects are reversed. Achieving that vision would mean closing four yawning equity gaps between people of color and white people in the United States:  Closing the racial wealth gap would enable all people to invest in their own and their children’s futures, buy a home, obtain a quality education, and save for a secure retirement.  Eliminating racial inequities in public school quality would give all children the solid educational foundation they need to succeed in the 21st-century economy.  Closing employment and earnings gaps would provide all people with the dignity and security of a quality job, the opportunity to contribute to the nation’s prosperity, and the resources to support their and their children’s well-being and future prospects.  Ending punitive policing would make people and communities safer and increase confidence in the justice system. These gaps are wide and deeply entrenched. Racist policies and practices have been part of the nation since its inception, practiced by “founding fathers” and presidents who wrote and spoke about equality while engaging in the purchase, bondage, and sale of people of African descent. These policies were intended to subjugate people of color and afford dominance to white people. Ibram Kendi (2016) asserts that these policies led to racist ideas to justify the systemic barriers that created racial inequity and that each period of progress has been followed by a backlash of racist policies and practices. Abolition and the Civil War were followed by segregation enforced by laws, regulations, white mob violence, and lynchings. The civil rights movement and legislation were succeeded by cuts in taxes— primarily benefiting the wealthy—and federal assistance programs and the initiation of mass incarceration. The election of the first African American president has been followed by a curtailment in regulations and policies that enforce fair housing, reduce inequities in the criminal justice system, and protect consumers from racial targeting by predatory lenders. Looking ahead, major disruptive forces—technological innovation, increasingly frequent and severe climate events, and global economic change—could further widen today’s equity gaps. Moreover, demographic changes are making the nation more racially and ethnically diverse (Colby and Ortman 2015). Although many people are excited and proud about these changes, some fear the change of familiar social roles and ways of life (Danbold and Huo 2015). And this fear has resulted in a tendency to support less-inclusive policies (Craig and Richeson 2014). In the face of these profound challenges, civic leaders, advocates, elected officials, and philanthropists are confronting our country’s history of unjust and oppressive policies and taking action to promote equity and expand access to opportunity. Many approaches, like those that equip people of color with information and tools to successfully navigate existing systems, modify policies and practices to expand access and options, or enforce anti-discrimination protections, are making some progress. Other emerging strategies focus intentionally on the detrimental effects of past policies and offer bolder remedies that more directly address the roots of persistent inequities.

Washington, DC: Urban Institute 2019. 54p.

by Charles Fain Lehman

Since the 2020 “racial reckoning,” there has been increased political momentum behind reparations for slavery. Debates about reparations have moved from the halls of academia to legislatures in California and a number of cities. Americans and their leaders are increasingly asking: Are reparations justified at all? And, if so, who should get how much? This report concerns itself with a different question: Who pays for reparations? Reparations are a form of compensation for historical injustice. But many Americans did not have any ancestors present in the country at the time that injustice was committed. It is hard to argue that Americans whose ancestors arrived after 1860 should be on the hook for the costs of reparations. What fraction of nonblack Americans have ancestors who arrived after the end of the Civil War? Using demographic modeling techniques, this report pegs the figure as high as 70%, including more than half the non-Hispanic white population. These Americans are the descendants of immigrants who came to the U.S. either in the first great wave of immigration in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, or in the second great wave, begun in 1965 and still ongoing today. Many of these more recent arrivals are at the top of America’s economic distribution. Indeed, the recent-arrival share of top wealth earners is likely only to grow in coming years, given the prevalence of immigrants and children of immigrants at the head of top businesses. This means that the base of people and wealth that could plausibly be taxed for reparations is shrinking and will continue to shrink for the foreseeable future. This dynamic plays out in other areas of social policy. Any transfer or subsidy proposal that is justified by historical injustice—e.g., affirmative action—will lose legitimacy as the population changes. This is an important, and often overlooked, feature not only of the reparations debate but of debates about such proposals in general. great period, beginning in 1965 and extending to the present. This second group, furthermore, is represented among the wealthiest Americans and American households, challenging the feasibility of a “soak the rich” approach to reparations. Even if we otherwise grant the arguments for reparations, this basic demographic fact—that a majority of nonblack Americans are attributable to post–Civil War immigration—throws a wrench into the reparations project. Publicly funded reparations for slavery will entail taking money from tens of millions of people who are not—even under assumptions of inherited guilt that are already wildly at odds with the American tradition—plausibly responsible for slavery. To ask the question “Who pays?” produces uncomfortable answers for those who would like to see reparations paid.

New York: Manhattan Institute, 2023. 26p.

Kumar Ramakrishna

One significant highlight of the recent Singapore Terrorism Threat Assessment Report (STTAR) 2023 was that since 2015, 11 self-radicalised Singaporean youths aged 20 or below have been detained under the Internal Security Act (ISA). In addition, three of the four cases dealt with since the previous STTAR in 2022 involved youths. STTAR 2023 noted that the youngest detainee was only 15 years old.

The three Singaporean youths referenced in STTAR 2023 were all supporters of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and had been radicalised by Islamist extremist narratives online. The 15-year-old mentioned earlier was also a staunch supporter of the rival Al Qaeda (AQ) global terror network. An 18-year-old detainee apparently went so far as to have planned to declare Coney Island (about 133 hectares in size and lying very close to the main island of Singapore) to be an ISIS wilayat (province). He had also planned to travel to overseas conflict zones to fight alongside ISIS’s affiliates.

Such concern with youth radicalisation is not new. In 2018, Singaporean authorities had already observed that youth aged between 17 and 19 were “falling prey to extremist ideologies” through “heavy reliance” on “social media and the Internet” for information.

There are two observations that can be made in this regard.

Global and Regional Trends

First, youth radicalisation is not just a Singaporean, but a global and regional issue. Terrorism researchers J. M. Berger and Jessica Stern in their publication ISIS: The State of Terror (2015) affirmed that ISIS “actively recruits children” to engage in “combat, including suicide missions”. AQ is hardly different. US intelligence has long warned that AQ sought to radicalise western youth for the purpose of mounting terror strikes in the West – including suicide attacks.

The Malaysian government noted in 2017 that “around 80 per cent of the arrests that the Malaysian police” had made since September 2016 were of people “under the age of 40”. The same year, the Indonesian government estimated that about 101 youths had joined ISIS in Iraq and Syria. Analysts since 2018 have worried that the use of youth in terrorist attacks in Southeast Asia may well be a “future trend”.

Low-Tech, Lone-Actor Attacks

Second, STTAR 2023 observed that self-radicalised youth, rather than mounting complicated attacks using firearms and explosive materials that are difficult to procure in Singapore, could nevertheless “pivot towards other available means for conducting terrorist attacks, such as knives” in conducting so-called “lone actor” attacks.

This low-tech, lone-actor attack modality has been actively promoted by ISIS for years. A 2016 article in the online ISIS magazine Rumiyah enjoined supporters around the world to “stage knife attacks in public places”, as knives were easy to obtain and “effective weapons of terror”. In fact, it has been observed that the “use of knives by single jihadists is gaining popularity around the world”.

Understanding Youth Radicalisation

Youth radicalisation is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon. Three key explanatory factors can be outlined briefly.

First, at a psychological level, during the teenage years the executive reasoning centres of the brain develop more slowly than the emotional parts. This helps explain why teenagers between 18 and 20 years of age often appear as impulsive and rash. Additionally, such emotional immaturity frequently expresses itself as a quest for absolute, black-and-white, intellectual and moral certainty.

Hence STTAR 2023 observes that the essentially “structured and dichotomous” extremist worldview appears as “more appealing to the young”. Emotionally vulnerable youth are also relatively susceptible to false extremist promises of excitement and thrills – all for an ostensibly righteous cause. In essence, because youth are in the midst of a “tumultuous biological, cognitive, social and emotional transition to adulthood”, they are relatively ripe targets for terrorist cultivation.

Second, experts have observed that youth coming from unstable family contexts with weak or no father figures tend to possess fragile egos and identities, ill-prepared to endure life’s ordinary challenges. Such youth, as James W. Jones in Blood That Cries Out from the Earth (2012) notes, tend to seek “external objects that claim to be perfect and ideal” and that supposedly offer “that necessary sense of connection to something of value” that can “buttress” their “self-esteem”.

This is precisely where ISIS and AQ propaganda strike home. The importance of stable families cannot be overstated. In Saudi Arabia, for instance, it was found that youth who had grown up “without their parents present” were at risk, as their “personal and social problems” appeared to “contribute to radicalisation”.

Third, youths growing up in subcultures that are relatively insulated from the wider community are also at risk. In particular, subcultures that promote exclusionary attitudes that are “self-righteous, prejudicial and condemnatory toward people outside their groups” may inadvertently soften the ground for future exploitation by extremists.

Meanwhile, subcultures that even passively promote retrograde norms of masculinity, tend to also pave the way for extremist ideologues to later persuade male youth that taking up violence against one’s putative enemies – including up-close-and-personal knife attacks – is to be a “real man” and “heroic”.

Policies Needed to Counter Youth Radicalisation

The foregoing analysis suggests that a suite of integrated policy interventions are needed in three broad areas to counter youth radicalisation.

First, policies are needed to directly foster strong and stable family contexts in Singapore. Ameliorating the societal economic and competitive pressures that generate stress levels negatively affecting parenting is important. Fundamentally, fostering a healthy family unit anchored by strong father figures and role models helps encourage normal ego and intellectual development in youth. This also strengthens their emotional and intellectual resilience against false extremist promises of absolute intellectual and moral certainties.

Second, cultural and other community institutions have a role in actively promoting inclusiveness. Such institutions could assist parents and communities in socialising their young into appropriate prosocial behaviour as they grow up in a secular, diverse and globalised multicultural society like Singapore. The community-building elements of the ongoing SG Secure campaign in Singapore have much relevance in the socialisation process.

Third, a central piece of the policy puzzle must be education. Ideally, whether secular or religious, the education of our youth should aim to broaden intellectual horizons. The core idea is to develop in youth intellectual resilience against the “simplified monocausal interpretation of the world” offered by ISIS and AQ – and other extremists – “where you are either with them or against them”.

Another key aspect of the educational space – religious and secular – is to promote healthy and balanced societal norms about masculinity. The aim is to create mental firewalls against attempts by online extremists to encourage more toxic and violent expressions of what it means to be male. In this context, as STTAR 2023 states, rather than travelling to conflict zones to fight, Singaporean youth should know that there are peaceful, legitimate and more effective ways to support good causes around the world, such as “the cause of helping Palestine”.

Conclusion

The United Nations Plan of Action to Prevent Violent Extremism urges that in the struggle against violent extremism, the world simply must “harness the idealism, creativity and energy of young people”. In this regard, the hearts and minds of Singaporean youth is absolutely one strategic battlespace that we must not ignore.

Singapore: S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, NTU Singapore, 2023. 4p.

By The Anti-Defamation League, Center for Technology and Society

Executive Summary Do social media and search companies exacerbate antisemitism and hate through their own design and system functions? In this joint study by the ADL Center for Technology and Society (CTS) and Tech Transparency Project (TTP), we investigated search functions on both social media platforms and Google. Our results show how these companies’ own tools–such as autocomplete and auto-generation of content–made finding and engaging with antisemitism easier and faster.1 In some cases, the companies even helped create the content themselves. KEY FINDINGS: • Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube are each hosting dozens of hate groups and movements on their platforms, many of which violate the companies’ own policies but were easy to find via search. Facebook and Instagram, in fact, continue hosting some hate groups that parent company Meta has previously banned as “dangerous organizations.” • All of the platforms made it easier to find hate groups by predicting searches for the groups as researchers began typing them in the search bar. • Facebook automatically generated business Pages for some hate groups and movements, including neo-Nazis. Facebook does this when a user lists an employer, school, or location in their profile that does not have an existing Page–regardless of whether it promotes hate. Our researchers compiled a list of 130 hate groups and movements from ADL’s Glossary of Extremism, picking terms that were tagged in the glossary with all three of the following categories: “groups/ movements,” “white supremacist,” and “antisemitism.”2 The researchers then typed each term into the respective search bars of Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, and recorded the results. The study also found that YouTube auto-generated channels and videos for neo-Nazi and white supremacist bands, including one with a song called “Zyklon Army,” referring to the poisonous gas used by Nazis for mass murder in concentration camps. • In a final test, researchers examined the “knowledge panels” that Google displays on search results for hate groups–and found that Google in some cases provides a direct link to official hate group websites and social media accounts, increasing their visibility and ability to recruit new members.

New York: Anti-Defamation League, Center for Technology and Society, 2023. 18p.

By Chandra Childers

Summary: Southern politicians claim that “business-friendly” policies lead to an abundance of jobs and economic prosperity for all Southerners. The data actually show a grim economic reality.

Key findings

The share of prime-age workers (ages 25–54) who have a job is lower than the national average in most Southern states.

• Median earnings in nine Southern states are among the lowest in the nation, even after adjusting for lower cost of living in the South.

• Poverty rates in most Southern states are above the national average. In Louisiana and Mississippi, nearly 1 in 5 residents live in poverty.

• The child poverty rate in the South is 20.9%—higher than in any other region.

These statistics reflect an anti-worker economic model whose signature policies are low wages, low taxes, few regulations on businesses, few labor protections, a weak safety net, and vicious opposition to unions.

Why this matters

A long history of anti-worker policies in the South—rooted in a racist agenda—has had devastating consequences for its residents. Business interests and the wealthy have stoked racial divisions to maintain power and ensure access to cheap labor—at the expense of working people.

How to fix it

We must begin to reverse 150 years of anti-worker policymaking in the South—starting with raising minimum wages and protecting workers’ right to organize. We also need to enforce appropriate regulations on business practices, reform a broken tax structure, and strengthen the safety net for Southerners.

The Impacts of Implicit Bias Awareness Training in the NYPD

By Robert E. Worden, Sarah J. McLean, Robin S. Engel, Hannah Cochran, Nicholas Corsaro, Danielle Reynolds ,Cynthia J. Najdowski, Gabrielle T. Isaza

In February of 2018, the New York City Police Department (NYPD) began inservice training on implicit bias for its 36,000 sworn personnel, using the Fair and Impartial Policing (FIP) curriculum. A team of researchers from the John Finn Institute for Public Safety and the IACP/UC Center for Police Research and Policy partnered with the NYPD to conduct evaluation research on the impacts of the training. The evaluation concentrated on the effects of the training among patrol officers assigned to commands in the Patrol Services Bureau, Transit Bureau, and Housing Bureau, whose training commenced in May, 2018 and concluded in April, 2019. We assessed the immediate effects of the training on officers’ beliefs and attitudes: their knowledge about the science of implicit bias and the potential implications for policing, and their attitudes about the salience of bias and discrimination as a social problem, and the importance of policing without prejudice. A survey was administered on the day of FIP training, either prior to or following the training on alternating days. We drew inferences about immediate training effects from the differences in pre- and post-training survey responses. The effect of the training on officers’ knowledge about implicit bias was of moderate magnitude, though many officers’ comprehension of the science of bias was limited. The effects of the training on officers’ attitudes toward discrimination, and their motivation to act without prejudice, were fairly small, though prior to the training, most officers considered discrimination a social problem and felt individually motivated to act without bias. Officers regarded the training as beneficial: 70 percent reportedly gained a better understanding of implicit bias and more than two-thirds reportedly learned new strategies and skills that they expected to apply to their work. Nearly half rated the likelihood of using all five biasmanagement strategies as either a 6 or 7 on a 7-point scale anchored at 7 as ‘very likely.’ We conducted a follow-up survey about officers’ beliefs and attitudes and their actual utilization of FIP strategies, which was administered from June through August of 2019, ranging from 2 to 13 months following the training. Asked whether they attempted “to apply the FIP training in your duties over the last month,” 42 percent said they had not, 31 percent said they attempted to use the bias-management strategies sometimes, and 27 percent said they attempted using them frequently. Comparing the follow-up survey responses to those on the days of training, we also detected some decay in the immediate effects of the training on officers’ comprehension of the science of implicit bias. The impact of police training is likely to be greater when it is supported by other organizational forces, of which immediate supervisors may be the most important. We surveyed sergeants post-training. We found that most sergeants view monitoring for bias as one of their responsibilities, and that they are willing to intervene as needed with individual officers. One-quarter reported that they had intervened with an officer whose performance warranted intervention. Slightly more than half of the sergeants reportedly address issues of implicit bias during roll calls, thereby reinforcing the training. Insofar as officers’ unconscious biases may influence their enforcement decisions, and to the extent that officers apply their training in FIP strategies to manage their unconscious biases, we hypothesized that the training would lead to reductions in racial/ethnic disparities in enforcement actions, including stops, frisks, searches, arrests, summonses, and uses of force. We examined enforcement disparities at multiple levels of analysis – at the aggregate level of commands and the level of individual enforcement events. To isolate the effect of the training from other factors, the NYPD adhered to a protocol for a randomized controlled trial that provided for grouping commands into clusters scheduled for training by random assignment. This experimental control was supplemented by statistical controls in the analytical models. Overall, we found insufficient evidence to conclude that racial and ethnic disparities in police enforcement actions were reduced as a result of the training. It is very difficult to isolate the effects of the training from other forces that produce disparate enforcement outcomes. Training impacts might be a signal that is easily lost in the noise of everyday police work. Estimating the effect of a single training curriculum on officers’ decisions to invoke the law or otherwise exercise police authority may well be akin to finding the proverbial needle in a haystack. Furthermore, it has been presumed but not demonstrated that enforcement disparities stem, at least in part, from officers’ implicit biases. Though research has shown that police officers, like the general public, hold unconscious biases, no scientific evidence directly links officers’ implicit bias with enforcement disparities. To the contrary, the evidence – which is thin, to be sure – suggests that officers practice controlled responses even without implicit bias training. If disparities stem from forces other than implicit bias, then even a welldesigned training that is flawlessly delivered cannot be expected to alter patterns of police enforcement behavior.

Albany, NY: John F. Finn Institute for Public Safety, Inc , 2020. 188p.

Edited by Håkan Hydén Roger Cotterrell David Nelken and Ulrike Schultz

This open access book pays homage to Reza Banakar, who passed away in August 2020, exploring the many different areas of socio-legal research that he worked on and influenced. It begins with a summary of his career and explains how he sparked a debate on the identity and aims of legal sociology. The book is then split into 5 sections: - Theory, including chapters on normativity and the stepchild controversy; - Methods and interdisciplinarity, illustrating how Banakar encouraged socio-legal scholars to push the boundaries of existing socio-legal knowledge through interdisciplinary imagination and methodological flexibility; - Legal culture, with particular focus on Iran - 2 areas of special interest for Banakar; - Law and science, covering topics such as human rights, the right to life, and the COVID-19 pandemic; and - Applied sociology of law, inspired by Banakar’s engagement with empirical research and case studies. As well as honouring Reza Banakar's memory and unique thinking, the book aims to advance the sociology of law by demonstrating the interconnectedness of the legal and the social from a broad range of perspectives.

Oxford; New York: Hart/Bloomsbury 2023. 495p.

Edited by Edward Aspinall and Gerry van Klinken

The popular 1998 reformasi movement that brought down President Suharto’s regime demanded an end to illegal practices by state officials, from human rights abuse to nepotistic investments. Yet today, such practices have proven more resistant to reform than people had hoped. Many have said corruption in Indonesia is “entrenched”. We argue it is precisely this entrenched character that requires attention. What is state illegality entrenched in and how does it become entrenched? This involves The state and illegality in Indonesia studying actual cases. Our observations led us to rethink fundamental ideas about the nature of the state in Indonesia, especially regarding its socially embedded character. We conclude that illegal practices by state officials are not just aberrations to the state, they are the state. Almost invariably, illegality occurs as part of collective, patterned, organized and collaborative acts, linked to the competition for political power and access to state resources. While obviously excluding many without connections, corrupt behaviour also plays integrative and stabilizing functions. Especially at the lower end of the social ladder, it gets a lot of things done and is often considered legitimate. This book may be read as a defence of area studies approaches. Without the insights that grew from applying our area studies skills, we would still be constrained by highly stylised notions of the state, which bear little resemblance to the state’s actual workings. The struggle against corruption is a long-term political process. Instead of trying to depoliticize it, we believe the key to progress is greater popular participation

Leiden: KLTIV Press, 2011. 341p.

By Peter d’Abbs and Nicole Hewlett

This open access book deals with community-based attempts on the part of Aboriginal communities and groups in Australia to address harms arising from alcohol misuse. Alcohol-related harms are viewed as both a product of colonisation and dispossession and a contributor to ongoing social, economic and health-related disadvantage, both in Australia and in other countries with colonised Indigenous populations, such as Canada, the US and New Zealand. This book contributes to an evidence-base by bringing together a selection of existing Australian documents considered by the editors to have continuing relevance to all those concerned with dealing with alcohol-related harms among Aboriginal peoples, These are contextualised in original chapters that recount key events, ideas, and programs. The book is a practical resource for all people and groups concerned with addressing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander alcohol-related harms, both at the community level and at the level of policy-making and administration.

London; New York: Routledge, 2023. 346p.

United States. Department Of Homeland Security

From the document: "On March 27, 2023, Secretary Mayorkas requested that the Homeland Security Advisory Council (HSAC) form two subcommittees to develop Artificial Intelligence (AI) Strategy. The Secretary asked our subcommittee to focus on mission enhancing use cases of AI and recognized the rapid development and introduction of artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) programs into the workforce, markets, and daily life. In December 2020, the Department of Homeland Security published a comprehensive plan on addressing the implications of AI parallel to the rise of its prevalence. The 'Artificial Intelligence Strategy' highlighted AI/ML programs and their innumerous effects on workforce development, the value of investing in their optimization capabilities, and how to bolster the public's trust and understanding of their functioning. While defending against threats posed by this technology, it is the Department's intention to explore avenues by which these programs can be leveraged to improve its mission. Utilized in an ethical, informed, and responsible manner, AI/ML systems have the ability to improve transportation security, accelerate migrant processing timelines, bolster the functioning of supply chains, intercept illicit contraband, and more."

Washington. DC. United States. Department Of Homeland Security . 2023. 21p.

By Miguel A. Martínez López

To date, there has been no comprehensive analysis of the disperse research on the squatters’ movement in Europe. In Squatters in the Capitalist City, Miguel A. Martínez López presents a critical review of the current research on squatting and of the historical development of the movements in European cities according to their major social, political and spatial dimensions.　

Comparing cities, contexts, and the achievements of the squatters’ movements, this book presents the view that squatting is not simply a set of isolated, illegal and marginal practices, but is a long-lasting urban and transnational movement with significant and broad implications. While intersecting with different housing struggles, squatters face various aspects of urban politics and enhance the content of the movements claiming for a ‘right to the city.’ Squatters in the Capitalist City seeks to understand both the socio-spatial and political conditions favourable to the emergence and development of squatting, and the nature of the interactions between squatters, authorities and property owners by discussing the trajectory, features and limitations of squatting as a potential radicalisation of urban democracy.

London; New York: Routledge, 2019. 294p.

By Nazima Kadir

This book is an ethnographic study of the internal dynamics of a subcultural community that defines itself as a social movement. While the majority of scholarly studies on this movement focus on its official face, on its front stage, this book concerns itself with the ideological and practical paradoxes at work within the micro-social dynamics of the backstage, an area that has so far been neglected in social movement studies. The central question is how hierarchy and authority function in a social movement subculture that disavows such concepts. The squatters’ movement, which defines itself primarily as anti-hierarchical and anti-authoritarian, is profoundly structured by the unresolved and perpetual contradiction between both public disavowal and simultaneous maintenance of hierarchy and authority within the movement. This study analyzes how this contradiction is then reproduced in different micro-social interactions, examining the methods by which people negotiate minute details of their daily lives as squatter activists in the face of a funhouse mirror of ideological expectations reflecting values from within the squatter community, that, in turn, often refract mainstream, middle class norms.

Manchester University Press, 2016. 232p.

Edited by Fred H. Cate and James X. Dempsey

• Examines national practices and laws regarding government access to personal information held by private-sector companies

• Contains updated reports on government surveillance and data collection in twelve major countries

• Describes evolving international law and human rights principles applicable to government surveillance

• Explores the principles and practical elements of transparency, accountability, and oversight

• Contains recommendations for both governments and industry on how to balance privacy and national security/law enforcement needs

• Includes chapters on the impact of encryption on the surveillance debate, and on reform of the international system for mutual legal assistance

Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2017. 505p.

Stephen P. Reyna

As US imperialism continues to dictate foreign policy, Deadly Contradictions is a compelling account of the American empire. Stephen P. Reyna argues that contemporary forms of violence exercised by American elites in the colonies, client state, and regions of interest have deferred imperial problems, but not without raising their own set of deadly contradictions. This book can be read many ways: as a polemic against geopolitics, as a classic social anthropological text, or as a seminal analysis of twenty-four US global wars during the Cold War and post-Cold War eras.

New York: Oxford, UK: Berghahn Books, 2016. 606p.

By Etchenique, Nicolas Cimarra

From the document: "While great power competition is the domain of geopolitics, democratic resilience mostly concerns domestic politics. President Biden has defined the domestic political challenges to democracy in the U.S. as a 'battle for the soul of the nation'. This narrative correlates with the 'battle between democracy and autocracy' that takes place at the geopolitical level. Rising distrust in government and society, polarization and illiberalism are particularly relevant to the international position of Washington and its soft power, as they are compromising democratic stability within the U.S. The paper will be divided in two parts: a diagnosis, called 'the global maelstrom of distrust', and a policy proposal, called 'the lighthouse of democracy'. The diagnosis focuses on the cumulative effect of three sets of challenges to democracy: a) great power competition and the authoritarian offensive against democracy, b) the rise of polarization and illiberalism, and c) the impact of social media and AI on democracy. This section of the paper will argue that these sets of challenges feed on distrust and amplify it. Furthermore, they have evolved into a series of cycles of distrust within democracies and into a great geopolitical cycle of distrust. Finally, the entanglement and feedback loops among the domestic and the geopolitical cycles of distrust have generated a cohesive threat to democracy. This threat is represented by a downward spiral that is pulling societies and the global community towards enmity. It feeds on and generates destructive human emotions, such as outrage and hatred, which include a strong irrational and unconscious dimension, and thus leads to violence, war, and autocracy."

Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. 2023.

By Larry B. Hill

FROM THE JACKET: “One increasingly popular device for achieving a balance between authority and accountability in government is the institution of the ombudsman. The first non-Scandinavian ombudsman appeared in New Zealand in 1962, and since then the office has spread to many countries and been adopted at different levels of government. This book--the first intensive study of New Zealand's "model" ombudsman-seeks to understand the process by which the institution was successfully adapted and made a part of New Zealand's political system. The author's inquiry is based on eighteen months of field experience in New Zealand. His book examines the complaints, the clients, their interaction with the ombudsman, his relations with the bureaucracy, and his effectiveness. His relations with various publics-bureaucrats, Honorable Members, and Queen's Ministers- receive special attention.

"This book will be essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the ombudsman institution. This book raises the level of scholarship on the ombudsman from mere definitions or classifications to that of tested propositions." -Stanley Anderson, University of California, Santa Barbara

Princeton, New Jersey. Princeton University Press. 1976.429p