By Kevin Dunn, Jehonathan Ben, Rachel Sharples, Nida Denson, Amanuel Elias, Fethi Mansouri, Craig McGarty, Yin Paradies, Öznur Şahin

The research addresses the relatively neglected subject of anti-racism in Australia. Forms of day-to-day anti-racism action and prosocial intercultural interaction already exist, often in public and semi-public places. Yet they have received little attention in anti-racism research and practice, programs, and policymaking. To our knowledge, this is the first global survey to examine everyday anti-racism practices on such a large scale, and the first to quantitatively measure 'transversal enabler' practices, for creating connections between people from different cultural backgrounds who inhabit the same locality. The research maps the frequencies and forms of everyday anti-racism and prosocial attitudes and interaction in Victoria; identifies the factors and social variations that underlie everyday action; and explores transversal enabler practices quantitatively, including their prevalence. It indicates a gap between positive dispositions towards cultural diversity and actual involvement in practices that foster social transformation. We suggest that Victorians can do better on everyday pro-sociality and make a series of recommendations on strategies to inform anti-racism practice, program, and policies for more meaningful and deeper intercultural engagement.

Burwood, Victoria, AUS: Alfred Deakin University, Centre for Resilient and Inclusive Societies, 2024. 39p.

By Mario Peucker, Franka Vaughan, Jo Doley, Tom Clark

Based on a community survey among 703 Victorians from culturally and racially marginalised communities and 27 in-depth peer-facilitated focus groups with 159 participants, the project that led to this report aimed to gain a better evidence-based understanding of racism, discrimination and vilification as well as to create more safe spaces for communities to talk about racism and share their views on how to make practical changes that can have real-life impact. These community voices provided guidance on how to tackle the silencing effects of racism, enhance opportunities to speak out against racism and report personal experiences, and improve anti-racism support across Victoria.

Based on the community input, this report highlights five areas of action for different stakeholders to consider concrete measures to better align reporting pathways and support services with community needs:

1. Awareness raising: racism, legal protections and support services

2. Improving existing reporting pathways and support services

3. Establishing alternative community-led antiracism services

4. Building broad organisational capacity to provide basic guidance on anti-racism support

5. Improving anti-racism support in places racism happens: schools, workplaces, shopping centres and public transport

Melbourne: Victoria University, 2024. 64p.

By James P. Murphy, Rosanna Smart, Terry L. Schell,  Nancy Nicosia,  Timothy S. Naimi

Alcohol use is involved in a large proportion of homicides and suicides each year in the U.S., but there is limited evidence on how policies targeting alcohol influence violence in the U.S. context. Extant studies generally focus on individual policies in isolation of each other. This study examines the impacts of changes in states’ alcohol policy restrictions on overall homicide and suicide rates and firearm-related homicide and suicide rates using a holistic measure of states’ alcohol policy environments. Methods: Using a composite measure of state-level alcohol policies (Alcohol Policy Scale) and data from the National Vital Statistics System from 2002 to 2018, this study applied a Bayesian time series model to estimate the impacts of alcohol policy changes on overall and firearm-involved homicide and suicide rates. The analysis was performed in 2023 and 2024. Results: A 1 SD change in the Alcohol Policy Scale was associated with a 6% decline in homicide rates both overall (incident rate ratio=0.94; 95% credible interval = 0.89, 1.00) and for firearm homicides specifically (incident rate ratio=0.94, 95% CI=0.88, 1.01). There was no clear association of alcohol policy with suicides. The model predicts that a nationwide increase in alcohol restrictions equivalent to a shift from the 25th to 75th percentile of the scale’s distribution would result in almost 1,200 fewer homicides annually. Conclusions: Increases in the restrictiveness of state-level alcohol policies are associated with reductions in homicides. More restrictive alcohol policy environments may offer an opportunity to reduce homicides. 

 AmJPrev Med 2024;67(2):193−200. © 2024 

National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine; Health and Medicine Division; Board on Health Care Services; Board on Population Health and Public Health Practice; Committee on Unequal Treatment Revisited: The Current State of Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Care; Georges C. Benjamin, Jennifer E. DeVoe, Francis K. Amankwah, and Sharyl J. Nass, Editors

Racial and ethnic inequities in health and health care impact individual well-being, contribute to millions of premature deaths, and cost the United States hundreds of billions of dollars annually. Addressing these inequities is vital to improving the health of the nation’s most disadvantaged communities—and will also help to achieve optimal health for all. In 2003, the Institute of Medicine examined these inequities in Unequal Treatment: Confronting Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Care.

Because disparities persist, the National Academies convened an expert committee with support from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and the National Institutes of Health. The committee’s report reviews the major drivers of health care disparities, provides insight into successful and unsuccessful interventions, identifies gaps in the evidence base, and makes recommendations to advance health equity.

National Academies. 2024. 375p..

Edited by Edward .L Glaser and Claudia Goldin

Historical Context: The book explores the history of corruption and reform in America, highlighting how corruption was prevalent in the 19th and early 20th centuries, similar to modern developing regions.

Consequences of Corruption: It discusses the impact of corruption on corporate governance, municipal finance, and public works, showing how it hindered economic growth and governance.

Reform Efforts: The book examines various reform efforts, such as the rise of the informative press, bank chartering reforms, and publicutility regulation, which helped curb corruption.

References: The document contains numerous references and contributions from various scholars, providing a comprehensive analysis of the topic.

The University of Chicago Press, 2006, 386 pages

Edited by Howard S. Becker

Focus on Deviance: The document explores deviance as an interactive process involving both deviants and non-deviants, emphasizing the importance of societal reactions and labeling.

Historical Context: It highlights the evolution of the study of deviance, noting its roots in general sociology and its shift towards practical applications.

Contributors and Topics: The document includes contributions from various scholars, covering topics like drug addiction, legal stigma, and the social integration of marginalized groups.

Lack of Sentimentality: The new approach to deviance is characterized by alack of sentimentality, focusing on objective analysis and avoiding preconceived notions

Free Press of Glencoe, 1964, 297 pages

By Robert A.LeVine and Donald .T Campbell

Origins and Purpose: The book originated from a 1958 seminar oninternational relations, highlighting the lack of cross-cultural data oninterethnic relations. It aims to address this gap by proposing acooperative research project on ethnocentrism.

Ethnocentrism Defined: Ethnocentrism is described as viewing one's own group as the center of everything, with other groups rated andscaled in reference to it. This includes attitudes, emotions, and collective actions that reinforce group solidarity and intergroup conflict.

Theoretical Framework: The book surveys various social science theories about ethnocentrism, focusing on cross-cultural variations in ethnocentric actions, institutions, ideologies, and attitudes. It aims to clarify contradictions and agreements among these theories.

Research Methodology: The authors developed a field manual for ethnographic research on ethnocentrism, emphasizing the importance of understanding both in group and out group dynamics.

John Wiley & Sons Inc., 1972, 310 pages

By Cyrus Harreld Karraker

Comparative Study: The document explores the role of the sheriff in 17th-century England and the Chesapeake colonies (Virginia and Maryland), highlighting similarities and differences.

Research Challenges: It discusses the difficulty in researching English and colonial records, noting the scattered and incomplete nature of sources.

Sheriff's Duties: The sheriff's responsibilities included court service, financial duties, and maintaining peace. The role was influenced by local conditions andevolved differently in the colonies.

Historical Context: The study emphasizes the importance of understanding the historical and institutional background to fully grasp the development of local government in the colonies.

University of North Carolina Press, 1930, 219 pages

By David Pozen

This book recovers a lost history of constitutional challenges to punitive drug laws. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, advocates argued that criminal bans on marijuana, cocaine, psychedelics, and other substances violate the U.S. Constitution’s guarantees of due process, equal protection, federalism, free speech, free exercise of religion, and humane punishment. Legal scholars and government commissions grappled with these arguments. State and federal courts endorsed them in pathbreaking rulings. By the 1980s, however, the movement for drug rights had collapsed, paving the way for the contemporary war on drugs and its disastrous consequences for racial justice, individual freedom, and public health. This study shows how constitutional law could have denied the drug war but instead became ever more defined by it—how a profoundly illiberal and paternalistic policy regime was assimilated into, and came to shape, an ostensibly liberal and pluralistic constitutional order. The book details the internal doctrinal dynamics and external cultural developments that first facilitated and then foreclosed challenges to drug prohibition. It explains how courts in other countries have curtailed punitive drug laws using a different approach to rights review. It evaluates the costs and benefits of the U.S. jurisprudence. And it considers potential constitutional paths still open to drug reformers today. In addition to offering a new perspective on the war on drugs, the book supplies a panoramic tour of many of the key features and failings, compromises and contradictions, of late twentieth-century American constitutionalism.

New York: Oxford University Press, 2024. 305p.

By Bart van der Sloot

Experts predict that in 5 years’ time, more than 90% of all digital content will be wholly or partially AI generated. In a synthetic society, it may no longer be possible to establish what is real and what is not. Central to this open access book are 4 technologies on the frontline of this trend: humanoid robots, deepfakes, augmented reality, and virtual reality. Although they are only in their relative infancy, these technologies can already produce content that is indistinguishable from authentic material. The impact of this new reality on democracy, the judicial system, the functioning of the press, as well as on personal relationships will be unprecedented. Van der Sloot describes the technological fundaments of each of those technologies and maps their positive uses for educational purposes as well as for the treatment of patients, for the entertainment and creative industries, and the retail and financial sectors. The book also conceptualises their negative uses for fraud, deception, exploitation, identity-theft and exploitation, and shows their deeper effects on the post-truth society, the privatisation of the public sphere, and the loss of individual autonomy and societal trust. The book evaluates how the current European legal paradigm applies to these technologies, focussing on the right to privacy and data protection, freedom of expression, procedural law, tort law, and the regulation of AI. It discusses regulatory alternatives to solve existing regulatory gaps and shows that there are no easy answers.

London: Hart Publishing, 2024. 296p.

By Giulia Raimondo

What are the human rights obligations of Frontex and its member states at the borders of Europe? Who is responsible when the rights of people crossing those borders are breached? Those are the main questions that this open access book addresses while exploring the evolution of the European integrated border management (EIBM). The mode of administration of European borders has become a complex and polymorphous affair involving multiple actors working at different levels, with different competences and powers. In this context, borders are no longer lines on a map but enmeshed in a tapestry of different actors and technologies. This evolution not only puts to test the relationship between territory and public power, but it also requires a different understanding of the responsibility for the exercise of that power by a panoply of actors. This book addresses the challenges related to the implementation of the EIBM and the human rights responsibilities that it can trigger. It entwines two separate but interlaced discourses: the first being a reflection on the concept of EIBM and its human rights impact; the second being the question of the attribution of international responsibility for violations that occurred in the implementation of the EIBM

London: Hart Publishing, 2024. 344p.

Reimagining Law for People and Planet

   Edited by Helen Dancer Bonnie Holligan and Helena Howe   

This open access book collects 11 reimagined judgments from the UK and challenges anthropocentrism in legal decision-making across a range of legal areas. It draws from a range of Earth law approaches including rights of nature, animal rights, environmental human rights, well-being of future generations, ecocide, and reinterpretations of existing legal principles. There is an urgent need to transform our legal institutions and cultures to foster healthier relationships between people and planet. The book explores how relationships between people, place, and the more-than-human world are produced, transformed, and destroyed through law, the limits of current law and the potential for positive transformation. A paradigm shift towards planetary, ecological and multispecies approaches offers possibilities for envisioning what the future of legal decision-making could look like. Beyond the judgments, the book critically reflects on the developing field of Earth law and its potential for reshaping legal reasoning in the UK and beyond. It also offers possibilities for the future of Earth law from scholarly, educational, and policy perspectives within legal practice, training and education. The book is a must read for scholars, students, legal practitioners and activists questioning the role of law and courts as mechanisms for change.

London: Hart Publishing, 2024. 304p.

Lynette J Chua (Anthology Editor) , Jack Jin Gary Lee (Anthology Editor)

This open access book explores law, politics, and inequality in fights against infectious diseases. Guided by a theoretical framework called “governing through contagion”, the studies in this book analyse how past and present governments have tried to combat contagious diseases, such as the bubonic plague, cholera, HIV/AIDS, and COVID-19.

They examine how these governments used law and other technologies, including waste management, mask-wearing, quarantine stations, house inspections, and the burning of entire neighbourhoods, to achieve their aims of protecting populations and ensuring productivity.

Although the studies recognise the power of the state, they simultaneously emphasise the active roles of technologies and creatures, drawing attention to the often-taken-for-granted workings of the non-human in public health governance. They also consider the implications of strategies of control on marginalised communities and democratic politics. Collectively, the studies in this book bring attention to the connections between COVID-19 responses by governments and their historical antecedents, shedding light on the role of capitalism, colonialism, and geopolitics in circulating contagions and the strategies used to control them.

London: Hart Publishing, 2024. 232p.

By Kate Stevens

Centering on cases of sexual violence, this open access book illuminates the contested introduction of British and French colonial criminal justice in the Pacific Islands during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, focusing on Fiji, New Caledonia, and Vanuatu/New Hebrides. It foregrounds the experiences of Indigenous Islanders and indentured laborers in the colonial court system, a space in which marginalized voices entered the historical record. Rape and sexual assault trials reveal how hierarchies of race, gender and status all shaped the practice of colonial law in the courtroom and the gendered experiences of colonialism. Trials provided a space where men and women narrated their own story and at times challenged the operation of colonial law. Through these cases, Gender, Violence and Criminal Justice in the Colonial Pacific highlights the extent to which colonial bureaucracies engaged with and affected private lives, as well as the varied ways in which individuals and communities responded to such intrusions and themselves reshaped legal practices and institutions in the Pacific. With bureaucratic institutions unable to deal with the complex realities of colonial lives, Stevens reveals how the courtroom often became a theatrical space in which authority was performed, deliberately obscuring the more complex and violent practices that were central to both colonialism and colonial law-making. Exploring the intersections of legal pluralism and local pragmatism across British and French colonialization in the Pacific, this book shows how island communities and early colonial administrators adopted diverse and flexible approaches towards criminal justice, pursuing alternative forms of justice ranging from unofficial courts to punitive violence in order to deal with cases of sexual assault.

London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2022. 304p.

by A. G. R U S S E L.L

● Focus on Race and Colour: The document explores the social and economic implications of racial differentiation, particularly within the British Colonial Empire, emphasizing the practical importance of these issues over physical differences.

● Historical Context: It discusses the historical development of racial issues, including the impact of European expansion and the Industrial Revolution on race relations.

● Colonial Exploitation: The text highlights the economic exploitation of colonies, particularly in Africa, and the profits made by European companies at the expense of native labor.

● Educational Challenges: The document addresses the educational disparities faced by colonized peoples and critiques the Western educational system for its failure to adequately serve these populations.

London. Gollancz. 1944. 273p.

By EUGENE L. HOROWITZ

● Study Focus: The research investigates the development of attitudes toward African Americans in white children, aiming for objective, verifiable, and significant results.

● Historical Context: The study highlights the historical evolution of attitudes toward African Americans, noting legal and social discrimination dating back to the 17th century.

● Methodology: The research employs three tests involving pictorial materials to measure children's attitudes, focusing on ranking preferences and imagined social situations.

● Findings: The study finds that prejudice begins early in childhood and is influenced more by societal attitudes than direct contact with African Americans.

NY. ARCHIVES OF PSYCHOLOGY. R. S. WOODWORTH, EDITOR. No. 194. 1916. 48p.

By W.D. Weatherford,

Addresses the complex issue of racial adjustment and is introduced by James H. Dillard. It explores the history and progress of Black people from Africa to America, highlighting the struggles and achievements in the face of adversity. The author emphasizes the importance of mutual understanding and trust between races to overcome racial antipathy and achieve social justice. Historical Context: The book provides a detailed account of the African background, the impact of slavery, and the ongoing challenges faced by Black people in America.

NEGRO UNIVERSITIES PRESS. NEW YORK. 1924. 483p.

By Willard Price

THE BLACK GIRDLE. If an inhabitant of Mars could see the Earth according to the color of its peoples, he could observe a broad black sash about the World's waist. The belt of black, within which most of the 140,000,000 black people of the globe live, follows the equator and spreads about twenty degrees to the north and the same distance south. It is not quite broad enough to take in the United States ith its 11,000,000 Negroesbut all the other important groupings of blacks in the world are within this tropical belt. It includes the 11,000,000 Negroes of Central and South America and the 10,000,000 of the West Indies. Most of the 100,000,000 Negroes of Africa are found within these limits….

NY. George H. Doran Co. 1925. 69p.

by John Hall

Retail theft is a complex issue with conflicting narratives. Some people believe that the problem is exaggerated by authorities and retailers who are struggling to keep up with a changing marketplace. Others point to personal experiences of theft and stores being repeatedly targeted by chronic offenders and organized crews. Unfortunately, traditional crime data sources don’t give us a clear picture of the situation.

This report explores the limitations of existing data and suggests ways for policymakers to get a better understanding of the problem. It uses New York City as a case study and shows how its challenges are similar to those in other cities. This paper also draws upon examples from other major cities that provide retail-theft  to highlight the commonalities and variations in how retail theft operates throughout the country and discusses some general strategies that could be used to address retail theft in cities across the country.

New York: Manhattan Institute, 2024. 20p.

By Alex Nowrasteh  

  Crime committed by illegal immigrants is an important and contentious public policy issue, but it is notoriously difficult to measure and compare their criminal conviction rates with those of other groups such as legal immigrants and native-born Americans. This policy analysis is the latest paper that attempts to resolve those data disputes by relying on detailed crime data from Texas. Over the 10-year period from 2013 to 2022, the homicide conviction rate in Texas for illegal immigrants was 2.2 per 100,000, compared to 3.0 per 100,000 for native-born Americans.  The homicide conviction rate for legal immigrants in Texas was 1.2 per 100,000. Illegal immigrants were 26 percent less likely than native-born Americans to be convicted of homicide, and legal immigrants were 61 percent less likely. Criminal conviction data for crimes other than homicide are included, but readers should interpret them with caution because the quality of the data is suspect. The conviction and arrest rates of illegal and legal immigrants, separately and together, were lower than those of native-born Americans for homicide and all crimes in Texas during the 2013–2022 period 

 Policy Analysis no. 977  

Washington, DC: Cato Institute, 2024. 12p.