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

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

Forensic Science International, 4 November 2024, 112288

By Mason Youngblood

Increasing levels of far-right extremist violence have generated public concern about the spread of radicalization in the United States. Previous research suggests that radicalized individuals are destabilized by various environmental (or endemic) factors, exposed to extremist ideology, and subsequently reinforced by members of their community. As such, the spread of radicalization may proceed through a social contagion process, in which extremist ideologies behave like complex contagions that require multiple exposures for adoption. In this study, I applied an epidemiological method called two-component spatiotemporal intensity modeling to data from 416 far-right extremists exposed in the United States between 2005 and 2017. The results indicate that patterns of far-right radicalization in the United States are consistent with a complex contagion process, in which reinforcement is required for transmission. Both social media usage and group membership enhance the spread of extremist ideology, suggesting that online and physical organizing remain primary recruitment tools of the far-right movement. In addition, I identified several endemic factors, such as poverty, that increase the probability of radicalization in particular regions. Future research should investigate how specific interventions, such as online counter-narratives to battle propaganda, may be effectively implemented to mitigate the spread of far-right extremism in the United States.

HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES COMMUNICATIONS | (2020) 7:49 |

By The Nato Strategi Direction-South Hub & African Centre For The Study and Research on Terrorism

Violent extremism – often intertwined with intercommunal tensions and criminality – has continued to gain ground across the Sahel. Rising instability and the deteriorating security situation in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger have generated concerns among neighbouring West African states about the effects of regional spillover. Since 2016, there have been incidents tied to the presence of Terrorist and Violent Extremist Organizations (TVEOs) in some of the border communities of Benin, Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, and Togo (the main focus of this report), as well as reports of preaching, recruitment and local development initiatives by violent extremists. Given the current deteriorating security situation in the Sahel and the potential spillover effects, this report aims to shed light on the potential vulnerability of West African coastal states to the spread of violent extremism from the Sahel area and to carry out an in-depth investigation into the state of governmental and regional efforts to counter the security and social challenges associated with this growing vulnerability. The report approaches the phenomenon of the contagion of violent extremism by firstly presenting background research carried out by both organizations and, secondly, highlighting the main takeaways of a Subject Matter Expert (SME) Workshop conducted as part of the report methodology. The Workshop was held with the participation of more than 30 (thirty) SMEs drawn from key institutions based in the West African sub-region, including international organizations, state institutions and non-governmental organizations. The report includes research into the current situations regarding violent extremism in the Sahel Region and those factors potentially contributing to its expansion in Benin, Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana and Togo, including in-depth analysis of statistical data and the available literature. The report also provides information on key institutional capacities and state security efforts put in place to prevent and counter that expansion. Analysis of the unfolding situation shows deteriorating security in the Sahel, as evident by the number of terrorist attacks between 2019 and 2021. Despite the multiplicity of both international and regional military deployments, terrorist activities are far from abating. The nature of attacks has grown more sophisticated, and become more synchronized, and the groups are growing in confidence and cohesion. The recent resurgence of coup d’etats has further threatened and worsened an already volatile situation. Multiple factors such as ideological and religion-inspired extremism, governance deficits as violent extremism catalysts, structural socio-economic conditions, and historical grievances and rivalries were identified as vulnerability factors in coastal states. In addition, lack of government presence in some local communities; herder-farmer conflicts; prolonged and unresolved conflicts; unfavourable government policies; inability of the government to provide for the basic needs of local communities; high and rising unemployment levels particularly among energetic youthful population; lack of accountability by political office holders; rampant corruption; impunity of the political elites; and marginalisation and discrimination of minority groups were identified as local-level context specific grievances that have the propensity to drive and sustain violent extremism in coastal West Africa states. Having recognised the devastating effects of violent extremism there have been efforts aimed at preventing the spread of violent extremism. International, regional and state-initiated actions towards preventing violent extremism by presenting the “hard” and “soft” security efforts are present. At the international level, the French-led Takuba forces and the European Union Training Mission in Mali, the US AFRICOM, and the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA) are some of the efforts to contain the terrorism and violent extremism threats in the Sahel and prevent expansion. The Accra Initiative, which was launched in September 2017 to coordinate and unite interests and capabilities in stopping violent extremists, especially in the border areas was identified a key regional preventative strategy . Other regional initiatives include the Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF), the G-5 Sahel Joint Task Force and the ECOWAS actions on preventing the finance of violent extremism. In addition to international and regional level efforts countries in coastal areas have implemented new administrative frameworks, regional and broader international cooperation, the development of security forces and other counterterrorism measures. The countries have widely accepted that the spread of violent extremist ideologies cannot be halted by purely legal and armed means. The development of society, embracing communities which have been left behind by economic and social investments have become key. In conclusion, the findings of this report have pointed out that violent extremist activities have been growing in recent years in West Africa and coastal states, radiating there from the Sahel. Although the security situations of the four countries assessed herein are not directly comparable to the very severe situation in the Sahel, the appearance of certain violent extremist groups at the northern border areas of Benin, Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, and Togo is cause for concern. Equally worrisome is that the spread of violent extremism is multi-directional: TVEOs do not exclusively expand southward, but in any direction where circumstances permit.

Addis Ababa, Ethiopia: African Union: 2022. 47p.   

By: Anita Raj and Susan C. Scrimshaw

While the concepts of women’s empowerment, population dynamics, and socioeconomic development have been studied extensively from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, a holistic interdisciplinary review that reconciles the literature on these complex dynamics is absent. The lack of consensus limits the extent to which these concepts can be applied toward accomplishing global health and development goals. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation asked the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to appoint a multidisciplinary consensus study committee focused on advancing the state of knowledge on the impact of women’s empowerment and associated population dynamics on socioeconomic development. The committee was tasked with developing a conceptual framework describing these dynamics and setting an agenda for future research and data collection.

To address the charge, the committee reviewed research from a wide variety of social science and health disciplines. While it became clear that existing empowerment frameworks do not fully address the interactions across women’s empowerment, population dynamics, and socioeconomic development, these frameworks enabled the committee to identify critical gaps and highlight women’s agency as a lynchpin in the empowerment process.

National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2024.

By: Theresa Wizemann, Kyle Cavagnini, Alex Helman, and Carolyn Shore

As stated in the 2022 National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (National Academies) report Improving Representation in Clinical Trials and Research: Building Research Equity for Women and Underrepresented Groups, “An equitable clinical research enterprise would include trials and studies that match the demographics of the disease burden under study. However, we remain far from achieve this goal” (NASEM, 2022). Despite decades of work and ongoing efforts on the part of policy-makers, patient groups, nonprofits, and industry sponsors to improve racial and ethnic diversity in clinical trials, there has been little change over time (Dzau, 2022). Furthermore, inconsistencies in data collection and reporting makes it difficult to track progress of demographic group participation in the United States for clinical trials. Given the urgent need, there have been calls for collective action across sectors and organizations “to align on goals for system-wide sustainable change.”

On May 20, 2024, the National Academies Forum on Drug Discovery, Development, and Translation, in collaboration with the National Cancer Policy Forum, convened a public workshop to explore opportunities to improve racial and ethnic diversity with a focus on system-level change and collective efforts across organizations and sectors that no one entity can effectively take on alone (see Box 1-1). The workshop builds on meetings hosted by the Clinical Trials Transformation Initiative (CTTI) in June 2023, the Multi-Regional Clinical Trials (MRCT) Center of Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard University in September 2023, and Faster- Cures of the Milken Institute in November 2023.

National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2024.

By National Academies: Sciences Engineering Medicine

"Rethinking Race and Ethnicity in Biomedical Research" by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, published in 2024, addresses the complex and often controversial use of racial and ethnic categories in biomedical research. The book provides a comprehensive assessment of how these categories are currently used and offers nine actionable recommendations to guide researchers in their future work. :

Evaluating the Use of Race and Ethnicity: The book emphasizes the importance of carefully considering whether and how to use race and ethnicity in research, taking into account historical and social contexts, scientific rationale, and potential implications.

Characterizing Limitations: It advises researchers to clearly disclose the limitations of datasets that include racial and ethnic information.

Identifying Relevant Factors: Researchers are encouraged to identify and investigate factors that may be more relevant than race and ethnicity, such as environmental, economic, and social determinants of health.

Community Engagement: The book highlights the need for sustained and meaningful engagement with communities, particularly those that are often overlooked in research.Overall, the book aims to promote a more thoughtful and responsible use of race and ethnicity in biomedical research, ultimately contributing to the reduction of health disparities and the advancement of health equity.

National Academies: Sciences, 2024, 251 pages

May Contain Mark-Ups

By A.C Harvey

“The Econometric Analysis of Time Series”by A.C. Harvey is a comprehensive guide to understanding and applying econometric theory to time series data. The book is structured into several key sections, each addressing different aspects of econometric analysis. It Begins with an introduction to the importance of econometrics in estimating relationships suggested by economic theory, testing hypotheses, and making predictions. The book covers linear regression models, least squares estimation, properties of the ordinary least squares (OLS) estimator, generalized least squares (GLS), and prediction. It also delves into the method of maximum likelihood (ML) estimation, its properties, and its application to regression models, discussing sufficiency, the Cramer-Rao lower bound, and robustness of ML estimators. Further, the book explores numerical optimization techniques, including the Newton-Raphson method and two-step estimators, and discusses test procedures and model selection strategies. It addresses regression models with serially correlated disturbances, dynamic models, and simultaneous equation models, emphasizing the integration of recent advances in time series analysis into econometric theory.

The book also highlights the importance of understanding the dynamic aspects of econometric models and the challenges associated with specifying suitable models for time series data. Practical considerations such as the use of instrumental variables, handling heteroscedasticity, and constructing robust estimators are also covered, providing a thorough foundation for both theoretical and applied econometric analysis.

John Wiley & Sons, 1990, 384 pages

By University of California, Los Angeles

Pursuant to this investigation’s findings and conclusions, the following describes a number of measures that UCLA should adopt and implement to address shortcomings, performance failures, systems breakdown, and campus safety issues that emerged from the campus events of April and May 2024. These recommendations are designed to ensure that UCLA’s response to acts of civil disobedience aligns with its commitments to freedom of expression and the protection of the health, safety, and well-being of the UCLA community. In addition to resulting in a more effective response to acts of civil disobedience, implementation of these recommendations will support a more effective response to a wide range of low-frequency, high-impact emergencies events on campus, including potential natural disasters or acts of mass violence. Finally, implementing these measures will better enable UCLA to deliver a range of public safety services in a manner that is effective, that aligns with changing conceptions of the meaning of public safety, and that reflects the UCLA community’s values and priorities. As described below, in the long-term, UCLA will need to address the possibility of making fundamental, structural changes to its public safety ecosystem, including by engaging in a community-driven process to define public safety objectives and goals and by making expanded resources available beyond law enforcement to support those goals. In the short-term, however, UCLA must make immediate changes and develop plans to effectively respond to campus disruptions using existing resources. We are encouraged that UCLA already has begun work to implement these immediate changes. 

Los Angeles: UCLA, 2024. 18p.

By Scott R. Baker,  Justin Balthrop,  Mark J. Johnson,  Jason Kotter,  Kevin Pisciotta 

We estimate the causal effect of online sports betting on households’ investment, spending, and debt management decisions using household transaction data and a staggered difference-in-differences framework. Following legalization, sports betting spreads quickly, with both the number of participants and the frequency of bets increasing over time. This increase does not displace other gambling or consumption but significantly reduces savings, as risky bets crowd out positive expected value investments. These effects concentrate among financially constrained households, as credit card debt increases, available credit decreases, and overdraft frequency rises. Our findings highlight the potential adverse effects of online sports betting on vulnerable households.  

Unpublished paper, 2024.

By Robert J. Spitzer

Since the Supreme Court’s ruling in 2022 that recast the basis for judging the constitutionality of contemporary gun laws according to the existence of historical analogs, all manner of laws have been subject to court challenge, including those that restrict gun access to those under the age of twenty-one. To date, federal courts have split on this question. Given this new, history-based standard for judging the constitutionality of current weapons laws, this article examines the historical record pertaining to how the age of majority was defined in our past and how that pertains to the history of laws that restricted minors’ access to firearms and other weapons. This article offers the most extensive assessment of state laws and local ordinances from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to be found to date. In addition, it includes a new and extensive excavation of a wide range of college and university codes in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that limited or barred students from having weapons from that time period, the nature and extent to which has not been identified or reported before. All of this information supports the conclusion that the broadly accepted age of majority during this time period was twenty-one.

Rutgers Law Review, Vol. 76, 2024

By Kat Ford a, Mark A. Bellis b, Karen Hughes, Natasha Judd a, Emma R. Barton

The relationship between parent and child adverse childhood experience (ACE) exposure remains underexplored, particularly within justice-involved samples. Objective: The objective of the study was to examine the intergenerational continuity of ACEs within a UK prison population. Participants: 294 males aged 18–69 years in a Welsh prison, with father-reported data for 671 children they had fathered. Methods: A face-to-face ACE questionnaire measured exposure to 10 ACE types. For each child they had fathered participants were asked to report their child’s gender, age, and their exposure before the age of 18 to the same ACE types, except having a household member incarcerated. Findings: Paternal ACE exposure was found to increase the risk of child ACE exposure, both to multiple ACEs and individual ACE types. Compared to children of fathers with no ACEs, those of fathers with 4+ were almost three times more likely to have been exposed to 2–3 ACEs and six times more likely to be exposed to 4+ ACEs. The risk of a child residing in a household where mental illness was present was 7.4 times higher where their father had 4+ ACEs. Conclusion: Findings highlight the need for prevention interventions to break the intergenerational continuity of ACEs. Further research is needed to explore what protects against the intergenerational continuity of ACEs. Criminal justice systems and wider services need to ensure that they support those incarcerated alongside their families who are at high risk of ACEs and consequently poorer education, health, and criminal justice outcomes. 

Child Protection and Practice Volume 3, December 2024, 100053

By Delameillieure, Chanelle

The Middle Dutch term schaec referred to abduction with marital intent. This book explores this phenomenon to understand wider attitudes towards marriage-making in the fifteenth-century Low Countries. Whilst exchanging words of consent was all that was required legally, making marriage was a social process that evoked public concern and familial scrutiny. Abductions embodied contrasting evaluations of what mattered when selecting a spouse and resulted in polarized trials in which narratives on consent, coercion, and family strategy coincided and competed. Abduction, Marriage, and Consent draws from a wide range of legal records to assess how men, women, families, and authorities used, navigated, and dealt with abductions during this period. It contributes to debates on consent, family involvement, and women’s access to justice and demonstrates that abduction should be approached as a comprehensive social phenomenon, one that is crucial in the history of marriage and women’s social and legal status.

Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2024. 254p.

Edited by Teresa Hiergeist, Stefanie Schäfer

In contemporary popular culture, armed women take center stage - but how can they be read from a feminist perspective? How do films, comics, and TV series depict the newly fashionable gunwomen between objectification and feminist empowerment? The contributions to this volume ask this question from different vantage points in cultural and literary studies, film and visual culture studies, history, and art history. They examine military and civic gun cultures, the rediscovery of historical armed women and revolutionaries, cultural phenomena such as gangsta rap, narcocultura and US politics, Bollywood and French cinema, and distinct genres such as the graphic novel, the romance novel, or the German police procedural Tatort.

Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, 2024. 322p.

By Marian Sawer and Maria Maley

This open access book shows how the #MeToo movement and revelations of sexual harassment and bullying have spurred on reform of the parliamentary workplace in four Westminster countries – Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the UK. Long-standing conventions included extreme power imbalances between parliamentarians and staff and a lack of professionalised employment practices. Codes of conduct and independent complaints bodies were resisted on grounds of parliamentary privilege: the ballot box was supposedly the best means of holding parliamentarians accountable for their conduct. The taken-for-granted status of adversarial politics and its silencing effects also rendered gendered mistreatment invisible. The authors examine the institutional backdrop and the different trajectories of reform in the four countries, with most detail on the dramatic developments in Australia after angry women marched on parliament houses in 2021. They show how the different parliaments have responded to escalating evidence of misconduct, the role of policy borrowing, and the possibilities of lasting institutional change.

Cham: Springer Nature, 2024. 125

By Samblanet, Lauren

Taking its cues from the New Narrative writing movement, like a dog considers how sexual identity is morphed, hidden, and denied by cultural forces like film, pornography, rape culture, and sexual semiotics. The speaker of like a dog writes about her sexuality, sexual trauma, and relationships in the epistolary form to explore how the personal becomes collective and how overt sexuality is necessary for questioning dominant ideologies. The intimacy (or perhaps voyeurism) that is opened through the epistolary form is balanced with commentary on the films of Lars von Trier, primarily Nymphomaniac, as a way to move away from the speaker’s experiences and into the larger social forces that seek to define us. Amidst these letters are images from a handwritten journal where blood, hair, vaginal fluids, and other bodily residues are used to direct the shape and content of the writing surrounding them. The tactility of the journal delivers the reader to the body, not as an intellectualized object, but as the physical, messy, oozing force that it is. Neither fiction nor nonfiction, and inhabiting a realm between gossip and scholarly film analysis, like a dog exists in a liminal zone that offers the speaker a site to rip away the layers of cultural conditioning surrounding sexuality and relationships, and to peek at what lies beneath. This interrogation of identity may not lead to answers but the speaker of like a dog is able to finally hear her own voice and to begin the work of rebuilding an identity that blooms from within.

Brooklyn, NY: punctum books, 2024. 149p.

By Margaret Cormier

The most-performed operas today were written at least a hundred years ago and carry some outdated and deeply problematic ideas. When performed uncritically, the misogyny, racism, and other ideologies present in many of these works clash with modern sensibilities. In Rape at the Opera, Margaret Cormier argues that production and performance are vital elements of opera, and that contemporary opera practitioners not only interpret but create operatic works when they put them onstage. Where some directors explicitly respond to contemporary dialogues about sexual violence, others utilize sexual violence as a surefire way to titillate, to shock, and to generate press for a new production. Drawing on archival footage as well as attendance at live events, Cormier analyzes productions of canonic operas from German, Italian, and French traditions from the eighteenth to the early twentieth century, including Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Don Giovanni, La forza del destino, Un ballo in maschera, Salome, and Turandot. In doing so, Cormier highlights the dynamism of twenty-first-century opera performance practice with regard to sexual violence, establishes methods to evaluate representations of sexual violence on the opera stage, and reframes the primary responsibility of opera critics and creators as being not to opera composers and librettists but to the public.

Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2024. 211p.

Edited by Mariah L. Cooper

How did legal, literary, and scientific discourses intersect to define sexual non-consent in the Middle Ages? How did popular cultural assumptions about sexuality and gender influence actual medieval criminal proceedings? And how far have we really come today? This book explores medieval English understandings of rape, consent, and the assumed mind-body dichotomy of rapists and rape victims. It demonstrates how laws, trial records, popular romance, and ecclesiastic and medical texts defined sexual consent and non-consent, and the consequences of such ideologies. By comparing episodes of rape and consent across diverse primary sources, it considers important medieval English rape myths and victim-blaming stereotypes. Significantly, it also highlights the cultural trepidation associated with believing women’s accusations of rape and questions how much “progress” we have made since then.

Leeds, Arc Humanities Press, 2024. 214p.

Edited by Eveline G. Bouwers and David Nash

This book investigates the relationship between blasphemy and violence in modern history, with a focus on cases from the European world, including its (post-) colonial ties. Spanning from the late-eighteenth century to today, it shows how cultures of blasphemy, and related acts of heresy, apostasy and sacrilege, have interacted with different forms of violence, committed against both the sacred and the secular.

Berlin; Boston: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2022. 

By William J. Aceves

This Article explores the history of the term “people of color” and its current status in a country struggling to overcome its racist origins. The murders of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and so many other victims of state violence have generated profound anger, calls for action, and demands for dialogue. It is undoubtedly simplistic to assert that words matter. But accurate descriptions are essential for honest conversations, and words convey meanings beyond their syntax. In discussions about race and racial identity, the term “people of color” is routinely used as the antipode to the white community. Yet little thought is given to its etymology or meaning. Through the use of historical documents, including many from the colonial era, and recent data compiled from search engine queries and social media activity, this Article reveals that the term “people of color” has a rich yet complicated heritage. For centuries, “people of color” was a term with legal significance. While it no longer defines rights, its use still matters. Today, we should embrace this collective terminology because it reflects a shared history among diverse communities and generates power against hierarchy. Because the white community serves as the antipode to people of color, we must also interrogate this other example of collective terminology. To engage in honest conversations about race, power, and privilege, it is time to separate white(ness) from the white community.   

  17 Harv. L. & Pol'y Rev. 79 (2022). Available at:

By Tom R. Tyler

My scholarly career has centered around articulating and testing a model of legitimacy-based law and governance. In recent decades, that model has achieved considerable success in shaping the way legal authority is understood and exercised. At the same time the legitimacy of legal, political, and social institutions and authorities has declined, raising questions about the future viability of a legitimacy-based model. In this review, I discuss the ascension and potential decline of legitimacy-based governance and outline alternative models of authority that may emerge in the twenty-first century. Three issues are addressed: whether there are ways to reinvigorate legitimacy-based law and governance; whether social norms, moral values, or ideologies are viable alternative forms of authority; and whether it is better to accept that no single form of authority works best in all situations and theories should focus on identifying the contingencies under which different forms of authority are most desirable.

Annu. Rev. Law Soc. Sci. 2023. 19:1–17