By Lauren Hamilton,  Lucy Macmillan,  Rodney Vlais

  • In 2023, the Northern Territory Department of Children and Families commissioned Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety (ANROWS) to conduct separate process evaluations of the two government-funded community-based men’s behaviour change programs (MBCPs) in the NT. • The MBCPs are delivered by two service providers, CatholicCare NT in Darwin and Wadeye, and Aboriginal Community-Controlled Organisation (ACCO) Tangentyere Council in Alice Springs. • This paper draws together key findings from the two evaluations relating to the MBCPs’ operating contexts, practice strengths, and the barriers and enablers to implementing quality practice. It provides recommendations from across the two  evaluations, focused on both the program level and the system level. • As part of the process evaluations, ANROWS developed the Quality Practice Elements for Men’s Behaviour Change Programs (MBCPs) in the Northern Territory (“quality practice elements”) in consultation with the two MBCP service providers and the Northern Territory Department of Children and Families. The quality practice elements were designed to support an assessment of quality practice being delivered by the two MBCPs. They outline nine areas of quality practice for MBCPs, contextualised to the NT, and were used to inform evaluation findings. The quality practice elements are published separately and can be read alongside this paper.   What was examined? The process evaluations examined two community-based MBCPs funded by the Northern Territory Department of Children and Families: CatholicCare NT’s Perpetrator Intervention Service operating in Darwin and Wadeye, and Tangentyere Council’s Marra’ka Mbarintja MBCP operating in Alice Springs. The focus on “process” meant the evaluations examined how the MBCPs were being delivered, rather than whether or not they were achieving intended outcomes. Specifically, the evaluations sought to understand how the MBCPs were being delivered in practice, and to compare this with what is understood to be quality practice for MBCPs in the context of the NT. The evaluations were guided by the following high-level questions: • How is each MBCP operating in its context? • How integrated is each MBCP with the community and service system? • How does each MBCP align with relevant standards of quality practice? • How does each MBCP manage risk and are there any unintended consequences? • What could be put in place to improve or prepare for future monitoring and evaluation of each MBCP?  Why is this important? There is a clear need for evaluations of domestic and family violence (DFV) programs and initiatives that are specific to the NT context, to support evidence-informed policy and practice to address the immense problem of DFV in the NT. This is particularly the case in relation to MBCPs, where evidence is needed to understand how these programs operate in different contexts, and the role they can play within a broader DFV service system. As this was the first time the two NT MBCPs have been externally evaluated since their inception, this work aimed to support the MBCPs and the NT Government to understand how the programs are being implemented, key factors that are influencing implementation, and areas for improvement. Findings from the evaluations are intended to support service provider-level decisions about adaptations or adjustments to the MBCPs and importantly, to identify system-level opportunities for the NT Government to support the MBCPs to work towards enhancing the safety of women and children in the NT.

Sydney: Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety (ANROWS), 2025. 36p.

By Max Griswold, Stephanie Brooks Holliday, Alex Sizemore, Cheng Ren, Lawrence Baker, Khadesia Howell, Osonde A. Osoba, Jhacova Williams, Jason M. Ward, Sarah B. Hunter

From 1995 to 2020, 104 municipalities in California adopted crime-free housing policies (CFHPs), seeking to reduce crime rates in multifamily rental housing. Across the United States, it is estimated that 2000 cities adopted a CFHP by 2019. Proponents of CFHPs claim these policies reduce crime by deterring criminal activity in rental properties. Critics argue that CFHPs lead to increased evictions and disproportionally impact low-income individuals, particularly people of color.

The authors evaluate proponents' and critics' claims regarding the effects of CFHPs, examine the implementation and enforcement of CFHPs, and assess how CFHPs affect the lived experiences of tenants in California. Findings indicate that CFHPs do not achieve their intended objective of preventing or reducing crime, but use of CFHPs does lead to a significant increase in evictions.

Key Findings

In 2020, there were 104 municipalities in California with a crime-free housing policy (CFHP). Between 2009 and 2019, 34 municipalities implemented CFHPs, which potentially increased policy coverage by 2.4 million renters.

The results of our study indicate no statistically meaningful relationship between CFHPs and crime rates but a strong relationship with increased evictions.

Municipalities with CFHPs have larger population proportions of Black residents than municipalities without CFHPs. Additionally, within municipalities, rental units covered by CFHPs are in neighborhood blocks with lower per capita income than municipal blocks without CFHP units.

It is difficult to challenge evictions caused by CFHPs because tenants often do not know the cause of their eviction and because CFHP evictions are treated by the court system as standard lease violations.

Tenants in CFHP properties are closely surveilled by both law enforcement, landlords, and property managers. Law enforcement agencies stay in contact with landlords and property managers who lease CFHP-covered units, and some agencies maintain databases that track tenant encounters with law enforcement officers.

Recommendations

Municipalities should reconsider maintaining or adopting CFHPs. Prior research and the findings in this report show that CFHPs do not serve their main purpose of reducing crime and do increase evictions.

State law should ensure that tenants are informed about evictions caused by CFHPs. Tenants are frequently unable to understand the cause of their eviction, and therefore face barriers to seeking legal assistance in eviction proceedings

Legislators should consider adopting civil right-to-counsel policies in eviction proceedings. In general, without legal representation, tenants are more likely to be evicted, face larger monetary judgments, and are more likely to be removed from their housing. Adopting these policies could result in more-equitable outcomes.

Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2023, 24p.

By David de Groot

People from racial and ethnic minority backgrounds face discrimination and its consequences on a daily basis. However, the exact scale of the problem is hard to gauge, owing to a lack of data and general under reporting of racist incidents. Although the European Union (EU) has been introducing legislation to combat racial and xenophobic discrimination since 2000, the problem persists. The global Black Lives Matter protests highlighted the need for new measures, while the COVID 19 pandemic saw a major increase in reports of racist and xenophobic incidents, and the crisis it triggered had a disproportionately large negative effect on racial and ethnic minority groups, in the form of higher death and infection rates. Studies point to the cost of racial discrimination not only for the individuals concerned, but also for society as a whole. For instance, a 2018 EPRS report argued that the loss in earnings caused by racial and ethnic discrimination for both individuals and societies amounts to billions of euros annually. EU citizens also acknowledge this problem: a 2019 survey found that over half of Europeans believe racial or ethnic discrimination to be widespread in their country. To address racial discrimination and the inequalities it engenders, the European Commission has put forward a number of equality strategies and actions. The European Parliament, meanwhile, has long demanded an end to racial discrimination. In recent resolutions, Parliament has called for an end to structural racism, discrimination, racial profiling and police brutality; for protection of the right to protest peacefully; for an enhanced role for culture, education, media and sport in the fight against racism; and for authorities to take an intersectional approach. On 18 and 19 March 2025, Members of the European Parliament from the Anti Racism and Diversity Intergroup (ARDI) co hosted the fourth EU Anti Racism and Diversity Week. This updates a briefing from June 2024.

Brussels: EPRS | European Parliamentary Research Service 2025. 12p.

By Elena Martellozzo, Andrew Monaghan, Julia Davidson, and Joanna Adler

Abstract

This article considers data from a large empirical study of nearly 1,100 U.K. adolescents aged 11 to 16 (in a mixed methods three-stage sample) and provides an overview of their experiences of online adult pornography. The article investigates how seeing online pornography influenced those who watched it, and to what degree, if any, the attitudes of those adolescents altered with repeat viewings. It concludes with an overview of the social policy challenges, both domestic and international, posed by the findings.

SAGE OpenVolume 10, Issue 1, January 2020, 11p.

By Sulin Sardoschau and Annalí Casanueva-Artís

Freedom of speech is central to democracy, but protests that amplify extremist views expose a critical trade-off between civil liberties and public safety. This paper investigates how right-wing demonstrations affect the incidence of hate crimes, focusing on Germany’s largest far-right movement since World War II. Leveraging a difference-in-differences framework with instrumental variable and event-study approaches, we find that a 20% increase in local protest attendance nearly doubles hate crime occurrences. We explore three potential mechanisms— signaling, agitation, and coordination—by examining protest dynamics, spatial diffusion, media influence, counter-mobilization, and crime characteristics. Our analysis reveals that large protests primarily act as signals of broad xenophobic support, legitimizing extremist violence. This signaling effect propagates through right-wing social media networks and is intensified by local newspaper coverage and Twitter discussions. Consequently, large protests shift local equilibria, resulting in sustained higher levels of violence primarily perpetrated by repeat offenders. Notably, these protests trigger resistance predominantly online, rather than physical counter-protests.

CESifo Working Paper No. 11745, Munich: Munich Society for the Promotion of Economic Research - CESifo GmbH

By David J. Harding, Maria S. Smith, Da Eun Jung, Stephanie Luna-Lopez & Amanda Glazer

Sociologists use the concept of narrative as an analytical tool and theoretical concept to understand the stories that people tell and their role in social and cultural life. A key tenet of prior research on narratives is their capacity to shape the audience’s understanding and evaluation of the narrator. In this mixed-method study, we investigate the role of narratives in destigmatization through the case of criminal record stigma in the labor market. Based on evidence from a survey experiment in which people with managerial experience were randomly assigned to job applicants with different narratives, we show that evaluations differ across reentry narratives. Drawing on prior theorizations and qualitative interviews with employers, we identify and describe three processes through which narratives impact evaluation and destigmatization: moral justification, social affinity signaling, and information salience.

American Journal of Cultural Sociology, 2025, 33p.

By Rachel Kleinfeld

The United States feels roiled by polarization, and the philanthropic world is seized with debates about what to do. Some scholars claim that Americans are so polarized they are on the brink of civil war. Other polls suggest that voters agree on plenty of policies and that polarization is an illusion. Some philanthropists call for pluralism and civility, while others lean into activism, believing polarization is a byproduct of change toward a more just world. So, is the United States polarized or not? If it is, what is causing the polarization and what are its consequences? Should polarization be solved or tolerated? This paper is intended to answer these questions. It opens with five facts about polarization in the United States today and what those imply for possible interventions. A literature review follows, organized chronologically to explain the scholarly shift from thinking of polarization as an ideological, policy-based phenomenon to an issue of emotion, as well as the emerging understanding of polarization as both a social phenomenon and a political strategy. This paper is organized as follows. Part I: Introduction Five Facts About Polarization in the United States What This Understanding Means for Interventions Part II: The Literature on Polarization First Generation Understanding: Elite Ideological Polarization Polarization Is Policy Difference, and Congress Is the Problem How Was America Polarized? What Caused Elite Polarization? Interventions to Reduce Policy-Based Polarization Among Political Elites Second Generation Understanding: Mass Affective Polarization Polarization Is Emotional Dislike Based on Identity That Affects Regular People How Was America Polarized? What Is Causing Affective Polarization? Interventions to Reduce Affective Polarization Third Generation Understanding: Cracks in the Foundations Reducing Affective Polarization May Not Impact Violent or Antidemocratic Attitudes Antidemocratic Attitudes Political Violence Political Structures Affect Incentives to Polarize Part III: Conclusion What We (Think We) Know in 2023 Ideological Polarization Affective Polarization Washington, DC:

Carnegie Endowment for International Peace 2023. 74p.

By Garen J. Wintemute, Andrew Crawford, Elizabeth A. Tomsich & Veronica A. Pear

Background

In 2022, a nationally representative longitudinal survey in the USA found concerningly high prevalences of support for and personal willingness to engage in political violence, but those prevalences decreased in 2023. This study examines changes in those prevalences from 2023 to 2024, an election year in the USA.

Methods

Participants were members of Ipsos KnowledgePanel. Wave 3 of the survey was conducted May 23-June 14, 2024; invitations to participate were sent to all respondents to prior waves who remained in KnowledgePanel. Outcome measures concern justification for the use of violence to advance any of 17 specified political objectives, personal willingness to engage in political violence at 4 levels of severity and against 9 target populations, and expectation of firearm use in political violence. Outcomes are expressed as weighted proportions. Year-to-year change is based on the means of aggregated individual change scores, which have a potential range from 0 (no change) to ± 2.

Results

The 2024 completion rates were 88.4% (8896 respondents/10,064 invitees) overall, 91.6% (8185 respondents/8932 invitees) for invitees in 2024 who had responded in 2023, and 62.8% (711 respondents/1132 invitees) for invitees in 2024 who had responded in 2022 but not in 2023. After weighting, 50.9% (95% confidence interval (CI) 49.5%, 52.3%) were female; weighted mean (SD) age was 48.5 (24.9) years. From 2023 to 2024, the prevalence of the view that violence was usually or always justified to advance at least 1 political objective did not change (2024: 26.2%, 95% CI 25.0%, 27.5%; 2023: 25.3%, 95% CI 24.1%, 26.5%). There were no changes from 2023 to 2024 in willingness to damage property, threaten a person, injure a person, or kill a person in an act of political violence, and no changes in expectations of firearm use in situations where respondents considered political violence justifiable. Changes on other measures were infrequent (17 of 58 comparisons in the main analysis) and small where they occurred (with 2 exceptions, change < 0.05).

Conclusions

Contrary to expectation, support for and willingness to participate in political violence in this cohort showed little to no change from 2023 to 2024, an election year in the USA. These findings can help guide prevention efforts.

Inj. Epidemiol. 12, 4 (2025), 29p.

By The Media Accountability Project

Media depictions of gun violence deeply influence how we perceive the individuals perpetuating or victimized in incidents, whether we feel safe, and how society collectively racializes crime and violence. The language that the media uses to describe individuals involved in gun violence incidents has evolved but remains deeply and problematically tied to race and other identities, as seen by the different connotations of “domestic terrorist,” “thug,” and “individual suffering from a mental illness” used to describe gun violence-involved individuals of different ethnicities and races. The impact of these depictions on the public can be profound, as differences in portrayals of gun violence, based on the race of those involved and where incidents occur, may reinforce harmful racial stereotypes and influence public support for gun reform policies. Most research examining gun violence in the media, 1-3 however, tends to overwhelmingly focus on deadly mass shootings and school shootings—fatalities that comprise only a fraction of firearm deaths—and overshadows more common forms of violence that routinely devastates cities across the United States, especially in Black and Latino communities. To better understand the way that media representations of shootings are influenced by race and place, Community Justice partnered with researchers at Northwestern University and the Center for Neighborhood Engaged Research and Science (CORNERS) to collect large portions of the U.S. media landscape on gun violence and analyze it using advanced computational and statistical methods. The goal of the project is to determine the extent to which racial differences among the individuals and communities where gun violence occurs create real, measurable differences in the way that incidents are reported and ultimately viewed. By understanding the relationship between race and media coverage of gun violence incidents, this Media Accountability Project aims to help news outlets, journalists, educators, and community stakeholders build more just

Chicago: Media Accountability Project, Northwestern University, 2024 14p.

By Jessica White, Claudia Wallner, Galen Lamphere-Englund, Love Frankie, Rachel Kowert, Linda Schlegel, Ashton Kingdon, Alexandra Phelan, Alex Newhouse, Gonzalo Saiz and Petra Regeni

As the popularity and social significance of online gaming have surged, with more than three billion gamers encompassing a broad spectrum of the global population, the urgency to understand how gaming spaces constitute formative identity- and community-building environments is more essential than ever. While acknowledging that many gamers have positive experiences, this project aims to understand, through a gender and intersectional lens, how socialisation processes coupled with exposure to harassment, hate-based discrimination and extreme content can potentially lower resilience to radicalisation in gaming and gaming-adjacent spaces. Governments are increasingly paying attention to this issue, considering regulatory requirements and effective intervention designs. This heightened awareness necessitates a deeper analysis of the nuances and complexities of the threats and risks. Therefore, this report aims to provide much-needed analysis of these issues, guiding the reader through the key research findings of the project ‘Examining Socialization with a Nexus to Radicalization Across Gaming (-Adjacent) Platforms Through a Gender Lens’, which was funded by Public Safety Canada, led by RUSI and implemented by a consortium of members of the Extremism and Gaming Research Network. Taking a cross-cultural global approach and drawing on primary survey data and data collected from and on multiple gaming and gaming-adjacent platforms, this project aims to provide accessible gender-sensitive research analysis, along with pragmatic recommendations for practitioners and policymakers engaged in these spaces. Following a conceptual framing section and a chapter outlining project scope and methodology, project analysis highlights the following four key analytical focuses: 1. An assessment of the prevalence of harmful, toxic and extremist content in gaming spaces. 2. Identification of the importance of (offline) identity and culture in the formation of gamer identity and communities. 3. Analysis of gender norms and dynamics in gaming communities and their potential exploitation for radicalisation and recruitment. 4. Exploration of where gendered socialisation processes combined with normalised exposure to extreme ideas and content can reduce resilience to radicalisation. Overall, this project adds new insights to the growing body of research on the topic of extremism and gaming through the gender and intersectional lens it applies to understanding the complex relationships between gaming, identity, community and radicalisation. Additionally, it breaks ground with the focus on cross-cultural data collection. However, it also highlights the need for further research to fully grasp how these dynamics play out across different contexts and identities, contributing to more nuanced and effective approaches to countering radicalisation in gaming spaces.

London: Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies RUSI, 2024. 81p.

By Rosie Cornish and Iain Brennan

Evidence for or against a causal effect of school exclusion on offending is inhibited by random allocation not being available on ethical grounds. To advance understanding of the connection between school exclusion and ofending—specifcally, serious violent ofending—we emulate a randomized controlled trial using a target trial framework and a linkage of national education and justice data. Across more than 20,000 matched pairs of excluded and not excluded children exclusion was associated with at least a doubling of risk for perpetrating serious violence (hazard ratio 2.05, 95% CI: 1.83, 2.29) and homicide/near-miss homicide (2.36, 95% CI: 1.04, 5.36) within 12 months of target trial entry. We discuss the implications of these findings for theory and policy in education and criminal justice as well as discussing the extent to which the observed relationships can be considered causal.

The British Journal of Criminology, 2025, 20p.

By Sharon DeGraw

While the connections between science fiction and race have largely been neglected by scholars, racial identity is a key element of the subjectivity constructed in American SF. In his Mars series, Edgar Rice Burroughs primarily supported essentialist constructions of racial identity, but also included a few elements of racial egalitarianism. Writing in the 1930s, George S. Schuyler revised Burroughs' normative SF triangle of white author, white audience, and white protagonist and promoted an individualistic, highly variable concept of race instead. While both Burroughs and Schuyler wrote SF focusing on racial identity, the largely separate genres of science fiction and African American literature prevented the similarities between the two authors from being adequately acknowledged and explored. Beginning in the 1960s, Samuel R. Delany more fully joined SF and African American literature. Delany expands on Schuyler's racial constructionist approach to identity, including gender and sexuality in addition to race. Critically intertwining the genres of SF and African American literature allows a critique of the racism in the science fiction and a more accurate and positive portrayal of the scientific connections in the African American literature. Connecting the popular fiction of Burroughs, the controversial career of Schuyler, and the postmodern texts of Delany illuminates a gradual change from a stable, essentialist construction of racial identity at the turn of the century to the variable, social construction of poststructuralist subjectivity today.

London; New York: Routledge, 2007.

Edited by Silvio Cruschina & Chiara Gianollo

Language is a key element in constructing and reinforcing social identities. Through hate speech, language becomes an instrument of creating and spreading stereotypes, discrimination, and social injustices based on attributes such as race, ethnicity, religion, gender, nationality, political ideology, disability, or sexual orientation. The rise of digital communication, especially social media, has made hate speech a major topic of research in various fields. An Investigation of Hate Speech in Italian analyses hate speech from a linguistic perspective. The focus is not only on lexical means, but also on more subtle grammatical and pragmatic strategies related to implicit meanings or conversational dynamics. The volume identifies the common linguistic characteristics of hate speech in different domains of communication and explores criteria that can help distinguish between hate speech and freedom of expression. The studies in this volume focus on Italian, but the methods and findings can easily be extended to other languages for comparative and contrastive purposes. The chapters utilize extensive research data. Social media platforms have provided linguistic data that would otherwise be challenging to collect and analyse systematically. The chapters allow readers to link linguistic insights to different real-world contexts, helping them understand the impact language has on various aspects of life and society.

Helsinki: Helsinki University Press, 2024. 384p.

By Daniel Rueda

The Rise of Nationalist Populism explores the intersection between populism and nationalism, conducted through the discursive analysis of three Populist Radical Right parties that have gained prominence during the 2010s: Rassemblement National (France), Lega (Italy) and Vox (Spain). Due to its rise in Europe, the United States, and further afield, there is a growing interest in right-wing populism, an exclusionary and illiberal form of populism that has been able to attain success in several countries. This book contributes to the analysis of how populism, understood as a way of constructing the political, is shaped by the ideologies that permeate it. It examines how a certain form of nationalism is shaped by populist dynamics, that is by a certain form of identity-building. The book analyses the intersection between nationalism and populism in right-wing populist parties by using a discourse analysis methodology based on Ernesto Laclau’s works, thus conducting an examination similar to the ones presented by the Essex School of Discourse Analysis. The empirical analysis focuses on party literature and carefully selected candidate speeches at a national level for its three case studies, as well as providing an overarching comparison. The book shows how the economic crisis and the irruption of issues related to sovereignty and national identity arising in France, Italy and Spain paved the way for the emergence of their respective right-wing populist forces. The book will appeal to researchers and students of political science,

Oxford, UK: Routledge, 2025. 274p.

By Fernanda Otilla

This book investigates how digital technologies, such as social media and artificial intelligence, can contribute to combatting corruption in Brazil. Brazil, with its long history of scandals and abundant empirical data on digital media usage, serves as a perfect case study to trace the development of bottom-up and top-down digital anti-corruption technologies and their main features. This book highlights the connections between anti-corruption reforms and the rapid implementation of innovative solutions, primarily developed by tech-savvy public officials and citizens committed to anti-corruption efforts. The book draws on interviews with experts, activists and civil servants, as well as open-source materials and social media data to identify key actors, their practices, challenges and limitations of anti-corruption technologies. The result is a thorough analysis of the process of digitalisation of anti-corruption in Brazil, with a theoretical framework which can also be applied to other countries. The book introduces the concept of “integrity techies” to encompass social and political actors who develop and facilitate anti-corruption technologies, and discusses different outcomes and issues associated with digital innovation in anti-corruption. This book will be a key resource for students, researchers and practitioners interested in technologies and development in Brazil and Latin America, as well as corruption and anti-corruption studies more broadly.

Oxford, UK: Routledge, 2025. 152p

Edited by Didier Bigo, Emma Mc Cluskey, and Félix Tréguer

This book adopts a critical lens to look at the workings of Western intelligence and intelligence oversight over time and space. Largely confined to the sub-field of intelligence studies, scholarly engagements with intelligence oversight have typically downplayed the violence carried out by secretive agencies. These studies have often served to justify weak oversight structures and promoted only marginal adaptations of policy frameworks in the wake of intelligence scandals. The essays gathered in this volume challenge the prevailing doxa in the academic field, adopting a critical lens to look at the workings of intelligence oversight in Europe and North America. Through chapters spanning across multiple disciplines – political sociology, history, and law – the book aims to recast intelligence oversight as acting in symbiosis with the legitimisation of the state’s secret violence and the enactment of impunity, showing how intelligence actors practically navigate the legal and political constraints created by oversight frameworks and practices, for instance by developing transnational networks of interdependence. The book also explores inventive legal steps and human rights mechanisms aimed at bridging some of the most serious gaps in existing frameworks, drawing inspiration from recent policy developments in the international struggle against torture. This book will be of much interest to students of intelligence studies, sociology, security studies, and international relations.

London; New York: Routledge, 2024. 311p.

By Justine Nolan and Samuel Pryde

Modern slavery in global supply chains is attracting increased attention from states, businesses and civil society including momentum to seek a "regulatory solution" to combatting it. In 2018, Australia introduced a Modern Slavery Act which was modelled on (in part) the UK Modern Slavery Act (2015). These laws emphasise corporate disclosure as the primary means of identifying and remedying modern slavery in supply chains. Whilst these disclosure-based laws harden the expectation that business will conduct itself responsibly, they are ultimately founded on a soft approach that assumes that the transparency gained from disclosure will incentivise corporate action to address human rights risks. Two independent reviews conducted in relation to the UK Act (in 2018) and the Australian law (in 2023) recommended significant changes to improve their regulatory effectiveness, including establishing a more ambitious enforcement model and a requirement to conduct human rights due diligence. This article considers the lessons learned since the establishment of the two modern slavery regimes, it explores the role of human rights due diligence in strengthening the current regulatory regimes and the efficacy of establishing a "failure to prevent" offence to enforce due diligence compliance. Finally, it discusses the utility of states adopting a forced labour import ban as a complementary regulatory strategy to contribute to a holistic regulatory framework to address modern slavery.

UNSW Law Research No. 24-37, 2024, 24p.

By Holly Nguyen, Kyle J. Thomas, Jennifer J. Tostlebe

Employment theoretically serves as a source of informal social control that can promote desistance from crime (Sampson & Laub, 1993). Findings from studies assessing the effects of employment, however, have been mixed. In a seminal study, Uggen (2000) reanalyzed data from the National Supported Work (NSW) Demonstration Project and found that employment significantly reduced the rate of recidivism among individuals aged 27 and older but had no impact on younger individuals. We reproduce and replicate Uggen's (2000) findings with data from four distinct employment programs: The National Supported Work Program (1975–1979), the Transitional Aid Research Project (1976–1977), the Employment Services for Ex-Offenders (1981–1984), and the Enhanced Services for the Hard-to-Employ Center for Employment Opportunities (2004–2008). We closely reproduced Uggen's original findings in the NSW but found evidence that the statistically significant interaction between age and employment in the NSW was only present at the year 3 follow-up and the observed effect is highly sensitive to minor threats to internal validity. Furthermore, a significant age–employment interaction was not observed in the three other data sources. These findings should encourage scholars to continue to investigate the age-graded nature of employment and crime, especially through a sociohistorical lens.

Criminology, Volume61, Issue3, August 2023, Pages 449-481

By Prithika Balakrishnan

Incarceration has become the norm for those who assert their innocence. A staggering number of defendants are incarcerated prior to the adjudication of their cases—a reality that has become a central paradox of an American criminal justice system which holds axiomatic the presumption of innocence. Recent attempts to address pretrial mass incarceration through bail reform and the COVID-19 pandemic compassionate release programs have embraced digital surveillance, resulting in unintended and little-understood consequences. This Article examines how the expanded use of pretrial GPS surveillance is radically changing the presumption of innocence by implicating punitive measures absent constitutional protections and amplifying the racial disparities in our criminal justice system. Largely viewed as a substitution for physical detention and therefore a less onerous intrusion on a defendant’s liberty, pretrial GPS surveillance erodes fundamental liberties under the guise of criminal justice regulation. These highly racialized but invisible repercussions include harms to physical and psychological health, freedom of movement, privacy, and future economic self-determination. I argue that, in light of these substantial harms, courts must examine how they evaluate technological surveillance, affording defendants substantive and procedural due process protections where there currently are none. Part I of this Article charts the ways in which bail reform and the COVID-19 pandemic-related compassionate release programs have resulted in the expansion of pretrial GPS monitoring far beyond the footprint of physical incarceration. Part II, examining an empirical case study as a basis, details the specific and racialized harms imposed by technologically-mediated restraint. Part III offers a substantive and procedural due process framework for how courts should weigh these harms. Finally, I argue for a re-assessment of United States v. Salerno to recognize future dangerousness as a fundamentally racialized concept that, guided by increasingly sophisticated means of constant surveillance, oversteps the boundary between regulatory and punitive purposes.

71 UCLA L. Rev. 478 (2024), 61p.

By The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe

  The Media Literacy Index, compiled in 2023 by the Open Society Institute, suggests that SouthEastern Europe (SEE) is among the most vulnerable regions in Europe to potential online harms. Violent extremist and terrorist groups exploit the internet to spread violent content, gain support, and recruit members. The COVID-19 pandemic saw a proliferation of hostile, sexist and xenophobic conspiracy theories, as highlighted by the UN Secretary-General in August 2022. Emerging studies find that media- and information literacy (MIL) can be useful for preventing the spread of mis- and disinformation and other harmful content online. OSCE Secretariat and field operations in the region have extensively worked on both preventing/ countering violent extremism and radicalization that lead to terrorism (P/CVERLT) and MIL. They have organized a number of activities, including workshops, training sessions, TV programmes and lectures for students – all designed in an effort to address the multi-faceted challenges posed by violent extremism and radicalization that lead to terrorism (VERLT) in the region, in line with OSCE’s comprehensive security approach, as well as to forge close collaborations with state authorities and civil society, in addition to partnering with the private sector in SEE. The first part of this report places the vulnerability to online harms in the context of broader MIL trends and challenges, with a particular focus on P/CVERLT. It highlights the multi-faceted challenges posed by disinformation – including polarization, radicalization to terrorist violence and threats to democracy – before outlining key technological and psychological challenges in addressing disinformation. The second part of the report analyses how these challenges are impacting SEE. Violent extremist groups remain resilient and adaptable, maintaining their audience, size despite repeated removals of their channels and accounts from the most popular online platforms in SEE. It also explores why SEE governments are struggling to respond to the current violent extremism environment,  highlighting media issues (including challenges around transparency, regulation and threats to journalists), the lack of effective and sustainable digital and media literacy education, failures of political leadership, and poor co-ordination among relevant stakeholders. The third part then examines the impact of existing media literacy campaigns, using the OSCE’s research and engagement with experts to identify what works and why. Different approaches – including inoculation theory, counter-narratives and technological approaches – are explored, while also explaining how they can be used to address issues such as confirmation bias and how they can be integrated into age-sensitive MIL approaches. The final part of the report provides substantive recommendations for all stakeholders on framing and communication. It also suggests content and format for a multi-stakeholder training curriculum, including methodology and design as well as strategies for avoiding backlash. The report concludes that, while there are numerous resources and initiatives on addressing the information disorder5 and aiming to foster medial literacy skills, there is a significant gap in connecting these efforts to projects focused on P/CVERLT. This report represents the beginning of an initiative that seeks to raise awareness of critical thinking and analysis, and meaningful engagement in the digital space, in order to build resilience to VERLT. Its follow-up project ‘INFORMED: Information and Media Literacy in Preventing Violent Extremism. Human rights and Gender-sensitive approaches to addressing the Digital Information Disorder’ seeks to support the OSCE participating States in identifying opportunities for collaboration with non-government stakeholders, including the private sector and civil society.    

Vienna:   Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, 2024. 60p.