By Nicolette Reyhani

From the Introduction:” Over recent years situational crime has gained considerable amount of support and recognition when determining what in society causes crime. Prior to the 1970s, the explanations for causes of crime revolved around the socio-economic effects society endured. The modern focus of criminological policy and theories began to change as attention turned to the potential environmental factors and effects they have on criminal activity (McGloin & O’Neil, 2007). The situational crime results from an offender, who under certain circumstances, commits a crime and is unlikely to repeat the offence or usually is not inclined to commit crimes, hence the emphasis on situational (Clarke, 1995). These crimes and offenders are best explained through theories that do not focus on the social causes of crime, rather the emerging prosperity of contemporary life and the rational human being.”

By  Grasso, Jordan, Stefan Vogler, Emily Greytak, Casey Kindall, & Valerie Jenness.

ACLU research report, documents LGBTQ+ communities’ experiences with police and the disparate treatment they face. In collaboration with scholars from the University of California, Irvine, and University of the Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, this research uses a national probability sample to examine differences between LGBTQ+ and non-LGBTQ+ people, as well as within the diverse LGBTQ+ community. Findings reveal that unique intersections of gender, sexuality, race, and socioeconomic status are associated with different experiences with and attitudes toward law enforcement. The report concludes with concrete recommendations for law enforcement and legislatures

New York: ACLU, 2024.  49p.

United States. Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency; United States. Federal Bureau Of Investigation; United States. Election Assistance Commission; United States. Department Of Homeland Security

From the document: "The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), in coordination with the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A), the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) prepared this overview to help partners defend against insider threat concerns that could materialize during the 2024 election cycle. For years, federal, state, local, and private sector partners nationwide have worked closely together to support state and local officials in safeguarding election infrastructure from cyber, physical, and insider threats. Because of these efforts, there is no evidence that malicious actors changed, altered, or deleted votes or had any impact on the outcome of elections. Over the past several years, the election infrastructure community has experienced multiple instances of election system access control compromises conducted by insider threats. While there is no evidence that malicious actors impacted election outcomes, it is important that election stakeholders at all levels are aware of the risks posed by insider threats and the steps that they can take to identify and mitigate these threats. This document outlines several recent examples of election security-related insider threats, discusses potential scenarios that could arise during the 2024 election cycle, and provides recommendations for how to mitigate the risk posed by insider threats."

United States. Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency; , et al. 2024. 9p

United States. Department Of Justice. Office Of The Inspector General.

From the document: "The Department of Justice (Department or DOJ) Office of the Inspector General (OIG) undertook this review to examine the Department's and its law enforcement components' roles and responsibilities in responding to protest activity and civil unrest in Washington, D.C., between May 29 and June 6, 2020, following the murder of George Floyd on May 25. The report details the relevant events involving DOJ and its components during this time period, including their assistance to the U.S. Park Police (USPP) and the U.S. Secret Service (USSS) in and around Lafayette Park in connection with USPP and USSS plans to construct a fence on H Street after violence had erupted during protests on May 29; meetings attended by then Attorney General William Barr and other DOJ officials at the White House on June 1; Barr's involvement in the events at Lafayette Park on June 1; and DOJ's deployment of its law enforcement personnel on June 1 and on subsequent days. Thereafter we describe our analysis of these events, including whether Barr affected the timing of the clearing operation at Lafayette Park on June 1."

United States. Department Of Justice. Office Of The Inspector General. Jul, 2024. 168p.

By Runnymede Trust

Summary ● New Home Office data and a government consultation has enabled the Runnymede Trust to explore the use of strip search by the police, and its impact on people of colour in the UK. ● Black people are subject to disproportionate rates of strip search across all police forces in England and Wales: ○ Black children are 6.5 times more likely than white children, and Black adults 4.7 times more likely than white adults, to be strip searched by police. ○ In London, Black children are 5.3 times more likely than white children, and Black adults 3.5 times more likely than white adults, to be strip searched by police. ○ Nearly half (47.7 per cent) of strip searches carried out on children in London are on Black children. ● The Metropolitan Police conducted around a third of strip searches in England and Wales in the year to March 2023. ● Evidence illustrates the disproportionate, racialised harm caused by strip searches. ● Instead of using heavy police powers such as strip search, and in the context of wider punitive policing and curtailment of rights, the Runnymede Trust calls for a societal reorientation to address the root causes of criminalised behaviour, to actually prevent harm.

London: The Runnymede Trust, 2024. 10p.

Perrin, Benjamin

This report considers the upcoming 2010 Olympics in Vancouver in the context of Canada's human trafficking response to date, and makes recommendations to ensure that this event is not a flashpoint for human trafficking.

Calgary: Future Group, 2007. 24p.

Halchin, L. Elaine and John W. Rollins

Issues affecting the safety and security of athletes and spectators at the 2016 Olympic Games, which begins August 5 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, are reviewed in this report from the Congressional Research Service. Concerns addressed in the CRS report include the Zika virus outbreak, domestic crime, the threat of terrorism, environmental hazards, and more.

Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 2016. 38p.

Cooper, Betsy

The UC Berkeley Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity (CLTC) has released a report focused on the rapidly evolving landscape of cybersecurity in sports, with an emphasis on the Olympic Games. The report, "The Cybersecurity of Olympic Sports: New Opportunities, New Risks," is an unprecedented look into how the proliferation of new technologies in major sporting events�from digital display panels in stadiums to online ticketing systems to artificial intelligence-based scoring software - opens the door to cyberattacks that could threaten public safety, diminish the fan experience, and undermine the integrity of competition. CLTC produced the report through a partnership with Cal Athletics (the University of California, Berkeley's athletics department) as well as the Los Angeles Organizing Committee for the 2028 Olympic Games. Using the Olympic Games as a case study, the report introduces a framework for evaluating potential risks posed by digital technologies in sports, and highlights possible threats that will arise as these technologies are deployed. The study identifies key areas of risk, including hacks on stadiums, scoring systems, and photo and video replay systems; manipulation of digital systems used by athletes for training and self-care; hacks on transportation and entry systems; as well as more extreme attacks designed to induce panic or facilitate terrorism or kidnapping. The report also includes fictional news stories from the future to highlight hypothetical incidents. One shows how malicious actors seeking to disrupt the Olympics could cause mass panic in a stadium by hacking into digital display panels. Another story highlights how hackers could manipulate a software-based scoring system in gymnastics, throwing a marquee event into chaos. A third story focuses on how "smart" appliances installed in athlete' residences in the Olympics Village could be hacked and used for surveillance. The report suggests that sporting event planners should consider the potential cybersecurity implications of any new technology, noting that "organizers should press to ensure that there are tangible benefits to incorporating digital devices�and that significant risks can be mitigated�before going forward."

Berkeley, CA: University of California at Berkeley, Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity, 2017. 40p.

By Cynthia Dion-Schwarz, Alt. Authors: Nathan Ryan, Julia A. Thompson, Erik Silfversten, Giacomo Persi Paoli

This report profiles the cybersecurity threat landscape faced by Japan as the host nation of the 2020 Summer Games and 2020 Paralympic Games of the XXXII Olympiad. The overarching objective of the study was to produce a threat actor typology, based on a risk assessment of the Tokyo 2020 threat landscape. Synthesizing multiple sources of primary and secondary data, the study team developed a visualization of the threat landscape that provides an at-a-glance overview to guide Olympic security planners, computer emergency response teams, and policy- and decisionmakers as they prioritize and address cybersecurity threats. The risk assessment also considered the motivation, sophistication, and propensity of threat actors to collude with one another. This research could be valuable to a wide variety of stakeholders and will be of particular interest to stakeholders involved in planning and ensuring the security of the Tokyo 2020 Games. The research also serves as a reference to inform ongoing policy debates on cybersecurity preparations for mega-events and as a basis for future research.

Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2018. 97p.

UNITED STATES. WHITE HOUSE OFFICE

From the document: "Over the last 3 years, we have more than doubled our global health partnerships--working directly with 50 countries to ensure they can more effectively prevent, detect, and control outbreaks. And we are working with partners to support an additional 50 countries to save even more lives and minimize economic losses. With strong bipartisan support from Congress, we also championed the creation of the Pandemic Fund, a new international body that has already catalyzed $2 billion in financing from 27 contributors, including countries, foundations, and philanthropies, to build stronger global health security capabilities. We are working to make life-saving medicines and vaccines more rapidly available in health emergencies, including through supporting Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations. And we are leading efforts to ensure international financial institutions, such as the World Bank Group, scale up lending for pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response because health security, economic security, climate security, and national security are all related. This new Global Health Security Strategy lays out the actions the United States will take over the next 5 years to ensure we continue this progress[.]"

United States. White House Office. APR, 2024. 64p.

NOWRASTEH, ALEX

From the document: "This policy analysis is an update and simplification of three previous Cato policy analyses on the same topic that were published in 2016, 2019, and 2023. It differs from the 2016 and 2019 editions because it does not include the total number of visas issued during the years analyzed, does not include a cost-benefit analysis of different immigration policies intended to reduce the threat of foreign-born terrorism, and it further differs from the 2019 version because it does not include native-born terrorists. The risks of foreign-born terrorists on US soil are quantified by evaluating how many people they murdered and injured in attacks, the ideologies of the attackers, the visas on which the foreign-born terrorists entered the country, their countries of origin, and the costs of their terrorist attacks."

CATO INSTITUTE. 9 APR, 2024. 28p.

UNITED STATES. SPACE FORCE

From the document: "The threats the United States faces from its strategic competitors have grown substantially. At the same time, the environment is being shaped by a rapidly growing commercial space sector, which is cultivating an ecosystem of innovation and reducing barriers to entry to deliver new, operationally relevant capabilities. This has extraordinary implications for global security and stability. The United States Space Force (USSF) will be more resilient and capable if it combines organic capabilities with the capabilities from other providers. Therefore, the USSF will integrate a mix of organic, allied, and commercial space solutions into hybrid architectures where the nation's space capabilities truly are greater than the sum of the parts. The USSF will leverage the commercial sector's innovative capabilities, scalable production, and rapid technology refresh rates to enhance the resilience of national security space architectures, strengthen deterrence, and support Combatant Commander objectives in times of peace, competition, crisis, conflict, and post-conflict."

UNITED STATES. DEPARTMENT OF THE AIR FORCE. 8 APR, 2024. 19p.

DELFORGE, DAMIEN; BELOW, REGINA; WATHELET, VALENTIN; LOENHOUT, JORIS VAN; SPEYBROECK, NIKO

From the document: "In 2023, the Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT) recorded a total of 399 disasters related to natural hazards. These events resulted in 86,473 fatalities and affected 93.1 million people. The economic losses amounted to US$202.7 billion. The 2023 earthquake in Türkiye and the Syrian Arab Republic was the most catastrophic event of the year in terms of mortality and economic damage, with 56,683 reported deaths and damage worth US$42.9 billion damage. This earthquake impacted an estimated 18 million people, a total for both countries, making it the second most impactful event in terms of affected individuals. The first was the 2023 Indonesian Drought, which affected 18.8 million people from June to September 2023. In the year under review there was a high level of disaster mortality, with a total of 86,473 deaths, exceeding the 20-year average of 64,148 deaths and the median value of 19,290 deaths for the same period, mainly due to the dramatic earthquake in Türkiye and Syria in February 2023, counting for two-thirds of the EM-DAT total deaths. The number of individuals affected by disasters, 93.1 million, is below the 2003-2022 annual average of 175.5 million."

CENTRE FOR RESEARCH ON THE EPIDEMIOLOGY OF DISASTERS; CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF LOUVAIN (1970- : FRENCH-SPEAKING); UNITED STATES. AGENCY FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT. 3 APR, 2024.

By Liam Michaud a a , b , * , Gillian Kolla c , d , Katherine Rudzinski Graduate Program in Socio-Legal Studies, York University, Toronto, ON, Canada b e , Adrian Guta

The ongoing overdose and drug toxicity crisis in North America has contributed momentum to the emergence of safer supply prescribing and programs in Canada as a means of providing an alternative to the highly volatile unregulated drug supply. The implementation and scale-up of safer supply have been met with a vocal reaction on the part of news media commentators, conservative politicians, recovery industry representatives, and some prominent addiction medicine physicians. This reaction has largely converged around several narratives, based on unsubstantiated claims and anecdotal evidence, alleging that safer supply programs are generating a "new opioid epidemic", reflecting an emerging alignment among key institutional and political actors. Employing situational analysis method, and drawing on the policy studies and social science scholarship on moral panics, this essay examines news media coverage from January to July 2023, bringing this into dialogue with other existing empirical sources on safer supply (e.g. Coroner's reports, program evaluations, debates among experts in medical journals). We employ eight previously established criteria delineating moral panics to critically appraise public dialogue regarding safer supply, diverted medication, and claims of increased youth initiation to drug use and youth overdose. In detailing the emergence of a moral panic regarding safer supply, we trace historic continuities with earlier drug scares in Canadian history mobilized as tools of racialized poverty governance, as well as previous backlashes towards healthcare interventions for people who use drugs (PWUD). The essay assesses the claims of moral entrepreneurs against the current landscape of opioid use, diversion, and overdose among youth, notes the key role played by medical expertise in this and previous moral panics, and identifies what the convergence of these narratives materialize for PWUD and healthcare access, as well as the broader policy responses such narratives activate.

International Journal of Drug Policy 127 (2024) 104423

By European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) to Correlation – European Harm Reduction Network (C-EHRN)

Drug consumption rooms (DCRs) are fixed or mobile spaces in which people who use drugs are provided with sterile drug use equipment and can use illicit drugs under the supervision of trained staff. They exist in several European countries, Australia, Canada, Mexico and the USA, and are usually located in areas where there is an open drug scene and injecting in public places is common. Their primary goal is to reduce morbidity and mortality by providing a safer environment for drug use and training clients in safer forms of drug use. Other explicit objectives may be providing a conduit to other care services and reducing public nuisance. A main aim of this report is to inform discussions on DCRs by examining the available evidence, as well as reviewing the various models being adopted and their characteristics. Two operational models are typically used in Europe: (1) integrated DCRs, operating within low-threshold facilities, where the supervision of drug use is just one of several services offered; and (2) specialised DCRs, which provide a narrower range of services directly related to supervised consumption. Services typically available within DCRs include: provision of a supervised environment for drug use; clean drug use equipment, including sterile syringes; and rapid interventions if overdose occurs. In addition, DCRs may offer counselling services; primary medical care; training for clients in safer forms of drug use, overdose awareness and the use of naloxone; and referral to social, healthcare and treatment services. Access to consumption facilities may be restricted to registered service users, and often certain conditions have to be met, for example minimum age and local residency. Typically, drugs used in these facilities must be obtained prior to entry. Drug dealing and drug sharing are not allowed within the facilities (staff may be required to call in the police if necessary), and staff can advise but do not directly assist clients in administering their drugs. As frontline, low-threshold services, drug consumption rooms are often among the first places where insights can be gained into new drug use patterns, and, thus, they also can have a role to play in the early identification of new and emerging trends among high-risk populations using their services. The operation and functioning of DCRs has adapted to changes in the profiles and needs of their target groups, and to new patterns of use, as well as to new types of drugs emerging on the market. DCRs may also therefore be well placed to identify and inform strategies to mitigate harms related to developments in the illicit drug market that present new health challenges.

Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union, 2023. 52p.

By Alexandra Gannoni , Alexandra Voce, Sarah Napier, Hayley Boxall and Dana Thomsen

This study reviews initiatives that aim to prevent child sexual abuse material (CSAM) offending, including evidence of effectiveness. Information was sourced via a literature search and input from an international expert advisory group. The study identified 74 initiatives in 16 countries, and 34 eligible studies measuring implementation and effectiveness.

The CSAM offending prevention initiatives identified in the study include helplines, therapeutic treatment and psychoeducation, online self-management courses, education and awareness campaigns, and other forms of support. Importantly, findings indicate that media and social media campaigns have successfully reached large numbers of offenders, both detected and undetected. While outcomes of programs are mixed, findings indicate that prevention initiatives can encourage help-seeking, reduce risk factors for offending, enhance protective factors, and reduce contact sexual offending against children. Findings also suggest that initiatives aimed at contact child sexual abuse offenders are not necessarily effective in reducing CSAM offending. Evaluations of initiatives aimed specifically at CSAM offending show promise but are limited methodologically. Further and more robust evaluations are required to determine their effect on CSAM use.

Research Report no. 28. Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology.2023. 125p.

By Geoffrey Carney-Knisely , Marquianna Griffin , Alaxandria Crawford , Kamesha Spates and Parvati Singh

The suicide rate for Black youth has increased by 60% between 2007 and 2020. Direct or vicarious racial trauma experienced through exposure to police brutality may underlie these concerning trends.MethodsWe obtained nationally aggregated monthly counts of suicides for non-Hispanic Black and White youth (age ≤ 24 years) and adults (age > 24 years) from the National Mortality Vital Statistics restricted-use data files provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, from 2013 to 2019. Monthly counts of Black youth suicides constituted our main outcome. We defined our exposure as the monthly counts of police killings of unarmed Black persons over 84 months (2013 to 2019), retrieved from the Mapping Police Violence database. We used ARIMA (AutoRegressive Integrated Moving Average) time-series analyses to examine whether Black youth suicides increased within 0 to 3 months following police killings of unarmed Black persons, controlling for autocorrelation and corresponding series of white youth suicides.ResultsSuicides among Black youth increase by ~1 count within three months following an increase in police killings of unarmed Black persons (coefficient=0.95,p<0.05), which approximates to about 267 suicides among Black youth over our study period. The observed increase in suicides concentrates among Black male youth.

Annals of Epidemiology. Volume 94, June 2024, Pages 91-99. June 2024.

By Ben Grunwald, John Rappaport and Michael Berg

Private security officers outnumber police by a wide margin, and the gap may be growing. As cities have claimed to defund the police, many have quietly expanded their use of private security, reallocating spending from the public to the private sector. It is difficult to know what to make of these trends, largely because we know so little about what private security looks like on the ground. On one prevalent view of the facts, a shift from public to private security would mean little more than a change of uniform, as the two labor markets are deeply intertwined. Indeed, academics, the media, popular culture, and the police themselves all tell us that private security is some amalgam of a police retirement community and a dumping ground for disgraced former cops. But if, instead, private officers differ systematically from the public police—and crossover between the sectors is limited—then substitution from policing to private security could drastically change who is providing security services.

We bring novel data to bear on these questions, presenting the largest empirical study of private security to date. We introduce an administrative dataset covering nearly 300,000 licensed private security officers in the State of Florida. By linking this dataset to similarly comprehensive information about public law enforcement, we have, for the first time, a nearly complete picture of the entire security labor market in one state. We report two principal findings. First, the public and private security markets are predominantly characterized by occupational segregation, not integration. The individuals who compose the private security sector differ markedly from the public police; they are, for example, significantly less likely to be white men. We also find that few private officers, roughly 2%, have previously worked in public policing, and even fewer will go on to policing in the future. Second, while former police make up a small share of all private security, roughly a quarter of cops who do cross over have been fired from a policing job. In fact, fired police officers are nearly as likely to land in private security as to find another policing job, and a full quarter end up in one or the other. We explore the implications of these findings, including intersections with police abolition and the future of policing, at the paper’s close.

Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, Forthcoming . U of Chicago, Public Law Working Paper No. 850. University of Chicago Coase-Sandor Institute for Law & Economics Research Paper No. 1004. Duke Law School Public Law & Legal Theory Series No. 2024-24

MAY CONTAIN MARKUP

By Brian E. McKnight

FROM THE PREFACE: “In moving down through this nested hierarchy of organizational types, we reach one of the key steps at a level where the social units are distinct as unique cultural and political entities. What was peculiarly Byzantine, or peculiarly Chinese, about the perception of law-enforcement problems and responses and about the ways in which lawbreakers were treated? These attributes, which distinguish one such political entity from another, are simply parts of our definition of what it is to be Chinese or Byzantine or Roman. Such defining attributes evolve over time. The Chinese language has changed from the time of the Shang dynasty to today. However, the changes in these fundamental attributes are evolutionary, not revolutionary. Despite the ways in which it has changed, the Chinese language has remained the Chinese language..”

Cambridge University Press. 1992. 572p.

Edited by Yvonne Daly

Police Custody in Ireland brings together experts from policing studies, law, criminology, and psychology, to critically examine contemporary police custody in Ireland, what we know about it, how it operates, how it is experienced, and how it might be improved. This first-of-its-kind collection focuses exclusively on detention in Garda Síochána stations, critically examining it from human rights and best practice perspectives. It examines the physical environment of custody, police interview techniques, existing protections, rights, and entitlements, and experiences of specific communities in custody, such as children, ethnic minorities, non-English speakers, the Mincéir/Traveller community, and those with intellectual disabilities or Autism Spectrum Disorder. Police Custody in Ireland gives a snapshot of garda custody as it is now and makes important recommendations for necessary future improvements. An accessible and compelling read, this book will be of interest to those engaged in policing and criminology, as well as related areas of interest such as human rights, youth justice and disability studies.

Abingdon, Oxon ; New York : Routledge, 2024. 363p.