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The Janes
\"The electric follow-up to Louisa Luna's acclaimed thriller Two Girls Down, featuring private investigators Alice Vega and Max Caplan.\"-- Provided by publisher.
BOOK
Artificial Intelligence Crime: An Interdisciplinary Analysis of Foreseeable Threats and Solutions
Artificial intelligence (AI) research and regulation seek to balance the benefits of innovation against any potential harms and disruption. However, one unintended consequence of the recent surge in AI research is the potential re-orientation of AI technologies to facilitate criminal acts, term in this article AI-Crime (AIC). AIC is theoretically feasible thanks to published experiments in automating fraud targeted at social media users, as well as demonstrations of AI-driven manipulation of simulated markets. However, because AIC is still a relatively young and inherently interdisciplinary area—spanning socio-legal studies to formal science—there is little certainty of what an AIC future might look like. This article offers the first systematic, interdisciplinary literature analysis of the foreseeable threats of AIC, providing ethicists, policy-makers, and law enforcement organisations with a synthesis of the current problems, and a possible solution space.
Journal Article
The Effects of Local Police Surges on Crime and Arrests in New York City
The New York Police Department (NYPD) under Operation Impact deployed extra police officers to high crime areas designated as impact zones. Officers were encouraged to conduct investigative stops in these areas. City officials credited the program as one of the leading causes of New York City's low crime rate. We tested the effects of Operation Impact on reported crimes and arrests from 2004 to 2012 using a difference-in-differences approach. We used Poisson regression models to compare differences in crime and arrest counts before and after census block groups were designated as impact zones compared to census block groups in the same NYPD precincts but outside impact zones. Impact zones were significantly associated with reductions in total reported crimes, assaults, burglaries, drug violations, misdemeanor crimes, felony property crimes, robberies, and felony violent crimes. Impact zones were significantly associated with increases in total reported arrests, arrests for burglary, arrests for weapons, arrests for misdemeanor crimes, and arrests for property felony crimes. Impact zones were also significantly associated with increases in investigative stops for suspected crimes, but only the increase in stops made based on probable cause indicators of criminal behaviors were associated with crime reductions. The largest increase in investigative stops in impact zones was based on indicators of suspicious behavior that had no measurable effect on crime. The findings suggest that saturating high crime blocks with police helped reduce crime in New York City, but that the bulk of the investigative stops did not play an important role in the crime reductions. The findings indicate that crime reduction can be achieved with more focused investigative stops.
Journal Article
Analysis of México’s Narco-War Network (2007–2011)
Since December 2006, more than a thousand cities in México have suffered the effects of the war between several drug cartels, amongst themselves, as well as with Mexican armed forces. Sources are not in agreement about the number of casualties of this war, with reports varying from 30 to 100 thousand dead; the economic and social ravages are impossible to quantify. In this work we analyze the official report of casualties in terms of the location and the date of occurrence of the homicides. We show how the violence, as reflected by the number of casualties, has increased over time and spread across the country. Next, based on the correlations between cities in the changes of the monthly number of casualties attributed to organized crime, we construct a narco-war network where nodes are the affected cities and links represent correlations between them. We find that close geographical distance between violent cities does not imply a strong correlation amongst them. We observe that the dynamics of the conflict has evolved in short-term periods where a small core of violent cities determines the main theatre of the war at each stage. This kind of analysis may also help to describe the emergence and propagation of gang-related violence waves.
Journal Article
Where Is the Opioid Use Epidemic in Mexico? A Cautionary Tale for Policymakers South of the US–Mexico Border
In North America, opioid use and its harms have increased in the United States and Canada over the past 2 decades. However, Mexico has yet to document patterns suggesting a higher level of opioid use or attendant harms. Historically, Mexico has been a country with low-level use of opioids, although heroin use has been documented. Low-level opioid use is likely attributable to structural, cultural, and individual factors. However, a range of dynamic factors may be converging to increase the use of opioids: legislative changes to opioid prescribing, national health insurance coverage of opioids, pressure from the pharmaceutical industry, changing demographics and disease burden, forced migration and its trauma, and an increase in the production and trafficking of heroin. In addition, harm-reduction services are scarce. Mexico may transition from a country of low opioid use to high opioid use but has the opportunity to respond effectively through a combination of targeted public health surveillance of high-risk groups, preparation of appropriate infrastructure to support evidence-based treatment, and interventions and policies to avoid a widespread opioid use epidemic.
Journal Article
Drugs, crime, and racial disparities in the homeless population gathered from a sample of police reports: Evidence from Brazil
Brazil is one of the most unequal democracies in the world. Although the number of homeless individuals in our country has increased due to the reproduction of people living in extreme poverty, little has been discussed about their welfare and rights. In the present study, we provide analysis with a theoretical-methodological approach directed at homeless people living in the wealthy neoliberal middle-sized southeast city of São Paulo, Brazil’s richest state. Data was acquired from police reports with prior permission from the Civil Police of São Paulo and the São Paulo Interior Judiciary Police Department. Our results illustrate that the homelessness phenomenon in Franca appears to be comparable to that of other large urban cities, where Blacks, a minority of the population, make up the bulk of homeless individuals. It also denies that homeless activity increases criminality, emphasizes the difference between Blacks and Whites drug users’ criminal behavior, with Whites being more active in theft and robbery and Blacks in trafficking, and extends the idea that drug use by homeless people is stress-related and hence an indicator of a health condition.
•Homelessness portrays the role of capitalism in its creation and perpetuation.•The neoliberal frame characterizes black and poor people as lacking merit.•In homeless people, ethnic origin is on the root of stigmatization and segregation.•Black people is more victim of this type of violence resulting from social stigma.
Journal Article
Forensic drug intelligence and the rise of cryptomarkets. Part I: Studying the Australian virtual market
•Results revealed the domestic nature of the virtual Australian illicit drug trade.•The virtual Australian illicit drug trade is dominated by amphetamine-type substances (ATS).•The online price fixed by Australian sellers for the considered illicit drugs is higher than for any other shipping countries.•Understanding the link between virtual and physical drug market necessitates the integration of different perspective.
Analysing and understanding cryptomarkets is essential to become proactive in the fight against the illicit drug trade. Such a research seeks to combine a diversity of indicators related to the virtual (darknet markets) and physical (the traditional “offline” market) aspects of the illicit drug trade to provide information on the distribution and consumption as well as to assess similarities/differences between the virtual and physical markets.
This study analysed data that had previously been collected on cryptomarkets from December 2013 to March 2015. In this article, the data was extracted from two marketplaces, Evolution and Silk Road 2, and analysed to evaluate the illicit drug trade of the Australian virtual market (e.g. information about the supply and demand, trafficking flows, prices of illicit drugs and market share) and highlight its specificities.
The results revealed the domestic nature of the virtual Australian illicit drug trade (i.e. Australian sellers essentially ship their products to local customers). This may explain the coherence between supply and demand. Particularly, the virtual Australian illicit drug trade is dominated by amphetamine-type substances (ATS), mainly methamphetamine and 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA), and cannabis. Australia, as a shipping country, accounts for half of the methamphetamine offered and purchased on Silk Road 2. Moreover, it was observed that the online price fixed by Australian sellers for the considered illicit drugs is higher than for any other shipping countries, which is in line with previous studies.
Understanding the virtual and physical drug market necessitates the integration and fusion of different perspectives to capture the dynamic nature of drug trafficking, monitor its evolution and finally improve our understanding of the phenomenon so policy makers can make informed decisions.
Journal Article
Modeling Opioid Abuse: A Case Study of the Opioid Crisis in New England
For the past two decades, the USA has been embroiled in a growing prescription drug epidemic. The ripples of this epidemic have been especially apparent in the state of Maine, which has fought hard to mitigate the damage caused by addiction to pharmaceutical and illicit opioids. In this study, we construct a mathematical model of the opioid epidemic incorporating novel features important to better understanding opioid abuse dynamics. These features include demographic differences in population susceptibility, general transmission expressions, and combined consideration of pharmaceutical opioid and heroin abuse. We demonstrate the usefulness of this model by calibrating it with data for the state of Maine. Model calibration is accompanied by sensitivity and uncertainty analysis to quantify potential error in parameter estimates and forecasts. The model is analyzed to determine the mechanisms most influential to the number of opioid abusers and to find effective ways of controlling opioid abuse prevalence. We found that the mechanisms most influential to the overall number of abusers in Maine are those involved in illicit pharmaceutical opioid abuse transmission. Consequently, preventative strategies that controlled for illicit transmission were more effective over alternative approaches, such as treatment. These results are presented with the hope of helping to inform public policy as to the most effective means of intervention.
Journal Article
How adolescents cope with food insecurity in Baltimore City: an exploratory study
To increase our understanding about food insecurity among urban adolescents, we conducted a qualitative study in Baltimore City with adolescents to: (i) explore how adolescents experience and cope with food insecurity; and (ii) identify community-based approaches or interventions for addressing food insecurity.
A total of eight focus groups were conducted across six neighbourhoods. To gather sociodemographic characteristics and personal data on food insecurity, all consented adolescents completed a brief questionnaire.
Six purposively selected neighbourhoods in Baltimore City, USA.
A total of fifty-three adolescents between the ages of 14 and 19 years participated in the study.
Although half of our sample was classified as food insecure, everyone in the focus groups was aware of adolescents who engaged in risky behaviours to get money for food. Among girls, prostituting was the most commonly mentioned behaviour, whereas for boys, it was selling drugs or stealing to get money for food. Adolescents also described tremendous stigma associated with food insecurity and agreed that food insecurity has to be viewed within a broader set of economic challenges.
Addressing food insecurity among adolescents in disadvantaged neighbourhoods should be a high priority for policy makers and practitioners. Current feeding programmes are not addressing the needs of adolescents; as a result, adolescents are at risk for a variety of harmful behaviours and outcomes, with long-term negative health and social consequences.
Journal Article