Influencers are persistently exposed through social media. Once almost unapproachable, celebrities are now open to daily interaction with the public. From comments, polls, emails, and even private messages, the public can engage with their celebrities with a mere click. While this engagement provides influencers with advantages, it also renders them particularly susceptible to online harassment and toxic critics. This paper investigates the characteristics, impact, and reactions to cyber victimisation among social media influencers. To accomplish this objective, the paper presents the findings of two studies: a self-reported online victimisation survey conducted among Spanish influencers and an online ethnography. The results indicate that over 70% of influencers have encountered some form of online harassment and toxic critics. Cyber victimisation, its effects, and reactions vary across socio-demographic characteristics and the influencers' profiles. Furthermore, the qualitative analysis of the online ethnography reveals that harassed influencers can be classified as non-ideal victims. The implications of these findings for the literature are discussed.

The growing dissension towards the political handling of COVID-19, widespread job losses, backlash to extended lockdowns, and hesitancy surrounding the vaccine are propagating toxic far-right discourses in the UK. Moreover, the public is increasingly reliant on different social media platforms, including a growing number of participants on the far-right's fringe online networks, for all pandemic-related news and interactions. Therefore, with the proliferation of harmful far-right narratives and the public's reliance on these platforms for socialising, the pandemic environment is a breeding ground for radical ideologically-based mobilisation and social fragmentation. However, there remains a gap in understanding how these far-right online communities, during the pandemic, utilise societal insecurities to attract candidates, maintain viewership, and form a collective on social media platforms. The article aims to better understand online far-right mobilisation by examining, via a mixed-methodology qualitative content analysis and netnography, UK-centric content, narratives, and key political figures on the fringe platform, Gab. Through the dual-qualitative coding and analyses of 925 trending posts, the research outlines the platform's hate-filled media and the toxic nature of its communications. Moreover, the findings illustrate the far-right's online discursive dynamics, showcasing the dependence on Michael Hogg's uncertainty-identity mechanisms in the community's exploitation of societal insecurity. From these results, I propose a far-right mobilisation model termed , which illustrates that toxic communication is the foundation for the community's maintenance and recruitment. These observations set a precedent for hate-filled discourse on the platform and consequently have widespread policy implications that need addressing.

The process of illicit drug trafficking on darknet markets is highly affected by various trust factors. Although the factors potentially affecting customers' risk perception can be identified based on previous research, cyber criminology has not produced empirical research ranking the importance of the specific factors. This study was designed to fill this gap by developing a tool that measures the importance of the various trust factors. To test out the measurement tool, a large-scale survey with projective situational questions was conducted among university students in Hungary. The sample ( = 5481) was compiled to include potential darknet market customers, respondents with above-average computer skills needed to access the darknet, and taking into account that university students are a group of society particularly exposed to drug consumption. The end product of this research is a trust matrix ranking the factors affecting illicit drug purchases on darknet markets. Among the factors, the survey's target group ranked reliable and undamaged delivery of goods and the reliability of vendors as the most important. The measurement tool developed in this research will facilitate further criminological research on vendor reputation. Its findings also point to the need for further research on delivery providers and predict that influencing the delivery-related risk perception of potential customers could effectively reduce demand.

The theft of medicines is a significant component of the illicit trade in pharmaceutical products. Besides small-scale thefts committed for personal usage, organised criminal networks are increasingly targeting high-priced medical products, either to reintroduce them into the legal supply chain or sell them on the black market. This crime has considerable implications that extend beyond the value of the stolen goods, including harmful impacts on citizens' health, legitimate companies, and national health systems. However, knowledge on organised theft of medicines remains limited. This paper employs a crime script analysis approach, based on interviews with relevant stakeholders and case studies retrieved across European countries, to examine the most common in the organised theft of medicines and medical devices. Potential policy implications are also discussed.

While much of work on homicide-suicide (HS) arises out of the USA and the UK, there is a paucity of research on HS outside of the Anglo-American sphere. This paper investigates HS in Hong Kong (HK), comparing the subtypes of filicide-suicide (FS) and mariticide/uxoricide-suicide (MUS) in that context as a means of testing the generalizability of past studies. Data from the HK Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) government and the HK Police Force reports retrieved 156 cases from 2000 to 2019. In that timeframe, HS resulted in 261 deaths, with MUS being the most prevalent type of HS. Male offenders and female victims are more commonly seen. Offenders are generally older than their victims, and over half of offenders are married. FS and MUS display distinct characteristics in terms of offender and victim demographics, relationship dynamics, motives, and mode of killing. Depressed mothers tend to victimize their sons in FS as a means of saving their sons from a perceived miserable future, whereas male offenders aggress upon their female partners in MUS to alleviate their own frustrations, subsequently dying by suicide out of sorrow or a fear of consequence. MUS offenders are more hostile towards their victims and tend to kill with aggressive means, whereas FS offenders are more likely to kill with altruistic motives and with minimal force. These results match patterns of MUS and FS in the Anglo-American sphere, but with some important differences in terms of the use of guns and the presence of altruistic killing.

This study examines the assumption that aspects of fear of crime (fear of rape and sense of insecurity) predict fear of terrorism. The online survey included 754 Israeli respondents, who answered questions about their demographic characteristics, fear of terrorism, fear of crime indicators (fear of rape and sense of insecurity), locus of control (LOC; internal and external), and coping strategies. The findings indicate that for women, higher belief in chance and fate, and powerful others (external LOC), higher sense of insecurity, and higher fear of rape were related to a higher fear of terrorism. For men, higher belief in chance and fate (external LOC), higher sense of insecurity, and higher fear of rape were related to a higher fear of terrorism. Furthermore, the effect of fear of rape on fear of terrorism was mediated by sense of insecurity. Our findings support the assumption that fear of crime shadows and affects fear of terrorism for men as well as women. Therefore, fear of rape should be addressed as a significant issue for both genders.

The study explores in depth the relationship between missing persons' psychosocial and criminological characteristics/circumstances and violent-fatal outcomes (suicide and homicide). A relational analytical explicative study of 929 cases and controls was designed using a retrospective and stratified design. Data gathering was conducted through the content analysis of judicial and police information, as well as the development of psychological autopsy techniques and semi-structured interviews with the persons involved in the missing person cases including offenders in prison. Bivariate and multivariate statistical techniques were utilised for analyses. The findings showed that there are different risk and protective factors which can distinguish between good state of health, suicide, and homicide outcomes. This research entails implications for prevention and police risk assessment system.

Individuals who engage in problematic behaviours within Australian night-time entertainment precincts can be banned from entering certain locations. Bans are expected to deter recipients and the wider community from further inappropriate behaviours. The collective effect is intended to reduce crime and increase safety within entertainment precincts. This study examined public awareness and understanding of two patron banning mechanisms (police barring notices and prohibition orders) used across Western Australia (WA). An anonymous survey was completed by 1018 respondents, and interviews were conducted with 54 stakeholders. Survey participants had limited awareness of patron banning: 75% had not heard of police barring notices; 87% had not heard of prohibition orders. Knowledge was higher for individuals directly associated with a ban recipient. Stakeholders also perceived a low level of community awareness and understanding of patron banning. Patron banning may have some merit as a specific deterrent for recipients but, in WA, the lack of public knowledge means that the banning provisions may currently have limited effect as a general deterrent. Public awareness should be increased in order to optimise the direct and consequential effects of patron banning policy.

This study looks at the spatial distribution of robbery against residents as a function of nonstationary density and mobility patterns in the most densely populated city in Spain, Barcelona. Based on the geographical coordinates of mobile devices, we computed two measures of density of the ambient population and the tourist presence, for work days, weekends, and holidays in 2019. Negative binomial regressions are then estimated to analyse whether these measures are correlated with the risk of robbery, controlling for land use and the characteristics of the social environment. The model reveals that residents' chances of being exposed to robbery in Barcelona depend on the social relevance and tourism attractiveness of certain places at particular times of the year. Our results disclose two sources of social disorganization as stronger predictors of the occurrence of robbery in Barcelona, respectively linked to structural processes of residential instability and daily and seasonal mobility patterns. On the one hand, we found that the effect of the density of international tourists on the outcome variable is mediated by residential volatility, which is assumed to be associated with housing shortages in neighbourhoods where short-term vacation rentals are widespread. On the other hand, the ability to exert effective social control is significantly undermined in urban areas, where the ambient population and the volume of tourists outnumber the resident population, thus increasing incidents of robbery victimization. The implications of these findings for urban policy and crime prevention in the Catalan capital are discussed.

The European legal framework is not devoid of norms that are directly or indirectly applicable to facial recognition technology for identification purposes within law enforcement. However, these various norms, which have different targets and are from multiple sources, create a kind of legal patchwork that could undermine the lawful use of this technology in criminal investigations. This paper advocates the creation of a specific law on the use of facial recognition technology for identification in law enforcement, based on existing regulations, to specifically address the pressing issues arising in this domain. The ultimate aim is to allow its use under certain conditions and to protect the rights of the people involved, but also to provide law enforcement authorities with the necessary tools to combat serious crimes.

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a major concern across the world, and its prevalence assessment has been a priority in numerous countries. However, data about IPV prevalence in Portugal is scarce and not up-to-date. This study aims to estimate IPV prevalence in Portugal. A community sample of 1392 adults (77.4% female, mean age = 34.95 years,  = 12.80) was collected through a web-based survey, between March and June of 2020. Participants completed a sociodemographic questionnaire and the (CTS-2). Accounting for all forms of IPV, a past-year prevalence of 64.4% and 64.6% were found, for victimization and perpetration, respectively. Regarding gender or sexual orientation, no significant differences were found in the past-year or the lifetime prevalence, neither concerning frequency. Directionality and dyadic concordance types were analyzed and showed that most violence was bidirectional. Having perpetrated violence in previous intimate relationships was the most influential factor when predicting past-year perpetration or victimization. Other significant predictors were age, being victimized before 15 years old, cohabitation with the intimate partner, and drug use, but the last two were only significant for victimization. Findings support the idea that IPV is a relevant phenomenon, regardless of gender and sexual orientation. It is the first nationwide, gender-inclusive study to do so in Portugal. Studies based on different samples might provide important evidence to prevent hasty conclusions about IPV prevalence and patterns and to guide empirically driven policies.

Josine Junger-Tas introduced the Communities That Care (CTC) prevention system to the Netherlands as a promising approach to address the growing youth violence and delinquency. Using data from a randomized trial of CTC in the United States and a quasi-experimental study of CTC in the Netherlands, this article describes the results of a comparison of the implementation of CTC in 12 U.S. communities and 5 Dutch neighborhoods. CTC communities in both countries achieved higher stages of a science-based approach to prevention than control communities, but full implementation of CTC in the Netherlands was hampered by the very small list of prevention programs tested and found effective in the Dutch context.

This article examines how Venezuelan forced migrants in Peru experience xenophobic discrimination, which has become increasingly linked to their criminalisation as thieves and murderers. Based on 12 months of qualitative fieldwork, including 72 in-depth interviews, five focus groups, and a survey (N116) in five Peruvian cities, we explore how Venezuelans experience, and make sense of, discrimination and criminalisation in everyday life. First, we discuss how criminalisation compares to general xenophobic discrimination, and other types of discrimination experiences. Second, we juxtapose the prevalence of xenophobic discrimination and criminalisation experiences across the five cities of our study, and between public spaces and the workspace. We then move to the qualitative discussion of the criminalisation experience in these different spaces. Fourth, we discuss how Venezuelan migrants perceive this criminalising discrimination as linked to their villanisation in the media and political discourses. Finally, we discuss our findings and make suggestion for further research. The paper contributes to the literature on migrant criminalisation by exploring how criminalisation processes play out in the context of large-scale intraregional forced displacement in the global South.

The Western homicide drop is a known fact, but the reasons behind the drop have so far mainly focused on macro explanations. In this study, we argue that to understand the homicide drop, it is necessary to first explore whether the drop is general or specific. We do this by examining the subtypes of homicide together with perpetrator and victim demographic characteristics. This study seeks to describe the nature and scope of homicidal violence in the period 1992-2016 in the Netherlands, disaggregating by subtype of homicide, and perpetrator and victim gender constellation and age. In doing so, we make use of the Dutch Homicide Monitor. Findings show that the Dutch homicide drop is significantly related to homicides resulting from disputes and robberies and intimate partner homicides. The gender constellation and age distribution in all homicide types are further explored. This study highlights the importance of disaggregating data by subtype in unravelling the homicide drop.

Education within prisons is one of the most complex scenarios in the field of education in Spain. Education is conceived in spatial and temporal coordinates that are totally alien to life in prison and often clash with economic or security and order-related contraindications that frustrate the right to education in the twenty-first century. This is an education that cannot be unconnected with digital competition, and one of its aims is to eliminate the "digital divide". On the one hand, it has been analysed by the Spanish and European authorities that there is a need for education to respond to the challenges of today's society, which is characterised by having moved from the analogue era to the digital era. This digital drive is designed to limit social differences. On the other hand, Spanish prison legislation guarantees the right to education, but without forgetting the special circumstances limiting rights in prisons. In Spain, the 1996 regulation does not seem to be able to respond to the existing difficulties, since its wording has become obsolete on this point. In this regard, the Council of Europe recalled different aspects which lead us to question how the right to comprehensive education should be skilfully combined with that of the restrictions specific to the prison environment. The study of these two aspects leads to the conclusion that it is a difficult challenge. The administration must therefore seek a fair balance between the public policy objectives pursued and respect for the rights of persons deprived of their liberty.

This Special Issue is a collection of seven papers that seek to better our understanding of how urban mobility relates to crime patterns, and how day to day movement of people in urban spaces (urban mobility) is related to spatio-temporal patterns of crime. It focusses on urban mobility, or the dynamic movement of people in relation to crime risk. Moreover, it questions how to best measure this risk using an appropriate crime denominator. Building on the work of Sarah Boggs, this special issue contends that we need more than an appropriate denominator related to the type of crime we are measuring, for example violence based on the number of potential victims present (the exposed or ambient population), or the number of burglaries per households in an area, or the number of shoplifting offences per number of shops present. It argues that this denominator needs to be both 'crime type' appropriate, and to be spatially and temporally appropriate. When considering urban mobility as flows of people, the challenge is that the denominator can not be considered as a fixed or static concept, and that we need to consider the 'dynamic denominator' challenge. Indeed, crime hot spots which do not account for dynamic denominators may be misleading for resource prioritisation. This special issue explores a range of potential solutions to this including mobile/cell phone data, transportation data, land use data, and other possible measures to address this.

Pre-trial detention empowers criminal courts to imprison defendants before they have been convicted of an offence. This is a significant power which should be subject to a rigourous decision-making process. A 2016 study of pre-trial detention practice in England and Wales highlighted concerns about such processes, recommending changes to law and practice in that jurisdiction. In 2017, several of these recommendations became law. This article details a follow-up empirical study, conducted in 2020, which sought to examine the impact of these changes on day-to-day pre-trial detention practice in criminal courts. After analysing the data, the article concludes that the changes in fact had minimal impact on practice, and suggests that changing the law does not necessarily translate into a change in the culture of pre-trial detention practice.

The decision to remand a defendant into custody pre-trial is one of the most controversial criminal justice decisions because it deprives individuals of their liberty while they are presumed to be innocent of a crime. Indeed, pre-trial detention decisions can have significant consequences for defendants, which need to be balanced against the potential implications of bail for public safety and the course of criminal proceedings. Despite this, court-based bail and remand decision-making remains relatively underexplored. In this paper, we compare court-based bail/remand decision-making in England and Wales and The Netherlands. We focus on (i) the procedure and structure of decision-making, (ii) the substantive relevant legal frameworks, (iii) the courts in which the decisions are made and the decision-makers in those courts, (iv) the conditions characterizing the decision task, and (v) the court's reasoning of bail and remand in custody decisions. Using a comparative and multi-disciplinary approach, relying on Law, Criminology, and Psychology, we make predictions about bail and remand in custody rates in the two jurisdictions as well as the decision performance of court-based decision-makers. These predictions are then evaluated using available (official) statistics and past research. We identify the need to collect more nuanced statistical data on bail and remand in custody rates and point to potentially fruitful avenues for future research. A comparative, multi-disciplinary, evidence-based approach can underpin remand reform in England and Wales, The Netherlands, and beyond.

Risk assessment tools are widely used throughout the criminal justice system to assist in making decisions about sentencing, supervision, and treatment. In this article, we discuss several methodological and practical limitations associated with risk assessment tools currently in use. These include variable predictive performance due to the exclusion of important background predictors; high costs, including the need for regular staff training, in order to use many tools; development of tools using suboptimal methods and poor transparency in how they create risk scores; included risk factors being based on dated evidence; and ethical concerns highlighted by legal scholars and criminologists, such as embedding systemic biases and uncertainty about how these tools influence judicial decisions. We discuss the potential that specific predictors, such as living in a deprived neighbourhood, may indirectly select for individuals in racial or ethnic minority groups. To demonstrate how these limitations and ethical concerns can be addressed, we present the example of OxRec, a risk assessment tool used to predict recidivism for individuals in the criminal justice system. OxRec was developed in Sweden and has been externally validated in Sweden and the Netherlands. The advantages of OxRec include its predictive accuracy based on rigorous multivariable testing of predictors, transparent reporting of results and the final model (including how the probability score is derived), scoring simplicity (i.e. without the need for additional interview), and the reporting of a wide range of performance measures, including those of discrimination and calibration, the latter of which is rarely reported but a key metric. OxRec is intended to be used alongside professional judgement, as a support for decision-making, and its performance measures need to be interpreted in this light. The reported calibration of the tool in external samples clearly suggests no systematic overestimation of risk, including in large subgroups.