When Your Best Friend Is Murdered: Experiences of Grief and Trauma with Crew-involved Youth

Trauma and Grief are two critical drivers of violence, yet these elements are often missing in discussions concerning youth violence, especially how we understand crews - building-based groups of youth whose conflicts revolve around turf and reputation rather than criminal enterprised.  Understanding the role of trauma and grief offers critical insights into how and why violence is sustained in crew-involved youth. Losing someone to murder is uniquely difficult to process and, disturbingly, crew-involved youth face this life experience frequently.  Death through murder is especially traumatic because death is sudden, horrific, and caused by another person.  Further, youth involved in crews often experience a variety of traumas and stressors throughout their lives.  When trauma symptoms and grief combine, it can lead to an experience known as complicated grieving, which is associated with worse health outcomes and prolonged distress

Social Media and Real-World Consequences: Volume 1 - From Virtual to Violent: How Social Media Fuels Real-World Violence

Social media has become a part of everyday life. All types of real-world behavior are now showcased online -- including criminal behavior, bullying, threats and the glorification of violence. Increasingly, youth associated with antisocial peer groups -- such as neighborhood-based "crews" engaging in violent rivalries -- use social media as a tool to create criminal opportunities and amplify conflicts. Unfortunately, in many cases, this type of social media usage can lead to real-life violence or other serious ramifications, such as arrest. Volume 1 of the Crime Commission's series, "Social Media & Real-World Consequences," provides an overview of the ways youth are communicating on social media and the associated risks of these communications turning into real-world violence

Social Media and Real-World Consequences: Volume 2 - Responding to Social Media Norms: Developing a Comprehensive Strategy to Promote Digital Citizenship

Social media has become a part of everyday life. All types of real-world behavior are now showcased online -- including criminal behavior, bullying, threats and the glorification of violence. Increasingly, youth associated with antisocial peer groups -- such as neighborhood-based "crews"? engaging in violent rivalries -- use social media as a tool to create criminal opportunities and amplify conflicts. Unfortunately, in many cases, this type of social media usage can lead to real-life violence or other serious ramifications, such as arrest. Volume 2 of the Crime Commission's series, "Social Media & Real-World Consequences", provides an overview of the range of legal, educational and professional consequences youth may face in the real-world

Examining Perceptions of Online Harassment among Constables in England and Wales

The ubiquity of the Internet and computer technology has enabled individuals to engage in bullying, threats, and harassing communications online. Limited research has found that local line officers may not view these offenses as serious compared to real world crimes despite their negative physical and emotional impact on victims. The perceptions of officers can produce poor interactions with victims during calls for service, particularly victim blaming, which can reduce citizens’ confidence in police agencies generally. However, local law enforcement agencies are increasingly mandated to respond to these cases, calling to question how their views may impact the community. This study examined the attitudinal and demographic factors associated with the negative views of online harassment and bullying within a sample of 1,348 constables from 34 local agencies across England and Wales. The study found that constables with negative views toward cybercrimes and worked in agencies with inconsistent messaging related to online crimes were more likely to view online harassment as less serious and believe that these offenses could be avoided by victims. The implications of this study for local police staff and command are discussed in detail

Social Media as an Opportunity for Service

Social media platforms are popular and serve as a natural extension of our social lives. However, online platforms are emerging as places where people also engage in risky behaviors and express trauma, grief, and emotional distress. This is particularly striking among youth involved in gun violence, whose social media activity often escalates and amplifies real-world violence and illuminates their experiences with grief and trauma.The high visibility of harmful behavior, trauma, grief, and emotional distress on social media gives service providers the opportunity to know exactly who is at the highest risk for committing or being victimized by violence and in greatest need of service. We need to capitalize on this opportunity by giving anti-violence professionals a new method of responding to risky social media use. As modes of communication have changed to favor online spaces, so too must our interventions.Partnering with NYC Cure Violence and researchers from NYU, the Crime Commission developed a multi-tiered intervention model called E-Responder, which aims to intervene with youth on social media, connect them to additional services, de-escalate conflict, and instill long-term life skills in critical areas.Programs like E-Responder are designed to reach out to youth within these virtual spaces of conflict in order to prevent violence. Additional interventions that seek to promote skills and reduce risks with others should capitalize on the opportunity to use social media in their work. In this way we can all ensure that the best strategies and resources are available to young people in the places where they are actively engaged and expressing themselves

'If U Don’t Pay they will Share the Pics' : Exploring Sextortion in the Context of Romance Fraud

Romance fraud involves the guise of a perceived genuine relationship to gain a financial reward. While those who commit these crimes employ a variety of techniques, emerging evidence suggests the use of sextortion to financially gain from victims. To date, sextortion has been explored generally in the image-based sexual abuse and sexual violence literature but not in the context of romance fraud. This article explores reports of 258 individuals who made a complaint to Scamwatch (Australian online fraud reporting portal) about romance fraud, captured between July 2018 and July 2019 (inclusive). Each of these complaints directly references the use of sextortion, through a threat to expose an intimate image or recording in response to a monetary request. Using an established cyber sextortion typology, this article applies these categories in the context of romance fraud to determine if there is consistency in the use of this technique, or whether its use in the context of romance fraud is unique.</p

The Moderating Role of Maternal CU Traits in the Stability of Justice-Involved Adolescents\u27 CU Traits

OBJECTIVE: Callous-unemotional (CU) traits are associated with chronic and severe antisocial behavior. Although previous research has found that parents play an important role in the etiology and maintenance of youth CU traits, little research has examined the extent that parents\u27 own CU traits impact the stability of their children\u27s CU traits. The present study investigated the moderating role of maternal CU traits on developmental changes in youth CU traits. METHOD: A sample of 346 mother-son dyads, in which all youth were justice-involved males (= 15.81; 57.80% Latino, 20.52% White, 18.21% Black, 3.47% other race/ethnicity), across three states (California, Louisiana, and Pennsylvania) completed a semi-structured interview. RESULTS: Youth exhibited a decrease in CU traits over 30 months. Mothers\u27 CU traits moderated this relation, such that high maternal CU traits were associated with a smaller decrease in CU traits than low or average maternal CU traits, both when considering youth CU traits continuously and using a clinically significant cut score. The findings remained for continuous CU traits even after accounting for environmental factors (i.e., maternal warmth, maternal hostility, victimization, and witnessing violence), and these environmental factors did not vary over time. CONCLUSION: The results highlight the importance of maternal influence in understanding how youth CU traits change over time, and have important implications for the use of parenting and family-level interventions among justice-involved youth