Victims’ motivations for reporting to the ‘fraud justice network’

ABSTRACT

It is well-established that (online) fraud has one of the lowest reporting rates across all crime categories. However, there is a large gap examining why some victims choose to report online fraud offenses. Therefore, this paper examines the under-researched group of online fraud victims who reported their crimes to authorities. Based on interviews with 80 victims across Australia, who lost at least AUD10,000 to online fraud, this paper demonstrates two motivations behind reporting: a sense of individual justice, and an altruistic notion of protecting others. The paper also highlights the negativity associated with the reporting process. The paper uses these findings to determine what can be learnt from the victims who were willing to report. It concludes with a discussion of the challenges evident in seeking to improve the confidence of victims reporting to authorities.     

Decentring state categories: diaspora within a Palestinian geopolitical assemblage in Nicosia,Cyprus

With over 50% of Palestinians in diaspora, global constructions of what is Palestinian are central to Palestinian geopolitics. This article examines how the meanings and implications of the label “Palestinian” in diaspora are produced as Palestinians negotiate the politics of migration and citizenship while living in Cyprus. Using the concept of a geopolitical assemblage incorporates the role of state immigration control into a critical discussion of diaspora. Cyprus provides a complex context in which the momentary constructions of a Palestinian diaspora in relation to other geopolitical entities affects Palestinians despite their immigration or citizenship status in Cyprus.     

The impact of after‐school programs on the routine activities of middle‐school students: Results from a randomized,controlled trial*

Research Summary Unsupervised after‐school time for adolescents is a concern for parents and policymakers alike. Evidence linking unsupervised adolescent socializing to problem behavior outcomes heightens this concern among criminologists. Routine activities theory suggests that, when youth peer groups congregate away from adult authority, both opportunity for and motivation to engage in deviant acts increase. After‐school programs are a possible solution to unsupervised teen socializing during afternoon hours and are much in demand. However, empirical research has yet to test the relationship between the availability of after‐school programs and youth routine activities. This study presents evidence from a multisite, randomized, controlled trial of an after‐school program for middle‐school students in an urban school district. Policy Implications Youth in the treatment group engaged in less unsupervised socializing after school than youth in the control group but not as much less as would be expected if the after‐school program was providing consistent supervision to youth who would otherwise be unsupervised. Additional analyses examined why the influence of the after‐school program was not more pronounced. We found that, although program attendance was related to decreases in unsupervised socializing, the program did not attract many delinquency‐prone youths who were unsupervised, which suggests that the students most in need of the program did not benefit. Furthermore, data obtained from a mid‐year activity survey revealed that youth in the study were highly engaged in a variety of after‐school activities. The addition of the after‐school program into the mixture of available activities had little effect on the frequency with which students participated in organized activities after school.     

Gender Differences in Worry About a Terrorist Attack: A Cross-National Examination of Individual- and National-Level Factors

Prior research has found gender to be associated with worry about crime and terrorism. We used World Values Survey data to assess gender differences in worry about terrorism across 54 nations. Analyses also examined the influence of individual- and national-level factors. Women were significantly more worried about terrorism in 22 of the 54 nations. Men in Iraq, Libya, Yemen, and New Zealand were significantly more worried about terrorism than women. Individuals were more likely to worry about terrorism as the nation’s average mortality count in terrorist incidents increased. Policy implications and directions for future research are discussed.     

Stewardship and health systems strengthening: An overview

The World Health Organization (WHO) introduced the concept of stewardship to clarify the practical components of governance in the health sector. For the WHO, stewardship concentrated on how government actors take responsibility for the health system and the wellbeing of the population, fulfill health system functions, assure equity, and coordinate interaction with government and society. This article overviews the contents of this special issue, which offers examples of how health stewards in a variety of countries have addressed issues of health security, primary care expansion, family planning, and quality of care. The contributors' articles draw lessons for policy, programs, and management useful for practitioners and scholars. Our overview identifies several themes emerging from the articles: the foundational role of legal frameworks for effective stewardship, the importance of institutional arrangements as enablers, the influence of regional and global entities on national stewardship, the connection between credible decision‐making structures and stewardship, and pathways to sustainable financing and domestic resource mobilization. The discussion concludes with highlighting several gaps in knowledge and practice related to health stewardship.     

Interpersonal violence in adolescence: ecological correlates of self-reported perpetration

Although growing attention is being paid to the problem of teen dating violence, to date less is known about perpetrators of victimization. The current article used a subset of 980 adolescents aged 11 to 19 who were surveyed as part of a statewide community service coordinated through Cooperative Extension to survey all youth in target communities about risky health behaviors. The current article examined correlates of perpetration of either physical dating violence or sexual abuse across all levels of the ecological model (individual, family, and community factors). At the bivariate level, individual factors including substance use and low social responsibility, family factors including divorce, low parental monitoring, and low social support, and community variables such as low school attachment and neighborhood monitoring were associated with self-reported perpetration. At the multivariate level, gender and history of victimization were most significant in explaining variance in perpetration.     

Response of short tandem repeat systems to temperature and sizing methods

In capillary gel electrophoresis (CE), changing run conditions such as temperature can result in minor variations in the size determination of an allele. These effects are caused by secondary structure differences that can occur between the amplified sample and the internal standard. The type of method chosen to generate the sizing curve in STR analysis can influence the relationship between estimated allele size and temperature. To better understand the effects of temperature and sizing method on the reproducibility of DNA migration, two fluorescently labeled allelic ladders, CTTv and Y-PLEX 6 were analyzed using the ABI Prism 310 Genetic Analyzer. The default method on the Genetic Analyzer utilizes an electrophoretic temperature of 60 degrees C and a Local Southern method to generate a sizing curve from the fragment migration times of the internal lane standard. In this work, electrophoresis was conducted at 35-70 degrees C using the commercially available POP 4 buffer at pH 8 and two sizing methods, Global Southern and Local Southern, were compared. The slopes of the regression line between estimated allele size and temperature, using either sizing method, were measured in order to demonstrate the temperature sensitivity of migration time and the importance of the operator-chosen method. Our results indicate that the Global Southern method is a better choice in situations where temperature fluctuations can occur. In addition, the temperature dependence of the DNA size estimates using the POP 4 system were compared to results obtained using an experimental buffer consisting of 3% hydroxyethylcellulose at pH 11. These results demonstrate that secondary structure effects are minimized at an elevated pH, increasing the precision of size estimates obtained.