By Europol, Innovation Lab

This report from Europol's Innovation Lab explores how the police can adapt to the increasingly digital lives of European citizens. Online worlds are increasingly perceived as lawless, and while community police officers play a key role in the physical world, community policing equivalents are often in their infancy or absent in virtual worlds.

Discover an overview of online policing principles and current initiatives across Europe, including case examples from specific countries to facilitate learning for similar initiatives

Publications Office of the European Union, Luxembourg, 2025. 21p.

By Jessica M. Eaglin 

 In response to the tenth anniversary of the Ferguson uprisings, this Essay examines how the protests reshaped legal discourse on algorithmic decision-making in criminal law, with a specific focus on systemic racial injustice. By deconstructing the metaphorical “black box,” the Essay surveys the intersection of race, technology, and incarceration while also illustrating how the uprisings influenced public and scholarly engagement with criminal legal technologies. The Essay analyzes current critiques and cautions against focusing too narrowly on reforming specific technologies rather than addressing the legal and social structures that sustain racial inequality. The Essay concludes by urging scholars and policymakers to engage with the structural dimensions of technology in criminal law and develop more comprehensive approaches to justice in the digital age.

Washington University Journal of Law and Policy, Volume 78 • Issue 1 • 2025 

By Aya Gruber

The Ferguson uprising and the 25 million-strong Floyd protests were a watershed, heralding a sustained national scrutiny of the routine violence of policing, or so we thought. A decade after Ferguson and five years after Floyd, police budgets have grown, racialized enforcement continues apace, and reform remains elusive. Despite the public raising their fists and voices to condemn racialized police brutality, so little has changed structurally and culturally. The resilience of policing in the face of grassroots activism, I argue, stems from not just political backlash, protester unpopularity, and fading public attention, but a deeply held cultural conviction that policing is crime fighting. This essay begins with Ferguson as a caution about the limits of protest-based police reform. From there, it traces the historical arc of policing, revealing its origins in the maintenance of racial and social hierarchies. It then turns to the contemporary investment in policing as a source of public order, despite consistent evidence that aggressive street policing fails to reduce crime and often exacerbates harm. Finally, the article critiques the liberal attachment to procedural fixes and individual prosecutions, which serve to preserve the institution’s legitimacy rather than challenge its foundations. Until there is a true challenge to the core faith that policing is about reducing harmful crime and preserving public safety, the machinery of violence will continue to thrive in the shadow of critique

Washington University Journal of Law and Policy, Volume 78 • Issue 1 • 2025 

By Maureen Taylor ahd Lesley McMillan 

  There is a significant body of research that illustrates the emotional demands of policing and the physical and psychological toll this takes on officers and staff. However, the management of these demands, particularly in more specialist roles such as those in public protection policing where the demand may be higher, are less well understood. This research explores the experiences of public protection police officers in Police Scotland through a lens of emotional labour..  The aims of this research were to: • Critically review the literature around the emotional impacts of policing on officers and the role of emotional labour in policing; • Establish the experience of, and impact on, officers involved in the investigation of public protection cases; assess how police officers in roles where emotional labour may be heightened, manage their emotions and the strategies they develop to do so; and • Examine how emotions and emotion management are mediated by organisational, departmental and role values, demands and culture In doing so, the research sought to answer the following research questions: 1. What is the emotional experience of police officers in public protection roles and what impact does it have on them? 2. What emotional labour do officers undertake, and what strategies of emotion management do officers employ? 3. To what extent does the theory of emotional labour explain the experiences of public protection police officers? 4. What role does the prevailing organisational culture play in the emotion management strategies of public protection policing? This report presents the findings from this research and a potential framework for understanding the factors that contribute to resilience within the context of public protection policing    

Edinburgh: Scottish Institute for Policing Research 2025. 32p.   

By Logan Seacrest and Jillian Snider

Artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping the criminal justice system. Law enforcement agencies are using it to predict crime, expedite response, and streamline routine tasks. One of the most promising applications can be found in body camera programs, where AI is transforming unmanageable archives of footage into active sources of insight. AI can now analyze hundreds of hours of video in seconds. Early pilot programs suggest that these video-reviewing tools, when guided by human oversight, can uncover critical evidence that might otherwise be overlooked, reduce pretrial bottlenecks, and identify potential instances of officer misconduct. But these benefits come with risks. Absent clear guardrails, the same technologies could drift toward government overreach, blurring the line between public safety and state surveillance. The line between public security and state surveillance lies not in technology, but in the policies that govern it. To responsibly harness AI and mitigate these risks, we recommend that agencies and policymakers: • Establish and enforce clear use policies. Statewide rules for body camera use and AI governance ensure consistency across jurisdictions, particularly in areas like body camera activation, evidence sharing, and public disclosure. • Pair technology with human oversight. AI should enhance—not replace—human decision-making. Final judgments must rest with trained personnel, supported by independent policy oversight from civilian review boards. • Safeguard civil liberties. Safeguards must be in place to protect individual rights, limit surveillance overreach, and ensure data transparency. For example, limiting facial recognition during constitutionally protected activities like protests will help ensure AI is aligned with democratic ideals. With the right guardrails in place, AI can elevate body cameras from afteraction archival tools to always-on intelligence tools, informing decisions in the moment, when it matters most. 

R Street Policy Study No. 328 

Washington, DC: R Street, 2025. 25p.

By Salla Huikuri

  Online communities of pedophiles in darknet facilitate sexual violence against children. They provide a criminogenic space for socially sidelined offenders to share and reinforce their sexual distortions. They accommodate illegal Child Sexual Abuse Material and enable its trading, sharing, and exchange. They offer advice on how to protect one’s online identity and how to physically proceed into sexual violence against children. This review deals with online child sexual offenders and their communities in darknet. It defines key terms dealing with online sexual offences against children and discusses different types of child sexual abuse offenders operating online. Moreover, it sheds light on the psychological side of offending – the justifications for sexual violence against children – and elaborates the underlying logics underpinning the respective trains of though in the online communities of pedophiles.  

Tampere: Police University College.   2022.

By the European Union Drugs Agency (EUDA);

This report was prepared within the framework of Operational Action 1.5 of the 2024/2025 EMPACT Synthetic Drugs and New Psychoactive Substances action plan, entitled ’Intelligence picture on the trafficking of ketamine in the EU.’ The action was led by Belgium and co-led by Germany and the European Union Drugs Agency (EUDA). It was initiated in response to concerns raised by several Member States regarding indications that ketamine may represent an emerging drug-related issue in Europe.

Increasing challenges related to the availability, supply, non-medical use and associated risks of ketamine have been observed at the global and EU levels. As ketamine is listed by the World Health Organization as an essential medicine and is not subject to international control, systematic reporting is not required in most jurisdictions, creating monitoring blind spots. Within this context, the operational action focused on supporting situational awareness, early identification of potential security risks and, where appropriate, suggesting possible ways forward. This report is based on information contributions from 32 countries.

Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union, 2026. 41p.

By: Ghaleb Krame, Amanda Davies, Magdalena García & Noé Cuervo Vázquez 

This paper explores the power struggle between the Chapitos and Mayiza factions of the Sinaloa Cartel and its implications for U.S. and Mexican law enforcement. Employing scenario analysis, payoff matrices, and Nash equilibria, the study evaluates potential outcomes of this conflict and their impact on cartel power dynamics. While the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG) is poised to exploit instability and expand its influence over fentanyl trafficking and key territories, for the United States of America (U.S.A.), this internal fragmentation complicates efforts to control the opioid crisis. In Mexico, Omar García Harfuch faces the challenge of stabilizing cartel-affected regions and countering CJNG’s growth. A Mayiza victory is seen as the most favorable outcome, reducing violence and curbing CJNG’s expansion. Coordinated intelligence-sharing and strategic responses are essential for regional stability.

Security Journal (2025) 38:57

By Corentin Cohen

This article looks at the discourses regarding Nigerian confraternities’ expansion to Europe. It analyses how networks of individuals working together for solidarity, economic or political objectives became categorized as organised crime or as a mafia. I use original data and police investigations, interviews with members and victims, judges, police officers, and journalists to show how the work of French and Italian institutions led to the emergence and transformation of discourses regarding the “Nigerian mafia” which, in the context of the 2015 migration crisis, came to designate confraternities. The circulation of these categories and frames cannot only be accounted for by the work of state institutions, but needs to be analysed through the sociology of information production and practices, which explains the effects of circular reporting, imposition of frames and narratives coming directly from investigations on criminal issues instead of other approaches to Nigerian migration.

Trends Organ Crim 26, 340–357 (2023

By Eric Hershberg, Edward Maguire, Steven Dudley

In October 2012, the U.S. government designated MS-13 as a transnational criminal organization (TCO), raising serious questions about the breadth of the gang’s criminal capacity. Some analysts have pointed to a steady growth and professionalization of this criminal organization, but insufficient data has hindered the formulation and implementation of policies aimed at countering this trend. Our multiyear project proposed to fill gaps in the extant literature by conducting qualitative and quantitative research designed to assess MS-13’s transnational criminal capacity. More specifically, our objectives were to: 1) conduct extensive interviews with local stakeholders, gang experts, and MS-13 members in three major metropolitan areas, including two in the U.S. and one in El Salvador; 2) analyze qualitative and quantitative data gathered through tested survey and interview instruments and from official sources, with particular attention to the following factors: type of criminal activities, organizational structure, inter- and intra-gang relationships, level of community penetration, accumulation of social capital, development and migration patterns, and recruitment strategies; 3) utilize social network analysis techniques to quantify the social reach of gang member respondents; and 4) disseminate project findings to relevant constituencies in law enforcement, policymaking circles, academe, and the general public. The purpose of our research was to provide policymakers and law enforcement officials with a comprehensive understanding of MS-13 by measuring the extent and range of the organization’s criminal activity and mapping its social networks. Our goal was to generate empirical data that could serve as a foundation upon which to shape new policies and practices. Specifically, our hope was that the data would provide insights regarding the optimal allocation of law enforcement resources, the likely movements of MS-13, and the design of intervention and suppression strategies. 

Washington DC: U..S. Department of Justice,  2019. 11p.

By C. Proffit

Twenty-five years ago, Krivo and Peterson wrote a seminal piece on the context of disadvantage and its threshold effects. In The Structural Context of Homicide: Accounting for Racial Differences in the Process, they emphasize that extreme contexts of disadvantage may diminish the significance of certain structural conditions that contribute to higher crime rates, particularly in relation to homicide. However, remarkably few studies consider the threshold effects of disadvantage when studying homicide. Although their research primarily focuses on race groups and the varying degree of disadvantage as a crime-generating condition, the unequal distribution of disadvantage in communities may have unique effects on certain forms of violence, particularly gang homicide. This study will (1) explore how community predictors of gang homicide differ across contexts by comparing neighborhoods with extreme levels of disadvantage to those with low-moderate levels of disadvantage and (2) examine differences in this context of disadvantage between gang-related and nongang-related homicide to assess if differences emerge between these categorizations of lethal violence. Findings reaffirmed Krivo and Peterson’s conclusion. Disadvantage was associated with increases in gang homicide only in low to moderately disadvantaged areas while effects diminished in extremely disadvantaged communities.

  American Journal of Criminal Justice , July 2025

By Sally Atkinson-Sheppard

Millions of the world’s children engage in labor, often exploitative and essential to their survival. Child labor is closely related to crime; global discourse illustrates how young people are victims of forced and bonded labor and recent studies from the global South demonstrate how young people are hired as the ‘illicit laborers’ of organized crime groups. Despite this, there is a tendency to consider young people, not as laborers but as victims of trafficking or as offenders (often in relation to gangs). To address this lacuna, the article draws on data from 3 studies conducted in the global South to develop a conceptual framework suitable for understanding the intersection between labor and crime. The article develops a metaphorical ‘labor lens’, a lens which centers and prioritizes labor and instrumental drivers for crime, embedded within wider structures of illicit markets, established organized crime, state:crime collaboration and the need for children to work to survive. The article integrates economic drivers for involvement in organized crime with the moral economy, within the context of ecological frameworks of crime, embedded with wider issues of coloniality. In doing so, the article develops a new conceptual framework for considering young people’s involvement in organized crime.

  Critical Criminology (2023) 31:467–487

By: Megan T. Stevenson and Robynn J.A. Cox

This Article tells the story of the birth of predictive algorithms in criminal justice. Known as risk assessments, these tools are widely used today to make decisions about bail, sentencing, and parole. Their roots trace back to the 1920s, when statistical prediction tools were first proposed for use in criminal justice decision-making. In this Article, we show that risk assessment found its origins in the ideas of eugenic criminology: namely, that crime is mostly caused by an inferior subclass of humanity, tainted from birth. Risk assessment was conceptualized as a way of sorting between the “normals” who were amenable to reform and the “sub-normals” who, due to their inferior genes, were not. Such “born criminals” were seen as requiring indefinite confinement within isolated penal colonies in order to protect society from crime, prevent procreation, and provide care for those in need of paternalistic guidance. We tell this story in part because it is a fascinating piece of history, marked by bigotry, bravado, and an almost fanatical optimism about mankind’s ability to engineer a perfect society. But we also tell it because the ideas and practices of eugenic criminology are not widely known. While “tainted origins” do not automatically condemn the ongoing use of risk assessment, understanding history can help identify ways that the past lives on in the present.

By Roland Neil, Bonnie Ghosh-Dastidar, Beau Kilmer, Michael W. Robbins, Kristin Warren

Objectives

Racial disparities in arrests are a major concern, particularly when it comes to drug enforcement. In 2021, Oregon decriminalized the possession of controlled substances as part of Measure 110 (M-110), an unprecedented policy change in the United States. We estimate how M-110 affected five types of arrests, overall and by race.

Methods

National Incident-Based Reporting System data covering 3,642 police agencies from 43 states for 2018-2023 are combined with 2020 Census data. We extend a synthetic control methodology developed for micro-level data to test whether policy effects differ across groups and whether policies affect disparities, using permutation inference to quantify uncertainty.

Results

M-110 reduced drug possession arrest rates in Oregon for the overall population (67.8%) and for the three racial groups we focus on: Black (75.6%), Hispanic (77.5%); and White (66.2%), with the reduction being statistically significantly larger for Hispanic and Black than White individuals. M-110 reduced disorder arrest rates by 30.9% for Black individuals, which is statistically significantly different from zero and the White estimate. Black-White rate differences in drug possession arrests fell by 79.5% and in disorder arrests by 41.7%. In general, M-110 did not affect arrest rates for violent, property, or drug trafficking offenses.

Conclusions

M-110 reduced drug possession arrests while reducing Black-White rate differences. M-110 led to a decrease in disorder arrests for Black individuals, suggesting police did not substitute one arrest type for another for this population. Our method offers a new approach for examining heterogeneous policy effects and how policies affect disparities.

By Miriam Driessen 

Political and legal immunity are justified by the principle that certain social aims outweigh the value of imposing liability. To be exempt from the rules, however, is a privilege granted to or demanded by the powerful. The structural disparities that underpin immunity can turn it into an unjust prerogative, one that is inscribed by global inequalities.  Set against the backdrop of an extraordinary wave of litigation against Chinese corporations in Ethiopia, Immunity on Trial probes the question of immunity in everyday encounters steeped in highly asymmetrical power relations. Drawing on observations from the courthouse, interviews with litigants, judges, and court support staff, and analyses of case files, Miriam Driessen demonstrates how immunity is debated and delegitimized—or affirmed—by those who fight, exact, grant, or weigh it. From the construction site to the police station, from the registrar’s office into the courtroom, she documents tussles over immunity, unraveling the politics of dignity on which they are founded.

Oakland: : University of California Press, 2026. 

By Li Sian Goh, Michael Rempel, and Joanna Weill

This report examines the alignment of New York City judges’ pretrial release decisions with the recommendations of the Pretrial Release Assessment, a validated tool that calculates the likelihood people will return to court if they are released before trial. Drawing on 251,917 New York City arraignments subject to pretrial release decisions in 2021, 2022, and 2023, we looked at what the assessment recommended, how often judges followed these recommendations, and cross-borough differences over time.

Key Findings:

Most People are Recommended for Release on Recognizance (ROR): From 2021 to 2023, the Release Assessment recommended releasing people on their own recognizance (ROR) for 88% of cases, including 79% of violent felonies, 77% of nonviolent felonies, and 92% of misdemeanors. Yet judges granted ROR in only 25% of violent felonies, 42% of nonviolent felonies, and 78% of misdemeanors.The Assessment Was Consistent Across Each Race/Ethnicity: The assessment recommended 87% of Black, 88% of Hispanic, and 85% of white people for ROR. For people charged with a violent felony, the assessment recommended a statistically identical 78% of Black and Hispanic and 77% of white people for ROR.Alignment with the Release Assessment’s Recommendations: From 2021 to 2023, judges infrequently followed ROR recommendations for violent felony cases (30%), only followed such recommendations about half the time (51%) in nonviolent felony cases, while adhering at a high rate for misdemeanors (83%). Conversely, in violent felony cases that are virtually all legally eligible for bail under the State’s bail reform law, judges set bail or remand in 41% of the cases where the Release Assessment had recommended ROR.Judges Aligned with the Assessment at Racially Disparate Rates: When the assessment recommended ROR in a violent felony case, judges set it least often for Black people (26%), somewhat more for Hispanic people (32%), and most often for white people (43%). In these same cases, judges were more likely to impose bail or remand on Black (44%) than Hispanic (39%) or white people (29%). Further analysis linked these racial differences to a tendency of judges to overrate certain risk factors correlated with race/ethnicity.Overrating Certain Risk Factors: Although criminal history and living situation are already factored into the assessment’s recommendations, judges were more likely to adhere to a ROR recommendation when people had no prior warrants, no prior misdemeanor or felony convictions, and a stable abode than when one of these risk factors was present.Alignment Varied Across the City: Bronx and Brooklyn judges followed a ROR recommendation at the highest and Staten Island judges at the lowest rate. Nonviolent felonies saw especially wide borough variability. (For example, people facing a nonviolent felony charge and recommended for ROR were 1.8 times more likely to receive it in the Bronx than in Manhattan or Staten Island.)

By John R. Lott, et al.

After peaking in 2022, the number of Concealed Carry Permit holders across the United States has declined for the third year in a row. The total now sits at 20.88 million, representing a 2.7% drop from last year. A major factor behind this ongoing decrease is the widespread adoption of Constitutional Carry laws. Following Louisiana’s implementation of permitless carry on July 4, 2024, 29 states now allow residents to carry without a permit. As a result, 46.8% of Americans (157.6 million) now live in Constitutional Carry States, with 67.7% of the land in the country (2.57 million square miles). Although no additional states enacted such laws this year, the broader trend remains unchanged. Unlike gun ownership surveys that may be affected by people’s unwillingness to answer personal questions, concealed handgun permit data is the only really “hard data” that we have, but it becomes a less accurate measure as more states become Constitutional Carry states.

Salt Lake City UK: Crime Prevention Research Center, 2025