By Michelle Kendler-Kretsch

The US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) appears to have a renewed interest in a sanctions tool first used in 2001: blocking individuals and entities pending investigation. Used in two recent sets of listings, the tool offers the agility and speed necessary to quickly and efficiently dismantle financing networks and sanctions evasion tactics. Its strategic application warrants closer attention from financial institutions, who must be responsive to their compliance obligations. Non-government organizations (NGOs) may be aware of opportunities where they can advocate for OFAC to take greater advantage of this option, particularly in cases related to sanctions evasion and conflict financing. In parallel, NGOs can also play a vital role by sharing information that supports implementation and, where applicable, reinforces the credibility of these provisional designations.

Washington, DC: The Sentry, 2025. 22p.

By David Weisburd, Laura A. Wyckoff, Justin Ready, John E. Eck, Joshua C. Hinkle, Frank Gajewski

This study addresses the longstanding concern that focused crime prevention efforts—such as policing "hot spots"—might simply displace crime to nearby areas. While displacement has been a major critique of place-based policing, empirical studies have rarely been designed specifically to assess its presence or measure its impact. The authors designed and implemented a controlled field experiment in Jersey City, New Jersey, to examine whether such displacement occurs or whether crime control efforts might instead lead to a diffusion of benefits—i.e., crime reductions in areas surrounding targeted sites. The study focused on two areas: one known for street-level drug dealing and the other for prostitution. Using over 6,000 social observations, interviews, and ethnographic fieldwork, the researchers found little evidence of spatial displacement and instead documented significant diffusion of crime control benefits to adjacent areas. The findings challenge assumptions that crime merely moves elsewhere and reinforce the effectiveness of concentrated policing in reducing crime beyond targeted hot spots.

(Criminology, Volume 44, Number 3, 2006, pp. 549–594)

By Brandon C. Welsh

Early developmental crime prevention is an important component of an overall strategy to reduce crime. Key features include a commitment to prevention in the first instance—intervening before a delinquent act has been committed and before a child has contact with the justice system—and a larger focus on improving the life chances of at-risk children and families, extending well beyond delinquency or criminal offending. The main aim of this article is to set out an agenda for action— a manifesto of sorts—to advance developmental crime prevention, with a special focus on the early stages of the life-course. Structured as a ten-point plan and organized around three core areas (policy directions, research priorities, and outreach), the agenda is designed to bring attention to what I view as the most important and pressing matters confronting early developmental crime prevention today. The good news is that the groundwork has been started on many fronts, with some successes and a great deal of promise. David Farrington’s research and scholarly contributions fgure prominently in this work, and this article also serves as a remembrance of David Farrington (1944–2024) and a way to celebrate his enduring life-work to help build a safer, more just society.

Journal of Developmental and Life-Course Criminology (2024) 10:457–476 

By Costas Meghir Marten Palme Marieke Schnabel

We study the intergenerational effect of education policy on crime. We use Swedish administrative data that links outcomes across generations with crime records and we show that the comprehensive school reform, gradually implemented between 1949 and 1962, reduced conviction rates both for the generation directly affected by the reform and for their sons. The reduction in conviction rates occurred across many types of crime. Key mediators for this reduction in the child generation are an increase in education and a decline in crime amongst their fathers.

COWLES FOUNDATION DISCUSSION PAPER NO. 2356, New Haven, CT: Yale University, 2023. 40p.