bby Bernard Hollander (Author), Graeme Newman (Introduction)

Why do people do what they know is wrong—and how much responsibility should they bear for their actions?

First published in 1922, Bernard Hollander’s The Psychology of Misconduct, Vice, and Crime: A Study of Conduct, Responsibility, and Moral Failing is a fascinating early attempt to understand wrongdoing through psychology rather than through moral condemnation alone. Drawing on twenty-five years of medical practice with patients suffering from nervous and mental disorders, Hollander examines the impulses, habits, emotions, circumstances, and failures of self-control that can lead ordinary people toward destructive or criminal behavior.

Moving across the emerging fields of psychology, psychiatry, and criminology, Hollander asks questions that remain strikingly familiar today. How do heredity and environment shape conduct? Why can one person resist temptation while another cannot? What roles do opportunity, habit, intoxication, anger, fear, acquisitiveness, and sexual desire play in misconduct? And at what point should psychological impairment affect our judgment of moral and legal responsibility?

Across twelve wide-ranging chapters, Hollander investigates the psychological foundations and causes of misconduct before turning to alcohol and drug habits, aggression and violence, suspicion and deceit, theft and crimes for gain, fear of consequences, sexual conduct, egotism and domination, moral weakness, responsibility, and treatment.

Of particular interest to readers of criminology is Hollander’s rejection of simplistic explanations based entirely upon free will. He sees behavior as emerging from the interaction of predisposition, upbringing, social environment, opportunity, competing motives, and the individual’s capacity for inhibition and self-control. His treatment of professional offenders also distinguishes calculated criminality from impulsive or psychologically troubled misconduct—an early recognition that there is no single psychological type called “the criminal.”

Hollander’s science is unmistakably that of his era. Some of his terminology, assumptions about heredity and mental deficiency, views of sexuality, and continuing interest in phrenology have long since been rejected or superseded. Yet this is precisely what makes the book valuable as a historical document: it captures a formative period when psychology, psychiatry, medicine, and criminology were struggling to replace simple categories of vice and wickedness with explanations based on individual differences and the causes of human behavior.

At the same time, Hollander frequently argues against indiscriminate punishment. He considers upbringing, poverty, physical and mental condition, temptation, and circumstance; questions whether fear and punishment genuinely reform offenders; and advocates individualized treatment rather than a single remedy for every form of misconduct.

This 2026 Read-Me.Org Classic Reprint, designed and edited with a new introduction by Graeme R. Newman, preserves Hollander’s historical arguments and period terminology while correcting obvious OCR and typographical defects, regularizing punctuation, and converting spelling to contemporary American English.

More than a century after its first appearance, The Psychology of Misconduct, Vice, and Crime offers historians, criminologists, psychologists, criminal-justice students, and general readers a provocative window into the origins of modern thinking about crime, deviance, self-control, treatment, and human responsibility.

Read-Me.Org Inc. New York-Philadelphia-Australia. 2026. 153p.

by Col. V. M. Masten (Author), Graeme Newman (Introduction)

What did Americans believe caused crime a century ago—and what did they think should be done about it?

First published in 1921, Stop Thief is a forceful and revealing examination of crime, punishment, policing, prisons, and social disorder in Progressive-Era America. Written by Col. V. M. Masten, the book captures a nation deeply concerned about rising crime and fiercely debating whether criminals should be deterred, punished, rehabilitated, or reformed.

Across eight wide-ranging chapters, Masten addresses immigration and crime, criminal influence and “crime by suggestion,” the courts and judges, prison reform, correctional regimes, professional sport and gambling, and proposals for improving probation, sentencing, and prison administration.

Masten is an uncompromising writer. He challenges the growing rehabilitative philosophy of his period and argues instead for discipline, deterrence, personal responsibility, and the vigorous enforcement of law. Yet some of his observations—particularly his concern with gambling, criminal association, and the ways people learn criminal behavior from others—anticipate debates that remain remarkably current.

At the same time, Stop Thief is very much a document of 1921 America. Its discussions of immigration, race, heredity, and social fitness contain prejudices and pseudo-scientific assumptions characteristic of parts of Progressive-Era criminological writing. This edition preserves that language rather than disguising or rewriting it, allowing the book to be read critically as an important historical source.

This new Read-Me.Org edition reproduces the complete original text, corrected for scanning and transcription errors, and includes a new introduction by criminologist Graeme R. Newman, placing Masten and his arguments within the history of American crime, criminal justice, immigration, and penal reform.

Essential reading for students and readers interested in criminology, criminal justice, American social history, policing, prisons, immigration history, and the Progressive Era, Stop Thief offers something more valuable than a modernized account of the past: it allows us to encounter the American debate over crime as it was actually being conducted more than a century ago.

Read-Me.Org Inc. New York-Philadelphia-Australia. 2026. 189p.

by Graeme R. Newman

In 1862, Henry Mayhew and John Binny walked into eleven of London's most notorious institutions — Newgate, Millbank, Pentonville, Brixton, the prison hulks at Woolwich, Coldbath Fields, Tothill Fields, Wandsworth, Holloway, the House of Detention at Clerkenwell, and Horsemonger Lane — and wrote down exactly what they saw: the governors, the warders, the chaplains, and the prisoners themselves, in their own words.

This edition brings that record back to life. Each chapter has been fully rewritten in modern prose while preserving every fact, every interview, and every argument the original authors made — from their case against purposeless hard labour to their unflinching accounts of the convict nursery, the condemned cell, and the boy discharged from prison with no one waiting at the gate.

A new introduction and retrospective, written for this edition, follows these institutions into the present: which ones were demolished, which became galleries, cathedrals, and post offices — and which are still open today, cited in current inspection reports for the very same overcrowding and neglect that Victorian reformers were fighting a century and a half ago.

What you'll find inside: • Eleven Victorian prisons, reconstructed room by room, cell by cell • Real testimony from governors, chaplains, and prisoners — first offenders and lifelong professionals alike • A frank, often moving record of Victorian London's poorest and most desperate • A new historical retrospective connecting each institution to its fate today

Part social history, part true crime, part uncomfortable mirror — London Prisons: A Retrospective is a door-by-door tour of a city's conscience, then and now.

Read-Me.Org Inc. New York-Philadelphia-Australia. 2026. p.339.

by Nettly Lucas (Author), Graeme Newman (Introduction)

Step into the hidden London of the 1920s—a city of fashionable hotels and crowded streets, respectable suburbs and shadowy back rooms, Scotland Yard detectives and professional criminals who made deception, burglary, fraud and blackmail their trade.

First published in 1926, London and Its Criminals is Netley Lucas’s remarkable journey through the criminal underworld of interwar London. Rather than simply recounting celebrated crimes, Lucas sets out to describe criminals themselves: how they lived, where they gathered, the methods they used, the slang they spoke, and the elaborate machinery of policing that pursued them.

The result is an extraordinary period portrait of crime and criminal justice.

Lucas takes his readers inside Scotland Yard and its Criminal Record Office, explaining the growing importance of fingerprints, criminal records and systematic detection. From there he ventures into a very different London—the world of professional burglars, pickpockets, confidence tricksters, jewel thieves, forgers, blackmailers and criminal gangs. He introduces his readers to figures he describes as the “Kings” and “Queens” of the Underworld: men and women who move between cheap public houses, prosperous suburban homes, exclusive restaurants and fashionable hotels while living secret criminal lives.

Among the book’s most striking chapters are Lucas’s accounts of “master criminals” and “crooked women.” His characters include expert burglars, ingenious forgers, sophisticated jewel thieves and accomplished confidence tricksters. Some are frightening, some ingenious, some surprisingly ordinary. Again and again Lucas emphasizes the unsettling proximity of the criminal world to respectable society.

Yet London and Its Criminals is more than a gallery of rogues. Lucas was writing at a moment when attitudes toward crime and punishment were beginning to change. He opens the book by discussing the emerging scientific study of crime, criminal psychology, rehabilitation and the limitations of imprisonment—questions that remain central to debates about criminal justice a century later.

Lucas is also an unusually provocative guide. He claims familiarity with criminals themselves and repeatedly describes conversations, meals and encounters with people operating on the wrong side of the law. His London is consequently not the London of official police reports alone. It is a city observed from its restaurants, streets, clubs, pubs, courtrooms and criminal meeting places.

Modern readers should approach some of Lucas’s language, assumptions and sweeping judgments as products of their time. That is also part of the historical importance of the book. It provides a vivid primary-source window into how crime, policing, punishment, class and the urban underworld were represented during the 1920s.

This new Read-Me.Org Classic Reprint presents Lucas’s fascinating account to a new generation of readers, accompanied by a detailed new Introduction by Graeme Newman that places the work in its historical and criminological context.

For readers interested in true crime, criminology, Scotland Yard, policing, criminal history, London history, organized crime and the social history of the 1920s, London and Its Criminals offers a fascinating journey into a vanished—but sometimes surprisingly familiar—criminal world

Read-Me.Org Inc. New York-Philadelphia-Australia. 2026. p.194.

A Forgotten Classic of Criminological Thought—Reintroduced for the Twenty-First Century

Originally published in 1918 and now carefully edited and introduced by Graeme R. Newman, The Criminology of Crime and Criminals: Medical, Biological and Psychological restores Charles Mercier’s groundbreaking exploration of crime, punishment, criminal behavior, and social order.

Long before modern criminology embraced concepts such as situational crime prevention, environmental opportunity, offender decision-making, and restorative justice, Mercier argued that crime cannot be explained by biology, psychology, or environment alone. Instead, criminal behavior emerges from the interaction between human nature and circumstance, between personal disposition and criminal opportunity.

Rejecting the popular theories of his day, Mercier challenges the notion of the “born criminal” and dismisses simplistic environmental explanations of lawbreaking. His provocative and highly original analysis examines:

• The psychological foundations of criminal conduct

• The roles of instinct, reason, desire, self-control, and will

• How opportunity and temptation shape criminal action

• The classification of crimes and criminals

• The relationship between crime, morality, and society

• The purposes of punishment: deterrence, retaliation, reform, and reparation

• The prevention, detection, and punishment of crime

Mercier’s central insight—that criminals are not a separate species but ordinary human beings responding differently to circumstances—remains strikingly relevant more than a century later.

Graeme R. Newman’s contemporary introduction places Mercier within the broader history of criminological thought and connects his ideas to modern developments in crime prevention and criminal justice. Together, Mercier and Newman illuminate enduring questions that continue to shape public policy and scholarly debate:

Why do people commit crimes? How should society respond? Is prevention more effective than punishment?

Part intellectual history, part criminological theory, and part social philosophy, this edition offers a fascinating window into the origins of modern criminology and the continuing struggle to understand crime and criminals.

Essential reading for students and scholars of criminology, criminal justice, sociology, psychology, legal history, and anyone interested in the causes of crime and the future of punishment.

Read-Me.Org Inc. New York-Philadelphia-Australia. 2026. 195p.

by Graeme Newman (Editor), Charles Mercier (Author)

Why do people commit crime? When does mental illness diminish responsibility? Should punishment always follow wrongdoing?

More than a century before modern debates about criminal responsibility, forensic psychiatry, and the treatment of mentally ill offenders, the distinguished British physician Charles Mercier confronted these enduring questions with remarkable clarity and originality.

In Crime, Insanity and Affliction, Mercier explores the complex relationship between criminal behaviour, mental disorder, and human suffering. Rejecting simplistic explanations, he argues that crime cannot be understood apart from the biological, psychological, and social forces that shape human conduct. His examination ranges from drunkenness, epilepsy, intellectual disability, and mental illness to questions of moral responsibility, punishment, and the proper role of the criminal law.

Although written in the early twentieth century, many of Mercier's observations anticipate debates that continue today. His discussion of diminished responsibility, the treatment of mentally ill offenders, addiction, and the limits of punishment remains surprisingly relevant in an era still struggling to balance justice, compassion, and public safety.

This new Read-Me edition presents Mercier's influential work with a new editorial introduction that places his ideas within the development of modern criminology, forensic psychiatry, and criminal justice. It also examines where Mercier's conclusions have been confirmed, where later research has challenged them, and why his work continues to deserve the attention of students, scholars, and general readers alike.

More than a historical curiosity, Crime, Insanity and Affliction is a thoughtful exploration of one of society's oldest and most difficult questions: how should we judge those whose minds, circumstances, or afflictions place them beyond the ordinary boundaries of responsibility?

Read-Me.Org Inc. New York-Philadelphia-Australia. 2026. 182p.

A Forgotten Classic of Criminological Thought—Reintroduced for the Twenty-First Century

Originally published in 1918 and now carefully edited and introduced by Graeme R. Newman, The Criminology of Crime and Criminals: Medical, Biological and Psychological restores Charles Mercier’s groundbreaking exploration of crime, punishment, criminal behavior, and social order.

Long before modern criminology embraced concepts such as situational crime prevention, environmental opportunity, offender decision-making, and restorative justice, Mercier argued that crime cannot be explained by biology, psychology, or environment alone. Instead, criminal behavior emerges from the interaction between human nature and circumstance, between personal disposition and criminal opportunity.

Rejecting the popular theories of his day, Mercier challenges the notion of the “born criminal” and dismisses simplistic environmental explanations of lawbreaking. His provocative and highly original analysis examines:

• The psychological foundations of criminal conduct

• The roles of instinct, reason, desire, self-control, and will

• How opportunity and temptation shape criminal action

• The classification of crimes and criminals

• The relationship between crime, morality, and society

• The purposes of punishment: deterrence, retaliation, reform, and reparation

• The prevention, detection, and punishment of crime

Mercier’s central insight—that criminals are not a separate species but ordinary human beings responding differently to circumstances—remains strikingly relevant more than a century later.

Graeme R. Newman’s contemporary introduction places Mercier within the broader history of criminological thought and connects his ideas to modern developments in crime prevention and criminal justice. Together, Mercier and Newman illuminate enduring questions that continue to shape public policy and scholarly debate:

Why do people commit crimes? How should society respond? Is prevention more effective than punishment?

Part intellectual history, part criminological theory, and part social philosophy, this edition offers a fascinating window into the origins of modern criminology and the continuing struggle to understand crime and criminals.

Essential reading for students and scholars of criminology, criminal justice, sociology, psychology, legal history, and anyone interested in the causes of crime and the future of punishment.

Read-Me.Org Inc. New York-Philadelphia-Australia. 2026. 195p.

The book that criminology forgot — and urgently needs to remember.
Arthur M<ercier (Author). Graeme Newman (Editor and Introduction).

First published in 1918 by the University of London Press, Charles Arthur Mercier's Conduct and Its Disorders, Biologically Considered, published by Macmillan in 1911 is one of the most rigorous, most readable, and most unjustly neglected works in the history of criminological thought. Now reissued as The Biology of Conduct Disorders, with a major critical introduction by Graeme R. Newman, it arrives at a moment when the questions it raises — about criminal intent, biological disposition, the limits of punishment, and the poverty of criminological theory — are more pressing than ever.
Mercier was no armchair theorist. As medical officer of lunatic asylums, consulting physician at criminal trials, and the only systematic student of conduct as a science, he brought to the study of crime a combination of clinical experience and biological rigour that the field had not seen before and has rarely matched since. His target was the prevailing chaos of criminological thought — above all the Continental school of Lombroso, which he dismantled with surgical precision — and his method was the application of praxiology, his own science of conduct, to the specific problem of criminal action.

What Mercier argued — and why it still matters:

• Every criminal act is the product of two factors: an internal factor (the biological constitution of the offender) and an external factor (circumstance and opportunity). Ignoring either produces not criminology but ideology.

• The turpitude of the criminal and the gravity of the crime are entirely separate questions — and confusing them has produced centuries of unjust punishment.

• Punishment should be calibrated to intention, not outcome: the man who intends murder and fails is more culpable than the man who kills by accident, whatever the body count.

• Statistical criminology — mass data gathered from convicted prisoners — cannot produce a science of crime. Only the study of individual criminal action, grounded in biology, psychology, and jurisprudence together, can do that.

• Certain acts currently outside the law (stealing the use of a thing; deliberate breach of contract) deserve criminal status; certain acts currently criminalised do not.

This new edition includes a critical introduction by Graeme R. Newman, Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the School of Criminal Justice, University at Albany, and one of the most provocative and original voices in the study of crime, deviance, and punishment. Author of Comparative Deviance: Perception and Law in Six Cultures, The Punishment Response, Just and Painful: A Case for the Corporal Punishment of Criminals, and Civilization and Barbarism: Punishing Criminals in the Twenty-First Century — and, as Colin Heston, of darkly satirical fiction including The Tommie Felon Show, Miscarriages, and Holy Water — Newman brings a unique authority to this text. Writing with the unflinching directness that earned him national television appearances and a reputation as the most uncomfortable conscience in American criminology, he traces the connections between Mercier's 1918 arguments and the debates that have defined — and divided — the field ever since.
"With the exception of logic, there is no subject on which so much nonsense has been written as this of criminality and the criminal." — Charles Arthur Mercier, 1918
Essential reading for students and scholars of criminology, criminal justice, the history of psychiatry, legal theory, and the philosophy of punishment — and for anyone who has ever wondered why, after two centuries of criminal science, we understand so little about why people commit crimes and what we should do about it.

Read-Me.Org Inc. New York-Philadelphia-Australia. 2026. 208p.

By Daniel Schaeffer

Often viewed through a myopic lens as an environmental issue or one relegated to fisheries authorities, illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing affects all coastal nations in the Western Hemisphere and has national security implications on the United States. A regional problem requires a regional solution and greater cooperation across agencies, private industry, and governments. Actions to address IUU fishing in Latin America have the potential to achieve greater aims of maritime security in the region. The report will frame the problem of IUU fishing by first highlighting its overall impacts globally and regionally. Food security, employment, national revenue, and other illicit activities are discussed. The report concludes with recommendations for interagency and regional coordination.

Miami:2021. 

By Maureen Murphy , Emily R Smith , Shikha Chandarana , Mary Ellsberg 

This review aims to contribute to the understanding of violence against women and girls in conflict-affected and fragile settings through a systematic review and meta-analysis to document the available evidence on the prevalence of intimate partner violence and non-partner sexual violence during periods of armed conflict and in post-conflict periods. A total of 45 studies were included. Inclusion criteria were: population-based, observational studies that collected quantitative data with women (aged 15 years or older), included prevalence data on intimate partner violence or sexual violence, was collected in a conflict-affected context (active conflict or within 10 years after conflict) and was self-reported by women themselves. PubMed (Medline), PsycINFO, and Scopus were searched, and Demographic and Health Surveys were included for conflict-affected settings. The search covered literature published between January 1990 and August 2023. The results estimate that 39% of women and girls in conflict-affected settings have experienced physical or lifetime IPV, while 24% reported this violence in the past 12 months. For non-partner perpetrated violence, an estimated 21% of women and girls had experienced this violence in their lifetime and 11% reported having this experience during a period of conflict. When looking at sexual violence overall, an estimated 21% had experienced this violence, though there was considerable heterogeneity depending on the source of this data.

Trauma Violence Abuse. 2024 Dec 24:

By Piotr Bąkowski

 As law enforcement agencies carry out lawful interception of electronic communications, they face numerous challenges stemming from rapid technological advancements. The growing use of messaging services and the development of 5G networks, which feature enhanced privacy and security measures such as encryption, have had the unintended consequence of hindering law enforcement's access to crucial data. Policymakers and regulators are working to strike a balance between meeting law enforcement needs and protecting the privacy of communications and cybersecurity. In 1994, the Council of the EU adopted a resolution on the lawful interception of telecommunications, but relevant EU laws also encompass broader rules on data protection and electronic communications, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the Law Enforcement Directive, the ePrivacy Directive, and the European Electronic Communications Code. In recent years, a lively debate has emerged on how best to address the operational needs of law enforcement agencies. The EU faces unique challenges, including the fragmentation of national rules and specific issues related to roaming. To address these concerns, a High-Level Group on access to data for effective law enforcement was established, providing recommendations that informed the Commission's Roadmap for law enforcement access to data, presented in June 2025. This is one of four publications that explore different aspects of the roadmap for effective and lawful access to data for law enforcement. These include a summary of the roadmap, and briefings on lawful interception, data retention and digital forensics.   

Brussels:  EPRS | European Parliamentary Research Service, 2025.

By Sebastian Rochéa and Jenny Fleming

Macro exogeneous shocks or disruptions (political, economic) have not received the attention they require in the study of policing and police.What happens when the police, whose primary practical and symbolic role is to define order, are operating within a society gripped by disorder? Contrary to endogenous shocks (caused by the misbehaviour of agents) which tends to have short term negative impact on trust in police, the effects of exogenous shocks (non-police origin) on trust seem to be more complex and conditional on the nature of the shock and on the attribution of blame to political authorities. In addition, during exogenous shocks decisions are made which have lasting effects in reshaping the nature of policing and the tactics of the police. The comparative analysis of shocks may make an important contribution tothe study of policing as they expand the scope of research beyond the usual Anglo-Saxon sphere and highlight the importance of concepts such as critical junctures or punctuated equilibrium

COMPARATIVE POLICING REVIEW – 2 / POLICING AND SOCIETY2025, VOL. 35, NO. 4, 381–397

By The New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services

  The Body-Worn Camera Model Policy is intended to allow for the individual needs of each of the police departments in New York State regardless of size or resource limitations. Law Enforcement are encouraged to customize these protocols to meet their regional needs, while being mindful of the intent of the policy. As with all model policies adopted by the Municipal Police Training Council (MPTC), this policy is non-binding upon agencies within New York State and is meant to serve as a guide to be used in developing a department’s individual policy. The Municipal Police Training Council (MPTC) approved an updated version of the model policy in June 2025.    

Albany: NYSCJS, 2025. 15p.

By The  United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division and United States Attorney’s Office For the Southern District of Mississippi

• Hours after the Department of Justice announced its investigation of the Lexington Police Department (LPD) on November 8, 2023, officers chased a Black man through a field and tased him nine times. The man began foaming at the mouth. One officer pointed to a Taser probe lodged in the man’s hat and said, “Damn, one of my probes hit him in the head.” The man, who has a behavioral health disability, had been accused of disturbing a business. This was not the man’s first encounter with LPD. Earlier that year, LPD officers had jailed him for ten days for trespassing; four days for stealing a cup of coffee; and twelve days for stealing packets of sugar. Each time they arrested him, LPD unlawfully refused to release the man until he paid money towards old fines and fees he owed from misdemeanors and traffic tickets. But each arrest added more fines and fees to the ledger. By November 2023, the man— who has no job, no assets, and no bank account—owed more than $7,500. In encounter after encounter with the man, LPD violated his rights. But like countless people in Lexington, the man had little recourse. Through a combination of poor leadership, retaliation, and a complete lack of internal accountability, LPD has created a system where officers can relentlessly violate the law. FINDINGS The Department of Justice has reasonable cause to believe that the City of Lexington and the Lexington Police Department engage in a pattern or practice of conduct that deprives people of their rights under the Constitution and federal law. Specifically, we find that LPD unlawfully: • Arrests, jails, and detains people who cannot pay fines or fees, without assessing their ability to pay; • Uses excessive force; • Conducts stops, searches, and arrests without probable cause, including jailing people on illegal “investigative holds” and arresting people solely because they owe outstanding fines; • Imposes money bail without justification or assessment of ability to pay; • Jails people without prompt access to court; • Violates the rights of people engaged in free speech and expression, including by retaliating against people who criticize the police; • Discriminates against Black people; and • Operates under an unconstitutional conflict of interest because LPD’s funding depends on the money it raises through its enforcement. 

Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice 2024. 42p.

By Zhuoying Fan, Xuewei Zhang, Guangwen Song &Chunxia Zhang 

• Targeted police stops are frequently carried out by police in response to real-world needs. The effectiveness of various purpose-driven police stop tactics on crime prevention and control varies. However, existing research has neither identified the associated factors of police stops nor explored their impact on crime with different factors. Therefore, this study focuses on the main urban areas of megacities along the southeast coast of China. The space is partitioned using hierarchical clustering after applying the XGBoost and SHAP algorithms to determine the factors related to police stops. Lastly, this study explores the causal effects of police stops with different associated factors on crime, using causal forests within double machine learning. There are three conclusions. First, there is a strong correlation between police stops and four variables: alarm, visiting population, criminal, and government agencies. Second, by clustering based on different associated factors of police stops, existing police stops can be classified into five categories according to their purposes: (i) composite stops positively associated with “Alarm, Visiting Population, Criminals” (AVC-CPS); (ii) composite stops positively associated with “Alarm, Visiting Population, Bus Station” (AVB-CPS); (iii) random stops with no significant positive association (NA-RPS); (iv) single police stops positively associated with “Alarm” (A-SPS); and (v) single stops positively associated with “Visiting Population” (V-SPS). AVC-CPS corresponds to the highest number of grids in the study area. Third, the influence of police stops on crime varies significantly depending on the factors that are associated with them. Among all categories, AVC-CPS has the best overall inhibitory effect on crime, while single police stops and random police stops have minimal or insignificant effects. In summary, the conclusions of this study can provide a basis for optimizing the spatial deployment of police forces, aiming to improve the effectiveness of stop operations and crime prevention and control capabilities.

  • Humanit Soc Sci Commun 12, 1026 (2025)

By Eric Arnold

This Comment explores the current state of police reform in the city of Chicago, with a special focus on the various oversight agencies currently in force. Chicago has a long history of police misconduct, and the city has tried to make changes over the years to restore the community’s trust in policing. The police reform movement became especially prevalent in recent years following the fatal shooting of Laquan McDonald by a Chicago Police Officer in 2014. This Comment will show why the current mechanisms in place are insufficient to bring the needed change to the Chicago Police Department, and that the Chicago Police Department has shown time and time again they are unable to police themselves. While there have been some effective changes to the city’s policing efforts in recent years, considerable room for improvement remains.

This Comment will evaluate some of the recent measures taken to change the Chicago Police Department, specifically looking at measures targeted at changing the culture of the Chicago Police Department by increasing transparency and accountability. These measures include mandatory body-camera footage and a ban on officers being affiliated with extremist groups. This Comment will explore and evaluate the effectiveness of these changes and how they could be further enhanced. This Comment will also propose additional solutions that Chicago could consider to increase police accountability and transparency and thus improve overall officer performance. This includes using more objective tools to measure police officers’ day to day performance, which can be done using tools similar to those being used in New Orleans and in Miami. This Comment will conclude with additional policy considerations and measures for enforcement, specifically focusing on ways to incentivize more responsible policing.

 115 J. Crim. L. & Criminology 205 (2025).

By Trevor George Gardner

 If criminal justice minimalism is a shared principle among criminal law scholars, it can help to clarify the quality of our disagreements. Every normative proposal in the criminal legal literature can be held to the minimalist standard—audited, so to speak, to account for the policy author’s minimalist claims. To this end, this Essay proposes a four-step framework by which to evaluate adherence to the minimalist principle, where each step serves as a hub for pointed scholarly debate regarding the path to minimalist criminal justice.

Washington University Journal of Law and Policy, 2025

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 Christopher Williams

 This article reflects on the impact of the Ferguson protests over the past decade, sparked by the 2014 death of Michael Brown. I engage with S. David Mitchell’s 2015 question, Ferguson: Footnote or Transformative Event?, and illustrate how Ferguson inspired the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, campus activism, and policy changes such as the abolition of cash bail under the SAFE-T Act in Illinois. This article also explores the dual nature of Ferguson’s legacy—acknowledging its role in empowering racial justice movements while simultaneously fueling opposition, including attacks on Critical Race Theory (CRT). I underscore Ferguson’s enduring resonance in the fight for justice, the resounding calls for continued vigilance, and heartfelt advocacy to ensure its transformative promises are fulfilled—even amid continuous challenges.

  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