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

By David Spencer

Summary of Recommendations 1. Given the very poor performance of the Metropolitan Police across a wide range of areas for an extended period – including prior to the present Commissioner’s term of office and particularly in relation to the fight against crime – the Home Secretary should become the “policing body” for the Metropolitan Police. This would remove the Mayor of London’s role in relation to oversight of policing in the capital. Shifting direct political oversight to the Home Secretary, as the minister principally responsible to Parliament for policing and crime, will enable both Government and Parliament to exercise far greater scrutiny and influence over the force’s performance in a way which has the potential to deliver the significant improvements which are required. 2. To enable the Metropolitan Police to shift the force’s principal focus to local crime fighting, the Government should transfer responsibility for the national leadership of the police counterterrorism network from the Metropolitan Police to a national Counter-Terrorism Policing body led by a Chief Constable. 3. The Chief Inspector of Constabulary should return the Metropolitan Police to the “Engage” process – more commonly known as “Special Measures”. The force was, based on performance across several areas, erroneously removed from the “Engage” process inmore commonly known as “Special Measures”. The force was, based on performance across several areas, erroneously removed from the “Engage” process in January 2025. There should be a presumption that all materials relating to the “Engage” process should be made publicly available. The current lack of transparency provides the public with little confidence that the necessary steps are being taken to deliver substantial improvements in the force’s performance. 4. The Home Secretary should order an inspection of the Metropolitan Police’s approach to protest policing using section 54 (2B) Police Act 1996. This should include consideration of both the strategic approach and operational tactics used, including what new strategies and tactics are required to more effectively deal with large-scale and widespread protests. This should consider the strategies and approaches used in other jurisdictions to determine what might be learned and adopted by the force – in particular the willingness of police chiefs to use non-human based means of “creating distance” between officers and protestors. 5. The Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police should review the performance of his most senior leaders and where individuals have been found to have failed to perform to the necessary standard, in some cases over very long periods, they should be replaced at the earliest opportunity. There should also be a substantial change in the approach to performance management for middle and senior leaders in the organisation – including being prepared to more willingly remove officers and staff who fail to deliver the necessary levels of performance, particularly in relation to fighting crime. Data should be published on every senior officer’s performance on crime-fighting throughout their leadership career. There should be a substantial increase in the transparency of the force’s Frontline Policing performance meetings, where local police commanders are questioned on their performance. This should include the publication of performance data, the publication of the meeting’s minutes and the option for members of the public to attend these meetings through online hosting. 

London: Policy Exchange, 2025. 52p.

By Justice

1. Artificial intelligence (“AI”) is rapidly reshaping public services, and policing is no exception. The pace of innovation, the scale of private sector investment, and the UK Government’s explicit ambition to “mainline AI into the veins of the nation” mean that AI deployment in policing is not a distant prospect but an accelerating reality. This brings significant opportunities: enhanced investigative capability, faster processing of digital evidence, improved risk assessment, and the potential to intervene earlier to prevent harm. Yet it also carries profound risks for human rights, the rule of law, and public trust. The police occupy a uniquely powerful position in our democratic society; integrating AI into that environment without the right safeguards risks entrenching discrimination, undermining lawful decision making, and eroding communities’ confidence in policing2. This report asks a central question: what must be in place for AI in policing to be trustworthy, value for money, effective in achieving policing goals, and compliant with human rights and the fair administration of justice? To answer this, JUSTICE carried out international research, examined domestic developments, and convened stakeholders across policing, government, civil society, regulators, academia, and industry. Across this work, five lessons emerged, each of which signals not only what must be done, but the urgency of acting now while the UK remains at a crossroads.

London: Justice, 2025. 62p.

By Mia Savicevic and Ethan Miner

This report is a focused look at the growing use of automated license plate readers (ALPRs) by law enforcement agencies across Iowa—a surveillance tool that poses serious risks to Iowans’ privacy and civil liberties. ALPRs are not speed cameras. They are not “red light” cameras. Instead, they are cameras used along roadways throughout Iowa that quickly take thousands of snapshots of license plates as vehicles drive by. That information can then be fed into a network of nationally shared databases that has too few privacy protections and is subject to abuse. More details about ALPRs generally can be found on the ACLU of Iowa website. Unlike other traffic cameras, ALPRs aren’t activated because you violated a law. They record you and every other person who drives by, simply to build a database of vehicle information. ALPRs can take hundreds of photos in a matter of minutes. And unlike ordinary surveillance cameras, where data is either not shared or shared in a more limited manner, the main purpose of ALPRs is to feed this information into a database. To investigate how this technology is being used, the ACLU of Iowa engaged the Technology Law Clinic at the University of Iowa College of Law to conduct independent research on the use of ALPRs in Iowa. We sent open records requests to a broad cross-section of 48 law enforcement agencies across the state, to larger towns, to smaller communities, and to Iowa’s college towns. The study was not comprehensive of all ALPRs in Iowa. Of the 48 agencies that were selected, 5 did not respond to our records request before publication: the Des Moines Police Department, the Clinton Police Department, the Fayette Police Department, the Fremont Police Department, and the Mills Police Department.While researching this project, the clinic also identified agencies (see Appendix D) that have accessed other Iowa cities’ or counties’ ALPR databases, whether they have their own ALPRs or not.

Technology Law Clinic at the University of Iowa College of Law and ACLU of Iowa, 2025. 63p.

By Camilla De Camargo, Fred Cram

The advent of the COVID-19 pandemic required police officers in England and Wales to enforce new public health restrictions (e.g., stay-at-home directives, social distancing requirements and mask mandates), as well as navigate the risk that COVID-19 posed to their own health and safety during interactions with the public. From a practical standpoint, these factors changed the nature of the policing task significantly, with previously routine police decision-making (e.g., whether or not to carry out stops, searches, arrests and/or detentions) necessarily responding not only to traditional concerns around suspicion and evidence but also directly to these novel legal and organisational challenges. Findings from interviews carried out in 2020 and 2022 with 18 police officers from 11 different forces in England and Wales suggest that well-established predictors of arrest decisions (e.g., offence severity, evidence and/or the pursuit of culturally orientated objectives) were disrupted due to broader considerations, uniquely related to the COVID-19 pandemic. This article uses Keith Hawkins’ (2002) conceptual framework of criminal justice decision-making—surround, field and frame—as an explanatory device to help us understand arrest and non-arrest decisions of street-level police officers during this period, despite the existence of sufficient evidence to support such action.

The Howard Journal of Crime and Justice Volume 64, Issue 3 Sep 2025 Pages 277-417