By ECLAC

The purpose of the Femicidal Violence in Figures Bulletin is to disseminate data on femicide/feminicide or gender-related killings of women in Latin America and the Caribbean, and to report on the methodological advances made by national institutions in generating statistics on this form of violence. Responsible entities:  Gender Equality Observatory for Latin America and the Caribbean of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and the UNiTE to End Violence against Women campaign.

By Dan Anderberg. Line Hjorth Andersen,  N.Meltem Daysal, Mette Ejrnæs

We examine the impact of a 2002 Danish parental leave reform on intimate partner violence (IPV) using administrative data on assault-related hospital contacts. Using a regression discontinuity design, we show that extending fully paid leave increased mothers’ leave-taking and substantially reduced IPV, with effects concentrated among less-educated women. The reform also lengthened birth spacing, while separations remained unchanged and earnings effects were modest. The timing and heterogeneity of impacts point to fertility adjustments—rather than exit options or financial relief—as the key mechanism. Parental leave policy thus emerges as an underexplored lever for reducing IPV.

By Sarah Picard, Leah Nelson, Rae Walker, Kasey Eickmeyer, and Ellie Wilson

Every year, courts across the United States impose millions of dollars in fines, fees, and restitution on people convicted of traffic violations, misdemeanors, and felonies. Collectively, monetary sanctions and other criminal justice fees are referred to as legal financial obligations or simply court debt. Ostensibly, court debt is intended to sanction offenders, recover the costs of running a court system, raise revenue, and compensate victims of crime. In most jurisdictions, however, court debt is assessed without considering an individual’s ability to pay, and much of what is owed goes uncollected. Estimates suggest that there are approximately $27.6 billion in outstanding obligations. In addition to being an unreliable source of revenue, court debt can have severe and long-standing consequences for those who owe, exposing them to increasing debt, future incarceration related to unpaid debt, and the suspension of voting rights, among other collateral consequences. In jurisdictions across the country, court debt also has a disproportionate effect on the economically disadvantaged, as well as Black and Latino individuals and communities. Many of the equity and collateral consequences described above hold true for court debt assessment and collection in Jefferson County and across Alabama, as documented in a 2018 survey with over 800 Alabama residents who owed court debt. This research attracted the attention of judges in the Tenth Circuit Court in Jefferson County (home to Birmingham) who worked with Leah Nelson, lead researcher on the 2018 survey, and MDRC to develop the Jefferson County Equitable Fines and Fees (JEFF) Project, a multidisciplinary study of the scope and consequences of court debt in the county. With funding from Arnold Ventures, the JEFF Project began in 2022. The findings in this report reflect multiple lines of inquiry, including descriptive and inferential analyses of five years of case-level court data, in-depth interviews with court practitioners, and focus group discussions with individuals who have direct experience with court debt in Jefferson County. Taken together, these analyses point to a system that is neither effective in generating revenue for the court, nor fair, given its outsized impact on Black and indigent people living in poor communities. Over the five years of the study, just under half of the individuals who owed court debt paid in full, with many seeing their debt burden grow over time. The research team also isolated some of the major factors that contribute to debt growth, which include race and economic disadvantage, in addition to factors related to how debt is collected, most notably the practice of assessing a 30 percent late fee on those who do not submit a payment within 90 days. Both court practitioners and individuals who are directly affected viewed the current system as broken, with the latter describing serious financial, emotional, and collateral consequences. Findings from the JEFF Project have already prompted the reconsideration of current practices in Jefferson County, including a pilot project to reduce debt burdens and encourage payments, and the creation of a statewide task force that will examine fines and fees across Alabama. Finally, given that Jefferson County is home to a midsized  city situated in a fiscally and socially conservative state, its social and geographic characteristics make it a useful reference for many cities and counties looking to make changes in their fines and fees systems.

By Tobias Auer and Tom Kirchmaier

In this paper we focus on how the criminal history of a household affects juvenile reoffending. Using detailed administrative data from Greater Manchester Police for 2007-2018, we construct a matched sample of 15,548 juvenile first-time offenders. We show causally that juveniles from a household with a previous criminal record are 26.4 to 29.8 percentage points more likely to reoffend within three years, with the greatest additional risk being in the first year after the initial offence. We show that social learning, co-offending by siblings, and differential processing contribute to this effect. Our findings highlight household criminality as an important driver of criminal persistence, underscoring the need to move beyond individual-level predictors and address the criminogenic dynamics within the home.

In this paper we focus on how the criminal history of a household affects juvenile reoffending. Using detailed administrative data from Greater Manchester Police for 2007-2018, we construct a matched sample of 15,548 juvenile first-time offenders. We show causally that juveniles from a household with a previous criminal record are 26.4 to 29.8 percentage points more likely to reoffend within three years, with the greatest additional risk being in the first year after the initial offence. We show that social learning, co-offending by siblings, and differential processing contribute to this effect. Our findings highlight household criminality as an important driver of criminal persistence, underscoring the need to move beyond individual-level predictors and address the criminogenic dynamics within the home.

By Olivia Naugle

The youth justice system was created because youth are different from adults.1 State departments of juvenile justice have purpose clauses affirming that rehabilitation is their primary goal. In the youth justice system, youth have access to developmentally appropriate services that are not available in the adult criminal legal system. Sending youth to the adult criminal justice system, for any offense, harms youth wellbeing and community safety.

By The International Organization for Migration

This report, Climate Chains: Mapping the Relationship between Climate, Trafficking in Persons and Building Resilience in Ethiopia, explores the complex links between climate change, livelihood, vulnerability, migration and human trafficking in Ethiopia. Commissioned by IOM under the Climate Resilience Against Trafficking and Exploitation (CREATE) project, this study forms part of a broader research focusing on Ethiopia and the Philippines – two countries facing distinct climate challenges: slow-onset droughts and sudden-onset typhoons, respectively.  

The research used a mixed-methods approach including household surveys, interviews and focus group discussions. The report puts forward a conceptual model that links climate events and trafficking through a series of intertwined steps. It identifies a causal chain where climate events disrupt livelihood, increase vulnerability and heighten migration intentions, which can lead to exploitation and trafficking. The research explores how factors linking climate and trafficking operate in Ethiopia. 

This study provides critical insights and recommendations for policymakers, donors and organizations in Ethiopia and internationally that are working to combat human trafficking and exploitation, while strengthening resilience to climate change.

By Crest Advisory with RSM UK Consulting

Economic growth is the number one mission of the Government in the UK, seeking to restore stability, increase investment and reform the economy to improve productivity, prosperity, and living standards. This commitment has been made in the context of a sustained period of economic stagnation, throughout which there has been an ongoing conversation as to whether the right levers are being pulled to achieve economic growth. The Office of the Chief Scientific Adviser for the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) commissioned us to understand the role of policing as a lever - our research seeks to collate existing evidence as well as identify where there are opportunities to develop this evidence in the future. This research also falls within the wider discussion on police funding, police productivity and police reform which is particularly relevant given that the Home Office will be looking to find savings ahead of this year’s spending review as an unprotected government department, ongoing debate about the police funding formula and growing financial pressures on police forces. Science and technology has a significant role to play in police efficiency and effectiveness, but also growth. The NPCC’s Science and Technology Strategy sets a clear ambition for policing “to deliver the most science and technology led police service in the world”. Often, our understanding of policing impact is focused on implementation and public safety outcomes, but economic outcomes have the potential to shift the narrative in terms of how we define an effective and efficient police response. Our work, in partnership with RSM UK Consulting, has sought to understand the evidence between policing and economic outcomes, from which we have produced a logic model to understand these relationships (a logic model conceptualises the links between activities and key outcomes). While we have not been able to estimate the scale of impact of UK policing on economic growth, we hope this logic model can act as a framework for partners to use to further develop the evidence base around the impact of policing on economic outcomes, specifically designing evaluations with these outcomes in mind. In time, this evidence may begin to change how we understand the positive impact of policing on individuals, businesses and communities in England and Wales - with the potential for positive economic outcomes influencing future decisions on funding allocations and commitments to specific policing initiatives and operational interventions. Furthermore, growth could sit alongside efficiency and effectiveness as key metrics for success in policing.

London: Crest Advisory, 2025. 69p.

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

By Stephen Farrall, Jason Warr, Abigail Shaw, Kanupriya Sharma

This paper reviews what is known about ethnic identity and the processes by which people cease offending. Whilst the past 30 years have seen dramatic growth in what is known about desistance, in many jurisdictions, there is a paucity of research which examines this in terms of ethnicity or ethnic variations. We therefore review what is empirically known about ethnicity and desistance. Whilst this review draws from the global literature, our focus is on what this literature tells us about ethnicity and desistance from a British perspective. We find that the majority of these have been undertaken in the United States (although there are some European and Australasian studies). Few studies, however, have fully unpacked the role of racism (in terms of institutional processes or overt prejudice and hostility) and that there have been very few studies of the roles played by ethnicity in processes of desistance.

The Howard Journal of Crime and JusticeVolume 64, Issue 3Sep 2025