By Sayler, Kelley M.

From the document: "Lethal autonomous weapon systems (LAWS) are a special class of weapon systems that use sensor suites and computer algorithms to independently identify a target and employ an onboard weapon system to engage and destroy the target without manual human control of the system. Although these systems are not yet in widespread development, it is believed they would enable military operations in communications-degraded or -denied environments in which traditional systems may not be able to operate. Contrary to a number of news reports, U.S. policy does not prohibit the development or employment of LAWS. Although the United States is not known to have LAWS in its inventory currently, some senior military and defense leaders have stated that it may be compelled to develop LAWS if U.S. competitors choose to do so. At the same time, many states and nongovernmental organisations are appealing to the international community for regulation of or a ban on LAWS due to ethical concerns. Developments in autonomous weapons technology and international discussions of LAWS could hold implications for congressional oversight, defense investments, military concepts of operations, treaty-making, and the future of war."

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. CONGRESSIONAL RESEARCH SERVICE. Jan. 2025. 3p.

By National Academy of Sciences

From the webpage: "At the request of the National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology, Strategic Report on Research and Development in Biotechnology for Defense Innovation provides an overview of the current landscape of artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML)-enabled biotechnology, the opportunities it presents, and the challenges it poses. This report offers a strategic vision for connecting scientists and technologists to build on, leverage, and tailor advances at the intersection of AI/ML, automated experimentation, and biotechnology to drive innovation in defence-related biotechnologies. Strategic Report on Research and Development in Biotechnology for Defense Innovation recommends addressing long-standing challenges with limited research, development, prototyping, testing and evaluation, and eventual use of biotechnologies. Addressing these challenges will help to advance U.S. national security and defence by improving the performance of existing capabilities, enabling the creation of domestic supply chains of valuable products, reducing reliance on processes and chemicals that are harmful to the environment, and/or adding new capabilities not currently possible with established technologies." Contributors include the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine; Division on Earth and Life Studies; Board on Life Sciences; and Committee on Biotechnology Capabilities for National Security Needs-Leveraging Advances in Transdisciplinary Biotechnology.

NATIONAL ACADEMIES PRESS (U.S.) 2025. 67p.

By Jerry H. Ratcliffe & Hayley Wight

Objectives

We test the benefit of adding an outreach specialist to a dedicated police team tasked with helping the vulnerable community in the transit system move to treatment or shelter.

Methods

For a year, officer shifts were randomized to determine when they were accompanied by an outreach specialist. One hundred and fifty-eight in-depth treatment conversations regarding treatment or shelter with 165 vulnerable people were assessed for whether they were subsequently transported to a suitable facility.

Results

Likelihood of an individual in a treatment conversation with a specialist and a police officer being transported to a facility was 29% greater than the likelihood for an individual talking with only a police officer; however, this finding was not statistically significant.

Conclusions

With the outcome of getting vulnerable people (mainly people experiencing homelessness) to accept transportation to a shelter or treatment facility, the co-responder model did not significantly outperform the effect of specially trained police officers working independently of the outreach specialist.

Journal of Experimental Criminology, 2024, 19p.

By Rachel Greenspan, Adele Quigley-McBride, Marissa Bluestine, Brandon L. Garrett

Decades of research have explored factors related to eyewitness misidentifications and recommended procedures to maximize identification accuracy. In the current study, we explore whether and how this research has actually been adopted into the formal, written policies of police agencies by evaluating eyewitness identification policies used across all Pennsylvania police agencies. Pennsylvania has a particularly large number of police agencies but no statewide mandates concerning best practices for eyewitness identifications in law or judicial ruling, permitting an examination of how police agencies choose to voluntarily implement eyewitness science in policy. We submitted public records requests to all police agencies in Pennsylvania (N = 1,140)-the most comprehensive study of this kind to date-and received a response rate of over 99%. Nearly two-thirds of agencies did not have a written eyewitness identification policy. Among agencies with a written policy, the content of their policies varied substantially. On average, agencies with a policy incorporated five of the eight recommended procedures studied here (Wells et al., 2020). Though many agencies with a policy had topics relevant to these key evidence-based practices, these policies often failed to incorporate central aspects of these scientific recommendations and most failed to require their use. We discuss the implications of these results for police policy and practice and for how scientific research is translated to criminal justice practitioners.

Duke Law School Public Law & Legal Theory Series No. 2024-63, 56p.

By No Name Kitchen

In the spring of 2020, the pandemic sealed borders and blinded those monitoring human rights violations along the Bosnian-Croatian border. Amid this backdrop, the Croatian authorities seemingly believed they could act with impunity. They were mistaken. NNK’s team activated its local network, connecting with neighbors to identify illegal pushbacks. On May 6th, in Poljana, Bosnia, sources reported a group of people had been forcibly returned, their heads marked with orange crosses. The men had their money, shoes, and mobile phones stolen. The use of spray paint –a religious symbol forced onto these predominantly Muslim men– suggests a disturbing mix of humiliation and psychological warfare. This case marked the beginning of a series of pushbacks involving an alarming level of torture and sadism, disconnected from any genuine border protection or respect for fundamental human rights. Croatian and European authorities have long justified pushbacks, citing bilateral agreements that bypass judicial due process and International Law. Likewise, the use of coercive force has been also legitimized under the guise of maintaining order. However, painting someone’s head with spray paint is neither defensible, legal, nor ethical, as it is robbing people of their phones, shoes, glasses, medicines, and passports and then burning these items in pyres. This is exactly what is happening today. Between October 2023 and August 2024, NNK conducted an extensive field investigation, uncovering evidence of these “burn piles”– secret locations where Croatian border police destroy the personal belongings of people attempting to migrate for a better life. This report compiles the evidence, survivor testimonies, and details the systematic and brutal modus operandi, aiming to push the Croatian administration towards accountability while urging European authorities and civil society to reflect on why would a border agent feel justified in taking a pair of glasses from a teenager fleeing war, leaving him blind in a forest at night, and then tossing those glasses into the flames to convert his hope into ashes? This border regime fails: it punishes the innocent while granting impunity to the undeserving. It is time to react. Time for safe and dignified routes.

Bloody Borders, 2024. 40.p.

=By Beth Redbird and Kat Albrecht

Racial disparity in arresting behavior is not only a concern for people of color; it can delegitimize law enforcement, increase tension between police and citizens, and even increase crime. Efforts at police reform stall, in part because racial disparity in policing was previously unmeasurable. The authors present three new measures of racial disparity in arrest, measured across more than 13,000 agencies nationwide, allowing for reliable analysis of disparity across time and geographic space. They demonstrate that, between 1999 and 2015, while crime rates generally declined, racial disparity in arrest increased substantially. Where the average police agency in 1999 arrested 5.48 Blacks for every White, the 2015 average was 9.25 arrests, nearly twice that. The increase derives largely from disparity in juvenile arrests by urban municipal agencies.

Evanston, IL: Northwestern University, Institute for Policy Research, 2020. 20p.

By Benjamin W. Fisher, Ethan M. Higgins, Aaron Kupchik, Samantha Viano , F. Chris Curran5 , Suzanne Overstreet, Bryant Plumlee , and Brandon Coffey.

Law enforcement officers (often called school resource officers or SROs) are an increasingly common feature in schools across the United States. Although SROs’ roles vary across school contexts, there has been little examination of why. One possible explanation is that SROs perceive threats differently in different school contexts and that the racial composition of schools may motivate these differences. To investigate this possibility, this study analyzes interviews with 73 SROs from two different school districts that encompass schools with a variety of racial compositions. Across both districts, SROs perceived three major categories of threats: student-based, intruder-based, and environment-based threats. However, the focus and perceived severity of the threats varied across districts such that SROs in the district with a larger proportion of White students were primarily concerned about external threats (i.e., intruder-based and environment-based) that might harm the students, whereas SROs in the district with a larger proportion of Black students were primarily concerned with students themselves as threats. We consider how these results relate to understandings of school security, inequality among students, racially disparate experiences with school policing, and school and policing policy

Social Problems, Vol. 69, No. 2, May 2022, 19p.

By Rebecca D. Gleit

This article describes how the use of sworn law enforcement in American schools is patterned by school racial composition. Three distinct measures are constructed using data from the Civil Rights Data Collection and the School Survey on Crime and Safety: police prevalence, the degree of exposure that students have to police officers within their schools, and the roles of officers within those schools. Results show that police have become increasingly prevalent in schools with the largest shares of white students, especially at the elementary level. Yet youth in schools with the most Black, Latinx, and Native American students experience the highest exposure to police, and police in these schools are more frequently directed to carry out punitive tasks such as discipline. Student exposure to police is also relatively common in the whitest schools, but officers in these settings are more often used for tasks unrelated to punishment, such as teaching.

Socius: Sociological Research for a Dynamic World Volume 8:, 2022, 18p.

By Alan Doig, Michael Levi, and Jodie Luker

In 2023, the UK government issued a national Fraud Strategy in response to concerns over increases in reported fraud and the low levels of law enforcement resources available to investigate cases. The Strategy was announced as a fundamental shift in how the government intended to respond to frauds and attempted frauds against individuals. The article focusses on the evidence base that may be assumed to underpin and shape any strategy by assessing and analysing the data what would have been available at the time the Strategy was drafted.The article argues that the Strategy has not taken any time to explore past strategies and any lessons to be learned and nor did it appear to substantively accessed, used, analysed and interpreted the available data, and nor used that data as an evidence base to develop an approach will have to be strategic, prioritised and innovative. The article concludes that, in strategic terms, the Strategy may be unlikely to achieve its objectives.

Security Journal (2025) 38:8

By Gretta L. Goodwin

Technologies such as automated license plate readers and drones can support federal law enforcement activities. However, the use of these technologies in public spaces—where a warrant is not necessarily required prior to use—has led to concerns about how law enforcement is protecting civil rights, civil liberties, and privacy. GAO was asked to review federal law enforcement’s use of detection, observation, and monitoring technologies. This report examines 1) the use of these technologies in public spaces without a warrant by selected DHS law enforcement agencies and 2) the extent to which the agencies have policies to assess the use of technologies for bias and protect privacy. GAO selected CBP, ICE, and the Secret Service within DHS based on various factors, including the large number of law enforcement officers in these agencies. GAO administered a structured questionnaire and reviewed documents, such as technology policies. GAO also interviewed agency officials. What GAO Recommends GAO is making five recommendations including that DHS develop policies and procedures to assess the risks of bias and ensure CBP, ICE and Secret Service implement privacy protections through technology policies. DHS concurred, but ICE and Secret Service described actions they have taken that do not address the recommendations, as discussed.

Washington, DC: U.S. Government Accountability Office, 2024. 54p.

By Dennis Mares and Lindsay Maier 

In 2018 the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department (SLMPD) was awarded a SPI grant aiming to reduce serious crime by deploying mobile surveillance trailers (MST). The targeted crimes include gun violence and theft of and from vehicles. The SPI award funded three mobile surveillance trailers equipped with license plate readers, cameras and gunshot detection. In addition to the three functioning trailers a fourth shell trailer (placebo) was also purchased to examine if any deterrent impact of the trailers is the outcome of enhanced intelligence capacity or whether the mere presence of the units deter crime by themselves. A total of 95 MST deployments occurred in micro hot spots between June 2020 and July 2022. Data from the SLMPDs CAD and RMS systems were collected continuously to explore the impact of the deployments. Final analysis of the data reveals some crime reductions. Crime reductions were noted in several targeted categories, including gunfire, larcenies and motor vehicle thefts. While crime reductions were found for violent crimes, comparable areas also experienced declines. While the SLMPD’s SPI project faced some challenges throughout its run, the project stayed the course and implementation of the project may be considered successful. There are numerous lessons learned from this project, a couple of the key items are highlighted here, but more can be found throughout this report: 1. Deployment of MSTs should be done by a small group of well-trained individuals. SPI trailers were monitored and received regular maintenance, but setup of the specific investigative components (license plate readers, cameras, and gunshot detection) requires specialized knowledge. We therefore recommend that agencies with a substantial number of trailers consider centralizing the deployment and maintenance of the units to minimize technical issues and reduce downtime. Quality of the MST units can be variable. Technical expertise within the department was a critical resource in expediently resolving wiring issues, for example. We recommend that agencies who purchase such units only do so if they have personnel with the technical expertise to handle and fix problems, or have a clear service contract with a vendor. While the vendor was responsive to problems, the vendor was located far from the region, which would delay service for significant issues. 2. Deployment of MSTs can only be adequately measured if units remain in place for some time and are adequately tracked. In other words: moving the units frequently hampers measurement, whereas leaving them in place too long conceivably reduces deterrent impacts. The SPI MSTs were carefully tracked by the RP, but other MSTs the department owned were tracked on a spreadsheet, which is not only time-consuming, but the information can be outdated quickly. During the course of the project the department improved tracking of all the MSTs . We created two ways to track the units, which could easily replicated in other agencies. We recommend that other agencies find similar ways to track the units, either using GPS trackers or within their CAD system. This allows for easier evaluation of crime prevention strategies but also helps with practical issues such as servicing and refueling trailers. 4. Deployment strategies should not just consider the frequency of crime but also the nature of the location. We found, for example, that the bright flashing blue lights on the trailers caused some annoyance among residents of narrow city streets. In addition, we found that automatic pan-tilt-zoom (PTZ) functions of cameras yielded less actionable footage in narrower streets as the cameras often would end up zoomed in on nearby properties thereby missing movement in the street. In short,  features that are often promoted by vendors may not always be useful in all situations. We therefore recommend discussing with vendors the types of locations in which the technology is typically deployed and customize the units to best fit the needs. 5. The SPI trailers were outfitted not only with cameras and license plate readers, but also with gunshot detection. That latter feature proved superfluous. Not only was the gunshot detection feature fairly inaccurate when compared to existing fixed gunshot technology (i.e., ShotSpotter), results indicate that the presence of the units themselves deters gunfire in close proximity (~500 feet) thereby negating any potential benefits gunshot detection system. In short, gunshot detection capability on visually prominent trailers is likely an inefficient and ineffective feature when deployed in most residential streets. In addition, setting up the gunshot detection can be very time-consuming, which in our case had to be redone every deployment. We therefore do not currently recommend adding gunshot detection to highly visible surveillance trailer as the added cost did not improve investigative benefits. 6. Target specific crime problems for reductions. We advise deploying MSTs in the highest crime locations that are difficult to surveil with traditional fixed systems (CCTV). Our results show that the most likely benefits can be gained from sites experiencing high levels of theft and gunfire, with no conclusive evidence that the units reduce serious violent crimes. 7. Crime reductions appear most commonly in only a small band around the units (~500ft), this makes careful placement important. It is also important to recognize that hot spots often may experience ‘regression to the mean’, meaning that crime often fluctuates in micro hot spots, rapidly heating up and quickly cooling down. This makes evaluating efforts difficult as it is easy to read crime reductions as a result of deployments, while in fact, they are simply returning to baseline levels and might have done so without deployment of MSTs. Using consistent criteria for deployment and measurement as well using comparison locations is therefore key to gain more confidence in results and minimize false conclusions. 8. Support of SLMPD personnel for MSTs became more prominent during the project. Survey results indicate that there was broad support for technology in the department, and especially for technologies that may aid investigations. Awareness of MSTs and their capacities grew substantially as the department expanded its use. 8. Finally and importantly, while it is relatively easy to measure crime at MST sites, it proved extremely difficult to measure how the units enhance intelligence gathering capacity. We encourage agencies to find ways to determine how MSTs and other technologies contribute to solving and prosecuting offenses. With growing public scrutiny of surveillance technology, it is even more important to develop best practices that can most accurately assess the cost-benefits of the technology.

Edwardsville, IL: Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, 2022. 46p.

By United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division and United States Attorney’s Office District of Massachusetts

The Department of Justice (DOJ) opened an investigation of the Worcester Police Department (WPD) and the City of Worcester (City) on November 15, 2022. Based on this investigation, DOJ has reasonable cause to believe that WPD and the City engage in a pattern or practice of conduct that deprives people of their rights under the Constitution and federal law. First, WPD uses excessive force. Second, WPD engages in outrageous government conduct by permitting undercover officers to participate in sexual contact with women suspected of being involved in the commercial sex trade. FINDINGS The Department of Justice has reasonable cause to believe that the Worcester Police Department and the City of Worcester engage in a pattern or practice of conduct that deprives people of their rights under the Constitution and federal law: • WPD uses excessive force that violates the Fourth Amendment. Officers unreasonably deploy Tasers, use police dogs, and strike people in the head. Officers rapidly escalate minor incidents by using more force than necessary, including during encounters with people who have behavioral health disabilities or are in crisis. • WPD engages in outrageous government conduct that violates the constitutional rights of women suspected of being involved in the commercial sex trade by engaging in sexual contact during undercover operations. This violates the Fourteenth Amendment’s due process clause. WPD’s inadequate policies, training, supervision, investigations, and discipline fostered these unlawful patterns or practices. This investigation also raises serious concerns that WPD officers have sexually assaulted women under threat of arrest and engaged in other problematic sexual conduct. WPD lacks the policies and practices needed to adequately address reports of sexual assault by non-officers as well, raising concerns about gender discrimination. In addition, the investigation raises serious concerns that WPD’s enforcement practices may result in discriminatory policing against Hispanic and Black people, whom WPD disproportionately warns, cites, arrests, and subjects to force. DOJ does not find at this time that these racial disparities amount to an unlawful pattern or practice of racial discrimination. However, WPD should collect and assess data about its practices and take steps to ensure they do not have an unlawful discriminatory effect. Worcester’s law enforcement professionals work hard to keep the public safe, often under difficult conditions. We commend those who dedicate their professional lives to serving the community. We also commend WPD and the City for implementing some reforms while this investigation was pending, including adopting body-worn cameras and creating a Policy Review Committee that solicits public comment on WPD policies. However, remedying the problems identified through this investigation will require more. DOJ expects to work constructively with WPD and the City to implement the reforms necessary to address the unlawful conduct outlined in this report.

Washington, DC: United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, 2024. 43p.

By Jess Keller

The Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security released a new report today on the widespread use of conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) and its devastating impacts on individuals and communities, which can last generations and undermine peace and security efforts.

Sexual violence is used as a weapon of war by combatants in conflict situations worldwide, decimating societies and fueling displacement. It remains a silent crime, with an estimated 80 percent of cases in conflict settings going unreported.

This fall, GIWPS convened leaders from Ukraine, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, and Colombia to share lessons learned for responding to the global scourge of CRSV. Drawing on their insights, this report presents actionable policy recommendations for key stakeholders to hold perpetrators accountable, meet survivor needs, and follow through on their commitments to deliver justice. The report, authored by Jess Keller, was made possible with support from the Embassy of Germany in Washington, D.C.

Key Recommendations

“Pathways to Justice and Accountability for Conflict-Related Sexual Violence: Lessons Learned and Policy Recommendations from the Frontlines” outlines detailed actions for the international community to hold perpetrators of CRSV accountable and meet survivors’ needs. Recommendations include:

Provide urgent survivor-centered medical and psychosocial services that include health care, legal assistance, and psychosocial support and address intersectional needs.

Co-create evidence-collection and documentation processes with survivors; prioritize data security and confidentiality; and train health workers, community leaders, police officers, judges, prosecutors, and qualified psychologists to minimize the risk of re-traumatization.

Challenge shame and transform stigma by amplifying survivor voices and leveraging community leadership.

Pursue criminal justice and accountability by strengthening national and subnational justice mechanisms, granting legal recognition to survivors, and utilizing sanctions to clearly and publicly condemn perpetrators and enablers.

Prioritize interim and comprehensive reparations to provide support, recognition, and compensation to survivors that address both immediate needs and post-conflict recovery.

Washington, DC: Georgetown University, Institute for Women, Peace and Security , 2024. 20p.

By Holly Bird, Jodie Bradshaw, Roger Grimshaw, Habib Kadiri and Helen Mills

The Labour government came into office earlier this year, with an ambitious ‘aim to halve knife crime in a decade’. Early moves have included, in September, the launch of a ‘Coalition to Tackle Knife Crime’, aiming, as the press release put it, to ‘bring together campaign groups, families of people who have tragically lost their lives to knife crime, young people who have been impacted and community leaders, united in their mission to save lives and make Britain a safer place for the next generation’. This was followed, in November, with proposals to fine senior executives of online companies if they market illegal weapons, along with moves to ban the sale of so-called ninja swords. The government is also proposing both ‘rapid intervention and tough consequences’ for those caught in possession of a knife and a network of ‘Young Futures hubs’, to improve access to support for young people at risk of criminalisation. The second of these proposals, which prioritise prevention and support for young people at risk, has a strong evidence-based underpinning it. ‘Decades of research and evidence gathering’, this briefing points out, ‘has shown that the drivers of serious violence are insecure employment prospects, poverty, substance misuse, mental health issues, volatile drug markets, experience of violence’. The same cannot be said of the ‘rapid intervention and tough consequences’ proposals, which tend to prioritise often short-term enforcement over longer-term prevention. One recent example of such action, the subject of this briefing, is the Serious Violence Reduction Order (SVRO), currently being piloted in four police areas in England. At its simplest, the imposition of an SVRO on an individual in effect gives the police carte blanche to stop and search them, at any time and in any place, and without the police having to demonstrate ‘reasonable suspicion’. Previous research on so-called suspicion-less stops and searches, cited in this briefing, found no evidence that they had any impact on the levels of violent crime. Indeed, there is scant evidence that stop and search in general has much of an impact on underlying crime levels (Bradford and Tiratelli, 2019). This is not an argument for no police enforcement. The police clearly perform important public order functions. But it is an argument for the importance of effective, evidenced-based policing. The roll-out of the SVRO pilots are shrouded in secrecy, with information hard to come by. While they are subject of an evaluation, there are some questions over whether it will provide the rigorous evidence of impact (or not) required, or, indeed, whether it will ever be published.

London: Centre for Crime and Justice Studies , 2024. 18p.

By The College of Policing (UK)

Key points Successfully identify stalking or harassment „ Think stalking first using the stalking mnemonic FOUR. Are the behaviours Fixated, Obsessive, Unwanted and Repeated? „ In cases of harassment, review and reconsider why the case does not meet the description of stalking. Investigate thoroughly „ Establish any pattern of behaviour and relevant history, reported or otherwise. „ Follow all lines of enquiry, whether they point towards or away from the suspect. „ In cases of stalking or harassment it is likely there will have been use of technology to facilitate the behaviour, and reasonable lines of enquiry must be pursued. Care for the victim „ Be compassionate and understanding in your approach. „ Do not make judgements about a victim’s behaviour – focus on the evidence. „ Remember that safeguarding the victim and reducing risk take priority over a criminal justice outcome. „ Recognise that victims may be traumatised and in need of specialist support. „ Remember that victims may be entitled to an enhanced service under the Code of Practice for Victims of Crime. „ Keep the victim updated on relevant stages of the investigation (eg, arrest, charge or release).

This advice will assist investigators responsible for a case once it has been transferred following the initial police response. This may be investigators working within public protection or CID, or in some forces, local policing investigators who retain stalking or harassment cases following an initial response

London: College of Policing (UK), 2024. 33p.

tFederal Facilities Council.. James Myska and Joe Alper, Rapporteurs

Federal facilities are increasingly complex and sophisticated systems of systems, with automated systems tied together through operational technology (OT) networks monitoring and controlling lighting and environmental control systems (CS), among many others. Federal agencies have built virtual fortresses around their information technology (IT) networks, including connected CS and OT networks, yet key vulnerabilities can allow bad actors to tunnel through the embedded layers of protection, interfere with facility operation and control, and gain direct passages into IT networks, bypassing their elaborate protections. On July 9, 2024, the National Academies' Federal Facilities Council convened a workshop to discuss the security of CS and OT networks. Workshop panelists explored the current threat environment; standards, policies, and guidance to protect OT and CS from malicious actors; and approaches that industry has taken to protect its OT and CS security.

National Academies of Sciences, 2024. 41p.

By Diogo G. C. Britto, Gianmarco Daniele, Marco Le Moglie, Paolo Pinotti, Breno Sampaio

We study the prevalence and effects of individuals with past criminal charges among candidates and elected politicians in Brazil. Individuals with past criminal charges are twice as likely to both run for office and be elected compared to other individuals. This pattern persists across political parties and government levels, even when controlling for a broad set of observable characteristics. Randomized anti-corruption audits reduce the share of mayors with criminal records, but only when conducted in election years. Using a regression discontinuity design focusing on close elections, we demonstrate that the election of mayors with criminal backgrounds leads to higher rates of underweight births and infant mortality. Additionally, there is an increase in political patronage, particularly in the health sector, which is consistent with the negative impacts on local public health outcomes.

Bonn:  IZA – Institute of Labor Economics, 2024. 60p.

By Erin Hammers Forstag, Rapporteur; Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education; National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine

Predictive policing strategies are approaches that use data to attempt to predict either individuals who are likely to commit crime or places where crime is likely to be committed, to enable crime prevention. To explore law enforcement's use of person-based and place-based predictive policing strategies, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine held a two-day public workshop on June 24 and 25, 2024.

National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2024. 14 pages

By Kevin Petersen, Christopher S. Koper, Bruce G. Taylor, Weiwei Liu, Jackie Sheridan-Johnson

Police use-of-force is a growing public health concern, with recent estimates suggesting that over 70,000 people are injured by police each year. To reduce the risk of injury to civilians, most police agencies authorize the use of various less-lethal weapons. However, to date, there is little consensus as to which types of less-lethal weapons are most effective at reducing injury risk. In this study, we test the differential effects of less-lethal weapons on civilian injury and injury severity using data on 2348 use-of-force incidents originating from 17 large urban and metropolitan law enforcement agencies from 2015 to 2019. Specifically, we assess the injury risks associated with conducted energy devices, chemical agents, impact weapons, and police canines, while controlling for a robust set of officer, civilian, and situational characteristics. Our results indicate that chemical agents reduce the risk of hospitalization or death significantly more than other weapon types, while police canines increase the risk of all injury outcomes significantly more than other weapon types. Adjusting for incident characteristics, chemical agents are predicted to cause hospitalization or death in 4% of cases, compared to 13% for conducted energy devices, 16% for impact weapons, and 37% for police canines. These findings suggest that civilian injury may be reduced through use-of-force policies that prioritize less severe modalities of force, though more research is needed on the contextual and long-term effects of these weapons.

Journal of Urban Health; November, 2024

By Emily Owens and Emily Hope Anderson

We analyze 2.3 million stops made by the California Highway Patrol (CHP) in 2022 to better understand who is being stopped (or helped in non-enforcement stops), if there are racial and ethnic disparities in who is being stopped, and suggest possible strategies the CHP could use to reduce unwarranted disparities in stops while also promoting public safety. KEY FINDINGS: 1. As compared to 2019, there were fewer enforcement and non-enforcement stops made by the CHP in 2022. This is likely driven by changes in the number of California drivers and their behavior or by the number of CHP Officers, rather than a reduction in CHP enforcement effort. 2. The overall size of Black-White and Hispanic-White disparities in stop rates, benchmarked to non-enforcement stops, is about the same as it was in 2019. This is true both state-wide, and within individual CHP Divisions. 3. In 2022, CHP Officers were more likely to stop Black or Hispanic people for moving violations than White people. A Veil of Darkness test also suggests the potential presence of bias in stops for moving violations. 4. In 2022, 21% of the traffic enforcement stops made by the CHP were for non-moving violations. These stops for non-moving violations led to 35% of all serious contraband seizures by CHP Officers and 12% of DUI arrests. Officers are more likely to discover serious narcotics in searches following non-moving violations than in searches following moving violations. 5. Black-White and Hispanic-White disparities in stop rates for non-moving violations made a small contribution to overall disparities in stops rates. If the CHP did not make any stops for non-moving violations in 2022, Black-White disparities in stop rates would have been 2.9% lower, and Hispanic-White disparities would have been 2.2% lower.  RECOMMENDATIONS: 1. The CHP should consider further investigation into the quantity and specific type of contraband seized when conducting searches; this information is currently not included in RIPA data. This would allow for a more formal cost-benefit analysis of making stops for non-moving violations. 2. The CHP may want to consider increased use of technology in making stops for moving violations. Statistical tests suggest that stops made where speed information is gathered by radar, lidar, or airplane, are less likely to involve nonWhite drivers than stops made when a CHP Officer collects speed information by driving alongside or behind the potentially speeding car.   

Berkeley: California Policy Lab, 2024. 56p.