By Ekow N. Yankah

A number of high-profile and racially charged killings, such as Trayvon Martin’s, Kenneth Herring’s, Ahmaud Arbery’s, and Jordan Neely’s, have been at the hands of civilians declaring themselves the law. These deaths stemmed from a phenomenon best described as “deputization.” Deputization describes a latent legal power that has empowered White people throughout American history to claim authority to enforce the law, as they see it, upon racial minorities generally and Black people in particular. This power turned the ancient common law duty to police all felons in England into a specific American common law duty to police Blacks. From the founding clauses of the Constitution to the Fugitive Slave Acts, to the birth of racist citizen’s arrest laws, there has always been an implicit understanding that part of Whiteness in America is a privilege to use private force to police Black people.

Deputization adds to the literature by focusing not only on racist state-sponsored violence but the privilege of racist private violence. Indeed, “deputization” is a more potent danger for Black Americans than racist policing. First, as a matter of magnitude, White Americans’ inherited assumption that they are authorized to violently enforce the law upon Black people dwarfs the reach of the police. Second, deputization is clothed in claims of legal authority; its power is amplified because those who act upon it feel they are in the right. Lastly, deputization shapes the way in which Black Americans so often move through the world: cautious, alert, or angry; their lives truncated, metaphorically and literally, by the awareness that White people around them claim a power to police them at any time.

Importantly, deputization presents a unique legal challenge because those who impose racial violence in its name do not fear the law; they are confident that they are both authorized by and reinforcing the law. This Article further places deputization in the context of two important areas of criminal theory. It shows how deputization presents another front in understanding critical race theories of criminal law. Simultaneously, it shows why civic, equality-based political theories are particularly insightful in identifying the harms deputization does to our civic bonds. Lastly, this Article shows the lessons of deputization can draw from criminal law abolitionism about the need to change deeper structures than policing while simultaneously cautioning of the dangers of private violence rushing to fill the void.

77 Stan. L. Rev. 703 (2025), 75p.

By Thalia González

The ever-growing list of names of Black victims who have died at the hands of police has emboldened a new public narrative that frames police violence—and other more commonplace, though less lethal, disparate policing practices—as a public health crisis rooted in this country’s history of racism and anti-Blackness. This public narrative in turn has spawned a diverse set of responsive actions in both the public and private sectors directed at addressing the effects of individual and structural racism on health. Yet missing from this linkage between police violence and racialized health disparities is any focus on the educational system, despite the increasing prevalence of police and standard policing practices in K-12 schools and the clear racial disparities of school policing. The central claim of this Essay is that school policing is an obvious public health issue. It sits at the nexus of two critical social determinants of health—education and racism—and requires targeted attention as such. The racialized nature of school-policing practices and the disparate outcomes for Black students are well documented. And, by applying a public health lens to this school police literature, specific individual- and aggregate-level health and mental outcomes become apparent. School policing negatively affects Black students’ mental health and physical safety, diminishes protective health factors, and places students at heightened risk for justice-system entry. Finally, understanding school policing as a public health issue has significant potential benefits and practical implications, especially for the antiracist health-equity movement.

Stanford Law Review Online, Vol. 73, 2021. 14p.

By Eisha Jain

This Essay argues that racial reckoning in policing should include a racial reckoning in the use of criminal records. Arrests alone—regardless of whether they result in convictions—create criminal records. Yet because the literature on criminal records most often focuses on prisoner reentry and on the consequences of criminal conviction, it is easy to overlook the connections between policing decisions and collateral consequences. This Essay employs the sociological framework of marking to show how criminal records entrench racial inequality stemming from policing. The marking framework recognizes that the government creates a negative credential every time it creates a record of arrest as well as conviction. Such records, in turn, trigger cascading consequences for employment, housing, immigration, and a host of other areas. The credentialing process matters because it enables and conceals race-based discrimination, and because a focus on the formal sentence often renders this discrimination invisible. This Essay considers how adopting a credentialing framework offers a way to surface, and ultimately to address, how race-based policing leaves lasting marks on over-policed communities.

Stanford Law Review Online, Volume 73, 2021. 18p.

By Jessica M. Eaglin

Much public debate circles around grassroots activists’ demand to “defund the police,” raised in public consciousness in the summer of 2020. Yet confusion about the demand is pervasive. This Essay adopts a literal interpretation of “defund” to clarify and distinguish four alternative, substantive policy positions that legal reforms related to police funding can validate. It argues that the policy debates between these positions exist on top of the ideological critique launched by grassroots activists, who use the term “defund the police” as a discursive tactic to make visible deeper transformations in government practices that normalize the structural marginalization of black people enforced through criminal law. w. By recognizing this socially contextualized meaning to the call to defund the police, this Essay offers two important insights for the public in this current moment. First, it urges the public to confront the structural marginalization of black people when evaluating legal reforms that may impact police budgets. Second, the Essay encourages the public to embrace the state of confusion produced by the demand to “defund the police” when considering social reforms going forward.

Stanford Law Review Online Volume 73 (2020-2021), 21p.

By Bocar A. Ba , Dean Knox, Jonathan Mummolo3, Roman Rivera

Diversification is a widely proposed policing reform, but its impact is difficult to assess. We used records of millions of daily patrol assignments, determined through fixed rules and preassigned rotations that mitigate self-selection, to compare the average behavior of officers of different demographic profiles working in comparable conditions. Relative to white officers, Black and Hispanic officers make far fewer stops and arrests, and they use force less often, especially against Black civilians. These effects are largest in majority-Black areas of Chicago and stem from reduced focus on enforcing low-level offenses, with greatest impact on Black civilians. Female officers also use less force than males, a result that holds within all racial groups. These results suggest that diversity reforms can improve police treatment of minority communities. 

Science, 371, (6): 2021, 8p.

By Lucy Strang, Jack Cattell, Eddie Kane, Emma Disley, Brenda Gonzalez-Ginocchio, Alex Hetherington, Sophia Hasapopoulos, Emma Zürcher  

Background to the Report RAND Europe, in partnership with Get the Data and Skills for Justice, was commissioned by the Ministry of Justice in 2021 to conduct a study funded by the Shared Outcomes Fund on how police in England and Wales use options to resolve cases out of court to support adults (aged 18 or over) with health-related vulnerabilities.1 Following legislative reforms, a ‘two-tier plus’ framework for Out of Court Disposals (OOCDs; or Out of Court Resolutions2) is due to come into force nationally. This new framework consolidates the current statutory disposals into two primary options: Diversionary Caution and Community Caution. In advance of the implementation of the framework, this study aimed to provide an overview of how different police forces use OOCDs; to improve the use of OOCDs with conditions attached that address mental health and other health-related vulnerabilities; and to produce the foundations of practice change and improve the data collection methods to monitor their use and enable potential further research to explore their effectiveness. The study took place in three phases: • In Phase 1, the research team captured the current use of OOCD conditions to support adults with health vulnerabilities and relevant services available locally for each of the 37 police force areas in England and Wales participating in this study, including identifying any local gaps in service provision. • In Phase 2, the research team explored in greater depth how health vulnerabilities are identified, relevant conditions set, and progress is monitored, as well as perceptions of the effectiveness of the conditions set in a sample of seven police forces. • In Phase 3, the research team worked with seven3 police forces on a more detailed follow-up to co-produce the foundations of practice change, developing improved operational practice around the use of OOCDs, and creating supportive guidance, tools and training to enable effective application of OOCDs with health related conditions. In addition, the research team worked with these forces to improve data collection on the use of OOCDs with conditions attached to enable potential longer-term analytical work to isolate the short, medium- and long-term impacts of individual interventions on reoffending. This Report presents findings from all three Phases of this study. It is intended to be useful and relevant for frontline and operational police officers, service providers and policy stakeholders. 1.2 Key findings from this study Force-level approaches to OOCDs • Just over half (19) of the participating forces were using a two-tier OOCD model in March 2022, with a further 13 forces reported to be introducing two-tier in 2022 or working towards introducing it in 2023. • The OOCD processes and protocols used varied a great deal between forces and work with the case study forces identified significant missed OOCD opportunities, even in forces which had high levels of OOCD usage. • Across 37 forces, 189 services were identified that could be attached as conditions to OOCDs, with substance misuse and mental health services the most commonly available to be attached to OOCDs. • Nevertheless, most force areas reported that the local provision of mental health-related services generally was not sufficient for the needs of vulnerable offenders with OOCDs. • A range of funding models for available services were identified, the most common of which were police-funded, externally funded (for example, by local authorities) and offender-funded. • Of the forces that reported engaging with service providers as part of their OOCD process, relationships with service providers were generally maintained through some form of regular contact. • The training of police officers and staff on OOCDs, particularly in relation to conducting vulnerability assessments, was generally conducted on an ad hoc basis and was not available as a structured programme for most police forces, with staff turnover and inexperienced officers identified as key challenges. • Disproportionality in who received OOCDs was identified as a concern by some OOCD stakeholders. • Force use of OOCD scrutiny panels, which independently review anonymised cases, varied greatly across forces. Frontline approaches to OOCDs • Three levels of decision-makers at key OOCD decision gateways – the officer in charge (OIC), their supervisor and the force OOCD management and support functions – were identified. • Most police forces did not have a force-wide policy requiring a health vulnerability screening and assessment during the OOCD decision-making process and the use of a tool to assess health vulnerabilities was a well established process in only a minority of forces, usually those with a dedicated OOCD team. • The majority of forces were still reliant on frontline officers and their supervisors to make decisions regarding OOCD condition setting and deciding on any supportive interventions. • The most effective OOCD management processes and outcomes were found in those with a dedicated team. • The responsibility for monitoring compliance varied significantly between forces, with some assigning it, for example, to a dedicated OOCD team, and others to the OIC or an OOCD caseworker. 5 experiment and process evaluation would offer the most rigorous findings in the current context. 1.3 Reflections and implications Overall, findings from the study indicate that there is significant variation across forces in England and Wales in their OOCD processes and in how well-developed and well-established these processes are. At the force level, it appeared that OOCDs were underused in many forces; across the 31 forces that shared information on outcomes given to offenders in 2021, on average only 8% of all offenders were given an OOCD, but this varied substantially between forces. Furthermore, significant gaps were identified across most force areas in the availability of interventions to meet the needs of vulnerable offenders. Furthermore, limited provision of training on OOCD use, staff turnover, high proportions of inexperienced officers, and the disproportionality in who receives OOCDs were identified as significant force-level challenges to making the best use of OOCDs to support adults with health vulnerabilities. At the frontline operational level, limited use of vulnerability assessments in the OOCD process and limited input from Liaison and Diversion (L&D) services were also widely reported. In relation to offender engagement and compliance with conditions, there is a lack of meaningful data available which creates challenges in understanding the effectiveness of their use. Overall, the existence of a dedicated OOCD team or independent entity was associated with strong and consistently applied OOCD processes. While most interventions identified in this study have not been rigorously evaluated, broader evidence from the UK and abroad suggests that OOCDs can address health vulnerabilities and reduce reoffending. In Section 5, we discuss how relevant data can be collated to facilitate the management, monitoring, and evaluation of OOCDs. Based on these reflections, our Phase 3 work produced a series of practice guides and tools to support forces to develop and maintain good practice in using OOCDs to support adults with health vulnerabilities. These guides and tools, listed below, are referred and linked to where appropriate throughout this report.    • Health Vulnerability Assessment Guide: to support forces in identifying the health vulnerability assessment process and enabling better decision-making throughout. This guide also includes good practice examples for working with Liaison and Diversion. • Quality Assurance Guide: discussing how forces can procure in a way that facilitates a good evidence base. • Auditing Missed Opportunities Guide: provides forces with a simple methodology for auditing OOCD decisions to identify learning. • Data collection tool prototype: to support forces in gathering and using OOCD data. In addition, the study team developed OOCD training resources for forces to support relevant officers and decision makers on setting conditions to OOCDs to address health vulnerabilities, and to support higher level decision makers on implementing OOCD processes. Implications Sections 3, 4 and 5 conclude with a series of implications for OOCD practitioners and stakeholders in light of the implementation of the statutory two-tier plus framework in 2023. At the force level (Section 3), these implications are: • Each force should review their current processes and protocols to ensure significant opportunities to use OOCDs for those with health vulnerabilities are not being missed. This could include offence type audits and more detailed scrutiny of cases given OOCD and equivalent cases where they were not. A guide developed as part of this study is available (see the Rand website). • Forces should analyse data on local needs to identify any gaps in service provision, and work with service providers to address these gaps. • Forces should build service provision for OOCDs and their relationships with service providers by piloting and scaling up services in response to identified local need (and informed by robust evidence of effectiveness – see Section 5 below (see the Rand website). • Where possible, forces should seek to identify and utilise service providers with stable sources of funding to help ensure resilience in service provision. This may mean that some services are funded by the police to provide this stability. Furthermore, reducing offender-pays services can remove some barriers to compliance. • Forces should establish consistent and standardised modes of communication with service providers, including on compliance with and breaches of conditions. This may be easier with a dedicated OOCD team. • Forces should facilitate good information sharing by integrating service providers into police IT systems (in compliance with relevant data protection regulations.) • Each force should review their current training arrangements to ensure all those involved in OOCD decision-making are suitably trained in this area. Forces can consider adopting/adapting the training model outlined in this guidance (see the Rand website). • Each force should review its current use of OOCD attached services aimed at those with health vulnerabilities to ensure that their current practice is not resulting in disproportionality in the use of OOCDs or discriminating against some individuals, groups or communities. • Each force should review their current adult OOCD scrutiny arrangements to ensure that their overall oversight and accountability mechanisms for OOCDs are more consistent and comprehensive, as well as able to address wider issues of disproportionality. At the frontline operational level (Section 4), these implications are: • Each force (where not already in place) should review its position on having a dedicated OOCD team and develop options to put one in place. • Each force should review their current approach to screening for and assessing health vulnerabilities as part of the OOCD decision making process including links to L&D or equivalent services in all relevant settings including for Voluntary Attendance. The research team has developed a guide on working with L&D for OOCDs (see the Rand website).  ....continued.....

London: UK Ministry of Justice, 2024. 150p.

By Richard Odin Segovia 

This systematic review explores the recruitment and retention challenges in law enforcement, focusing on their impact on operational effectiveness and community safety. The goal is to synthesize existing literature to identify research gaps and suggest directions for future studies. By examining qualitative and quantitative research, this review aims to provide practical strategies to improve recruitment and retention in law enforcement. Methods: Searches were conducted using Google Scholar, JSTOR, and ProQuest to capture a broad range of law enforcement recruitment and retention studies. The selection process involved a systematic search that yielded 135 records. After removing duplicates, 42 studies were screened based on title and abstract, leading to 34 full-text articles assessed for eligibility. Twenty-five studies met the inclusion criteria and were included in the qualitative and quantitative synthesis, and five additional sources were used for background and contextual information. This review adhered to PRISMA guidelines. Results: The review highlights key factors influencing recruitment and retention, including public perceptions, competing labor markets, and organizational culture. Enhanced recruitment efforts, such as digital campaigns and targeted outreach, significantly increase applications and improve the quality of applicants. Supportive workplace environments and wellness programs substantially reduce turnover rates and improve job satisfaction. Effective recruitment and retention strategies also enhance community trust and workforce diversity. Conclusions: The review underscores the need for well-structured research to substantiate effective recruitment and retention strategies. It recommends areas for in-depth exploration in future studies, especially longitudinal research on the long-term impacts of innovative recruitment and retention strategies. Application to Law Enforcement: Integrating digital recruitment, community engagement, and wellness programs can enhance workforce stability  and effectiveness for law enforcement leaders. These strategies improve officer recruitment and retention, reduce turnover, and build stronger relationships with the community, leading to more effective policing outcomes.    

Lynchburg, VA: Liberty University, 2024. 43p.

 By Logan Seacrest and Jillian Snider  

  This policy study explores the recruitment and retention crisis in U.S. law enforcement, analyzing historical, social, and economic factors that have shaped the problem. It describes the staffing shortage, evaluates its consequences, and explores innovative strategies to address the issue. The findings and recommendations offered in this paper provide a practical, comprehensive framework for agencies to build and sustain a strong, resilient workforce

R Street Policy Study No. 31, 2025. 27p.

By Eve M. Brank, Jennifer L. Groscup, and Kayla R. Sircy

The Fourth Amendment and court cases interpreting it provide guidelines for how law enforcement should legally approach searching for and taking evidence in criminal investigations. Though it originally applied to physical intrusion by law enforcement, current—and likely future—intrusions are more virtual in nature. Law enforcement officers no longer need to walk onto someone’s property to search for criminal activity because various technologies now provide similar or more in-depth information. Technological innovations have stretched the bounds of the Fourth Amendment. Although public opinion cannot answer the policy implications, it can speak to what the public reasonably expects of the police. In general, limited research demonstrates that the public has concerns about the way law enforcement officers can use technology in their investigations, but those concerns are not strong enough to decrease individuals’ technology use  

Annual Review of Law and Social Science Vol. 20:387-405, October 2024)

By Brian A. Jackson, Pauline Moore, Jennifer T. Leschitz, Benjamin Boudreaux, Jo Caulkins, Shoshana R. Shelton

Violence by K–12 students is disturbingly common. Ensuring that schools have effective ways to identify and prevent such incidents is becoming increasingly important. Various concerning behaviors or disturbing communications, including direct threats, can precede acts of violence. Although removing every student exhibiting such behaviors might seem prudent, doing so can be counterproductive, limiting the effectiveness of safety efforts. With effective systems for behavioral threat assessment and management (BTAM), schools can assess and respond to concerning behavior to protect the community and respond to the student whose behavior caused concern.

To do so, schools need the tools to respond. Tools may include restrictive measures or law enforcement involvement in the most serious cases, but other options can be more effective. Those additional options include different types of mental health intervention, counseling, and other supports. Teams with extensive tools available to them can better customize interventions, increasing the chance of positive outcomes for all involved.

In this report, the authors draw on published literature and extensive interviews with education and public safety practitioners to build an inventory of the many intervention options that are valuable for schools in the management phase of BTAM. In addition, drawing on varied approaches from the fields of counseling, school discipline and behavioral management, and other professions that must match appropriate services to the needs of youth in their care, the report discusses decision support tools to help management teams implement this critical part of efforts in preventing targeted violence and keeping school communities safe.

Key Findings

Various Intervention Options Are Available for K–12 BTAM Efforts

Support-focused interventions can address the underlying causes of problematic student behavior and also lead a student toward a more favorable, positive path into the future.

By using supportive counseling and other interventions, BTAM is widening the options available for school leaders and staff to address problematic behavior that has the potential to develop into violence.

To be effective, school BTAM teams need a broad set of tools, including options appropriately matched (1) to the specifics of a student's problematic behaviors, (2) to the unique school community and environment, and (3) to the needs and circumstances of the student or students involved.

Insights from Education, Public Safety, and Other Fields Can Be Combined to Support Matching Effective Interventions to Student Needs

Decision support tools and resource-matching guidance can help ensure that school-based teams are collecting the information required to taking a holistic approach to address a student's varied needs and help promote appropriate consistency to ensure that disparities in how BTAM teams respond do not substantiate concerns that BTAM processes are unfair or inequitable.

Using structured systems to capture data when a BTAM team (1) interviews students involved in an incident, (2) collects school or law enforcement data, or (3) contacts others for information about a student of concern provides a more straightforward starting point for selecting among multiple intervention options.

Recommendations

To better inform intervention planning, intervention tools should be designed so that they prioritize collecting data on factors that can be changed because pieces of information in BTAM that may be a useful part of assessing the danger posed by an individual may be useless for intervention planning.

The inventory of intervention options developed in this study could provide a starting point for schools to make conscious decisions as they (1) review the options available to their teams and (2) identify any options they do not have access to but that could become valuable near-term priorities to strengthen their school safety efforts.

Progress monitoring data of BTAM efforts can help better support students while also helping schools become more responsive to external oversight of their BTAM programs and allay concerns about the fairness and equity of outcomes across different student populations.

Including positive mileposts into threat management planning not only could help lay out a path to full completion of all intervention activities but could also help define goals more specifically for an at-risk student, motivating even more beneficial outcomes.

Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2025. 170p.

By David J. Knight and Vesla M. Weaver

This review integrates recent scholarship outside of criminology with primary source material from a broadened source base to trace underappreciated histories of political struggle to secure safety and address harm in Black communities. Much of the existing literature in criminology and related social science fields tends to overlook bottom-up sources and the creative safety practices and sites of safety provision that exist and, in so doing, contributes to a lopsided empirical narrative of policing in the United States. This review, however, highlights the centrality of Black-led political mobilization, formal and informal, to articulating alternate visions of safety beyond policing and building alternate structures to transform the legal system and challenge racial criminalization. Examples include community patrols, the efforts of Black police to confront violence in their own departments and stand up structures of responsiveness, and national campaigns to challenge punitive legislation and offer alternatives. Unearthing these often marginalized and misrecognized histories and sources of Black-led struggle for community safety enables an analysis of not only the forms that community-led practices and interventions can take but also the ongoing state-produced conditions—referred to in this review as safety deprivation—that give rise to them. More broadly, this review uses these histories as a lens through which to consider how empirical narratives of policing and safety are transformed when community-derived, bottom-up knowledge sources are accounted for both substantively and methodologically and offers the field a guide of available databases.

Annu. Rev. Criminol. 2025. 8:25–52

By The Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services

The Community Policing Act of 2020 (HB 1250; “the Act") mandated that the Virginia State Police (VSP) and other state and local law enforcement agencies, including police departments (PDs) and sheriff’s offices (SOs), begin collecting and reporting data on traffic stops as of July 1, 2020. State law enforcement agencies, PDs, and SOs are required to collect data on the race, ethnicity, and other characteristics of the drivers stopped, and on other circumstances of the stop such as the reason for the stop, whether any individuals or vehicles were searched, and the outcome of the stop (arrest, citation, warning, etc.). All reporting agencies are to submit this data to VSP, who maintain the data in the Community Policing Database.

The Act also mandated that the Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services (DCJS) periodically obtain data from the Community Policing Database and produce an annual report “for the purposes of analyzing the data to determine the existence and prevalence of the practice of bias-based profiling and the prevalence of complaints alleging the use of excessive force." Such reports shall be produced and published by July 1 of each year.

This is the third of these reports from DCJS. It contains a review of how the data was collected and analyzed as well as preliminary findings of data from 650,387 traffic stops reported in Virginia during the nine-month period between July 1, 2022, and March 31, 2023. This report also presents the findings from analyses of statewide data; aggregated data from the seven VSP Divisions; and data from each individual law enforcement agency that reported sufficient data to the Community Policing Database.

The information presented in this report is preliminary and should be interpreted with caution. Although this analysis identified disparities in traffic stop rates related to race/ethnicity, it does not allow us to determine or measure specific reasons for these disparities. Most importantly for this study, this analysis does not allow us to determine the extent to which these disparities may or may not be due to bias-based profiling or to other factors that can vary depending on race or ethnicity. These other factors include differences in locations where police focus their patrol activities, differences in underlying regional populations, differences in driving patterns among individuals, and the lack of a scientifically established baseline for determining the number of drivers in each racial/ethnic group who are on the road and subject to being stopped while driving.

The analysis of racial disparity is a complex field with a vast array of potential contributing factors. Many data elements could play influential roles in racial/ethnic patterns of traffic enforcement but are unavailable to DCJS. Factors like the race of the officer performing the stop, agency policies and community priorities driving enforcement patterns, police report narratives outlining legal justifications for stop, search, and arrest can all inform stop patterns but are not within the current purview of available Community Policing Act data. Additionally, the data presented in this report cannot reflect any stop trends from agencies which did not provide data or records that were excluded for completeness issues. As such, while the report presents stop, search, and arrest disparities based on the available data, they should not be construed as complete and final proof of disparity OR any explanation of contributing factors which drive genuine disparities which may exist.

This report does not tabulate the many positive actions that can occur for a traffic stop such as seizures of guns, confiscation of drugs, and ensuring valid and current drivers’ licenses. The Community Policing Act imposes narrow requirements for data collection and analysis, and any benefits of traffic or pedestrian stops are not within the scope of the law.

While DCJS and VSP have introduced process improvements based on lessons learned in past reporting, the Community Policing Act is still in the early stages of implementation. More and better data, as noted in the recommendations, is needed to make the observations in this report more than directional, and the costs of such data gathering need further evaluation. As the report notes, many PDs and SOs − especially smaller agencies with limited resources − continue to face challenges establishing the data collection and reporting required under the Act. The majority of local law enforcement agencies (LEAs) in Virginia (255, or 74%) employ 50 or fewer sworn officers, including 118 (or 34%) employing 10 or fewer sworn officers. Many of these agencies have faced challenges fulfilling all requirements imposed by the Act and aligning their collection practices with the changes introduced since first implementation of the Act. For this reason, some agencies were unable to report complete data responsive to the Community Policing Act for the entire year, and in some cases the quality of the data was limited. Additionally, a substantial number of smaller agencies reported so few traffic stops that it was not possible to interpret data related to driver race/ethnicity. The state may wish to consider providing additional resources to LEAs, particularly smaller agencies, to support their ability to comply with the data-related provisions of the Act.

Another important limitation to the data and findings presented in this report relates to the race/ethnicity data in the Community Policing Database itself. Because the state lacks a standardized mechanism for reporting the race or ethnicity of a given driver, law enforcement officers must either make their own determination about a driver’s race/ethnicity (which may or may not be accurate) or ask for that information in the course of the traffic stop, which could raise constitutional concerns or escalate the perception of conflict in certain situations. Virginia does not collect and store information about a driver’s race/ethnicity, whether in driver-related databases maintained by the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles or on individual driver’s licenses. Whether and to what extent the data related to driver race/ethnicity in the Community Policing Database accurately captures this information cannot be determined without further review.

The factors described above limited the ability of DCJS staff to conduct any complex statistical analysis of the data or to draw any firm conclusions about the existence and prevalence of the practice of bias-based profiling in a given agency or jurisdiction. It is anticipated that the reporting, analysis, and interpretation of Community Policing Act data will improve in the future as the program matures.

Richmond: Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services, 2021. 73p.

By Alex Severson

In July 2019, Bernalillo County and the City of Albuquerque established the Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion (LEAD) program, a pre-booking diversion intervention designed to provide harm reduction services to individuals either at risk of or previously involved in the criminal justice system. In this report, we analyzed whether enrolling and engaging in LEAD improved participants’ housing, substance use, employment, and recidivism outcomes. We did not have enough data through November 2023 to support strong statistical conclusions about whether LEAD – Bernalillo County had been effective at improving outcomes of participants due to low enrollment counts prior to September 2021 and due to the deadline for submitting the present outcome evaluation. Preliminary results were suggestive of potential short-term gains in housing outcomes specifically among the subset of LEAD participants who continued to engage with the program through six-months, though it is unclear whether these results generalized to the subset of LEAD participants who disengaged following enrollment. Results, though statistically underpowered to detect effects, also did not suggest that program enrollment or engagement meaningfully influenced participant recidivism.

Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, Center for Applied Research & Analysis, 2023. 29p

By Stephanie Seguino, Nancy Brooks, Pat Autilio

This study has three goals. The first it to analyze police behavior as regards race and traffic policing. The second is to evaluate police compliance with the law requiring the collection and reporting of traffic stop data. And the third is to evaluate the effectiveness of the legislation in generating robust data collection on race and traffic policing that is relatively user friendly for analysis by community stakeholders. With regard to the first goal, we examine the data for evidence of racial disparities in several areas: racial shares and magnitudes of stops as well as racial disparities in stop rates, reasons for stops, arrest rates, search rates, and contraband “hit” rates. We also examine trends to determine whether racial disparities fall over time, particularly in response to the legalization of cannabis in July 2018. Our study is based on more than 800,000 traffic stops and 79 Vermont law enforcement agencies. The study includes a number of agencies that had not reported their data in time for our earlier study (Seguino and Brooks 2017). In addition to providing a statewide overview of racial disparities, we compare policing patterns as well as racial disparities across agencies, and separately for municipal law enforcement agencies, sheriff’s departments, and the Vermont State Police. We report raw data on all agencies in our sample, and these results can be found in the appendix. We have been careful to include in the body of the report that follows agency-level statistics only for those agencies that have the minimum number of observations by race (typically, 10 or more). Our main findings are as follows: • The Black and Hispanic shares of stopped drivers exceed their shares of the estimated driving population. The data indicate Black drivers were over-stopped by between 3% to 81%, depending on the measure of the driving population used. Hispanic drivers were over-stopped by 26%. The shares of stops of all other racial groups are at or below their share of the driving population. These numbers represent a statewide average, and obscure wide variation at the agency level. We provide detailed agency-level data in the report, which show that approximately 45 agencies over-stopped Black drivers by more than 25%. • The stop rate per 1,000 residents is very high in Vermont (255 drivers stopped per 1,000 residents) compared to the national average of 86 per 1,000 residents. This overall average obscures notable racial disparities in stop rates. The statewide white stop rate per 1,000 white residents is 256 compared to 459 stops of Black drivers per 1,000 Black residents. The Black stop rate is about 80% higher than the white stop rate and matches the upper bound described above since one of our measures of the driving population of an area is its number of residents. • These averages also obscure the wide variation in stop rates per 1,000 residents. Of particular concern are agencies with large racial disparities in stop rates that also significantly over-stop relative to the national average. For example, in Bennington the overall stop rate per 1,000 residents is estimated to be 659 and Black drivers are over-stopped from 55% to 335% depending on the measure of driving population. • Black and Hispanic drivers were ticketed at a higher rate than white drivers, and Black drivers were also more likely to be given multiple tickets per stop. Our ability to report accurately on ticket rates is limited by data quality concerns as some agencies only report a single outcome per stop even when more than one outcome occurred, such as multiple tickets. • White drivers were more likely to be stopped for moving violations than Black drivers. Black drivers were more likely to experience a stop for vehicle equipment violations. We are concerned that this type of stop may be more investigatory and pretextual than moving violations. Stops that are investigatory/pretextual, based on suspicion of illegal activity rather than observable behavior or evidence, are more susceptible to officer racial bias than stops based on other reasons, such as a moving violation or suspicion of Driving While Impaired (DWI). Several experts have recommended banning this type of stop, which could help to reduce not only racial stop rate disparities but also search disparities. (A November 2019 ruling by the Oregon Supreme Court has banned this increasingly controversial policing practice). • The arrest rate of Black drivers is roughly 70% greater than that of white drivers. The Hispanic-white arrest rate disparity is even larger, with the arrest rate of Hispanic drivers 90% greater than the white arrest rate. Some agency-level disparities were much wider. In Brattleboro, Black drivers’ arrest rate is 400% greater than the white rate; in Colchester, 185% times greater. • Black drivers are about 3.5 times more likely to be searched subsequent to a stop than white drivers and Hispanic drivers are searched at a rate that is 3.9 times greater than that of white drivers. Asian drivers are less likely to be searched than white drivers. Again, some agencies exhibited much wider disparities than the state average. In Brattleboro, Black drivers are almost 9 times more likely to be searched than white drivers; in Shelburne, 4.4 times greater; in South Burlington; 3.9 times greater; in Vergennes, 3.8 times greater; in Burlington, 3.6 times greater; and in Rutland, 3.45 times greater. • Black, Hispanic, and Asian drivers were less likely to be found with contraband than white drivers. The lower hit rate (that is, the percentage of searches that yield contraband) of drivers of color is widely regarded as providing evidence the police rely on a lower bar of evidence to search drivers of color than white drivers, suggesting possible racial bias in the decision to search. In a second test (a logit analysis) for racial bias in searches, we find that the race of the driver continues to be strongly correlated with the officer’s decision to search a vehicle, even after controlling for other factors that may influence the officer’s decision to search a vehicle. • We find that searches based on reasonable suspicion (a lower threshold of evidence than probable cause) have lower hit rates for all racial groups. And, the gap between the (higher) white hit rates and (lower) hit rates for people of color increases. Just as with investigatory/pretextual stops, searches based on reasonable suspicion are more prone to racial bias. With regard to trends over time: • From 2015 to 2019, the number of traffic stops has increased for all racial groups. Sheriff’s Departments registered an 86.4% increase in traffic stops over this time period, compared to a statewide average for all agencies of 39.7%. • Racial disparities in the increase in number of traffic stops are notable. While stops of white drivers increased by 44.6% over this time period, Black stops increased 72.5%; Asian stops, 66.7%; and Hispanic stops, 120.3%. • The share of stops that are investigatory/pretextual, including vehicle equipment stops, increased for all racial groups, but increases were greatest for Black drivers—so much so that by 2019, about one third of all stops of Black drivers were included in this category, up from 23% in 2016. For Hispanics, the increases in the share of such stops was even greater, rising from 18.0% in 2015 to 27.5% in 2019. • Racial disparities in arrest rates have also widened since 2014. The widening gap is due to a decline in the white arrest rate from 2018 to 2019 rather than an increase in the Black arrest rate. • Search rates declined for all racial groups after cannabis legalization but by 2019, the Black search rate continued to be 3 times greater than the white rate. Legalization of cannabis, in other words, did not have a substantial impact on the Black-white search rate disparity. The Hispanic search rate disparity widened from 2018 to 2019 with Hispanic drivers 2.6 times more likely to be searched than white drivers by 2019. • Hit rates have decreased for searches that result in any outcome (warning, ticket, or arrest) but the arrest-worthy hit rate rose slightly from 20.3% to 24.9% from 2018 to 2019. As search rates have fallen, searches appear to be somewhat more productive with regard to those that lead to an arrest but are somewhat less productive overall. Increasing hit rates suggests greater efficiency in policing decisions regarding searches, and clearly, less negative impact on drivers for whom searches are often traumatic experiences. Regarding data quality, our main findings are: • Data quality has improved for some but not all agencies over time. There continues to be a lack of compliance with the legislation requiring race data collection during traffic stops. Missing data on all of the outcomes of a stop, when stops have more than one outcome, date and time of stop, and stops IDs also hinders analysis. • Particularly worrisome is the large number of stops missing race of driver, the main concern of traffic stop data collection. One way to put into perspective the quantity of missing data is to compare the share of stops missing race of driver to the percentage of stops that are of BIPOC drivers. Given the low percentages of people of color in Vermont, even a small amount of missing race data can distort results. For more than a dozen agencies, the percentage of stops missing race of driver is at least double the percentage of stops that are reported to be of BIPOC drivers. At a minimum, this leads to low quality data and the accuracy of results from those agencies. It also violates the spirit of the legislation requiring race data collection. • The legislation has not been sufficiently precise or comprehensive in delineating the data to be collected. Police chiefs have interpreted the meaning of various components of the legislation differently, and thus do not follow a uniform method of reporting data. Some categories of data that would be useful—and are already collected—were not stipulated in the legislation. Law enforcement agencies have as a result declined to share those data. These findings suggest the need to revise the legislation on traffic stop race data collection in order to insure complete data that is uniformly submitted so that it can be analyzed without excessive difficulty.    

Burlington, VT: University of Vermont, 2021. 159p.

By Robin Joy

Act 193 mandates that law enforcement agencies collect data on roadside stops for the purpose of evaluating racial disparities. The Act dictates agency data collection and any related conversation centers on agency behavior. The Act and the data collected do not focus on or reflect the stories told by Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) as related to their contacts with law enforcement agencies. Because of Vermont’s rural nature, small populations, and policing strategies, we conclude that traffic stop and race data are not sufficient to inform policy makers and stakeholders. Rigorous qualitative research focused on the experiences of the BIPOC community which detects patterns and trends can distinguish structural issues within the criminal justice system. Agency data should be used as a supplement to that research. The purpose of the study was to test different methods of assessing racial disparities in traffic stops for their applicability for all Vermont law enforcement agencies. In short, we found that this was not possible. This report reviews the methodologies tested and the findings. On Measuring Disparities 1. We tested three peer reviewed methods for benchmarking the driving population: Commuting Hour populations, Resident Driver populations, and Crash Data benchmarking. All three failed in Vermont because of the state’s rural nature and small populations. The low volume of people of color makes it difficult for consistent analysis. It is not possible for one benchmarking standard to be applied to all law enforcement agencies in the state. 2. We can recommend the “Veil of Darkness” analysis as an effort to examine racial disparities. However, that analysis essentially measures one work shift in a police department. In some departments that may just be a single officer. 3. Post-stop outcome measures may be useful, however, without more information on the stop (such as the violation for which the person was ticketed/arrested and other circumstances surrounding the stop) it is of limited value. Further, because so few people are searched or arrested it is hard to draw a conclusion from the data. 4. Stop data will now include information as to how often the same person is stopped by a department. Specifically, the year, make, model, and color of the car and the town/state of residence and the state of the plate will be available. This will help illustrate the stories community members have spoken about in protests, legislative hearings, and news articles – stories of people who feel they are being continuously targeted. For example, using these additional data fields, researchers can identify a 30-year-old Asian female from Montpelier driving a 2008 White Honda CRV who has been stopped four times in one month for various reasons

Montpelier, VT: Crime Research Group, 2021, 27p. 

By The Crime Research Group

Act 193 mandates that law enforcement agencies collect data on roadside stops for the purpose of evaluating racial disparities. The Act dictates agency data collection and any related conversation centers on agency behavior. The Act and the data collected do not focus on or reflect the stories told by Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) as related to their contacts with law enforcement agencies. Because of Vermont’s rural nature, small populations, and policing strategies, we conclude that traffic stop and race data are not sufficient to inform policy makers and stakeholders. Rigorous qualitative research focused on the experiences of the BIPOC community which detects patterns and trends can distinguish structural issues within the criminal justice system. Agency data should be used as a supplement to that research. Part 1 of this report covers the data collection process over the past five years. The purpose of Part 2, which is in a separate report, was to test different methods of assessing racial disparities in traffic stops for their applicability for all Vermont law enforcement agencies.

Montpelier VT: Crime Research Group, 2021. 12p.

By Robin Joy

Introduction

Criminal justice stakeholders and policymakers are interested in the way people with mental health concerns and/or substance use disorders engage with law enforcement agencies. This examination explores a sample of these interactions to describe individuals’ contact with the criminal justice system. A better understanding of these interactions can evaluate the utility of administrative data to inform policies regarding police responses in crisis incidents.

Methods

With data provided by a municipal police department, researchers identified 18 people who had the most arrests from 2018-2022 and at least one incident with a mental health flag in the Valcour system. Criminal histories were obtained and used in conjunction with data from the Vermont judiciary and Department of Corrections to construct a robust description of how these individuals interact with the criminal justice system.

This study is a preliminary exploration of the utility of administrative data in describing how and why people with behavioral health concerns utilize police services in one municipal police department. As such, the results may not be applicable to other agencies and populations in Vermont. The cohort was too small to find patterns in the criminal histories that suggest how a person goes from limited contact in the first two years to a high utilization of services. Missing also is how much contact the cohort had with law enforcement during their lifetime. Additionally, the interaction that individuals with behavioral health concerns have with other law enforcement agencies, social service providers, and hospitals was outside the scope of study.

Findings

On average, individuals in the cohort had 1.39 contacts per day with law enforcement. Most of the calls were related to non-violent matters. The most common type of call involved intoxication followed by trespass.

Montpelier VT: Crime Research Group, 2024. 18p.

By Stephen Rushin

This Article argues that, if effectively regulated, policing represents a fundamentally important social institution that advances the community interest in public safety, justice, equality, and the rule of law.

In recent years, a significant and growing body of legal scholarship has called for the shrinking of police responsibilities, the defunding of police budgets, or the complete abolition of local police departments. A countervailing body of scholarly literature has questioned the wisdom of some of these proposals, arguing that they could unintentionally make policing worse or have unintended public safety effects.

This Article enters this debate by affirmatively defending the importance of the institution of policing. It argues that effectively regulated policing is critical to the investigation of harmful criminal behavior, the responses to public safety emergencies, the deterrence of future harmful conduct, the physical protection of historically marginalized communities, and the rule of law.

However, policing can only serve these important functions if it is effectively regulated and accountable to the community it serves. Too often, the failure of policymakers to properly regulate police behavior has led to unaccountable policing agencies that regularly violate the constitutional rights of their constituents, particularly the rights of historically marginalized populations. However, that represents an ongoing regulatory challenge rather than an indictment of the fundamental importance of the institution of policing.

Understanding the importance of policing as a social institution has more than mere academic significance. As some scholars push for a fundamental reimagination of public safety, it is vital for these proposals to understand the value conferred by the institution of policing. Only by understanding the importance of policing can both abolitionists and reformers develop solutions that balance public safety and the protection of constitutional rights.

76 South Carolina Law Review 133 (2024), 47p.

By Jeannine Bell and Stephen Rushin

This Article considers how policymakers can more effectively constrain police authority during traffic stops to reduce racial disparities and prevent unnecessary violence.

We begin by chronicling the power granted to police officers during traffic enforcement and the harms generated by this discretionary power. Under existing criminal procedure, police officers have considerable authority to stop motorists for any technical violation of the traffic code, even if the stated justification is a pretext for investigating an unrelated hunch or suspicion. After stopping a motorist, existing doctrine gives police the ability to question motorists, search vehicles under numerous circumstances, arrest drivers for minor violations of the law, and otherwise use traffic stops as a justification for criminal fishing expeditions. This makes police traffic stops an entryway into officer misconduct and violence.

Moreover, the harms of police traffic enforcement are felt disproportionately by communities of color. Empirical evidence generally suggests that Black and Hispanic drivers are more likely than their white counterparts to experience traffic stops. Black and Hispanic drivers are more likely to be stopped during daylight hours relative to nighttime hours when their race is apparent to police through visual observation. And searches of Black and Hispanic motorists are less likely to produce contraband than searches of white drivers, suggesting that police may employ a less rigorous standard of probable cause when justifying vehicle searches of drivers of color.

Given the growing body of literature on the harms caused by police traffic enforcement, some have called for the abolition of police traffic enforcement. Short of abolition, though, this Article shows how jurisdictions across the country have already moved to limit the authority of police during traffic encounters. This approach does not seek to eliminate entirely the police from the enforcement of traffic laws. Rather, it involves state and local policymakers enacting restrictions on police power during traffic enforcement that go beyond those mandated by the U.S. Supreme Court under existing doctrine. Indeed, in recent years, states and municipalities have enacted limitations on the use of pretextual traffic stops, consent searches, and unrelated questioning of motorists after stops. Others have restricted or banned the use of quotas as a police management tool. Some prosecutors’ offices have announced declination policies designed to disincentivize police from using traffic stops as a tool for the investigation of other unrelated crimes. Still other jurisdictions have explored additional reporting requirements and even technological replacements for the use of police officers in the enforcement of the traffic code.

Combined, we argue that this sort of criminal justice minimalism can reduce the harmful and racially disparate effects of police traffic enforcement without compromising public safety

57 Arizona State Law Journal, 2025, 52p.

By The College of Policing (UK)

The government’s Safer Streets mission aims to reduce serious harm and increase public confidence in policing and the wider criminal justice system. This guide supports senior police leaders and police and crime commissioners to help achieve this mission. It clearly sets out the best available evidence on public confidence in the police, as well as the policing activities that are most likely to have an impact. „ Implementing neighbourhood policing – Having a targeted visible presence in crime and anti-social behaviour hot spots or places with low trust. – Community engagement to identify the crime and anti-social behaviour issues that matter to people locally. – Carrying out effective problem-solving to tackle the issues that matter the most to local people. „ Policing with procedural and distributive justice – Making fair decisions and treating people respectfully. – Not being seen to over-police and under-protect communities. „ Improving police contact with victims – Responding to the needs and concerns of victims. – Focusing as much on the process as the end result. „ Improving police contact with suspects – Minimising the number of negative experiences. – Explaining enforcement action and preserving people’s dignity. „ Tackling police wrongdoing – Working within the law and adhering to ethical and professional standards. The guide begins by providing key definitions and trends in public perceptions over the past 20 years. It ends with a summary of what else may be important to public confidence in the police.

Coventry, UK: College of Policing Limited (2025) 23p.