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 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 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 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 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.