By Lily Robin, Bryce Peterson and Daniel Lawrence

In 2016, the Urban Institute received funding from the National Institute of Justice to help the Milwaukee Police Department (MPD) optimize its surveillance system. Improvements included doubling the number of MPD public surveillance cameras across Milwaukee, integrating video analytic technologies, and other software and hardware upgrades. The department also strategically installed two types of cameras—pan-tiltzoom (PTZ) and panoramic—at intersections across the city. This brief explains how PTZ and panoramic cameras work and how they differentially impact crime and support criminal investigations.

Washington, DC: The Urban Institute, 2020. 12p.

By Ashlin Oglesby-Neal, KiDeuk Kim, Sam Tecotzky, Josh Fording

Since 2014, Oakland residents have supported violence reduction strategies through the Public Safety and Services Violence Prevention Act, commonly referred to as Measure Z. Measure Z funds strategies implemented by the Oakland Police Department (OPD) and the Oakland Department of Violence Prevention. The Urban Institute and the Urban Strategies Council were contracted by the City of Oakland to evaluate these strategies. This report focuses on the strategies implemented by the OPD under Measure Z since July 2022. Specifically, this report provides a process evaluation of Measure Z strategies implemented by the OPD, incorporating community survey results to capture residents' experiences and safety concerns. To conduct this evaluation, we analyzed OPD administrative data, interviewed OPD staff, participated in dealongs with officers, reviewed program documents, observed neighborhood council meetings, and surveyed Oakland residents regarding their experiences with crime and their perceptions of the OPD. Key Findings Our key findings are as follows:  The rate of violent crime in Oakland was on a downward trend from 1,977 violent crimes per 100,000 residents in 2013 to 1,299 in 2017, then plateaued from 2018 to 2020. The violent crime rate then increased by 35 percent from 2020 to 2023. » Relatedly, the number of shootings and homicides increased in 2020–2021 compared with 2017–2019. The number of shootings and homicides decreased in 2022–2023, but remained above 2017–2019 levels.  The City of Oakland receives hundreds of thousands of 911 calls for police service a year, with a large increase having occurred in calls involving shootings in 2020. The number of shooting calls decreased from 2022 to 2024, but remained higher than in 2017 to 2019. » From 2018 to 2024, the average response time to 911 calls for potential violent crimes became slower.  The OPD is implementing all three of the strategies funded under Measure Z: (1) geographic policing through crime reduction teams, (2) community policing through community resource officers (CROs), and (3) addressing domestic violence and child abuse through the Special Victims Section. » All three strategies face staffing shortages, with fewer officers assigned to the positions than were authorized or envisioned at the outset of Measure Z. » Coinciding with the reduced staffing, CROs implemented markedly fewer community policing projects from 2022 to 2024 than from 2011 to 2019. Alongside a rise in violent crime, the Special Victims Section (SVS), operating with approximately two-thirds of its positions filled, had several hundred cases a year assigned to each investigator in 2022 to 2024.  Oakland residents who participated in a community survey administered by the project team in the summer of 2023 reported mixed views of the social cohesion in their neighborhoods, but overall are happy with living in Oakland. » Most do not feel safe after dark, and more than 7 in 10 respondents are concerned about becoming victims of many types of crime, including robbery, burglary, and shootings. » Roughly 4 in 10 respondents have negative views of the OPD’s ability to make fair decisions and keep their neighborhoods safe, while 2 in 10 have positive views of the OPD’s ability to do so. The remaining 3 in 10 have neutral views. » For respondents who had called 911 in the past year, half said that the dispatcher treated them respectfully and half said the call was not answered in a timely manner.

Washington, DC: The Urban Institute, 2025. 60p.

By Ashlin Oglesby-Neal Alena Stern Kathryn L. S. Pettit

Public scrutiny of police in the US—especially regarding racial disparities—has increased in recent years, with many communities experiencing strained relations with their local police. Police departments have also increased transparency by making some data about their activity (primarily arrests and reported crimes) public. However, access to high-quality, disaggregated police data is insufficient—these data must also be analyzed to inform and empower people in communities most affected by crime and the justice system as well as to benefit law enforcement agencies and policymakers. When meaningfully analyzed and shared, these data can support conversations between communities and police and catalyze local reforms. Local organizations in the National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership (NNIP)—a learning network coordinated by the Urban Institute that connects independent partner organizations in 30 cities—regularly provide data and analysis to support discussions about key issues in their communities. The NNIP’s mission is to ensure all communities can access data and have the skills to use information to advance equity and well-being across neighborhoods. In 2018, NNIP and Microsoft partnered to use the network to spur data-driven and community-led criminal justice reforms with the goal of building police-community trust and improving public safety.1 As one of the project’s activities, we selected one city—Los Angeles—to explore how we could create a comprehensive measure of community-police engagement using publicly available police data. Our motivating research questions are the following: ◼ Are there different patterns of community-initiated and police-initiated engagement? ◼ How many distinct patterns are there, and what makes them distinct? ◼ How do the patterns of community-police engagement vary across neighborhoods? In collaboration with the Microsoft Criminal Justice Reform team, the Microsoft Data Science team, and the University of Southern California’s Sol Price Center for Social Innovation (Los Angeles’s local NNIP partner), we synthesized data sources (including information on calls for service, stops, arrests, and crime) to develop a typology that elucidates the relationship between resident-initiated and policeinitiated activity, as well as how that relationship varies across Los Angeles neighborhoods. Our typology of community-police interactions reveals patterns in how calls to police and police activity (which varies by the severity of crime and levels of economic hardship) differ across neighborhoods. We also discuss how this neighborhood-policing typology can inform conversations about police reform and support local movements for a more equitable criminal justice system. We hope this report informs conversations in Los Angeles and demonstrates how open data can be a powerful tool for local data organizations and criminal justice advocates nationwide

Washington, DC: The Urban Institute, 2020. 34p.

By Maria R. Khan ,Farzana Kapadia,Amanda Geller,Medha Mazumdar,Joy D. Scheidell,Kristen D. Krause,Richard J. Martino,Charles M. Cleland,Typhanye V. Dyer,Danielle C. Ompad,Perry N. Halkitis

Although racial/ethnic disparities in police contact are well documented, less is known about other dimensions of inequity in policing. Sexual minority groups may face disproportionate police contact. We used data from the P18 Cohort Study (Version 2), a study conducted to measure determinants of inequity in STI/HIV risk among young sexual minority men (YSMM) in New York City, to measure across-time trends, racial/ethnic disparities, and correlates of self-reported stop-and-frisk experience over the cohort follow-up (2014–2019). Over the study period, 43% reported stop-and-frisk with higher levels reported among Black (47%) and Hispanic/Latinx (45%) than White (38%) participants. Stop-and-frisk levels declined over follow-up for each racial/ethnic group. The per capita rates among P18 participants calculated based on self-reported stop-and-frisk were much higher than rates calculated based on New York City Police Department official counts. We stratified respondents’ ZIP codes of residence into tertiles of per capita stop rates and observed pronounced disparities in Black versus White stop-and-frisk rates, particularly in neighborhoods with low or moderate levels of stop-and-frisk activity. YSMM facing the greatest economic vulnerability and mental disorder symptoms were most likely to report stop-and-frisk. Among White respondents levels of past year stop-and-frisk were markedly higher among those who reported past 30 day marijuana use (41%) versus those reporting no use (17%) while among Black and Hispanic/Latinx respondents stop-and-frisk levels were comparable among those reporting marijuana use (38%) versus those reporting no use (31%). These findings suggest inequity in policing is observed not only among racial/ethnic but also sexual minority groups and that racial/ethnic YSMM, who are at the intersection of multiple minority statuses, face disproportionate risk. Because the most socially vulnerable experience disproportionate stop-and-frisk risk, we need to reach YSMM with community resources to promote health and wellbeing as an alternative to targeting this group with stressful and stigmatizing police exposure.

PLOS ONE 16(8): e0256201. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0256201

PLoS ONE 16(8): e0256201.2021, 17p.

By Chauncee Smith, Senior Manager, Reimagine Justice & Safety, Catalyst California Elycia Mulholland Graves, et al.

Fundamentally transforming California’s approach to safety is long overdue. Communities disproportionately impacted by racist law enforcement practices—including violence, economic extraction, and dehumanization—have demanded that policymakers shift toward safety approaches that prioritize care and equity without harm reproduction. This report aims to contribute to those ends. Specifically, both lived experience and data continuously show that people of color are disproportionately profiled by law enforcement. In addition to confirming that problem, this report explains how patrol activities undermine safety and waste tremendous public dollars. It does so by analyzing Racial & Identity Profiling Act (RIPA) stop data from a sample of four sheriff’s departments (Los Angeles, Riverside, Sacramento, and San Diego) that collectively account for nearly 20% of the state’s sworn law enforcement personnel,1 have jurisdiction over counties that represent 44% of California’s population, and patrol areas covering approximately 17% of the state population.2 RIPA data analysis is combined with county budget estimates to show the tremendous cost of unproductive patrol activities. Key Findings ɟ Sheriff’s departments dedicate significant patrol time (and, in turn, public resources) to racially biased pretextual stops that undermine community safety. ɟ The impact of sheriff’s departments’ patrol activities is extremely detrimental to people of color because they are far more likely to experience numerous harms as a result of pretextual stops. ɟ Such unproductive and harmful law enforcement activities annually cost individual counties hundreds of millions to over one-billion dollars. Recommendations ɟ Justice Reinvestment: Research and demands from community partners show that redirecting government spending from the criminal legal system (i.e., law enforcement, district attorneys, and prisons) to investments that help people fulfill basic needs improves safety, and that doubling down on criminal legal system spending entrenches inequities. ɟ Care-Centered Community Safety: The general thrust of the community safety landscape increasingly trends toward community-connected approaches of harm prevention, such as increasing the capacity of organizations that provide violence intervention services, behavioral health support, homeless outreach, youth development, jobs, and housing. ɟ Limit Enforcement of Minor Traffic Violations Used for Racially Biased Pretextual Stops: Throughout California and around the U.S., there has been growing movement toward innovative approaches to roadway safety that do not rely on armed law enforcement. Policymakers should follow this trend by shifting away from armed law enforcement for minor traffic violations, investing in preventive roadway design upgrades that alleviate the need for enforcement, improving public transportation, and decriminalizing numerous low-level traffic violations that have little to no tangible connection to true safety.

Los Angeles:: Catalyst California; ACLU SoCal , 2023. 40p.

By Antonio Cediel

Community violence intervention (CVI) is a term recently coined by the federal government in order to encapsulate a set of strategies that have been used for decades to address gun violence in major cities across the country. While various versions of CVI have been implemented successfully for years, lack of awareness and funding for this work have kept it at a relatively small scale. The Biden administration’s recent promotion of CVI—egged on by years by grassroots advocacy—has accelerated public awareness and opened up new opportunities for scaling the work. However, how and if CVI can be sustained or dramatically expanded is far from certain.

New York: Square One Project at the Columbia University Justice Lab. 2024. 33p.

By Jim Mignano, Daniel Egel, Phoebe Rose Levine, Daniel Cunningham, Brian A. Jackson, John S. Hollywood, Lucy L. Thomson, Dulani Woods

The Federal Reserve’s exploration of a U.S. Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) raises questions about its impact on U.S. law enforcement’s ability to detect and investigate crime. This report, informed by expert interviews and a scenario-based workshop, identifies key CBDC design choices affecting law enforcement capabilities. It underscores the need to evolve investigative techniques to meet relevant challenges if a U.S. CBDC is launched.

Santa Monica, CA" RAND, 2025. 51p.

By Deepak Premkumar, Magnus Lofstrom, Joseph Hayes, Brandon Martin, Sean Cremin

Racial disparities within the criminal justice system continue to be a pressing issue in the U.S. In this paper, we analyze data for almost four million stops by California’s fifteen largest law enforcement agencies in 2019, examining the extent to which people of color experience searches, enforcement, intrusiveness, and use of force differently from white people. Black Californians are more likely to be searched than white Californians, but searches of Black civilians reveal less contraband and evidence. Black people are overrepresented in stops not leading to enforcement as well as in stops leading to an arrest. While differences in location and context for the stop significantly contribute to racial disparities, notable inequities remain after accounting for such factors. These disparities are concentrated in traffic stops. A notable proportion of which lead to no enforcement or discovery—suggesting that gains in efficiency and equity are possible. Through a “veil of darkness” analysis, we find evidence that racial bias may be a contributing factor to disparities in traffic stops for Black and Latino drivers. These findings suggest that traffic stops for non-moving violations deserve consideration for alternative enforcement strategies.

IZA DP No. 17729

Bonn: IZA – Institute of Labor Economics , 2025. 137p.

Edited by Vasilis Galis , Helene O.I. Gundhus , and Antonis Vradis

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 License. It is free to read, download and share on Elgaronline.com. Taking a critical approach, this book advances understanding of the social, legal and ethical aspects of digitalisation in law enforcement and the reliance on data-driven tools to predict and prevent crime. It shows how the proliferation of data analytics challenges citizens’ rights, at a time when what counts as ‘safety’ or ‘policing’ is being fundamentally transformed.

Cheltenham, UK: Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2025. 200p.

By Mélanie Seabrook, Vardan Gupta, Alexander Luscombe, and Andrew Pinto

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Municipal police in Ontario are overburdened – they are called upon to respond to issues beyond their scope and training. Investing in a range of municipal services – including housing, public health, long-term care, social assistance, paramedics, and children’s services – would promote community health and wellbeing and reduce demand for police through preventing crime and other crises from occurring, freeing police capacity for core functions. Ontario municipal funding for services promoting health and wellbeing hasn’t kept up with police funding over the past 12 years. Despite public support, municipalities face challenges in de-prioritizing police budgets to reinvest in other services, mainly due to the influential role of police boards in budget-setting. Community Safety and Wellbeing Plans present an opportunity to better engage local communities in municipal priority setting and could support the reprioritization of resources in future budget-setting.

Toronto: University of Toronto, School of Cities, 2025. 21p.

By Rebecca Gambler

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has seen a significant increase in the number of individuals they apprehend between U.S. ports of entry along the southwest border. This has resulted in overcrowding and difficult humanitarian conditions in its facilities.

CBP monitors the care of individuals in its custody in various ways. For example, staff are required to conduct and document welfare checks every 15 minutes for individuals who are sick or injured. However, Border Patrol (a part of CBP) does not have a mechanism to verify that staff have done so across field locations.

We recommended that Border Patrol implement such a mechanism.

Washington, DC: U.S. Government Accountability Office. 2022. 50p.

By Neil Donnelly

To examine changes in the clear up rate for New South Wales (NSW) crimes by considering offence-specific trends in the NSW Police Force 90-day legal action rate over the 15 years from 2009 to 2023. METHOD Data were extracted from the NSW Police Force’s Computerised Operational Policing System (COPS) for incidents reported between 2009 and 2023. This includes the total number of incidents reported, the number of persons of interest legally proceeded against, and the percentage of incidents where police commenced legal action against at least one person within 90 days of reporting. Trends were examined separately across 11 major offence categories using the percentage point change and the total percentage change. The Kendall’s rank order correlation test to determine statistical significance. RESULTS Over the 15 years from 2009 to 2023, there were significant increases in the 90-day legal action rate for nine of the 11 offences examined. The largest percentage point changes were observed for robbery (up 19.9 percentage points (p.p.)), malicious damage to property (up 14.2 p.p.), break and enter non-dwelling (up 12.7 p.p.), break and enter dwelling (up 8.5 p.p.), motor vehicle theft (up 7.9 p.p.) and domestic violence (DV) related assault (up 6.5 p.p.). Smaller, though significant, increases were also found for steal from motor vehicle (up 3.0 p.p.), non-DV related assault (up 2.5 p.p.) and sexual touching, sexual act and other sexual offences (up 2.0 p.p.). By contrast there was a significant decline in the 90-day legal action rate for reported incidents of sexual assault over the 15-year period examined (down -3.4 p.p.). For most property offences, the upward trend in legal action rates has not caused a significant growth in criminal court workload. This is because the fall in crime rates over the last 15 years has been even greater than the rise in legal actions. This is not true for DV assault and sexual touching, sexual acts and other sexual offences. The combination of a rise in incident counts and the improvements in legal action rates has resulted in more people being brought before the criminal courts for these offences. The overall number of sexual assault incidents recorded by police over the 15-year period also increased. This increase offset the decline in the legal action rate in recent years, leading to a higher number of offenders being proceeded against to court for this offence.

Parramatta, NSW: NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research (BOCSAR), 2025. 11p.

By Irshad Altheimer, Hayder Alhafedhi, Rashid Muhammad

his report provides a descriptive analysis of Rochester Police Department (RPD) traffic stop data. We analyzed 41,201 traffic stops performed by RPD between 2015 and 2023. The stop data consisted of 83 variables, but the analysis of many of those variables was hampered by high numbers of missing values. Increased scrutiny of law enforcement practices has led to calls for the collection and analysis of police stop data. Such data analysis is essential for fostering accountability and transparency within the police departments. Police officers in the United States conduct at least 50,000 traffic stops every day, making these stops a central part of modern policing and the most common way in which the public interacts with law enforcement (Policing Project, 2019). Beyond the frequency, traffic stops often lead to significant financial hardship for individuals through fines and fees, and evidence suggests that both traffic and pedestrian stops disproportionately impact people of color (Policing Project, 2019). Despite how common these stops are, there is still much we do not understand about traffic stop practices and the full effects of traffic stops. Analyzing this data enables the identification of patterns and trends within policing practices, including disparities in traffic stops based on factors such as race, gender, or geographic location (Policing Project, 2019). This helps to assess the effectiveness of current policing strategies and ultimately develop informed policy reforms aimed at promoting equitable policing practices. Transparency is crucial in law enforcement because it builds trust between police departments and the communities they serve. When the actions, decisions, and data of law enforcement agencies are open to public scrutiny, it demonstrates a commitment to accountability and ethical practices. This openness allows citizens to understand the reasoning behind police actions, reducing misunderstandings and promoting cooperation. Strong relationships based on mutual trust between police and the communities they serve are vital for effective policing and public safety; community members are more likely to cooperate with law enforcement and provide crucial information when they trust that police actions are fair and reflect community values (Community Relations Service, n.d.). Transparency is a key element in fostering this trust, as timely and open communication about critical incidents helps reassure the public that information is not being deliberately withheld (Community Relations Service, n.d.). This report is divided into the following sections. First, we provide an overview of the data. Second, we provide a descriptive analysis of the data that could be reliably analyzed. Third, we provide recommendations for future data collection.

Working Paper 2025-01 - 01

Rochester, NY: Center for Public Safety Initiatives Rochester Institute of Technology, 2025. 15p.

By Iain Britton

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts has a proud tradition of volunteers in law enforcement stretching back to colonial times (Greenberg, 2015). Until very recently many police departments, large and small, had volunteer auxiliary police. Many of which had existed essentially in their current forms since the 1940s and 1950s (Spigel, 2017). This reflects the abundant picture of tens of thousands of volunteer auxiliary and reserve police in hundreds of law enforcement agencies across most states in the USA (Dobrin and Wolf, 2016). Sadly, recent changes have seen the auxiliary model in Massachusetts almost entirely administratively swept away. What was a large, and in many ways thriving, and highly impactful, volunteer auxiliary policing model in Massachusetts, has all but gone. Changes in ‘POST’,The Massachusetts Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) Commission1 certification standards at state level across Massachusetts, had the effect of wiping out all but a tiny number of auxiliary units. This rapid extinction event removed volunteer auxiliary police almost overnight from their communities across Massachusetts, communities that many of those individual auxiliaries had served in with dedication for decades. This represents the largest single volunteer police extinction event in the USA for decades. It serves as a worrying harbinger for volunteer policing more widely, especially in other states across the USA but also worldwide. Heralding the very real and urgent strategic threat to continuity of volunteer police programmes. Something that is resonant in the UK, as we see for the twelfth successive year an annual reduction in the number of volunteer special constables.2 Across the USA and internationally, some volunteer police models are thriving, with volunteer police impacting in a wide range of ways (Wolf and Borland Jones, 2018). Some are growing or innovating – the Netherlands, Estonia and Hungary are strong national examples, with significant scale, and interesting innovation of roles. However, many more programmes are struggling to survive (Britton, 2024). Many volunteer police programmes around the world are struggling to maintain sustainable numbers, with the combined headwinds of generational changes in reduced patterns of voluntarism, unfavourable attitudes towards police volunteers, volunteer police models with too narrow appeal and accessibility, and increasingly hostile public perceptions of policing particularly in respect of conduct, race, and misogyny. Despite strong evidence of return on investment (Britton et al., 2023) many forces are also struggling to effectively adapt and redefine the role, capability, professional identities and operating models for the volunteer police officer in a fast-changing, and ever more complex, litigious, dangerous and contested policing environment (Britton and Callender, 2018). Retention of longer-service volunteers is proving in many contexts to be a particular challenge (Britton, 2023).

London: The Police Foundation, 2025. 7p.

By Gabrielle T. Isaza, Ryan T. Motz, Hannah D. McManus, Nicholas Corsaro, and Amanda M. Shoulberg

The report “Examining Police Reforms in New Jersey: Impacts on Officer Attitudes and Self-Reported Behavior” is the first of a series of publications presenting the findings from the statewide evaluation of police use of force reform in New Jersey.

It describes the research team’s examination of the impact of the mandated training—including the Police Executive Research Forum’s Integrating Communications, Assessment, and Tactics (ICAT) de-escalation training and Georgetown University’s Active Bystandership for Law Enforcement (ABLE) peer intervention training—on officers’ perceptions, attitudes, and self-

reported behaviors.

The findings represent offics’ responses to training surveys immediately before, after, and one to two years following their training participation. The high response rates to the surveys—ranging from 12,623 to 17,036 responses at pre- and post-training—offer insights representative of law enforcement officers across New Jersey.

Arlington, VA: National Policing Institute, 2025. 217p.

By Andy Higgins

The Police Foundation’s Blueprints project explores the design choices made by English and Welsh police forces in the delivery of local policing – specifically in relation to the operating models they adopt to provide incident response, neighbourhood policing, local investigation and public protection. It takes as its starting point the considerable diversification and frequent change in local policing models that has occurred within and between police forces over the last one to two decades.

Project aims

Describe and (as far as possible) codify, the variety of local police operating models being practised across England and Wales, explain why they have developed and explore the rationales behind them.

Investigate what (if anything) can be concluded about the strengths and weaknesses of different approaches, based on quantitative performance

analysis (where possible) and local experiences and learning.

Look, in-depth, at the way policing models enable and constrain police practitioners working in four functional areas: incident response, neighbourhood policing, local investigation and public protection.

Explore what can be learned from the way local policing is organised in other countries.

Assess the suitability of different design options against future policing challenges, drawing on the analysis presented in the Strategic Review of Policing in England and Wales, and focusing on strategic enablers such as preventative partnership and public cooperation.

The Police Foundation, 2024. 21p.

By Michael Skidmore 

In 2022-23 there were an estimated 3.5 million fraud offences in England and Wales, with members of the public now more likely to fall victim to fraud than any other type of crime (ONS, 2023a). And accordingly, the police are seeing an overwhelming rise in reported fraud, with levels of recorded crime exceeding one million offences, reflecting not only fraud against the public but also the considerable impact on businesses (ONS, 2023a). These patterns are largely the consequence of living in an increasingly digitised society in which the opportunities to perpetrate fraud have proliferated. All this crime is reduced into one single offence category of ‘fraud’, which covers both a large volume and a wide variety of offenders, offending, victims, harm, and vulnerability. This paper focuses specifically on ‘online fraud’, forming part of a wider programme of work looking at fraud that is enabled by the internet and digital technology. The paper reviews the literature with the aim of unpacking the nature and particular characteristics of online fraud. It also examines how data and knowledge about fraud inform and direct the strategic and operational responses of the police and other organisations. The complexities of producing a ‘true’ picture of fraud are explored, including a discussion of the meaning and significance of fraud when it is ‘online’. It highlights the gaps and challenges in our current understanding of online fraud that will be addressed in our ongoing research programme  

Paper 10. 

London: The Police Foundation April 2024  16p.

By Melissa M. Labriola, Jill Portnoy Donaghy, Tiffany Keyes, Sarah Junghee Kang

oncerns about the physical health, mental health, and safety of first responders and law enforcement officers have been increasing for some time. The goal of this research is to synthesize evidence from the growing literature on mental health and wellness programs studied with law enforcement and first responder populations to help the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) identify and strengthen programs and policies and to conduct an evaluability assessment (EA) to provide direction for future research.

This report presents findings from multiple research tasks, including a review of domestic and international literature on first responder wellness programs and interviews with key stakeholders in DHS about existing DHS wellness programs, wellness program implementation, and subsequent challenges. Authors conducted an EA of programs identified as potentially ready for evaluation in the stakeholder interviews. The authors of this report synthesized the findings from these tasks to develop a research agenda for future DHS wellness research efforts.

Key Findings

• According to the literature within the scope of our parameters, the most studied wellness programs for law enforcement and first responders were group prevention skills and knowledge training, psychotherapy, physical fitness, and mindfulness training.

• According to our interviews, certain program types, such as suicide prevention training, physical fitness programs, mindfulness training, and mandatory postvention efforts, were generally viewed as effective.

• Overall, more research is needed with larger sample sizes, rigorous designs, and outcomes other than knowledge change.

• Some interviewees recommended adopting robust, evidence-informed, non-DHS programs and adapting them for DHS's population, with the related concern of the uniqueness of the agency and the applicability of programs designed for different populations.

• Stigma in seeking and receiving services is a critical barrier but, according to interviewees, might be improving.

• Organizational barriers to participation include (1) a lack of resources to fund programs and/or on-site mental health clinicians, (2) employees feeling that they do not have sufficient time to seek out support (especially employees who have very demanding roles), (3) employee concerns about confidentiality, (4) insufficient leadership support, and (5) a lack of awareness about the resources available to employees.

• More research is needed with larger sample sizes, rigorous designs, and outcomes other than knowledge change, such as mental health and wellness outcomes.

Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2025, 107p.

By The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe

This paper is a summary of the first of a series of roundtable discussions that aim to identify opportunities for law enforcement to harness new technologies to support its work, help formulate policy recommendations and explore potential OSCE capacity-building support in this area. The first event of this series was dedicated to the topic of harnessing new technologies to enhance crime analysis, and focused on opportunities and challenges in deploying artificial intelligence (AI) for analysis and the potential impact of these technologies on human rights.

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Prague: OSCE 2025. 12p.

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.