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

On June 24 and 25, 2024, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine held a two-day public workshop exploring law enforcement’s use of person-based and place-based predictive policing strategies. Predictive policing strategies are approaches that use data to attempt to predict either individuals who are likely to commit crime or places where crime is likely to be committed, to enable crime prevention. The workshop was held in response to Executive Order 14074,1 which discusses enhancing public trust and safety through accountable policing and criminal justice practices, and Executive Order 14110,2 which addresses the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in law enforcement. David Weisburd (George Mason University and Chair of the workshop planning committee) began by noting that these executive orders reflected strong public concerns surrounding the idea of predictive policing, as well as critiques of specific implementations—in particular for these strategies’ disparate impact on communities of color. While planning the workshop, Weisburd said that the planning committee confronted several challenging issues. First, there is a lack of precise and clear definitions of what exactly constitutes predictive policing. Second, the term “predictive policing” is often avoided, even when approaches appear to meet conventional definitions. Predictive technologies include “automated,” “dynamic,” or “data-driven,” approaches. However, predictive policing is generally seen as involving predictive algorithms that identify individuals and locations that are more likely to be associated with crime in the future. Whatever the definition, law enforcement agencies routinely use tools that collect and analyze data to anticipate crime and facilitate police response. Weisburd highlighted that the method and extent to which police should rely on algorithmic approaches remain as real-world challenges for law enforcement officials.

This workshop, said Weisburd, comes at a time when original applications of predictive policing have come and gone, while algorithmic and big data technologies advance and continue to be applied in law enforcement contexts. “We may be on the precipice of a new era of predictive policing,” he said, “with the time and wisdom to consider what that could and should look like.”

Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2024. 13p.

By Sarah L. Desmarais, Eva McKinsey, Ethan Rex, and Jessica Smith

Executed by the North Carolina Association of Chiefs of Police (NCACP), UNC School of Government Criminal Justice Innovation Lab (the Lab), Policy Research Associates (PRA), and North Carolina State University (NCSU), the Citation Project sought to improve policing practices through implementation and rigorous evaluation of a model Citation in Lieu of Arrest Policy. On December 1, 2020, four North Carolina police departments implemented the project’s model policy: Apex, Elizabeth City, Wilmington, and Winston-Salem. The evaluation of the model policy examined four questions.

Was the model policy implemented consistently according to its guidelines and recommendations? Our findings indicate challenges with implementation that primarily reflected limited patrol officer buy-in. Despite multiple implementation strategies and consistent buy-in from leadership, some patrol officers expressed discontent with the model policy. This response, along with relatively low completion of required documentation in warrantless arrest encounters, limits our ability to evaluate the impact of the model policy.

Did the model policy increase the use of citations in policy-relevant encounters without increasing involvement of individuals in the criminal justice system? Overall, there was no increase in citation rates following implementation of the model policy. In two pilot sites, citation rates decreased after implementation. When evaluating encounters by offense type, we found that citation rates for traffic offenses were over 98% even before implementation of the model policy, signaling a ceiling effect on any potential impact. Only one site had an increase in citation rates for traffic offenses; the others had no change. We found no meaningful increases in citation rates for the other two offense types examined: non-violent and violent misdemeanors. We also found that the number of encounters over time across all sites decreased. Put another way, there was no evidence of increased involvement in the justice system. This decrease in encounters was likely due to external factors such as COVID-19 and social protests, which stakeholders identified as affecting policing practices.

Did the model policy result in the administration of citations in an equitable manner by race/ethnicity? We found that citation rates did not increase for any racial/ethnic subgroup following implementation of the model policy. Instead, the citation rate decreased for Black people in one site and for both Black and White people in another. We also found that differences across races did not change over time. Finally, although the policy was not designed to address racial differences in overall encounters, we examined that issue for context. We found that in three sites, Black people were significantly overrepresented in misdemeanor encounters with the police and White people were significantly underrepresented.

Did the model policy reduce the amount of time that police and equipment are removed from service during an encounter? Officers saved an average of over ninety minutes per encounter when choosing to cite instead of arrest. However, because of low completion of required documentation in warrantless arrest encounters, the data used for this calculation may not be representative of all encounters covered by the model policy.

Several important qualifications and limitations apply to these findings. These include external factors, such as the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and periods of social unrest, that overlapped with implementation of the model policy; implementation challenges; overall decreases in misdemeanor charging during the study period; and characteristics of the pilot sites, such as attitudes towards citation in lieu of arrest.

We conclude this report with recommendations for new or continuing implementation of citation in lieu of arrest initiatives. These recommendations include:

1. Conduct a needs assessment and use it to develop a targeted policy.

2. Conduct an organizational assessment to determine whether to implement a policy and how to do so.

3. Use implementation lessons learned from this evaluation to supplement organizational assessment results.

4. Continue to assess and address issues of racial/ethnic equity.

University of North Carolina, School of Government, 2023. 38p.

By Susan Dewey and Patty Kelly

Mónica waits in the Anti-Venereal Medical Service of the Zona Galactica, the legal, state-run brothel where she works in Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Mexico. Surrounded by other sex workers, she clutches the Sanitary Control Cards that deem her registered with the city, disease-free, and able to work. On the other side of the world, Min stands singing karaoke with one of her regular clients, warily eyeing the door lest a raid by the anti-trafficking Public Security Bureau disrupt their evening by placing one or both of them in jail.

Whether in Mexico or China, sex work-related public policy varies considerably from one community to the next. A range of policies dictate what is permissible, many of them intending to keep sex workers themselves healthy and free from harm. Yet often, policies with particular goals end up having completely different consequences.

Policing Pleasure examines cross-cultural public policies related to sex work, bringing together ethnographic studies from around the world—from South Africa to India—to offer a nuanced critique of national and municipal approaches to regulating sex work. Contributors offer new theoretical and methodological perspectives that move beyond already well-established debates between “abolitionists” and “sex workers’ rights advocates” to document both the intention of public policies on sex work and their actual impact upon those who sell sex, those who buy sex, and public health more generally.

New York; London: NYU Press, 2011. 240p.