RAND CORP.

Facilitator, law law enforcement, and and community organizers introduce themselves and and summarize overall aim of the dialogue. For example, “Now we’d like to tell you why of the example, "Now we'd like to tell we we are are engaged in in this this work. In In recent years, we've seen many examples of tension of between police and the communities they serve. Importantly, events that happen and the that elsewhere can also affect and inform local community-police relations. We're doing also affect and inform this this exercise to help community members and police better communicate their to and police expectations." expectations.” It It also helps participants participants to to think about " “what what if if something happened here that is similar to what we’re seeing nationally?” “Would we be prepared?” here “Would that we is know similar how to what to respond? we're ” seeing “How nationally? should we " " respond? Would we ” be p

Santa Monica. CA. RAND CORP. 2023. 28p.

By Beth Redbird and Kat Albrecht

Racial disparity in arresting behavior is a significant concern for people of color. It also delegitimizes law enforcement, increases tension between police and citizens, and can even increase crime. Efforts at police reform stall, in part because racial disparity in policing was previously unmeasurable. The authors present three new measures of racial disparity in arrest, measured across more than 13,000 agencies nationwide, allowing for reliable analysis of disparity across time and geographic space. These measures are validated against Department of Justice law enforcement misconduct investigations, the “gold standard” for assessing racial disparity in policing.

Evanston, IL: Institute for Policy Research,  Northwestern University, 2020. 48p.

By Nazgol Ghandnoosh and Celeste Barry

As noted in the first installment of this One in Five series, scholars have declared a “generational shift” in the lifetime likelihood of imprisonment for Black men, from a staggering one in three for those born in 1981 to a still troubling one in five for Black men born in 2001. “I can’t breathe,” George Floyd said over 20 times. “Every time you see me, you want to mess with me,” said Eric Garner. “I just want to go home,” said Tyre Nichols. Breonna Taylor asked who had come into her apartment in the middle of the night. Police killed them all. The Black Lives Matter movement has rightly highlighted the tragic deaths resulting from policing’s biased and excessive contact with people of color. Nearly half of those killed by police in recent years have been Black or Latinx, and officers are rarely held accountable. This report interrogates the large footprint of policing—particularly of Black Americans— as, in part, a failed response to racial disparities in serious crimes. The wide net that police cast across people of color is at odds with advancing safety because excessive police contact often fails to intercept serious criminal activity and diminishes the perceived legitimacy of law enforcement. Excessive policing also distracts policymakers from making investments to promote community safety without the harms of policing and incarceration. In addition, the large footprint of policing gets in the way of, as the National Academies of Sciences has called for, needed “durable investments in disadvantaged urban neighborhoods that match the persistent and longstanding nature of institutional disinvestment that such neighborhoods have endured over many years.”

Washington, DC: Sentencing Project, 2023. 27p.

By Ylenia Rocchini and Bernardo Monzani, together with Kelly–Ange Irakoze

The “Tubiri Tuvurana Ubupfu” project’s main aim was to strengthen trust and positive relationships between youth and police to prevent violence before, during and after the 2020 electoral cycle. To this effect, the project set out to transform the relationship between the two groups by encouraging constructive and humanizing interactions, and also with other members of the community. The project intended, in particular, to harness the potential of mixed security committees. AP’s staff Ylenia Rocchini and Bernardo Monzani, together with Kelly–Ange Irakoze, conducted the final evaluation of the project. The evaluation confirms the effectiveness of the project, and identifies positive elements relating to its impact and sustainability. This said, there are two challenges worth highlighting. The first relates to the participation of police officers, which was different than that of young people, for reasons outside of Search’s control, but nonetheless significant for impact and sustainability. The second challenge relates to the participation of women. The project was not able to reach gender parity across several activities, primarily because the institutions it targeted, the mixed security committees and the police force, are male–dominated. Yet, more research should done to understand why women participate less on this front, to build a more gender–sensitive approach capable, if anything, at least to build the basis for greater inclusivity in future endeavours.

Bologna, Italy: Agency for Peacebuilding, 2022. 30p.