Edited by Korel Goymen and Robin Lewis

Public policy is a contested sphere. From politics to civil society, bureaucracy to academia, many professions have staked a claim in it since the latter half of the 20th century. For most of our known history, government was the sole proprietor of public policy. Until the civil rights movements that rattled the world in the 1960s, very little outside influence played a role in government’s policies on the greater good of the public. The few nongovernmental organizations that had succeeded in affecting public policy in the first half of the 20th century were professional lobby groups, cartels, or unions. These organizations were mostly confined to the Western world and could be counted on one hand. In fact, since these institutions were formed to look after the interests of particular groups, their impact on public policymaking was dubious at best.

However, the tumultuous 60s brought the curtain down on the post-war stability of the 1950s, and with that the invisible barrier between the public and government cracked. With the breakout of the Vietnam War, the civil rights movements, the fight for gender equality and women’s suffrage, the OPEC crisis and global economic volatility, people all over the world mobilized and staked their claim on policymaking in various shapes and forms. Some used mass protests, some organized around public advocacy groups, and a few built professional public policy research institutes. Especially from the mid-60s to the mid-80s, advocacy groups funded and initiated by the public, monitoring agencies, and think tanks mushroomed in North America and Western Europe. This epoch also corresponded to the increased access granted to public advocates, civil rights representatives and attorneys, as well as outside policy experts by governments mostly in the aforementioned territories.

By the turn of the last millennium, public policy was no longer confined to the realm of civil society; it had evolved far beyond the perception of a ragtag, concerned citizens’ movement, which would assemble in world capitals whenever the interests of their constituencies were threatened or ignored. On the contrary, they had become much more institutionalized. Many had opened permanent representations in power capitals such as Washington, New York, London, Berlin, Brussels, and even in Ankara and Istanbul toward the end of the millennium. More importantly, they constructed their policy advocacy on sound academic research and legal bases and often confronted governments with irrefutable, fact-based, powerful alternative policy options.

With the advent of globalization around this time, two important occurrences changed public policymaking once and for all. First, governance as a concept has become more fragmented. The international and local levels of governance for the first time came to the limelight as actors to be reckoned with. On certain occasions, central governments were bypassed; local and international governmental actors were able to engage one another freely. Second, the concept of “public” left the national confines and assumed a more global definition that rallied concerned citizens of different states around common global causes. With the coming of the EU as a supranational entity and its power over national competences, the influence of the UN programs on regimes in non-Western part of the world, and the increasing number of multinational corporations, multilateral agreements as well as free trade zones turned policymaking into a more sophisticated endeavor. This development eventually tampered with the traditional definition of policymaking, as well as the fundamental principles, depth, and breadth of governance.

Therefore, there has been a general shift in the understanding of public policymaking in recent years. The changing tenets of public policy also renders academics, policy specialists, and decision-makers more flexibility in determining the actors, instruments, and influence of public policymaking. The current sophistication of this concept requires thinking about government beyond its primary characteristics as an administration to decide on and look after the best interests of the public. For most academicians, policymaking has evolved to a different level now, and interregional relations has an important impact on this change.

Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom (FNF)

By Marke Geisy da Silva Dantas, Luciano Menezes Bezerra Sampaio, Thadeu Gasparetto

Background: The violent behavior of football fans is constantly associated with their drinking habits. Aiming to reduce its impact, policy makers often ban the sales and consumption of alcohol beverages during matches. Nonetheless, there are few papers that empirically analyzed such relationship, and our paper aims to shed light on this question. Methods: Out dataset comprises 4,560 matches from the first and second tiers of the Brazilian League, where 245 exhibited at least one antisocial behavior from fans. Ordered logistic regressions are used as method. Results: Our empirical findings evidence that the sales of alcoholic drinks do increase the likelihood of severe antisocial behavior. We also observed a higher likelihood of violent cases when the home club loses its match as well as during crowded matches. Conclusions: We conclude that the change in the alcohol police in Brazil did show a significant association with the likelihood of antisocial behavior among football fans. However, since the magnitude of such effect is small, further research is needed to examine the potential benefits of this policy changes

International Journal of Drug Policy, Volume 123, January 2024, 10427

By Robert Doar

“Given New York Today, Could Anyone Lead It?” So bemoaned a 1991 New York Times headline after decades of failure and futility.1 Crime was endemic, schools were failing, poverty was pervasive, and the economy had stagnated. From John Lindsay to David Dinkins, mayor after mayor had tried to tackle these problems. They had all failed. After three decades of policy futility, New Yorkers were giving up. In 1991, surveys indicated that more than half of New Yorkers wanted to leave.2 Political leadership had come to regard the city’s ills as intractable pathologies. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, then New York senator, said at one public hearing on juvenile violence in 1993, “There is nothing you’ll do of any consequence, except start the process of change. Don’t expect it to take less than thirty years.”

Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute, 2023. 10p.

By Jesse Jannetta, Sino Esthappan, Jocelyn Fontaine, Mathew Lynch , and Nancy G. LaVigne

Many communities throughout the United States that face high levels of crime and concentrated disadvantage—particularly communities of color—also struggle with high levels of mistrust in the police and strained police-community relations. Recognizing that a lack of legitimacy and community trust in policing was a serious and persistent problem with deep historical roots, and that addressing that problem required a wellresourced, multidimensional approach combining proven practices with new tools and approaches, the US Department of Justice launched the National Initiative for Building Community Trust and Justice. Led by John Jay College of Criminal Justice’s National Network for Safe Communities (NNSC), and in partnership with the Center for Policing Equity (CPE), Yale Law School (YLS), and the Urban Institute, the National Initiative for Building Community Trust and Justice (National Initiative) brought together practitioners and researchers to deliver a suite of interventions focused on law enforcement and community members in six cities: Birmingham, Alabama; Fort Worth, Texas; Gary, Indiana; Minneapolis, Minnesota; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; and Stockton, California. Core National Initiative interventions included (1) training and technical assistance for police officers on engaging with residents in a procedurally just manner, (2) trainings that encouraged officers to understand and mitigate implicit biases, (3) developing model police department policies and identifying key changes to extant policies, and (4) reconciliation discussions, during which police officers and community members had authentic conversations to acknowledge historic tensions, harms, and misconceptions and to repair relationships. The Urban Institute evaluated the National Initiative’s implementation and impact to inform potential replications and/or modifications of the initiative’s components, and to guide future research on police efforts to build community trust. The evaluation focuses on National Initiative activities occurring from January 2015 through December 2018. Researchers collected the following qualitative and quantitative data to support the evaluation: ◼ monthly teleconferences among members of the National Initiative implementation team that included partners from CPE, NNSC, and YLS ◼ publicly available information and media coverage of the National Initiative and issues pertaining to police-community relations in the pilot sites ◼ fieldwork that included observations of National Initiative activities and interactions between National Initiative partners and site stakeholders ◼ routine teleconferences with site coordinators, police chiefs, and other stakeholders ◼ documents provided by the sites and National Initiative partners ◼ semistructured interviews with police and community stakeholders in each site ◼ learning assessment surveys of officers receiving National Initiative trainings in each site ◼ surveys of residents in areas with high levels of concentrated crime and poverty/disadvantage in each site The implementation evaluation focused specifically on the successes and challenges of the collaboration among the National Initiative partners, participating police departments, and communities.

Washington, Urban Institute, 2019. 112p.

By United States. Office Of The Director Of National Intelligence; Intelligence Community (U.S.)

From the document: "Following the attacks of September 11, 2001, and in the wake of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act passed by Congress in 2004, Director of National Intelligence John D. Negroponte signed out the Intelligence Community's (IC) first National Intelligence Strategy. The strategy explained that the Intelligence Community's clear charge was to: [1] Integrate the domestic and foreign dimensions of U.S. intelligence so that there are no gaps in our understanding of threats to our national security; [2] Bring more depth and accuracy to intelligence analysis; and [3] Ensure that U.S. intelligence resources generate future capabilities as well as present results. Now, almost twenty years after our first strategy was issued, the Intelligence Community's charge remains just as clear, even as the strategic environment has changed dramatically. The United States faces an increasingly complex and interconnected threat environment characterized by strategic competition between the United States, the People's Republic of China (PRC), and the Russian Federation, felt perhaps most immediately in Russia's ongoing aggression in Ukraine. In addition to states, sub-national and non-state actors--from multinational corporations to transnational social movements--are increasingly able to create influence, compete for information, and secure or deny political and security outcomes, which provides opportunities for new partnerships as well as new challenges to U.S. interests. In addition, shared global challenges, including climate change, human and health security, as well as emerging and disruptive technological advances, are converging in ways that produce significant consequences that are often difficult to predict. [...] The six goals outlined in this National Intelligence Strategy have emerged as our understanding of the kinds of information, technology, and relationships needed to be effective in the future has expanded."

Washington. United States. Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Intelligence Community (U.S.). 2023.

By Goldberg, Zach

From the document: "Recently, there has been a dramatic increase in media and public attention to police brutality and racial bias. By some measures, the volume of media references to these topics has been greater over the past decade than ever before. Google search behavior shows that Americans are consuming this messaging ('Figure 1'), and their attitudes toward police--particularly Democrats' and liberals' attitudes--have responded accordingly. Confidence in police has never been lower, while antipolice sentiment, perceptions of police brutality and racism, and support for defunding the police have never been higher. So much have perceptions of racist policing grown that, as of 2021, more than half (52%) of Democrats felt that levels of racism were greater among police officers than other societal groups (up from 35% in 2014). Fears of the police among black Americans have increased to the point that, in 2020, roughly 74% of black respondents to a Quinnipiac University poll said that they 'personally worry' about being the victim of police brutality, compared with 64% and 57% who said so in 2018 and 2016, respectively. Yet these trends in media coverage and public perceptions seem divorced from empirical reality. A stark illustration of this was provided by a nationally representative survey conducted in 2019 by the Skeptic Research Center, which found that nearly 33% of people--including 44% of liberals--thought that 1,000 or more unarmed black men 'alone' were killed by police in 2019. In fact, according to the Mapping Police Violence (MPV) database, 29 unarmed black (vs. 44 white) men were killed by police that year."

NY. Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. 2023. 50p.

By The City of Minneapolis

The City of Minneapolis is reexamining what being just looks like and acts like. In today’s world, the concept of justice is by most accounts expanding. In the United States, for example, courts have broadened the scope of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution which reads in part, “nor shall any state deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” Thus, we’re in an environment with a larger and more complex set of issues and challenges requiring “equal protection” by public institutions – particularly law enforcement and public safety organizations. Compounding the challenge of achieving justice is the degree to which changing societal conditions impact what community members and stakeholders view as “just” and “valuable.” As crime and safety trends shift, as public sentiment changes, and as society expands the scope of equal protection, the nature and definition of “value” shifts accordingly. For public safety leaders, this means that achieving justice, and the resulting value and legitimacy of policing and public safety institutions, is based on three interdependent demands: One, equally protecting people from increasingly complex crime. Two, equally protecting access to ever more robust rights, freedoms, and liberties. And three, engaging with communities to continually define value and co-create solutions that build trust. The resulting imperative is that public safety leaders and stakeholders must continually adapt their policing organizations to new value propositions and methods of producing that value. To accomplish this, Minneapolis public safety organizations must increase organizational capacity – the structures, systems, processes, and people that enable an organization to meet goals effectively and efficiently. And this capacity needs to not only be activated in real-time, but also dynamic – able to grow and adapt over time. The Safe and Thriving Communities report provides a pathway to this future of enhanced justice, value, and legitimacy

Minneapolis: City of Minneapolis, 2023. 143p.

By The City of Dallas,

A three-year study released Thursday from the Dallas Office of Community Police Oversight looked at low-level offense arrests and showed there were disparities in those types of arrests for Black people compared to the city's Black population. The study from the oversight office looked at public data to analyze low-level arrests in Dallas and shared recommendations to lessen the impact of misdemeanor enforcement on the community, police department and city resources, the report said. Most low-level custodial arrests during the three-year study period were public intoxication, possession of marijuana, and criminal trespass, the report said. The report outlined how Black residents are more often arrested for low-level offenses like public intoxication, low-level drug-related arrests, disorderly conduct and criminal trespass which the report claims "are not a public safety threat." It also recommended that the Dallas Police Department should officially de-prioritize low-level arrests in their policy, including marijuana, possession, public intoxication and criminal trespass arrests when the offense doesn't involve a felony charge or Class A or Class B offense.

Office of Community Police Oversight

By Tobias Kammersgaard

Background: In 2018 the Norwegian government appointed a committee to prepare the implementation of a drug decriminalization reform. The overall goal of the committee was to propose a model where responsibility for society’s response to the use and possession of illegal drugs for personal use would be transferred from the justice sector to the health service, under the catchphrase ‘from punishment to help’. While the proposal ultimately did not get the necessary backing in parliament, the proposed reform still constitutes a very comprehensive and recent proposal for reforming national drug policy and it provides an ideal case for studying contemporary discourses on ‘drug decriminalization’. Methods: The analysis of this reform proposal is guided by the post-structuralist “What’s the Problem Represented to be” (WPR) approach, which is used for investigating the problem representation(s) in the proposal, as well as the rationalities, practices and deep-seated assumptions underpinning these. In doing this, the paper explores how the strategy represents both changes and continuities in discourses around illicit drugs and the people who use them. Results: Based on the WPR approach, two problem representations in the proposal are identified: the ‘problem of illicit drug use’ and the ‘problem of criminalization’. However, the ‘problem of illicit drug use’ is argued to be the authoritative representation that takes precedence over the other. In that regard, the paper points to how the proposed shift from the justice sector to the health sector would only be partial, given that the role of the police and drug law enforcement would be retained in the reform. Furthermore, the paper points to how illicit drug use continued to be fundamentally pathologized in the proposed reform. Conclusion: The paper concludes with a discussion about the overall ambition of shifting from a crime-centered to a health-centered approach to people who use drugs and some reflections on the potential of an additional rights-based approach is provided.

International Journal of Drug Policy. Volume 113, March 2023, 103963.

By Michael Skidmore

‘Disruption’ has become central to the state’s response to serious and organised crime, a framework for rationalising, directing and accounting for the work in this important area of policing. In public policy it is presented as a distinct mode of crime control, however, the specific nature of the activities or outcomes encompassed by disruption remain unclear. It is comprised of an eclectic mix of policing activity for targeting the diverse criminality that falls within the scope of the serious and organised crime policy framework (HM Government, 2018). And it has been subjected to little external scrutiny, with limited coverage in the existing research literature. The lack of conceptual clarity and gaps in empirical evidence are not simply academic concerns, they obscure the efficacy, accountability and legitimacy of disruption policies and interventions and their real-world value. The aim of this paper is to unpack the concept of disruption so to better understand its characteristics as a distinct mode of crime control. The paper reviews the existing literature to examine the nature of disruption and highlight the gaps in evidence and understanding. It identifies a number of key questions to be explored in our wider ongoing research to examine the meaning, application, and value of disruption for tackling serious and organised crime. These findings will be published in a subsequent Police Foundation report.

London: The Police Foundation, 2023. 13p.

By Baroness Casey

Misconduct data, extracted from the Met’s Centurion systems This dataset contains information on all allegations (18,589), cases (10,252), and officers/staff (12,856) involved in misconduct issues (formally) from April 2013 – March 2022. The difference in these numbers is due to the fact that one case may involve several allegations against several individuals. And, as several officers may also be involved in more than one conduct case in the time period, the number of individual officers and staff in the data is actually 8,917. These allegations are only internal, i.e. initiated by Met staff, officers, or their families, not complaints from the general public, which are held on a different dataset. This dataset includes information on the nature of the allegation, the outcomes and decisions made, information on the subject of the allegation and key data around times, dates, and jurisdictions. The Review has taken an exploratory approach to this complex dataset, conducting descriptive statistical analysis on all components of the data to identify trends, changes, and outliers. It should be noted that this data is significant, but can never be fully accurate as many variables depend on the recording practices of individuals, which can vary between people and time. Nevertheless, the numbers are so significant that we are confident in our conclusions. The basis of our analysis is financial years (Apr-Mar), we measure the number of allegations/cases which have been received in each financial year. Some other performance analyses measure instead the number of case/allegations which have been finalised in a specific year. We have chosen the former approach for two reasons (1) it gives us a person-centred understanding of the misconduct system i.e. the experience of those making complaints / being complained about (2) it allows us to look at the impact of changes to legislation which do not apply retrospectively i.e. if a case was received in 2015, the rules changed in 2016, and the case was finalised in 2017, the 2016 rules would not apply. However, because we count all allegations and cases made in the period, not just the finalised ones, the closer we get to the contemporary day, the higher the percentage of cases/allegations which have not yet received an outcome becomes. Because of this, throughout, we have included red lines to indicate where the unknown percentage is too large to draw conclusions for that year.

London: Metropolitan Police, 2022. 21p.

By Rose M.C. Kagawa, Christopher D. McCort, Julia Schleimer, Veronica A. Pear, Amanda Charbonneau, Shani A.L. Buggs, Garen J. Wintemute, Hannah S. Laqueur

This study estimates disparities in driving under the influence (DUI) convictions relative to the frequency with which racial/ethnic groups engage in alcohol-impaired driving. We use had-been-drinking crashes and self-reported alcohol-impaired driving to approximate alcohol-impaired driving frequency for racial/ ethnic groups in California from 2001 to 2016.DUI conviction and had-been-drinking crash data are from a sample of 72,368 California men aged 21–49 in 2001. Self-reported alcohol-impaired driving rates could lead to more equitable DUI conviction rates.

Such actions could include limiting discretion at each level of the criminal justice system, for example, by providing prescriptive guidance to officers on when to stop drivers or using local had-been-drinking crash rates to determine sobriety checkpoint and saturation patrol locations are from male Californians who responded to the Behavioral RiskFactor Surveillance System. Relative to race/ethnicity-specific estimated rates of engaging in alcohol-impaired driving, Latino/Hispanic men had higher rates of DUIconviction than White men. This suggests racial bias plays a role in DUI convictions, with White men experiencing a lower probability of conviction thanLatino/Hispanic men who engage in similar behavior.Policy implications:These findings suggest actions aimed at reducing individual and structural biasesThis is an open access article under the terms of theCreative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivsLicense, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.

Criminology & Public Policy, Volume20, Issue 4 November 2021 Pages 645-663

By Meagan Cahill, Melissa M. Labriola, Jirka Taylor

In this report, RAND Corporation researchers summarize what is currently known about killings committed by police officers in the United States and identify existing evidence about various ways to prevent these killings. A relatively large body of research on these topics exists, but these studies often suffer from methodological shortcomings, largely stemming from the dearth of available data. Recognizing the need for more-rigorous work to guide efforts to reform police — and, more specifically, to reduce police killings — the authors present work focused on the development of a research agenda, or a road map, to reduce police killings. The report, based on an extensive literature review as well as interviews with policing experts, contains a series of recommendations for areas in which research efforts may be most effective in helping inform policy-making and decision-making aimed at reducing police killings.

The authors identified six focus areas — foundational issues (such as racial inequities, police culture, and police unions), data and reporting, training, policies, technology, and consequences for officers. Reviewing the priority research topics in each focus area, similar themes emerged, especially around the need for more-extensive and more-systematic data collection and around the use of agency policies to better govern a range of operations related to police violence, such as data collection and reporting and technology.

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  In this report, the authors use the terms police killings, police violence, and police shootings to describe these types of police behaviors, whether wrongful or not. The authors identify specific instances of these behaviors as misconduct, illegality, wrongful, or excessive when those descriptions apply.

Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2021. 80p.

By Jenniina Kotajoki

This publication describes how and to what extent violent extremism and different forms of crime converge in Nordic country prevention of violent extremism (PVE) and crime prevention (CP) strategies and action plans. The text’s author argues that despite some significant differences regarding PVE and CP in these countries, the relationship between violent extremism and different forms of crime may actually be inextricable and have much more of a profound impact than traditionally described. Considering the relation between violent extremism and criminality in theory and in practice could therefore help tackle possible threats and improve the design of policies and prevention measures.

Stockholm: Stockholm International Peace Research Institute - SIPRI, 2018. 20p.

By Joshua J. Skoczylis

This book explores the successes and failures of the Prevent strategy, which was developed by the UK Government to help stop people becoming terrorists or supporting terrorism. It provides a holistic overview of the policy's formation, delivery, and impact on Muslim communities. Based on interviews with former Ministers, senior policy makers, frontline professionals and community focus groups, Joshua Skoczylis also analyses the various impacts of policy and organizational tensions. These include the ambiguous scope of Prevent, the idea of community cohesion, and funding and evaluation issues.

The Local Prevention of Terrorism highlights the difficulties in applying terrorism prevention policies and the limitations of their impact. It shows that strategies such as Prevent may have particularly negative effects on Muslim communities, undermining their trust and perceptions of legitimacy. In its use of a large body of primary data and up-to-date analysis, the book will be of great interest to policymakers as well as scholars studying terrorism and security.

Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, UK; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. 312p.

By Robin Cuypers, Pieter Raymaekers and Steven Van de Walle

The goal of this report is to provide policymakers with an overview of behavioural insights and interventions that aim to increase citizens’ awareness of domestic burglary prevention and encourage them to take prevention measures. In the report, we construct an evaluation framework and provide recommendations for four policy measures: neighbourhood watch groups; security surveys; police advice and police labels. We evaluate these measures using behavioural models, the Taxonomy of Choice Architecture Techniques and the EMMIE framework…..We recommend the simultaneous use of behavioural and traditional prevention measures, targeting both the intuitive and the reflective, the conscious and the unconscious, and the rational and emotional underpinnings of people’s decision making processes

Brussels: European Crime Prevention Network, 2022. 56p.

By Roger Matthews

Prostitution has become an extremely topical issue in recent years and attention has focused both on the situation of female prostitutes and the adequacy of existing forms of regulation. Prostitution, Politics & Policy brings together the main debates and issues associated with prostitution in order to examine the range of policy options that are available.

Governments in different parts of the world have been struggling to develop constructive policies to deal with prostitution – as, for example, the British Home Office recently instigated a £1.5 million programme to help address the perceived problems of prostitution. In the context of this struggle, and amidst the publication of various policy documents, <EM>Prostitution, Politics & Policy develops a fresh approach to understanding this issue, while presenting a range of what are seen as progressive and radical policy proposals. Much of the debate around prostitution has been polarized between liberals – who want prostitution decriminalized, normalized and humanized – and conservatives – who have argued that prostitution should be abolished. But, drawing on a wide range of international literature, and providing an overview that is both accessible to students and relevant to policy makers and practitioners, Roger Matthews proposes a form of radical realism that is irreducible to either of these two positions.

Milton Park, Abingdon, UK: Routledge-Cavendish, 2008. 176p.

By Stephen Smallbone, William L. Marshall and Richard Wortley

Although child sexual abuse (CSA) is generally referred to as a distinct and singular phenomenon, there is a remarkably wide range of circumstances and events that may constitute CSA. Wide variations have been observed in the characteristics, modus operandi and persistence of CSA offenders, in the characteristics, circumstances and outcomes for victims, and in the physical and social settings in which CSA occurs. These multiple dimensions of CSA, and the wide variations within them, may at first seem to make the task of prevention overwhelmingly difficult, if not impossible. However, it is important to recognise that on virtually none of these dimensions is the incidence of CSA evenly distributed. Not all children are equally at risk of falling victim to sexual abuse, not all victims will be affected in the same way, not all adolescents and adults are equally at risk of becoming offenders, not all offenders are equally at risk of proceeding to a chronic pattern of offending, and not all physical and social environments present the same risk for CSA to occur. The first step towards developing a comprehensive, evidence-based approach to preventing CSA is therefore to understand the patterns of variation within, and the interactions between, its key empirical dimensions. To the extent these patterns can be reliably identified, the focus of prevention strategies can be narrowed, and prevention resources can accordingly be prioritised. Notwithstanding the limitations of the current knowledge base, the main aim of the present chapter is to specify where, when, how, to whom and by whom CSA occurs.

Cullompton, Devon, UK: Willan Publishing, 2008. 267p.

By Fernando G. Cafferata. and Carlos Scartascini

Crime is a major problem in Latin America and the Caribbean. With 9 percent of the world's population, the region accounts for 33 percent of global homicides. Using new, extensive survey data, we endeavor to identify what anti-crime policies citizens in the region demand from their governments. We also analyze who is demanding what and why. We find that harsher penalties appear to be the preferred weapon in the anti-crime arsenal but people are willing to spend public moneys not only for punishment, but also for anti-poverty and detection policies. Citizens recognize that allocating resources to the police is better than subsidizing private security for citizens. Nevertheless, most oppose raising taxes to fund the police, a reluctance that might stem from mistrust in governments' ability to manage these resources. Mistrust, misinformation, and impatience combine to create flawed anti-crime policy. Educating citizens both about crime and about the fiscal consequences of their policy preferences may help move the region's public opinion toward a better policy equilibrium. Governments should also invest in their capability to design and deliver evidence-based solutions for fighting crime, and work to increase trust levels among citizens.

Washington, DC: Inter-American Development Bank, 2021. 68p.

By Lind, J.; Mitchell, B. and Rohwerder, B.

This Evidence Report details key insights from the Institute of Development Studies Addressing and Mitigating Violence programme, which involved detailed political analysis of dynamics of violence as well as efforts to reduce and prevent violent conflict across a number of countries and areas in sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and South Asia. In particular, the evidence highlighted here is from violent settings that do not neatly fit categories of ‘war’ or ‘peace’. The findings of these studies, published as a series of open-access reports, Policy Briefings and blogs, were discussed by conflict and security experts as well as thinkers from aid and advocacy organisations at a consultative session in London in November 2015. This report uses evidence from the programme to critically reflect on policy and programming policy approaches for reducing violence. Specifically, it provides a synthesis of findings around these themes: (1) the nature of violence and how it might be changing; (2) the connectivity of actors across levels and space; and (3) the significance of identities and vulnerabilities for understanding and responding to violence. The report concludes by examining the implications of the research for the violence reduction paradigm.

Brighton, UK: Institute of Development Studies. 2016. 33p.