By Sara B. Heller, Benjamin Jakubowski, Zubin Jelveh & Max Kapustin   

  This paper shows that shootings are predictable enough to be preventable. Using arrest and victimization records for almost 644,000 people from the Chicago Police Department, we train a machine learning model to predict the risk of being shot in the next 18 months. Out-of-sample accuracy is strikingly high: of the 500 people with the highest predicted risk, almost 13 percent are shot within 18 months, a rate 128 times higher than the average Chicagoan. A central concern is that algorithms may “bake in” bias found in police data, overestimating risk for people likelier to interact with police conditional on their behavior. We show that Black male victims more often have enough police contact to generate predictions. But those predictions are not, on average, inflated; the demographic composition of predicted and actual shooting victims is almost identical. There are legal, ethical, and practical barriers to using these predictions to target law enforcement. But using them to target social services could have enormous preventive benefits: predictive accuracy among the top 500 people justifies spending up to $134,400 per person for an intervention that could cut the probability of being shot by half. 

Unpublished Paper, 2023. 64p.

By Brenden Beck

Between 2016 and 2021, more than 400 unarmed people were killed by police during traffic stops. In addition, metropolitan areas that rely more on revenue from fines and fees experience more police killings. This study analyzed over 2,700 U.S. municipalities from 2009 to 2018 to describe the type of municipalities that collect the most money in monetary sanctions and investigate whether killings by police are more frequent in places that rely on fines and fees revenue. The author found that suburbs with larger Black populations rely the most on revenue from monetary sanctions and that municipalities that rely on such revenue have more police killings. This suggests municipalities’ fiscal landscape not only influences police contact with the public but also influences police violence. 

RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences February 2023, 9 (2) 161-181

By Carmen L. Diaz, Michelle Yang,  Miriam Northcutt Bohmert , Jessica Meckes, Mitchell Farrell,

Cash bail payments are generally imposed to ensure an individual appears in court after arrest. Lesser known is the practice of bond conversion, wherein bond money is held to pay for legal financial obligations if the individual is found guilty. Procedural justice theory is a useful framework for understanding bail processes. Individuals subject to bond conversion may experience distrust towards a system whose policies are not transparent, potentially reducing compliance with the law. We conduct an assessment of statutes relevant to bond conversion for all 50 states and the US Code. Nearly half of all states and the US Code permit bond conversion via statute; statutes most often authorize conversion to pay for fines, costs, and restitution; most do not require the depositor be given notice, do not include language making exceptions for low-income individuals, and do not exclude third parties.

Federal Sentencing Reporter, 34(2-3):119-127

By Keith Finlay, Elizabeth Luh, Matthew Gross and Michael Mueller-Smith.

  We estimate the causal impact of financial sanctions in the U.S. criminal justice system. We utilize a regression discontinuity design and exploit two distinct natural experiments: the abrupt introduction of driver responsibility fees (DRF) in Michigan and Texas. These discontinuously imposed additional surcharges ($300–$6,000) for criminal traffic offenses. Although the policies generated almost $3 billion of debt, we find consistent evidence that the DRFs had no impact on recidivism, earnings, or romantic partners’ outcomes over the next decade. Without evidence of a general or specific deterrence effect and modest success with debt collection, we find little justification for these policies.

Unpublished paper, 2022. 47p.

By Ram Subramanian, Jackie Fielding, Lauren-Brooke Eisen, Hernandez Stroud, and Taylor King    

Financial incentives throughout the criminal justice system encourage punitive enforcement and sustain mass incarceration. Realigning them will require action from municipalities to the federal government.

New York Brennan Center for Justice, 2022. 73p.

By Daniel C.K. Chow 

The proliferation of counterfeits for sale on e-commerce sites has created new and more dangerous challenges to brand owners than counterfeits sold through brick and mortar establishments. Most brand owners are currently focusing their efforts on simplifying and streamlining Notice and Takedown (“NTD”) procedures set up by ecommerce platforms to remove illegal listings. The shortcomings of these efforts are that NTDs do not directly reach the counterfeiter who remains free to conduct its illegal activities with impunity and that NTDs do not prevent delisted counterfeiters from reappearing in short order under a new fictitious name and identity. Brand owners should seek to induce China to rigorously enforce its recently enacted Electronic Commerce Law (“ECL”), which was designed by China’s lawmakers to create a “choke point” that excludes counterfeiters and other unscrupulous merchants from gaining access to online accounts. The ECL requires multiple layers of government review and approval that were designed so that they can be satisfied only by legitimate and economically viable business entities. To date, e-commerce sites in China do not strictly comply with the ECL, and U.S.-based ecommerce sites do not require any compliance whatsoever with the ECL. Rigorous enforcement of the ECL should result in preventing counterfeiters from gaining access to e-commerce sites based in China and the United States and should lead to a decrease in sales of counterfeits on the internet. 

Ohio State Legal Studies Research Paper No. 676. 52 Seton Hall Law Review 1053 (2022)

By Liberty, et al.

Whatever our postcode or the colour of our skin, we all deserve to grow up in communities where we are cared for and given the tools we need to flourish in life. But instead of investing in young people or providing support to deal with the causes of social problems, the government has given the police more powers to try and tackle the symptoms of these issues. This has led to more and more people being treated unfairly by the police, rather than being given the help they need. Our communities need investment, so that together we can create spaces and services that we know will give our young people the best chance in life. And we need to roll back the powers of the police so no-one faces harsh and traumatising treatment at the hands of police. That’s why a coalition including Liberty, have launched a groundbreaking report calling for a new approach to tackling serious youth violence, with the powers of the police rolled back and more funding and support given for young people to thrive., 

London?: 2023,Liberty, 133p.

By Kevin Petersen, David Weisburd, Sydney Fay, Elizabeth Eggins and Lorraine Mazzerole 

Police stops are associated with reductions in crime but also a broad range of negative individual-level outcomes.

Police stop interventions produce meaningful and significant reductions in crime without evidence of spatial displacement. However, people subject to stops are associated with significantly less desirable mental and physical health outcomes, attitudes toward police, and self-reported crime/delinquency. For some outcome measures, the negative effects of pedestrian stops are considerably more pronounced for youth, though the data did not permit a comparison of individual effects by race.

What is this review about?

Police stops have become one of the most controversial yet widely-used crime prevention strategies in modern policing. This intervention involves the police-initiated stop of an individual (or group of individuals) on the street, for the purpose of investigation and/or questioning. Police stops have been commonly used as a tactic to combat violent and gun-related crime.

Campbell Systematic Reviews. 2023;1

By Ranae Jabri

  Predictive policing algorithms are increasingly used by law enforcement agencies in the United States. These algorithms use past crime data to generate predictive policing boxes, specifically the highest crime risk areas where law enforcement is instructed to patrol every shift. I collect a novel dataset on predictive policing box locations, crime incidents, and arrests from a major urban jurisdiction where predictive policing is used. Using institutional features of the predictive policing policy, I isolate quasi-experimental variation to examine the causal impacts of algorithm-induced police presence. I find that algorithm-induced police presence decreases serious property and violent crime. At the same time, I also find disproportionate racial impacts on arrests for serious violent crimes as well as arrests in traffic incidents i.e. lower-level offenses where police have discretion. These results highlight that using predictive policing to target neighborhoods can generate a tradeoff between crime prevention and equity.

 Unpublished paper, 2021. 44p.  

By The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Washington Advisory Committee

The Washington Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights submits this briefing report regarding barriers to accountability for use of excessive force by law enforcement officers. The Committee submits this report as part of its responsibility to study and report on civil-rights issues in the state. The contents of this report are primarily based on testimony the Committee heard during public meetings held via video-conference from March to June 2021

Washington, DC: USCCR, 2022. 32p.-

By Richard A. Berk

  There are widespread concerns about the use of artificial intelligence in law enforcement. Predictive policing and risk assessment are salient examples. Worries include the accuracy of forecasts that guide both activities, the prospect of bias, and an apparent lack of operational transparency. Nearly breathless media coverage of artificial intelligence helps shape the narrative. In this review, we address these issues by first unpacking depictions of artificial intelligence. Its use in predictive policing to forecast crimes in time and space is largely an exercise in spatial statistics that in principle can make policing more effective and more surgical. Its use in criminal justice risk assessment to forecast who will commit crimes is largely an exercise in adaptive, nonparametric regression. It can in principle allow law enforcement agencies to better provide for public safety with the least restrictive means necessary, which can mean far less use of incarceration. None of this is mysterious. Nevertheless, concerns about accuracy, fairness, and transparency are real, and there are tradeoffs between them for which there can be no technical fix. You can’t have it all. Solutions will be found through political and legislative processes achieving an acceptable balance between competing priorities.  

  Annu. Rev. Criminol. 2021. 4:209–37  

By Liz Campbell, Nessa Lynch, Joe Purshouse, Marcin Betkier

  The use of automated facial recognition technology (FRT) is becoming commonplace globally and in New Zealand. FRT involves the use of an algorithm to match a facial image to one already stored in a system, is used in automated passport control and other border control measures, as a biometric identifier in the banking, security and access contexts, and on social media platforms and various other consent-based applications

  This report contributes to the understanding of how and when this rapidly emerging hnology should be used and how it should be regulated. It is centred in what has been described as the ‘second wave’ of algorithmic accountability – While the first wave of algorithmic accountability focuses on improving existing systems, a second wave of research has asked whether they should be used at all—and, if so, who gets to govern them.3 This project seeks to address the regulation gap through ascertaining how FRT can and should be regulated in New Zealand. While the benefits that might be offered by FRT surveillance are increasingly observable, its effect on civil liberties is subtler, but certainly pernicious. Given the potential for FRT to be used as a key identity and access management tool in the future, there are pertinent questions around how images are being collected and stored now by the private sector. Where are these images being stored? Who has access to this data? What else might the images be used for? Without a detailed appraisal of the benefits of state FRT surveillance, and an understanding of the ethical issues raised by its use, any framework for the regulation of this activity cannot hope to engender public confidence that its use is fair and lawful.

Monash University, 2020. 118p.   

By Cameron Holley, Tariro Mutongwizo, and Clifford Shearing

  This review explores past and future shifts in policing and criminology scholarship that have shaped, and been shaped by, what is done to enhance safety within political domains. Investigating established policing conceptualizations, the review demonstrates how the ideal of state-delivered safety as a public good was challenged by a sizeable policing industry, giving rise to debates about legal context, service provision, and conceptualizations of policing and security nodal arrangements. This review argues that these understandings are now confronted by new harms and new conceptualizations of social institutional affairs. Interrogating these claims through an examination of the Anthropocene and technologies of cyberspace, we canvass debates and show that a shared focus of attention for the future of policing will be a decentralization of security and an expansion of private security governance professionals (both human and nonhuman)  

Annual Review of Criminology,  3:341-358, 2020

By Rachel Harmon

Coercive policing is conducted mostly by means of commanding officers usually cannot use force unless they have first issued an order. Yet, despite widespread concern about force and coercion in policing, commands are both underregulated and misunderstood. Officers have no clear legal authority to give many common commands, almost no departmental guidance about how or when to issue them, and almost no legal scrutiny for many commands they give. Scholars rarely study commands, and when they do, they get them wrong. As a result of vague law and inadequate analysis, basic questions about police commands—what role they play, where officers get authority to issue them, and how law regulates them—remain unanswered. Instead, officers interact with the public in a legal gray zone, a recipe for illegitimacy and conflict. This Article offers initial answers to these questions. First, it explains the constitutivecommands play in policing: Long-standing law dictates that officers usually cannot compel people, including by stop or arrest, without issuing commands that impose new legal duties. Second, it contends that although statutes sometimes authorize specific commands, officers’ authority to issue many orders comes from—and is limited by—officers’ authority to stop, search, and arrest suspects. Third, the Article argues that the legal functions commands serve—namely, generating and communicating legal duties—dictate that lawful orders must satisfy three constraints: They must be authorized by state law; they must obey constitutional limits; and they must provide adequate notice and opportunity for individuals to comply. These constraints are embedded in the law, but few avenues exist for challenging commands. Courts have therefore not defined or enforced limits on command authority well, except when commands violate constitutional rights. Courts can easily do better, and legislative and departmental action could clarify, extend, and enforce appropriate limits on police authority.

Rachel Harmon, Law and Orders, 123 Colum. L. Rev. 1 (2023).

By Lakomy, Miron; Bożek, Maciej

From the document: "Researchers who study online terrorism and political violence face a broad spectrum of risks to their safety and wellbeing. Awareness of the challenges researchers face in this subdiscipline has remained relatively low for years. Since the launch of Islamic State's propaganda campaign on the internet, which skilfully deployed scenes of death and dying to influence online audiences, that awareness has increased. Subsequently, some researchers have reported that prolonged exposure to terrorist content can be harmful across many wellbeing dimensions. This research project aims to determine if exposure to terrorist propaganda may be a factor in causing trauma for researcher or their development of mood disorders. Our study is founded on two research methods: an online survey and a novel experiment. The online survey was completed by a group of recognised terrorism researchers who were asked about their opinions and experiences related to the impact of their research activities on mental health. The experiment used a biofeedback device and an eye-tracker to measure the short-term psychophysiological response of researchers to ordinary content available on the internet (Control Group) and certain types of terrorist propaganda (Experimental Group). The reactions of both groups, primarily their eye fixation and skin conductance, were subsequently compared."

Global Network On Extremism And Technology (Gnet. 2023. 44P.

By 21CP Solutions.

From the Introduction: The President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing was established by Executive Order under then President Barack Obama on December 18, 2014. President Obama charged the task force with identi- fying best practices and offering recommendations on how policing practices can promote effective crime reduction while building public trust. Since the publication of the task force’s final report in May 2015, there have been more than 133 national, state, or local task forces, councils, and working groups responding to police violence in communities throughout the country.1

The nation remains in a policing crisis, and too many poor communities of color face the adverse conditions of poverty and economic exclusion that aggravate the relationship between communities and police. The 2015 report by the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing remains a significant influence on policing reform, but the country still confronts police violence that undermines community trust and confidence.

Task Force on 21st Century Policing: A Renewed Call to Action. Chicago: 21CP Solutions, LLC. 2023. 40p.

By Durham, John H.

From the document: "Following Special Counsel [Robert] Mueller's report, on May 13, 2019, Attorney General [William] Barr 'directed United States Attorney John Durham to conduct a preliminary review into certain matters related to the 2016 presidential election campaigns,' and that review 'subsequently developed into a criminal investigation. [...] On October 19, 2020, the Attorney General determined that, 'in light of the extraordinary circumstances relating to these matters, the public interest warrants Mr. Durham continuing this investigation pursuant to the powers and independence afforded by the Special Counsel regulations.' [...] [This] review and investigation, in turn has focused on separate but related questions, including the following: [1] Was there adequate predication for the FBI to open the Crossfire Hurricane investigation from its inception on July 31, 2016 as a full counterintelligence and Foreign Agents Registration Act ('FARA') investigation given the requirements of 'The Attorney General's Guidelines for FBI Domestic Operations' and FBI policies relating to the use of the least intrusive investigative tools necessary? [2] Was the opening of Crossfire Hurricane as a full investigation on July 31, 2016 consistent with how the FBI handled other intelligence it had received prior to July 31, 2016 concerning attempts by foreign interests to influence the Clinton and other campaigns? [3] Similarly, did the FBI properly consider other highly significant intelligence it received at virtually the same time as that used to predicate Crossfire Hurricane, but which related not to the Trump campaign, but rather to a purported Clinton campaign plan 'to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by Russian security services,' which might have shed light on some of the Russia information the FBI was receiving from third parties, including the Steele Dossier, the Alfa Bank allegations and confidential human source ('CHS') reporting? [...] [4] Was there evidence that the actions of any FBI personnel or third parties relating to the Crossfire Hurricane investigation violated any federal criminal statutes, including the prohibition against making false statements to federal officials? [...] [5] Was there evidence that the actions of the FBI or Department personnel in providing false or incomplete information to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court ('FISC') violated any federal criminal statutes? [...]"

U.S. Department of Justice. 2023. 316p

By John Comiskey

Abstract: This study identified and analyzed the utilization of theory in college homeland security curricula in the United States. Faculty and program directors with diverse academic and professional backgrounds actively teach theory from multiple fields and disciplines to help prepare students for the field, address homeland security problems, and to grow and mature the field. The most prevalent theories which are taught as part of college homeland security curricula constellate around leadership, risk management, security, social identity, and terrorism themes. Homeland security, however, lacks a grand theory or overarching framework. Essentially, homeland security is an eclectic discipline or field of study that seeks to prevent, protect against, mitigate, respond to, and recover from the threats and hazards that pose the greatest risks to the Nation.

Journal of Homeland Security Education. Volume 7 (2018). 17p.

By Neighborhood Analytics and St. Norbert College Strategic Research Institute

At the request of and in cooperation with the City of Milwaukee Fire & Police Commission, in 2022, the Strategic Research Institute at St. Norbert College (SRI) and Neighborhood Analytics, LLC partnered to conduct the fourth wave of the City of Milwaukee Police Satisfaction Survey. The purpose of this survey was to measure resident perceptions regarding a range of issues relevant to the Milwaukee Police Department; satisfaction with and trust in the police, perceptions of safety and police visibility, views on various kinds of police contacts, and exposure to crime. The survey was structured to provide estimates of both city-wide opinion as well as estimates of opinion within each police district. Data collection for the mixed-mode RDD (Random Digit Dial) telephone/ABS (Address-Based Sampling) mail survey occurred between September 9th, 2022 and November 23rd, 2022. Of the 1,003 completed interviews, 44.7% were conducted via telephone and 55.3% via ABS online survey. The response rate for the RDD sample was approximately 4.3%, while the response rate for the ABS sample was approximately 1.1%. The margin of error for unweighted sample statistics is ±3.1% at the 95% confidence level. Surveys were conducted in both English and Spanish. MAJOR FINDINGS:  36% of Milwaukee residents are “not very” or “not at all satisfied” overall with the Milwaukee Police Department in 2022, compared to 21% in 2019.  Overall satisfaction decreased among every demographic and socioeconomic subgroup of Milwaukee residents, and regardless of recent contact with police or recent exposure to crime. The largest increases in dissatisfaction occurred among white residents, residents 30-44 years of age, homeowners, those with 4-year degrees or higher, and those with no recent instances of victimization. The largest gap in opinion across groups of Milwaukee residents is generational, with younger residents far more likely to express dissatisfaction when compared with those in older age groups.

Milwaukee: Neighborhood Analytics; De Pere, WI: St. Norbert College Strategic Research Institute , 2023. 84p.

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.