By Jody van der Heyde, Andrew Faull and Martin Sycholt

Trust in the police is vital to a functioning democracy, but relations between South Africa’s residents and police have long been characterised by mistrust. This report introduces procedural justice as a cost-effective, evidence-informed practice that can increase public trust and confidence in the police, and enhance police legitimacy and social cohesion. The report provides an overview of the theory and presents data on trust, customer satisfaction and police morale in South Africa.

South Africa: Institute for Security Studies, 2023. 16p.

By Carole McCartney and Louise Shorter

The seizure, safe handling and secure storage of evidence during criminal investigations is pivotal to the successful detection and prosecution of offences. The safe retention of materials after an investigation closes, even post-conviction, is also critical both to the ability of the appellate system to function and for ‘cold cases’ to be reviewed. Yet despite periodic high-profile instances in which failures to ensure the integrity and retention of evidence have occurred, there is a reticence to admit to evidence being lost; in particular, to consider the issue on an aggregate rather than a case-by-case basis. This lack of transparency is compounded by an accountability deficit, in which the issue falls through regulatory gaps. Provoked to locate proof of lost evidence, this article examines police retention of investigative materials, and details the results of surveys undertaken with lawyers and miscarriage of justice campaigners (n = 65) and police (n = 87), and 21 interviews with serving and retired police officers. We identify ‘weak links’ in the evidence chain that need strengthening, including the enhancement of training, improved physical packaging and storage facilities, sufficient training of police staff and the creation of specialised ‘exhibits’ roles. Further to practical resource demands, the issue requires accessible data so that the problem can be acknowledged, and accountability and oversight mechanisms created to assure processes.

International Journal of Police Science & ManagementOnlineFirst 2023

By The City & County of San Francisco Police Department

In 2018, the San Francisco Police Department formed a Task Force on Strategic Police Staffing (“Staffing Task Force”) per direction from the Board of Supervisors and the Police Commission as adopted in Resolution No. 63-17. Resolution No. 63-17, supported and signed by the Mayor, “[urged] the San Francisco Police Commission to form a Task Force, in collaboration with the San Francisco Police Chief, on Strategic Police Staffing and with the purpose of determining the best methodology for establishing staffing levels in the San Francisco Police Department.” Resolution 63-17 was adopted to initiate an update to the 1994 Proposition D Charter amendment by determining SFPD staffing levels using a workload methodology based on the demand for police services rather than utilizing other metrics such as population size. As prescribed in Resolution No. 63-17, the Staffing Task Force included a cross-section of community stakeholders, nationally recognized police staffing experts, data analysts, City and County of San Francisco agency partners, and Police Commissioners. In early 2019, the San Francisco Police Department hired police staffing expert Matrix Consulting Group, Ltd (“Matrix”) to conduct a comprehensive staffing analysis of the Department. Matrix was directed to develop an understanding of SFPD staffing, operations, and workload; and to develop methodologies to use in the analysis. In 2019, Matrix developed the staffing analysis framework and presented the methodologies throughout the duration of the project to the Staffing Task Force to seek input and direction. In early 2020, Matrix released its report that described the methodologies used to establish SFPD staffing levels, developed in collaboration with the Staffing Task Force; and provided the results of the staffing analysis. In November 2020, San Francisco voters approved Proposition E, amending the City Charter to remove the previously established 1,971 baseline staffing level and requiring the Police Department to submit a report and recommendation on staffing levels every two years to the Police Commission for consideration when approving the Department’s budget. The purpose of this report is to recommend baseline staffing levels for the San Francisco Police Department using the rigorous, industry-reputed methodologies developed and used by Matrix Consulting Group and vetted by the Staffing Task Force.

City & County of San Francisco Police Department. 2023. 213p.

By Manja Nikolovska, Shane D. Johnson and Paul Ekblom

Crisis and disruption are often unpredictable and can create opportunities for crime. During such times, policing may also need to meet additional challenges to handle the disruption. The use of social media by officials can be essential for crisis mitigation and crime reduction. In this paper, we study the use of Twitter for crime mitigation and reduction by UK police (and associated) agencies in the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic. Our findings suggest that whilst most of the tweets from our sample concerned issues that were not specifically about crime, especially during the first stages of the pandemic, there was a significant increase in tweets about fraud, cybercrime and domestic abuse. There was also an increase in retweeting activity as opposed to the creation of original messages. Moreover, in terms of the impact of tweets, as measured by the rate at which they are retweeted, followers were more likely to ‘spread the word’ when the tweet was content-rich (discussed a crime specific matter and contained media), and account holders were themselves more active on Twitter. Considering the changing world we live in, criminal opportunity is likely to evolve. To help mitigate this, policy makers and researchers should consider more systematic approaches to developing social media communication strategies for the purpose of crime mitigation and reduction during disruption and change more generally. We suggest a framework for so doing.

Crime Science 2020 9:20

By Peter Stout

Houston TX experienced a widely known failure of its police forensic laboratory. This gave rise to the Houston Forensic Science Center (HFSC) as a separate entity to provide forensic services to the City of Houston. HFSC is a very large forensic laboratory and has made significant progress at remediating the past failures and improving public trust in forensic testing. HFSC has a large and robust blind testing program, which has provided many insights into the challenges forensic laboratories face. HFSC’s journey from a notoriously failed lab to a model also gives perspective to the resource challenges faced by all labs in the country. Challenges for labs include the pervasive reality of poor- quality evidence. Also that forensic laboratories are necessarily part of a much wider system of interdependent functions in criminal justice making blind testing something in which all parts have a role. This interconnectedness also highlights the need for an array of oversight and regulatory frameworks to function properly. The major essential databases in forensics need to be a part of blind testing programs and work is needed to ensure that the results from these databases are indeed producing correct results and those results are being correctly used. Last, laboratory reports of “inconclusive” results are a significant challenge for laboratories and the system to better understand when these results are appropriate, necessary and most importantly correctly used by the rest of the system.

PNAS 2023 vol. 120, no. 41

By Melissa M. Labriola, Samuel Peterson, Jirka Taylor, Danielle Sobol, Jessica Reichert, Jon Ross, Jac Charlier, Sophia Juarez

Many law enforcement and other first responder agencies have adopted deflection as a front-line response to the increasing number of drug overdoses and deaths in the United States over the past two decades. Deflection programs aim to connect individuals with substance use disorder (not necessarily limited to opioids or one particular substance) who encounter the criminal justice system with treatment and other services according to the individual's needs.

This report describes the findings from a multi-site evaluation of law enforcement deflection in the United States. The authors describe how each program is implemented and identify key program facilitators and barriers. For two of the six sites, the authors conducted outcome analyses to determine whether the model is effective in reducing drug-related deaths and overdoses, arrests, and treatment admissions.

Key Findings

• Deflection programs in the United States can take many shapes and forms, but there are some trends emerging: gradual incorporation of additional pathways; an overall move toward greater complexity and breadth of service provision, including the coexistence of other diversion programs in the area; and a move toward the professionalization of deflection (e.g., needing own staff, formulation of best practices).

• Qualitatively, perspectives from stakeholders suggest positive results in terms of (1) individual participant journeys, (2) change in policing practice and views, (3) reductions in stigma, and (4) stakeholder and community buy-in.

• Facilitators of implementation can also be identified, primarily as strong partnerships and champions.

• Barriers include persistence of stigma, distrust of police, and challenges pertaining to services for people who use drugs writ large, such as treatment capacity and payment methods.

• The outcome analyses for one site (Lake County, Illinois) suggest a reduction in fatal overdoses and in property crime arrests, but findings for the other site (Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts) are mostly null, likely because of the small sample

Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2023. 52p.

By Dulani Woods, John S. Hollywood, Jeremy D. Barnum, Danielle Fenimore, Michael J. D. Vermeer, Brian A. Jackson

The advent of blockchain-based technologies has opened a new frontier for individuals wishing to conduct financial and other transactions remotely, anonymously, and without the need for a third party like a bank. Blockchain technology has various uses but is perhaps best known as the foundation for a certain type of digital currency called cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrency is increasingly an accepted form of payment in many legitimate business transactions, but it is also used to facilitate many illegal activities, in large part because of its capacity to facilitate mostly anonymous transactions remotely. As a result, law enforcement investigators need to develop new skills, competencies, and tools for ensuring justice. In support of the National Institute of Justice, researchers from RAND and the Police ExecutiveResearch Forum conducted a workshop with law enforcement practitioners, academics, and other experts. Workshop participants identified and priorit ized 24 research and development needs that, if invested in, would improve law enforcement's ability to adapt to these societal changes. These needs pertain to policies for digital key management, resources for law enforcement training on blockchain and cryptocurrency, and tools for investigations involving cryptocurrency.

In this report, the researchers detail the proceedings of the workshop, discuss the ten highest-priority needs identified by the participants, and provide additional context based on the participants' discussions. The participants prioritized needs associated with raising the level of knowledge for officers and investigators, training or hiring experts who can assist with investigations, and adapting existing policies and procedures to ensure that cryptocurrencies are handled responsibly.

Key Findings

• There are not enough law enforcement–specific blockchain and cryptocurrency training and experts to meet the demand for educating justice practitioners.

• Cryptocurrency can be transferred by anyone in possession of an easy-to-copy digital key. Individuals with copies of the keys may move assets before an agency can take possession.

• This digital key is merely a unique set of letters and/or numbers (i.e., text). This text allows the bearer to control digital assets of high value and should not be treated like other text-based information within a case file.

• Seized cryptocurrency assets can be transferred by anyone in possession of a digital key to a digital wallet of unknown ownership. This presents opportunities for officer misconduct.

• Blockchain and cryptocurrency are fast-moving, rapidly evolving technologies. Justice practitioners are having difficulty keeping up with the changes.

• There is a lack of expertise in all aspects of blockchain and cryptocurrency technologies across the justice system.

• Commercial cryptocurrency-tracking tools can be more expensive than an agency can afford. Open-source tools can require significant computing power.

• Once a problematic cryptocurrency wallet is identified by law enforcement (via subpoena or another method), there is no good way to notify other interested investigators in other jurisdictions.

Recommendations

• Identify best-practice policies and procedures for rapidly securing cryptocurrency assets during investigations.

• Develop best-practice policies and procedures (e.g., two-person systems) to minimize opportunities for mishandling cryptocurrency.

• Identify best-practice policies and procedures for handling, storing, transferring, and redacting digital cryptocurrency keys within record-management systems.

• Catalog and publicize the training resources that are already available, including training that is not tailored for justice practitioners.

• Develop regional or national sharing systems that facilitate sharing of training materials and actionable intelligence for ongoing cases (e.g., digital or cyber fusion centers).

• Develop model materials that can be easily adapted for training recruits, investigators, forensics experts, prosecutors, judges, and others.

• Conduct research to examine the balance of skills and expertise that law enforcement agencies look for when hiring and assess whether those are likely to meet current and future needs.

• Convene a standing group of practitioners and experts who can examine the “state of the possible” and generate requirements for research and development organizations.

• Work with federal, state, local, and private entities (e.g., the Regional Computer Forensics Laboratory, Lawyers Without Borders) to make available appropriate cryptocurrency-tracking resources so that costs can be more easily shared.

• Assess the costs and benefits of developing a private-sector clearinghouse that will allow the public sector and vetted private-sector entities to coordinate (similar to how the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children screens potentially abusive materials.

Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2023. 28p.

By Jeffrey A. Fagan and Alexis D. Campbell

Police officers in the United States have killed over 1000 civilians each year since 2013. The constitutional landscape that regulates these encounters defaults to the judgments of the reasonable police officer at the time of a civilian encounter based on the officer’s assessment of whether threats to their safety or the safety of others requires deadly force. As many of these killings have begun to occur under similar circumstances, scholars have renewed a contentious debate on whether police disproportionately use deadly force against African Americans and other nonwhite civilians and whether such killings reflect racial bias. We analyze data on 3933 killings to examine this intersection of race and reasonableness in police killings. First, we describe the objective circumstances and interactions of police killings and map those event characteristics to the elements of reasonableness articulated in case law. Second, we assess whether inherently vague constitutional regulation of lethal force is applied differently by officers depending on the civilian’s race, giving rise to a disproportionate rate of deaths among racial and ethnic minority groups. We then assess the prospects for remediation of racialized police killings by testing the effects of an existing evidence-based training curricula designed to reduce police use of deadly force towards persons experiencing mental illness. We find that, across several circumstances of police killings and their objective reasonableness, Black suspects are more than twice as likely to be killed by police than are persons of other racial or ethnic groups; even when there are no other obvious circumstances during the encounter that would make the use of deadly force reasonable. Police killings of Latinx civilians are higher compared to whites and other racial or ethnic groups in some but not all circumstances. We find no evidence that enhanced police training focused on mental health crises can reduce the incidence of fatal police shootings of persons in mental health crisis or racial and ethnic disparities generally in police killings. Our findings suggest that the standards in constitutional case law fail to anticipate the circumstances of fatal police shootings and are therefore seemingly irrelevant in preventing racial disparities in police fatal police shootings. In light of this constitutional landscape, we argue that the ineffectiveness of enhanced police training to reduce shootings overall and racial disparity within these shootings may reflect the absence of race-specific components in their curricula. We suggest that the addition of training components that specifically address the role of race in officers’ perceptions of risk and their decision-making in potentially dangerous interactions with citizens may remediate both the incidence of police shootings and their apparent racial and ethnic disparity.

BOSTON UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW [Vol. 100:951 2020.

By Susan Olzak

An underlying premise of democratic politics is that protest can be an effective form of civic engagement that shapes policy changes desired by marginalized groups. But it is not certain that this premise holds up under scrutiny. This paper presents a three-part argument that protest (a) signals the salience of a movements’ focal issue and expands awareness that an issue is a social problem requiring a solution, (b) empowers residents in disadvantaged communities and raises a sense of community cohesion, which together (c) raise costs and exert pressure on elites to make concessions. The empirical analysis examines the likelihood that a city will establish a Civilian Review Board (CRB). It then compares the effects of protest and CRB presence on counts of officer-involved fatalities by race and ethnicity. Two main conjectures about the effect of protest are supported: Cities with more protest against police brutality are significantly more likely to establish a CRB, and protest against police brutality reduces officer-involved fatalities for African Americans and Latinos (but not for Whites). But the establishment of CRBs does not reduce fatalities, as some have hoped. Nonetheless, mobilizing against police brutality matters, even in the absence of civilian review boards.

American Sociological Review. 86(6): 2021.

By Jeffrey A. Fagan and Amanda B. Geller

Following Soto v. State (1999), New Jersey was the first state to enter into a Consent Decree with the U.S. Department of Justice to end racially selective enforcement on the state’s highways. The Consent Decree led to extensive reforms in the training and supervision of state police troopers, and the design of information technology to monitor the activities of the State Police. Compliance was assessed in part on the State’s progress toward the elimination of racial disparities in the patterns of highway stops and searches. We assess compliance by analyzing data on 257,000 vehicle stops on the New Jersey Turnpike by the state police from 2005– 2007, the final months of the Consent Decree. Specifically, we exploit heterogeneity of officer and driver race to identify disparities in the probability that stops lead to a search. We assume a crime-minimizing or welfarist rationale for stops, under which race-neutral factors are equally likely to motivate stops, regardless of driver or passenger race. We also test a Fairness Presumption by comparing search patterns between driver-officer pairs where the driver and officer are different races, and a set of race-neutral benchmarks where the driver and officer are the same race. Results of fixed effects logistic regressions show that Black and Hispanic drivers, when stopped, are more than twice as likely as White drivers to be searched, regardless of officer race. The results also suggest that search patterns vary significantly by officer race: Black officers are less likely to conduct a search in the course of a stop than are White drivers. We also see significant interactions between the race of officers and that of the drivers they stop: Black drivers are significantly more likely to be searched by White officers than they are by Black officers; on the other hand, Hispanic drivers are significantly less likely to be searched by either Black or White officers than they are by Hispanic officers. Racial disparities in the selection of stopped drivers for search and in the rates of seizure of contraband suggest that despite institutional reforms under the Consent Decree in management and professionalization of patrol officers, there were no tangible gains in distributional equity. We review the design of the Consent Decree and the accompanying oversight mechanisms to identify structural weaknesses in external monitoring and institutional design in the oversight of the State Police that compromised the pursuit of equality goals.

J. SOC. POL'Y & L. 16 (2020). Available at:

By Kanna Hayashi , Tyson Singh Kelsall, Caitlin Shane , Zishan Cui., et al

Background

Several jurisdictions in Canada have recently considered decriminalizing possession of illicit drugs for personal use (henceforth, simple possession) as part of their responses to the ongoing drug toxicity/overdose crisis. In this context, we sought to examine an early implementation case of a de facto depenalization policy of sim‑ ple possession ofences in Vancouver, Canada, that was enacted in 2006. Specifcally, we characterized experiences of people who use drugs (PWUD) whose drugs were discretionally seized by police without arrest.

Methods

Data were derived from three prospective cohorts of community-recruited PWUD in Vancouver over 16 months in 2019–2021. We conducted multivariable generalized estimating equations analyses to determine the prevalence of and factors associated with drug seizure. Sub-analyses used data collected in 2009–2012 and examined the trends over time.

Results

Among 995 participants who were interviewed in 2019–2021, 63 (6.3%) had their drugs seized by police at least once in the past 6 months. In multivariable analyses, factors significantly associated with drug seizure included: homelessness (adjusted odds ratio [AOR]: 1.98; 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.09–3.61), working in the unregulated drug market (AOR: 4.93; 95% CI 2.87–8.49), and naloxone administration (AOR: 2.15; 95% CI 1.23– 3.76). In 2009–2012, 67.8% reported having obtained new drugs immediately after having their drugs seized by police. Odds of drug seizure were not significantly different between the two time periods (2019–2021 vs. 2009–2012) (AOR: 0.93; 95% CI: 0.64–1.35).

Conclusions

Despite the depenalization policy, the Vancouver Police Department has continued to seize illicit drugs from PWUD, even in cases where no arrest occurred. This policing practice may create health and safety risks for PWUD as it forces PWUD to increase the engagement with the unregulated illicit drug market. Our findings support calls for abolishing this often-undocumented discretionary policing practice that may exacerbate ongoing health inequities and interfere with peer-based overdose prevention efforts.

Harm Reduction Journal (2023) 20:117

Ben Grunwald and John Rappaport

“Wandering officers” are law-enforcement officers fired by one department, sometimes for serious misconduct, who then find work at another agency. Policing experts hold disparate views about the extent and character of the wandering-officer phenomenon. Some insist that wandering officers are everywhere—possibly increasingly so—and that they’re dangerous. Others, however, maintain that critics cherry-pick rare and egregious anecdotes that distort broader realities. In the absence of systematic data, we simply do not know how common wandering officers are or how much of a threat they pose, nor can we know whether and how to address the issue through policy reform.

In this Article, we conduct the first systematic investigation of wandering officers and possibly the largest quantitative study of police misconduct of any kind. We introduce a novel data set of all 98,000 full-time law-enforcement officers employed by almost 500 different agencies in the State of Florida over a thirty-year period. We report three principal findings. First, in any given year during our study, an average of just under 1,100 officers who were previously fired—three percent of all officers in the State—worked for Florida agencies. Second, officers who were fired from their last job seem to face difficulty finding work. When they do, it takes them a long time, and they tend to move to smaller agencies with fewer resources in areas with slightly larger communities of color. Interestingly, though, this pattern does not hold for officers who were fired earlier in their careers. Third, wandering officers are more likely than both officers hired as rookies and those hired as veterans who have never been fired to be fired from their next job or to receive a complaint for a “moral character violation.” Although we cannot determine the precise reasons for the firings, these results suggest that wandering officers may pose serious risks, particularly given how difficult it is to fire a police officer. We consider several plausible explanations for why departments nonetheless hire wandering officers and suggest potential policy responses to each.

129 Yale Law Journal 1676-1782 (2020)

By Abdul Nasser Rad, David S. Kirk, and William P. Jones

Recent discussions of police violence in the United States and the corresponding lack of accountability have shone a light on a highly debated agent opposing police reform—police unions. Although police unionism continues to be an understudied area, a recent wave of empirical investigations, both qualitative and quantitative, have contributed to a nascent understanding of the ways in which police union mechanisms facilitate police misconduct and violence. Accordingly, in this review we first discuss the origins of police unionism in the United States, illustrating how historical forces, including racial animus, have shaped the existing landscape. Then, we highlight significant empirical work exploring the relationship between police unionism and misconduct. Thereafter, we review the potential intervening mechanisms, which are employed in ways to reduce disciplinary consequences of misconduct and excessive use of force, undermine oversight of the police, and limit police transparency. We end with a set of recommendations on future avenues for research.

Annual Review of Criminology, 2023. 6:181–203

By Tamara D. Herold, Ph.D. Robin S. Engel, Ph.D. Nicholas Corsaro, Ph.D. Stacey L. Clouse

The gang and gun violence reduction project implemented in Las Vegas consisted of three components: hot spots deployment, focused deterrence, and place network investigations (PNI). This report focuses on a program review and process evaluation of the PNI initiative. The PNI strategy, also known as PIVOT (Place-based Investigations of Violent Offender Territories), is grounded in crime science theory and research, which consistently finds that crime is highly concentrated, and patterns of crime concentration generally persist in the same locations over time despite repeated police intervention (Andresen, & Malleson, 2011; Braga, Andresen, & Lawton, 2017; Weisburd, Bushway, Lum, & Yang, 2004, Wilcox & Eck, 2011). The strategy was designed and first implemented in Cincinnati, Ohio. It is based on the assumption that historical, or persistent, hot spots are the result of deeply entrenched crime place networks used by active offender groups. The PNI strategy requires police investigations to uncover crime place networks, and a local PNI Investigative Board to focus existing city/county resources to alter crime-facilitating place dynamics (Madensen et al., 2017). In early 2018, the LVMPD Command Staff, in consultation with the Director of Crime Analysis, selected a pilot project site within the bureau’s Northeast Area Command (NEAC) for PNI implementation. A specific condominium complex, small strip mall that housed a convenience store, and nearby multi-family unit housing was selected to serve as the primary focus of the intervention. The NEAC Captain assigned her FLEX (Flexible Deployment) team to implement the PNI strategy and serve as the primary investigative unit. The International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) / University of Cincinnati (UC) Center for Police Research and Policy arranged to provide technical assistance and training to LVMPD’s PNI investigative unit. An introductory training for investigators and internal/external partners was conducted in April 2018. On-going training and assistance were provided on a bi-weekly basis in the form of on-site meetings or telecommunication with strategy experts and police personnel involved in Cincinnati’s PNI implementation from May 1, 2018, until the end of the evaluation period (April 30, 2019). In order to better understand the process and influence of the pilot PNI program in Las Vegas, officials from LVMPD partnered with researchers from the Center for Police Research and Policy, along with academic partners from the University of Nevada Las Vegas (UNLV) to conduct a program review and process evaluation of the PNI initiative. Using bi-weekly investigative activity summaries and LVMPD reported crime incident data, this study addresses the following specific research questions: 1) What types of activities were conducted by the LVMPD PNI investigative unit in the targeted violent hot spot? Given that PNI is a recently developed strategy, LVMPD and other agencies interested in adopting the PNI strategy could benefit from systematic documentation of investigative and enforcement activities conducted by investigative units 2) What successes and obstacles were experienced by those responsible for implementing the PNI strategy in Las Vegas? For the purpose of this evaluation, 11 specific implementation dimensions (or general steps) were identified based on the process used to conduct previous place network investigations in Cincinnati, Ohio. The current assessment attempts to describe the general degree of program fidelity achieved by the LVMPD during PNI strategy implementation. 3) What was the impact of the LVMPD PNI strategy on gun-related crime in the targeted area? While the analysis presented within this evaluation is mostly exploratory in nature, given the relatively short intervention period and low overall crime numbers, it offers insight into how the PNI strategy, as implemented by the LVMPD, could impact violent crime targeted areas.

Cincinnati: UC Center for Police Research and Policy University of Cincinnati 2020. 35p.

By Karen Bullock , Iain Agar , Matt Ashby , Iain Brennan, Gavin Hales , Aiden Sidebottom and Nick Tilley

Knife crime remains a major concern in England and Wales. Problem-oriented and public health approaches to tackling knife crime have been widely advocated, but little is known about how these approaches are understood and implemented by police practitioners. To address this knowledge gap, this article draws on semi-structured interviews and focus groups with 44 police personnel to consider the processes and challenges of applying problem-oriented and public health approaches to knife crime. Findings show that knife crime was seen as a complex social problem which would not be solved by ‘silver bullets’; prevention was prioritised and the limitations of enforcement were widely acknowledged; there was an emphasis on understanding and responding to vulnerability and risk; discussion of ‘holistic’ and ‘whole systems’ approaches was evident (but these concepts were rarely defined); and the problem of serious violence was viewed as a shared, multi-agency issue that the police could not tackle alone. Various challenges were also evident, most notably around analysis of the drivers and patterns of knife crime and the evaluation of knife crime interventions. The article concludes by discussing the implications of the findings for knife crime prevention and the implementation and advancement of problem-oriented and public health approaches to policing

Crime Science, 12(2): 2023

By Andy Higgins and Ruth Halkon

Public support and approval sit at the heart of the British policing model and are critical dependencies for effective policing. Although citizen attitudes have slipped out of formal policy focus over the last decade, a complex combination of factors – most obviously the recent set of misconduct scandals and cultural failings exposed within the Metropolitan Police in particular – have pulled questions of trust, confidence, and police legitimacy back into the spotlight. The first data to emerge from the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) following its hiatus during Covid, confirms a consistent deterioration in public sentiment towards the police, which has begun to spread into more ‘relational’ dimensions (of fairness and respectfulness), not just appraisals of service quality. The downturn in London is particularly stark. These conditions and their causes require action from police leaders and policy makers, and a range of ‘issue based’ reform efforts, reviews and change programmes are underway. Additionally, however, the strategic-level questions these shifts pose, about the future working relationship between police and public, demand that concerted attention should also be given to contact – the way that citizens experience ‘everyday’ interactions with the police, across a variety of contexts, and the attitudinal traces these episodes leave behind. Personal contact is what citizens consistently say affects their trust and confidence in police, and its impact can ripple beyond those directly involved, through ‘vicarious’ transmission (e.g., reports from family and friends) and media (and social media) coverage. It also seems to be an aspect of service delivery amenable to policy and practice change, drawing on a well-established evidence-base about what is likely to be effective. But contact is also an area of considerable flux and disruption. Right across society, technology is precipitating radical shifts in the way citizens communicate with each other and interact with businesses, organisations, and government services. Online commerce and service provision, social media, videoconferencing, artificial intelligence (AI) powered chatbots, and advanced analytics are all contributing to a much more complex and plural contact environment. These developments are shifting public expectations and promise real benefits in terms of the speed, efficiency, convenience, and choice available to citizens in their everyday lives. The pace of change, however, is such that the wider social implications are difficult to comprehend. Policing, of course, is not immune to these shifts and technologically enabled developments such as in online crime reporting, self-service portals, social media engagement, Body-Worn Video, live chat and video-link responses are increasingly coming to augment and meditate the public experience of dealing with the police. At a strategic level, the service seems optimistic about the potential for these and future innovations to generate mission critical efficiencies, optimise effectiveness, enable the sector to keep pace with public expectations, and promote public trust and confidence – although the mechanisms through which the latter might occur remain largely under-theorised. This report begins to address the interconnections between those two trajectories: the deterioration in police/public relations (and associated imperatives on policing to halt and reverse this), and the technological transformation of police/public contact. More specifically, it asks: what are the implications, opportunities, and risks for public confidence (and related attitudes) arising from the introduction of new technology into police/public contact experiences? Our investigation proceeds in three parts: • First (in Section 2) we revisit and summarise what is already known about the way police/public contact impacts on public confidence (and related attitudes) from research conducted in more ‘analogue’ times and contexts. • Second (in Section 3) we ask: what evidence is emerging, what is promising and what can be hypothesised, about how various forms of technology might impact on public experiences of contact, and the lasting impressions these leave behind? We present six promising mechanisms and one pressing risk. • Third (in Section 4) we conclude by considering the strategic implications for policing and present eight recommendations. Our analysis is informed by a literature review, analysis of survey data collected by the London Mayor’s Office of Policing and Crime (MOPAC), a survey of police contact management and community engagement leads, a roundtable discussion, and interviews and discussions with relevant experts and stakeholders.

London: Police Foundation, 2023. 57p.

By Uttara M Ananthakrishnan, Jason Chan, Yicheng Song

One of the most acute social justice problems in the United States is the direct conflict between police and minorities. Media coverage of police brutality instances not only allow such inequitable practices come to light, but is an important step towards the reform of inappropriate policing. However, it is theoretically unclear whether the reporting of excessive use of police force on minorities can have a tangible impact on subsequent policing outcomes. In this paper, we aim to answer the question of whether and how digital news on police brutality is effective in shaping subsequent police actions. To address this question, we construct a cross-sectional dataset of news reports of police violence and police traffic stop records. Under a difference-in-difference framework, we find that news reports on police brutality reduces police stops of minorities. Additionally, we find that news with sad frames are more effective in effectuating change in policing behaviors. Finally, we learn that the impact of news reports are less effective in minority-dominated areas and high-crime areas.

SSRN 2022. 40p.

John A. Shjarback

Objectives: To quantify nonfatal injurious police shootings of people and examine the factors associated with victim mortality.

Methods: We gathered victim-level data on fatal and nonfatal injurious police shootings from four states that have such information publicly available: Florida (2009–14), Colorado (2010–19), Texas (2015–19), and California (2016–19). For each state, we examined bivariate associations between mortality and race/ethnicity, gender, age, weapon, and access to trauma care. We also estimated logistic regression models predicting victim mortality in each state.

Results: Forty-five percent of these police shooting victims (N = 1,322) did not die. Black–white disparities were more pronounced in nonfatal injurious police shootings than in fatal police shootings. Overall, Black victims were less likely than white victims to die from their wound(s). Younger victims were less likely to die from their wound(s), as well as those who were unarmed.

Conclusions: Racial and age disparities in police shootings are likely more pronounced than previous estimates suggest.

Policy implications: Other states should strongly consider compiling data like that which is currently being gathered in California. Absent data on nonfatal injurious police shootings–which account for a large share of deadly force incidents–researchers and analysts must be cautious about comparing and/or ranking jurisdictions in terms of their police-involved fatality rates.

PLOS ONE, Nov. 2021. 14p.

By Jonathan S. Masur, Aurélie Ouss, John Rappaport

We document and discuss the implications of a striking feature of modern American policing: the stasis of police labor forces. Using an original employment dataset assembled through public records requests, we show that, after the first few years on a job, officers rarely change employers, and intermediate officer ranks are filled almost exclusively through promotion rather than lateral hiring. Policing is like a sports league, if you removed trades and free agency and left only the draft in place. We identify both nonlegal and legal causes of this phenomenon—ranging from geographic monopolies to statutory and collectively bargained rules about pensions, rank, and seniority—and discuss its normative implications. On the one hand, job stability may encourage investment in training and expertise by agencies and officers alike; it may also attract some high-quality candidates, including candidates from underrepresented backgrounds, to the profession. On the other hand, low labor mobility can foster sclerosis in police departments, entrenching old ways of policing. Limited outside options may lead officers to stay in positions that suit them poorly, decreasing morale and productivity and potentially contributing to the scale of policing harms. In turn, the lack of labor mobility makes it all the more important to police officers to retain the jobs they have. This encourages them to insist on extensive labor protections and to enforce norms like the “blue wall of silence,” which exacerbate the problem of police misconduct. We suggest reforms designed to confer the advantages of labor mobility while ameliorating its costs..

Public Law and Legal Theory Working Paper. Chicago: University of Chicago School of Law, Chicago Unbound, 2023. 60p.

By Kerry Carrington, Máximo Sozzo, Vanessa Ryan

Our ARC funded research team has been investigating how to enhance the prevention and policing responses to gender-based violence. Initially we undertook three months of field research in Argentina investigating how Women’s Police Stations – a unique invention that emerged in Latin America in the mid-1980s – respond to and prevent gender-based violence (Carrington et al. 2019; 2020b). A brief summary of our findings is included in this report. The second stage of our research has investigated what could be learnt from these unique approaches to policing in Australia and elsewhere in the world. This report presents the findings of two surveys we designed to explore whether the innovative strategies used by women’s only police stations in Argentina could improve the way we respond to and prevent gender violence in Australia. The report is presented in four parts. The first part presents an overview of our project on gendered violence. Part II presents the findings from the Workforce survey (n=277), followed by Part III which presents the findings from the Community survey (n=566). The final part of the report compares the responses to two key questions asked of both cohorts. The first asked, “In your opinion, which aspects of Women's Police Stations (in Argentina) could improve how Australian police stations respond to victims of gender violence?”. There were 12 aspects provided, and respondents were able to choose more than one response. Overall, Workforce respondents were positive about 11 aspects, and nine strongly, varying between 41 and 86 percent, with only one below 50 percent (see Figure 12). Community respondents were less enthusiastic with levels of endorsement varying between 32 percent and 67 percent, with only three aspects below 50 percent (see Figure 24). Nevertheless, when compared (see Figure 32) there was a considerable level of agreement across the surveys to nine aspects: Work in multi-disciplinary teams with lawyers, counsellors and social workers; Collaborate with local agencies to prevent gender violence; Provide emergency support to victims of violence; Police Stations specifically designed to receive victims; Provide childcare and a space for children; Carry out violence prevention work in the local community; Specially designed interview rooms for victims; and Work with victims and offenders to break the cycle of violence.

Brisbane: Centre for Justice, Queensland University of Technology: Brisbane, 2020. 52p.