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 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.

The Police Foundations report contains 56 recommendations regarding how the structure, skill sets, and training of the police service in England and Wales should change to meet today’s challenges.

Under the direction of The Independent Strategic Review of Policing in England and Wales, the report lays out a long-term strategic direction for the police service so that it will be capable of meeting the challenges of the 21st century. Announcing the final report at an event in London, Sir Michael Barber, Chair of the Review, said, “Policing in this country is at a crossroads, and it cannot stand still whilst the world changes so quickly around it. Now is the moment to move forward quickly on the path of reform.”

The report calls for:

• Increasing trust between the police and the public

• Equipping to take on new forms of crime through a complete overhaul of training systems

• Changing the police service’s existing organization, adding special agencies dedicated to cybercrime, cross-border crime, and police modernization

London: Strategic Review of Policing in england and Wales, Police Foundation, 2022. 196p.

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 Statistics Canada

Having a high level of confidence in the Federal Parliament, the justice system and courts, the police, and the Canadian media can be seen as a vital measure for assessing the health of democracy in Canada. Confidence in these institutions reflects the sense that they are safe, effective, transparent and accountable.

From October 2022 to January 2023, about two-thirds (67%) of Canadians reported having a high level of confidence in the police. This was a greater proportion than other institutions, such as the justice system and courts (51%), the Federal Parliament (36%) and the Canadian media (33%).

In the context of increased diversity and immigration being the main driver of population growth in Canada, it is relevant to investigate if different groups of the population share these views similarly.

Using preliminary data from the Survey Series on People and their Communities, this report examines whether racialized and non-racialized, non-Indigenous people in Canada have differing levels of confidence in public institutions, which is a key indicator of Canada's Quality of Life Framework.

Southeast Asian, Black and Japanese people are less likely to report confidence in police

Previous surveys have shown that Black Canadians report lower levels of confidence in police than non-Indigenous and non-racialized people. Along the same lines, this survey reported that Southeast Asian (63%), Black (52%) and Japanese (47%) people in Canada were less likely to have confidence in the police, compared with those who did not belong to a racialized group and were not Indigenous (69%). Some subgroups had notably lower confidence in the police, like Southeast Asian (45%) and Black (32%) people who were born in Canada.

Most racialized groups report higher levels of confidence in the justice system and courts than non-racialized, non-Indigenous people

By contrast, some racialized groups were more likely to be confident in the justice system and courts. Compared with their non-racialized, non-Indigenous counterparts (49%), racialized groups—such as South Asian, Chinese, Filipino, Arab, Latin American, Southeast Asian, West Asian and Korean people in Canada—were more likely to have confidence in the justice system and courts (ranging from 58% to 69%; Table 1). However, Japanese people in Canada (36%) were less likely to be confident in this institution. Recent South Asian, Chinese, Filipino, Arab and Southeast Asian immigrants reported particularly high confidence (Tables 2 and 3).

Similar patterns were found for levels of confidence in the Federal Parliament and the Canadian media. Japanese people in Canada were less likely to be confident in the Federal Parliament (24%) and the Canadian media (21%) than their non-racialized, non-Indigenous counterparts (31% for both institutions). However, South Asian, Chinese, Black, Filipino, Latin American, Southeast Asian, West Asian and Korean people in Canada were more likely to have confidence in the Federal Parliament (ranging from 44% to 58%; Table 1) and the Canadian media (ranging from 35% to 45%; Table 1).

Among most racialized groups, recent immigrants had a substantially higher level of confidence in the media and the Federal Parliament. For example, among South Asian people, 25% of those born in Canada had confidence in the Canadian media, compared with 57% of recent immigrants (Table 2, 3).

This report identified that the intersection between racialized groups and immigrant status was associated with confidence in all four institutions. Future research using the Survey Series on People and their Communities will be useful for tracking relevant indicators in the Quality of Life Framework among racialized groups as well as immigrants in Canada.

Ottawa: Statistics Canada, 2022. 5p.

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 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 Laura Connelly, Roxy Legane, and Remi Joseph

The number of school-based police officers (SBPOs) across Greater Manchester is significantly increasing with at least 20 more officers being introduced for the 2020/2021 academic year. This is happening without due consultation with parents, teachers, young people, or wider communities. In response, this report explores the views and experiences of people who live and work in Greater Manchester in relation to police in schools. Drawing upon the survey responses of 554 people – including young people, teachers, parents, and community members – this report is by far the most comprehensive of its kind in the UK. Key Statistics 95% of respondents reported that they have not been consulted on the plans for more police in Greater Manchester schools. Almost 9 out of 10 respondents reported feeling negative about a regular police presence, with 7 out of 10 of these respondents very negative. Almost 2 in 5 young people who responded to the survey attend or have attended a school with a ‘regular police presence’. Almost 3 in 4 parents or guardians stated that they would have concerns about sending their children to a school with a regular police presence. Exacerbating Existing Inequalities SBPOs are disproportionately placed in schools with a high proportion of working class students and young people of colour. This was a major concern for survey respondents who believe that this will exacerbate existing inequalities. Responses from young people who attend schools in Greater Manchester with a regular police presence suggest that officers act in ways that discriminate against students of colour, and particularly Black students. As well as Black and Asian and/or working class students, concerns were also raised about the negative impact that police in schools can have on disabled students; LGBTQ+ students; Muslim students; Gypsy, Roma and Traveller students; and women/girls. Stigmatising Schools A broad cross-section of respondents – including teachers, young people, parents/guardians, and community members – felt that a regular police presence would lead to the stigmatisation of a school. Seventy percent of young people said that schools with a regular police presence would be viewed more negatively by society than those without. Only 8% said that they wouldn’t. etc.

Manchester, UK: Kids of Colour and Northern Police Monitoring Project, 2020. 55p.

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

By Rod K. Brunson and Ayanna Miller

The often-clandestine inner workings of the policing profession have been of considerable interest to scholars, policy makers, social justice activists, and everyday citizens. Technological innovations such as body-worn cameras, smartphones, and social media have allowed for increased public scrutiny of how officers carry out their duties. Recently, there has been intensified interest in the role of police and their suitability for addressing a wide range of important social issues. As various stakeholders consider impassioned calls for police reform, a comprehensive understanding of officer behavior is especially critical. Police observational research has historically used innovative methods to observe, document, and analyze police officer conduct. Herein, we investigate the evolution of police observational research and its many contributions and underscore the potential for future research.

Annu. Rev. Criminol. 2023. 6:205–18

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 Deepak Premkumar, Thomas Sloan, Magnus Lofstrom, and Joseph Hayes

At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the criminal justice system was affected by public health measures such as the statewide shelter-in-place order, as well as state and local directives that altered interactions between law enforcement officers and the public, resulted in the early release of inmates, and modified bail procedures. This report takes a first step toward investigating California arrest trends during this period (through mid-2021). Like the rest of the nation, California experienced overall decreases in crime in 2020, likely due to fewer people leaving their homes, but there were increases in some crime categories, including homicides. The causes of the trends we have identified are hard to discern, given the highly unusual and challenging context of the pandemic.

Arrests began to fall precipitously in early March 2020, driven by reductions in misdemeanor arrests. Felony arrests briefly experienced significant declines but rose to around 10 percent below January 2020 levels by fall 2020. Though some COVID-related criminal justice policies and measures expired after a few months, California experienced persistent declines of 5 percent for felony arrests and 40 percent for misdemeanor arrests until at least July 2021—resulting in a rare near-convergence of these two arrest types. The reductions were largely among lower-level offenses related to drugs and driving.→

Californians staying home appeared to be a key driver of arrest trends during 2020, through reduced social interactions and police-public encounters. Changes in the number of people walking, driving, and using transit are consistent with initial decreases and subsequent rebounds in arrests during this period. The mobility-arrest relationship was not as close in 2021, when arrests did not fluctuate as much.→

In general, percent changes in arrests were similar across racial/ethnic groups. After the murder of George Floyd, there were 9 to 15 percent more misdemeanor arrests across all races compared to the preceding weeks. However, felony arrests of Black Californians spiked by 43 percent during this period—relative to increases of less than 10 percent for other races.→

Reductions in police stops and formal enforcement also contributed to declines in arrests. The state’s largest local law enforcement agencies made 35 percent fewer stops until at least the end of 2020. They also altered their handling of the stops they did make: officers were proportionally more likely to let people go without formal enforcement in the first few months of the pandemic, and later transitioned to citing and releasing stopped individuals in the field.→

Pandemic policies raised concerns about a “revolving door” effect—whereby people are repeatedly detained and released. Re-arrests as a proportion of arrests are a key indicator of this effect. In the months before COVID, about 40 percent of weekly arrests were re-arrests within a 90-day period; after holding steady during much of the pandemic, this share dropped sharply to 32 percent in June 2021. However, the felony re-arrest share increased from 29 percent to 32 percent before the June 2021 decline. Further study of re-arrests in relation to specific policies is warranted.→

Declines in arrests contributed to a 30 percent reduction in new admissions into jail and a 17 percent reduction in the jail population that persisted until at least December 2021. While it is clear that multiple factors contributed to a sustained decline in bookings and jail populations, the impact of any one policy is difficult to quantify.

San Francisco: Public Policy Institute of California, 2023. 35p→

By The St Louis Cty Police Dept

Spurred in part by a 2021 grant from the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA BWCPIP Grant # 15P BJA-21-GG-04437-BWCX), Missouri’s St. Louis County Police Department (SLCPD) expanded and refined its body-worn camera (BWC) program, acquiring an additional 100 BWCs to expand deployment to all sworn personnel. Concurrently, SLCPD developed helpful applications around their BWCs, integrating cameras from multiple sources into one readily accessible platform. Overall, the officers at SLCPD who spoke to CNA during a site visit in October 2022 feel the BWC system makes their jobs easier and increases personal safety. Department investment in the technical infrastructure as well as staff resources has allowed creative uses of the cameras and their data with practical results. Commitment and support from both the officers and the department leadership has led to a successful deployment of the camera systems. The integration of BWCs with automated license plate readers (ALPRs), Missouri Department of Transportation highway cameras, and other sources allows users to access video data from multiple sources. This integrated system, managed by the SLCPD Camera Systems Unit (CSU), turns SLCPD’s BWC system into an application that improves operations, efficiency, and officer safety. While automation helps efficiency in the field, the technology still adds labor hours and costs to handle the processing and storage of footage. According to SLCPD, the benefit of increased officer safety and the evidentiary value of BWCs are worth the operational and maintenance costs. The BWCs and their features have been used in several critical incidents to date. The footage often makes investigations more efficient because of the added digital evidence and saves time spent testifying in court. SLCPD has also used BWC footage in press releases, highlighting officers’ actions in the field.

Clayton, MO: St. Louis Police Department, 2023. 5p.

United States. Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency

From the document: "The federal government, critical infrastructure, and state, local, tribal, and territorial (SLTT) governments greatly depend upon open source software (OSS). OSS is software for which the human-readable source code is made available to the public for use, study, re-use, modification, enhancement, and re-distribution. OSS is part of the foundation of software used across critical infrastructure, supporting every single critical infrastructure sector [hyperlink] and every National Critical Function [hyperlink]: one study found that 96% of studied codebases across various sectors contain open source code, and 76% of code in studied codebases was open source. Therefore, to fulfill CISA's [Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency's] mission of understanding, managing, and reducing risks to the federal government and critical infrastructure, we must understand and protect the open source software that we rely upon. [...] CISA recognizes the immense benefits of open source software, which enables software developers to work at an accelerated pace and fosters significant innovation and collaboration. With these benefits in mind, this roadmap lays out how CISA will help enable the secure usage and development of OSS, both within and outside the federal government."

Washington. D.C United States. Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency . 2023. 8p.

United States. Department Of Homeland Security. Office Of Intelligence And Analysis

From the document: "The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Intelligence Enterprise Homeland Threat Assessment reflects the insights from across the Department, the Intelligence Community, and other critical homeland security stakeholders. It focuses on the most direct, pressing threats to our Homeland during the next year and is organized into four sections. We organized this assessment around the Department's missions that most closely align or apply to these threats--public safety, border and immigration, critical infrastructure, and economic security. As such, many of the threat actors and their efforts cut across mission areas and interact in complex and, at times, reinforcing ways. Going forward, the annual Homeland Threat Assessment will serve as the primary regular mechanism for articulating and describing the prevailing terrorism threat level, which has previously been done through our issuance of National Terrorism Advisory System (NTAS) bulletins. In the future, the issuance of NTAS bulletins will be reserved for situations where we need to alert the public about a specific or imminent terrorist threat or about a change in the terrorism threat level."

Washington. D.D. United States. Department Of Homeland Security. Office Of Intelligence And Analysis. 2023..

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 New York University School of Law, Policing Project

In response to the Gideon’s Army report indicating racial disparities in traffic stops, and the shooting of Jocques Clemmons, the Nashville Mayor’s Office asked the Policing Project to help develop strategies to address the disparities and improve community-police relations in Nashville. The Policing Project is an organization devoted to front-end democratic accountability to assure just and effective policing. The Policing Project talked with dozens of Nashville residents about their experiences with policing. Based on those conversations, we proposed to conduct a thorough assessment of the costs and benefits of using traffic stops to address crime. And we suggested that the City create a Steering Committee to guide work around community-police engagement and policing in Nashville. We conducted the traffic stop data work in collaboration with the Stanford Computational Policy Lab (SCPL), whose researchers performed the analysis. (The SCPL team’s more detailed report is included here as Appendix B.) The Metropolitan Nashville Police Department (MNPD) provided the necessary data, and has from the beginning shown a strong commitment to re-evaluating its traffic stop strategies and developing alternatives that can achieve public safety with fewer social costs. As the SCPL report shows, and as we summarize below, there are indeed notable racial disparities in traffic stops in Nashville. These disparities are higher for traffic stops around non-moving violations, such as broken taillights or expired tags. Disparity, however, is not necessarily evidence of discrimination. Any number of neutral factors, including officer deployment patterns or differences in rates of offending, may explain these and other disparities in the criminal justice system. MNPD explains these racial disparities in traffic stops on the ground that officers go where the crime is, and that in Nashville, high-crime neighborhoods tend to have larger minority populations. The SCPL analysis bears this out. However, even controlling for crime, unexplained racial disparity still remains. More importantly, the SCPL report shows that traffic stops are not an effective strategy for reducing crime. In particular, MNPD’s practice of making large numbers of stops in high crime neighborhoods does not appear to have any effect on crime. We make a number of recommendations, including that MNPD: • reduce the number of traffic stops • acknowledge black residents have been disproportionately affected by MNPD’s stop practices • monitor racial disparities on an ongoing basis • redeploy officer resources toward more effective crime-fighting tools • consider adopting a Neighborhood Policing strategy • post its department policies online • conduct a review of certain key policies such as use of force • conduct a review of training around use of force, traffic stops, and procedural justice • adopt a body camera policy with attention to transparency regarding the release of body camera footage In addition, we suggest that Nashville engage in a public process of strategic planning around public safety, bringing together the voices of the community and MNPD officials in doing so.

New York: Policing Project, 2023. 27p.