By Patrick J. Carr

With the close proximity of gangs and the easy access to drugs, keeping urban neighborhoods safe from crime has long been a central concern for residents. In <em>Clean Streets, Patrick Carr draws on five years of research in a white, working-class community on Chicago’s South side to see how they tried to keep their streets safe. Carr details the singular event for this community and the resulting rise of community activism: the shootings of two local teenage girls outside of an elementary school by area gang members. As in many communities struck by similar violence, the shootings led to profound changes in the community's relationship to crime prevention. Notably, their civic activism has proved successful and, years after the shooting, community involvement remains strong.

Carr mines this story of an awakened neighborhood for unique insights, contributing a new perspective to the national debate on community policing, civic activism, and the nature of social control. <em>Clean Streets offers an important story of one community's struggle to confront crime and to keep their homes safe. Their actions can be seen as a model for how other communities can face up to similarly difficult problems.

New York: New York University Press, 2005. 209p.

This guide begins by describing the problem of illicit public sexual activity and the factors that contribute to it. It then identifies a series of questions to help you analyze your local problem. Finally, it reviews responses to the problem, and what is known about them from evaluative research and police practice. Public sexual activity includes a range of behaviors, such as solitary nude sunbathing, flashing, streaking, solitary or mutual masturbation, fellatio, and vaginal or anal intercourse.

Read more at the Center for Problem Oriented Policing

This guide addresses homeless encampments, also known as transient camps. It begins by describing the problem and reviewing factors that contribute to it. It then identifies a series of questions to help you analyze your local problem. Finally, it reviews responses to the problem and what is known about them from evaluative research and police practice. Homeless encampments are only one aspect of the larger set of problems related to homelessness, street life, and public disorder.

Read more at the Center for Problem Oriented Policing

This guide addresses effective responses to the problem of graffiti—the wide range of markings, etchings, and paintings that deface public or private property. In recent decades, graffiti has become an extensive problem, spreading from the largest cities to other locales. Despite the common association of graffiti with gangs, graffiti is widely found in jurisdictions of all sizes, and graffiti offenders are by no means limited to gangs.

Read more at the Center for Problem Oriented Policing

By Roger Matthews

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

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

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

By Steve Herbert

Policing Space is a fascinating firsthand account of how the Los Angeles Police Department attempts to control its vast, heterogeneous territory. As such, the book offers a rare, ground-level look at the relationship between the control of space and the exercise of power. Author Steve Herbert spent eight months observing one patrol division of the LAPD on the job. A compelling story in itself, his fieldwork with the officers in the Wilshire Division affords readers a close view of the complex factors at play in how the police define and control territory, how they make and mark space.

Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997. 208p.

By David G. Bolgiano, L. Morgan Banks, III, et al.

A vigorous assessment and commentary on governmental uses of force, whether by civilian law enforcement officers in the United States or by military service members overseas, 'Virtuous Policing' presents strategies to ease rising tensions in citizen-law enforcement relations. The book particularly addresses the growing division between members of the police and citizenry due to a number of factors, including the effects of some press members who are more interested in cultivating sensational stories of 'rogue' cops than in discovering and disseminating facts

Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press [Imprint] Taylor & Francis Group, 2017. 256p.

By Cecilia MacDowell Santos

Women's Police Stations examines the changing and complex relationship between women and the state, and the construction of gendered citizenship. These are police stations run exclusively by police women for women with the authority to investigate crimes against women, such as domestic violence, assault, and rape. S?o Paulo was the home of the first such police station, and there are now more than 300 women's police stations throughout Brazil. Cecilia MacDowell Santos examines the importance of this phenomenon in book form for the first time, looking at the dynamics of the relationship between women and the state as a consequence of a political regime as well as other factors, and exploring the notion of gendered citizenship.

New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. 246p.

By Magnus Lofstrom, Joseph Hayes, Brandon Martin, and Deepak Premkumar, with research support from Alexandria Gumbs

In this report, we analyze data for almost 4 million stops by California’s 15 largest law enforcement agencies in 2019, examining the extent to which people of color experience searches, enforcement, intrusiveness, and use of force differently from white people. While it is important to caution the reader that analysis of these differences is not causal, our analysis—which focuses in particular on differences between Black and white Californians—reveals notable differences.Black Californians are more than twice as likely to be searched as white Californians, at about 20 percent versus 8 percent of all stops. …hese disparities are driven primarily by traffic stops made by the 14 data-contributing police and sheriff departments (as compared with the California Highway Patrol). These findings can provide guidance for discussing which stops can safely be reduced to mitigate racial inequities, which may also reduce risks and injuries to both officers and civilians.

San Francisco, CA Public Policy Institute of California, 2021. 30p.

By Travis Campbell

A difference-in-differences design finds census places with Black Lives Matter protests experience a 15% to 20% decrease in police homicides over the ensuing five years, around 300 fewer deaths. The gap in lethal use-of-force between places with and without protests widens over these subsequent years and is most prominent when protests are large or frequent. This result holds for alternative specifications, estimators, police homicide datasets, and population screens; however, it does not hold if lethal use-of-force is normalized by violent crime or arrests. Protests also influence local police agencies, which may explain the reduction. Agencies with local protests become more likely to obtain body-cameras, expand community policing, receive a larger operating budget, and reduce the number of property crime-related arrests, but forgo some black officer employment and college education requirements.

Working paper, 2021. 65p.

By David L. Carter

Law Enforcement Intelligence: A Guide for State, Local, and Tribal Law Enforcement Agencies is a policy oriented review of current initiatives, national standards, and best practices. The first two chapters provide definitions and context for the current state of law enforcement intelligence. Chapter 2 also provides a discussion of homeland security—or “all-hazards”—intelligence. While more law enforcement agencies and fusion centers are embracing the all-hazards approach, its application remains somewhat unclear. This discussion provides a framework for homeland security intelligence policy. Chapter 3 is a historical perspective that has multiple purposes. First, it provides a discussion of past abuses by law enforcement intelligence because it is important to understand the problems of the past in order to prevent them in the future. Next, the chapter provides a framework for national recommendations and professional standards for the practice of intelligence. Finally, the discussion identifies the various working groups and committees that are framing the current intelligence model and the relationship of those groups to federal agencies and professional law enforcement organizations. Fundamental to all types of intelligence is a system for managing the flow of information for analysis. This is alternately called the Intelligence Process or the Intelligence Cycle. Chapter 4 is a descriptive discussion of the process as it applies to law enforcement agencies. While there are different models for the Intelligence Process, this discussion relies on the model used in the National Criminal Intelligence Sharing Plan. Recommendations from both the National Criminal Intelligence Sharing Plan and the COPS Office-funded International Association of Chiefs of Police intelligence summits urge law enforcement agencies to adopt Intelligence-Led Policing (ILP). The challenge, however, is that there is no universally accepted definition or process for understanding and implementing ILP. Chapters 5 and 6 amalgamate the diverse literature on ILP to provide a holistic view. Chapter 5 focuses on the concept of ILP as it applies to American law enforcement, with a perspective on the British approach from which the concept originated. Chapter 6 focuses on the organizational and administrative processes for implementing ILP.

Washington, DC: U. S. Department of Justice Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, 2009. 496p.

By Dermot S. Barr

This thesis explores the intergroup dynamics during the development of rioting at two sites in Greater Manchester in 2011, Pendleton, in Salford, and Manchester city centre. The primary theoretical contribution of this thesis is to the Elaborated Social Identity Model of the development of conflict (ESIM, Drury & Reicher 2000). Through detailed analysis of how the intergroup dynamics informed the development of the two riots, and participants’ subjective experiences, the thesis confirms and extends the ESIM understandings of the social psychological processes involved in escalating intergroup conflict.

Manchester, UK: University of Manchester, 2018. 420p

By Lorraine Mazerolle,Adrian Cherney,Elizabeth Eggins,Lorelei Hine and Angela Higginson

Multiagency responses to reduce radicalisation often involve colla-borations between police, government, nongovernment, business and/or community organisations. The complexities of radicalisation suggest it is impossible for any single agency to address the problem alone. Police‐involved multiagency partner-ships may disrupt pathways from radicalisation to violence by addressing multiple risk factors in a coordinated manner.Objectives:1. Synthesise evidence on the effectiveness of police‐involved multiagency interventions on radicalisation or multiagency collaboration. Qualitatively synthesise information abouthowthe intervention works (me-chanisms), interventioncontext(moderators), implementation factors and eco-nomic considerations.Search Methods:Terrorism‐related terms were used to search the Global PolicingDatabase, terrorism/counterterrorism websites and repositories, and relevantjournals for published and unpublished evaluations conducted 2002–2018. Thesearch was conducted November 2019. Expert consultation, reference harvestingand forward citation searching was conducted November 2020.Selection Criteria:Eligible studies needed to report an intervention where policepartnered with at least one other agency and explicitly aimed to address terrorism,violent extremism or radicalisation. Objective 1 eligible outcomes included violentextremism, radicalisation and/or terrorism, and multiagency collaboration. Only impact evaluations using experimental or robust quasi‐experimental designs were eligible. Objective 2 placed no limits on outcomes. Studies needed to report anempirical assessment of an eligible intervention and provide data on mechanisms,moderators, implementation or economic considerations.Data Collection and Analysis:The search identified 7384 records. Systematic screening-identified 181 studies, of which five were eligible for Objective 1 and 26 for Objective 2.

Oslo, Norway: Campbell Collaborative, 2021. 88p.

By Jonathan P. Caulkins and Keith Humphreys

Drug policy often comprises efforts to reduce the supply of drugs, to provide health and social services to addicted individuals, and to prevent the development of addiction in the first place. The last of these efforts—prevention—is the subject of this paper. The scientific literature on drug policy offers some insights on the relative effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of different strategies for preventing traditional opioid misuse and related harm. But these insights don’t apply perfectly to the current opioid crisis in the U.S. and Canada, due to many important differences between today’s epidemic and those of the past (e.g., heroin in the 1960s and 1970s). School-based universal primary prevention programs, for example, will probably remain only modestly effective, mainly because it is mostly adults, rather than adolescents, who initiate opioid use through prescription drugs. However, there are new opportunities for prevention, including promoting safer opioid prescribing, and issuing public health warnings about fentanyl’s dangers and the need to keep prescription opioids locked up. Importantly, the audience for these prevention interventions can include prescribers and pharmacists, not just potential users, and the mechanisms should involve incentives and nudges, not just information and education. Classic drug law enforcement against retail sellers and their suppliers may become even less effective than it has been in the past. However, other forms of supply control are possible because most of the prescription opioids that get misused come from legal and regulated distribution. Because prescription opioids remain the dominant route through which opioid use disorder is initiated, reducing its incidence can translate over time into reduced deaths not only from prescription opioids, but also from heroin and fentanyl. Enforcement against licensed producers and distributors may perform well even if enforcement against traditional dealers does not, and there are a wide range of actions visa-vis these licensees that do not require arrest or incarceration.

Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 2020. 24p.

By Lisa Tompson, Jyoti Belur and Nikola Giorgiou

This report outlines the routes or processes through which Neighbourhood Watch activities might have an impact on crime reduction and other, associated, outcomes. These are broken down into chains of events (the ‘theories of change’ or ‘mechanisms’). Commonly used in evaluation projects, a theory of change is intended to simply but elegantly explain how and why something works . The first step is determining the intended outcomes of the activity, i.e. crime reduction or increased neighbourliness; the second is determining the logical sequence of specific actions and processes that are required to make that outcome likely to happen. The result is a process map that links activities and required conditions to produce intermediate changes and final outcomes. Articulating a theory of change before conducting any evaluation has the advantage of exposing measurement points along the process where data can be collected to evidence whether something is working as assumed. Therefore, measurement points along each theory of change we present are highlighted. Subsequently, the advantages and disadvantages of different data sets that can measure and evidence these points in the theory of change are summarised.

London:UCL, Jill Dando Institute of Crime Science, 2020. 17p.

By Irving Spergel, et al.

The goal of the GVRP was to achieve a significant absolute or relative decrease in the level of serious gang violence committed by 100 targeted gang members, as well as a reduction of serious gang violence in Little Village compared with 6 other similar Chicago communities. At least 50 of these gang youth were to receive intensive, collaborative services and supervision from the project team and associated community-based agencies and grass-roots groups. The Project Model called for a team approach that used interrelated strategies to address the gang problem; these included local community mobilization, social intervention, provision of social opportunities, suppression, and organizational change and development of local agencies and groups. In this final project report, a section on project implementation focuses on the genesis of the project, the beginning of field operations and research planning, organizational change and development, social intervention, suppression, community mobilization, and project transition (crisis, transfer, and termination). The second section of the report addresses project outcomes as determined by a survey of individual gang members, the documentation of program services/contact and effects, the criminal histories of program and comparison groups, the modeling of program effects, aggregate-level changes in gang crime, changes in community perceptions of the gang problem, and community and leadership perceptions of the GVRP. Regarding project implementation, this report concludes that although the project developed an effective collaborative approach among the members of a team of street-level police, probation, and community youth workers during the course of the 5-year project, the project did not adequately organize the local community or gain the full support of the administration of the Chicago Police Department. Regarding project outcomes, it did achieve a significant reduction in certain types of crime among approximately 200 targeted hardcore gang members served by the program. The coordinated approach was effective in reducing serious gang violence and drug crime by individual targeted youth. The strategies of social intervention, provision of social opportunities, and suppression were well implemented and effective in achieving their goals. Community and citywide institutional involvement must be achieved, however, if serious chronic gang problems are to be addressed. The lead agency would have to mobilize and encourage collaborative change in the policies and practices of city and county justice agencies, as well as social, education, and faith-based organizations, along with business and local community groups.

Chicago: School of Social Service Administration, University of Chicago, 2002. 100p.

By U.S. Secret Service National Threat Assessment Center (NTAC)

When incidents of school violence occur, they leave a profound and lasting impact on the school, the community, and our nation as a whole. Ensuring safe environments for elementary and secondary school students, educators, administrators, and others is essential. This operational guide was developed to provide fundamental direction on how to prevent incidents of targeted school violence, that is, when a student specifically selects a school or a member of the school community for harm. The content in this guide is based on information developed by the U.S. Secret Service, Protective Intelligence and Assessment Division, National Threat Assessment Center (NTAC).

Washington, DC: U.S. Secret Service National Threat Assessment Center (NTAC), 2018. 32p.

By Juhu Thukral and Melissa Ditmore

Police and prostitutes1 engage in a cat-and-mouse dynamic, in which the police seek to control the activities of prostitutes, and prostitutes respond by trying to avoid them. This report examines the impact of law enforcement approaches to street-based sex work in New York City and proposes a series of policy and practice recommendations for reform based on the researchers’ analyses of the data collected. This report also seeks to promote reasoned, fact-based, and informed debate regarding street-based prostitution in New York City. Public discussion of this issue usually occurs in flashy headlines that are meant to titillate rather than to explore the consequences of policy decisions in depth. This is a special effort to give voice to the problems faced by street-based sex workers, using their own words, since this is a voice that is almost always left out of policy debates. We propose recommendations based on programmatic possibilities that can create effective solutions for this population and the broader community. The researchers focused on street-based prostitution primarily because these sex workers have the greatest contact with law enforcement and with the community at large, and thus receive the majority of police attention. Most are economically deprived and vulnerable. Current law enforcement approaches include arrest or giving a summons or desk-appearance ticket, often during the course of police sweeps (the practice of arresting all women or all people in a known prostitution area, temporarily removing prostitutes from the street.)

New York: Urban Justice Center, 2003. 100p.

By Alexander Mayer-Rieckh

Security sector reform (SSR) and transitional justice processes often occur alongside each other in societies emerging from conflict or authoritarian rule, involve many of the same actors, are supported by some of the same partner countries and impact on each other. Yet the relationship between SSR and transitional justice, or â dealing with the pastâ (DwP) as it is also called, remains underexplored and is often marked by ignorance and resistance. While SSR and transitional justice processes can get into each otherâ s way, this paper argues that SSR and DwP are intrinsically linked and can complement each other. SSR can make for better transitional justice and vice versa. Transitional justice needs SSR to prevent a recurrence of abuses, an essential element of justice. SSR can learn from transitional justice not only that it is better to deal with rather than ignore an abusive past but also how to address an abusive legacy in the security sector. The validity of these assumptions is tested in two case studies: the police reform process in Bosnia and Herzegovina after 1995 and the SSR process in Nepal after 2006.

London: Ubiquity Press, 2018. 79p.

By Peter Langman and Frank Traub

The Police Foundation, in collaboration with the COPS Office, implemented the Averted School Violence (ASV) database to provide a platform for sharing information about averted incidents of violence in institutions of elementary, secondary, and higher education. As a companion to the preliminary report on the ASV database (Daniels 2018), this report compares 51 completed with 51 averted incidents of school violence from the ASV database and analyzes both sets. It includes findings on the demographics of individuals who plan attacks, victims' demographics in completed attacks, and community characteristics; it also provides important recommendations to minimize school violence and improve student and school safety.

Washington, DC: Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, 2019. 42p.