By Suat Çubukçu, Nusret M. Sahin, Erdal Tekin & Volkan Topalli

Police body-worn cameras (BWCs) have been the subject of much research on how the technology’s enhanced documentation of police/citizen interactions impact police behavior. Less attention has been paid to how BWC recordings affect the adjudication of citizen complaints against the police. We employ citizen complaint data from the Chicago Police Department and Civilian Office of Police Accountability filed between 2012-2020 to determine the extent to which BWC footage enhances the efficacy of evidence used to formulate a conclusion of responsibility, and whether bias against complainants based on race would subsequently be reduced. Accordingly, we exploit the staggered deployment of BWCs across 22 Chicago police districts over time to estimate the effect of BWCs on these outcomes. Our findings indicate that BWCs led to a significant decrease in the dismissal of investigations due to insufficient evidence ("not sustained") as well as a significant increase in disciplinary actions against police officers ("sustained" outcomes”) with sufficient evidence to sanction their misconduct. We further find that disparities in complaints across racial groups for the “unsustained” category fade away with the implementation of BWCs.

Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), 2021. 43p.

By William Webster, Diana Miranda, and Charles Leleux

This report provides research findings from a rapid research project reviewing the use of Body-Worn Video (BWV) cameras in a policing context, with specific reference to police-citizen interactions and scrutiny mechanisms. The research was conducted in November and December 2021, using a methodology consisting of a literature review and a sequence of semi-structured interview with BWV experts. The research was undertaken with a view to providing advice and guidance to Police Scotland for the potential widespread future roll-out of BWV in Scotland. It is evident, from the research reviewed here, that BWV is being deployed internationally by law enforcement agencies and other public service providers. Typically, BWV is recognised to provide evidence of incidents, provide a level of personal protection and increased transparency in policing. The rationale for the use of BWV in policing is well established and is afforded a good level of public support. It is also evident, that across UK police forces there is differentiated use of the technology and associated governance mechanisms. In this respect, Police Scotland is in an advantageous position in that it can learn from what is perceived to be ‘best practice’ elsewhere in the UK and beyond. It is apparent that across the UK there are novel emergent mechanisms used to govern BWV in relation to scrutiny and accountability. These include dedicated Scrutiny Panels and practices referred to as random ‘dip sampling’, as well as dedicated codes of practice and use protocols. Here, it is suggested that Police Scotland review what other police forces are doing in this area and design processes that are compatible with Police Scotland’s institutional arrangements. The research presented here also suggests that BWV use protocols and data management procedures are established prior to the widespread deployment of the technology. One aspect in which published literature was lacking was in relation to the impacts of BWV on minority groups and ethnic minorities. Here, the evidence is mixed with some authors claiming BWV strained community relations, whilst others claimed BWV made police interactions more transparent. This points to both, a need for further research, plus the use of caution in the use of BWV in certain situations. It is also noted, that whilst there is a general level of public support for BWV, this relates primarily to basic BWV camera units and that this level of support cannot be assumed from more sophisticated data processes, such as those associated with face recognition and live streaming technologies. Here, it is recommended that Police Scotland implement mechanisms that ensure a degree of oversight and accountability in how BWV cameras are used. This can ensure legitimacy of use and facilitate public confidence in the use of the technology.

Edinburgh: Scottish Institute for Policing Research, 2022. 74p.

By Vanda Felbab-Brown

Even as the administration of Mexico’s President Enrique Peña Nieto has scored important reform successes in the economic sphere, its security and law enforcement policy toward organized crime remains incomplete and ill-defined. Preoccupied with the fighting among vicious drug trafficking groups and the rise of anti-crime vigilante militias in the center of Mexico, the administration has for the most part averted its eyes from the previously highly-violent criminal hotspots in the north where major law enforcement challenges remain. • The Peña Nieto administration thus mostly continues to put out immediate security fires—such as in Michoacán and Tamaulipas—but the overall deterrence capacity of Mexico’s military and law enforcement forces and justice sector continue to be very limited and largely unable to deter violence escalation and reescalation.

Washington DC: Latin America Initiative, Foreign Policy at Brookings, 2016. 48p.

By D. Elaine Pressman

Risk factors for violent individuals have been used in risk assessment protocols for decades. Such tools and guides have been shown to be a valid and reliable way to assess risk of future violence. The risk assessment protocols currently available, however, have questionable relevance to violent extremists and terrorists because the factors used to assess risk do not relate to the background and motivations of this group of violent actors. The need was identified for a relevant tool for the population of violent ideologically motivated extremists. Approaches to risk assessment for violence are described in the document. These include unstructured clinical judgment, actuarial approaches and structured professional judgment (SPJ). Unstructured approaches have been criticized for not demonstrating high validity or good inter-rater reliability. Given the low base rate of violent extremists, it is difficult to create empirically based actuarial prediction instruments for violent extremism. The structured professional judgment approach (SPJ) has been used successfully with forensic populations and was considered appropriate for a tool to address risk assessment for the population of violent extremists. As current SPJ guides were found to be inadequate to address the specific historical and contextual features of violent extremists, a new SPJ guide was developed and is described in this document. The major goals of the project were to identify and compare the specific characteristics and factors of those who perpetrate “general” criminal violence and those who perpetrate ideologically motivated violence, to highlight the salient differences among the historical, contextual, attitudinal and protective risk factors of these types of criminal violence and to construct a new tool to assess the risk of violence in ideologically motivated extremists. ‘Political violence’, ‘radicalization’, ‘extremism’ and ‘terrorism’ were defined and elaborated in the document. The most significant risk factors relevant to violent extremism and terrorism were extracted from the literature and organized into a structured professional judgment (SPJ) protocol. Five categories were identified as risk factors and relevant items were identified for each category. These categories are modeled after other well-established SPJ tools but are item specific to violent extremism. The categories include attitude factors, contextual factors, historical factors, protective factors and demographic factors. A preliminary model for the assessment of de-radicalization and disengagement efficacy was proposed. The new SPJ protocol, Violent Extremist Risk Assessment or VERA is designed to be used with persons having a history of extremist violence or having been convicted of such offences. At this stage of development, the VERA is a conceptual “research” tool intended to generate debate and discussion.

Ottawa: Public Safety Canada, 2009. 44p.

National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

Proactive policing, as a strategic approach used by police agencies to prevent crime, is a relatively new phenomenon in the United States. It developed from a crisis in confidence in policing that began to emerge in the 1960s because of social unrest, rising crime rates, and growing skepticism regarding the effectiveness of standard approaches to policing. In response, beginning in the 1980s and 1990s, innovative police practices and policies that took a more proactive approach began to develop. This report uses the term “proactive policing” to refer to all policing strategies that have as one of their goals the prevention or reduction of crime and disorder and that are not reactive in terms of focusing primarily on uncovering ongoing crime or on investigating or responding to crimes once they have occurred.

Proactive policing is distinguished from the everyday decisions of police officers to be proactive in specific situations and instead refers to a strategic decision by police agencies to use proactive police responses in a programmatic way to reduce crime. Today, proactive policing strategies are used widely in the United States. They are not isolated programs used by a select group of agencies but rather a set of ideas that have spread across the landscape of policing.

Proactive Policing reviews the evidence and discusses the data and methodological gaps on: (1) the effects of different forms of proactive policing on crime; (2) whether they are applied in a discriminatory manner; (3) whether they are being used in a legal fashion; and (4) community reaction. This report offers a comprehensive evaluation of proactive policing that includes not only its crime prevention impacts but also its broader implications for justice and U.S. communities.

Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. 2018. 408p. .

By Daniel Meji and Pascual Restrepo

This paper develops a simple model of the war against illegal drugs in producer and consumer countries. Our analysis shows how the equilibrium quantity of illegal drugs, as well as their price, depends on key parameters of the model, among them the price elasticity of demand, and the effectiveness of the resources allocated to enforcement and prevention and treatment policies. Importantly, this paper studies the trade-off faced by drug consumer country`s government between prevention policies (aimed at reducing the demand for illegal drugs) and enforcement policies (aimed at reducing the production and trafficking of illegal drugs in producer countries). We use available data for the war against cocaine production and trafficking in Colombia, and that against consumption in the U.S. in order to calibrate the unobservable parameters of the model. Among these are the effectiveness of prevention and treatment policies in reducing the demand for cocaine; the relative effectiveness of interdiction efforts at reducing the amount of cocaine reaching consumer countries; and the cost of illegal drug production and trafficking activities in producer countries.

Bogotá, Colombia: Universidad de los Andes–Facultad de Economía–CEDE, 2011. 31p.

By National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

Injury and death from use of excessive force by police officers remain a common concern in countries across the globe. Despite local, national, and international attempts to legislate and provide guidance for police use of force, there continue to be global accounts of excessive force by law enforcement. Reports of officer-involved killings, injuries to citizens, and attempts to control protests and demonstrations with chemical irritants, rubber bullets, and sometimes shooting into crowds with live ammunition frequently appear in the press worldwide. However, reliable data on and accounting for these incidents are both lacking.

Policies and Practices to Minimize Police Use of Force Internationally, the third in a series of five reports produced for INL, addresses what policies and practices for police use of force are effective in promoting the rule of law and protecting the population (including the officers themselves). This report looks at what is known about effective practices and their implementation and identifies promising actions to be taken by international donors in their efforts to strengthen the effectiveness of law enforcement agencies.

Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2022. 84p.

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 Cornelius Friesendorf

Intervening states apply different approaches to the use of force in war-torn countries. Calibrating the use of force according to the situation on the ground requires a convergence of military and police roles: soldiers have to be able to scale down, and police officers to scale up their use of force. In practice, intervening states display widely differing abilities to demonstrate such versatility. This paper argues that these differences are shaped by how the domestic institutions of sending states mediate between demands for versatile force and their own intervention practices. It considers the use of force by Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom and the United States in three contexts of international intervention: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo and Afghanistan. The paper highlights quite different responses to security problems as varied as insurgency, terrorism, organised crime and riots. This analysis offers important lessons. Those planning and implementing international interventions should take into account differences in the use of force. At the same time, moving towards versatile force profoundly changes the characteristics of security forces and may increase their short-term risks. This difficulty points to a key message emerging from this paper: effective, sustainable support to states emerging from conflict will only be feasible if intervening states reform their own security policies and practices.

London: Ubiquity Press, 2013. 97p.

By Lutterbeck, Derek

This paper describes and explains the evolution of gendarmerie-type forces, i.e. police forces with a military status, over the past three decades. It focuses on their institutional features and functions, including material and human resources, and uses case studies from Europe, the Middle East and North Africa to illustrate these characteristics in different contexts. The overall development of gendarmeries has been a somewhat paradoxical one. On the one hand, most of these forces have witnessed a considerable expansion, and come to assume an increasingly prominent role in addressing many of the currently most important security challenges, ranging from border control and counterterrorism to public order tasks in international peace operations. On the other hand, there has also been a trend towards the demilitarization of gendarmeries, which in some European countries has ultimately led to their dissolution and integration into the civilian police. The paper suggests an explanation of these seemingly contradictory developments with reference to two broad â and at least partly opposing â trends: the convergence of internal and external security agendas, which to a large extent is a post-Cold War phenomenon; and the demilitarization of internal security, which is a more long-term historical trend and part of the more general democratization process. Based on this analysis, the paper predicts that in the long run gendarmeries are likely to be further demilitarized, eventually losing their formal military status, although in the context of international peace operations militarized gendarmerie forces are expected to play an increasingly significant part.

London: Ubiquity Press, 2013. 66p.

By Bryan Vossekuil; Robert A. Fein; Marisa Reddy; Randy Borum; and William Modzeleski

This publication results from ongoing collaboration between the U.S. Secret Service and the U.S. Department of Education. Its goals are to determine whether it could have been known that incidents of targeted violence at schools were being planned and whether anything could have been done to prevent them from occurring. Results from the Secret Service's Exceptional Case Study Project (ECSP) are used to organize planning. This report describes the Safe School Initiative, defines "targeted" school violence, and discusses the prevalence of school violence in American schools. The methodology of this study, sources of information, and an analysis of survey responses are also discussed. Incidents of targeted school violence are characterized, including characteristics of the attacker, conceptualization of the attack, and signaling, advancing, and resolving the attack. Implications of study findings and the use of threat assessment as a strategy to prevent school violence are presented.

Washington, DC: United States Secret Service and United States Department of Education, 2004. 54p.

By Joseph M. McKenna and Anthony Petrosino

In 2019, the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) was directed to provide Congress with a report on the state of school policing in the United States that examined the current role of police in schools and provided recommendations on how they can better serve the needs of students. To address this directive, NIJ engaged two consultants to conduct a comprehensive literature review and examination of data sources, facilitate four days of expert panel discussions, and synthesize the results from these data collection efforts. This report is the result of those efforts. The report focuses exclusively on the United States and on sworn officers and does not consider the use of school police in nations outside the United States or on the employment of private security, retired military, or other types of non-sworn police in schools. Much of the writing of this report occurred in 2020 amid the civil unrest stemming from the murder of George Floyd and the police killings of other people of color. It also was written during the COVID-19 pandemic, which undoubtedly will also have impacts on school policing. This report focuses on what we currently knew at the time of its writing.

Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice Office of Justice Programs National Institute of Justice, 2022. 105p.

By International Crisis Group

What’s new? The theft and illicit sale of fuel, known in Mexico as huachicoleo, experienced an enormous spike after 2010. Rising fuel prices and other unintended effects of energy reforms and security policies have attracted organised crime into this domain, driving up murder rates. Why does it matter? President Andrés Manuel López Obrador made fighting fuel theft a central item on his anti-crime agenda. But although he has had some success, enduring progress toward stopping huachicoleo could be elusive, largely due to pervasive official corruption and the failure to promote licit alternatives for earning a living. What should be done? The government should tackle collusion between state officials and criminal outfits by introducing external oversight over state energy and security institutions. Conflict mitigation plans tailored to violent regions should offer legal alternatives to illicit livelihoods, protect civilians through focused police or military deployments, and support local security and justice institutions.

Mexico City/New York/Brussels: International Crisis Group, 2022. 24p.

Edited by David A. Shirk, Duncan Wood, and Eric L. Olson

Mexico has suffered a severe security crisis over the last decade. As in several other Latin American countries, elevated levels of crime and violence—and especially the proliferation of violent organized crime groups—have presented a serious threat to the Mexican state and to ordinary citizens. During the presidency of Felipe Calderón (2006–2012), the Mexican government attempted to address these problems primarily through law enforcement and military operations to combat organized crime and reforms to enhance the institutional integrity and efficacy of police and judicial sectors. Calderón’s successor, President Enrique Peña Nieto (whose six-year term began in 2012) spent much of his first year in office attempting to shift the narrative within and about Mexico from security issues to other matters, including political, economic, and social reforms to help move the country forward. However, while placing less emphasis on such matters, Peña Nieto also largely continued Calderón’s approach to security by targeting major organized crime figures, deploying federal forces to address urgent local security crises, and pushing ahead with efforts to implement Mexico’s new criminal justice system. Still, for many Mexicans, there have been few improvements in their dayto-day sense of security, their confidence in law enforcement authorities, or their ability to attain access to justice. Indeed, crime and violence remains such a serious concern in certain parts of the country that ordinary citizens have taken to extraordinary measures—hiring private security guards and embracing vigilantism—to protect themselves. In recent years, the emergence of self-professed citizen self-defense groups has introduced a new dimension to Mexico’s security situation. Such developments raise concerns about the course of Mexico’s security situation over the longer term. On the one hand, there are serious questions about the capacity of the Mexican government to fulfill its responsibility to provide for basic citizen security. While not a failed state, Mexico has proved highly vulnerable to penetration and corruption by powerful organized crime groups, and the government’s ability to maintain a monopoly on the legitimate use of force has been challenged by both political insurgents and violent criminal organizations.

Washington DC: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars; San Diego University of San Diego Justice in Mexico Project, 2014. 294p.

By Héctor Silva Ávalos

Corruption and the infiltration of public institutions in Central America by organized crime groups is an unaddressed issue that lies at the core of the increasing violence and democratic instability that has afflicted the region in the last decade. In El Salvador, infiltration has mutated into a system capable of determining important political and strategic decisions, such as the election of high-level judicial officials and the shaping of the state approach to fighting crime. This paper addresses corruption in El Salvador’s National Civil Police (PNC), the law enforcement agency created under the auspices of the 1992 Peace Accord that ended the country’s 12-year civil war. Archival and field research presented here demonstrates that the PNC has been plagued by its own “original sin”: the inclusion of former soldiers that worked with criminal groups and preserved a closed power structure that prevented any authority from investigating them for over two decades. This original sin has allowed criminal bands formed in the 1980s as weapon or drug smugglers to forge connections with the PNC and to develop into sophisticated drug trafficking organizations (DTOs). These new DTOs are now involved in money laundering, have secured pacts with major criminal players in the region — such as Mexican and Colombian cartels — and have learned how to use the formal economy and financial system. These “entrepreneurs” of crime, long tolerated and nurtured by law enforcement officials and politicians in El Salvador, are now major regional players themselves.

Washington, DC: American University - Center for Latin American & Latino Studies (CLALS), 2014. 36p.

By Juan Pablo Pérez Sáinz, et. al.

This paper offers insights into dynamics of urban violence in two Central American countries that have evolved very differently historically. Costa Rica boasts the lowest overall levels of poverty and inequality of any country on the Isthmus, and has benefited from decades of stable and relatively inclusive governance highlighted by ambitious social policies. El Salvador, by contrast, exhibits severe levels of poverty and inequality typical of its neighbors, as well as a long history of exclusionary rule and corresponding inattention to social welfare. Yet our research reveals significant parallels between the two countries. This three-year, multi-method comparative study, carried out by teams at FLACSO-Costa Rica and FLACSO-El Salvador in collaboration with American University and with support from the IDRC/DFID Safe and Inclusive Cities program, focused on violence in two impoverished urban communities in Costa Rica and three in El Salvador. In all five settings, we analyzed neighborhood dynamics as well as community assessments of anti-violence interventions. We identified numerous lessons, some of which are counterintuitive, as well as concrete measures for consideration by regional, national, and local policymakers and community actors.

Washington, DC: American University - Center for Latin American & Latino Studies (CLALS), 2015. 20p.

By Stephen Smallbone, William L. Marshall and Richard Wortley

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

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

By Nadia Wager, Alexandra Robertshaw Seery, and Diana Parkinson

This report sets out the findings from a scoping review to explore the existing literature on the use of disruption measures by police forces in relation to child sexual abuse, and the effectiveness of those measures. The scoping review laid the groundwork for two national surveys of police, described in the report Police Disruption of Child Sexual Abuse: Findings from a National Survey of Frontline Personnel and Strategic Leads for Safeguarding. Few reports of child sexual abuse result in a conviction, meaning that many suspects remain at liberty to offend against children and young people; efforts to disrupt their circumstances and behaviours are therefore vitally important.

The term ‘disruption’ is used to describe activities which attempt to interfere with suspects’ behaviours and circumstances so they are less able to commit crime. There are three fundamental approaches to disruption, with some overlap between them: The first approach uses direct measures to impose legal sanctions on suspects, making it harder for them to commit or continue to commit child sexual abuse. The second approach uses disruption supportive measures which disable or disrupt criminal activity in the community.

A third approach uses online measures to disrupt criminal activity taking place or being facilitated over the internet. In addition to reviewing empirical research studies, the scoping review included material identified from serious case reviews, policy documents, practice guidelines and other sources. The search produced more than 250 relevant documents.

Ilford, Essex, UK:Centre of Expertise on Child Sexual Abuse, 2021. 40p.

By Nadia Wager, Alexandra Robertshaw Seery, Diana Parkinson

This research study was commissioned by the Centre of expertise on child sexual abuse (CSA Centre) to explore the ways in which police forces across England and Wales seek to disrupt child sexual abuse. Disruption, alongside enforcement and prevention, is one of the principal ways in which police respond to criminality and criminal activity. While enforcement focuses on the prosecution of past crimes, and prevention aims to stop whole groups of suspects or protect potential victims, disruption is a more flexible and dynamic approach which seeks to disrupt offenders’ networks, lifestyles, and routines so that it is harder for them to commit crime. Disrupting child sexual abuse is a vital activity because most incidents of such abuse are never reported to or discovered by the police – meaning that many individuals who sexually abuse children remain at liberty to commit further abuse. Disruption measures have the potential to swiftly interrupt contact between a suspect and a child or young person, and to help stop further abuse in the longer term.

Ilford, Essex, UK: Centre of Expertise on Child Sexual Abuse, 2021. 68p.