By Jialu L. Streeter

For decades, California has had one of the country’s largest
populations of unhoused people. In recent years, however,
the challenges have severely worsened for the Golden State.
The homelessness counts in California rose by 42 percent
between 2014 and 2020, while the rest of the country had a
9 percent decrease. On any given night, the state has more
than 160,000 homeless persons.

California’s homeless crisis is associated with high housing
costs, inadequate shelter spaces, deinstitutionalization,
and changes in the criminal justice system.

Stanford, CA: The Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR), 2022. 13p.

By Sarah Gillespie,Devlin Hanson,Nicole DuBois,Cary Lou,Christine Velez,Jennifer Esala,Tracey O'Brien

In 2016, the City and County of Denver launched the Denver Supportive Housing Social Impact Bond Initiative (Denver SIB) to shift resources from expensive emergency services to more permanent, affordable housing and supportive services. The initiative aimed to increase housing stability and decrease jail stays for people trapped in the homelessness-jail cycle. Funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Evidence for Action program, the Urban Institute launched a health outcomes study as a complement to the ongoing SIB evaluation. This report focuses on the year before people were enrolled in the SIB evaluation, giving us a picture of the status quo for health services in Denver for people experiencing cycles of homelessness and incarceration.

Washington, DC: Urban Institute, 2021. 59p.

By Sarah Gillespie, Devlin Hanson, Josh Leopold, Alyse D. Oneto

In 2016, the City and County of Denver launched the Denver Supportive Housing Social Impact Bond Initiative (Denver SIB) to shift resources from expensive emergency services to more permanent, affordable housing and supportive services that can be difficult to fund without up-front capital. The initiative aimed to increase housing stability and decrease jail stays for people trapped in the homelessness-jail cycle. This report details the costs of supportive housing provided by the Denver SIB and the costs and cost offsets associated with supportive housing’s effects on outcomes across the housing and homelessness assistance, criminal justice, and health care systems.

Washington, DC: Urban Institute, 2021. 49p.

By Mary K. Cunningham, Devlin Hanson,Sarah Gillespie,Michael Pergamit,Alyse D. Oneto,Patrick Spauster,Tracey O'Brien,Liz Sweitzer,Christine Velez

Homelessness is growing in communities across the United States as housing becomes increasingly unaffordable and public systems fail to support people who need assistance, forcing thousands to sleep outside or in shelters. Without access to housing and services, many people experiencing chronic, or long-term, homelessness are trapped in a homelessness-jail cycle—rotating in and out of jail, detoxification centers, and emergency health care. This cycle doesn’t help people access the assistance they need to find stability, and it comes at a major cost to taxpayers. Rather than paying for the consequences of leaving people in homelessness, communities could invest in housing and services that end this harmful pattern. Results from the five-year Denver Supportive Housing Social Impact Bond Initiative (Denver SIB) show how both people and public budgets benefit when communities take this proactive approach.ess, communities could invest in housing and services that end this harmful pattern. Results from the five-year Denver Supportive Housing Social Impact Bond Initiative (Denver SIB) show how both people and public budgets benefit when communities take this proactive approach. The Denver SIB, launched in 2016 by the City and County of Denver, aimed to increase housing stability and decrease jail stays among people who were experiencing chronic homelessness and who had frequent interactions with the criminal justice and emergency health systems.

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  The Denver SIB, which provided supportive housing (a permanent housing subsidy and intensive services) to help participants stay housed, used a Housing First approach. Housing First programs don’t require participants to meet any preconditions, and they are built on the idea that secure, affordable, and permanent housing must be available before people can work on other challenges, such as mental health or substance use disorders. The Urban Institute, with partners from The Evaluation Center at the University of Colorado Denver, tracked implementation of the Denver SIB and evaluated its effects between 2016 and 2020. The evaluation used a randomized controlled trial, the gold standard for determining a program’s impact, that included 724 people: 363 people were in the treatment group (referred to the supportive housing program) and 361 people were in the control group (receiving services as usual in the community).

Washington, DC: Urban Institute, 2021. 94p.

By Samantha Batko, Sarah Gillespie,Katrina Ballard,Mary K. Cunningham

In response to unsheltered homelessness, communities often turn to punitive responses: issuing ordinances that criminalize homelessness, clearing homeless encampments, and arresting people. This results in people becoming trapped in a cycle of homelessness and jail. The solution to this cycle is Housing First, an evidence-based strategy that has been proven to help people stay in housing and improve their quality of life. Until housing is available at the scale needed to end homelessness, communities can improve outcomes for people enduring unsheltered homelessness and for the community as a whole by considering promising innovations that prioritize inclusive public space management and shift the role of law enforcement agencies from policing homelessness to solving homelessness in partnerships with service providers. This report reviews the evidence for housing as the solution to homelessness and emerging evidence for inclusive public space and alternative crisis response policies and practices.

Washington, DC: Urban Institute, 2020. 35p.

By Madeline Bailey, Erica Crew, and Madz Reeve

On any given night in the United States, more than 550,000 people are experiencing homelessness.1 Among these, approximately 96,000 are chronically homeless, meaning they are facing long and repeated episodes of homelessness that make it increasingly difficult to return to housing.2 This crisis is perpetuated by a legal system that criminalizes survival behaviors associated with homelessness, fails to account for the ways in which people who are homeless face impossible odds within the legal process, and then releases them back into the community with even more obstacles than they faced before.3 Confirming this cycle, researchers have found that homelessness is between 7.5 and 11.3 times more prevalent among the jail population, and in some places the rate is much higher—for example, in San Francisco, California, a 2013 survey found that between 10 and 24 percent of people in jail identified as homeless at the time of arrest.4 Because of punitive laws and enforcement practices, people who are homeless are 11 times more likely to be arrested, nationwide, than those who are housed.

New York: Vera Institute of Justice, 2020. 19p.

Edited by David J. Francis

This wide-ranging collection offers fresh insights into a critical factor in development and politics on the African continent. It critically examines and illustrates the centrality of policing in transition societies in Africa, and outlines and assesses the emergence and impact of the diversity of state and non-state policing agencies.

New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. 228p.

Deaths of civilians at the hands of on-duty police are in the national spotlight as never before. How many killings by police occur annually? What circumstances provoke police to shoot to kill? Who dies? The lack of answers to these basic questions points to a crisis in American government that urgently requires the attention of policy experts. When Police Kill is a groundbreaking analysis of the use of lethal force by police in the United States and how its death toll can be reduced.

Cambridge, MA: London: Harvard University Press, 2017. 321p.

Edited by Sanja Kutnjak Ivković and M. R. Haberfeld

This work provides an innovative new look at police ethics, including results from an updated version of the classic Police Integrity Questionnaire, including new social and technological advances. It aims to push the study of police research further, expanding on and testing police integrity theory and methodology, the relationship between community and integrity, and the influence of multiculturalism and globalization on policing and community attitudes.

This work brings together experienced scholars who have used the police integrity theory and the accompanying methodology to measure police integrity in eleven countries, and provide advance and sophisticated explorations of the topic. Organized into three thematic sections, it explores the testing methodology for international comparisons, insights into police-community relations, and explores police subcultures.

Cham: Springer, 2019. 388p.

By Janet B. L. Chan

Police culture is often considered as both a cause of police deviance and an obstacle for police reform. In this study of police racism and police reform in Australia, Janet Chan provides a critical assessment of police initiative in response to the problem of policeSHminorities relations. The book examines the dynamics of change and resistance within an organization and captures the complexity and unpredictability of the change process. It questions the utility of the traditional conception of police culture and proposes a new framework for understanding the interrelationships among the structural conditions of police work, police cultural knowledge, and police practice. A highly original and valuable contribution to policing studies and studies of organizational reform, the book is both empirically rich and theoretically informed.

Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997, 267p.

By Peter Andreas and Ethan Nadelmann

In this illuminating history that spans past campaigns against piracy and slavery to contemporary campaigns against drug trafficking and transnational terrorism, Peter Andreas and Ethan Nadelmann explain how and why prohibitions and policing practices increasingly extend across borders. The internationalization of crime control is too often described as simply a natural and predictable response to the growth of transnational crime in an age of globalization. Andreas and Nadelmann challenge this conventional view as at best incomplete and at worst misleading. The internationalization of policing, they demonstrate, primarily reflects ambitious efforts by generations of western powers to export their own definitions of "crime," not just for political and economic gain but also in an attempt to promote their own morals to other parts of the world.

A thought-provoking analysis of the historical expansion and recent dramatic acceleration of international crime control, Policing the Globe provides a much-needed bridge between criminal justice and international relations on a topic of crucial public importance.

New York; Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2006. 348p.

By Meagan Cahill, Melissa M. Labriola, Jirka Taylor

In this report, RAND Corporation researchers summarize what is currently known about killings committed by police officers in the United States and identify existing evidence about various ways to prevent these killings. A relatively large body of research on these topics exists, but these studies often suffer from methodological shortcomings, largely stemming from the dearth of available data. Recognizing the need for more-rigorous work to guide efforts to reform police — and, more specifically, to reduce police killings — the authors present work focused on the development of a research agenda, or a road map, to reduce police killings. The report, based on an extensive literature review as well as interviews with policing experts, contains a series of recommendations for areas in which research efforts may be most effective in helping inform policy-making and decision-making aimed at reducing police killings.

The authors identified six focus areas — foundational issues (such as racial inequities, police culture, and police unions), data and reporting, training, policies, technology, and consequences for officers. Reviewing the priority research topics in each focus area, similar themes emerged, especially around the need for more-extensive and more-systematic data collection and around the use of agency policies to better govern a range of operations related to police violence, such as data collection and reporting and technology.

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  In this report, the authors use the terms police killings, police violence, and police shootings to describe these types of police behaviors, whether wrongful or not. The authors identify specific instances of these behaviors as misconduct, illegality, wrongful, or excessive when those descriptions apply.

Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2021. 80p.

By Duren Banks, Michael G. Planty, Madison Fann, Lynn Langton, Dulani Woods, Michael J. D. Vermeer, Brian A. Jackson

Congress enacted the Death in Custody Reporting Act of 2013 (DCRA) to address the lack of reliable information about law enforcement–related deaths and deaths in correctional institutions. The U.S. Department of Justice has conducted several activities designed to respond to the provisions specified in the DCRA legislation, as well as their own federal mandates, toward a comprehensive understanding of the prevalence and characteristics of deaths that occur in law enforcement custody. Despite these efforts, no national data collection program currently describes all deaths that occur in law enforcement custody. These data are critical to support strategies to reduce such deaths; to promote public safety through appropriate responses to reported crimes, calls for service, and police-community encounters; and to build trust with communities.

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  To better understand the needs around developing and leveraging data from a national data collection of law enforcement–related deaths, RTI International and the RAND Corporation, on behalf of the National Institute of Justice, convened a panel of experts to discuss the challenges to conducting a national data collection, to recommend potential solutions to those challenges, and to recommend research and other applications for the collected data. Through a three-session virtual workshop, participants identified 19 high-priority needs to support a comprehensive and robust data collection program on law enforcement–related deaths. These high-priority needs address challenges related to scope, definition, and detail of the collection; data collection elements and reporting needs; and the utility of the information to inform law enforcement training, programs, and policies.

Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2022. 24p.

By Sean E. Goodison, Jeremy D. Barnum, Michael J. D. Vermeer, Dulani Woods, Siara I. Sitar, Brian A. Jackson

Police often are the first (and sometimes the only) point of government contact for persons experiencing homelessness (PEH). Although it has been common for police to rely on traditional law enforcement powers in dealing with homelessness, many agencies have moved away from arrest-focused methods in favor of approaches that are designed to foster positive relationships with PEH, assess individual needs of each person or area, and guide homeless or unsheltered individuals to the services they require.

To better understand the potential challenges of the law enforcement response to homelessness, the RAND Corporation and the Police Executive Research Forum, on behalf of the National Institute of Justice, convened a workshop of practitioners and researchers to discuss current law enforcement responses to homelessness and identify the highest-priority needs to support and improve existing efforts. During this meeting, four major themes were identified. First, there is a common set of factors underlying homelessness that law enforcement can address. Second, homelessness and overall health and wellness are deeply intertwined issues that should be treated together. Third, effective responses require the collaboration of stakeholders across governments, the private sector, and the community. Finally, acquiring and sharing data is necessary to understand the nature and scope of homelessness in each jurisdiction and to measure the effect of any implemented strategies. All four of these themes are vital to understanding the current challenges confronting the implementation of innovative police responses to homelessness.

Santa Monica, CA: 2020. 32p.

By Michael J. D. Vermeer, Dulani Woods, Brian A. Jackson

Recent nationwide protests against police use of force and perceptions of systemic racism in law enforcement in the United States have sparked renewed conversation about problems in the U.S. criminal justice system. Much of this conversation has been focused on the idea of "defunding the police." In this Perspective, the authors describe police leaders' and practitioners' views on defunding the police — that is, budgeting less money for police and more for other public safety strategies — and explain why revisiting the role of law enforcement in society could have broader appeal than some think. To do this, the authors draw on experience in workshops held over the past seven years by the Priority Criminal Justice Needs Initiative. In these workshops, police leaders and practitioners have voiced frustration with being the default party that is expected to respond to many complex social problems, such as homelessness, substance use, and mental health crises. Practitioners argue that nonenforcement strategies are often more effective than policing in solving many of these problems. Therefore, the authors suggest that there might be significant law enforcement support for some "defunding" strategies — as long as these efforts relieve some of the unrealistic expectations on police. The authors also describe current police functions that could be reassigned to other community partners, discuss factors that communities must consider if they choose to reallocate police functions, and note evidence of broader support for such reforms in the general population.

Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2020. 20p.

By John S. Hollywood, Kenneth N. McKay, Dulani Woods, Denis Agniel

Strategic Decision Support Centers (SDSCs) are the Chicago Police Department's district-level real-time crime centers, launched in January 2017 and expanded in 2018. They serve as command and control centers for staff to gain awareness of what is happening in their districts and decide on responses. SDSCs support daily and weekly planning meetings and provide near–real-time support for detecting, responding, and investigating crimes as they occur. Their objectives are to improve districts' abilities to reduce crime, hold offenders accountable, improve officer safety, and reduce service times.

In this report, the authors evaluate the processes, organizational structures, and technologies employed in the SDSCs. They also assess the extent to which the introduction of SDSCs was associated with reductions in crime levels in the districts. They find that SDSCs are a promising tool for supporting crime reduction. According to the authors' models, a district that adds an SDSC can expect to see reductions in at least some of the ten types of major crimes modeled, including shootings, robbery, burglary, and criminal sexual assault.

More broadly, the authors see SDSCs as a promising model for improving law enforcement agencies' awareness of their communities, improving their decision-making, and carrying out more effective and more efficient operations that lead to crime reductions and other policing benefits.

Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2019. 98p.

By John S. Hollywood, Dulani Woods, Sean E. Goodison, Andrew Lauland, Lisa Wagner, Thomas J. Wilson, Brian A. Jackson

The National Institute of Justice tasked RAND to host a panel of law enforcement experts to identify high-priority needs for innovation in law enforcement, covering advances in technology, policy, and practice. The needs discussed in this report can help prioritize research, development, and dissemination efforts in ways that will provide the greatest value to law enforcement practitioners.

The panel identified four top findings. First, there is a need to improve practitioners' knowledge of available research and technology, starting with a central knowledge repository and research on how to improve dissemination and training methods. Second, there is a need for practices and technologies to improve police-community relations, both to improve encounters with the public and to improve community relations more broadly. Third, there is a need to improve the sharing and use of information in a range of ways. These include means to get crime analysis capabilities to all agencies (including small and disadvantaged agencies), software development to reduce information overload, and model proposal and contract language to make systems interoperable. Fourth, there is a need to reduce backlogs in forensic processing; panelists suggested broadening U.S. Department of Justice forensic grants outside of DNA to help address the backlogs.

Additional high-priority needs included further development of policies and use cases for unmanned aerial vehicles, best practices for selecting and using personal gear, and improving defenses against active shooters. The latter included improving both suspicious activity reporting processes and efforts to educate the public on responding to an active shooter. There is also a need for a review of technologies that might improve officers' health.

Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2017, 152p.

By Regina G. Lawrence

When police brutality becomes front-page news, it triggers a sudden, intense interaction between the media, the public, and the police. Regina Lawrence ably demonstrates how these news events provide the raw materials for looking at underlying problems in American society. Journalists, policy makers, and the public use such stories to define a problematic situation, and this process of problem definition gives the media a crucial role in our public policy debates.

Lawrence extensively analyzes more than 500 incidents of police use-of-force covered by the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times from 1985 to 1994, with additional analysis of more recent incidents such as as the shooting of Amadou Diallo in New York. The incidents include but are not limited to those defined as "police brutality." Lawrence reveals the structural and cultural forces that both shape the news and allow police to define most use-of-force incidents, which occur in far greater numbers than are reported, she says.

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  Lawrence explores the dilemma of obtaining critical media perspectives on policing policies. She examines the factors that made the coverage of the Rodney King beating so significant, particularly after the incident was captured on video. At the same time, she shows how an extraordinary news event involving the police can become a vehicle for marginalized social groups to gain entrance into the media arena.

  In contrasting "event-driven" problem definition with the more thoroughly studied "institutionally driven" news stories, Lawrence's book fills a major gap in media studies. It also offers a broader understanding of the interplay between the criminal justice system and the media in today's world.Description text goes here

Berkeley: Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2000. 254p.

By Desmond Ang, Panka Bencsik, Jesse Bruhn and Ellora Derenoncourt

How do high-profile acts of police brutality affect public trust and cooperation with law enforcement? To investigate this question, we develop a new measure of civilian crime reporting that isolates changes in community engagement with police from underlying changes in crime: the ratio of police-related 911 calls to gunshots detected by ShotSpotter technology. Examining detailed data from eight major American cities, we show a sharp drop in both the call-to-shot ratio and 911 call volume immediately after the police murder of George Floyd in May 2020. Notably, reporting rates decreased significantly in both non-white and white neighborhoods across the country. These effects persist for several months, and we find little evidence that they were reversed by the conviction of Floyd’s murderer. Together, the results illustrate how acts of police violence may destroy a key input into effective law enforcement and public safety: civilian engagement and reporting.

Cambridge, MA: Working paper, Harvard Kennedy School, 2021. 27p.

By Robert C. Davis, Nicole J. Henderson and Christopher W. Ortiz

This report examines the outcomes of the consent decree between the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice and the Pittsburgh Police Bureau.

In 1994, the United States Congress expanded the powers of the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department by granting it the authority to file civil lawsuits against States and municipalities that display a "pattern or practice" of police misconduct. The department has filed six lawsuits, all of which have been settled out of court through consent decrees. These decrees specify the reforms the police agencies must implement; the first consent decree was negotiated in Pittsburgh, PA. Researchers at the Vera Institute of Justice questioned whether the use of this new Federal intervention power could make a sustainable difference in the operation of local law enforcement agencies.

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  Researchers studied the Pittsburgh Police Bureau both before and after the consent decree was lifted in 2002. Research methods involved observations of police in field and management settings, interviews with key officials and community leaders, focus groups with police officers, surveys of citizens, and reviews of the Federal monitor's reports and police data. Findings indicated two key factors were most responsible for the quick compliance with the terms of the decree: the leadership displayed by the police chief and guidance received from the Federal monitor. Several changes were made to the way the police agency operated, including the addition of new systems to track the use of force, traffic stops, and searches, as well as new procedures to increase officer accountability and new policies and training. Despite budget cutbacks, these new reforms remain in place and the surveys of community leaders and citizens indicate significant improvements in police services. Problems remain however, as front-line police officers complain about tighter management and citizens continue to voice concerns about police misconduct. The overall findings suggest that this type of Federal intervention can bring lasting improvements in police accountability. Description text goes here

New York, NY: Vera Institute of Justice, 2005. 62p.