By Romanoff, Tom; Farshchi, Jamil; Neschke, Sabine; Lord, Ben; Draper, Danielle; Douglas, Ahmad

From the document: "The Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) convened a working group of leaders to strengthen America's cybersecurity. The group's approach was to identify the nation's top cybersecurity risks to raise awareness so policymakers and businesses can take pragmatic action and invest in countermeasures. In assembling the working group, the co-chairs sought broad inclusivity from strategically important industries, government, and civil society. Every sector with a stake in cybersecurity was included--banking, communications, digital platforms, health, energy, and more. The working group drew from a wide range of important perspectives, including stakeholders representing privacy concerns and digital identities. [...] Identifying cybersecurity risks is the first step in managing them. This report--unlike other, more technical sources that identify cyber risks--frames them for the strategic audience of business and government decision-makers. We intentionally focused on identifying risks, not solutions, because various stakeholders may need to take different approaches. There are no one-size-fits-all fixes. Rather, these top risks must be considered individually by companies and collectively by the nation. Many will require a multifaceted response, across business and government, who will need to work various levers including policy, organizational culture, technology, and processes."

Bipartisan Policy Center 2023. 28p.

By Goldstein, Josh A.; Sastry, Girish; Musser, Micah; Diresta, Renee; Gentzel, Matthew; Sedova, Katerina

From the Executive Summary: "This report aims to assess: how might language models change influence operations, and what steps can be taken to mitigate these threats? This task is inherently speculative, as both AI [artificial intelligence] and influence operations are changing quickly. Many ideas in the report were informed by a workshop convened by the authors in October 2021, which brought together 30 experts across AI, influence operations, and policy analysis to discuss the potential impact of language models on influence operations. The resulting report does not represent the consensus of workshop participants, and mistakes are our own. We hope this report is useful to disinformation researchers who are interested in the impact of emerging technologies, AI developers setting their policies and investments, and policymakers preparing for social challenges at the intersection of technology and society."

Georgetown University. Walsh School Of Foreign Service. Center For Security And Emerging Technology; Openai; Stanford Internet Observatory. 2023. 85p.

By Barton, Delilah; Mcnamara, Jason; Fletcher, Kim; Vogler, Sarah

From the Executive Summary: "In 2014 and 2015, FEMA reengineered the Public Assistance (PA) Program into a 'new delivery model.' The program goals were to increase accuracy and efficiency, bring consistency and simplicity, and improve timeliness and accessibility to the PA Program [...]. Introducing an 'assembly line' standardization of project development, FEMA created nodes called Consolidated Resource Centers (CRCs), where technical aspects of the PA projects would be performed in seven distinct phases, from request for public assistance (RPA) to obligation. The four CRCs were responsible for supporting specific geographic regions but were also required to support incident operations outside of those areas as national needs dictated. They were designed to validate, develop, review, and process PA Program grant applications based on information and documentation provided by the field staff via a new cloud-based information management system-- Grants Manager/Grants Portal--that served to connect the CRC nodes with state recipients/applicants and project applicants, as well as regional PA and field office PA operations. FEMA initiated this concept in Oregon in 2016. An initial assessment of the program was conducted in late 2016 but proved inconclusive as to whether the new model was successful in its original intent. In 2017, the program--renamed the National Delivery Model--was launched nationally in time for the record-breaking 2017-2018 disaster season, followed by the 2020-2022 COVID-19 pandemic. This report assesses whether the National Delivery Model has met its original intent in increasing accuracy, efficiency, and simplicity and improving timeliness and accessibility."

CNA Corporation; United States. Federal Emergency Management Agency. 2023. 108p.

By David Garland

From the cover: The past 30 years have seen vast changes in our attitudes toward crime. More and more of us live in gated communities; prison popula­tions have skyrocketed; and issues such as racial profiling, community policing, and “zero- tolerance” policies dominate the headlines. How is it that our response to crime and our sense of criminal justice have come to be so dramatically reconfigured? David Garland charts the changes in crime and criminal jus­tice in America and Britain over the past twen­ty-five years, showing how they have been shaped by two underlying social forces: the dis­tinctive social organization of late modernity and the neoconservative politics that came to dominate the United States and the United Kingdom in the 1980s. Garland explains how the new policies of crime and punishment, welfare and security— and the changing class, race, and gender rela­tions that underpin them—are linked to the fundamental problems of governing contempo­rary societies, as states, corporations, and pri­vate citizens grapple with a volatile economy and a culture that combines expanded person­al freedom with relaxed social controls. It is the risky, unfixed character of modern life that underlies our accelerating concern with con­trol and crime control in particular. It is not just crime that has changed; society has changed as well, and this transformation has reshaped criminological thought, public policy, and the cultural meaning of crime and crimi­nals. David Garland’s The Culture of Control offers a brilliant guide to this process and its still-reverberating consequences..

Chicago. University of Chicago Press. 2001. 304p.

By Center For Countering Digital Hate

From the Introduction: "Two-thirds of American teenagers use TikTok, and the average viewer spends 80 minutes a day on the application. The app, which is owned by the Chinese company, Bytedance, rapidly delivers a series of short videos to users and has overtaken Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube in the bid for young people's hearts, minds, and screen time. [...] For our study, Center for Countering Digital Hate researchers set up new accounts in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia at the minimum age TikTok allows, 13 years old. These accounts paused briefly on videos about body image and mental health, and liked them. What we found was deeply disturbing. Within 2.6 minutes, TikTok recommended suicide content. Within 8 minutes, TikTok served content related to eating disorders. Every 39 seconds, TikTok recommended videos about body image and mental health to teens. The results are every parent's nightmare: young people's feeds are bombarded with harmful, harrowing content that can have a significant cumulative impact on their understanding of the world around them, and their physical and mental health."

Center for Countering Digital Hate. 2022. 48p.

By Special Advisor Board of Police Commissioners on Civil Disorder in Los Angeles.

Motion: “In light of the events that have consumed this City since the verdict in the criminal prosecution of the four officers involved in the arrest of Rodney King, the Police Commission will undertake an investigation to examine the Police Department's preparations in the event of a civil disturbance and to understand what worked and what did not work In the days following April 29, 1992, with a view toward improving Departmental systems intended for that purpose.”

Board of Police Commissioners on Civil Disorder in Los Angeles. 1992. 227p.

By William H. Webster.

“The firestorm of April, 1992 burned deeply into the fabric of Los Angeles. The toll of death, destruction and human misery left this time compels us to recall another such tragedy — one that scorched the ground of the City and its people lust over a quarter of a century ago. To read the reporr of the Governor's Com­mission impaneled to study that tragedy causes us to experience a profound sense that, while much has changed since 1965, much remains the same,…..We have discovered a general lack of emer­gency preparedness, and a specific lack in the period before the Simi Valley verdicts of preparedness for the possibility of civil disor­der. As we describe in Chapters Three and Four of our report, the City and the police department each have created general mecha­nisms intended to cope with emergencies. As we describe in Chapters Five and Six. to varying degrees, each has devoted modest effort to preparedness planning and training, However, the preparedness efforts of neither have resulted in anything that reasonably can he considered a "plan" for response to an emergency. Rather, it appears to be more accurate to state that each has collected and summarized a variety of materials having to do generally with emergency powers of gov­ernment and the subject of emergency re­sponse. However, neither the City nor the police department has produced much in the way of substantive guidance with regard to specific emergency response objectives, pri­orities, tasks or assignments….”

By The Police Executive Research Forum

For decades, enforcing laws against illegal drug trafficking, drug dealing, and drug possession was the primary role of police departments and sheriffs’ offices across the United States. During the Just Say No era of the 1980s and 1990s, arrests for illegal drug possession more than doubled as part of law enforcement’s efforts to deter and diminish drug use. Through time, however, the role of police and sheriffs has evolved and expanded as “demand-reduction policies” have become increasingly prominent. Today, for example, many police agencies administer naloxone, a life-saving medication that quickly reverses the effects of an opioid overdose. Police in some cities and towns also work to connect addicted persons with drug treatment and other services. In many jurisdictions, police have reprioritized their enforcement of laws against possession or use of illegal opioids. Police have had to adjust to what remains a major—and evolving—public health crisis. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, an average of 128 people in the United States died every day in 2018 after overdosing on opioids. And there are reports that the COVID-19 pandemic may be resulting in higher numbers of overdose deaths.Through time, police responsibilities have grown to encompass at least three different roles on the frontlines of responding to the opioid crisis: 1. Emergency response. Preventing an opioid overdose from becoming a fatal opioid overdose. 2. Public safety. Helping individuals protect themselves from opioid-related harms. 3. Law enforcement. Investigating and disrupting opioid-related criminal activity.   

Washington, DC: Office of Community Oriented Policing Services. 2021  88p.  

By The Police Executive Research Forum (PERF)

When a police officer or sheriff’s deputy is killed in the line of duty, either in an act of violence by a criminal offender or in a motor vehicle crash or other accident, there is a time-honored response. Agencies conduct a thorough investigation to understand every detail of what happened, how it happened, and why. There is typically extensive news media coverage of the tragedy, and police executives and other leaders speak about the incident and the fallen officer. Officers are laid to rest with honors, and their survivors can receive emotional support and financial assistance through a combination of local, state, and federal programs. At the national level, the FBI, the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, and other groups collect detailed data about line-of-duty deaths—how, when, and where they occurred—and these organizations issue periodic reports examining trends in officer fatalities. This information is used to develop policies, new training programs, and procurement of equipment that can help keep officers safe and prevent tragedies in the future.  

Washington, DC: Police Executive Research Forum, 2019. 72p.

By The International Association of Chiefs of Police

This guide provides evidence-based policing practices (EBPP) for small, rural, and tribal agencies. The information comes from published research studies and working group conversations with command staff from various small, rural, and tribal agencies. In this guide, we use the terms small and rural or small, rural, and tribal broadly. The types of agencies that fall within these categories vary in terms of size, crime rates and types, and community characteristics. More than 12,000 local police agencies in the United States are “small” or serve small populations—75 percent employ fewer than 25 sworn officers, and 71 percent serve populations of fewer than 10,000 residents (Hyland and Davis 2019). However, not all small agencies serve rural communities. For example, some small agencies serve independent towns within densely populated metropolitan areas. On the other hand, some county police agencies with hundreds of sworn officers serve predominantly rural communities (e.g., Yang et al. 2018). Police agencies that serve tribal communities operate within a unique cultural, historical, and legal context. While we use the terms small, rural, and tribal somewhat interchangeably, the main guiding principle for police agencies trying to implement evidence-based policing is that strategies, interventions, and practices must be specific, tailored, and based on the best available information relevant to the department and jurisdiction. This is with the understanding that there is no one-size-fits-all approach.   

Washington, DC: Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, 2021. 64p.

By Ruth Halkon and Rick Muir

The United Kingdom has the reputation of having some of the safest roads in the world. Yet there is increasing evidence that they are becoming more dangerous. On average around 25,000 people are killed or seriously injured on our roads each year. This number had been constant for the last decade, following many years of reductions. Now the most recent data shows a five per cent rise in fatality rates, the first significant increase in 40 years. Improvements in technology may have made cars safer for those inside them, but there is evidence that these bigger, heavier vehicles are more hazardous for those on the outside. Cyclists and pedestrians may be doing their bit for the environment, but they are putting themselves at risk in streetscapes designed for cars. More needs to be done to facilitate such green transport methods if we are to emulate the models set by our European neighbours.  

London: The Police Foundation, 2022. 51p.

By The Sentry

In a country plagued by horrific violence and rampant corruption, South Sudan’s National Security Service (NSS) stands out as particularly ruthless, secretive, and well-funded. Fear of the NSS is pervasive in South Sudan, and for good reason. Its personnel have been involved in widespread, grave human rights abuses, including kidnapping, torture, and illegal detention, and the organization operates without regard for basic human rights or the personal rights of civilians laid out in the South Sudanese constitution, including freedom of assembly, freedom from torture, and the rights to fair trial and litigation.The Sentry found that, to cement its control and power in South Sudan, the NSS has employed a two-pronged strategy of state capture and repression. Corporate records reviewed by The Sentry reveal a vast network of companies with NSS shareholders, ranging from media and publishing to natural resources and logistics. The oil, finance, and media sectors particularly suffer from NSS involvement both in terms of economic capture and repression. NSS personnel have occupied key posts in state institutions, and the NSS itself has had a role in approving private company operations in the lucrative mining and security sectors. In this way, the NSS has been able to access off-budget finances and diverted revenues, all while sidestepping oversight and operational scrutiny. In turn, the NSS has funded a campaign of surveillance, intimidation, and horrific violence against civilians, activists, and journalists. The NSS has interfered with civil society and the press, suppressed freedom of…..

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  speech, and illegally detained and permanently silenced those who spoke out against the regime. In interviews with The Sentry, several South Sudanese in civil society organizations and in the media sector expressed concern that they might be targeted by the NSS if they spoke openly about corruption or other government issues. Operating under the supervision of President Salva Kiir, the NSS and its activities have gone far beyond their original remit, largely unchecked. This has created a vicious cycle in which a highly militarized agency has gained ever more power and wielded it with increasing brutality. In order to end the NSS campaign of egregious human rights abuses and economic capture, decisive action must be taken to curb its powers of detention and arrest, cut off the sources of its off-budget revenue, and ensure civilian oversight mechanisms are established, empowered, and effectively implemented. Civil society and the media must be protected so that they can hold the NSS and the government accountable, and the government of South Sudan must enforce its own constitution, which demands that the NSS respect human rights, democracy, and civilian oversight—the very cornerstones of a promising future for the people of South Sudan.

Washington DC: The Sentry, 2022. 36p.

By Stephen Rushin

Before punishing an officer for professional misconduct, police departments often provide the officer with an opportunity to file an appeal. In many police departments, this appeals process culminates in a hearing before an arbitrator. While numerous media reports have suggested that arbitrators regularly overturn or reduce discipline, little legal research has comprehensively examined the outcomes of police disciplinary appeals across the United States. In order to better understand the use of arbitration in police disciplinary appeals and build on prior research, this Article draws on a dataset of 624 arbitration awards issued between 2006 and 2020 from a diverse range of law enforcement agencies. It finds that arbitrators on appeal reduced or overturned police officer discipline in 52% of these cases. In 46% of cases involving termination, arbitrators ordered police departments to rehire previously terminated officers. On average, arbitrators reduced the length of officer suspensions by approximately 49%. Arbitrators gave several common justifications for reductions in officer discipline. Frequently, arbitrators found the original discipline to be excessive relative to the offense committed or relative to punishments received by other officers. In a somewhat smaller number of cases, arbitrators cited insufficient evidence or procedural flaws in the investigation or adjudication of the original internal disciplinary process. This Article concludes by considering the implications of these findings for the literature on police accountability. It also considers emerging efforts in states like Minnesota and…..

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  Oregon to reform police arbitration procedures in order to better balance officers' interests in due process with the public's interest in accountability.   

Chicago: Loyola University Chicago, School of Law, 2021. 57p.

By Elizabeth M. Luh

This dissertation contains two essays on disparate treatment in policing. The first chapter links this disparate treatment to bias in the context of highway trooper's stop and search decision. Highway police officers, or troopers, may misreport the race of people that they engage with in order to evade detection of racial bias. I propose a new test of racial bias in the presence of misreporting that is well-suited to explore the rich heterogeneity in bias behavior. Using a unique event in Texas where troopers were caught deliberately misreporting minority motorists as white, I find bias against all minority motorists, but especially against Hispanic motorists. I estimate bias for each trooper and find that over 30\% of troopers were engaging in this behavior. Using my trooper level measure of bias, I identify causal relationships between bias and labor outcomes using a panel data set of trooper employment outcomes. I show misreporting was used effectively to evade detection of bias, with bias having no effect on labor market outcomes when the misreporting was possible. I find that after a rule change to trooper stop recording policy in response to the misreporting led to negative labor outcomes for biased troopers, specifically, lower rates of promotion and had lower salary growth. I further test how individual trooper bias changes in response to changes in peer, demographic compositions. In particular, black or Hispanic troopers are sensitive to changes in peer composition, while white troopers are unaffected. The second chapter tests whether police officers disparately enforce parking…..

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  tickets across black and non-black neighborhoods. Using a plausibly exogenous increase in the fine for failing to purchase annual vehicle registration in 2012, colloquially known as the sticker tax, I test if Chicago police disparately enforced parking compliance across black and non-black neighborhoods from 2007 to 2017. I find that police behavior is responsive to the penalty structure of the fine and are 20 to 50 percent more likely to apply the sticker fine to black neighborhoods after the increase. This disparate enforcement is robust to employment controls and is not driven by changing compliance rates across neighborhoods. In contrast, I find that parking enforcement agents do not disparately enforce the tickets across black and non-black neighborhoods. I attribute this difference in behavior between parking enforcement agents and police officers to the lack of ticket quotas for police officers. Since police officers are not evaluated by their parking citation productivity, they do not behave as revenue-maximizing agents.

Houston, TX: University of Houston,  Department of Economics, 2020. 103p.

By Manja Nikolovska and Shane Johnson  

On 30 January 2020 the World Health Organisation declared the outbreak of Covid-19 a “Public Health Emergency of International concern” which posed an unprecedented threat. Chief police officers recognised that quick decisions needed to be taken, working with partners to ensure public safety and to help contain the spread of the virus. The National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) assumed the lead for the national policing response, using an enhanced cross portfolio command structure named Operation Talla. The work described in this report was commissioned by the NPCC and conducted by the Dawes Centre for Future Crime at UCL, in consultation with Op Talla, to understand the effects of the pandemic on the policing response and future impacts. Here, we report the findings of the (Delphi) study, the aims of which were to elicit expert opinion from a wide range of UK law enforcement agency stakeholders (LEAs) to understand their perspectives about the police response to the pandemic, how the pandemic affected policing, what worked well and should continue, how the pandemic affected crime, and how crime might change as a consequence of other future drivers of changes (e.g. climate change, Brexit and technological change). The key aims of the study were to: • Systematically assess learned experiences of policing during the disruption to inform future policy • Contribute towards LEAs readiness to police future disruptions and operate under “normal” conditions • Anticipate future crime trends • Inform policing strategy and policy The main report covers all of the themes…..

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  identified. Here, however, we discuss only those themes for which there was a clear consensus that motivated one or more recommendations.

London:  Dawes Centre for Future Crime at UCL , 2022. 76p.

Edited by Jacob Copeman and Giovanni da Col

Fakes, forgery, counterfeits, hoaxes, frauds, knock-offs—such terms speak, ostensibly, to the inverse of truth or the obverse of authenticity and sincerity. Do all cultures equally spend an incredible amount of energy and labor on detecting differences between the phony and the genuine? What does the modern human obsession with fabrications and frauds tell us about ourselves? And what can anthropology tell us about this obsession? This timely book is the product of the first Annual Debate of Anthropological Keywords, a collaborative project between Hau, the American Ethnological Society, and L’Homme, held each year at the American Anthropological Association meetings. The aim of the debate is to reflect critically on keywords and terms that play a pivotal and timely role in discussions of different cultures and societies, and of the relations between them. This volume brings together leading thinkers to interrogate the concept of fake cross-culturally, including insightful contributions by Jacob Copeman, Giovanni da Col, Veena Das, John Jackson Jr., Graham Jones, Carlo Severi, Neil Thin, and Alexei Yurchak.

Chicago: Hau Books (Distributed the University of Chicago Press), 2018. 142p.

By The Policing Project at NYU School of Law

The right to engage in peaceful demonstration is a cornerstone of American democracy. Yet sometimes police fail to strike the right balance, approaching demonstrations as a threat to public safety, rather than as an expression of constitutionally protected rights. This results in bad outcomes, for protestors and for police. The Policing Project’s new guidance provides an overview of how to police demonstrations to protect public safety and democratic freedoms. Drawn largely from what policing leaders themselves have identified as best practices as well as evidence-based research, we outline a clear approach that emphasizes transparent communication, de-escalation, and a healthy relationship between police and the communities they serve.

New York: NYU School of Law, 2020. 14p.

By Katie Bollman

  In less than a decade, body-worn cameras rose from rarity to standard amongst local law enforcement in the U.S. as agencies sought to enhance trust, transparency, and accountability of officers. However, this policing tool also generates large quantities of a new source of data for criminal courts: footage of criminal defendants. This data can provide evidence pertinent to a criminal case, but at a cost of attorney time. Using rich case data from Virginia state courts from 2006-2020 and a new body-worn camera data set I investigate whether local law enforcement adoption of body-worn cameras changes court filings, criminal case dispositions, time to disposition, and other case outcomes. I find evidence that body-worn cameras affect interactions between police and members of the public, but that these effects are restricted to a small subset of cases. Once cases enter the courts, I find that in the aggregate, contrary to expectations, both case processes and resolutions are unresponsive to the influx of data generated by body-worn camera footage.

Working Paper, Michigan State University, 2021. 54p.

By Amal Ali and Nina Champion

  It is widely accepted that policing is most effective when it secures the co-operation, trust, and confidence of the public. The police themselves recognise that these features are critical to their relationship with the public and form an important part of their day-to-day working culture. This co-operation, trust and confidence is being undermined by unfair and disproportionate stop and search practices. Such practices cause alarm and distress to members of the public, damage trust and confidence in policing, and make the police’s job more difficult overall. We therefore believe that due to the harms outlined in this report, the government must urgently repeal the harmful s.60 police power and instead invest in working with communities to improve trust and confidence and tackle the root causes of violent crime. Furthermore, insufficient scrutiny of stop and search powers means that the police are not effectively being held to account where there is evidence of unfair and discriminatory use of these powers. Fair and effective community scrutiny for all police forces should be mandated, adequately resourced and supported by an independent national body. Section 60 (s.60) of the Criminal Justice and Public Order (CJPO) Act 1994 allows a constable in uniform to stop and search any pedestrian, or any vehicle for offensive weapons or dangerous instruments. This legislation was originally introduced to tackle football hooliganism and the threat of serious violence at football games. Today, s.60 permits officers to search a person or vehicle in anticipation of violence if an officer of or above…..

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  the rank of inspector ‘reasonably believes that incidents involving serious violence may take place in any locality’. These powers are only to be authorised in a designated area for a specific period of time.

London: Criminal Justice Alliance, 2021.  38p.

By Amber Evans, Patrick Olajide, Isabella Ross and Jon Clements

In our previous research, focusing on adults, we found that despite support for the use of stop and search powers in principle, there were deep misgivings among Black adults about the way stop and search was carried out in practice, as well as the general service and treatment they received from the police. For Black children, these misgivings were amplified. They have less trust in the police than children from every other ethnic group, and less trust than Black adults do. This report, which is the second of three publications related to our research project, focuses specifically on the views of children and teenagers. It is based on findings from three focus groups with predominantly Black or Black and Mixed ethnicity children, and a survey of 1,542 ten to 18 year olds, 100 of whom were Black.   

London: Crest Advisory, 2022. 55p.