By The Calgary Police Commission

  The Commission’s community perception research has evolved over the past five years from annual quantitative surveys to quantitative and qualitative methods alternating annually. The research is customized and updated annually to provide insights that are relevant for CPS and the Commission each year. In 2023, we conducted qualitative research focused on the impact of communications and transparency on trust in CPS. The research was designed to focus on two specific groups to understand potential differences in communication needs: 1. Calgarians who trust CPS 2. Calgarians who do not trust CPS This research will help inform actions to improve communications and trust in the Calgary Police Service (CPS).

Calgary: The Police Commission 2023. 52p.

By Jessica Reichert, Brandon Del Pozo, and Bruce Taylor

Fatal opioid overdoses continue to break historical records. Stigma toward people with opioid use disorder (OUD) can negatively impact treatment access, retention, and recovery. Attitudes and beliefs of police officers can profoundly shape key discretionary decisions. Therefore, we examined police officer views indicating stigma toward those with OUD. We administered an online survey to select Illinois police departments using a stratified random sampling strategy with a final sample of 248 officers from 27 police departments. We asked officers questions measuring stigmatizing attitudes toward people with OUD including distrust, blame, shame, and fear. We found officers held somewhat stigmatizing views with a mean score of 4.0 on a scale of 1 (least stigmatic) to 6 (most stigmatic). Regression results showed certain officer characteristics were associated with more stigmatizing attitudes of blaming and distrust of those with OUD, including gender, education, race, years in policing, and department size. Since most officers in the sample held at least some stigmatizing views toward people with OUD, this may impede the feasibility and acceptability of criminal justice interventions meant to improve behavioral health, such as police deflection programs that link people who use drugs to treatment in lieu of arrest. Departments should offer officer training and education on substance use disorders, treatment for addiction, and the potential for a person’s recovery. Training should allow officers to hear directly from, or learn about, personal experiences of people who use drugs and have been in recovery, as this type of interaction has been shown to reduce stigma.

Chicago: Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority, 2023. 23p.

by Adam Cotter 

  Perceptions of and experiences with police and the justice system among the Black and Indigenous populations in Canada: Highlights  The Black population and Indigenous people (First Nations people, Métis, and Inuit) living in Canada have distinct histories, backgrounds, geographic distributions, and current conditions and situations. These factors should be taken into account when interpreting and evaluating data focusing on these populations. While these groups are distinct, their perceptions and experiences are explored in this article to highlight similarities and differences relative to the population who is neither Indigenous nor a member of a population group designated as visible minority.  According to the 2020 General Social Survey (GSS) on Social Identity, one in five Black (21%) and Indigenous (22%) people have little or no confidence in police, double the proportion among those who were neither Indigenous nor a visible minority (11%).  Based on data from the 2019 GSS on Canadians’ Safety (Victimization), Black and Indigenous people are more likely to rate police performance poorly. About one in three Black (30%) and Indigenous (32%) people said that police were performing poorly in at least one part of their job, a higher proportion than non-Indigenous, non-visible minorities (19%).  Perceptions of the police varied among the Black population. Almost six in ten (58%) Canadian-born Black people rated at least one element of police performance poorly, well above the proportion of Black immigrants (15%).  Relative to the overall population, Black people and Indigenous people had particularly negative perceptions of the ability of police to treat people fairly and be approachable and easy to talk to.

Ottawa: Statistics Canada, 2022. 31p.

By  Undercover Policing Inquiry (UK)

The report which this foreword introduces is the first fruit of the work undertaken by the Undercover Policing Inquiry, under the chairmanship of Sir Christopher Pitchford from July 2015 until July 2017, and under my chairmanship since then. It covers the first 14 years, approximately, of the Special Operations Squad (SOS)/Special Demonstration Squad (SDS), a unit of the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) set up in July 1968 (hereafter referred to as the SDS, unless specifically referring to the SOS). It attempts to set out the history of the unit and to draw conclusions about the purposes for which it was set up and continued, and their justification. The findings of fact and conclusions are mine and mine alone. These findings are based on multiple sources of evidence. As in the case of any historical inquiry, the starting point must be contemporaneous documents created by those who participated in the events being investigated. Sufficient documents from the MPS and public sources have survived to permit reliable findings to be made about the creation of the unit and the purpose it served in 1968. The documentary record then becomes sketchier until November 1974. From then on, Security Service files contain an extensive and substantially complete record of the intelligence gathered by the undercover officers deployed by the unit. I know that different views are held about the lawfulness and propriety of the retention of so much personal information for so long. I do not intend to enter into this debate, but only to make the trite observation that, without this evidence, accurate reconstruction of what occurred would not have been possible. I wish to express my gratitude to the Security Service for the collation and production of these files. Flesh was put on the bones of the documentary material by evidence given by surviving former undercover officers and their managers, and by members of the public with whom they interacted. As will be apparent from the content of this report, their evidence was, almost without exception, of significant value in enabling me to understand what had occurred, in particular about matters such as personal relationships, which were not documented. I acknowledge the inconvenience, at best, which the provision of this evidence has caused to them. I am grateful to all of them for the trouble they have taken to assist me in my task  

Undercover Policing Inquiry (UK), 2023. 120p.

By Whitfield Diffie and Susan Landau

A penetrating and insightful study of privacy and security in telecommunications for a post-9/11, post-Patriot Act world.Telecommunication has never been perfectly secure. The Cold War culture of recording devices in telephone receivers and bugged embassy offices has been succeeded by a post-9/11 world of NSA wiretaps and demands for data retention. Although the 1990s battle for individual and commercial freedom to use cryptography was won, growth in the use of cryptography has been slow. Meanwhile, regulations requiring that the computer and communication industries build spying into their systems for government convenience have increased rapidly. The application of the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act has expanded beyond the intent of Congress to apply to voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and other modern data services; attempts are being made to require ISPs to retain their data for years in case the government wants it; and data mining techniques developed for commercial marketing applications are being applied to widespread surveillance of the population.In Privacy on the Line, Whitfield Diffie and Susan Landau strip away the hype surrounding the policy debate over privacy to examine the national security, law enforcement, commercial, and civil liberties issues. They discuss the social function of privacy, how it underlies a democratic society, and what happens when it is lost. This updated and expanded edition revises their original—and prescient—discussions of both policy and technology in light of recent controversies over NSA spying and other government threats to communications privacy.

Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2010. 496p.

By John Kleinig • Peter Mameli • Seumas Miller • Douglas Salane Adina Schwartz

This study is principally concerned with the ethical dimensions of identity management technology – electronic surveillance, the mining of personal data, and profiling – in the context of transnational crime and global terrorism. The ethical challenge at the heart of this study is to establish an acceptable and sustainable equilibrium between two central moral values in contemporary liberal democracies, namely, security and privacy. Both values are essential to individual liberty, but they come into conflict in times when civil order is threatened, as has been the case from late in the twentieth century, with the advent of global terrorism and trans-national crime. We seek to articulate legally sustainable, politically possible, and technologically feasible, global ethical standards for identity management technology and policies in liberal democracies in the contemporary global security context. Although the standards in question are to be understood as global ethical standards potentially to be adopted not only by the United States, but also by the European Union, India, Australasia, and other contemporary liberal democratic states, we take as our primary focus the tensions that have arisen between the United States and the European Union.

Canberra: ANU Press, 2011. 304p.

By The European Parliament

Cannabis is by far the most commonly used illicit drug (referred to as drug in this briefing) in the European Union (EU), where its distribution, cultivation, possession and use (consumption) are largely prohibited. The prohibition of drug-related activities other than those performed for medical or scientific purposes is the defining feature of the international drug control system. Set up by the United Nations (UN), this system is composed of three complementary conventions, to which all EU Member States are parties. Various countries around the world have made use of the flexibility of the UN system, not applying criminal penalties in some cases (e.g. for possession of small amounts of drugs for personal use) or replacing them with administrative ones. The UN bodies monitoring compliance with the conventions seem to have come to accept these policy choices. However, they remain resistant to the still rare yet increasingly common practice of legalising the recreational use of cannabis, which may entail regulating drug distribution and sale in a manner akin to that for alcohol and tobacco. In the EU, drug policy has remained primarily the Member States' preserve. The EU has fostered the Member States' cooperation on law enforcement and health-related issues, while at the same time respecting their diverse philosophies on how to address recreational drug use. National approaches range from very restrictive policies that prioritise criminal law responses, to more liberal ones that focus primarily on reducing the health and social harms resulting from drug use. In 2021, Malta became the first Member State to legalise recreational cannabis, and since then several others have taken steps that could potentially lead to similar drug policy reforms.

Brussels: European Union, 2023. 12p.

By Bradley Ray, Steven J. Korzeniewski, George Mohler, Jennifer J. Carroll, et al.

Objectives. To test the hypothesis that law enforcement efforts to disrupt local drug markets by seizing opioids or stimulants are associated with increased spatiotemporal clustering of overdose events in the surrounding geographic area. Methods. We performed a retrospective (January 1, 2020 to December 31, 2021), population-based cohort study using administrative data from Marion County, Indiana. We compared frequency and characteristics of drug (i.e., opioids and stimulants) seizures with changes in fatal overdose, emergency medical services nonfatal overdose calls for service, and naloxone administration in the geographic area and time following the seizures. Results. Within 7, 14, and 21 days, opioid-related law enforcement drug seizures were significantly associated with increased spatiotemporal clustering of overdoses within radii of 100, 250, and 500 meters. For example, the observed number of fatal overdoses was two-fold higher than expected under the null distribution within 7 days and 500 meters following opioid-related seizures. To a lesser extent, stimulant-related drug seizures were associated with increased spatiotemporal clustering overdose. Conclusions. Supply-side enforcement interventions and drug policies should be further explored to determine whether they exacerbate an ongoing overdose epidemic and negatively affect the nation’s life expectancy.

Am J Public Health. 2023;113(7):750–758

By  Erica Wennberg, Sarah B. Windle, Kristian B. Filion, Brett D. Thombs; et al. 

As more countries legalize recreational cannabis, roadside screening programs are imperative to detect and deter driving under the influence of cannabis. This systematic review evaluated roadside screening tests for cannabis use. We searched six databases (inception-March 2020) and grey literature sources for primary studies evaluating test characteristics of roadside screening tests for cannabis use compared to laboratory tests for cannabinoids in blood or oral fluid. The synthesis was focused on sensitivity and specificity of delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) detection. 101 studies were included. Oral fluid tests were higher in specificity and lower in sensitivity compared to urine tests when evaluated against blood laboratory tests. Oral fluid tests were higher in sensitivity and similar in specificity compared to observational tests when evaluated against blood and oral fluid laboratory tests. Sensitivity was variable among oral fluid tests; two instrumented immunoassays (Draeger DrugTest 5000 [5 ng/mL THC cut-off] and Alere DDS 2 Mobile Test System) appeared to perform best, but definitive conclusions could not be drawn due to imprecise estimates. Specificities were similar. Overall, oral fluid tests showed the most promise for use in roadside screening for blood THC levels over legal limits; their continued development and testing are warranted. Urine tests are generally inadvisable, and observational tests require sensitivity improvements.

Heliyon, Volume 9, article id. e14630. 2023.

By Benjamin J. Goold  

Discretion is central to policing in Canada. Every day, the police make thousands of decisions that affect the lives of Canadians across the country, determining when the law should (or should not) be enforced, how public complaints and crimes are investigated, and what happens to those suspected of breaking the law. In many cases, these decisions are made by police officers in direct contact with members of the public and play a crucial role in shaping the relationship between those individuals and the state. While public officials in many capacities have discretion to make decisions in the ordinary course of their work, the decisions made by police officers are underpinned by their unique ability to use force in the execution of their duties, accompanied by extensive powers with respect to arrest, detention, search and seizure, and the gathering of evidence. This report aims to shed light on several key aspects of police discretion and decision-making, beginning with the fundamental issue of the relationship between discretion, law, and the legal duties of the police. The report is not a comprehensive overview of the extensive literature on police discretion in Canada and elsewhere but instead looks to provide a foundation for broader discussions about the scope of police discretion, the factors that influence its exercise, and whether it needs to be subject to more extensive and effective limitations. Fundamentally, the report considers whether the role of the police as a public institution and the demands placed on police officers as individuals are compatible with the notion of discretion as traditionally conceived. Given the many challenges facing the police in Canada today, there is a pressing need for a serious and structured discussion about the nature and scope of their discretion and whether it should continue to be regarded as an inescapable aspect of modern policing.  

Halifax, NS: The Joint Federal/Provincial Commission into the April 2020 Nova Scotia Mass Casualty, 2022., 65p.

By Geoffrey C. Barnes, Simon Williams | Lawrence W. Sherman | Jesse Parmar | Paul House | Stephen A. Brown

In this article, we examine how communities can maximize deterrence of crime while minimizing cost and police intrusion on public life. Using 3,720 hot spot-days, we show that the “sweet spot” duration of police absence, to maximize the residual deterrence of crime, was a full four days after the last day of targeting police patrol at each hot spot. Over a 248-day period, we randomly reshuffled 15 separate hot spots daily into either treatment (targeted police patrols) or control (no targeted patrols) for that day, so that all locations repeatedly switched between randomly assigned groups. This repeated crossover design (Cochrane & Cox, 1957; Fienberg et al., 1980) included random periods of up to 20 consecutive days in which individual hot spots remained in the control condition, allowing us to measure how soon, and by what trajectory, the residual deterrent effect of targeted patrolling wore off. After four days without patrolling, there was a sudden termination of residual deterrence, marked by a 66% rise in offense frequency, and a 395% spike in our index of crime harm (House & Neyroud 2018), compared to the treatment condition. It may be possible to deploy less, not more policing and still maximize deterrent effects.

Sweet Spots Pre-Print 2020-07

By Lawrence W. Sherman

Police are often criticized fordoing “too much” or “too little” policing in various sit-uations. These criticisms amount to testable hypothe-ses about whether “less” force, or intensity, or enforce-ment would have been enough, or whether “more” was needed. The rise of evidence-based policing provides a starting point for public dialogues about those hypotheses, in ways that could help to build police legitimacy.Such dialogues can be focused on the questions posed by the three “Ts”: (1) Is police actiontargetedin a way that is proportionate to the harm that it can prevent?(2) Has the action been tested and found effective with the kinds of targets, and their levels of harm, where it is being used? (3) Is police actiontrack to ensure it is delivered in the way that has been tested, and in compli-ance with relevant legal requirements? In this lecture, I frame the issue as follows:Can more widespread use of better research evidence on targeting, testing, and tracking police actions, shared more clearly among the public and police, help reduce the wide range of oscillation between over-policing and under-policing?PolicyImplications:Theuseofthesequestionsinpub-lic dialogue would be especially relevant to the three biggest threats to police legitimacy in the aftermath ofGeorge Floyd’s murder: (A) police killing people, (B)police stopping people, and (C) police under-patrolling 176SHERMANhigh-crime hot spots (while over-patrolling low-crime areas). One result of applying the three-Ts questions to these threats, for example, could be the end of the vast overuse of stop and search in low-violence areas. At The same time, this approach could also lead to reduc-tions in homicide by increasing stops in highest vio-lence hot spots. Such changes could demonstrate how the “Goldilocks principle” for the three Ts could get policing closer to “just right” for each place and person being policed.

 Criminology & Public Policy.2022;21:175–196

By Charles Fain Lehman

In the wake of the death of George Floyd and the summer of protests and riots that followed, left-wing activists and politicians have called not simply for reforms to policing, but for its abolition. In order to eliminate the possibility of wrongful killing of civilians, these advocates say, we should defund police departments, reroute their budgets to social services, and replace beat cops with unarmed civilian alternatives wherever possible. In the first half of this brief, I outline why such proposals would be a disaster for public safety. In short, they:

• Have little basis in evidence;

• Would increase the risk posed to civilian employees;

• Would diminish the crime-reduction benefits of current police work; and

• Would have little impact on the size, and therefore effect, of social welfare spending.

While replacing the police is a misguided idea, that does not mean that lawmakers should dismiss altogether the idea of nonpolice crime-fighting tools. Indeed, there are several evidence-based, effective means to mitigate crime through channels other than more police work. These complementary tools can help relieve stress on overtaxed and understaffed police forces. In the second half of this report, I lay out the evidence behind three options:

• Reducing crime through changes to the built environment, such as cleaning up vacant lots and green public spaces;

• Using “nonpolice guardians,” such as neighborhood watches and CCTV cameras, to extend the police’s reach;

• Targeting problematic alcohol use, a major cause of crime.

New York: The Manhattan Institute, 2021. 20p.

By Anne Nassauer

Officer-involved shootings (OIS) of people of color concern fundamental societal issues, including race, violence, and policing. While scholars have gathered extensive insights on contextual circumstances of OIS, the unfolding of encounters still remains a black box, and research is still debating whether racialized biases actually matter for shootings. To study this question, this article discusses findings from an in-depth analysis of real life OIS as they unfold. It triangulates video footage with document data to analyze the role of racial biases and situational interaction in shootings. It compares police shootings of black and white citizens, as well as a police-citizen encounter that did not end in a shooting. Findings suggest two intertwined processes of dehumanization contribute to the shootings of black citizens, one operating on the cultural and one on the situational level. The article contributes to research on race and racism, violence, police use of lethal force, and sociological theory.     

   Ethnic and Racial Studies , 2023.

By Sean Barry Butcher

Within contemporary policing and community safety discourses, citizen-led initiatives have rarely commanded the degree of attention afforded elsewhere. Typically, research has tended to focus upon state, and more recently market provision. This thesis addresses that deficit by investigating volunteer citizen patrol initiatives. It adopts an exploratory approach to conceptualise and determine the composition of patrols, and subsequently offers insights into the reasons why individuals partake in organised patrols, the nature of their activities, and how they are received by other citizens and local stakeholders. In the first half of the study, citizen patrols are defined, charted across extended historical periods, and located within the contemporary policing landscape. The second half presents the empirical findings of a qualitative study that explores three citizen patrol case studies in northern England. Data collected within these sites consisted of a total of 150 hours of participant observation and 40 semi-structured interviews, with participants, coordinators and external stakeholders. The findings indicate that despite state dominance and more recent market expansion across the policing landscape, the presence of citizen patrols illustrates a space for civil society that demonstrates continuities with the past. Participants exhibited a range of motivations for partaking and completed various activities; as responses to perceived threats, broader vulnerability, and for the purposes of information sharing. Elsewhere, a distinction emerged between those that the patrols engaged, and those that more broadly benefited. Serving the interests of the latter presented implications not only for the fair and even spread of patrol activities, but also for the delivery of policing provision more generally. Finally, the patrols were well-received by stakeholders, who connected with initiatives both strategically and operationally. There was evidence of positive relationships and collaboration, though frontline police articulated concern about their capacity to effectively support initiatives in light of reductions to personnel and resources.

  Leeds, UK: The University of Leeds, School of Law, Centre for Criminal Justice Studies, 2019. 309p.  

City and County of Denver, Officer of the Auditor  

Objective: To evaluate the effectiveness of the Denver Police Department’s recruitment and retention practices and determine whether it adequately uses data to assess its resources and ensure effective operations.

Background: The Denver Police Department and its more than 1,400 uniformed officers strive to keep the public safe through crime prevention and crime reduction strategies. Law enforcement agencies nationwide are struggling to hire and retain officers. This is in part because of greater scrutiny of law enforcement — and negative perceptions by the public — following events like the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police in 2020. Understaffing puts a strain on police agencies, reducing officers’ availability to respond to 911 calls and impairing their wellbeing. It also limits the time officers can spend in the community rebuilding trust and relationships with the people they serve.   \\

Denver: Office of the Auditor, City of Denver,  2023. 82p.

By Mia-Maria Magnusson

Policing research has had an upswing as the evidence-based policing movement has grown stronger and entered police practises worldwide. Within the evidence-based policing (EBP) approach, practically and academically skilled individuals, pracademics, have attracted attention as facilitating the merging of policing practice and research.

Using principles from EBP, and with a special focus on translating between policing practice, policy and research, this thesis aims to explore the characteristics of illicit drug markets with a place-based focus and to link this to the enhancement of EBP in Sweden. The theoretical base of the thesis is drawn from disorganization theory, routine activity theory and situational action theory, and these theories are combined with empirical studies from the research field of drug markets. This thesis argues for making use of pracademics to bridge the research-practice gap, a focus on ODSs, and the testing and tracking of methods such as hot spots policing, with an emphasis on properly implemented evidence-based methods and on the goals of enforcement strategies as a means of improving the effectiveness of drug-market policing.

Malmö: Malmö universitet, 2022. , p. 106

By Matt Freear and Andrew Glazzard

Communications and the tools of the media age have been at the centre of preventing and countering violent extremism (P/CVE) for many years. Often emerging in reaction to terrorist narratives, the emphasis has been on how to most impactfully distribute narratives that counter or present an alternative vision. The debate amongst practitioners has often treated young people as ‘target audiences’, identifying and using ‘credible messengers’, and designing creative digital communication tools to engage them most effectively. Despite the emergence of numerous ‘how-to’ guides and policy briefs, substantial criticisms around the theory, impact and ethics of such approaches remain largely unaddressed.

This Whitehall Report compares two P/CVE programmes in Kenya and Lebanon that independently came to the same conclusion: to counter the multiplicity of factors drawing young people into violent extremism, communications and media tools should be recast to serve the needs of young people, rather than treat them as an audience. This means understanding the perspectives and lived experiences of those young people involved in the programmes. The report describes the programmes’ communications outputs: digital media platforms, news reporting and campaigns led by young people and journalists in areas of Kenya and Lebanon particularly affected by violent extremism.

To provide practicable insights to those designing and implementing P/CVE programmes, the report uses a realist methodology that pays attention to the particulars of what works, for whom and where, by studying the context, mechanisms of change and outcomes of the two programmes. The report finds that mapping the media ecology of the two target locations informed programme activities: examining how young people are represented and the dominant narratives in the media helped to shape, target and prioritise participation. It also finds that media content was secondary to the process which led to the active, voluntary participation of young people. …

  Whitehall Report 4-21. London: Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies  (RUSI), 2021. 40p.

By Katya Migacheva and Jordan Reimer

  The following resource aims to serve as a guide for U.S. state governments as they seek to implement comprehensive targeted violence prevention (TVP) programming. It is not aimed to be prescriptive, but rather provide menus of options for what comprehensive TVP programming might look like at a state level. This resource lays out three specific categories of activities for state-level TVP implementation. The first (Preparation) and last (Monitoring) are "back-end" activities to help state governments lay the groundwork for effective programming and sustain those efforts in perpetuity. The middle category (Prevention) follows the public health model of violence prevention and incorporates four levels of prevention – Primordial, Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary – that address community and individual susceptibility to targeted violence. Guided by the broad mission statement (see below), each activity category (e.g., Preparation, Prevention, Monitoring) has been organized as a logic model, delineating individual goals to accomplish the mission, and corresponding objectives, tasks, outputs, and desired outcomes for each goal. For each output and outcome, or key performance indicators (KPIs) we propose measures of success and corresponding methods/scales to calculate those measures. We also suggest impact indicators to gauge the extent of achieving the overall mission. Finally, appendices lay out definitions of key terms, potential TVP stakeholders, references for targeted violence risk factors, scales for use in conducting measurements, and a references to materials used to develop this resource.    

Washington, DC: National Governors Association, 2022. 140p.

by Trevor Johnston, Erik E. Mueller, Irina A. Chindea, Hannah Jane Byrne, Nathan Vest, Colin P. Clarke, Anusree Garg, Howard J. Shatz

Violent nonstate actors (VNSAs) obtain money from multiple sources, both licit (e.g., donations and legitimate businesses) and illicit (e.g., extortion, smuggling, theft). They use that money to pay, equip, and sustain their fighters and to provide services to local populations, which can help build support for the groups, allowing them to extract resources, gain safe havens, and challenge state authority and territorial control. In this way, financial resources can prolong conflicts and undermine stabilization efforts after the fighting ends. Countering VNSA financing plays a critical role in degrading such organizations. Various means are available to disrupt financing. These include kinetic means, such as destroying resources or neutralizing leadership, and nonkinetic means, such as targeted financial sanctions and legal remedies. The counter–threat financing (CTF) tools that work best for transnational groups may not work as well for national ones, and some tools may prove counterproductive in certain situations. Which tools to use in a given case is not always obvious. The authors draw lessons from efforts against five VNSA groups to discover, in each case, how they financed their activities and for what purposes, as well as which methods to counter this financing worked best and which were counterproductive. The authors then consider what the U.S. Army can do to support counter–terrorism financing efforts.

Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2023. 386p.