By David Weisburd George Mason University, Hebrew University Taryn Zastrow

Recent data in New York City suggest that violent crime is on the rise. However, over the last three decades, there has been a more than 70% decline in index crimes as reported by the FBI. This led to a growing perception, especially among critics of policing, that crime in NYC had become a marginal problem, or at least that it had declined to levels such that there was no need to place too much emphasis on crime control. Combined with concerns about police abuses and claims of disparities in policing in minority and disadvantaged communities, this fueled calls for defunding the police. In this report, we focus on the high-crime hot spots where 25% and 50% of NYC crimes were committed. The crime numbers on those streets suggest that, despite the encouraging overall crime decline over the past few decades, many city streets continue to have very high crime levels that need to be addressed by police and other agents of the city government. Our report looks beyond general crime statistics to the hot spots of crime where much crime in a city is concentrated. Looking at NYPD crime reports for 2010, 2015, and 2020, we find that about 1% of streets in NYC produce about 25% of crime, and about 5% of streets produce about 50% of crime. This is consistent across the three years, showing that a very small proportion of streets in the city are responsible for a significant proportion of the crime problem. Mapping crime in NYC, we found that high-crime streets are spread throughout the city, though concentrated in Manhattan, the Bronx, and Brooklyn. In turn, we observed a good deal of street-by-street variability, with the highest-crime streets often adjacent to streets with little or no crime. This means that it is misleading to classify whole neighborhoods as crime hot spots, since the majority of streets—even in higher-crime areas—are not. This is an important lesson for police and ordinary citizens who mistakenly see very large areas as crime-ridden. We also found a good deal of stability in the locations of crime hot spots. Nearly all the streets that were hot spots as we have defined them in 2010 were also hot spots in 2020.

New York: Manhattan Institute, 202. 30p.

By The Virginia Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights

On February 18, 2021, the Virginia Advisory Committee (Committee) to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (Commission) adopted a proposal to undertake a study of police oversight and accountability in the Commonwealth. The focus of the Committee’s inquiry was to examine law enforcement accountability and oversight structures in Virginia to better understand their effectiveness and impact. From a civil rights perspective, the Committee sought to consider the role such accountability structures have in ensuring equal protection of the laws and in the administration of justice, and the impact they may have on any disparities in police contact and use of force based on race, color, sex, disability, and national origin. As part of this inquiry the Committee heard testimony via video conference held in a series of eight public meetings that took place between July 2021 and May 2022.1 The following report results from a review of testimony provided at these meetings, combined with written testimony submitted during this timeframe. It begins with a brief background of the issues to be considered by the Committee. It then identifies primary findings as they emerged from this testimony. Finally, it makes recommendations that address related civil rights concerns. This report focuses on civil rights and police accountability structures in Virginia. While other important topics may have surfaced throughout the Committee’s inquiry, matters that are outside the scope of this specific civil rights mandate are left for another discussion. This report and the recommendations included within it were adopted by a unanimous vote of the Committee members present at the Committee meeting on May 31, 2023. 2

Washington, DC: USCCR, 2023. 57p.

By Stephanie A. Wiley https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9533-008swiley@sfu.ca, Lee Ann Slocum https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8441-0546, and Finn-Aage Esbensen

Objectives: Individual- and school-level factors associated with youth being stopped, searched, or arrested in school are identified. Correlates of community-based contact are also examined. Methods: Longitudinal student surveys and corresponding school-level data come from 21 middle and high schools in 6 districts in St. Louis County, Missouri. Multilevel multinomial logistic regression was used to assess factors related to a three-category dependent variable, distinguishing youth with: (1) no police contact, (2) in-school contact, and (3) out-of-school contact. Independent variables capture student-level demographics, behavior, experiences, and perceptions and school-level characteristics and practices. Results: Factors associated with in-school contact include substance use, peer associations, prior contact, and prior school sanctions. Odds of school-based contact also increase when youth are less aware of school rules and perceive greater disorder. Among school-level characteristics, only officers responding to school problems is significantly associated with in-school contact. Conclusions: There is some consistency in individual-level factors associated with police contact across locations, particularly related to prior sanctions, but findings highlight potential mechanisms that vary across contexts. This study also provides evidence that some schoolwide responses may contribute to youth's likelihood of having police contact in school, but solutions should consider the fluidity of contact in schools and communities.

Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency. Volume 60, Issue 5 Aug 2023 Pages 543-699

By Mark Shaw

Drug seizures are widely referred to in the media and academic reporting on drug trafficking and organised crime. Everyone knows their limitations. But what if seizures represent the exact opposite of what we generally think them to be? That is, not a reflection of state efficiency, but rather cracks in systems of political protection. If that is the case, they may appear more regularly at some times rather than others. A detailed study of West African cocaine seizures in the context of periods of political instability over a twenty-year period suggest this association is worth exploring. Key findings ∙ Drug seizures in West Africa have been concentrated in two periods: 2003-2012 and more lately in the period from 2019, with a ‘seizure drought’ in between. ∙ At a regional level, increases in seizures correlated with period of declining political stability while declines in seizures occur during periods of political stability. ∙ This relationship can also be seen in countries with cycles of conflict and instability, namely GuineaBissau and Mali. Notably, seizures occur in the period just before instability increases. ∙ As there is strong evidence of political protection over the drug trafficking economy in the region, increases in seizures may align with periods when political protection systems for trafficking weaken or crack. Seizures decline again when new systems of political protection are put in place. ∙ One outlier is Nigeria which has a very stable and low level of seizures. This is a reflection of a longstanding and lower-level system of criminal protection, partly the outcome of the fact that most illicit profits are generated outside the drug sector. ∙ This suggests that seizure data is important – but not for the reasons generally accepted – and when carefully examined can be read as a reflection of changes in the political economy. If so, they may serve as ‘warning flares’ of pending political instability

ENACT-Africa, 2021. 24p.

By Jonathan P. Caulkins, Kristina Vaia Reimer

Background: Nations wrestle with whether to prohibit products that can harm consumers and third parties but whose prohibition creates illegal markets. For example, cannabis is banned in most of the world, but supply for non-medical use has been legalized in Uruguay, Canada, and much of the United States and possession restrictions have been liberalized in other countries. Likewise, supply and possession of fireworks have been subject to varying degrees of prohibition in multiple countries, with those bans prompting significant evasion. Methods: Current and past history of fireworks regulations, sales, and harms are reviewed and contrasted with those for cannabis. The focus is on the United States, but literature from other countries is incorporated when possible and appropriate. This extends the insightful literature comparing drugs to other vices (such as gambling and prostitution) by comparing a drug to a risky pleasure that is not seen as a vice but which has been subject to prohibition. Results: There are many parallels between fireworks and cannabis in legal approaches, harms to “users”, harms to others, and other externalities. In the U.S. the timing of prohibitions were similar, with prohibitions on fireworks being imposed a little later and repealed a little sooner. Internationally, the countries that are strictest with fireworks are not always those that are strictest with drugs. By some measures, harms are of roughly similar magnitude. During the last years of U.S. cannabis prohibition, there were about 10 emergency department (ED) events per million dollars spent on both fireworks and illegal cannabis, but fireworks generated very roughly three times as many ED events per hour of use/enjoyment. There are also differences, e.g., punishments were less harsh for violating fireworks prohibitions, fireworks consumption is heavily concentrated in just a few days or weeks per year, and illegal distribution is primarily of diverted legal products, not of illegally produced materials. Conclusions: The absence of hysteria over fireworks problems and policies suggests that societies can address complex tradeoffs involving risky pleasures without excessive acrimony or divisiveness when that product or activity is not construed as a vice. However, the conflicted and time-varying history of fireworks bans also show that difficulty balancing freedoms and pleasure with harms to users and others is not restricted to drugs or other vices. Use-related harms fell when fireworks were banned and rose when those bans were repealed, so fireworks prohibitions can be seen as “working” from a public health perspective, but not well enough for bans to be employed in all times or places

International Journal of Drug Policy. Volume 118, August 2023,

In the fall of 1983, the Los Angeles Police Department sent police officers into elementary schools to teach the Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) Program. Within a decade DARE had become the nation’s preeminent anti-drug education program. Yet the DARE program accomplished much more than teaching kids to resist drugs. DARE shifted the responsibility of preventing drug use from social and public-health policy to local, police-led, educative projects that taught personal responsibility, the value of morally strengthened families, and respect for the authority of the police. By stressing the consequences of poor behavior and demanding respect for law and order, DARE attempted to cultivate popular consent for policies that divorced drug use from social and economic conditions. DARE’s approach helped justify reductions in social welfare spending and the expansion of policing and incarceration during the 1980s and 1990s.

Modern American History (2022), 5, 313–337

John R. Pamplin II, Saba Rouhani,, Corey S. Davis, Carla King, and Tarlise N. Townsend,

The US overdose crisis continues to worsen and is disproportionately harming Black and Hispanic/Latino people. Although the “War on Drugs” continues to shape drug policy—at the disproportionate expense of Black and Hispanic/Latino people—states have taken some steps to reduce War on Drugs–related harms and adopt a public health–centered approach. However, the rhetoric regarding these changes has, in many cases, outstripped reality. Using overdose Good Samaritan Laws (GSLs) as a case study, we argue that public health–oriented policy changes made in some states are undercut by the broader enduring environment of a structurally racist drug criminalization agenda that continues to permeate and constrict most attempts at change. Drawing from our collective experiences in public health research and practice, we describe 3 key barriers to GSL effectiveness: the narrow parameters within which they apply, the fact that they are subject to police discretion, and the passage of competing laws that further criminalize people who use illicit drugs. All reveal a persisting climate of drug criminalization that may reduce policy effectiveness and explain why current reforms may be destined for failure and further disadvantage Black and Hispanic/Latino people who use drug

Am J Public Health. 2023;113(S1):S43–S48. https://doi.org/ 10.2105/AJPH.2022.307037)

By Tobias Kammersgaard

Background: In 2018 the Norwegian government appointed a committee to prepare the implementation of a drug decriminalization reform. The overall goal of the committee was to propose a model where responsibility for society’s response to the use and possession of illegal drugs for personal use would be transferred from the justice sector to the health service, under the catchphrase ‘from punishment to help’. While the proposal ultimately did not get the necessary backing in parliament, the proposed reform still constitutes a very comprehensive and recent proposal for reforming national drug policy and it provides an ideal case for studying contemporary discourses on ‘drug decriminalization’. Methods: The analysis of this reform proposal is guided by the post-structuralist “What’s the Problem Represented to be” (WPR) approach, which is used for investigating the problem representation(s) in the proposal, as well as the rationalities, practices and deep-seated assumptions underpinning these. In doing this, the paper explores how the strategy represents both changes and continuities in discourses around illicit drugs and the people who use them. Results: Based on the WPR approach, two problem representations in the proposal are identified: the ‘problem of illicit drug use’ and the ‘problem of criminalization’. However, the ‘problem of illicit drug use’ is argued to be the authoritative representation that takes precedence over the other. In that regard, the paper points to how the proposed shift from the justice sector to the health sector would only be partial, given that the role of the police and drug law enforcement would be retained in the reform. Furthermore, the paper points to how illicit drug use continued to be fundamentally pathologized in the proposed reform. Conclusion: The paper concludes with a discussion about the overall ambition of shifting from a crime-centered to a health-centered approach to people who use drugs and some reflections on the potential of an additional rights-based approach is provided.

International Journal of Drug Policy. Volume 113, March 2023, 103963.

By Kellen Russoniello , Sheila P. Vakharia , Jules Netherland , Theshia Naidoo , Haven Wheelock , Tera Hurst and Saba Rouhani

In November 2020, Oregon voters approved Measure 110, a ballot initiative that decriminalized possession of small quantities of all drugs and allocated hundreds of millions of dollars annually to health services for people who use drugs. Implementation of Measure 110 is ongoing, but several effects are noticeable in the first two years since the measure passed. Among these are substantial decreases in possession of controlled substances arrests and an infusion of funding into harm reduction services that have not traditionally enjoyed a sustainable funding source. This paper analyzes the provisions of Measure 110, examines its early impacts, successes, and challenges, and outlines lessons that jurisdictions contemplating decriminalizing drug possession in the U.S. and globally should consider. \

Drug Science, Policy and Law Volume 9: 1–16 , 2023

By Jack K. Reed

In 2013, following the passage of Amendment 64 which allows for the retail sale and possession of marijuana, the Colorado General Assembly enacted Senate Bill 13-283. This bill mandated that the Division of Criminal Justice in the Department of Public Safety conduct a study of the impacts of Amendment 64, particularly as these relate to law enforcement activities. This report seeks to establish and present the baseline measures for the metrics specified in S.B. 13-283 (C.R.S. 24-33.4-516). The information presented here should be interpreted with caution. The majority of the data sources vary considerably in terms of what exists historically and the reliability of some sources has improved over time. Consequently, it is difficult to draw conclusions about the potential effects of marijuana legalization and commercialization on public safety, public health, or youth outcomes, and this may always be the case due to the lack of historical data. Furthermore, the measurement of available data elements can be affected by very context of marijuana legalization. For example, the decreasing social stigma regarding marijuana use could lead individuals to be more likely to report use on surveys and also to health workers in emergency departments and poison control centers, making marijuana use appear to increase when perhaps it has not. Additionally, law enforcement officials and prosecuting attorneys continue to struggle with enforcement of the complex and sometimes conflicting marijuana laws that remain. Finally, the lack of comparable Federal data across many metrics makes it difficult to compare changes in Colorado to other jurisdictions which may have not legalized marijuana. In sum, then, the lack of pre-commercialization data, the decreasing social stigma, and challenges to law enforcement combine to make it difficult to translate these preliminary findings into definitive statements of outcomes.

Denver: Colorado Department of Public Safety Division of Criminal Justice Office of Research and Statistics , 2021. 188p.

By Corey Whichard and Katelyn Kelley

There is limited research on internet sting operations. It is unclear whether these operations are effective at deterring or reducing crime. Using administrative data, WSIPP examined 299 Net Nanny arrests made between August 2015 and September 2022. Most arrests (96%) came from one of two sting scenarios. Scenario #1 (57%): Undercover officers posed online as a minor posting personal ads on dating websites or internet forums. Scenario #2 (39%): Undercover officers posed online as a parent seeking adults to engage in sexual activity with their children. WSIPP compared two groups: 1) individuals with Net Nanny cases that resulted in conviction and 2) individuals with cases from the same time period that resulted in conviction for similar offenses (not Net Nanny). Individuals in both groups exhibit similar demographic characteristics and criminal history. On average, across these specific measures individuals convicted through Net Nanny resemble people convicted of sexual crimes against minors who were arrested via traditional police tactics.

Olympia: Washington State Institute for Public Policy . 2023. 32p.

By Miguel A. Mascarúa Lara

How does imperfect law enforcement affect drug trafficking, predation on firms, informality, and aggregate production? To quantify it, a general equilibrium occupational model is developed in which there is room for drug trafficking, crime against businesses, and tax evasion in the presence of imperfect institutions. Detailed micro-level data on business victimization and cartels in Mexico are used to calibrate the model. It is found that the imperfect application of the law generates considerable losses in production derived from a misallocation of occupations and resources. Finally, using counterfactual simulations, the effects of policies that seek to improve the allocation of resources are calculated. With complete law enforcement in the illegal drug market, the workers in that sector would relocate to the productive sector, and aggregate production would increase. Without crimes against businesses, which would allow a reallocation of work, capital, and occupations to the formal sector, production would increase even more. However, the largest effects come from a decrease in informality

Banco de México Working Papers N° 2022-16 . Mexico City, Bank of Mexico, 2022. 55p.

By Giulia Berlusconi

This paper investigates the impact of the targeting of key players by law enforcement on the structure, communication strategies, and activities of a drug trafficking network. Data are extracted from judicial court documents. The unique nature of the investigation – which saw a key player being arrested mid-investigation but police monitoring continuing for another year – allows to compare the network before and after targeting. This paper combines a quantitative element where network statistics and exponential random graph models are used to describe and explain structural changes over time, and a qualitative element where the content of wiretapped conversations is analysed. After law enforcement targeting, network members favoured security over efficiency, although criminal collaboration continued after the arrest of the key player. This paper contributes to the growing literature on the efficiency-security trade-off in criminal networks, and discusses policy implications for repressive policies in illegal drug markets.

Global Crime . 2022, Vol. 23, No. 1, 44–64

By Beatriz Magaloni, Edgar Franco Vivanco, Vanessa Melo

State interventions against drug trafficking organizations (DTOs) sometimes work to improve security, but often exacerbate violence. To understand why, this paper offers a theory about different social order dynamics among five types of criminal regimes – Insurgent, Bandit, Symbiotic, Predatory, and Anarchic. These differ according to whether criminal groups confront or collude with state actors; predate or cooperate with the community; and hold a monopoly or contest territory with rival DTOs. Police interventions in these criminal orders pose different challenges and are associated with markedly different local security outcomes. Evidence for the theory is provided by the use a multi-method research design combining quasi-experimental statistical analyses, extensive qualitative research and a large N survey in the context of Rio de Janeiro’s “Pacifying Police Units” (UPPs), which sought to reclaim control of the slums from organized criminal groups.

American Political Science Review. 2020. 51p.

By Ronald van Steden and Shanna Mehlbaum

WhatsApp Neighbourhood Crime Prevention (WNCP) groups are popular in the Netherlands. As a basic assumption, this kind of digital neighbourhood watch could prevent crime, but what is the evidence? Drawing on a mixture of qualitative research and a review of additional publications, we conclude that WNCP groups stimulate social cohesion rather than prevent crime. We reach our conclusion by applying the evaluation EMMIE framework – an acronym for Effect, Mechanisms, Moderators, Implementation and Economics – to the available data. A point for further discussion is the limited scope of the economic dimension. Moral costs must be calculated, too, as WNCP groups tend to deepen divisions between groups of citizens and fuel exclusionary practices in the name of community safety.

Crime, Media, CultureVolume 18, Issue 4 Nov 2022 Pages 491-624

By  Martin Lundsteen &  Miquel Fernández González 

Recent studies have argued for more nuanced understandings of zero tolerance (ZT) policing, rendering it essential to analyze the significance and actual workings of the policies in practice, including the context in which they are introduced. This article aims to accomplish this through a comparison of two case studies in Catalonia: one in the neighborhood of Raval in Barcelona and one in Salt—a municipality in the comarca (or county) of Girona. We identify a transformation in the use of ZT policies in Catalonia and a con‑tradiction between their social effects and proclaimed objectives. This article attempts to address how specific sociocultural groups gain power and privilege from these policies. The main argument is that a set of commonsensical ideas have become hegemonic, which allows and naturalizes certain sociocultural practices in urban space, while persecuting oth‑ers, fundamentally pitting two categories against each other: the desired civil citizen and the undesirable and uncivil stranger

Critical Criminology volume 29, pages837–852 (2021)

By Brunilda Pali and Marc Schuilenburg
The “smart city” has become the latest urban buzzword to rethink the elementary functions of the modern city. It attracts money, corporate power, and private tech companies (e.g. Tesla, Google, Cisco, IBM). An important reason why the smart city has become such a popular brand is the fact that it is presented as a value-neutral, objectivist, rational, and evidence-base concept. In this paper, we will question what we call the “non-ideology” ideology of the smart city and argue that the phenomenon of the smart city demands a critical criminological response as much as a philosophical one. First, we argue that instruments which were traditionally classified as tools of surveillance and control are now rebranded as essential components of the smart city-package in order to increase the properness of the city. Second, we consider how the smart city oscillates within a social imaginary populated by feelings of fear and fantasy. We conclude by suggesting that the smart city not only reproduces the social order, but also produces new social categories out of new forms of smart governance of crime and disorder.

Critical Criminology; 2019; Vol. 27; iss. 4; pp. 1 - 14

By Sugarman, Eli; Daniel, Michael; François, Camille; Chowdhury, A. K. M. Azam; Chowdhury, Rumman; Willner, Dave; Roth, Yoel

From the document: "Digital technologies continue to evolve at breakneck speed, unleashing a dizzying array of society-wide impacts in their wake. In the last quarter of 2022 alone: Meta, Accenture, and Microsoft announced a massive partnership to establish immersive spaces for enterprise environments; Elon Musk took over Twitter; the third-largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world collapsed overnight; the European Union's landmark Digital Services Act came into force; and generative artificial intelligence ('GAI') tools were released to the public for the first time. Within a fifty-day span, the outline of a new internet age came into sharper focus. In December 2022, the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab began to assemble a diverse array of experts who could generate an action-oriented agenda for future online spaces that can better protect users' rights, support innovation, and incorporate trust and safety principles--and do so quickly. [...] The task force specifically considered the emerging field of 'trust and safety' (T&S) and how it can be leveraged moving forward. That field provides deep insights into the complex dynamics that have underpinned building, maintaining, and growing online spaces to date. Moreover, the work of T&S practitioners, in concert with civil society and other counterparts, now rests at the heart of transformative new regulatory models that will help define how technology is developed in the twenty-first century. 'This executive report captures the task force's key findings and provides a short overview of the truths, trends, risks, and opportunities that task force members believe will influence the building of online spaces in the immediate, near, and medium term. It also summarizes the task force's recommendations for specific, actionable interventions that could help to overcome systems gaps the task force identified.'"

Atlantic Council Of The United States. Digital Forensic Research Lab. 2023. 150p.

By Graeme Blair et al.

More than one-fourth of the world's population lives in conditions of in-security because of high levels of crime and violence, especially in the Global South. Although the police are central to reducing crime and violence, they are also often per-petrators of unjust harm against citizens.We investigated the effects of community policing, a set of practices designed to build trust between citizens and police, increase the co-production of public safety, and reduce crime. Community policing is meant to improve outcome by increasing engagement between citizens and police through increased foot patrols, community meetings, and the adoption of problem-oriented policing strat-egies that address concerns raised by citizens.When cooperation leads to effective police responses, this approach reinforces citizen trust and facilitates further cooperation, creating a virtuous cycle. Community policing has beenimplementedaroundtheworldoneverycon-tinent. However, although there is evidence for its positive effects in rich countries, there is no systematic evidence about whether com-munity policing effectively generates trust and reduces crime in the Global South.

Science. 2021 Nov 26;374(6571):eabd3446. doi: 10.1126/science.abd3446. Epub 2021 Nov 26. PMID: 34822276.

By  Annabelle Heckler, Gin Armstrong, Derek Seidman, and Katie Unger , et al.

  This dangerous truth has never been clearer. After the police murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Rayshard Brooks sparked the largest sustained mass mobilization in U.S. history in 2020, conversations about police accountability and police budgets moved from activist circles to the mainstream. At the same time, after years of deafening silence, some of the largest corporations in the world made public statements in support of Black Lives Matter. Yet, beyond the black squares on Instagram and tweets demanding justice for Black people murdered by police, many of these same corporations have continued to fund the very systems that put Black lives in danger.

Color of Change. Public Accountability Initiative (LittleSis), 2021. 53p.