By Jody van der Heyde, Andrew Faull and Martin Sycholt

Trust in the police is vital to a functioning democracy, but relations between South Africa’s residents and police have long been characterised by mistrust. This report introduces procedural justice as a cost-effective, evidence-informed practice that can increase public trust and confidence in the police, and enhance police legitimacy and social cohesion. The report provides an overview of the theory and presents data on trust, customer satisfaction and police morale in South Africa.

South Africa: Institute for Security Studies, 2023. 16p.

By Carole McCartney and Louise Shorter

The seizure, safe handling and secure storage of evidence during criminal investigations is pivotal to the successful detection and prosecution of offences. The safe retention of materials after an investigation closes, even post-conviction, is also critical both to the ability of the appellate system to function and for ‘cold cases’ to be reviewed. Yet despite periodic high-profile instances in which failures to ensure the integrity and retention of evidence have occurred, there is a reticence to admit to evidence being lost; in particular, to consider the issue on an aggregate rather than a case-by-case basis. This lack of transparency is compounded by an accountability deficit, in which the issue falls through regulatory gaps. Provoked to locate proof of lost evidence, this article examines police retention of investigative materials, and details the results of surveys undertaken with lawyers and miscarriage of justice campaigners (n = 65) and police (n = 87), and 21 interviews with serving and retired police officers. We identify ‘weak links’ in the evidence chain that need strengthening, including the enhancement of training, improved physical packaging and storage facilities, sufficient training of police staff and the creation of specialised ‘exhibits’ roles. Further to practical resource demands, the issue requires accessible data so that the problem can be acknowledged, and accountability and oversight mechanisms created to assure processes.

International Journal of Police Science & ManagementOnlineFirst 2023

By Peter Stout

Houston TX experienced a widely known failure of its police forensic laboratory. This gave rise to the Houston Forensic Science Center (HFSC) as a separate entity to provide forensic services to the City of Houston. HFSC is a very large forensic laboratory and has made significant progress at remediating the past failures and improving public trust in forensic testing. HFSC has a large and robust blind testing program, which has provided many insights into the challenges forensic laboratories face. HFSC’s journey from a notoriously failed lab to a model also gives perspective to the resource challenges faced by all labs in the country. Challenges for labs include the pervasive reality of poor- quality evidence. Also that forensic laboratories are necessarily part of a much wider system of interdependent functions in criminal justice making blind testing something in which all parts have a role. This interconnectedness also highlights the need for an array of oversight and regulatory frameworks to function properly. The major essential databases in forensics need to be a part of blind testing programs and work is needed to ensure that the results from these databases are indeed producing correct results and those results are being correctly used. Last, laboratory reports of “inconclusive” results are a significant challenge for laboratories and the system to better understand when these results are appropriate, necessary and most importantly correctly used by the rest of the system.

PNAS 2023 vol. 120, no. 41

By Melissa M. Labriola, Samuel Peterson, Jirka Taylor, Danielle Sobol, Jessica Reichert, Jon Ross, Jac Charlier, Sophia Juarez

Many law enforcement and other first responder agencies have adopted deflection as a front-line response to the increasing number of drug overdoses and deaths in the United States over the past two decades. Deflection programs aim to connect individuals with substance use disorder (not necessarily limited to opioids or one particular substance) who encounter the criminal justice system with treatment and other services according to the individual's needs.

This report describes the findings from a multi-site evaluation of law enforcement deflection in the United States. The authors describe how each program is implemented and identify key program facilitators and barriers. For two of the six sites, the authors conducted outcome analyses to determine whether the model is effective in reducing drug-related deaths and overdoses, arrests, and treatment admissions.

Key Findings

• Deflection programs in the United States can take many shapes and forms, but there are some trends emerging: gradual incorporation of additional pathways; an overall move toward greater complexity and breadth of service provision, including the coexistence of other diversion programs in the area; and a move toward the professionalization of deflection (e.g., needing own staff, formulation of best practices).

• Qualitatively, perspectives from stakeholders suggest positive results in terms of (1) individual participant journeys, (2) change in policing practice and views, (3) reductions in stigma, and (4) stakeholder and community buy-in.

• Facilitators of implementation can also be identified, primarily as strong partnerships and champions.

• Barriers include persistence of stigma, distrust of police, and challenges pertaining to services for people who use drugs writ large, such as treatment capacity and payment methods.

• The outcome analyses for one site (Lake County, Illinois) suggest a reduction in fatal overdoses and in property crime arrests, but findings for the other site (Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts) are mostly null, likely because of the small sample

Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2023. 52p.

By Dulani Woods, John S. Hollywood, Jeremy D. Barnum, Danielle Fenimore, Michael J. D. Vermeer, Brian A. Jackson

The advent of blockchain-based technologies has opened a new frontier for individuals wishing to conduct financial and other transactions remotely, anonymously, and without the need for a third party like a bank. Blockchain technology has various uses but is perhaps best known as the foundation for a certain type of digital currency called cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrency is increasingly an accepted form of payment in many legitimate business transactions, but it is also used to facilitate many illegal activities, in large part because of its capacity to facilitate mostly anonymous transactions remotely. As a result, law enforcement investigators need to develop new skills, competencies, and tools for ensuring justice. In support of the National Institute of Justice, researchers from RAND and the Police ExecutiveResearch Forum conducted a workshop with law enforcement practitioners, academics, and other experts. Workshop participants identified and priorit ized 24 research and development needs that, if invested in, would improve law enforcement's ability to adapt to these societal changes. These needs pertain to policies for digital key management, resources for law enforcement training on blockchain and cryptocurrency, and tools for investigations involving cryptocurrency.

In this report, the researchers detail the proceedings of the workshop, discuss the ten highest-priority needs identified by the participants, and provide additional context based on the participants' discussions. The participants prioritized needs associated with raising the level of knowledge for officers and investigators, training or hiring experts who can assist with investigations, and adapting existing policies and procedures to ensure that cryptocurrencies are handled responsibly.

Key Findings

• There are not enough law enforcement–specific blockchain and cryptocurrency training and experts to meet the demand for educating justice practitioners.

• Cryptocurrency can be transferred by anyone in possession of an easy-to-copy digital key. Individuals with copies of the keys may move assets before an agency can take possession.

• This digital key is merely a unique set of letters and/or numbers (i.e., text). This text allows the bearer to control digital assets of high value and should not be treated like other text-based information within a case file.

• Seized cryptocurrency assets can be transferred by anyone in possession of a digital key to a digital wallet of unknown ownership. This presents opportunities for officer misconduct.

• Blockchain and cryptocurrency are fast-moving, rapidly evolving technologies. Justice practitioners are having difficulty keeping up with the changes.

• There is a lack of expertise in all aspects of blockchain and cryptocurrency technologies across the justice system.

• Commercial cryptocurrency-tracking tools can be more expensive than an agency can afford. Open-source tools can require significant computing power.

• Once a problematic cryptocurrency wallet is identified by law enforcement (via subpoena or another method), there is no good way to notify other interested investigators in other jurisdictions.

Recommendations

• Identify best-practice policies and procedures for rapidly securing cryptocurrency assets during investigations.

• Develop best-practice policies and procedures (e.g., two-person systems) to minimize opportunities for mishandling cryptocurrency.

• Identify best-practice policies and procedures for handling, storing, transferring, and redacting digital cryptocurrency keys within record-management systems.

• Catalog and publicize the training resources that are already available, including training that is not tailored for justice practitioners.

• Develop regional or national sharing systems that facilitate sharing of training materials and actionable intelligence for ongoing cases (e.g., digital or cyber fusion centers).

• Develop model materials that can be easily adapted for training recruits, investigators, forensics experts, prosecutors, judges, and others.

• Conduct research to examine the balance of skills and expertise that law enforcement agencies look for when hiring and assess whether those are likely to meet current and future needs.

• Convene a standing group of practitioners and experts who can examine the “state of the possible” and generate requirements for research and development organizations.

• Work with federal, state, local, and private entities (e.g., the Regional Computer Forensics Laboratory, Lawyers Without Borders) to make available appropriate cryptocurrency-tracking resources so that costs can be more easily shared.

• Assess the costs and benefits of developing a private-sector clearinghouse that will allow the public sector and vetted private-sector entities to coordinate (similar to how the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children screens potentially abusive materials.

Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2023. 28p.

By Jeffrey A. Fagan and Amanda B. Geller

Following Soto v. State (1999), New Jersey was the first state to enter into a Consent Decree with the U.S. Department of Justice to end racially selective enforcement on the state’s highways. The Consent Decree led to extensive reforms in the training and supervision of state police troopers, and the design of information technology to monitor the activities of the State Police. Compliance was assessed in part on the State’s progress toward the elimination of racial disparities in the patterns of highway stops and searches. We assess compliance by analyzing data on 257,000 vehicle stops on the New Jersey Turnpike by the state police from 2005– 2007, the final months of the Consent Decree. Specifically, we exploit heterogeneity of officer and driver race to identify disparities in the probability that stops lead to a search. We assume a crime-minimizing or welfarist rationale for stops, under which race-neutral factors are equally likely to motivate stops, regardless of driver or passenger race. We also test a Fairness Presumption by comparing search patterns between driver-officer pairs where the driver and officer are different races, and a set of race-neutral benchmarks where the driver and officer are the same race. Results of fixed effects logistic regressions show that Black and Hispanic drivers, when stopped, are more than twice as likely as White drivers to be searched, regardless of officer race. The results also suggest that search patterns vary significantly by officer race: Black officers are less likely to conduct a search in the course of a stop than are White drivers. We also see significant interactions between the race of officers and that of the drivers they stop: Black drivers are significantly more likely to be searched by White officers than they are by Black officers; on the other hand, Hispanic drivers are significantly less likely to be searched by either Black or White officers than they are by Hispanic officers. Racial disparities in the selection of stopped drivers for search and in the rates of seizure of contraband suggest that despite institutional reforms under the Consent Decree in management and professionalization of patrol officers, there were no tangible gains in distributional equity. We review the design of the Consent Decree and the accompanying oversight mechanisms to identify structural weaknesses in external monitoring and institutional design in the oversight of the State Police that compromised the pursuit of equality goals.

J. SOC. POL'Y & L. 16 (2020). Available at:

By Laura Connelly, Roxy Legane, and Remi Joseph

The number of school-based police officers (SBPOs) across Greater Manchester is significantly increasing with at least 20 more officers being introduced for the 2020/2021 academic year. This is happening without due consultation with parents, teachers, young people, or wider communities. In response, this report explores the views and experiences of people who live and work in Greater Manchester in relation to police in schools. Drawing upon the survey responses of 554 people – including young people, teachers, parents, and community members – this report is by far the most comprehensive of its kind in the UK. Key Statistics 95% of respondents reported that they have not been consulted on the plans for more police in Greater Manchester schools. Almost 9 out of 10 respondents reported feeling negative about a regular police presence, with 7 out of 10 of these respondents very negative. Almost 2 in 5 young people who responded to the survey attend or have attended a school with a ‘regular police presence’. Almost 3 in 4 parents or guardians stated that they would have concerns about sending their children to a school with a regular police presence. Exacerbating Existing Inequalities SBPOs are disproportionately placed in schools with a high proportion of working class students and young people of colour. This was a major concern for survey respondents who believe that this will exacerbate existing inequalities. Responses from young people who attend schools in Greater Manchester with a regular police presence suggest that officers act in ways that discriminate against students of colour, and particularly Black students. As well as Black and Asian and/or working class students, concerns were also raised about the negative impact that police in schools can have on disabled students; LGBTQ+ students; Muslim students; Gypsy, Roma and Traveller students; and women/girls. Stigmatising Schools A broad cross-section of respondents – including teachers, young people, parents/guardians, and community members – felt that a regular police presence would lead to the stigmatisation of a school. Seventy percent of young people said that schools with a regular police presence would be viewed more negatively by society than those without. Only 8% said that they wouldn’t. etc.

Manchester, UK: Kids of Colour and Northern Police Monitoring Project, 2020. 55p.

By Kanna Hayashi , Tyson Singh Kelsall, Caitlin Shane , Zishan Cui., et al

Background

Several jurisdictions in Canada have recently considered decriminalizing possession of illicit drugs for personal use (henceforth, simple possession) as part of their responses to the ongoing drug toxicity/overdose crisis. In this context, we sought to examine an early implementation case of a de facto depenalization policy of sim‑ ple possession ofences in Vancouver, Canada, that was enacted in 2006. Specifcally, we characterized experiences of people who use drugs (PWUD) whose drugs were discretionally seized by police without arrest.

Methods

Data were derived from three prospective cohorts of community-recruited PWUD in Vancouver over 16 months in 2019–2021. We conducted multivariable generalized estimating equations analyses to determine the prevalence of and factors associated with drug seizure. Sub-analyses used data collected in 2009–2012 and examined the trends over time.

Results

Among 995 participants who were interviewed in 2019–2021, 63 (6.3%) had their drugs seized by police at least once in the past 6 months. In multivariable analyses, factors significantly associated with drug seizure included: homelessness (adjusted odds ratio [AOR]: 1.98; 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.09–3.61), working in the unregulated drug market (AOR: 4.93; 95% CI 2.87–8.49), and naloxone administration (AOR: 2.15; 95% CI 1.23– 3.76). In 2009–2012, 67.8% reported having obtained new drugs immediately after having their drugs seized by police. Odds of drug seizure were not significantly different between the two time periods (2019–2021 vs. 2009–2012) (AOR: 0.93; 95% CI: 0.64–1.35).

Conclusions

Despite the depenalization policy, the Vancouver Police Department has continued to seize illicit drugs from PWUD, even in cases where no arrest occurred. This policing practice may create health and safety risks for PWUD as it forces PWUD to increase the engagement with the unregulated illicit drug market. Our findings support calls for abolishing this often-undocumented discretionary policing practice that may exacerbate ongoing health inequities and interfere with peer-based overdose prevention efforts.

Harm Reduction Journal (2023) 20:117

Ben Grunwald and John Rappaport

“Wandering officers” are law-enforcement officers fired by one department, sometimes for serious misconduct, who then find work at another agency. Policing experts hold disparate views about the extent and character of the wandering-officer phenomenon. Some insist that wandering officers are everywhere—possibly increasingly so—and that they’re dangerous. Others, however, maintain that critics cherry-pick rare and egregious anecdotes that distort broader realities. In the absence of systematic data, we simply do not know how common wandering officers are or how much of a threat they pose, nor can we know whether and how to address the issue through policy reform.

In this Article, we conduct the first systematic investigation of wandering officers and possibly the largest quantitative study of police misconduct of any kind. We introduce a novel data set of all 98,000 full-time law-enforcement officers employed by almost 500 different agencies in the State of Florida over a thirty-year period. We report three principal findings. First, in any given year during our study, an average of just under 1,100 officers who were previously fired—three percent of all officers in the State—worked for Florida agencies. Second, officers who were fired from their last job seem to face difficulty finding work. When they do, it takes them a long time, and they tend to move to smaller agencies with fewer resources in areas with slightly larger communities of color. Interestingly, though, this pattern does not hold for officers who were fired earlier in their careers. Third, wandering officers are more likely than both officers hired as rookies and those hired as veterans who have never been fired to be fired from their next job or to receive a complaint for a “moral character violation.” Although we cannot determine the precise reasons for the firings, these results suggest that wandering officers may pose serious risks, particularly given how difficult it is to fire a police officer. We consider several plausible explanations for why departments nonetheless hire wandering officers and suggest potential policy responses to each.

129 Yale Law Journal 1676-1782 (2020)

By Rod K. Brunson and Ayanna Miller

The often-clandestine inner workings of the policing profession have been of considerable interest to scholars, policy makers, social justice activists, and everyday citizens. Technological innovations such as body-worn cameras, smartphones, and social media have allowed for increased public scrutiny of how officers carry out their duties. Recently, there has been intensified interest in the role of police and their suitability for addressing a wide range of important social issues. As various stakeholders consider impassioned calls for police reform, a comprehensive understanding of officer behavior is especially critical. Police observational research has historically used innovative methods to observe, document, and analyze police officer conduct. Herein, we investigate the evolution of police observational research and its many contributions and underscore the potential for future research.

Annu. Rev. Criminol. 2023. 6:205–18

By Abdul Nasser Rad, David S. Kirk, and William P. Jones

Recent discussions of police violence in the United States and the corresponding lack of accountability have shone a light on a highly debated agent opposing police reform—police unions. Although police unionism continues to be an understudied area, a recent wave of empirical investigations, both qualitative and quantitative, have contributed to a nascent understanding of the ways in which police union mechanisms facilitate police misconduct and violence. Accordingly, in this review we first discuss the origins of police unionism in the United States, illustrating how historical forces, including racial animus, have shaped the existing landscape. Then, we highlight significant empirical work exploring the relationship between police unionism and misconduct. Thereafter, we review the potential intervening mechanisms, which are employed in ways to reduce disciplinary consequences of misconduct and excessive use of force, undermine oversight of the police, and limit police transparency. We end with a set of recommendations on future avenues for research.

Annual Review of Criminology, 2023. 6:181–203

By Tamara D. Herold, Ph.D. Robin S. Engel, Ph.D. Nicholas Corsaro, Ph.D. Stacey L. Clouse

The gang and gun violence reduction project implemented in Las Vegas consisted of three components: hot spots deployment, focused deterrence, and place network investigations (PNI). This report focuses on a program review and process evaluation of the PNI initiative. The PNI strategy, also known as PIVOT (Place-based Investigations of Violent Offender Territories), is grounded in crime science theory and research, which consistently finds that crime is highly concentrated, and patterns of crime concentration generally persist in the same locations over time despite repeated police intervention (Andresen, & Malleson, 2011; Braga, Andresen, & Lawton, 2017; Weisburd, Bushway, Lum, & Yang, 2004, Wilcox & Eck, 2011). The strategy was designed and first implemented in Cincinnati, Ohio. It is based on the assumption that historical, or persistent, hot spots are the result of deeply entrenched crime place networks used by active offender groups. The PNI strategy requires police investigations to uncover crime place networks, and a local PNI Investigative Board to focus existing city/county resources to alter crime-facilitating place dynamics (Madensen et al., 2017). In early 2018, the LVMPD Command Staff, in consultation with the Director of Crime Analysis, selected a pilot project site within the bureau’s Northeast Area Command (NEAC) for PNI implementation. A specific condominium complex, small strip mall that housed a convenience store, and nearby multi-family unit housing was selected to serve as the primary focus of the intervention. The NEAC Captain assigned her FLEX (Flexible Deployment) team to implement the PNI strategy and serve as the primary investigative unit. The International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) / University of Cincinnati (UC) Center for Police Research and Policy arranged to provide technical assistance and training to LVMPD’s PNI investigative unit. An introductory training for investigators and internal/external partners was conducted in April 2018. On-going training and assistance were provided on a bi-weekly basis in the form of on-site meetings or telecommunication with strategy experts and police personnel involved in Cincinnati’s PNI implementation from May 1, 2018, until the end of the evaluation period (April 30, 2019). In order to better understand the process and influence of the pilot PNI program in Las Vegas, officials from LVMPD partnered with researchers from the Center for Police Research and Policy, along with academic partners from the University of Nevada Las Vegas (UNLV) to conduct a program review and process evaluation of the PNI initiative. Using bi-weekly investigative activity summaries and LVMPD reported crime incident data, this study addresses the following specific research questions: 1) What types of activities were conducted by the LVMPD PNI investigative unit in the targeted violent hot spot? Given that PNI is a recently developed strategy, LVMPD and other agencies interested in adopting the PNI strategy could benefit from systematic documentation of investigative and enforcement activities conducted by investigative units 2) What successes and obstacles were experienced by those responsible for implementing the PNI strategy in Las Vegas? For the purpose of this evaluation, 11 specific implementation dimensions (or general steps) were identified based on the process used to conduct previous place network investigations in Cincinnati, Ohio. The current assessment attempts to describe the general degree of program fidelity achieved by the LVMPD during PNI strategy implementation. 3) What was the impact of the LVMPD PNI strategy on gun-related crime in the targeted area? While the analysis presented within this evaluation is mostly exploratory in nature, given the relatively short intervention period and low overall crime numbers, it offers insight into how the PNI strategy, as implemented by the LVMPD, could impact violent crime targeted areas.

Cincinnati: UC Center for Police Research and Policy University of Cincinnati 2020. 35p.

By Deepak Premkumar, Thomas Sloan, Magnus Lofstrom, and Joseph Hayes

At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the criminal justice system was affected by public health measures such as the statewide shelter-in-place order, as well as state and local directives that altered interactions between law enforcement officers and the public, resulted in the early release of inmates, and modified bail procedures. This report takes a first step toward investigating California arrest trends during this period (through mid-2021). Like the rest of the nation, California experienced overall decreases in crime in 2020, likely due to fewer people leaving their homes, but there were increases in some crime categories, including homicides. The causes of the trends we have identified are hard to discern, given the highly unusual and challenging context of the pandemic.

Arrests began to fall precipitously in early March 2020, driven by reductions in misdemeanor arrests. Felony arrests briefly experienced significant declines but rose to around 10 percent below January 2020 levels by fall 2020. Though some COVID-related criminal justice policies and measures expired after a few months, California experienced persistent declines of 5 percent for felony arrests and 40 percent for misdemeanor arrests until at least July 2021—resulting in a rare near-convergence of these two arrest types. The reductions were largely among lower-level offenses related to drugs and driving.→

Californians staying home appeared to be a key driver of arrest trends during 2020, through reduced social interactions and police-public encounters. Changes in the number of people walking, driving, and using transit are consistent with initial decreases and subsequent rebounds in arrests during this period. The mobility-arrest relationship was not as close in 2021, when arrests did not fluctuate as much.→

In general, percent changes in arrests were similar across racial/ethnic groups. After the murder of George Floyd, there were 9 to 15 percent more misdemeanor arrests across all races compared to the preceding weeks. However, felony arrests of Black Californians spiked by 43 percent during this period—relative to increases of less than 10 percent for other races.→

Reductions in police stops and formal enforcement also contributed to declines in arrests. The state’s largest local law enforcement agencies made 35 percent fewer stops until at least the end of 2020. They also altered their handling of the stops they did make: officers were proportionally more likely to let people go without formal enforcement in the first few months of the pandemic, and later transitioned to citing and releasing stopped individuals in the field.→

Pandemic policies raised concerns about a “revolving door” effect—whereby people are repeatedly detained and released. Re-arrests as a proportion of arrests are a key indicator of this effect. In the months before COVID, about 40 percent of weekly arrests were re-arrests within a 90-day period; after holding steady during much of the pandemic, this share dropped sharply to 32 percent in June 2021. However, the felony re-arrest share increased from 29 percent to 32 percent before the June 2021 decline. Further study of re-arrests in relation to specific policies is warranted.→

Declines in arrests contributed to a 30 percent reduction in new admissions into jail and a 17 percent reduction in the jail population that persisted until at least December 2021. While it is clear that multiple factors contributed to a sustained decline in bookings and jail populations, the impact of any one policy is difficult to quantify.

San Francisco: Public Policy Institute of California, 2023. 35p→

By The St Louis Cty Police Dept

Spurred in part by a 2021 grant from the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA BWCPIP Grant # 15P BJA-21-GG-04437-BWCX), Missouri’s St. Louis County Police Department (SLCPD) expanded and refined its body-worn camera (BWC) program, acquiring an additional 100 BWCs to expand deployment to all sworn personnel. Concurrently, SLCPD developed helpful applications around their BWCs, integrating cameras from multiple sources into one readily accessible platform. Overall, the officers at SLCPD who spoke to CNA during a site visit in October 2022 feel the BWC system makes their jobs easier and increases personal safety. Department investment in the technical infrastructure as well as staff resources has allowed creative uses of the cameras and their data with practical results. Commitment and support from both the officers and the department leadership has led to a successful deployment of the camera systems. The integration of BWCs with automated license plate readers (ALPRs), Missouri Department of Transportation highway cameras, and other sources allows users to access video data from multiple sources. This integrated system, managed by the SLCPD Camera Systems Unit (CSU), turns SLCPD’s BWC system into an application that improves operations, efficiency, and officer safety. While automation helps efficiency in the field, the technology still adds labor hours and costs to handle the processing and storage of footage. According to SLCPD, the benefit of increased officer safety and the evidentiary value of BWCs are worth the operational and maintenance costs. The BWCs and their features have been used in several critical incidents to date. The footage often makes investigations more efficient because of the added digital evidence and saves time spent testifying in court. SLCPD has also used BWC footage in press releases, highlighting officers’ actions in the field.

Clayton, MO: St. Louis Police Department, 2023. 5p.

United States. Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency

From the document: "The federal government, critical infrastructure, and state, local, tribal, and territorial (SLTT) governments greatly depend upon open source software (OSS). OSS is software for which the human-readable source code is made available to the public for use, study, re-use, modification, enhancement, and re-distribution. OSS is part of the foundation of software used across critical infrastructure, supporting every single critical infrastructure sector [hyperlink] and every National Critical Function [hyperlink]: one study found that 96% of studied codebases across various sectors contain open source code, and 76% of code in studied codebases was open source. Therefore, to fulfill CISA's [Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency's] mission of understanding, managing, and reducing risks to the federal government and critical infrastructure, we must understand and protect the open source software that we rely upon. [...] CISA recognizes the immense benefits of open source software, which enables software developers to work at an accelerated pace and fosters significant innovation and collaboration. With these benefits in mind, this roadmap lays out how CISA will help enable the secure usage and development of OSS, both within and outside the federal government."

Washington. D.C United States. Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency . 2023. 8p.

United States. Department Of Homeland Security. Office Of Intelligence And Analysis

From the document: "The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Intelligence Enterprise Homeland Threat Assessment reflects the insights from across the Department, the Intelligence Community, and other critical homeland security stakeholders. It focuses on the most direct, pressing threats to our Homeland during the next year and is organized into four sections. We organized this assessment around the Department's missions that most closely align or apply to these threats--public safety, border and immigration, critical infrastructure, and economic security. As such, many of the threat actors and their efforts cut across mission areas and interact in complex and, at times, reinforcing ways. Going forward, the annual Homeland Threat Assessment will serve as the primary regular mechanism for articulating and describing the prevailing terrorism threat level, which has previously been done through our issuance of National Terrorism Advisory System (NTAS) bulletins. In the future, the issuance of NTAS bulletins will be reserved for situations where we need to alert the public about a specific or imminent terrorist threat or about a change in the terrorism threat level."

Washington. D.D. United States. Department Of Homeland Security. Office Of Intelligence And Analysis. 2023..

By Karen Bullock , Iain Agar , Matt Ashby , Iain Brennan, Gavin Hales , Aiden Sidebottom and Nick Tilley

Knife crime remains a major concern in England and Wales. Problem-oriented and public health approaches to tackling knife crime have been widely advocated, but little is known about how these approaches are understood and implemented by police practitioners. To address this knowledge gap, this article draws on semi-structured interviews and focus groups with 44 police personnel to consider the processes and challenges of applying problem-oriented and public health approaches to knife crime. Findings show that knife crime was seen as a complex social problem which would not be solved by ‘silver bullets’; prevention was prioritised and the limitations of enforcement were widely acknowledged; there was an emphasis on understanding and responding to vulnerability and risk; discussion of ‘holistic’ and ‘whole systems’ approaches was evident (but these concepts were rarely defined); and the problem of serious violence was viewed as a shared, multi-agency issue that the police could not tackle alone. Various challenges were also evident, most notably around analysis of the drivers and patterns of knife crime and the evaluation of knife crime interventions. The article concludes by discussing the implications of the findings for knife crime prevention and the implementation and advancement of problem-oriented and public health approaches to policing

Crime Science, 12(2): 2023

By Andy Higgins and Ruth Halkon

Public support and approval sit at the heart of the British policing model and are critical dependencies for effective policing. Although citizen attitudes have slipped out of formal policy focus over the last decade, a complex combination of factors – most obviously the recent set of misconduct scandals and cultural failings exposed within the Metropolitan Police in particular – have pulled questions of trust, confidence, and police legitimacy back into the spotlight. The first data to emerge from the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) following its hiatus during Covid, confirms a consistent deterioration in public sentiment towards the police, which has begun to spread into more ‘relational’ dimensions (of fairness and respectfulness), not just appraisals of service quality. The downturn in London is particularly stark. These conditions and their causes require action from police leaders and policy makers, and a range of ‘issue based’ reform efforts, reviews and change programmes are underway. Additionally, however, the strategic-level questions these shifts pose, about the future working relationship between police and public, demand that concerted attention should also be given to contact – the way that citizens experience ‘everyday’ interactions with the police, across a variety of contexts, and the attitudinal traces these episodes leave behind. Personal contact is what citizens consistently say affects their trust and confidence in police, and its impact can ripple beyond those directly involved, through ‘vicarious’ transmission (e.g., reports from family and friends) and media (and social media) coverage. It also seems to be an aspect of service delivery amenable to policy and practice change, drawing on a well-established evidence-base about what is likely to be effective. But contact is also an area of considerable flux and disruption. Right across society, technology is precipitating radical shifts in the way citizens communicate with each other and interact with businesses, organisations, and government services. Online commerce and service provision, social media, videoconferencing, artificial intelligence (AI) powered chatbots, and advanced analytics are all contributing to a much more complex and plural contact environment. These developments are shifting public expectations and promise real benefits in terms of the speed, efficiency, convenience, and choice available to citizens in their everyday lives. The pace of change, however, is such that the wider social implications are difficult to comprehend. Policing, of course, is not immune to these shifts and technologically enabled developments such as in online crime reporting, self-service portals, social media engagement, Body-Worn Video, live chat and video-link responses are increasingly coming to augment and meditate the public experience of dealing with the police. At a strategic level, the service seems optimistic about the potential for these and future innovations to generate mission critical efficiencies, optimise effectiveness, enable the sector to keep pace with public expectations, and promote public trust and confidence – although the mechanisms through which the latter might occur remain largely under-theorised. This report begins to address the interconnections between those two trajectories: the deterioration in police/public relations (and associated imperatives on policing to halt and reverse this), and the technological transformation of police/public contact. More specifically, it asks: what are the implications, opportunities, and risks for public confidence (and related attitudes) arising from the introduction of new technology into police/public contact experiences? Our investigation proceeds in three parts: • First (in Section 2) we revisit and summarise what is already known about the way police/public contact impacts on public confidence (and related attitudes) from research conducted in more ‘analogue’ times and contexts. • Second (in Section 3) we ask: what evidence is emerging, what is promising and what can be hypothesised, about how various forms of technology might impact on public experiences of contact, and the lasting impressions these leave behind? We present six promising mechanisms and one pressing risk. • Third (in Section 4) we conclude by considering the strategic implications for policing and present eight recommendations. Our analysis is informed by a literature review, analysis of survey data collected by the London Mayor’s Office of Policing and Crime (MOPAC), a survey of police contact management and community engagement leads, a roundtable discussion, and interviews and discussions with relevant experts and stakeholders.

London: Police Foundation, 2023. 57p.

By New York University School of Law, Policing Project

In response to the Gideon’s Army report indicating racial disparities in traffic stops, and the shooting of Jocques Clemmons, the Nashville Mayor’s Office asked the Policing Project to help develop strategies to address the disparities and improve community-police relations in Nashville. The Policing Project is an organization devoted to front-end democratic accountability to assure just and effective policing. The Policing Project talked with dozens of Nashville residents about their experiences with policing. Based on those conversations, we proposed to conduct a thorough assessment of the costs and benefits of using traffic stops to address crime. And we suggested that the City create a Steering Committee to guide work around community-police engagement and policing in Nashville. We conducted the traffic stop data work in collaboration with the Stanford Computational Policy Lab (SCPL), whose researchers performed the analysis. (The SCPL team’s more detailed report is included here as Appendix B.) The Metropolitan Nashville Police Department (MNPD) provided the necessary data, and has from the beginning shown a strong commitment to re-evaluating its traffic stop strategies and developing alternatives that can achieve public safety with fewer social costs. As the SCPL report shows, and as we summarize below, there are indeed notable racial disparities in traffic stops in Nashville. These disparities are higher for traffic stops around non-moving violations, such as broken taillights or expired tags. Disparity, however, is not necessarily evidence of discrimination. Any number of neutral factors, including officer deployment patterns or differences in rates of offending, may explain these and other disparities in the criminal justice system. MNPD explains these racial disparities in traffic stops on the ground that officers go where the crime is, and that in Nashville, high-crime neighborhoods tend to have larger minority populations. The SCPL analysis bears this out. However, even controlling for crime, unexplained racial disparity still remains. More importantly, the SCPL report shows that traffic stops are not an effective strategy for reducing crime. In particular, MNPD’s practice of making large numbers of stops in high crime neighborhoods does not appear to have any effect on crime. We make a number of recommendations, including that MNPD: • reduce the number of traffic stops • acknowledge black residents have been disproportionately affected by MNPD’s stop practices • monitor racial disparities on an ongoing basis • redeploy officer resources toward more effective crime-fighting tools • consider adopting a Neighborhood Policing strategy • post its department policies online • conduct a review of certain key policies such as use of force • conduct a review of training around use of force, traffic stops, and procedural justice • adopt a body camera policy with attention to transparency regarding the release of body camera footage In addition, we suggest that Nashville engage in a public process of strategic planning around public safety, bringing together the voices of the community and MNPD officials in doing so.

New York: Policing Project, 2023. 27p.

By Uttara M Ananthakrishnan, Jason Chan, Yicheng Song

One of the most acute social justice problems in the United States is the direct conflict between police and minorities. Media coverage of police brutality instances not only allow such inequitable practices come to light, but is an important step towards the reform of inappropriate policing. However, it is theoretically unclear whether the reporting of excessive use of police force on minorities can have a tangible impact on subsequent policing outcomes. In this paper, we aim to answer the question of whether and how digital news on police brutality is effective in shaping subsequent police actions. To address this question, we construct a cross-sectional dataset of news reports of police violence and police traffic stop records. Under a difference-in-difference framework, we find that news reports on police brutality reduces police stops of minorities. Additionally, we find that news with sad frames are more effective in effectuating change in policing behaviors. Finally, we learn that the impact of news reports are less effective in minority-dominated areas and high-crime areas.

SSRN 2022. 40p.