By Alexandra Gannoni , Alexandra Voce, Sarah Napier, Hayley Boxall and Dana Thomsen

This study reviews initiatives that aim to prevent child sexual abuse material (CSAM) offending, including evidence of effectiveness. Information was sourced via a literature search and input from an international expert advisory group. The study identified 74 initiatives in 16 countries, and 34 eligible studies measuring implementation and effectiveness.

The CSAM offending prevention initiatives identified in the study include helplines, therapeutic treatment and psychoeducation, online self-management courses, education and awareness campaigns, and other forms of support. Importantly, findings indicate that media and social media campaigns have successfully reached large numbers of offenders, both detected and undetected. While outcomes of programs are mixed, findings indicate that prevention initiatives can encourage help-seeking, reduce risk factors for offending, enhance protective factors, and reduce contact sexual offending against children. Findings also suggest that initiatives aimed at contact child sexual abuse offenders are not necessarily effective in reducing CSAM offending. Evaluations of initiatives aimed specifically at CSAM offending show promise but are limited methodologically. Further and more robust evaluations are required to determine their effect on CSAM use.

Research Report no. 28. Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology.2023. 125p.

By Roderic Broadhurst, Matthew Ball, Chuxuan Jiang, Joy Wang and Harshit Trivedi

Opioids, including the highly potent synthetic opioids fentanyl and carfentanil, are commonly sold on illicit cryptomarkets or Tor darknet markets. Data collected throughout 2019 from 12 large darknet markets that sold opioids enabled observation of the impact of law enforcement seizures and voluntary or scam market closures on the availability of fentanyl and other opioids.

Trends in opioid and fentanyl availability before and after law enforcement interventions indicate whether market operators and sellers are deterred and whether market closures lead to displacement, dispersal or substitution. Evidence of all of these outcomes was present in both descriptive and trend analyses, although most effects were short lived. Market closures, especially law enforcement seizures, reduced the availability of opioids, in particular fentanyl, as well as increasing prices and displacing vendors to other markets. Market closures also led vendors to substitute fentanyl for other opioids or other illicit drugs.

Research Report no. 18. Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology, 2021. 73p.

By Geoffrey Carney-Knisely , Marquianna Griffin , Alaxandria Crawford , Kamesha Spates and Parvati Singh

The suicide rate for Black youth has increased by 60% between 2007 and 2020. Direct or vicarious racial trauma experienced through exposure to police brutality may underlie these concerning trends.MethodsWe obtained nationally aggregated monthly counts of suicides for non-Hispanic Black and White youth (age ≤ 24 years) and adults (age > 24 years) from the National Mortality Vital Statistics restricted-use data files provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, from 2013 to 2019. Monthly counts of Black youth suicides constituted our main outcome. We defined our exposure as the monthly counts of police killings of unarmed Black persons over 84 months (2013 to 2019), retrieved from the Mapping Police Violence database. We used ARIMA (AutoRegressive Integrated Moving Average) time-series analyses to examine whether Black youth suicides increased within 0 to 3 months following police killings of unarmed Black persons, controlling for autocorrelation and corresponding series of white youth suicides.ResultsSuicides among Black youth increase by ~1 count within three months following an increase in police killings of unarmed Black persons (coefficient=0.95,p<0.05), which approximates to about 267 suicides among Black youth over our study period. The observed increase in suicides concentrates among Black male youth.

Annals of Epidemiology. Volume 94, June 2024, Pages 91-99. June 2024.

By Ben Grunwald, John Rappaport and Michael Berg

Private security officers outnumber police by a wide margin, and the gap may be growing. As cities have claimed to defund the police, many have quietly expanded their use of private security, reallocating spending from the public to the private sector. It is difficult to know what to make of these trends, largely because we know so little about what private security looks like on the ground. On one prevalent view of the facts, a shift from public to private security would mean little more than a change of uniform, as the two labor markets are deeply intertwined. Indeed, academics, the media, popular culture, and the police themselves all tell us that private security is some amalgam of a police retirement community and a dumping ground for disgraced former cops. But if, instead, private officers differ systematically from the public police—and crossover between the sectors is limited—then substitution from policing to private security could drastically change who is providing security services.

We bring novel data to bear on these questions, presenting the largest empirical study of private security to date. We introduce an administrative dataset covering nearly 300,000 licensed private security officers in the State of Florida. By linking this dataset to similarly comprehensive information about public law enforcement, we have, for the first time, a nearly complete picture of the entire security labor market in one state. We report two principal findings. First, the public and private security markets are predominantly characterized by occupational segregation, not integration. The individuals who compose the private security sector differ markedly from the public police; they are, for example, significantly less likely to be white men. We also find that few private officers, roughly 2%, have previously worked in public policing, and even fewer will go on to policing in the future. Second, while former police make up a small share of all private security, roughly a quarter of cops who do cross over have been fired from a policing job. In fact, fired police officers are nearly as likely to land in private security as to find another policing job, and a full quarter end up in one or the other. We explore the implications of these findings, including intersections with police abolition and the future of policing, at the paper’s close.

Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, Forthcoming . U of Chicago, Public Law Working Paper No. 850. University of Chicago Coase-Sandor Institute for Law & Economics Research Paper No. 1004. Duke Law School Public Law & Legal Theory Series No. 2024-24

MAY CONTAIN MARKUP

By Brian E. McKnight

FROM THE PREFACE: “In moving down through this nested hierarchy of organizational types, we reach one of the key steps at a level where the social units are distinct as unique cultural and political entities. What was peculiarly Byzantine, or peculiarly Chinese, about the perception of law-enforcement problems and responses and about the ways in which lawbreakers were treated? These attributes, which distinguish one such political entity from another, are simply parts of our definition of what it is to be Chinese or Byzantine or Roman. Such defining attributes evolve over time. The Chinese language has changed from the time of the Shang dynasty to today. However, the changes in these fundamental attributes are evolutionary, not revolutionary. Despite the ways in which it has changed, the Chinese language has remained the Chinese language..”

Cambridge University Press. 1992. 572p.

Edited by Yvonne Daly

Police Custody in Ireland brings together experts from policing studies, law, criminology, and psychology, to critically examine contemporary police custody in Ireland, what we know about it, how it operates, how it is experienced, and how it might be improved. This first-of-its-kind collection focuses exclusively on detention in Garda Síochána stations, critically examining it from human rights and best practice perspectives. It examines the physical environment of custody, police interview techniques, existing protections, rights, and entitlements, and experiences of specific communities in custody, such as children, ethnic minorities, non-English speakers, the Mincéir/Traveller community, and those with intellectual disabilities or Autism Spectrum Disorder. Police Custody in Ireland gives a snapshot of garda custody as it is now and makes important recommendations for necessary future improvements. An accessible and compelling read, this book will be of interest to those engaged in policing and criminology, as well as related areas of interest such as human rights, youth justice and disability studies.

Abingdon, Oxon ; New York : Routledge, 2024. 363p.

By Christopher M. Sun, James R. “Chip” Coldren, Jr.Keri RichardsonEmma Wohl

Law enforcement agencies continue to develop new and innovative strategies to better support and police the communities they serve, from integrating gunshot detection technologies into dispatch systems to improve response times during shootings, to collaborating with local health and social service organizations to address issues such as homelessness or substance abuse in comprehensively ways. Over the past 10 years, the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA), in partnership with the CNA Institute for Public Research (IPR), has supported law enforcement agencies across the country in implementing innovative policing approaches through the Strategies for Policing Innovation Initiative (SPI, formerly the Smart Policing Initiative). SPI supports not only the development and implementation of innovative policing strategies, but also the research partnerships that result in in-depth analyses and rigorous evaluations of these strategies to advance what is known about effective and efficient policing practices. This report examines SPI’s accomplishments since its inception in 2009 and explores some of the major themes across SPI initiatives in both policing and policing research, including the following:

• Reductions in violent crime

• Improved crime analysis capabilities in police agencies

• Evolution of research partnerships with SPI sites

• Collaborative partnerships with agencies, organizations, and community stakeholders

• Integration of technology into policing

Arlington, VA: CNA, 2019. 20p.

By Anthony A. Braga, Cory Schnell, Brandon C. Welsh

Research Summary

Broken windows theory suggests that police can prevent serious crime by addressing social and physical disorder in neighborhoods. In many U.S. cities, recent increases in disorder, fear, and crime have initiated calls for an intensification of disorder policing efforts. Disorder policing programs can be controversial, with evaluations yielding conflicting results. Further, a growing number of descriptive analyses of aggressive order maintenance programs raise concerns over varied negative consequences, such as increased racial disparities in arrests of citizens. Systematic review and meta-analytic techniques were used to conduct an updated analysis of the effects of disorder policing on crime. Fifty-six eligible studies including 59 independent tests of disorder policing interventions were identified, representing almost twice the number included in the previous review. As part of the meta-analysis, new effect size metrics were used. The updated meta-analysis suggests that policing disorder strategies are associated with overall statistically significant crime reduction effects that spill over into surrounding areas. The strongest program effect sizes were generated by community and problem-solving interventions designed to change social and physical disorder conditions at crime hot spots. Conversely, aggressive order maintenance strategies did not generate significant crime reductions.

Policy Implications

The types of strategies used by police departments to address disorder seem to matter in controlling crime, and this holds important implications for police–community relations, justice, and crime prevention. Further research is needed to understand the key programmatic elements that maximize the capacity of these strategies to prevent crime.

Criminology & Public Policy. Early View, May 2024.

By Anthony Morgan,  Timothy Cubitt,  Isabella Voce

• Using data from a large national survey of online Australians, we examined the presence of risk and protective factors for cognitive and behavioural radicalisation among individuals who participated in an anti-authority protest since early 2020.

• Anti-authority protesters exhibited more risk factors and fewer protective factors for cognitive and behavioural radicalisation than other respondents, including people who had protested in support of other issues or movements. They were also more likely to justify violence in support of their cause and willing to support or participate in violent or unlawful behaviour on behalf of their group.

• These findings show that people who participated in anti-authority protests were more vulnerable to radicalisation compared with other protestors and non-protestors. The results have implications for responding to protest movements that promote anti-government sentiment, that spread disinformation and that are exploited by malicious actors.

• AIC Research Report 31

Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology, 2024. 62p.

By Vicki Sentas, Louise Boon-Kuo  & Justin R. Ellis

The violent and contested overpolicing of LGBTQI+ communities at Sydney’s Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras has a long and visible history which has been amplified through intensified drug policing over the last two decades. This article scrutinises police practices during Sydney WorldPride events in February and March 2023, which included Mardi Gras events. It draws on a unique data set drawn from the NSW Police Force and an independent legal observer initiative, ‘Fair Play’, that provided support for policed people at WorldPride. We ask: What do police practices tell us about the exercise of police power over LGBTQI+ people at WorldPride? Our study found intensive and aggressive high-visibility policing characterised by invasive questioning and drug detection dog patrols, and humiliating and potentially unlawful searches. The impacts illustrate how policing criminalises and gatekeeps belonging to sexual and gender-diverse communities.

Current Issues in Criminal Justice, 1–17.2024.

By Loch K. Johnson

Recent years have seen numerous books about the looming threat posed to Western society by biological and chemical terrorism, by narcoterrorists, and by the unpredictable leaders of rogue nations. Some of these works have been alarmist. Some have been sensible and measured. But none has been by Loch Johnson.

Johnson, author of the acclaimed Secret Agencies and "an experienced overseer of intelligence" (Foreign Affairs), here examines the present state and future challenges of American strategic intelligence. Written in his trademark style--dubbed "highly readable" by Publishers Weekly--and drawing on dozens of personal interviews and contacts, Johnson takes advantage of his insider access to explore how America today aspires to achieve nothing less than "global transparency," ferreting out information on potential dangers in every corner of the world.

And yet the American security establishment, for all its formidable resources, technology, and networks, currently remains a loose federation of individual fortresses, rather than a well integrated "community" of agencies working together to provide the President with accurate information on foreign threats and opportunities. Intelligence failure, like the misidentified Chinese embassy in Belgrade accidentally bombed by a NATO pilot, is the inevitable outcome when the nation's thirteen secret agencies steadfastly resist the need for central coordination.

Ranging widely and boldly over such controversial topics as the intelligence role of the United Nations (which Johnson believes should be expanded) and whether assassination should be a part of America's foreign policy (an option he rejects for fear that the U.S. would then be cast not only as global policeman but also as global godfather), Loch K. Johnson here maps out a critical and prescriptive vision of the future of American intelligence.

New York; London: NYU Press, 2002. 298p.

By Luis A. Fernandez , Amory Starr and Christian Scholl

Recently, a wall was built in eastern Germany. Made of steel and cement blocks, topped with razor barbed wire, and reinforced with video monitors and movement sensors, this wall was not put up to protect a prison or a military base, but rather to guard a three-day meeting of the finance ministers of the Group of Eight (G8). The wall manifested a level of security that is increasingly commonplace at meetings regarding the global economy. The authors of Shutting Down the Streets have directly observed and participated in more than 20 mass actions against global in North America and Europe, beginning with the watershed 1999 WTO meetings in Seattle and including the 2007 G8 protests in Heiligendamm. Shutting Down the Streets is the first book to conceptualize the social control of dissent in the era of alter globalization. Based on direct observation of more than 20 global summits, the book demonstrates that social control is not only global, but also preemptive, and that it relegates dissent to the realm of criminality. The charge is insurrection, but the accused have no weapons. The authors document in detail how social control forecloses the spaces through which social movements nurture the development of dissent and effect disruptive challenges.

New York; London: NYU Press, 2011. 224p.

By Susan Dewey and Patty Kelly

Mónica waits in the Anti-Venereal Medical Service of the Zona Galactica, the legal, state-run brothel where she works in Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Mexico. Surrounded by other sex workers, she clutches the Sanitary Control Cards that deem her registered with the city, disease-free, and able to work. On the other side of the world, Min stands singing karaoke with one of her regular clients, warily eyeing the door lest a raid by the anti-trafficking Public Security Bureau disrupt their evening by placing one or both of them in jail.

Whether in Mexico or China, sex work-related public policy varies considerably from one community to the next. A range of policies dictate what is permissible, many of them intending to keep sex workers themselves healthy and free from harm. Yet often, policies with particular goals end up having completely different consequences.

Policing Pleasure examines cross-cultural public policies related to sex work, bringing together ethnographic studies from around the world—from South Africa to India—to offer a nuanced critique of national and municipal approaches to regulating sex work. Contributors offer new theoretical and methodological perspectives that move beyond already well-established debates between “abolitionists” and “sex workers’ rights advocates” to document both the intention of public policies on sex work and their actual impact upon those who sell sex, those who buy sex, and public health more generally.

New York; London: NYU Press, 2011. 240p.

By William Garriott

In its steady march across the United States, methamphetamine has become, to quote former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, “the most dangerous drug in America.” As a result, there has been a concerted effort at the local level to root out the methamphetamine problem by identifying the people at its source—those known or suspected to be involved with methamphetamine. Government-sponsored anti-methamphetamine legislation has enhanced these local efforts, formally and informally encouraging rural residents to identify meth offenders in their communities.
Policing Methamphetamine shows what happens in everyday life—and to everyday life—when methamphetamine becomes an object of collective concern. Drawing on interviews with users, police officers, judges, and parents and friends of addicts in one West Virginia town, William Garriott finds that this overriding effort to confront the problem changed the character of the community as well as the role of law in creating and maintaining social order. Ultimately, this work addresses the impact of methamphetamine and, more generally, the war on drugs, on everyday life in the United States.

New York; London: NYU Press, 2011. 201p.

By Rochisha Shukla, Bryce Peterson, KiDeuk Kim

The Urban Institute and our partners—CNA Corporation, Correctional Leaders Association, the American Correctional Association, and criminal justice consultants John Shaffer and Joe Russo—conducted a needs assessment to (1) understand the scope and severity of contraband cell phones in prisons across the country, (2) identify which interdiction technologies and strategies agencies are using, and (3) assess the knowledge gaps related to correctional practice and contraband interdiction.

Washington, DC: Urban Institute. 2024, 22pg

By John Shaffer

In an effort to combat contraband cell phones in correctional facilities, which have been found to challenge the safety and security of prisons and jails, correctional leaders and policymakers have employed a variety of technological and nontechnological strategies to find and remove these devices from their facilities. This practitioner-focused report examines one such contraband interdiction strategy: the use of cell phone detection canines (K9s). Historically, agencies have largely used K9s for perimeter patrol, crowd control, escapee apprehension, and drug detection in correctional settings, but more recently, agencies have trained K9s to detect contraband cell phones and other electronic storage devices.

Washington, DC: Urban Institute. 2024, 20pg

United States. Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency; United States. Federal Bureau Of Investigation; United States.

From the document: "Foreign malign influence operations refer to hostile efforts by or on behalf of foreign governments to shape U.S. policies, decisions, and discourse. These operations may occur overtly or covertly, taking many forms and using a variety of tactics and techniques to accomplish their goals. Foreign malign influence operations are not new; however, technology developments have enabled actors to conduct operations while more effectively hiding their identities. To help critical infrastructure stakeholders increase the resilience of the elections process to foreign malign influence operations, CISA [Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency] publishes materials, such as this guide, to explain the tactics used by these operations, such as the potential for malicious use of generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools. Generative AI tools enable or support large-scale creation of more realistic fake videos, images, audio, and text for foreign malign influence operations. Several of the tactics outlined [in the document] can be powered by generative AI tools to increase the scale of foreign malign influence operations. In addition, the tactics covered [in the document] can also be utilized by domestic actors to spread disinformation."

Office Of The Director Of National Intelligence 2024. 8p.

By Laura Mills, James Freeman, and Verity Truelove

Facebook groups and pages exist that expose the locations of roadside drug testing, potentially undermining police enforcement and enabling punishment avoidance. This study aimed to understand how and why these sites are used, with a focus on Queensland motorists who reported using illicit drugs and/or medical cannabis and used Facebook police location communities. Interviews with 30 participants were conducted. A thematic analysis revealed that participants used police location communities to avoid receiving a charge for driving under the influence of drugs. Upon observation of a relevant roadside drug-testing location on police location communities, participants reported (a) delaying their driving and/or (b) circumventing the operation. Avoidance of roadside drug-testing locations appeared driven by the perception that laws for driving under the influence of drugs were unfair and that a charge for driving under the influence of drugs would negatively impact their life. The findings provide important knowledge regarding police location communities and have implications for how roadside drug testing could be most effectively operated.

Criminal Justice and Behavior, 2024. (online first)

By Josh Leung-Gagné

I use data linking counts of homicides by police to police department (PD) and jurisdiction characteristics to estimate benchmarked (i.e. risk-adjusted) police homicide rates in 2008–2017 among the 711 local PDs serving 50,000 or more residents, a sample with demographics resembling all mid-to-large Census places. The benchmarked rate estimates capture PD deadliness by comparing PDs to peers whose officers face similar risks while adjusting for access to trauma care centers to account for differential mortality from deadly force. Compared to existing estimates, differences in benchmarked estimates are more plausibly attributable to policing differences, speaking to whether the force currently used is necessary to maintain safety and public order. I find that the deadliest PDs kill at 6.91 times the benchmarked rate of the least deadly PDs. If the PDs with above-average deadliness instead killed at average rates for a PD facing similar risks, police homicides would decrease by 34.44%. Reducing deadliness to the lowest observed levels would decrease them by 70.04%. These estimates also indicate the percentage of excess police homicides—those unnecessary for maintaining safety —if the baseline agency is assumed to be optimally deadly. Moreover, PD deadliness has a strong, robust association with White/Black segregation and Western regions. Additionally, Black, Hispanic, foreign-born, lower-income, and less-educated people are disproportionately exposed to deadlier PDs due to the jurisdictions they reside in. Police violence is an important public health concern that is distributed unevenly across US places, contributing to social disparities that disproportionately harm already marginalized communities.

PNAS Nexus, 2024, 3, 1–10

By Mami Kajita; Daisuke Murakami, Seiji Kajita, Georgia Ribeiro, Genilson Zeferino, and Claudio Beato  

Optimizing urban resources, such as ride-sharing and logistics, improve efficiency by reducing waiting times and costs. Similarly, effective allocation of security resources enhances crime deterrence effect. However, measuring the net impact of security policy campaigns remains challenging due to the influence of various external factors. This study introduces a method using high-resolution GPS data from patrol activities to measure crime deterrence effects. We examined the impact of optimized patrol routes on crime prediction in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, over two months, observing a 68.5% reduction in crime compared to the previous period. Analysis of the GPS data revealed a spatial propagation of the deterrent effect to areas distant from the patrol locations. Our findings indicate that unique spatial-temporal patterns of the deterrent effects detected through sensor technology can be reduced into its net impact, potentially helping decision-makers to choose more informed options in security policies.

Unpublished paper. 2024, 17pg