By: U.S. Secret Service National Threat Assessment Center

Preventing targeted violence in America is everyone's responsibility. Far too often, communities have witnessed mass injury and loss of life at the hands of an attacker, only to learn that the perpetrator had a long history of threatening or concerning behaviors. In many cases, the attacker's behavior was witnessed by community bystanders, some of whom sought to report their concerns to public safety officials. Unfortunately, many communities lack the structured systems to receive, evaluate, and respond to these reports in a way that reduces the likelihood of a violent outcome. The framework presented herein is the latest NTAC [National Threat Assessment Center] offering intended to support the violence prevention efforts of state and local law enforcement agencies. The steps that follow describe how agencies can adopt the principles of the Secret Service model to proactively identify and intervene with those who intend to carry out acts of targeted violence in their communities. These steps are not intended to be prescriptive, but rather offer a scalable blueprint that can be implemented by agencies varying in size, structure, and resources, all of which share the Secret Service's mission of preventing targeted violence.

United States. Secret Service. National Threat Assessment Center, Oct. 2024

By: Clifford Karchmer

Traditional police response to crime has been reactive, yet nationwide trends toward problem-oriented and community-oriented policing have changed this approach in many departments. Over the past decade, police executives have shifted to more proactive policing and have instituted collaborative programs with a wide range of community groups and other organizations to prevent crime. These programs likely have contributed to decreasing rime, with most success demonstrated by the vast reduction in the nation’s homicide rate.

This report reviews current trends in homicide rates, the changing police perspective on homicide prevention, and summarizes innovative police department programs as captured in a Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) and Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) exploratory project that examined the homicide prevention practices of over 70 police departments. The goal of this report is to highlight successful policing strategies and programs offered by departments in cities that have reduced homicide. Descriptions of homicide prevention strategies and key program elements common to successful police departments around the country may serve as a guide to other police executives seeking to reduce homicide in their communities.

Homicide Prevention, October 2002

By: Leslie Tutty, Jennifer Koshan, Deborah Jesso, Cindy Ogden, and Jacqueline G. Warrell

The serious nature of intimate partner violence and the harm to women and their children has been acknowledged in numerous documents (Statistics Canada, 2005; Tutty & Goard, 2002). The costs to society for charging abusive partners and providing treatment in the hope of stopping domestic violence are substantial (Bowlus, McKenna, Day & Wright, 2003; Greaves, Hankivsky, & Kingston-Reichers, 1995; Healey, Smith, & O‘Sullivan, 1998).

The criminal justice system is an institution that deals with a high number of cases of domestic assaults yearly. While there is no separate domestic violence offence, abusers are subject to a variety of charges, from common assault to uttering threats to murder, that would apply to anyone regardless of the relationship between the victim and the perpetrator. Nevertheless, the dynamics and the intimate relationship between the accused and the victims in domestic violence cases, has severely challenged the criminal justice response that typically deals with crimes committed by strangers.

Beginning with the development of the court in Winnipeg in 1991, specialized domestic violence courts have become increasingly available across Canada with the goal of more effectively addressing the criminal justice response to domestic violence. The extensive effort involved in creating such specialized justice responses should be acknowledged. To date, however, few evaluations have been published that assess whether these initiatives make a difference, exceptions being the work of Ursel in Winnipeg, the Yukon Domestic Violence Treatment Option (Hornick, Boyes, Tutty & White, 2005: funded by NCPC), some courts in Ontario (Moyer, Rettinger & Hotton (2000), cited in Clarke, 2003; Dawson & Dinovitzer, 2001), and Tutty and Ursel in the Canadian prairie provinces (Ursel, Tutty, & LeMaistre, 2008).

Calgary‘s model developed in early 2000 with the input of key players from not only the criminal justice institutions such as police services, the Crown Prosecutor offices, probation, Legal Aid and the defence bar, but also community agencies that offer batterer intervention programs and support, shelter and advocacy for victims. The model was innovative, with the initial emphasis on a specialized domestic violence docket court with the aim of speeding up the process for those charges with domestic abuse offences to both allow low risk offenders to take responsibility for their actions and speed their entry into treatment.

Such actions were thought to better safeguard victims, both because their partners were mandated to treatment much earlier, and to prevent repercussions to victims who, if the case proceeded to court, might be required to testify. Crisis intervention theory has long posited that the sooner one receives intervention, the more likely the counselling will be effective (Roberts & Everly, 2006). Also, the safety and wishes of the victims are taken into consideration by the court team early on in the process, while the assault is still fresh in their minds and they are not influenced by the accused to the same extent as they might be later on.

The National Crime Prevention Centre of Public Safety Canada and The Alberta Law Foundation March 2011

By BARRY VAUGHAN

The problem of policing is often portrayed as providing sufficient personnel to sate demand. Pluralism, however, complicates the issue since the public disagree among themselves over which activities or individuals should be policed. In turn, police priorities may differ from these demands, inciting public discontent. In these circumstances, how can public policing sustain its legitimacy? Lessons can be learnt from how political theories have grappled with pluralism and legitimacy. This article analyses how three major political theorists, John Rawls, Michael Walzer and Friedrich Hayek, dealt with these issues. It mines their insights to nominate the principle of non- domination, defined as freedom from interference on an arbitrary basis, as best suited to justify policing in an era of pluralism.

Vol. 11(3): 347–366; 1362–4806

By: Joshua C. Hinkle, David Weisburd, Christine Famega, and Justin Ready

Background: Hot spots policing is one of the most influential police innovations, with a strong body of experimental research showing it to be effective in reducing crime and disorder. However, most studies have been conducted in major cities, and we thus know little about whether it is effective in smaller cities that account for a majority of police agencies. The lack of experimental studies in smaller cities is likely partly due to challenges of designing statistically powerful tests in such contexts.

Objectives: The current paper explores the challenges of statistical power and “noise” resulting from low base rates of crime in smaller cities and provides suggestions for future evaluations to overcome these limitations.

Research Design: Crime data from a randomized, experimental evaluation of broken windows policing in hot spots are used to illustrate the challenges that low base rates present for evaluating hot spots police innovations in smaller cities.

Results: Analyses show that low base rates make it difficult to detect treatment effects. Very large effect sizes would be required to reach sufficient power, and random fluctuations around low base rates make detecting treatment effects difficult irrespective of power by masking differences between treatment and control groups.

Conclusions: Low base rates present strong challenges to researchers attempting to evaluate hot spots policing in smaller cities. As such, base rates must be taken directly into account when designing experimental evaluations. The paper offers suggestions to researchers who attempt to expand the examination of hot spots policing and other microplace-based interventions to smaller jurisdictions.

By: Gary Cordner and Elizabeth Biebel

Problem-oriented policing was first introduced in an article by Herman Goldstein in 1979. It was formally field-tested in the 1980s in Baltimore County (Cordner, 1986) and Newport News (Eck and Spelman, 1987), given a wider audience through an Atlantic Monthly magazine article in 1989 (Wilson and Kelling), and systematically described and explained in Goldstein's 1990 book. Today, it is widely regarded as the most analytical and intellectually challenging strategy in the police arsenal.

Questions linger, however, about the implementation and practicality of problem-oriented policing (POP). The SARA process (scanning, analysis, response, assessment) for carrying out POP is analytically and creatively demanding, as well as time-consuming. Some observers question whether police have the knowledge and skill to implement the SARA process properly. Police officers often question whether they have the time to do so.

The research reported here carefully examined problem-oriented policing in practice by ordinary police officers in one agency - the San Diego, California Police Department. The objective was to discover and describe the reality of everyday, street-level POP as practiced by generalist patrol officers. San Diego was chosen because of its reputation as a national leader in problem-oriented policing.

200518, 06/19/2003, 98-IJ-CX-0080

By: Gloria Laycock and Graham Farrell

This paper discusses some of the difficulties encountered in attempting to introduce ideas derived from research on repeat victimization to the police services of the United Kingdom. Repeat victimization is the phenomenon in which particular individuals or other targets are repeatedly attacked or subjected to other forms of victimization, including the loss of property. It is argued that repeat victimization is a good example of the kind of problem solving envisaged by Goldstein and discussed in his original conception of problem-oriented policing.

Crime Prevention Studies, vol. 15 (2003), pp. 213-237.

By Derek A. Epp & Macey Erhardt

This article asks if investigative police stops (1) help officers find contraband, and (2) serve as a bulwark against violent crime. We focus on the experiences of Fayetteville, North Carolina, which in 2012 mandated that police officers obtain written permission from motorists before conducting searches absent any probable cause. The effect of these mandates was a dramatic reduction in the use of so-called “consent searches.” Using traffic stops data available from the North Carolina Department of Justice, we show that after these reforms went into effect officers made fewer overall searches, but contraband continued to be recovered at pre-reform levels, indicating a reduction in low-quality searches with minimal substantive impact. Moreover, we find that homicide rates are statistically indistinguishable between the pre- and postreform periods. Thus, Fayetteville local government was able to implement community pleasing police reforms without jeopardizing community safety.

POLITICS, GROUPS, AND IDENTITIES https://doi.org/10.1080/21565503.2020.1724160

By Frank R. Baumgartner , Kate Bell, Luke Beyer, Tara Boldrin, Libby Doyle, Lindsey Govan, Jack Halpert, Jackson Hicks, Katherine Kyriakoudes, Cat Lee, Mackenzie Leger, Sarah McAdon, Sarah Michalak, Caroline Murphy, Eyan Neal, Olivia O’Malley, Emily Payne, Audrey Sapirstein, Sally Stanley, and Kathryn Thacker

We evaluate the factors associated with an officer’s decision to search a driver or vehicle after a routine traffic stop, and we compare the accuracy of these searches by looking at the share leading to arrest. Racial disparities in search rates by race and gender of driver are similar for all types of officers; all tend to search Black male drivers at higher rates than any other demographic. White male officers have higher search rates for all types of drivers. Further, they conduct the greatest share of “fruitless searches” (those not leading to arrest), and these searches are particularly targeted on those drivers with the greatest number of cumulative disadvantages

Policy Studies Journal, Vol. 49, No. 3, 2021

By Barak Ariel, Alex Sutherland, David Weisburd, Yonatan Ilan and Matt Bland

Substantial evidence suggests that focussing police resources on hotspots of crime has a discernable crime-re duction effect. However, little is known about the efficacy of proactively policing areas with higher concentrations of more common low-harm problems in society. This study evaluates the first national double-blind randomized controlled trial in which clearly identifiable hotspots (n = 488) of low-harm ‘quality-of-life’ incidents nested in 31 participating police stations were randomized to be either actively policed by any available police officer or by ‘business-as-usual’ reactive policing over a 12-month period. A series of count-based regression models show a moderate and statistically significant reduction in the number of quality-of-life incidents in treatment versus control hotspots, with more than 2,000 quality-of-life incidents prevented, without evidence of spatial displacement to street segments nearby. However, we find no diffusion of benefits in terms of other crime types within the same hotspots, which may suggest that either low- and high-harm crime hotspots are not spatially aligned with each other, that focusing police officers on one type of crime does not produce a suppression effect on other types of crime, or both. We discuss the implications of these results for crime policy and future research.

Policing, Volume 17, pp. 1–23, 2023. doi: https://doi.org/10.1093/police/paad040

By Philipp M. Dau, Christophe Vandeviver, Maite Dewinter, Frank Witlox, Tom Vander Beken

We systematically review the effectiveness of police presence. In doing so, we investigate concepts of police presence and differences between reported effects. Using the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) guidelines and protocols, we systematically identify and review eligible studies on police presence. Further, quality assessment and findings synthesis are used to map limitations of current research as well as grounds for future avenues. The systematic search strategies yielded 49 studies focusing on testing the effects of police presence or evaluating its measurement. We find evidence that police presence has mostly crime reduction effects on crimes related to motor theft, property, violence, and guns. Police presence also reduces calls for service and improves traffic behaviour. Police presence focused on specific areas, times, and types of crime achieves maximum effectiveness. The reviewed studies show a high degree of heterogeneity in reporting, however, which limits comparability of findings across studies. Research on police presence presents evidence for significant crime preventative effects of focused police actions. Police presence shows the strongest effects when focused on certain areas, times, or types of crimes. We encourage future research to focus on police presence en route and its effects, including crime prevention, traffic regulation, and fear of crime.

Unpublished paper, 2021.

By David Spencer, Sir Stephen Laws KCB KC (Hon) and Niamh Webb

We have entered a new era of increasingly disruptive protests. This report shows how decisions made by the police, prosecutors, courts, Parliament and Government mean that undue weight is being placed on the rights and interests of disruptive (and, at times, criminal) activists at the expense of the rights, wellbeing and interests of ordinary members of the public.

This report addresses two central questions:

• Do the police, and other authorities, use their existing powers effectively to deal with disruptive protest?

• Is the existing legal regime fit for purpose?

The answer to both questions, as we show in this report, is no.

As the new Government will soon commence their review of the legislation relating to protest and the Home Office continues their appeal in a high-profile protest-related court case this report is highly relevant to the contemporary policy making and legal context.

The report argues that the new Government must prioritise the rights, wellbeing and interests of ordinary members of the public – otherwise they risk finding themselves in the same difficulties as their predecessors.

In addition to a detailed analysis of the police approach to protest, this report also contains recent polling on the public mood and a detailed review of the current legal regime. The report has 26 recommendations for Government, police forces, the Crown Prosecution Service and the Mayor of London.

London: Policy Exchange, 2024. 157p.

By Andrew Eichen

Sanctioned by the courts and taught in police manuals, deceptive tactics are employed by virtually every police department across the country. Officers seeking to elicit a confession will routinely lie to suspects about the evidence and make statements that imply leniency. While effective at times, deception is ethically dubious and can result in severe consequences for suspects. The United States is an outlier in allowing police to deceive suspects, as the practice is prohibited or highly restricted in most peer nations, including England, France, Germany, and Japan. First, deceptive interrogation tactics frequently induce false confessions, which are a leading cause of wrongful convictions in the United States. Further, the acceptability of lying to suspects during interrogations seems to encourage deception in other, more troubling contexts. Research shows that testimonial lies, such as perjury in court and falsifying police reports, are commonly employed by officers to secure convictions and circumvent constitutional protections. While such practices remain illegal, testimonial lies are rarely identified or punished. As a result, the justifications and skills cultivated through deceiving suspects in interrogations naturally bleed over into other police work. Ultimately, the pervasiveness of police deception undermines the integrity and legitimacy of the criminal justice system. It leads to wrongful convictions, weakens civil liberties, and erodes public trust in law enforcement. While there are difficult trade-offs in regulating police deception, its negative consequences require policy responses. Contrary to contentions that deceit is a necessary tool of law enforcement, experiences in other nations suggest that restricting police deception does not hamper criminal investigations. Policymakers should consider measures to curtail police deception, such as requiring that interrogations be recorded, banning or limiting certain deceptive tactics, and increasing judicial scrutiny of interrogation practices

Cato Policy Analysis, no. 979, Washington, DC: Cato Institute, 2024. 32p.

By Maureen O’Hara

This report addresses the impact of policies and practices within the criminal justice system in England and Wales which classify and treat suspects, defendants in criminal trials, and convicted offenders on the basis of their ‘gender identity’ rather than their biological sex. In recent years, self-declaration of ‘gender identity’ has been adopted as policy by all of the key criminal justice institutions, despite the fact that this is not aligned with the law. This change appears to have come about largely as the result of policy capture, as it is a widely contested belief and has been adopted without public scrutiny. Current criminal justice policy prioritises the wishes and feelings of those who identify as transgender over the rights of others, and particularly over the sex-based rights of women, such as rights to single-sex facilities. This publication examines the detrimental effects of this approach and makes recommendations about the development of policies which are based on acknowledgment of the significance of biological sex in the field of criminal justice.

London: Policy Exchange, 2022. 73p.

By Marleen Stelter,  Iniobong Essien, Carsten Sander, and Juliane Degner

Racial disparities in policing are well documented, but the reasons for such disparities are often debated. In the current research, we weighed in on this debate using a regional-level bias framework: We investigated the link between racial disparities in police traffic stops and regional-level racial bias, employing data from more than 130 million police traffic stops in 1,413 U.S. counties and county-level measures of racial bias from more than 2 million online respondents. Compared with their population share in county demographics, Black drivers were stopped at disproportionate rates in the majority of counties. Crucially, disproportionate stopping of Black drivers was higher in counties with higher levels of racial prejudice by White residents (rs = .07-.36). Furthermore, county-level aggregates of White people's threat-related stereotypes were less consistent in predicting disproportionate stopping (rs = .00-.19). These observed relationships between regional-level bias and racial disparities in policing highlight the importance of the context in which police operate.

Psychological Science Volume 33, Issue 4Apr 2022 Pages 483-668

By: Graham Farrell and Ken Pease

The attempt to reduce

• the number of crime events and/or

• the loss and harm resulting from crime events

is the core work of both the security industry and the police, with their local authority partners. The difference is that the former does its work for its employers (where the security is in-house) or for paying clients. The police act as the National Health Service to the security industry’s BUPA, with many of the same tensions that arise at the points of connection.

This chapter seeks to outline key aspects of criminology that, in the view of the authors, make a significant and continuing contribution to the security industry. Its main aim therefore, is to present an introduction to crime prevention and crime science for a readership working in the security industry. Enough case studies of successful crime reduction efforts have now been published to provide a source of information and possible emulation for anyone in the public or private sector seriously interested in crime and loss reduction.

August 2005 Chapter forthcoming in M. Gill (Ed.) The Handbook of Security. Perpetuity Press.

By: FERHAT TURA

Problem-oriented policing (POP) is one of the various proactive policing strategies that have been developed since the 1970s. It has been claimed that POP has had a considerable effect in reducing crime (Weisburd et al., 2010). However, its role in the crime drop that has been experienced in England and Wales and across the world since the 1990s (Tseloni et al., 2010) is not yet known (Weisburd and Majmundar, 2018). Therefore, this thesis explores the role of POP in the burglary drop at the police force area (PFA) level in England and Wales between 1988 and 2007/08.

The theories that underpin both POP and this study are opportunity-related theories (rational choice and routine activity theories), social disorganisation theory, and the new public management concept. The empirical component of the study is divided into three phases, where each phase employs different methods (e.g. multilevel negative binomial regression) to analyse a rich array of data sources (e.g. the Crime Survey for England and Wales). The results of this thesis can be summarised as follows:

1. A number of police forces in England and Wales were consistently committed to POP over time.

2. There seemed to be a relationship between POP and the fall in burglaries and repeat burglaries in a number of POP-committed PFAs between 1995 and 2007/08.

3. Although POP-committed police forces experienced fewer burglaries in 2003/04, POP did not result in a statistically significant reduction in burglaries between 1995 and 2003/04.

4. Conversely, POP-committed police forces saw a statistically significantly higher number of burglaries in 1997.

5. Police forces with a higher number of police officers per 1000 residents experienced a statistically significant reduction in burglaries in 2003/04.

In light of the above findings, this thesis sheds new light on the crime drop and policing literature. Consequently, the findings inform the theoretical and practical aspects of POP that can be used by police and other crime prevention agencies to reduce burglary victimisation.

Notttingham Trent University; November 2019

By: Michael Townsley, Sacha Reid, Danielle Reynald, John Rynne, and Benjamin Hutchins

The aim of this research is to inform housing and planning policy development by exploring the variation in types and volumes of crime in a range of existing high-density communities. By analysing actual rates and types of crime, building management styles and perceptions of fear of crime, the research will reveal how policing and high-rise building management styles can coalesce to create safer vertical communities.

Report to the Criminology Research Advisory Council; Grant: CRG 29/11-12

By: Rob T. Guerette, Stephen F. Pires, and Auzeen Shariati

Despite common media reports of death among kidnapped victims, little is known about the extent and factors that determine whether victims will be killed during the ransom process. Using data on 9,469 kidnappings for ransom incidents, which occurred in Colombia, South America between the years 2002 and 2011, this exploratory study sought to determine whether predictable patterns existed among those incidents in which victims were killed. The analyses revealed significant differences in the odds of death across victims, offenders, and situational circumstances. Distinct time-to-death trajectories were also found. Recognizing and understanding these patterns offer to improve preventive efforts.

Homicide Studies, 1 –16

By Tomas Salem

This book offers a unique look into the world of policing and the frontline of Brazil’s war on drugs. It analyzes the tensions produced by attempts to modernize Rio de Janeiro’s public security policies. Since the return of democracy in 1985, Rio's police forces have waged war against armed drug gangs based in the city’s favelas, casting the people who live in these communities as internal enemies. In preparation for the Olympics in 2016, the police sought to ‘pacify’ the favelas and their populations through the establishment of Pacifying Police Units (UPPs) in many of the city’s favela communities. Drawing on eight months of ethnographic fieldwork with the police, this book follows officers across the institutional hierarchy in their daily activities, on patrol, and during training. Tracing the genealogies of contemporary forms of policing-as-warfare through the notion of ‘colonial war’ and ‘cultural war’, it highlights the material and ideational dimensions of war as a cosmological force that shapes Brazilian social relations, subjectivities, landscapes, economies, and politics. It draws on the Deleuzian notion of ‘war machine and state dynamics’ to show how practices of elimination co-exist with attempts to transform favela territories and their people and analyzes the link between the moral universe of policing and right-wing populism in Brazil. Through rich and nuanced ethnography, it offers a critical perspective on militarized policing and 21st century forms of authoritarianism. 

Cham: Springer Nature, 2024.