By Madeline Bailey, Erica Crew, and Madz Reeve

On any given night in the United States, more than 550,000 people are experiencing homelessness.1 Among these, approximately 96,000 are chronically homeless, meaning they are facing long and repeated episodes of homelessness that make it increasingly difficult to return to housing.2 This crisis is perpetuated by a legal system that criminalizes survival behaviors associated with homelessness, fails to account for the ways in which people who are homeless face impossible odds within the legal process, and then releases them back into the community with even more obstacles than they faced before.3 Confirming this cycle, researchers have found that homelessness is between 7.5 and 11.3 times more prevalent among the jail population, and in some places the rate is much higher—for example, in San Francisco, California, a 2013 survey found that between 10 and 24 percent of people in jail identified as homeless at the time of arrest.4 Because of punitive laws and enforcement practices, people who are homeless are 11 times more likely to be arrested, nationwide, than those who are housed.

New York: Vera Institute of Justice, 2020. 19p.

By Christopher Herring

This report details the effects of criminalization on the homeless residents of San Francisco. Since 1981, San Francisco has passed more local measures to criminalize sleeping, sitting, or panhandling in public spaces than any other city in the state of California.1 During this same period, the United States has experienced the greatest expansion of its jail and prison system under any democracy in history. This expansion has primarily affected the poorest members of this society.2 This report documents and analyzes the impacts of the rising tide of anti-homeless laws in our era of mass incarceration on those experiencing homelessness in San Francisco. This portrait of the impact of criminalization on homelessness in San Francisco is based on a citywide survey of 351 homeless individuals and 43 in-depth interviews carried out by volunteers at the Coalition on Homelessness and supervised by researchers at the UC Berkeley Center on Human Rights. It also analyzes data on policy, citations, and arrests received from the San Francisco Police Department, the Sheriff ’s Office, the Human Services Agency, and the Recreation and Park Department. The report provides an in-depth analysis of each step in the criminalization of homelessness—from interactions with law enforcement, to the issuance and processing of citations, to incarceration and release.

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  The study makes evident how criminalization not only fails to reduce homelessness in public space, but also perpetuates homelessness, racial and gender inequality, and poverty even once one has exited homelessness. The aim of this study is to provide sound empirical data on the impacts of the criminalization of homelessness in San Francisco, while also giving voice to the experiences of those whose housing status results in their regularly being processed through the city’s criminal justice system. Our hope is that these findings will inform public discussions and provide the basis for thoughtful policy approaches to these issues.

San Francisco: Coalition on Homelessness, 2015. 86p.

By Christopher Herring

Over the past thirty years, cities across the US have adopted variants of “quality-of- life” policing. Central to these efforts have been local ordinances aimed at curbing visible poverty, suppressing “anti-social behavior,” and removing the homeless from public space. My dissertation examines the causes, practices, and consequences of criminalizing homelessness in the contemporary metropolis. By relating ethnographic observations in the political and bureaucratic fields with those between interactions of state officials and homeless individuals, the dissertation reveals novel forms of the criminalization of poverty, tracing how homelessness is turned into a criminal activity by state classifications, institutional transformations, and populist politicization thanks to, rather than in-spite of, provisions of welfare and rhetoric of assistance. It also uncovers novel forms of the penalization of poverty, disclosing how policing can be directed by urban change, economic organizations, community groups, and agencies of poverty governance tangential to the criminal justice system. Expanding the conception of the criminalization of poverty, which is often centered on incarceration or arrest, the study reveals previously unforeseen consequences of move- along orders, citations, and threats that dispossess the poor of property, create barriers to services and jobs, and increase vulnerability to violence and crime.

Berkeley: University of California, Berkeley, 2020. 142p.

By Robert E. Worden and Sarah J. McLean.

In the United States, the exercise of police authority—and the public’s trust that police authority is used properly—is a recurring concern. Contemporary prescriptions for police reform hold that the public would trust the police more and feel a greater obligation to comply and cooperate if police-citizen interactions were marked by higher levels of procedural justice by police. In this book, Robert E. Worden and Sarah J. McLean argue that the procedural justice model of reform is a mirage. From a distance, procedural justice seems to offer relief from strained police-community relations. But a closer look at police organizations and police-citizen interactions shows that the relief offered by such reform is, in fact, illusory. A procedural justice model of policing is likely to be only loosely coupled with police practice, despite the best intentions, and improvements in procedural justice on the part of police are unlikely to result in corresponding improvements in citizens’ perceptions of procedural justice.

University of California Press. 2015. 254p.

By Harm Reduction International

This is the eighth edition of the Global State of Harm Reduction. Every two years since 2008, Harm Reduction International (HRI) has mapped responses to drug-related health harms around the world, including HIV and viral hepatitis. The report has become a key publication for researchers, policymakers, civil society organisations, advocates and United Nations’ agencies interested in mapping harm reduction policy adoption and programme implementation globally.

The Global State of Harm Reduction has always been produced through a collaborative effort between community and civil society representatives and researchers. This year, we have expanded this collaboration, as all nine regional chapters are authored by regional experts. We hope that the involvement of these additional regional experts and harm reduction organisations has resulted in a more comprehensive, thorough analysis in the Global State of Harm Reduction 2022.

In this year’s report, dedicated chapters pay special attention to viral hepatitis and the ongoing impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, we now report on Eastern and Southern Africa and West and Central Africa separately, reflecting the growth of harm reduction across Africa. We have also expanded our attention to include harm reduction for non-injected drugs and stimulants, for the first time collecting quantitative data on the availability of safer smoking kits and stimulant pharmacotherapy

IDPC, 2022. 152p.

By Daniel F. Funde and Mark L. Schneider

The Northern Triangle of Central America (NTCA), made up of El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala, has experienced overwhelming economic, political, and security challenges in recent years. A combination of domestic challenges, including anemic economic growth, high rates of violence, and few jobs in the formal economy, have had international repercussions, such as an influx of unaccompanied minors (UACs) entering the United States in the summer of 2014 and the ongoing migration crisis at the U.S.-Mexican border.1 The United States remains a major partner for these three countries, disbursing over $401 million in foreign aid in FY2018, with strong bipartisan support for approving appropriations of $1.8 billion for FY17-19.2 The NTCA countries also attract considerable foreign direct investment (FDI), surpassing $3.1 billion in 2017.3 While the United States has always played a powerful role in the NTCA region, the coverage in Washington tends to be erratic in its grasp of Northern Triangle issues. The region is portrayed as having insoluble problems with little in the way of progress. There is neither a “magic bullet” nor an “out of the box” solution to the problems of the Northern Triangle. Most of the solutions are relatively straightforward but politically hard and involve a mixture of economic, development, political, and security reforms. The problems of the region are, in fact, solvable, but they require sustained attention from the United States, political will in the NCTA countries, including cooperation rather than obstruction from elites in these societies, and ultimately strong and inclusive economic growth to go with strengthened governance.

Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2019. 11p.

By Eleno Castro and Randy Kotti

El Salvador is one of the most violent countries in the world, mostly because of gang violence. This paper studies the extent to which gangs affect political elections across El Salvador and hence affect the quality of democracy. Despite the growing body of qualitative evidence suggesting collusion between gangs and political parties in El Salvador, little has been done systematically at the national level. Using police data and voting results, we find that homicides in gang-controlled neighborhoods tend to decrease during electoral seasons along with an increase in electoral participation. These effects are especially significant in the neighborhoods where political parties have a strong voting base. Consistent with the interviews we conducted, this suggests that parties negotiate with gangs to foster electoral participation in the areas where they are more likely to receive electoral support and thus increase their chances of winning. Gangs may also affect elections by forcing political parties to ask permission to get into gang-controlled neighborhoods during campaigns. Also, politicians can agree with gangs to receive gang members’ direct votes and their collaboration to mobilize voters.

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  To mitigate the influence of gangs on elections, we recommend organizing staggered municipal elections to increase voters’ security and discourage politicians’ negotiation through citizens’ protection on election day. In addition, we make a series of recommendations to improve the quality of elections and reduce the effects of gangs control: (1) organize electoral campaign days protected by security forces to ensure parties’ equitable access to gang-controlled areas, (2) restrict ex-convicts’ voting rights for violent crimes to reduce the influence of gang members, (3) increase the number of polling stations and let voters register in the station they prefer, and (4) extend electronic voting to people living in El Salvador (not just the diaspora).

Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government, 2022. 63p.

By Duren Banks, Michael G. Planty, Madison Fann, Lynn Langton, Dulani Woods, Michael J. D. Vermeer, Brian A. Jackson

Congress enacted the Death in Custody Reporting Act of 2013 (DCRA) to address the lack of reliable information about law enforcement–related deaths and deaths in correctional institutions. The U.S. Department of Justice has conducted several activities designed to respond to the provisions specified in the DCRA legislation, as well as their own federal mandates, toward a comprehensive understanding of the prevalence and characteristics of deaths that occur in law enforcement custody. Despite these efforts, no national data collection program currently describes all deaths that occur in law enforcement custody. These data are critical to support strategies to reduce such deaths; to promote public safety through appropriate responses to reported crimes, calls for service, and police-community encounters; and to build trust with communities.

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  To better understand the needs around developing and leveraging data from a national data collection of law enforcement–related deaths, RTI International and the RAND Corporation, on behalf of the National Institute of Justice, convened a panel of experts to discuss the challenges to conducting a national data collection, to recommend potential solutions to those challenges, and to recommend research and other applications for the collected data. Through a three-session virtual workshop, participants identified 19 high-priority needs to support a comprehensive and robust data collection program on law enforcement–related deaths. These high-priority needs address challenges related to scope, definition, and detail of the collection; data collection elements and reporting needs; and the utility of the information to inform law enforcement training, programs, and policies.

Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2022. 24p.

By Richard W. Myers, Bernard H. Levink, and Joseph A. Schafer

The Neighborhood-Driven Policing model has been revisited by policing reform advocates since its beginnings in 2005, as several key elements of NDP encapsulate various changes that have garnered widespread consideration in recent years. While much has changed in the fifteen years since the original piece was published, many other issues remain stubbornly entrenched. This paper involved conducting an analysis of research and seeks to describe an updated vision of how NDP might better-meet the needs and expectations of both police and residents in contemporary communities. The authors offer this revisitation of NDP as a starting point for more imaginative conversations about how we should rethink basic assumptions about police staffing, police deployment, the skills of policing, and the nature of police-communication roles and relationships. Furthermore, this paper encourages ways to think about the position and role that police and residents occupy in their relationship with each other as they seek to enhance shared goals, namely community safety and resident well-being. It is our hope that this document will advance deeper conversations, rather than viewing the document as a proven prescription for the future of policing. This paper was developed as part of a collaboration between the National Policing Institute (NPI) and the Futures Working Group (FWG). The FWG is a research and training organization affiliated with the Society of Police Futurists International. The NPI/FWG partnership seeks to advance discussions about how the future of technology, society, crime, and justice might influence the policing profession.

Arlington, VA: National Police Foundation, 2021. 27p.

By Deloitte

Surveillance and predictive policing through AI is the most controversial trend in this report but one that has important implications for the future of cities and societies.

Technology is frequently used as a synonym of evolution, but the ethics of its use may need to be questioned. An underlying question is what society are we aiming to build. There are doubts and uncertainties about the impact of AI on communities and cities: the most fundamental concern is privacy, but there are frequent debates about AI from other perspectives, such as its impact on jobs, the economy and the future of work. Therefore, one cannot disconnect the discussions about surveillance and predictive policing from recent debates about the societal, ethical, and even geopolitical dimensions.

The pace the adoption of AI for security purposes has increased in recent years. AI has recently helped create and deliver innovative police services, connect police forces to citizens, build trust, and strengthen associations with communities. There is growing use of smart solutions such as biometrics, facial recognition, smart cameras, and video surveillance systems. A recent study found that smart technologies such as AI could help cities reduce crime by 30 to 40 per cent and reduce response times for emergency services by 20 to 35 per cent. The same study found that cities have started to invest in real-time crime mapping, crowd management and gunshot detection.

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  Cities are making use of facial recognition and biometrics (84 per cent), in-car and body cameras for police (55 per cent), drones and aerial surveillance (46 per cent), and crowdsourcing crime reporting and emergency apps (39 per cent) to ensure public safety. However, only 8 per cent use data-driven policing. The AI Global Surveillance (AIGS) Index 2019 states that 56 out of 176 countries used AI for surveillance for safe city platforms, although with different approaches. The International Data Corporation (IDC) has predicted that by 2022, 40 percent of police agencies will use digital tools, such as live video streaming and shared workflows, to support community safety and an alternative response framework.

London: Deloitte, 2021. 158p.

By Katherine Aguirre, Emile Badran and Robert Muggah

Rio de Janeiro, or simply Rio, is the second-most populous municipality in Brazil and the sixth-most populous in the Americas. The metropolis is anchor to the Rio de Janeiro metropolitan area and is the capital of the state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil's third-most populous state. Part of the city has been designated as a World Heritage Site, named "Rio de Janeiro: Carioca Landscapes between the Mountain and the Sea", by UNESCO on 1 July 2012 as a Cultural Landscape. Rio de Janeiro is headquarters to Brazilian oil, mining, and telecommunications companies, including two of the country's major corporations – Petrobras and Vale – and Latin America's largest telemedia conglomerate, Grupo Globo. Being the home of many universities and institutes, Rio is the second-largest center of research and development in Brazil. Rio de Janeiro is also one of the most visited cities in the Southern Hemisphere and is known for its natural settings, including several beaches. There are significant disparities between the rich and the poor in Rio de Janeiro, and different socioeconomic groups are largely segregated into different neighborhoods. Although the city is ranked as among one of the world’s most populated metropolises, a large number of its inhabitants live in slums known as favelas. There have been a number of government initiatives to counter this problem, from the removal of the population from favelas to housing projects such as Cidade de Deus to the more recent approach of improving conditions in the favelas and bringing them up to par with the rest of the city, as well as the development of the "Favela Bairro" program and deployment of Pacifying Police Units

Igarape, Brazil: Igarape Institute, 2019. 24p.

By Ronald V. Clarke and John E. Eck

This 60-step manual assumes that you are an experienced analyst and that you are accustomed to providing the kind of information needed to support police operations. This means that:

You use modern computing and know how to access and manipulate comprehensive databases.

You know how to use software to map crime, to identify hot spots, and to relate these to demographic and other data.

You routinely produce charts showing weekly or monthly changes in crime at departmental and beat level, perhaps to support CompStat-style operations.

You are accustomed to carrying out analyses into such topics as the relationship between the addresses of known offenders and local outbreaks of car theft and burglary.

You may have carried out some before-and-after evaluations of crackdowns, such as on residential burglaries or car thefts.

You have some basic knowledge of statistics and research methodology such as is provided by an undergraduate social science degree.

The manual builds on this experience to prepare you for a different analytic role as a key member of a problem-solving team. Indeed, the latest writings on problem-oriented policing see crime analysts as central to this new way of policing communities. These writers argue that many of the weaknesses of current practice result from the insufficient involvement of well-trained crime analysts at each stage of the problem-solving process.

Washington, DC: Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, 2016. 148p.

By Lee Antony Johnson

Assaults against police officers are an enduring aspect of the risk posed to police officers, with the underlying risk of conflict prevalent in all encounters with the public. Egon Bittner (1975) highlighted that police officers hold the threat of and ability to use force to resolve conflict between and with citizens. As a result, police officers put themselves in situations where there is an increased risk of being assaulted or injured. Police officers make quick decisions to interfere in the lives of others, deciding whether to use force and on how best to control potentially violent individuals. The main research questions for this thesis focused on the impact of the police role and the informal rules of the ‘occupational police culture’ on the risk of conflict escalation. It explored the importance of cultural talk as a way of making sense of the police role but also in guiding the way in which officers approach future incidents. To provide this detailed understanding of cultural traits, the study concentrated on the observation of police officers in action at live incidents as well as their behaviours and actions in the parade room and police vehicles when discussing and explaining incidents of violence. The thesis explored how both male and female officers engaged with gendered discussion and the differences between officers in how they approached incidents and reacted to facing aggressive non-compliance. In doing so, the study moves away from quantitative overviews of assault data, including location and temporal analysis towards understanding the realities of policing, the dynamics of incidents, how officers support each other and the influence of informal cultural values in explaining some assaults and the general reactions to being attacked.

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  The study reveals that there is a strong connection between how an officer performs according to informal rules and guidance and the increased risk of being assaulted. The approach of an officer, coupled with a desire for action and a need to (re)assert authority create situations whereby there is often a higher risk of conflict escalation. The police role also influences the risk of assault with a clear impact of workload and call demand stressors on the police response to incidents, including the danger that an officer under stress can over-react to challenges to their authority, creating conditions by which assaults sometimes occur. The final key finding suggests that the demands of assistance based calls present new risks and challenges to police officers from the misunderstanding of needs to problems in morally applying force and establishing authority. This study extends knowledge of assaults against police officers in England and Wales and leads to wider debates about the influence of informal cultural values and discretion on assaults alongside the impact of assistance based calls. Recommendations are made for police policies on personal safety training, the encouragement of reporting assaults and the provision of information on the effects of drugs and mental health concerns on a person’s behaviour. The conclusion also raises opportunities for future research on this emotive subject.

Leeds, UK: University of Leeds, 2019. 220p.

By INTERPOL and UNICRI

The first Global Meeting on the Opportunities and Risks of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Robotics for Law Enforcement was organized by INTERPOL’s Innovation Centre and the United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute (UNICRI), through its Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, and took place in Singapore on 11 and 12 July 2018. Participants of this first meeting were actively involved in presentations on insights and foresight of AI and robotics, three open discussions (break-out) sessions, and six live demonstrations of the latest innovations and new technologies in the application of AI and robotics.

Torino, Italy: United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute (UNICRI); Lyon, France: The International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL), 2019. 44p.

By Europol

Facing reality? Law enforcement and the challenge of deepfakes’ is the first report produced through the Observatory function of the Europol Innovation Lab. The Europol Innovation Lab’s Observatory function monitors technological developments that are relevant for law enforcement and reports on the risks, threats and opportunities of these emerging technologies.

The report provides a detailed overview of the criminal use of deepfake technology, including their potential use in serious crimes such as CEO fraud, evidence tampering, and the production of non-consensual pornography. It also elaborates on the challenges faced by law enforcement in detecting and preventing the nefarious use of deepfakes. It shows that law enforcement, online service providers and other organisations need to develop their policies and invest in detection as well as prevention solutions for misinformation, and policymakers need to adapt to the changing technological reality as well.

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  Contributing to this report, law enforcement practitioners helped identify a series of challenges that they will have to contend within the decade ahead. In particular, they identified risks associated with digital transformation, the adoption and deployment of new technologies, the abuse of emerging technology by criminals, accommodating new ways of working and maintaining trust in the face of an increase of disinformation. The findings of this report are based on extensive desk research and in-depth consultation with law enforcement experts through strategic foresight activities. These strategic foresight and scenario methods are one means by which the Europol Innovation Lab researches and prepares for the potential impact of new technologies on law enforcement.

Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union, 2022. 23p.

By Europol

The metaverse has been described as the next iteration of the internet. This report provides a first, law enforcement-centric outlook at current developments on the topic, potential implications for law enforcement, as well as key recommendations as to what the law enforcement community could do to prepare for the future. This report aims to help police chiefs, law enforcement agencies and policy makers to begin to grasp this new environment so that they can adapt and prepare for policing in the metaverse.

Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union, 2022. 29p.

By Sean E. Goodison, Michael J. D. Vermeer, Jeremy D. Barnum, Dulani Woods, Brian A. Jackson

The United States is grappling with an opioid crisis that continues to cause devastation from addiction and massive numbers of deaths from overdose. Law enforcement has a unique role in addressing this crisis because it is directly tasked with interacting with those affected by the crisis on a day-to-day basis.

On September 25 and 26, 2018, the National Institute of Justice (NIJ), supported by the RAND Corporation in partnership with the Police Executive Research Forum, hosted an event that brought together subject-matter experts to identify and prioritize promising approaches for responding to the opioid crisis. After a series of panels and discussions, participants produced 13 high-priority needs, including strategies that were perceived to be ready for immediate implementation and those with remaining challenges that should inform the research agenda.

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  The high-priority needs reflect an assessment by the group that one primary solution to the opioid crisis will be a focus on connecting individuals with opioid use disorder (OUD) to the medications that can treat them. It will be important to pursue solutions that reduce barriers to the use of medication-assisted treatment (MAT) and expand access and funding for it. Connecting individuals with OUD to treatment will require effective collaborations among law enforcement officers, social workers, and other stakeholders. Finally, in addition to removing legal barriers, community and other stakeholder concerns will need to be addressed before high-priority harm-reduction approaches, such as safe injection sites or syringe exchanges, can be implemented.

Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2019. 31p.

By The Police Executive Research Forum.

For decades, enforcing laws against illegal drug trafficking, drug dealing, and drug possession was the primary role of police departments and sheriffs’ offices across the United States. During the Just Say No era of the 1980s and 1990s, arrests for illegal drug possession more than doubled as part of law enforcement’s efforts to deter and diminish drug use. Through time, however, the role of police and sheriffs has evolved and expanded as “demand-reduction policies” have become increasingly prominent. Today, for example, many police agencies administer naloxone, a life-saving medication that quickly reverses the effects of an opioid overdose. Police in some cities and towns also work to connect addicted persons with drug treatment and other services. In many jurisdictions, police have reprioritized their enforcement of laws against possession or use of illegal opioids. Police have had to adjust to what remains a major—and evolving—public health crisis. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, an average of 128 people in the United States died every day in 2018 after overdosing on opioids. And there are reports that the COVID-19 pandemic may be resulting in higher numbers of overdose deaths.

Washington, DC: Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, 2021. 88p.

By The Police Executive Research Forum (PERF)

Police agencies’ management of protests and demonstrations is not a new issue. PERF produced major reports on this topic in 2006, 2011, and 2018 (see pp. 15-17). And yet, the demonstrations of 2020 required PERF to throw out those playbooks and realize that we had to look at demonstrations very differently. Police simply did not expect and were not prepared for the level and extent of violence they encountered. It was unlike anything they had seen in 20 years. Police actually faced three major crises in 2020: Crisis 1: The COVID-19 pandemic, Crisis 2: Thousands of demonstrations following the murder of George Floyd, and Crisis 3: A spike in homicides and shootings. This report is mainly about Crisis 2, demonstrations. But I want to briefly discuss all three crises, because each one posed difficult, sometimes unprecedented challenges to law enforcement agencies, and the three crises compounded each other, creating a synergy that made all of the problems worse.

Police Executive Research Forum, 2022. 64p.

By Sammie Wicks, Jennifer Zeunik, Frank Straub, Elyse Hansen, John Donahue, and John Sullivan

The purpose of the Institute’s independent review of the Metropolitan Police Department’s (MPD) protest threat assessment process is to determine whether threat assessments conducted by MPD have been or are influenced by bias when planning for and executing a response to First Amendment demonstrations. The legislation specifically requested that the study utilize arrest data, public and officer injury data, type of injury reports, fatality numbers, officer deployment data, tactical and type of weaponry used, and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) terrorist watchlist data to determine if and how MPD responses varied. The Institute’s team worked to gain access to and review all available data regarding MPD responses to first amendment demonstrations to determine if bias played a role in MPD threat assessments from January 2017 – January 2021, and to provide recommendations for mitigating bias in the threat assessment process and producing a report that captures the information.

Arlington, VA: National Policing Institute, 2022. 63p.