By Alex S. Vitale

The massive uprising that followed the police killing of George Floyd in the summer of 2020— by some estimates the largest protests in US history—thrust the argument to defund the police to the forefront of international politics. That case had been put persuasively a few years earlier in The End of Policing by Alex Vitale, now a leading figure in the urgent public discussion over policing and racial justice.

The central problem, Vitale demonstrates, is the dramatic expansion of the police role over the last forty years. Drawing on firsthand research from across the globe, he shows how the implementation of alternatives to policing—such as drug legalization, regulation, and harm reduction instead of the policing of drugs—has led to reductions in crime, spending, and injustice.

London; New York: Verso, 2017. 247p. (Updated in 2021)

By Scott M. Stringer

This report, by New York City Comptroller Scott M. Stringer, is rooted in the view that we have conceived of public safety too narrowly for too long at an enormous cost to communities of color entangled in the criminal legal system, their families and neighbors, and the city as a whole. To change this paradigm and address the near-term spike in crime, we must pursue new and better ways to co-produce public safety in partnership with communities, ensure accountability, address chronic needs, and make the city safer for all. Identifying the interventions that will enable us to confront these challenges requires that we take a public health-first approach. Indeed, safety must be viewed both as freedom from violence and the ability to access all of what is necessary to thrive in our city – from stable housing and quality education, to health care and living-wage jobs. In June of 2020, Comptroller Stringer detailed ways to immediately achieve recurring savings from the NYPD to invest in communities. Some but not all of these proposals were adopted by the City Council and Mayor de Blasio and reflected in the Fiscal Year 2021 Adopted Budget. With this report, developed in the months since the passage of the City budget, the Comptroller’s Office seeks to build on that baseline proposal from June, presenting a more comprehensive plan that moves additional responsibilities away from the NYPD and identifies specific areas for community reinvestment.

New York: Office of the New York City Comptroller, Bureau of Policy and Research , 2021. 50p.

By Harvey Treger

This book examines the empirical evidence demonstrating the efficacy of police–social work crisis teams, barriers to effective teamwork, and the tasks and situations that police social workers are likely to experience. Descriptive data obtained from a police–social work team within a midsize law enforcement agency located in the northeastern U.S. is used to illustrate the situations and tasks that social workers encounter. Implications for the use of such teams with assisting law enforcement agencies with their community service and community policing functions, and research implications for conducting program evaluations to determine the efficacy of police–social teams are discussed.

Illinois. Charles C. Thomas. 1975.

Edited by Ronald V. Clarke

Situational prevention originated in Great Britain, but its development was soon influenced by policy research in the United States. Research over the last 10 years has demonstrated the usefulness of situational prevention in dealing with a broad range of crime problems. Situational prevention requires design or modification of the immediate environment to reduce opportunities for crime by increasing the efforts and risks and decreasing the rewards as perceived by a wide range of offenders. Its 12 techniques include target hardening, access control, deflecting offenders, control of factors that facilitate crime, entry and exit screening, formal surveillance, surveillance by employees, natural surveillance, target removal, property identification, removal of inducements, and rule setting. Many of these measures are unobtrusive, others actually reduce fear of crime, and others increase convenience while increasing security. The case studies describe the use and outcomes of situational prevention focused on specific crimes in the United States, England, Australia, Canada, Sweden, and the Netherlands.

NY. Harrow and Heston. 1992. 289p.

By GBD 2019 Police Violence US Subnational Collaborators

The burden of fatal police violence is an urgent public health crisis in the USA. Mounting evidence shows that deaths at the hands of the police disproportionately impact people of certain races and ethnicities, pointing to systemic racism in policing. Recent high-profile killings by police in the USA have prompted calls for more extensive and public data reporting on police violence. This study examines the presence and extent of under-reporting of police violence in US Government-run vital registration data, offers a method for correcting under-reporting in these datasets, and presents revised estimates of deaths due to police violence in the USA.

The Lancet 2021; 398: 1239–55  

By Andrew C. Forrester and Alex Nowrasteh 

The 287(g) program enables local law enforcement agencies to enforce federal immigration laws. We examine 287(g)’s implementation across multiple counties in North Carolina and identify its impact on local crime rates and police clearance rates using a staggered difference-in-differences research design. Under multiple empirical specifications, we find no evidence to suggest that 287(g) programs had an effect on crime rates in North Carolina counties following their implementation. These results hold for simple measures of program adoption and program intensity. Our findings suggest that 287(g) in North Carolina counties did not meet its intended objective of improving public safety by facilitating the removal of violent offenders.   

Logan, UT: Center for Growth and Opportunity at Utah State University , 2020. 40p.

By Joel A. Capellan; Evan T. Sorg

The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 has facilitated the arrest, detention, and deportation of illegal immigrants by local law enforcement officials by adding 287(g) to the Immigration and Nationality Act; however, there has not been a nationwide examination of the crime reduction benefits of these agreements. Using crime, demographic, and detention data from the 167 counties that applied for 287(g) status from 2005-2010, the authors estimated three cross-lagged panel models to assess the impact on total crime of 287(g) interventions resulting in detention or deportations on total crime, violent crime, and property crime. The study found no evidence that 287(g) arrangements were linked to meaningful crime reduction. Due to the potential adverse consequences from these agreements, this study questions the continued use of such agreements under 287(g).

Glassboro, NJ: Rowan University, 2022. 40p.

By Maxime Ricard and Kouamé Félix Grodji

Africa’s rapidly expanding cities are witnessing unprecedented levels of violent crime and the growing menace of criminal gangs. Exceeding the capacity of police, these dangers pose threats to citizen security, livelihoods, and the governability of urban areas.

• In response to these security crises, community-based security groups are emerging as a form of collaborative policing. While not a substitute for police, these groups can help address rising urban crime. Since they know their neighborhoods, these groups can act as go-betweens for overstretched local police and citizens.

• The most effective vigilance committees recognize that coercive tactics and violent confrontations with youth gangs escalate hostilities and fail to address deeper community problems. This will require tackling systemic factors linked to high crime rates in order to redirect youth gangs and stem urban violence.

• Experience from Abidjan reveals the limits of these vigilance committees in tackling serious crimes as well as the risk that these committees can turn to extrajudicial violence and become a threat themselves. This highlights the importance of close partnerships between vigilance committees and the police if collaborative policing models are to contribute to community security.

• Civil society engagement and community oversight are needed to regulate community-based security groups and ensure that they are not misused by local elites or corrupt police.

Washington, DC: Africa Center for Strategic Studies, 2021. 

By Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Constabulary

Serious acquisitive crime (SAC) strikes at the heart of people’s feelings of safety in their homes and communities. It isn’t just a ‘volume crime’. It affects people on a daily basis. And failing to target it damages public confidence in policing. The response to SAC from policing isn’t consistently good enough. Too many offenders remain at liberty and most victims aren’t getting the justice they deserve. Forces are missing opportunities to identify and catch offenders, from the moment a member of the public reports the crime to the point where a case is finalised. Depending on where in England and Wales they live, some victims of SAC are more likely than others to get a thorough investigation from their force. This can’t be justified. This report brings together some of our findings from recent police effectiveness, efficiency and legitimacy (PEEL) and thematic inspections in England and Wales. It shows where forces need to make improvements in the way they tackle SAC, and it reports on the good practice we identified. The onus is on forces to learn from each other. They should consider whether they can apply the positive examples in this report to their own force.  

Birmingham, UK: HM Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services, 2022. 40p.

By Justin T. Pickett. Amanda Graham and Francis T. Cullen 

The mission of policing is “to protect and serve,” but recent events suggest that many Americans, and especially Black Americans, do not feel protected from the police. Understanding police-related fear is important because it may impact civilians’ health, daily lives, and policy attitudes. To examine the prevalence, sources, and consequences of both personal and altruistic fear of the police, we surveyed a nationwide sample (N = 1,150), which included comparable numbers of Black (N = 517) and White (N = 492) respondents. Most White respondents felt safe, but most Black respondents lived in fear of the police killing them and hurting their family members. Approximately half of Black respondents preferred to be robbed or burglarized than to have unprovoked contact with officers. The racial divide in fear was mediated by past experiences with police mistreatment. In turn, fear mediated the effects of race and past mistreatment on support for defunding the police and intentions to have “the talk” with family youths about the need to distrust and avoid officers. The deep American racial divide in police-related fear represents a racially disparate health crisis and a primary obstacle to law enforcement’s capacity to serve all communities equitably.  

Criminology, 60 (2): 291-320, 2022.    

By The Independent Office for Police Conduct

The circumstances in which police officers use Taser is an area of significant public interest. Tasers provide the police and the community with valuable protection in dangerous situations. The police are able to use Tasers as an option to resolve situations, including the threat of serious violence, when they consider the use of the Taser is reasonable and proportionate to the threat they face. Tasers are now available to more police officers than ever before with some police forces committing to providing them to all frontline officers who wish to carry one. Home Office data shows Taser was used in 17,000 incidents in 2017/18, nearly doubling to around 32,000 incidents in 2019/20. In the majority of cases Taser is not discharged – the threat alone can help to resolve an incident. However, some community groups and organisations have repeatedly expressed concerns about the risks associated with Taser use, particularly in the context of deaths and serious injuries, their use against children and vulnerable adults, and the significant racial disparities in Taser usage. As an independent body, our oversight helps to shine a light on issues we see in our investigations and through concerns being raised by community groups and organisations. This report was commissioned following a series of incidents involving Black men and people with mental health concerns in early 2020. We reviewed 101 cases involving Taser use that the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC), or our predecessor organisation the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC), investigated between 2015 and 2020. This report is not intended to present a fully representative picture of how Tasers are used across England and Wales, because we investigate only the most serious and sensitive cases. However, these cases often have the greatest impact on community confidence and provide invaluable opportunities for learning. It is right that Taser use is closely analysed to ensure the device is being used appropriately and not as a default when other options may be available. Police forces must be able to justify to the public the circumstances in which Taser is deployed, particularly when children and vulnerable people are involved. Forces must also respond to the disproportionate use of Tasers against Black people.  

London: The Independent Office on Police Conduct, 2021.128p.

By Beatriz Magaloni and Luis Rodriguez

How can societies restrain their coercive institutions and transition to a more humane criminal justice system? We argue that two main factors explain why torture can persist as a generalized practice even in democratic societies: weak procedural protections and the militarization of policing, which introduces strategies, equipment and mentality that treats criminal suspects as if they were enemies in wartime. Using a large survey of the Mexican prison population and leveraging the date and place of arrest, this paper provides causal evidence about how these two explanatory variables shape police brutality. Our paper offers a grim picture of the survival of authoritarian policing practices in democracies. It also provides novel evidence of the extent to which the abolition of inquisitorial criminal justice institutions – a remnant of colonial legacies and a common trend in the region – has worked to restrain police brutality.

Stanford, CA: Stanford University, Poverty, Violence and Governance Lab (PoVgov), 2020. 51p.

By Beatriz Magaloni, Vanessa Melo, Jailson de Souza Silva, Eliana Sousa Silva

 The goal of this study is to explore themes related to public security using a large-scale, door-to-door survey of roughly 6,300 residents from Cidade de Deus, Providência, Rocinha, Batan, and Maré. Our aim is to generate a more informed debate about the security situation in Rio de Janeiro that gives voice to residents of the city’s favelas. In this survey, we explore favela residents’ patterns of interaction with the police and armed criminal groups, their experiences with victimization, their perceptions of changes in the security climate, as well as their evaluations of the police and the public security situation in their communities

Stanford, CA: Stanford University, Poverty, Violence and Governance Lab (PoVgov), 2017.  81p.

By Beatriz Magaloni, Vanessa Melo, and Gustavo Robles  

We present the first randomized experiment on police body-cameras in a high-violence setting: Brazil. Camera assignment -regardless of whether police turned it on -reduced stop-and-searches and other forms of potentially aggressive interactions with civilians. Cameras also produced a strong de-policing effect, where police wearing cameras were significantly less likely to engage in any form of activity, including responding to requests of help. These changes in police behavior took place even when most officers disobeyed the protocol that required them to turn their cameras on when interacting with civilians. To address this problem, we randomly assigned cameras to supervisors during part of the study. When officers’ supervisors wore a camera, policing activities and camera usage increased. Police surveys, interviews and focus groups strengthen the finding that technological advances can only have a limited impact in so far an organizational culture that perpetuates lack of compliance with internal protocols and violence persists.

Stanford, CA: Stanford University, Poverty, Violence and Governance Lab (PoVgov), Working Paper, 2020. 38p.

By Beatriz Magaloni, Vanessa Melo, Jailsun de Souza Silva and Eliana Sousa Silva

This study was conducted by the Poverty, Violence and Governance Lab (PovGov) in partnership with the Rio-based NGOs Favela’s Observatory (Observatório de Favelas) and Redes de Maré, two of the most respected civil society organizations acting in Rio de Janeiro’s favelas today. Our study seeks to understand the public security perceptions of residents living in four favelas that received a Pacifying Police Unit (UPP): Cidade de Deus, Providência, Rocinha and Batan. We also interviewed residents of Complexo da Maré during the “pre-pacification” period when the Brazilian Armed Forces and the Military Police occupied Maré in preparation for the arrival of the UPP (Sousa Silva, 2017). In the end, Complexo da Maré did not receive a UPP and the occupation of the favela by the state’s armed forces marked the end of the “pacification” process. The goal of this study is to explore themes related to public security using a largescale, door-to-door survey. The survey was administered between September 2015 and February 2016 and collected information from roughly 6,300 residents of Cidade de Deus, Providência, Rocinha, Batan and Maré. Our aim is to generate a more informed debate about the security situation in Rio de Janeiro that gives voice to residents of the city’s favelas. We seek to convey the experiences and perspectives of a large number of favela residents, including their patterns of interaction with the police and the armed criminal groups, their victimization experiences, changes in the security climate, evaluations of the UPP and the Military Police more broadly, and the overall public security situation in these communities.

Stanford, CA: Poverty, Governance, Policy Lab (povgov), 2018 81p.

By Rafael A. Mangual

New York was the site of what was surely one of the most significant government-led achievements in urban American history: a steep drop in serious violent crime, continuing across a 25-year period from the early 1990s well into the second decade of the 21st century. As of 1990, New York State’s violent crime and murder rates per 100,000 residents had reached 1,180.9 and 14.5, respectively. By 2015, those measures had plummeted to 379.7 and 3.1—respective declines of 68% and 79%. The statewide reduction in criminal violence was concentrated in New York City, which had accounted for nearly 87% of the 2,605 murders reported to the FBI by New York State in 1990. Then as now, violent crime was significantly concentrated within small slices of the city’s neighborhoods, whose black and Latino residents benefited most from the decline. As crime plummeted, New York City blossomed. Over the course of a single decade, the once crime-ridden, under-developed city depicted in gritty vigilante and gangster movies—whose northern-most borough was infamously observed in flames by horrified viewers of the 1977 World Series—rebranded itself as the safest big city in America. In recent years, however, the previously steady decline in violent crime in New York has ground to a halt—and even begun to reverse. An uptick in violent crime, concentrated in the state’s urban centers and accelerating during the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic, constitutes perhaps the most serious challenge for policymakers. Successfully meeting that challenge and addressing those concerns will require an understanding of what lies at the root of the problem.

New York: Manhattan Institute, 2022. 15p.

By Giovanni Circo, June Werdlow Rogers, Edmund F. McGarrell, Julie M. Krupa, Alaina De Biasi, Juli Liebler, Shannon Cartwright and Travis Carter

Project Greenlight Detroit (PGLD) represents an innovative approach to public safety. PGLD involves a partnership between the Detroit Police Department (DPD), the city of Detroit, and business owners. PGLD is a multiple component strategy that involves the installation of high-quality video systems in and around retail, service, and multi-unit residential locations; monitoring of the cameras in a Real-Time Crime Center; priority call response; and supportive collaboration between DPD and PGLD participants. PGLD is best viewed as part of a comprehensive set of crime and 6 violence reduction strategies developed by DPD and its local, state, and federal partners over recent years. These comprehensive strategies include interventions aimed at high rate, repeat offenders, gangs and groups involved in violent crimes and shootings, and outreach, prevention, and community development strategies. PGLD represents a place-based intervention that builds upon crime analysis that indicates a small number of geographic locations account for a disproportionate amount of the crime and violence that occurs in the city. Additionally, these crime analysis patterns have revealed that violent crime is concentrated among a small proportion of street segments, particularly those where gas stations, bars and taverns, and small commercial entities such as convenience stores are located. Particularly, when combined with indicators of illicit drug sales, these types of locations demonstrate high risk for fatal and nonfatal shootings and other types of violent crime. PGLD represents a strategic response to these crime patterns based upon the partnership of the City, DPD, and PGLD business and property owners. This report presents the results of a multi-year evaluation of PGLD. The report provides background on the development and key components of PGLD, provides insight into the implementation and key program outputs, and then examines the potential impact of PGLD on crime. The evaluation is complicated because of the nature of the PGLD program itself. In effect, the program has been in a continual “roll-out” since its launch in 2016. Thus, the program began with 77 PGLD locations in 2016 and has added 138, 235, 204 new locations from 2017-2019, respectively. Even in 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, an additional 62 PGLD locations were enrolled through the end of November. Indeed, the expansion of PGLD, requiring initial and ongoing investment by the business owner, represents an indicator of the success of PGLD. Yet, from an evaluation perspective, this is more complicated than studying the impact of a program initiated at one point in time. Second, we have reason to believe that PGLD results in increases in reporting of crime, particularly property and disorder offenses, to the police. This makes it difficult to assess trends in crime – is an observed increase in incidents indicative of more crime or a greater willingness to report the incident? Third, PGLD was implemented during a period of multiple crime and violence reduction strategies. Overall crime trends indicate that these strategies have improved public safety in Detroit (see Table 1). Indeed, fatal and nonfatal shootings were 38 percent lower in 2018-19 compared to 2011-12 and since 2016 fatal and nonfatal shootings have declined 27 percent compared to the prior five years.

East Lansing, MI: Michigan Justice Statistics Center School of Criminal Justice Michigan State University,. 2020. 94p.

By The Institute of Economics and Peace

This is the first edition of the Lloyd’s Register Foundation Safety Perceptions Index (SPI), produced by the Institute for Economics and Peace using data from the Lloyd’s Register Foundation’s World Risk Poll.

The purpose of the index is to better understand how perceptions of safety differ across countries, and how the different aspects of risk are connected. The SPI measures the levels of worry, likelihood and experience of risk across five domains: health, personal, violence, environment, and the workplace. These domains and themes are combined into a composite score which reflects perceptions of safety at the country level. A high score indicates a high level of concern with safety issues The SPI measures the levels of worry, likelihood and experience of risk across five domains: health, personal, violence, environment, and the workplace. Future versions of the index will be able to track trends and changes in perceptions of safety over time, and to see if perceptions of safety have changed across different regions. This will be particularly important as the world begins to recover from the COVID19 pandemic. Data for the first iteration of the SPI was collected before the onset of the pandemic in early 2020. As such, it is highly likely that attitudes towards different risks will have shifted significantly over the past two years.

Sydney: IEP, 2022. 35p.

By Yvon Dandurand, Paul Maxim and Darryl Plecas

This study was undertaken as a step toward understanding how the relationship between police services and their host communities has evolved over the years. It examined the extent to which police efforts aimed at improving police-minority relations over the past 20 years have improved perceptions of the police among visible minority groups in Canada (with special attention to British Columbia). More specifically, the study examined the degree to which attitudes of visible minorities over that 20-year period between 1999 and 2019 can be distinguished from those of the overall population in Canada and British Columbia – with special attention to the matter of crime victims’ contacts with police. The core analysis for this 5 study involved a comparison of data from Statistics Canada’s General Social Survey (GSS) panels on Canadians’ Safety (Victimization) conducted in 1999, 2004, 2009, 2014 and 2019.

Vancouver BC; International Centre for Criminal Law Reform and Criminal Justice Policy, 2022. 62p.

By Katheryne Pugliese, Paul Odér, Talib Hudson, and Jeffrey A. Butts

The crime and justice field recently started to label a wide array of violence prevention strategies as Community Violence Interventions (or CVI). Many of these strategies depend on law enforcement and social services, but the most innovative approaches are community-centered and community-sourced. They are grassroots efforts that rely on the resources of neighborhoods and residents themselves, operating separately from law enforcement and traditional human services. These strategies could be called Community Violence Interventions at the Roots (or CVI-R). The most established CVI-R programs are Cure Violence and Advance Peace. They offer highly localized and potentially cost-effective approaches to public safety, but do they work? Evaluation evidence is recent and not yet consistent, but the grassroots approach to community violence prevention is highly promising. To build sustainable CVI-R models, communities and researchers must collaborate in designing rigorous evaluations to produce reliable and actionable evidence.

New York: John Jay College of Criminal Justice, 2022. 19p.