By Geoffrey C. Barnes, Simon Williams | Lawrence W. Sherman | Jesse Parmar | Paul House | Stephen A. Brown

In this article, we examine how communities can maximize deterrence of crime while minimizing cost and police intrusion on public life. Using 3,720 hot spot-days, we show that the “sweet spot” duration of police absence, to maximize the residual deterrence of crime, was a full four days after the last day of targeting police patrol at each hot spot. Over a 248-day period, we randomly reshuffled 15 separate hot spots daily into either treatment (targeted police patrols) or control (no targeted patrols) for that day, so that all locations repeatedly switched between randomly assigned groups. This repeated crossover design (Cochrane & Cox, 1957; Fienberg et al., 1980) included random periods of up to 20 consecutive days in which individual hot spots remained in the control condition, allowing us to measure how soon, and by what trajectory, the residual deterrent effect of targeted patrolling wore off. After four days without patrolling, there was a sudden termination of residual deterrence, marked by a 66% rise in offense frequency, and a 395% spike in our index of crime harm (House & Neyroud 2018), compared to the treatment condition. It may be possible to deploy less, not more policing and still maximize deterrent effects.

Sweet Spots Pre-Print 2020-07

By Lawrence W. Sherman

Police are often criticized fordoing “too much” or “too little” policing in various sit-uations. These criticisms amount to testable hypothe-ses about whether “less” force, or intensity, or enforce-ment would have been enough, or whether “more” was needed. The rise of evidence-based policing provides a starting point for public dialogues about those hypotheses, in ways that could help to build police legitimacy.Such dialogues can be focused on the questions posed by the three “Ts”: (1) Is police actiontargetedin a way that is proportionate to the harm that it can prevent?(2) Has the action been tested and found effective with the kinds of targets, and their levels of harm, where it is being used? (3) Is police actiontrack to ensure it is delivered in the way that has been tested, and in compli-ance with relevant legal requirements? In this lecture, I frame the issue as follows:Can more widespread use of better research evidence on targeting, testing, and tracking police actions, shared more clearly among the public and police, help reduce the wide range of oscillation between over-policing and under-policing?PolicyImplications:Theuseofthesequestionsinpub-lic dialogue would be especially relevant to the three biggest threats to police legitimacy in the aftermath ofGeorge Floyd’s murder: (A) police killing people, (B)police stopping people, and (C) police under-patrolling 176SHERMANhigh-crime hot spots (while over-patrolling low-crime areas). One result of applying the three-Ts questions to these threats, for example, could be the end of the vast overuse of stop and search in low-violence areas. At The same time, this approach could also lead to reduc-tions in homicide by increasing stops in highest vio-lence hot spots. Such changes could demonstrate how the “Goldilocks principle” for the three Ts could get policing closer to “just right” for each place and person being policed.

 Criminology & Public Policy.2022;21:175–196

By Charles Fain Lehman

In the wake of the death of George Floyd and the summer of protests and riots that followed, left-wing activists and politicians have called not simply for reforms to policing, but for its abolition. In order to eliminate the possibility of wrongful killing of civilians, these advocates say, we should defund police departments, reroute their budgets to social services, and replace beat cops with unarmed civilian alternatives wherever possible. In the first half of this brief, I outline why such proposals would be a disaster for public safety. In short, they:

• Have little basis in evidence;

• Would increase the risk posed to civilian employees;

• Would diminish the crime-reduction benefits of current police work; and

• Would have little impact on the size, and therefore effect, of social welfare spending.

While replacing the police is a misguided idea, that does not mean that lawmakers should dismiss altogether the idea of nonpolice crime-fighting tools. Indeed, there are several evidence-based, effective means to mitigate crime through channels other than more police work. These complementary tools can help relieve stress on overtaxed and understaffed police forces. In the second half of this report, I lay out the evidence behind three options:

• Reducing crime through changes to the built environment, such as cleaning up vacant lots and green public spaces;

• Using “nonpolice guardians,” such as neighborhood watches and CCTV cameras, to extend the police’s reach;

• Targeting problematic alcohol use, a major cause of crime.

New York: The Manhattan Institute, 2021. 20p.

By Anne Nassauer

Officer-involved shootings (OIS) of people of color concern fundamental societal issues, including race, violence, and policing. While scholars have gathered extensive insights on contextual circumstances of OIS, the unfolding of encounters still remains a black box, and research is still debating whether racialized biases actually matter for shootings. To study this question, this article discusses findings from an in-depth analysis of real life OIS as they unfold. It triangulates video footage with document data to analyze the role of racial biases and situational interaction in shootings. It compares police shootings of black and white citizens, as well as a police-citizen encounter that did not end in a shooting. Findings suggest two intertwined processes of dehumanization contribute to the shootings of black citizens, one operating on the cultural and one on the situational level. The article contributes to research on race and racism, violence, police use of lethal force, and sociological theory.     

   Ethnic and Racial Studies , 2023.

By Eric Piza and Victoria A. Sytsma 

  The current study applies Systematic Social observation (SSO) to body-worn camera (BWC) footage of use of physical force events in Newark, NJ. The analysis tests the effect of suspect resistance and police officer interpersonal and informational justice tactics on time until use of physical force in police-citizen encounters. The results indicate police officer actions have a greater effect on the time until physical force than does suspect resistance. Officer adherence to informational justice is negatively associated to the time until both first use of force and highest level of force. Suspect resistance did not achieve statistical significance in any model. This study has implications for research and police practice, and demonstrates the benefits of leveraging video footage in criminological research.

Crime & Delinquency 2022.

By Sébastien Cojean, Nicolas Combalbert & Anne Taillandier-Schmitt  

  Aim: Police action is frequently discussed and almost always monitored. The aim of this systematic review is to identify the psychological and social factors underlying police officers' decisions to use force. Methodology: Scientific articles were selected from six databases (PsycINFO, PsycARTICLES, Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection, HeinOnline, ScienceDirect, PubMed). Results We found 923 articles matching our search, and 52 were retained based on their results regarding the psychological factors underlying police officers' decisions to use force and the decision-making process itself. We found that the most frequently studied factors were belonging to an ethnic minority, carrying a conducted energy device (CED), the police department’s policies and managerial organization, and the environment in which the encounter occurred. However, it seems that the most predictive factor in the decision to use force is the resistance and behavior of the suspect.   

International Journal of Law and Psychiatry. Volume 70, May–June 2020

By Laura Mangels & Joel Suss & Brian Lande  

  Improving police use-of-force training is methodologically difficult. By providing a method for identifying the “expert” response to any given scenario, and by triangulating multiple methods, we aim to contribute towards police departments’ capacities to engage in more effective and targeted training. Forty-two police experts and 36 novices watched five scenarios taken from body-worn camera footage. The videos would pause at several points, and respondents gave both close-ended survey answers and open-ended written answers. Using a mixed-methods approach combining quantitative regression and natural-language processing techniques, we triangulated our findings to reach conclusions regarding the differences between experts and novices. Relative to novices, expert police officers were more likely to report the importance of force mitigation opportunities to any given scenario in close-ended questions, and were more likely to use words associated with verbal de-escalation; novices were more likely to use words associated with physical control.  

  Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology, Volume: 35 Dated: 2020 Pages: 294-303

By Dorothy Moses Schulz

  This report examines the issue of “wandering cops”—officers who leave one police department after alleged misconduct and are then hired by another agency. After discussing the problem of wanderers, its causes, and the relevant literature, this paper proposes a number of recommendations to address the problem and related concerns. These recommendations include: 1. Strengthen the National Decertification Index (NDI) maintained by the International Association of Directors of Law Enforcement Standards and Training (IADLEST): a. Create incentives and set aside federal funding for all police agencies to report to their states’ police officer standards and training (POST) bureau any changes in officers’ employment or disciplinary status—including dismissals and retirements/resignations of personnel under investigation—within 30 days. Existing and pending legislation should be reviewed to ensure that these events are promptly recorded. b. Require an NDI inquiry as part of the background check for any applicant who claims prior police or peace officer employment, in order to determine whether the applicant’s certification was ever canceled. 2. Strengthen individual state POSTs, particularly since some are reporting varying levels of success in implementing the new powers that they have already received.1 States should consider requiring police departments to report all terminations and questionable departures to their state POST, as well as requiring the POST to submit the information to NDI.  3. States should pass legislation that clarifies the authority of POSTs not to merely list officers but to decertify them. State law should clearly specify the criminal or civil offenses or departmental violations that trigger decertification; whether decertification is automatic or whether it may be decided by a panel of law-enforcement and civilian personnel; whether officers have the right to appeal; and how decertified officers are to be recertified if they are found not guilty in a criminal or civil procedure or are returned to full duty based on legal or union appeals. This will ensure a precise definition of “listing” versus “decertifying.” 4. The federal government and/or states should subsidize the costs of recruit training: a. States should use a portion of the $350 billion that they will receive from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) to directly subsidize the costs of training for all police departments or, at a minimum, departments below a certain size or budget. By subsidizing the cost of training new officers, states can reduce the incentive for local police departments to hire wandering police officers. b. States should also use ARPA funds to hire and train POST staff with the technological expertise to ensure that information shared with NDI is timely and accurate. 

New York: The Manhattan Institute,  2022.  18p.

By Nicole Gelinas

  Since mid-2020, government spending on American police departments has come under intense scrutiny nationwide. The New York Police Department (NYPD) is no exception. Leftwing critics supporting the “defund the police” movement charge that spending on police is crowding out necessary spending on civilian agencies that provide education, housing, health care, and social services. Even moderate Democrats and supposedly neutral news outlets accept the premise that police spending is either too high, relative to the rest of the city budget, or, at minimum, keeping up with the rest of the city budget. What’s missing from the “defund” argument and even from news sources is context. How large is the NYPD budget, relative to the overall city budget? How has spending on policing changed over the years and decades, relative to the entire budget? How large is uniformed-police staffing, relative to the overall city workforce? To answer these questions, this paper analyzes four decades of New York City police spending, from the recovery after the 1970s fiscal crisis through the pandemic years of the early 2020s. This paper puts spending and officer headcount in the context of the overall budget. The paper finds that operational spending on the uniformed NYPD, contrary to conventional wisdom, has shrunk substantially as a share of the city budget since the early 1980s, both in terms of spending and the size of the uniformed-officer workforce.

New York: The Manhattan Institute, 2023. 13p.

By Sean Barry Butcher

Within contemporary policing and community safety discourses, citizen-led initiatives have rarely commanded the degree of attention afforded elsewhere. Typically, research has tended to focus upon state, and more recently market provision. This thesis addresses that deficit by investigating volunteer citizen patrol initiatives. It adopts an exploratory approach to conceptualise and determine the composition of patrols, and subsequently offers insights into the reasons why individuals partake in organised patrols, the nature of their activities, and how they are received by other citizens and local stakeholders. In the first half of the study, citizen patrols are defined, charted across extended historical periods, and located within the contemporary policing landscape. The second half presents the empirical findings of a qualitative study that explores three citizen patrol case studies in northern England. Data collected within these sites consisted of a total of 150 hours of participant observation and 40 semi-structured interviews, with participants, coordinators and external stakeholders. The findings indicate that despite state dominance and more recent market expansion across the policing landscape, the presence of citizen patrols illustrates a space for civil society that demonstrates continuities with the past. Participants exhibited a range of motivations for partaking and completed various activities; as responses to perceived threats, broader vulnerability, and for the purposes of information sharing. Elsewhere, a distinction emerged between those that the patrols engaged, and those that more broadly benefited. Serving the interests of the latter presented implications not only for the fair and even spread of patrol activities, but also for the delivery of policing provision more generally. Finally, the patrols were well-received by stakeholders, who connected with initiatives both strategically and operationally. There was evidence of positive relationships and collaboration, though frontline police articulated concern about their capacity to effectively support initiatives in light of reductions to personnel and resources.

  Leeds, UK: The University of Leeds, School of Law, Centre for Criminal Justice Studies, 2019. 309p.  

City and County of Denver, Officer of the Auditor  

Objective: To evaluate the effectiveness of the Denver Police Department’s recruitment and retention practices and determine whether it adequately uses data to assess its resources and ensure effective operations.

Background: The Denver Police Department and its more than 1,400 uniformed officers strive to keep the public safe through crime prevention and crime reduction strategies. Law enforcement agencies nationwide are struggling to hire and retain officers. This is in part because of greater scrutiny of law enforcement — and negative perceptions by the public — following events like the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police in 2020. Understaffing puts a strain on police agencies, reducing officers’ availability to respond to 911 calls and impairing their wellbeing. It also limits the time officers can spend in the community rebuilding trust and relationships with the people they serve.   \\

Denver: Office of the Auditor, City of Denver,  2023. 82p.

By Mia-Maria Magnusson

Policing research has had an upswing as the evidence-based policing movement has grown stronger and entered police practises worldwide. Within the evidence-based policing (EBP) approach, practically and academically skilled individuals, pracademics, have attracted attention as facilitating the merging of policing practice and research.

Using principles from EBP, and with a special focus on translating between policing practice, policy and research, this thesis aims to explore the characteristics of illicit drug markets with a place-based focus and to link this to the enhancement of EBP in Sweden. The theoretical base of the thesis is drawn from disorganization theory, routine activity theory and situational action theory, and these theories are combined with empirical studies from the research field of drug markets. This thesis argues for making use of pracademics to bridge the research-practice gap, a focus on ODSs, and the testing and tracking of methods such as hot spots policing, with an emphasis on properly implemented evidence-based methods and on the goals of enforcement strategies as a means of improving the effectiveness of drug-market policing.

Malmö: Malmö universitet, 2022. , p. 106

By Matt Freear and Andrew Glazzard

Communications and the tools of the media age have been at the centre of preventing and countering violent extremism (P/CVE) for many years. Often emerging in reaction to terrorist narratives, the emphasis has been on how to most impactfully distribute narratives that counter or present an alternative vision. The debate amongst practitioners has often treated young people as ‘target audiences’, identifying and using ‘credible messengers’, and designing creative digital communication tools to engage them most effectively. Despite the emergence of numerous ‘how-to’ guides and policy briefs, substantial criticisms around the theory, impact and ethics of such approaches remain largely unaddressed.

This Whitehall Report compares two P/CVE programmes in Kenya and Lebanon that independently came to the same conclusion: to counter the multiplicity of factors drawing young people into violent extremism, communications and media tools should be recast to serve the needs of young people, rather than treat them as an audience. This means understanding the perspectives and lived experiences of those young people involved in the programmes. The report describes the programmes’ communications outputs: digital media platforms, news reporting and campaigns led by young people and journalists in areas of Kenya and Lebanon particularly affected by violent extremism.

To provide practicable insights to those designing and implementing P/CVE programmes, the report uses a realist methodology that pays attention to the particulars of what works, for whom and where, by studying the context, mechanisms of change and outcomes of the two programmes. The report finds that mapping the media ecology of the two target locations informed programme activities: examining how young people are represented and the dominant narratives in the media helped to shape, target and prioritise participation. It also finds that media content was secondary to the process which led to the active, voluntary participation of young people. …

  Whitehall Report 4-21. London: Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies  (RUSI), 2021. 40p.

By Katya Migacheva and Jordan Reimer

  The following resource aims to serve as a guide for U.S. state governments as they seek to implement comprehensive targeted violence prevention (TVP) programming. It is not aimed to be prescriptive, but rather provide menus of options for what comprehensive TVP programming might look like at a state level. This resource lays out three specific categories of activities for state-level TVP implementation. The first (Preparation) and last (Monitoring) are "back-end" activities to help state governments lay the groundwork for effective programming and sustain those efforts in perpetuity. The middle category (Prevention) follows the public health model of violence prevention and incorporates four levels of prevention – Primordial, Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary – that address community and individual susceptibility to targeted violence. Guided by the broad mission statement (see below), each activity category (e.g., Preparation, Prevention, Monitoring) has been organized as a logic model, delineating individual goals to accomplish the mission, and corresponding objectives, tasks, outputs, and desired outcomes for each goal. For each output and outcome, or key performance indicators (KPIs) we propose measures of success and corresponding methods/scales to calculate those measures. We also suggest impact indicators to gauge the extent of achieving the overall mission. Finally, appendices lay out definitions of key terms, potential TVP stakeholders, references for targeted violence risk factors, scales for use in conducting measurements, and a references to materials used to develop this resource.    

Washington, DC: National Governors Association, 2022. 140p.

by Trevor Johnston, Erik E. Mueller, Irina A. Chindea, Hannah Jane Byrne, Nathan Vest, Colin P. Clarke, Anusree Garg, Howard J. Shatz

Violent nonstate actors (VNSAs) obtain money from multiple sources, both licit (e.g., donations and legitimate businesses) and illicit (e.g., extortion, smuggling, theft). They use that money to pay, equip, and sustain their fighters and to provide services to local populations, which can help build support for the groups, allowing them to extract resources, gain safe havens, and challenge state authority and territorial control. In this way, financial resources can prolong conflicts and undermine stabilization efforts after the fighting ends. Countering VNSA financing plays a critical role in degrading such organizations. Various means are available to disrupt financing. These include kinetic means, such as destroying resources or neutralizing leadership, and nonkinetic means, such as targeted financial sanctions and legal remedies. The counter–threat financing (CTF) tools that work best for transnational groups may not work as well for national ones, and some tools may prove counterproductive in certain situations. Which tools to use in a given case is not always obvious. The authors draw lessons from efforts against five VNSA groups to discover, in each case, how they financed their activities and for what purposes, as well as which methods to counter this financing worked best and which were counterproductive. The authors then consider what the U.S. Army can do to support counter–terrorism financing efforts.

Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2023. 386p.

by James V. Marrone, Todd C. Helmus, Elizabeth Bodine-Baron, Christopher Santucci

The number of programs dedicated to countering violent extremism (CVE) has grown in recent years, but a fundamental gap remains in the understanding of the effectiveness of such programs. A 2017 RAND Corporation report documented that only a handful of such programs have been subject to rigorous evaluations of effect. Such evaluations are critical because they help ensure that programming funds are dedicated to the most-effective efforts. Evaluations also play a critical role in helping individual programs improve the quality of service provision.

This report presents the results of an evaluation designed to assess the impact of a CVE-themed radio talk show, Ina Mafita, broadcast in northern Nigeria in 2018–2019. RAND researchers studied this program by recruiting more than 2,000 northern Nigerians via text message from a research panel administered by a mobile phone–based market research company. The participants were randomly assigned to listen to either the treatment program of interest, which is intended to address underlying factors promoting instability and support for Boko Haram in northern Nigeria, or to a nontreatment control program. Specifically, RAND researchers examined the effects of the program on listeners' beliefs about the importance of being a role model and the value of local committees in reintegrating at-risk youth, as well as their views of kidnap victims. The report details the research design and findings and offers recommendations for improving such evaluations in the future.

Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2022. 32p.

by Elizabeth Bodine-Baron, James V. Marrone, Todd C. Helmus, Danielle Schlang

This report presents the results of an evaluation designed to assess the effects of countering violent extremism (CVE)–themed social media content used in a campaign to promote tolerance, freedom of speech, and rejection of violence in Indonesia. RAND Corporation researchers studied the effects of the campaign by recruiting a sample of Indonesian youth on Facebook and randomly assigning them to a treatment condition that exposed participants to CVE social media posts or a control condition. This report details the research design and findings and offers recommendations for improving such evaluations in the future.

The group Search for Common Ground (SFCG) worked with a market research firm to design content for Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter using two different hashtags developed specifically for the CVE campaign: #AkuTemanmu ("I am your friend") and #CapekGakSih ("Aren't you tired?"). RAND researchers recruited 1,570 participants from Indonesia via a series of Facebook advertisements. They assigned participants either to a treatment group that viewed SFCG's CVE content or to a control group that viewed non-CVE placebo content that consisted of advertisements from Indonesian entertainment media and retail companies, as well as public service announcement campaigns.

The results indicate that audiences recognized and liked the CVE-themed content at levels comparable to control content, and there were positive effects regarding attitudes toward promoting inclusivity online, although the effect was the result of an unusual, sudden drop in attitudes of control group participants. There also were strong, significant negative treatment effects regarding respondents' attitudes toward living in separated communities.

Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2020. 82p.

By Heather Wolbers, Christopher Dowling, Timothy Cubitt and Chante Kuhn

This paper reviews available research on how the internet facilitates radicalisation and measures to prevent it. It briefly canvasses evidence on the extent to which the internet contributes to radicalisation broadly, and who is most susceptible to its influence, before delving further into the mechanisms underpinning the relationship between the internet and violent extremism.

High-level approaches to combating internet-facilitated radicalisation, including content removal, account suspensions, reducing anonymity, and counternarrative and education campaigns, are mapped against these mechanisms. This illustrates how these approaches can disrupt radicalisation and assists researchers, policymakers and practitioners to identify potential gaps in existing counterterrorism and countering violent extremism regimes. Research on the implementation and outcomes of these approaches is also summarised.

Trends & issues in crime and criminal justice no. 673.  Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology. 2023. 17p.

By the  U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division 

 The United States has conducted an extensive investigation of the Orange County District Attorney’s Office (OCDA) and the Orange County Sheriff’s Department (OCSD), pursuant to our authority under the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, 34 U.S.C. § 12601 (previously codified at 42 U.S.C. § 14141). We have determined that there is reasonable cause to believe that the Orange County District Attorney’s Office and the Orange County Sheriff’s Department engaged in a pattern or practice of conduct—the operation of a custodial informant program—that systematically violated criminal defendants’ right to counsel under the Sixth Amendment and right to due process of law under the Fourteenth Amendment. While our review focused on custodial informant activity from 2007 through 2016, the informant controversy continues to undermine public confidence in the integrity of the Orange County criminal legal system. Neither agency has implemented sufficient remedial measures to identify criminal cases impacted by unlawful informant activities or prevent future constitutional violations. This report provides a public accounting of the scope and impact of the informant program on the Orange County criminal legal system. … We focused our investigation on: (1) whether OCDA and OCSD used custodial informants to elicit incriminating statements from individuals in the Orange County Jail, after those individuals had been charged with a crime, in violation of the Sixth Amendment; and (2) whether OCDA failed to disclose exculpatory evidence about those custodial informants to criminal defendants in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. We reviewed thousands of pages of documents, made  numerous site visits to OCDA and OCSD, and conducted dozens of interviews in the course of our investigation. In particular, we conducted 17 transcribed interviews with OCDA prosecutors about specific cases they personally handled involving custodial informants. The evidence reveals that custodial informants in the Orange County Jail system acted as agents of law enforcement to elicit incriminating statements from defendants represented by counsel, and that for years OCSD maintained and concealed systems to track, manage, and reward those custodial informants. The evidence also reveals that OCDA prosecutors failed to seek out and disclose to defense counsel exculpatory information regarding custodial informants. We therefore have reasonable cause to believe that this pattern or practice of conduct by both agencies resulted in systematic violations of the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments.     

Washington, DC: The Author, 2022. 63p.

By The United States Commission on Civil Rights,  Minnesota Advisory Committee 

The nature and scope of the problem. There will be no end to disparate policing, and the accompanying resentment in the community, until sufficient data can be collected to better inform both policymakers and the People who elect them. Disparate policing is abusive on many levels, affecting the individuals involved, reopening unhealed wounds left by historical injustices, and reminding entire communities that their lives don’t matter. The Committee found that the lack of political will at all levels of government to enforce the limits on police conduct is the major impediment to meaningful change that would address the Constitutional violations identified in this report.  

Minneapolis:: Minnesota Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights ,2022. 62p.