By  Kate Bowers , Lisa Tompson and Shane D. Johnson

In many disciplines, there is a wealth of primary evaluation research on what works, and systematic reviews that synthesize that evidence. This is, of course, extremely positive. However, the sheer scale of the information and the way in which it is indexed and presented can mean that it is difficult for practitioners to locate the best available evidence. For this reason, in health, education, and other disciplines, using techniques from information science, researchers have systematically assembled databases such as those hosted on healthevidence.org and educationendowmentfoundation.org which bring together the most reliable evidence. Hitherto, no such database has existed for crime and criminal justice interventions. This article sets out some of the challenges and early findings of one exercise which aims to produce such a database, being completed as part of the What Works Centre for Crime Reduction initiative in collaboration with the College of Policing. 

Policing: A Journal of Policy and Practice, Volume 17, 2023

By Ashly Fuller | Marie Vasek | Enrico Mariconti  | Shane D. Johnson

Issues: The sale of illicit drugs online has expanded to mainstream social media apps. These platforms provide access to a wide audience, especially children and adolescents. Research is in its infancy and scattered due to the multidisciplinary aspects of the phenomena. Approach: We present a multidisciplinary systematic scoping review on the advertisement and sale of illicit drugs to young people. Peer-reviewed studies written in English, Spanish and French were searched for the period 2015 to 2022. We extracted data on users, drugs studied, rate of posts, terminology used and study methodology. Key Findings: A total of 56 peer-reviewed papers were included. The analysis of these highlights the variety of drugs advertised and platforms used to do so. Various methodological designs were considered. Approaches to detecting illicit content were the focus of many studies as algorithms move from detecting drug-related keywords to drug selling behaviour. We found that on average, for the studies reviewed, 13 in 100 social media posts advertise illicit drugs. However, popular platforms used by adolescents are rarely studied. Implications: Promotional content is increasing in sophistication to appeal to young people, shifting towards healthy, glamourous and seemingly legal depictions of drugs. Greater inter-disciplinary collaboration between computational and qualitative approaches are needed to comprehensively study the sale and advertisement of illegal drugs on social media across different platforms. This requires coordinated action from researchers, policy makers and service providers. 

Drugs and Alcohol Review, 2023

By Jane Duncan

In spite of Edward Snowden’s disclosures about government abuses of dragnet communication surveillance, the surveillance industry continues to expand around the world. Many people have become resigned to a world where they cannot have a reasonable expectation of privacy. In this open access book, the author looks at what can be done to rein in these powers and restructure how they are used beyond the limited and often ineffective reforms that have been attempted. Using southern Africa as a backdrop, and its liberation history, Jane Duncan examines what an anti-capitalist perspective on intelligence and security powers could look like. Are the police and intelligence agencies even needed, and if so, what should they do and why? What lessons can be learnt from how security was organised during the struggles for liberation in the region? Southern Africa is seeing thousands of people in the region taking to the streets in protests. In response, governments are scrambling to acquire surveillance technologies to monitor these new protest movements. Southern Africa faces no major terrorism threats at the moment, which should make it easier to develop clearer anti-surveillance campaigns than in Europe or the US. Yet, because of tactical and strategic ambivalence about security powers, movements often engage in limited calls for intelligence and policing reforms, and fail to provide an alternative vision for policing and intelligence. Surveillance and Intelligence in Southern Africa examines what that vision could look like.

London: Zed Books, 2020. 

By Neil Donnelly and Sara Rahman

To understand whether the introduction of penalty notices in New South Wales (NSW) for first time low, special and novice range drink-driving and drug-driving offences reduced the number of court appearances and increased the certainty of licence sanctions for these offences. Data was obtained from the NSW Police Force’s Computerised Operational Policing System (COPS) for all first time low, special and novice range exceed the prescribed concentration of alcohol (PCA) incidents and first time drug-driving incidents occurring between 5 December 2016 to 1 March 2020. We used a combination of interrupted time series analysis, and descriptive analysis respectively to determine the changes in CANs and dismissals post-reform. We used logistic regression to identify significant correlates of receiving a penalty notice among the first time PCA and drug-driving offenders in our sample. The introduction of penalty notices significantly reduced the number of CANs issued for first time low, special and novice range PCA offences by 81.0%, or 4,779 fewer CANs than predicted. For first time drug-driving there was a significant, though smaller (29.8%) reduction in CANs (or 1,118 fewer CANs issued). These changes also translated into decreases in court dismissals and conditional discharges. Among first time low, special and novice range PCA offenders, the percentage receiving a court dismissal or conditional discharge decreased from 51.5% to 8.0% while among first time drug-driving offenders it decreased from 28.0% to 15.2%. Among both first time low, special and novice range PCA offenders and drug-driving offenders, having no concurrent offences and no prior proceedings to court in the previous 5 years predicted receipt of a penalty notice. The smaller reduction in court appearances for drug-driving was primarily due to those charged with this offence having more concurrent and prior offences. The introduction of penalty notices significantly reduced the number of court appearances for first time low, special and novice range PCA offences and to a lesser extent, first time drug-driving offences, and decreased the percentage of offenders who received a court dismissal or conditional discharge for these offences.

Sydney:  NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, 2023. 22p.

By Lisa Fedina; Rich Tolman; Todd Herrenkohl

This paper addresses gaps in available prevalence data on campus sexual assault rates found among women, including demographic differences among student groups and variations in characteristics of college campuses. The research study also investigated how attitudes and norms vary across college campuses and whether characteristics of those campuses can help explain variations in experiences at the individual (student) level, by analyzing data from the Sexual Assault Prevention for Undergraduates (SAPU) online sexual assault prevention education program. Data from SAPU includes a large, demographically diverse sample of college students, which allows for in-depth investigation of the prevalence and predictors of sexual assault victimization and perpetration across different types of college campuses; it also includes contemporaneous measures of sexual assault victimization and perpetration during the highest period of risk, early in students’ first year of college. The five stated aims of the research study were: to examine variation in school-level prevalence of sexual assault victimization and perpetration by school type, size, and region from academic year (AY) 2016-2017 to 2019-2020; to assess subgroup differences in school-level prevalence of sexual assault victimization and perpetration, accounting for school region, size, and type; to investigate the relationship between attitudes and perceptions of campus norms and self-reports of sexual assault victimization and perpetration, accounting for precampus sexual assault and individual demographics and school characteristics; to examine the variation in the relationship between attitudes and perceptions of campus norms and self-reports of sexual assault victimization and perpetration by subgroups, accounting for precampus sexual assault and individual and school characteristics; and to examine variation in bystander intentions, efficacy, and behaviors and self-reports of sexual assault victimization and perpetration by subgroups, accounting for attitudes, perceptions of campus norms, and precampus sexual assault, as well as individual and school characteristics. 

Final Report to the U.S. National Institute of Justice, 2024. 20p.

By Lenny Roth

The issue of criminal responsibility for workplace deaths has generated debate in NSW and nationally for many years. In October 2023, the New South Wales government announced that it would introduce an industrial manslaughter offence in the first half of 2024, with severe penalties for serious work health and safety breaches that result in death.

The purpose of this paper is to put the proposed reforms in their current and historical context. The paper discusses the general criminal offence of manslaughter, outlines the key offences in current work health and safety laws, summarises the debate, and examines industrial manslaughter laws in other Australian jurisdictions.

Sydney: State of New South Wales through the Parliament of New South Wales , Parliamentary Research Service, 2024. 28p.

By Ira P. Robbins

The law of burglary has long played a vital role in protecting hearth and home. Because of the violation of one’s personal space, few crimes engender more fear than burglary; thus, the law should provide necessary safety and security against that fear. Among other things, current statutes aim to deter trespassers from committing additional crimes by punishing them more severely based on their criminal intent before they execute their schemes. Burglary law even protects domestic violence victims against abusers who attempt to invade their lives and terrorize them. However, the law of burglary has expanded and caused so many problems that some commentators now argue for its elimination. Given broad discretion, prosecutors use burglary to over-punish a wide variety of offenses. The law can even encompass mere instances of shoplifting. Additionally, by punishing perpetrators before they accomplish their target crimes, burglary law often acts as a general law of attempts. Much of the law’s expansion stems from adding the word “remaining” to many burglary statutes. This inclusion allows burglary convictions in circumstances in which a perpetrator enters a structure legally, but then “remains unlawfully.” While this language has led to confusion among courts and legislatures about the scope of burglary, there is scant legal literature addressing this confusion. Scholars have yet to untangle the conflicting interpretations of unlawful remaining, and legislatures have failed to provide guidance that captures the nuances of burglary law. This Article unravels the complexities of burglary law and proposes a model statute that retains burglary law for its protective purposes, while also considering its problematic expansion.

UC Davis Law Review, vol. 57, February 2024

By: Sandhya Kajeepeta, Daniel K. N. Johnson

On July 11, 2020, 26-year-old Donavan La Bella was participating in a protest against racialized police violence in Portland, Oregon when a federal law enforcement officer fired an impact munition into his face, causing severe injury including a fractured face and skull. Video footage from the event shows Mr. La Bella standing unarmed with both hands over his head, holding a speaker playing the song “Black Lives Matter” by the recording artist Dax. Federal law enforcement officers then threw a canister of smoke or tear gas toward him, which Mr. La Bella pushed away from his feet. Then, a federal officer fired the impact munition at Mr. La Bella, hitting the young man directly in the face. Mr. La Bella was rushed to the hospital for emergency surgery. He survived the assault, but he has suffered permanent brain damage, including impairments to his cognitive function and impulse control. Donavan La Bella is one of tens of millions of people in the U.S. (and many more across the world) who participated in racial justice demonstrations during the summer of 2020 in response to police killings of Black Americans, including George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. In the U.S., there were well over 7,000 public demonstrations for racial justice across more than 2,400 locations in all 50 states, arguably the largest protest movement in the nation’s history. An overwhelming majority (an estimated 93%) of racial justice demonstrations in the summer of 2020 involved no violence, property destruction, or road blockades. However, police responses to protests varied widely, ranging from no presence at all to mass arrests, indiscriminate use of projectiles and chemical weapons (e.g., rubber bullets, tear gas, pepper spray), and driving police vehicles into crowds of protestors. Those types of police responses served as yet another example of the very police violence that protestors were calling to end. During the summer of 2020, there were also thousands of public demonstrations about issues other than racial justice, such as protests related to COVID-19 pandemic measures, labor movements, LGBTQ rights, political candidates, support for white nationalism, and more. This presented a unique opportunity to study how police responses to protests may have varied depending on the issue being protested. We found striking disparities in police responses to protests in the summer of 2020. At racial justice demonstrations, police were more likely to be present, more likely to have an escalated presence (i.e., riot police, state police, or national guard), and more likely to escalate their response to include arrests, projectiles, and chemical weapons, compared to similar demonstrations unrelated to racial justice. We begin this brief by describing the significance of the right to protest and how inequitable police responses to protest can undermine U.S. Constitutional rights under the First, Fourth, and Fourteenth Amendments. We then present the findings from our analysis of protests in the summer of 2020, discuss the implications of these findings, and argue that police, ultimately, should not be tasked with managing protests.

Washington, DC: NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund,2023. 23p.

By: Kesha Moore, Ryan Tom, Jackie O’Neil

Promoting public safety is serious business and requires precise, thoughtful analysis, not distortions designed to evoke fear and anger.

We model the contextual analysis of crime data needed to guide an effective approach to improving public safety.

Unsubstantiated crime narratives prevent us from understanding the factors contributing to recent increases in violent crime and undermine our investments in evidence-based solutions. Misdiagnosing the causes of crime compromises public safety, similar to when a doctor misdiagnoses you with the wrong ailment and subsequently prescribes medication that fails to address your underlying issues while exacerbating your condition.

Politicians have lobbed disparaging attacks against criminal justice reforms despite contradictory evidence. Public officials, regardless of party affiliation, create fear-mongering narratives about why crimes are happening to convince the public that their strategy is correct. Whether it is Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) incorrectly arguing that crime would increase without aggressive prosecutors and increased police funding, or New York City’s Democratic Mayor, Eric Adams, blaming the city’s bail reforms for increases in crime, public actors disparage criminal justice reforms based on false and inaccurate premises. These political actors engage in this rhetoric despite research studies proving their assertions are flatly wrong. This rhetoric leads to harmful and counterproductive policies that aim to increase policing and incarceration, which particularly harm Black people. Unfortunately, the pattern of peddling harmful “tough-on-crime” narratives is not new, but a cyclical component of U.S. history.

Promoting public safety is serious business that requires precise, thoughtful analysis, not distortions designed to evoke fear and anger. Crime is a complex and varied phenomenon, and solutions to address crime must be grounded in data, equity, and fairness. The need for accurate assessments is critical, lest false narratives and distorted data contribute to the harming of communities by law enforcement, just as they did in the War on Drugs. Here, we examine three false narratives presented by politicians and the media to explain the recent increase in homicides nationwide: the expansion of bail reform, practices of progressive prosecutors, and calls to defund the police. Our analysis reveals that the empirical data contradicts these narratives. Our data substantiates other reasons for a spike in homicide rates: pandemic-induced instability and econmic inequality.

Washington, DC: NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, 2020. 41p.

By NAACP Legal Defense Fund

Ferguson, Missouri has emerged as the site of the most disturbing display of racial tension, political powerlessness, and police violence in recent memory. The fatal shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, by police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, is the latest tragic incident in a recent spate of police-involved homicides. Ferguson’s history of economic exclusion, disenfranchisement, segregation and poverty helped create a political system in which African Americans are grossly underrepresented in local government as well as an environment in which protesters and journalists from around the country were met with tear gas, rubber bullets, assault rifles, Kevlar vests, and military tanks as they bore witness to and reported on the aftermath of Michael Brown’s killing. This briefing paper aims to put Ferguson in focus by opening a window into the political, social, and economic conditions surrounding the life of Michael Brown. The report will look at Ferguson through the lenses of educational inequality, political disenfranchisement, economic inequality, and the criminal justice system – areas in which the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc.’s historically has rooted its advocacy in support of African-American and other marginalized communities. Ferguson’s unadorned image revealed here is a candid snapshot into many of fault lines in American society. The challenges facing Ferguson are shared by locales across the country, and we can no longer turn a blind eye.

Washington, DC: NAACP Legal Defense Fund, 2024. 9p.

By Trine Filges, Mette Verner, Else Ladekjær, Elizabeth Bengtsen

Background: Healthy after‐school activities such as participation in organised sport have been shown to serve as important resources for reducing school failure and other problem/high‐risk behaviour. It remains to be established to what extent organised sport participation has positive impacts on young people in unstable life circumstances. Objectives: What are the effects of organised sport on risk behaviour, personal, emotional and social skills of young people, who either have experienced or are at‐risk of experiencing an adverse outcome? Search Methods: The database searches were carried out in March 2023 and other sources were searched in May 2023. We searched to identify both published and unpublished literature. Selection Criteria: The intervention was participation in leisure time organised sport. Young people between 6 and 18 years of age, who either have experienced or are at‐risk of experiencing an adverse outcome were eligible. Primary outcomes were problem/high‐risk behaviour and a secondary outcomes social and emotional outcomes. Studies that used a control group were eligible for. Studies that utilised qualitative approaches were not. Data Collection and Analysis: The number of potentially relevant studies was 43,716. Thirteen studies met the inclusion criteria. Only seven studies could be used in the data synthesis. Five studies were judged to have a critical risk of bias and were excluded from the meta‐analysis. One study did not report data that enabled the calculation of effect sizes and standard errors. Meta‐analyses were conducted on each conceptual outcome separately. All analyses were inverse variance weighted using random effects statistical models. Main Results: Two studies were from Canada, one from Australia, and the remaining from the USA. The timespan of the interventions was 23 years, from 1995 to 2018. The median number of participants analysed was 316, and the median number of controls was 452. A number of primary outcomes were reported but each in a single study only. Concerning secondary outcomes, two studies reported the effect on overall psychosocial adjustment at post‐intervention. The standardised mean difference was 0.70 (95% CI 0.28–1.11). There was a small amount of heterogeneity. Three studies reported on depressive symptoms at 0–3 years follow‐up. The standardised mean difference was 0.02 (95% CI −0.01 to 0.06). There was no heterogeneity between the three studies. In addition, a number of other secondary outcomes were reported each in a single study only. Authors' Conclusions: There were too few studies included in the meta‐analyses in order for us to draw any conclusion. The dominance of Northern America clearly limiting the generalisability of the findings. The majority of the studies were not considered to be of overall high quality and the process of excluding studies with critical risk of bias from the meta‐analysis applied in this review left us with only 7 of a total of 13 possible studies to synthesise. Further, because too few studies reported results on the same type of outcome, at most three studies could be combined in a particular meta‐analysis and no meta‐analysis could be performed on any of the primary outcomes.

Campbell Systematic Reviews. 2024;20:e1381.

By Patrick Naef

Although the use of resilience in international relations and urban planning has given rise to a growing body of critical research, this contested concept continues to feature prominently in the conversation on the development of cities. Taking the 100 Resilient Cities (100RC) network pioneered by the Rockefeller Foundation as a case study, this article exposes some of the challenges inherent in the implementation of a global model of resilience. Exploring initiatives related to violence prevention in the member cities of Medellin, Cali (Colombia), Chicago (United States), and Belfast (Northern Ireland), this study will look at the practices of resilience officers, a position created by the 100RC network, and determine whether it can be considered as a new profession in the field of resilience planning. It will also use urban resilience to question the category of global cities, by suggesting that networks centered on resilience can serve as globalizing agents for “ordinary cities” (Robinson 2006). Finally, this article maintains that although the flexible and elusive definition promoted by 100RC facilitated a global circulation of the concept, its one-size-fits-all approach implied significant challenges and led in some cases to its depoliticization.

Annals of the American Association of Geographers 2022.

By Roger Jarjoura; Christina LiCalsi; Melissa Yisak; Lauren Stargel; Amelia Auchstetter

The current study presents implementation and impact findings of a cluster randomized control trial examining a school-wide restorative practices model called Circle Forward. Overall, the study team found implementation of Circle Forward generally was happening as intended in the intervention schools. The Tier 1 training occurred as planned and the circles that staff were implementing in schools fit the CF model both in terms of format and expected behavior. The one implementation area that was lower than expected were staff attendance rates at the Tier 1 training. Previous research has indicated that multi-tiered professional development is important for implementation of restorative practices, including initial Tier 1 training that is school-wide and covers basic restorative principles to build knowledge and buy in. Each intervention school had a dedicated group of RLT members who implemented circles, planned professional development about circles, provided ongoing support for implementation, and helped encourage staff to use circles in their classrooms. With support from RLT staff as well as knowledge gained from the Tier 1 training, staff could create avenues for students to share their thoughts. Often, school staff implemented advisory circles with their students, which encouraged them to connect with others by voicing their opinions and discussing personal and nonacademic topics. Through this process, students also learned more about their peers and teachers and developed stronger relationships. In turn, these positive staff-student relationships and relationships between students helped build a positive, inclusive classroom climate. This finding is consistent with earlier research describing teacher and student perspectives in Tier 1 circle implementation and how it created space for student ownership and voice, as well as the clear connection to broader social-emotional learning. Further, others have indicated the importance of explicitly considering student participation and inclusion as a basic indicator of restorative practices implementation.

Arlington, VA: American Institutes for Research, 2023. 47p.

By Mike Males

California is not “defunding the police” nor implementing lenient criminal justice reforms – just the opposite. State spending on law enforcement has risen sharply, even after adjustments for inflation and population growth. The odds of being imprisoned per arrest have risen to near-record heights. However, despite record spending on California law enforcement agencies in recent years, one of the core measures of law enforcement effectiveness— crime clearance rates — has fallen to historically low levels. An agency’s clearance rate is the share of Part I violent and property crimes2 that are considered solved after law enforcement makes an arrest. Over the past three decades, these clearance rates fell by 41%, from a 22.3% clearance rate in 1990 to 13.2% in 2022, which equates to fewer than one in seven crimes solved (Figure 1, Table 1). California’s decline in overall clearance rates has been driven by falling property felony clearances (-59%), though the solve rate for violent felonies also fell during the 1990 – 2022 period (-14%).

San Francisco, Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice. 2024, 8pg

By Mary Iliadis, Bridget Harris, Zarina Vakhitova, Delanie Woodlock, Asher Flynn and Danielle Tyson

Police body-worn camera (BWC) technologies—affixed to a vest, sunglasses or cap—are deployed by all Australian police agencies, including in frontline responses to domestic and family violence (DFV). This paper presents the findings from the first Australian study focused on how women DFV victim-survivors view and experience BWCs in police call-outs and legal proceedings. Informed by a national survey of 119 victim-survivors, it explores two key concerns relating to the potential consequences of BWC footage: (1) it may facilitate misidentification of the primary aggressor, and (2) perpetrators may use the BWC to present (false) evidence of themselves as blameless.

Australia, Australian Institute of Criminology. 2024, 15pg

By Roseanna Sommers, Vanessa K. Bohns

Most police searches today are authorized by citizens' consent, rather than probable cause or reasonable suspicion. The main constitutional limitation on so-called “consent searches” is the voluntariness test: whether a reasonable person would have felt free to refuse the officer's request to conduct the search. We investigate whether this legal inquiry is subject to a systematic bias whereby uninvolved decision-makers overstate the voluntariness of consent and underestimate the psychological pressure individuals feel to comply. We find evidence for a robust bias extending to requests, tasks, and populations that have not been examined previously. Across three pre-registered experiments, we approached participants (“Experiencers”) with intrusive search requests and measured their behavioral compliance and self-reported feelings of psychological freedom. Another group of participants (“Forecasters”) reported whether they would comply if hypothetically placed in the same situation. Study 1 investigated participants' willingness to allow experimenters access to their unlocked personal smartphones in order to read through the search histories on their web browsers—a private sphere where many individuals feel they have something to hide. Results revealed that whereas 27% of Forecasters reported they would permit such a search, 92% of Experiencers complied when asked. Study 2 replicated this underestimation-of-compliance effect when individuals were asked to permit a search of their purses, backpacks, and other bags—traditional searches not eligible for the heightened legal protection extended to digital devices. Study 3 replicated the gap between Forecasters' projections and Experiencers' behavior in a more representative sample, and found it persists even when participants' predictions are incentivized monetarily.

Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, Volume21, Issue1, March 2024, Pages 4-34

By Rafael A. Mangual

After a long period of continuous violent-crime declines throughout the U.S.—spanning from the mid-1990s through the early 2010s—many American cities are now seeing significant increases in violence. Nationally, in 2015 and 2016, murders rose nearly 11% and 8%, respectively. The national homicide rate declined slightly in 2017 and 2018, before ticking upward in 2019. In 2020, the nation saw its largest single-year spike in homicides in at least 100 years—which was followed by another increase in murders in 2021, according to CDC data and FBI estimates. In the last few years, a number of cities have seen murders hit an all-time high. In addition to homicides, the risk of other types of violent victimizations rose significantly, as well. While various analyses estimated a slight decline in homicides for the country in 2022, many American cities still find themselves dealing with levels of violence far higher than they were a decade ago. While violent crime—particularly murder—is the most serious due in large part to its social costs, there have also been worrying increases in crimes such as retail theft, carjacking, and auto theft, as well as in other visible signs of disorder in public spaces (from open-air drug use and public urination to illegal street racing and large-scale looting and riots). Although several contributing factors are likely, this general deterioration in public safety and order was unquestionably preceded and accompanied by a virtually unidirectional shift toward leniency and away from accountability in the policing, prosecutorial, and criminal-justice policy spaces. That shift is evidenced by, among other things, three major trends in enforcement: • A 25% decline in the number of those imprisoned during 2011–2212 • A 15% decline in the number of those held in jail during 2010–2113 • A 26% decline in the number of arrests effected by law-enforcement officers during 2009–1914 Notable contributing factors to the decline in enforcement include: • A sharp uptick in public scrutiny and interventions—in the form of investigations and legal action taken by state attorneys general and the federal Department of Justice—against local law-enforcement agencies • The worsening of an ongoing police recruitment and retention crisis, particularly in large urban departments • The electoral success of the so-called progressive prosecutor movement, which, by 2022, had won seats in 75 jurisdictions, representing more than 72 million U.S. residents • Perhaps most important, the adoption of a slew of criminal-justice and policing reform measures at all levels of government Those who are skeptical of the criminal-justice reform movement have devoted most of their efforts to arguing against the movement’s excesses and explaining why it would be unwise to enact certain measures. Less effort has been devoted to the extremely important task of articulating a positive agenda for regaining what has been lost on the safety and order front. This paper seeks to add to that positive agenda for safety by proposing three model policies that, if adopted, would help, directly and indirectly, stem the tide of rising crime and violence, primarily by maximizing the benefits that attend the incapacitation of serious criminals (especially repeat offenders) and by encouraging the collection and public reporting of data that can inform the public about the downside risks that are glossed over by decarceration and depolicing activists.

New York: Manhattan Institute, 2023. 19p.

By Justice Policy Institute

A nearly decade-long failure of the Bowser Administration to fund and implement evidence-based strategies to prevent violence and strengthen communities has contributed to the context for increased crime and violence. Missed Opportunities: Why Inaction on Preventative Measures Undermines Public Safety in Washington, DC uncovers recent trend of a lack of leadership on proactive public safety strategies, instability in key executive agencies, and little coordination of efforts by government officials that have left the District ill-prepared to respond to alarming increases in some crimes. The brief offers a series of recommendations for District leadership:

– Improve the coordination between agencies working to prevent and address violent crime;

– Focus comprehensive resources on the specific people at the center of violence;

– Implement a holistic public health approach to violence prevention and intervention and invest in supports and services in communities;

– Fund efforts to build community trust and efficacy in policing; and

– Evaluate and sustain effective programs and initiatives.

United States, Justice Policy. 2023, 16pg

By Justin Nix, Jessica Huff

Many U.S. cities witnessed both de-policing and increased crime in 2020, yet whether the former con-tributed to the latter remains unclear. Indeed, much of what is known about the effects of proactive policing on crime comes from studies that evaluated highly focused interventions atypical of day-to-day policing,used cities as the unit of analysis, or could not rule out endogeneity. This study addresses each of these issues,thereby advancing the evidence base concerning the effects of policing on crime. Leveraging two exogenous shocks presented by the onset of the coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and social unrest after the mur-der of George Floyd, we evaluated the effects of sudden and sustained reductions in high-discretion policing on crime at the neighborhood level in Denver, Colorado.Multilevel models accounting for trends in prior police activity, neighborhood structure, seasonality, and popu-lation mobility revealed mixed results. On the one hand,large-scale reductions in stops and drug-related arrests were associated with significant increases in violentThis is an open access article under the terms of theCreative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivsLicense, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made and property crimes, respectively. On the other hand,fewer disorder arrests did not affect crime. These results were not universal across neighborhoods. We discuss the implications of these findings in light of debates concerning the appropriate role of policing in the 21st century.

United States, Criminology. 2023, 16pg

By Duane Stanton Sr.1 , Nicholas Lovrich, David Makin, Mary Stohr, Dale Willits, Craig Hemmens and Mikala Meize

In 2012, Washington State legalized recreational cannabis. The challenge of policing cannabis-related motor vehicle operator impairment emerged as an issue in the wake of legalization. There has been less focus on exploring the topic of boating under the influence (BUI), which is regrettable given the popularity of boating. The National Association of State Boating Law Administrators and the National Safe Boating Council (NASBLA), in concert with the U.S. Coast Guard, have identified cannabis-impaired boating as a major problem and are using resources from the Sports Fish Restoration and Boating Trust Fund to address it. To explore this topic, we conducted 17 semi-structured qualitative interviews with local and state law enforcement marine officers and their supervisors and trainers in Washington, as well as NASBLA-certified BUI trainers. These interviews explored the marine officers’ experiences since legalization, as well as their perceptions of marijuana legalization on public safety. Results drawn from the interviews indicate that marine officers are very concerned about the threats to public safety and responsible boating practices arising from cannabis-impaired boating and feel that enhanced training and funding is needed to better detect impairment and enforce BUI laws. Public policy, police training, and best practices implications arising from these interviews are discussed.

American Journal of Qualitative Research August 2020, Vol.4 No. 2, pp. 1-19,