By Tomas Salem

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

Cham: Springer Nature, 2024.

By: ROB T. GUERETTE and KATE J. BOWERS

Few criticisms of situational crime-prevention (SCP) efforts are as frequent or prevalent as claims of displacement. Despite emerging evidence to the contrary, the prevailing sentiment seems to be that crime displacement is inevitable. This study examined 102 evaluations of situationally focused crime-prevention projects in an effort to determine the extent to which crime displacement was observed. The results indicate that of the 102 studies that examined (or allowed for examination of) displacement and diffusion effects, there were 574 observations. Displacement was observed in 26 percent of those observations. The opposite of displacement, diffusion of benefit, was observed in 27 percent of the observations. Moreover, the analysis of 13 studies, which allowed for assessment of overall outcomes of the prevention project while taking into account spatial displacement and diffusion effects, revealed that when spatial displacement did occur, it tended to be less than the treatment effect, suggesting that the intervention was still beneficial. Implications for theory and future research are discussed.

CRIMINOLOGY VOLUME 47 NUMBER 4 2009

By: Lorne Walker-Nolan

Few scholars of Australian history need reminding that Colonial Australia began as a British prison. The detrimental effect these origins had, and arguably still have, on Indigenous Australia is unambiguous. The extent to which this brutal background shaped the modern nation merits re-evaluation. In this issue of Coolabah, we aim to extrapolate and explore the links stretching from the First Fleet, and assess how much of a role this past plays in the building of the modern Australian nation.

Coolabah, Nr 29, 2021, ISSN 1988-5946, Observatori: Centre d’Estudis Australians i Transnacionals / Observatory: Australian and Transnational Studies Centre, Universitat de Barcelona

By: Colin Rogers

The introduction of crime prevention through environmental design initiatives such as alley-gating is now widespread across the United Kingdom. For practitioners and policymakers alike, erecting steel gates at entrances to alleys is seen as a major initiative for reducing domestic burglary and tackling a range of anti-social behaviours. In particular, in the current climate of economic austerity, such apparent cost-effective measures may seem more attractive to policymakers and planners alike, as they struggle to maintain public confidence in the criminal justice system and reduce levels of criminality. This article examines one such alley-gate initiative at Cadoxton, Barry, South Wales, based on a series of annual data collections and considers the long-term impact on recorded burglary statistics and local community perceptions of the effectiveness of the gates as well as considering any impact on long-term public support for such interventions.

Crime Prevention and Community Safety (2013) 15, 106 – 126.

doi: 10.1057/cpcs.2012.16

By: M. Lyn Exum, Joseph B. Kuhns, Brad Koch, and Chuck Johnson

Although the efficacy of situational crime prevention (SCP) strategies on convenience store safety has received considerable attention, the security of fast-food restaurants has been virtually ignored. This study was based on a population of convenience stores (n = 295) and fast-food restaurants (n = 321) in Charlotte, North Carolina. The study examined whether the crime control strategies commonly recommended to the convenience store industry were effective at reducing robbery in the fast-food industry. Relatedly, the study examined whether target-hardening strategies have similar effects on robbery prevalence rates across the two types of businesses. In general, the article found that many target-hardening strategies derived from the literature failed to impact robbery rates for either type of establishment. For those factors that did emerge as statistically significant predictors of robbery, the preventative effects generally appeared in one type of establishment or the other, but not in both. These findings suggest that effective SCP strategies are truly situation-specific and not “one size fits all.”

Criminal Justice Policy Review 2010 21: 269, 11 November 2009 DOI: 10.1177/0887403409346110

By: SUGIKI Tsunehiko

According to Indian classics in general, punishment (daṇḍa, etc.) is a principal function of a king and it is the reason kingship was created. The same is said in Indian Buddhism, which is typically represented in the narrative on the origin of kingship in the Aggaññasutta1)

There are various forms of punishment, from the light ones, such as verbal reprimand, to the more severe ones, such as capital punishment. The more severe forms of punishment are carried out in the form of killing or wounding criminals. However, in Buddhism, killing or wounding others intentionally is an unwholesome karma or action, which has negative karmic effects on the killer. The Mūgapakkhajātaka says that a king who punished robbers by death, prison, physical torture, and impalement suffers rebirth in hell, even though he ordered the punishment as part of his duties.2)

This paper investigates discourses on royal punishment found in two Pāli texts (Kūṭadantasutta and Milindapañha) and three Mahāyāna texts (Nāgārjunaʼs Ratnāvalī, Satyakaparivarta, and Candrakīrtiʼs Catuḥśatakaṭīkā) and elucidates an aspect of Buddhist views of royal punishment in ancient India.3)

Journal of Indian and Buddhist Studies Vol. 68, No. 3, March 2020

By: Priit Suve

Recent developments in understanding the concept of problem in problem-oriented policing denote valuable perspectives but mainly from a substantialist perspective. In this article, the relational perspective in thinking of safety problems was introduced, and some key advancements presented. Exploiting causal and constitutive reasoning and the idea of the complexity of problems, the self-actional, inter-actional, and trans-actional perspectives were used for determining the differences between the substantialist and relationalist perspectives. The concept of problem was analyzed from two perspectives. First, in light of initial and recent elaborations of the term. Second, through the actual use of the term. The substantialist ethos dominated through the data analysed and it has both advantages and disadvantages. However, relational thinking calls for a deeper understanding of safety problems. Resigning from the substantialist ethos and asking whether there are pre-given A-s and B-s, and turning towards the idea that there is no A-s without B-s, creates an environment for a more open-minded understanding of problems in policing.

ORCID: 0000-0003-4408-3568, Estonian Academy of Security Sciences, Estonia

DOI: 10.5604/01.3001.0014.6656

By: Sana Humd, Dr. Haris Umar & Dr. Mohd Wazid Khan

This article is concerned with the penological perspective of capital punishment in India. It critically examines the contentious views of honorable courts, policymakers, commentators, human rights activists, and the Law Commission of India on whether capital punishment should be abolished or retained as earlier or whether there should be some alternative to it as it is practiced in other nations. In so doing, It has analyzed the penal provisions of different enactments provided in favor of Capital Punishment in India, including a critical examination of the lacuna in the enforcement and implementation of the death penalty. This article has referred to the contradictory landmark judgments of the hon'ble Courts of India. This article reviews the suggestions made by the Law Commission of India in its 262nd Reports to determine whether legislators have considered them for future adoption. It has also discussed the theories advocating capital punishment as well as systems of capital punishment in other countries.

By: Cozens, P. M., Neale, R.H., Whitaker, J., Hillier, D. and Graham, M.

The government has recently made £300 million available to help local authorities to modernise their street lighting. In consideration of such future funding, this paper reviews the relationship between lighting and crime, explores the current theoretical explanations and discusses the limitations of the existing BS 5489 lighting standards as they relate to crime reduction.

British street lighting standards rely largely upon official recorded crime statistics as the preferred measure of crime and crucially, fear of crime maps have been shown to differ markedly from the reality suggested by recorded crime statistics (Brantingham et al., 1977; Vrij and Winkel, 1991). The implications of utilizing the current classification of streets according to levels of recorded crime and levels of pedestrian and traffic flows to determine acceptable lighting levels, are presented. In the light of recent research on crime and street lighting, local authorities might usefully critically review lighting levels following the Crime and Disorder Act 1998. Acknowledging the emergence of the 24-hour city the policy implications for improving the crime reduction potential of street lighting is discussed.

By Lorena Montoya, Marianne Junger and Yfke Ongena

This article examines how residential property and its surroundings influence day- and night-time residential burglary. Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) principles of territoriality, surveillance, access control, target hardening, image maintenance, and activity support underpin the study. Data were collected by observing 851 houses in the city of Enschede, half of which were burgled and half representing a random selection of houses not burgled. Multilevel multinomial regression models were estimated for predicting day- and night-time burglaries. The findings show that territoriality and access control predict daytime burglary while access control and target hardening predict night-time burglary. The analysis controls for offender availability, target attractiveness, and residential stability. The conclusion is that two separate burglary prevention frameworks are needed: one for day-and another one for night-time burglary.

Environment and Behavior 25 September 2014, DOI: 10.1177/0013916514551047

By Rana Sampson, Problem-oriented Policing Consultant

In the early 1990s, American policing, applying a problem-oriented approach, displayed much creative energy in closing drug markets. This has not translated to a under range of quality efforts in tackling other common crimes, such as burglary, auto theft, and shop-lifting. While few of the factors that combined to fuel wide exploration of creative solutions in drug markets are present for other crime and safety problems, there may be some simple ways to engage the police to further study and target other crimes. Three strategies are offered: identifying, understanding, and responding to snowball crimes; using a situational crime prevention approach to graded responses for repeat victimization; and examining privately-owned properties for disproportionate demands on police service with an eye towards shifting responsibility for crime-place management to these owners.

Crime Prevention Studies, vol. 15 (2003), pp. 239-256.

By Marly van Bruchem, Laura Hendriks, Hans Myhre Sunde, Don Weenink, Lasse Suonperä Liebst & Marie Rosenkrantz Lindegaard

The causes of riots have been extensively researched. Comparatively, little is known about how they are prevented from occurring. We address this gap with a qualitative study of the role of formal and informal guardians in Amsterdam in January 2021, when public disorder was widespread across the Netherlands after the government had announced a curfew to curb the spread of the Covid−19 virus. We used CCTV footage of two gatherings that had elements of disorder and two that occurred without them. We also rely on interviews with 40 so-called “intimate handlers” who were present during these gatherings to understand how they managed them. We find that the presence and actions of intimate handlers collaborating with the police during the gatherings, effectuated through frequent affiliative contacts with the crowd, had direct de-escalatory effects, operative because of their well-developed social community bonds: participants in gatherings avoided jeopardizing these bonds of attachment, which also created a more positive image of the police through citizen-police collaborations. Our findings thus stress the importance of social bonds for the effectiveness of riot prevention and we consider practical implications for public disorder and large-scale crowd management.

Deviant Behavior, Volume 44, 2023 - Issue 11

By Thaddeus L. Johnson, Natasha N. Johnson, William J. Sabol, Megan A. Hartman and David T. Snively

This study examines the interaction effects of police collective bargaining authorization and police pay on racial differences in police-related fatalities. Using data from Fatal Encounters, the Bureau of Justice Statistics, and other publicly available databases, we applied entropy-weighted regressions to a balanced panel of 282 local police departments from 2000 to 2013 in the United States. We found that collective bargaining authorization is not directly associated with police-caused deaths. However, results indicate that higher median salaries for city police officers directly and meaningfully contribute to fewer people killed by police actions. When considering interactive effects, our findings suggest that police unionization offsets the life-saving benefits of higher relative pay, leading to more Black citizens dying from police intervention as salaries increase in agencies with collective bargaining authorization. Our findings demonstrate authorities should consider the potentially fatal and inequitable consequences for citizens during collective bargaining and salary-setting negotiations.

Police Practice and Research,  An International Journal May 2024.

By Marly van Bruchem, Karin Proost, Joris van Ruysseveldt & Marie Rosenkrantz Lindegaard

Studies on bystander behavior showed that bystanders regularly intervene in conflicts and crime in public in order to de-escalate, yet these studies focus solely on the way citizens manage situations in the absence of police. Bystanders, however, are also present while police officers carry out their work and might help or challenge their performance. Based on 15 interviews with police officers and participant observation during 12 police shifts in the Netherlands, this study provides insights into the way officers perceive bystanders and experience their actions. Police officers describe bystanders as a dilemma they have to face during encounters: they want to convey a positive and fair image of themselves towards bystanders, yet also want to control the situation and show their authority. The diversity of bystander actions and the dilemmas officers face imply that more attention should be given to bystanders of police action in both research and training.

Police Practice and Research, An International Journal, June 2024

By Aaron Chalfin, Jacob Kaplan, Michael LaForest

 For more than one hundred years, street lighting has been one of the most enduring capital investments to maintain public safety. In this study, we provide a comprehensive examination of the effect of street lights on crime, by estimating the effect of nearly 300,000 street light outages in Chicago neighborhoods on crime. We find that outdoor nighttime crimes change very little on-street segments affected by street light outages, but that crime appears to spill over to nearby street segments during these outages. These findings suggest that crime may follow patterns of human activity and that the impact of localized street light outages can reverberate throughout a community. 

Working Paper,  2021.  56p. Final version is at: Journal of Quantitative Criminology 38(1):1-29

By Shelley Trevethan and Eva Maxwell

This report reviewed and synthesized literature in response to two guiding research questions: how have Indigenous cultural practices, traditions, and activities been included in crime prevention programming and what is their connection with crime prevention; how have culturally-relevant crime prevention programs been evaluated and what is their contribution to crime prevention outcomes? This literature review includes a review of risk/protective factors for crime among Indigenous persons; a summary of the literature on crime prevention programs for Indigenous Peoples; an analysis of the connection between cultural practices, traditions, and activities and crime prevention objectives; a review of program evaluations; a summary and analysis of evaluation approaches and methodologies; a review of the effectiveness of Indigenous cultural practices, traditions, and activities based on existing evaluation results; and, conclusions and recommendations. Articles reviewed for this review were published in English, dated from 1983 to 2021, and represented 22 countries. Countries of publication included Canada, Australia, the United States, New Zealand, the Philippines, and South Africa. Overall, the literature in this field (a total of 291 articles and publications) is relatively new and challenging to find, particularly so for literature on the evaluation of programs. Indeed, the majority of articles reviewed were from gray literature sources, indicating that the field has not been extensively researched in academia; thus, causality is difficult to establish. Key themes included over-representation of Indigenous Peoples in all stages of the criminal justice system (and the reasons); risk and protective factors; nature of existing programming; and approaches for culturally competent evaluation

Research Report: 2023-R009   Ottawa: Public Safety Canada, 2023. 301p.

By Hannah Cortés-Kaplan and Laura Dunbar

This research study sought to examine the unique implementation issues for crime prevention programs aiming to serve Indigenous populations. This was completed through the analysis of implementation data from 49 crime prevention projects with completed evaluations, funded under the National Crime Prevention Strategy. The purpose was to examine the information that currently exists related to the implementation process, to provide an in-depth understanding of the associated challenges and strategies, and to identify possible recommendations for moving forward. An exploratory research design was employed, whereby data obtained from evaluation reports and related documents, were analyzed using Microsoft® Excel and QSR International NVivo 10. Results demonstrated that projects experienced implementation challenges in the following areas: program accessibility; funding requirements; management and administrative issues; and time management and planning deficiencies. Although few strategies were identified overall, adding a cultural element or making cultural adaptations were acknowledged as important components in addressing challenges. Findings from this research study identified the importance of program readiness and planning, resource limitations, culturally relevant adaptations, and formative evaluation in the implementation process. Knowledge of the latter may in turn help to assist crime prevention practitioners and policy makers in their understanding of implementation issues and strategies for improving projects aimed at serving Indigenous populations moving forward. 

Research Report: 2021–R001  Ottawa: Public Safety Canada. 2021. 33p.

By Nicolette Reyhani

From the Introduction:” Over recent years situational crime has gained considerable amount of support and recognition when determining what in society causes crime. Prior to the 1970s, the explanations for causes of crime revolved around the socio-economic effects society endured. The modern focus of criminological policy and theories began to change as attention turned to the potential environmental factors and effects they have on criminal activity (McGloin & O’Neil, 2007). The situational crime results from an offender, who under certain circumstances, commits a crime and is unlikely to repeat the offence or usually is not inclined to commit crimes, hence the emphasis on situational (Clarke, 1995). These crimes and offenders are best explained through theories that do not focus on the social causes of crime, rather the emerging prosperity of contemporary life and the rational human being.”

By Matthew A. Graham, Scarlet Neath, Kim S. Buchanan, Kerry Mulligan, Tracey Lloyd, and Phillip Atiba Solomon

A significant share of the millions of traffic stops made annually are for low-level violations,i such as a single broken taillight or tinted windows, which do not have a clear relationship to traffic safety.ii Officers may pull over drivers for these reasons because they are incentivized to generate a high volume of stops through, for example, performance metrics or grant funding. Officers also use minor violations to conduct what are known as pretextual stops, or an effort to uncover evidence of a serious crime for which they lack reasonable suspicion. Traffic stops have come under increasing scrutiny because of their role in fueling racial disparities in policing and associated harms, including distrust in police,iii financial penalties,iv and police violence. Evidence shows that Black drivers are more likely than White drivers to be pulled over, even though there is no evidence to show that they more frequently commit driving violations. Black drivers are also twice as likely to be searched once stopped–a common feature of a pretextual stop–despite the fact that they are less likely to be found in possession of contraband, such as drugs or weapons.vi This brief aims to shed light on one of the many risks to Black drivers posed by traffic enforcement: police use of force. We draw on data from two sources: CPE’s existing portfolio of work providing agency-specific analyses to local law enforcement agencies

West Hollywood California, Center for Policing Equity, 2024. 9p.

By TIM CAREY, LISA GELLER, SPENCER CANTRELL, KELLY ROSKAM, JOSHUA HORWITZ,

This Model Policy Guide is designed to inform advocates and policymakers about important elements to include in evidence-informed public health policy. The guidance in this report is structured to be applied in any state across the country, regardless of jurisdictional differences. While some of the recommendations contained herein are necessary for the law to function properly, variations in the law are naturally going to occur due to local practice. Readers should ensure that the essential elements are in place and strive to incorporate other promising practices to improve the life-saving potential of this policy. ERPOs Extreme Risk Protection Orders (ERPOs) are civil court orders that temporarily prohibit the possession and purchase of firearms by people adjudicated by a court to pose a danger to themselves and/or others. These laws are currently implemented in 21 states and the District of Columbia and show promise in addressing risks of suicide and mass violence. As further research continues to shed light on the life-saving effects of ERPO laws, this report details essential elements and promising practices to make ERPO laws function the best they can based on the evidence available to us.

Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health The Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions , 2024. 33p.