By Dongpil Son · Boyeong Im · Jaeseok Her · Woojin Park · Seok-Jin Kang · Seung-Nam Kim

Nighttime activities have significantly increased in cities, underscoring the growing importance of nocturnal lighting in fostering emotional stability and comfort of people. This study utilized simulated virtual reality (SVR) technologies to investigate the relationship between lighting environment and fear of crime in narrow residential streets. We created virtual models replicating a typical low-rise residential area in Seoul, Korea, diversified into eight environments representing different times of day with corresponding lighting scenarios (natural light, streetlamps, and interior building lights). One hundred recruited young adult participants were asked to experience four randomly selected environments and rate their perceived level of fear of crime while wearing a head-mounted display. The ordinal logistic regression analysis demonstrated that fear of crime was influenced not only by natural light but also significantly by artificial lights on streets and inside buildings.

Specifically, while a decrease in natural illuminance contributes to an increase in fear of crime in general (especially shortly after sunset), the role of natural illuminance was minimized immediately after streetlamp activation. After p.m. 8:30, when other light sources are relatively constant, fear of crime was significantly influenced by the proportion of interior building lights turned on. In residential areas where preventing light pollution is also crucial, a comprehensive strategy is necessary rather than solely focusing on improving illuminance levels to create safe and comfort lighting environment

Virtual Reality (2025) 29:8

By Lara Trautman

Long a bit player in the growing movement to reimagine the criminal justice system, prosecutors are finally entering the spotlight. Leveraging the tremendous authority of the office, they have begun to reshape the flow of criminal cases and nudge outcomes in a more productive direction. These early successes, however, should not obscure a broader truth: they cannot do it alone. Prosecutorial efforts can only realize their lofty potential for positive change with the active and enduring support of state legislatures. With unparalleled power over everything from charging decisions to plea bargaining, it may seem as though prosecutors could bend the justice system to their will without any assistance. Yet, the reality is much more complicated. For example, expansive charging and pretrial decision-making is relatively ineffective without the provision of strong alternatives to traditional prosecutorial pathways. Likewise, low funding can stymie individualized consideration of cases while poor data collection can get in the way of evidence-based policy. And here is where the legislature can and must step in. Only they have the power to remove many of these external roadblocks to constructive and beneficial prosecutorial action. Rewriting the law and adjusting appropriations can ensure that prosecutors have the tools, authority and discretion necessary to transform prosecution. Accordingly, this brief is offered as a guide for those legislators who wish to become allies in the prosecutor-driven reform movement by proposing specific actions legislatures can take to support prosecutors who are attempting to improve the criminal justice system in their jurisdictions

R STREET SHORTS NO. 88 April 2020

Washington, DC: R Street, 2020. 5p.

By Nila Bala and Emily Mooney

Seventeen-year-old William Miller was simply trying to go to a morning dentist appointment, when two adults—a school resource officer and school discipline assistant—blocked off the exit and threatened him with suspension if his car proceeded further. William explained that his absence was excused and that he could provide a note supporting the legitimacy of the excuse upon his return. But the officer and assistant continued to block the exit and tell him that, unless he got a parent on the line, he would be considered truant if he left. At one point, body cam footage shows the teenager attempting to pull his car around the deputy’s golf cart, only for the police officer to say, “You’re going to get shot if you come another fucking foot close to me. You run into me, you’ll get fucking shot.” William does not proceed further, but the arguments between the 17-year-old and two adults continue for several minutes. Seemingly unbeknownst to them, William’s mother had already called the school earlier to inform them of his absence and grant her permission. Nevertheless, River Ridge High School later suspended William for multiple weeks and then expelled him due to the incident. The adults involved faced no admonishments or repercussions for their behavior. Incidents like these should cause all people to question the role and priorities of police who interact with children in school settings. After all, children are different from adults, and William’s behavior, although perhaps immature, is far from unexpected. Developmental research (and any parent’s anecdotal accounts) suggest youth, especially teenagers, are often highly-impulsive and risk-loving. Given these facts, responses to their misbehavior—William’s attempt to go around the golf cart in this instance—should be crafted with care and informed by youth development principles. However, accounts like this, along with others in Miami and Chicago, demonstrate that this is not always how police youth interactions are handled. And, even the most well-intentioned police officers may cause more harm than good by unnecessarily introducing youth to the justice system, interacting with youth in a manner that leads to a negative impression or by exacerbating racial and ethnic disparities in the system. Accordingly, this policy study seeks to provide an overview of the current state of policing within school settings. It will then focus on identifying conservative priorities for police to uphold in this context, acknowledging that schools and communities often ask police to do more than they are best equipped for or should do. And it will offer potential policy considerations for positive change.

R STREET POLICY STUDY NO. 196 March 2020

Washington, DC: R Street, 2020. 8p.

By Lars Trautman

As defined by convictions, sentence lengths, and the relentless enforcement of the law, for decades, conservatives have prized “toughness” above all other attributes in assessing a prosecutor’s worth. Indeed, until recently, this same mindset permeated conservatives’ approach to nearly every other aspect of the criminal justice system. But then something interesting happened. Starting in Texas and quickly spreading to other “red” states and beyond, conservatives began to realize that mentality actually undermined the very goals they were pursuing. From public safety to fiscal probity, individual liberty to human dignity, a “smart on crime” approach that addressed underlying causes of crime proved better able to deliver than the old status quo that all too often relied on incarceration as the antidote to societal ills. Reform has followed in nearly every state2 and even managed to pass a notoriously divided Congress. The legislative focus of these conservative efforts to date, however, belies the intrinsically local nature of criminal justice. The fates of the overwhelming majority of individuals who come into contact with the criminal justice system are determined by a collection of county, town and city officials. Perhaps foremost among these is the local district attorney. After all, while a judge may act as the king in his court, only the district attorney has the ability to influence criminal proceedings in every single courtroom across her jurisdiction. The district attorney’s office is thus a natural channel for new criminal justice ideas. This realization has helped to propel a growing movement on the political left to elect “progressive prosecutors” who wield the broad powers of the office to further liberal criminal justice goals relating to decarceration and racial justice, among others.5 Plaudits have come from all corners for many of these efforts6 and the result is a coherent narrative around what it means to be a liberal-minded prosecutor in the twenty-first century. Of course, plenty of reasonable and just prosecutors have no aspirations to ever wear the “progressive” label, nor would their constituents want them to. This raises two related questions for prosecutors who reject this progressive mold, yet nevertheless yearn to be smarter and more even-handed than their predecessors: can the disruption of traditional prosecutorial practices align with a more conservative worldview and what does the center-right path toward more fair and effective prosecution look like? The answer is that a conservative prosecutor can and should challenge current prosecutorial practices by striving to become a more productive prosecutor in the broader sense of the term. This means ensuring that every prosecutorial decision is productive insofar as it produces an outcome that actually improves community wellbeing. It requires a subtle understanding that a charge, conviction or sentence is not itself the outcome, merely a factor building toward one that includes a safer community and rehabilitated defendant. Ultimately, trading a penchant for tough prosecutors for those who are productive in this manner will allow conservatives to forge a more constructive prosecutorial identity that does a better job of efficiently pursuing justice and keeping their communities secure and whole

R STREET POLICY STUDY NO. 193 January 2020

Washington, DC: R Street, 2020. 6p.

By Lars Trautman

In many ways, the criminal justice system is the epitome of government control; it is also a system marked by high costs and poor outcomes, especially for juveniles. Seeking to build a more effective system, Florida established its civil citation and similar diversion programs to provide an alternative path for juveniles accused of committing low-level offenses. These programs empowered civil society and community members to contribute at all levels, including as program operators, treatment and service providers, and as a source of volunteers for government managed programs. The results of this public-private partnership have been largely positive, including boasting the lowest recidivism rate of all of the programs under the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice’s purview, which suggests the value of empowering civil society to help address criminal justice issues.

Washington, DC: R Street, 2019. 22p;

By Lars Trautman and Jonathan Haggerty

Handcuffs close about a person’s wrists and the few, simple words “you are under arrest” are spoken as the individual is placed in the back of a police car. It is a scene that plays out once every three seconds in the United States and sets into motion a criminal process that exhibits at times all of the control and potential for damage of a runaway locomotive. Indeed, regardless of whether a murder indictment or an ordinance violation spurred the arrest, the immediate aftermath is the same. The individual loses their freedom and gains a new entry in their criminal history, while the officer must spend hours transporting and processing the individual with the specter of additional court time hanging over the future. And, while arrest is warranted for many of the more serious transgressions, it is an ill-fitting and disproportionate response to myriad other situations. Yet, traditionally, the only other option officially available to officers is to do nothing.

The shortcomings of this approach have not been lost on many law enforcement leaders and other crisis first responders, and in recent years, police departments from Seattle, Washington to Gloucester, Massachusetts have instituted new strategies and initiatives meant to break this old paradigm and present their officers with options beyond the binary choice to arrest or take no action. Operating under a variety of labels that usually reference ‘diversion’ in some form, these efforts have ranged from actively searching out vulnerable members of the community and connecting them with services to de-escalating potentially criminal encounters through citations or treatment opportunities. Often, it has meant law enforcement officers working in concert with other first responders; in some instances, non-law enforcement personnel may direct a response themselves—indeed, for crises without a criminal justice component, this can represent the optimal response. It has also involved turning to a set of independent crisis response procedures, such as protective custody or citations in lieu of arrest, that entail a noncriminal or deescalated enforcement response and can operate as part—or instead—of a more comprehensive diversion program. Although these strategies are often locally designed and implemented, they do not operate in a legal or political vacuum. Instead, localities are subject to a web of state laws and regulations that directly bear on their ability to institute pre-arrest diversion and other crisis response strategies effectively. Laws that grant local officials noncriminal responses to crises can propel diversion efforts or provide alternative, supplemental crisis responses. Laws that require criminal responses or otherwise circumscribe when and how non-law enforcement responders are able to intervene can impede them. In light of this, the present study dives into these problems by reviewing and analyzing the primary statewide barriers to and accelerants of pre-arrest diversion and crisis response strategies. It begins by providing an overview of pre-arrest diversion strategies. It then delves into five categories of law or regulation that most directly affect these strategies and often serve as the basis of fully-fledged crisis responses in their own right: emergency mental health hold laws, protective custody statutes, citation authority, substance abuse Good Samaritan laws and ambulance transport destination rules.

R STREET POLICY STUDY NO. 187 November 2019

Washington, DC: R Street, 2019. 34p.

By SteVon Felton

The 1991 beating of Rodney King and the subsequent acquittal of the Los Angeles police officers responsible for the attack sparked massive riots and protests across the nation. Following an investigation by the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Civil Rights Division, Congress granted the attorney general the power to investigate “a pattern or practice of conduct by law enforcement officers that violates Constitutional or federal rights.” In cases of a proven pattern or practice of police misconduct, the court may use a federal, court-enforced order, known as a consent decree, as a mechanism to force police departments to address institutional failures. Under such orders, a law enforcement agency and the Justice Department, overseen by an independent monitor, negotiate and establish concrete benchmarks to determine which reforms will constitute the successful end of the decree. Since the first consent decree in 1994, the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department has conducted over 65 investigations and entered into 40 reform agreements with police departments across the country. According to the Division, these negotiations are most effective when they can “ensure accountability, transparency and the flexibility to accomplish complex institutional reforms.” Indeed, a number of studies have now confirmed that consent decrees helped resolve management and oversight issues in cities such as Pittsburgh, Los Angeles and Cincinnati.4 However, while federal consent decrees have their place in promoting systemic policy change, they consistently fail to effect local and cultural change within departments. Several factors contribute to this phenomenon. For starters, as is often the case, centralized models like federal consent decrees cannot adequately adjust to localized systems of knowledge and regional distinctions between departments. Because they target local governments rather than individuals, the reform agreements reached by the DOJ and local law enforcement agencies often fail to sustain cultural change.5 Moreover, within some police departments, consent decrees lack the very thing that is perhaps most important to their success—the support of officers. Without buy-in from individual officers, police departments often disregard best practices that they view as externally forced upon them. And because policing is a profession that allows substantial discretion, in some departments officers openly ignore state and federal policies.6 Given the localized nature of police-citizen interactions, a top-down approach to police reform is virtually guaranteed to be unsuccessful. In light of these failures, the New Orleans Police Department’s Ethical Policing is Courageous (EPIC) program provides an alternative structure that begins with officers’ localized knowledge level and ends with systemic change. By allowing officers to police themselves, EPIC utilizes them and their experiences as resources to promote meaningful change

R STREET SHORTS NO. 70 April 2019

Washington, DC: R Street, 2019. 5p.

By The New Jersey Office of the State Comptroller (OSC)

The New Jersey Office of the State Comptroller (OSC) examined over 500 motor vehicle stops conducted by New Jersey State Police (NJSP) that ended with no enforcement. OSC looked at body-worn camera footage of stops that are rarely, if ever, watched—stops where tickets were not given, arrests were not made, and no one was even ordered to exit their vehicle. Most of the traffic stops OSC reviewed started with the trooper briefly explaining the reason for the stop and requesting a driver’s license, registration, and insurance. But in more than one out of four stops reviewed, the motorist presented a courtesy card, asserted a personal relationship with a law enforcement officer, or even flashed a law enforcement badge. When that happened, the side-of-the-road interactions between the motorists and the stopping troopers shifted, and in some cases, shifted dramatically.

Sometimes, the motorist boldly handed over a courtesy card, occasionally in lieu of driving credentials, and the stop resolved relatively quickly with the trooper offering some version of “you’re good.” Other times, a driver volunteered “my dad is a lieutenant” or “my best friend works at [insert name of any law enforcement agency]” and received remarkably solicitous treatment from the trooper. This was the case even when the drivers were stopped for dangerous traffic infractions, such as driving more than 100 miles per hour or suspected drunk driving. The most serious consequence the troopers imposed in these stops was advising the motorists that they left a voicemail message for the law enforcement officer named on the courtesy card or invoked as a friend or relative. In one instance of suspected drunk driving, the trooper also warned the driver to “stay off my highway,” after reminding him how bad things would be if he crashed under the circumstances.

OSC’s Police Accountability Project initiated this investigation in response to multiple reports that New Jersey law enforcement officers’ exercise of discretion in motor vehicle stops is often influenced by improper factors, such as courtesy cards given to or purchased by motorists. OSC reviewed more than 3,000 minutes of body-worn camera footage, which included 501 traffic stops conducted by a sample of NJSP troopers over a ten-day period in late 2022. In doing so, OSC found evidence of a two-tiered system in which motorists with ties to law enforcement—no matter how tenuous—were given preferential treatment.

Among the findings:

Courtesy cards—which are given out by police labor associations and sold by private companies online—appear to be in wide usage and function as accepted currency. Of the 501 stops OSC reviewed, 87 motorists presented courtesy cards which came from municipal police departments, county and state agencies, as well as inter-state and out-of-state law enforcement agencies. They all appeared to be equally effective at getting motorists released without enforcement.

Motorists who asserted personal relationships with law enforcement have similarly strong social capital that often has the same effect as a courtesy card. In ten percent of the stops, the motorist did not present a courtesy card but cited a relationship to a law enforcement officer and was able to evade any consequences, even for serious motor vehicle violations. In one stop, a driver was speeding 103 miles per hour. The trooper released her after she said her father was a lieutenant. Another motorist, stopped for tailgating, speeding, and driving over the median in a tunnel, was released promptly after he cited a friendship with a law enforcement officer.

Many active duty law enforcement officers were observed using their official government position to get out of a ticket. Some volunteered that they were law enforcement, some flashed badges, and in one instance, a trooper sitting in the back seat of a car offered up his badge number.

Troopers’ decisions to grant preferential treatment to motorists who have courtesy cards or asserted close personal relationships with law enforcement seem to be having a discriminatory impact. White motorists were more likely to hold a courtesy card or assert a relationship to law enforcement. Of the 87 courtesy cards observed in the sample, for instance, 69 were presented by White drivers, while Black, Hispanic/LatinX, Asian, and other drivers presented a combined 18 courtesy cards.

NJSP policy requires troopers to request and review driving credentials (driver’s license, vehicle registration, and proof of insurance) for all stopped drivers. Yet, drivers without courtesy cards or a close relationship with law enforcement were more likely to have all three driving credentials requested and verified by the trooper, more likely to have the trooper take the extra step of conducting a full motor vehicle lookup in the computer, and more likely to be given some form of a warning.

An overall analysis of the full sample revealed racial disparities that went beyond courtesy cards. White and Asian drivers were less likely to have all three of their credentials requested and verified when compared to Black and Hispanic/LatinX drivers. And Hispanic/LatinX drivers who were stopped were generally subjected to a more thorough computerized lookup. Most striking, troopers conducted computerized lookups of Hispanic/LatinX drivers 65 percent of the time, while looking up White drivers only 34 percent of the time.

Out of the 501 stops that resulted in no enforcement, 232 related to speeding. At least 80 of those stops were for 20 or more miles per hour over the speed limit. Speeding is one of the common causes of traffic fatalities.

In short, this two-tiered system of justice that provides differing treatment for those with law enforcement connections and those without is unethical, discriminatory, and fundamentally unfair. It also contributes to making New Jersey roads less safe. Traffic fatalities on New Jersey roads continue to rise, with fatal crashes at the end of November 2024 already well surpassing the number of fatal crashes from the prior year. Impaired driving and speeding are some of the leading causes of accidents. Millions of public dollars are allocated to law enforcement agencies throughout the state to prioritize safety initiatives and adherence to traffic laws. Yet for some drivers, these priorities do not seem to apply.

For these reasons, and those set forth in more detail below, OSC makes 11 recommendations and has also made appropriate referrals. OSC’s findings also make clear that regular review of no enforcement stops could provide valuable insight into officer discretion and also could reveal why particular data trends persist, highlight the need for training or retraining and updates to policies, and ensure that the motor vehicle laws are being enforced fairly and equitably. While some of the drivers in this sample had courtesy cards or asserted relationships to law enforcement, many did not, and yet still avoided any consequences for often serious violations.

Trenton: New Jersey Office of the State Comptroller, 2024. 38p.

By Susan Olzak

Though it has had a long history, the recent social movement aimed at stopping police violence against minorities has consistently endorsed policies designed to make police conduct more accountable. This paper analyzes the effects of protest in cities on the establishment of Citizen Review Boards (CRBs) in recent decades. It also examines whether or not the presence of a CRB influences subsequent rates of police-involved fatalities in cities.

Preprint, 2020.

Contributor(s): National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine; Transportation Research Board; National Cooperative Highway Research Program; Xiao Qin; Yang Li; Habib Tabatabai; Andrew Graettinger; Mohammad Wael Amer; Frank Gross; Bob Scopatz; Sam Arnold; Jason J. Bittner; Dan D'Angelo; Hannah Silber; Neil Janes

There has been an increase in bridge and tunnel strikes in the United States, which present significant hazards to both the vehicles involved and the structural integrity of bridges and tunnels. Nationally, over 15,000 bridge strikes occur annually, costing millions of dollars in repairs and posing serious safety risks. The pressing need for a comprehensive solution is evident.

NCHRP Web-Only Document 411: Prevention and Mitigation of Bridge and Tunnel Strikes, from TRB's National Cooperative Highway Research Program, is supplemental to NCHRP Research Report 1132: Bridge and Tunnel Strikes: A Guide for Prevention and Mitigation.

NCHRP. 2025.253p.

Contributor(s): National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine; Transportation Research Board; National Cooperative Highway Research Program; Xiao Qin; Yang Li; Habib Tabatabai; Andrew Graettinger; Mohammad Wael Amer; Frank Gross; Bob Scopatz; Sam Arnold; Jason J. Bittner; Dan D'Angelo; Hannah Silber; Neil Janes

Bridge and tunnel strikes inflict serious damage to vehicles, highway bridges, and tunnels; cause injuries and fatalities; and impose detours and costly delays on highway users. Attempts by state departments of transportation (DOTs) and other bridge and tunnel owners to prevent bridge and tunnel strikes include signing, lighting, height detection systems, and actuated warning devices.

NCHRP Research Report 1132: Bridge and Tunnel Strikes: A Guide for Prevention and Mitigation, from TRB's National Cooperative Highway Research Program, presents state-of-the-art information to assist state DOTs in the prevention and mitigation of bridge and tunnel strikes by overheight motor vehicles.

Supplemental to the report is NCHRP Web-Only Report 411: Prevention and Mitigation of Bridge and Tunnel Strikes. (2025).

NCHRP. 2025.

Racial Disparities in Arrests in Santa Clara County, California, 1980

By Sophia Hunt, Micayla Bozeman, and Matthew Clair

This report examines racial/ethnic disparities in arrests in Santa Clara County, California, from 1980 to 2019. Over the past forty years, felony and misdemeanor arrest rates have declined for all racial groups, but racial disparities have persisted and, in some cases, increased. Black residents, though a small percentage of the population, are disproportionately susceptible to being arrested. In the 2010s, the Black arrest rate was 5.4 times the White arrest rate—the highest BlackWhite ratio in arrest rates observed over the four decades. Nevertheless, as overall arrest rates declined over this period, the absolute difference between Black and White arrest rates substantially narrowed. Hispanic residents are also disproportionately arrested, but to a lesser degree than Black residents. Racial/ethnic disparities are most pronounced with respect to felony arrests; the Black-White ratio in felony arrest rates peaked at 7.2 in the 1980s and declined to 6.6 in the 2010s. Racial/ethnic disparities also exist, to a lesser degree, with respect to misdemeanor arrests. We find small racial differences in arrest dispositions (or, what law enforcement does with a person following arrest). However, it is noteworthy that, across all four decades, Black and Hispanic felony arrests are slightly more likely than White felony arrests to result in release due to “insufficient grounds to file a complaint.” This pattern could suggest that law enforcement officers are more likely to arrest Black and Hispanic residents for reasons that law enforcement entities later determine do not rise to the level sufficient for filing a complaint with the District Attorney’s Office.

Court Listening Project, Report No. 3,( c/o Matthew Clair, Stanford University), 2022. 30p.

By Sophia Hunt, Claudia Nmai, and Matthew Clair

This report summarizes perceptions of policing among a racially and socio-economically diverse sample of 37 people who faced criminal charges in the Hall of Justice, a courthouse in San Jose, California, between August 2021 and March 2022. A majority of criminal defendants we interviewed reported negative perceptions of personal police treatment, but a considerable minority reported positive perceptions. Among those who reported negative perceptions, two criticisms were common: (1) individual police officers’ violence, abuse, and fabrication of evidence; and (2) systemic policing practices that are overly intrusive and estrange certain disfavored groups in the Bay Area, such as the unhoused. Among those who reported positive perceptions, some believe that, despite their personal experiences of positive treatment, police do not treat everyone fairly and policing quality varies by context and the race of the policed person. Alongside these perceptions, a handful of defendants in the sample offered visions for changing policing. Two notable visions were: (1) reallocating resources from police departments toward other city services or under-resourced groups; and (2) reforming police departments in ways that reduce discrimination and abuse. While we discuss variation along demographic characteristics in our sample, we foreground how the range of experiences and visions of policing in San Jose have implications for policymakers and future research.

Court Listening Project, Report no. 1. Court Listening Project ((c/o Matthew Clair, Stanford University) 2022, 15p.

By John A. Shjarback

Broader public, media, and scholarly interest in police shootings of residents in the United States has been a constant since 2014. This interest followed a number of high-profile deadly force incidents, including those leading to the deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO, and Tamir Rice in Cleveland, OH. In the decade since, researchers from a variety of academic disciplines have learned much about the scope and nature of police shootings. While US police as a whole use their firearms more than most other countries, rates of police shootings of residents vary across states.

The purpose of this report is to examine police shootings of residents—including both fatal and nonfatal, injurious incidents—using a comparative lens. More specifically, it explores rates of police shootings in the states comprising the Regional Gun Violence Research Consortium (RGVRC)—Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island—with the rest of the country. These comparisons suggest an association between levels of firearm prevalence/availability in the general population, as well as related laws and rates of police shootings per capita. The majority of RGVRC states possess the lowest rates of police shootings of residents, which appears to at least partially be a function of low levels of firearm prevalence/availability among residents and strong laws and legislation related to guns.

Albany, NY: Rockefeller Institute of Government, 2024. 20p.

By John Bansemer, Greg Rattray and Franklin Lee

The R Street Institute has conducted a study of the challenges associated with improving state and municipal responses to cyber attacks. This study leverages existing reports, interviews with defenders at the state and municipal level, experts studying these challenges, as well as workshops conducted in conjunction with the New York Cyber Task Force. It describes the shape of the challenges and offers recommendations for action to improve state and municipal cyber response capabilities. Further, understanding the associated challenges and extending the work on the recommendations within this report requires significant follow-on efforts. This report seeks to engage and assist those on the front line—governors, mayors, personnel, and state and local governmental organizations. While the federal government and the private sector play key roles, they were not the specific focus of this study

R STREET POLICY STUDY NO. 229 May 2021, 13p.

By Lars Trautman and Camille Infantolino

As with so many facets of American life, the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic hit the criminal justice system like a tsunami, upending existing practices and forcing leaders to rapidly consider new approaches. The fast-spreading, deadly contagion added new urgency to long-festering issues, especially the problems associated with the sheer number of individuals contained within and processed through the system. To protect those working within jails and prisons or those facing the prospect of becoming confined, jurisdictions adopted new policies to reduce the number of individuals entering the system altogether, or at least its correctional facilities. One of the primary ways in which jurisdictions grappled with that priority was by instituting new alternatives to arrest. Across the country, jurisdictions expanded citations in lieu of arrest, deprioritized police stops for minor transgressions, and changed how they received and responded to certain civilian complaints. In each of these instances, the policy shifts suited the COVID-19 situation especially well because of their propensity to reduce unnecessary human contact, particularly in close quarters. Of course, whether jurisdictions retain and even expand these measures, or whether additional jurisdictions follow suit, will depend on more than simply their immediate health benefits. In addition to considering how well the policies lived up to their promises of saving resources, avoiding unproductive police encounters and reducing government interference in individuals’ lives, local authorities will have to weigh the political and public reaction to their introduction. Indeed, one obstacle to alternatives to arrest that has existed since long before the pandemic is fear about how the public will respond to their adoption. Accordingly, the present brief addresses some of these concerns by delving into COVID-19- inspired shifts in alternatives-to-arrest policy and examines how these changes were received in the popular press.

R STREET SHORTS NO. 98 December 2020, 4p.

By Brenden Beck

Did governments shift funding from their social welfare functions to their criminal justice functions after the 1980s? Studies investigating this possible “punitive turn” have been inconclusive and have been conducted at the state or national scale. Cities, however, are increasingly important as government responsibility devolves downward and social movements target municipal police budgets. This study contributes to ongoing academic and political debates about welfare-state retrenchment and police department funding using data on 390 U.S. cities between 1990 and 2019. In contrast to conventional explanations for budgetary restructuring that foreground across-the-board cuts or macroeconomic causes, this study proposes a fiscal crisis model that emphasizes localized budget deficits, beliefs about policing's primacy, and police agencies’ political power. Data reveal gradual and considerable municipal budgetary restructuring toward law enforcement between 1990 and 2019, with police funding growing 32% relative to social spending. Fixed-effects regression models with asymmetric predictors find that when municipal revenues fell by 10%, cities reduced police expenditures by an associated 1% and social service expenditures by 4%, with parks and housing seeing the biggest cuts. During austerity, municipalities cut police shallowly and temporarily while cutting social services deeply and enduringly, accelerating welfare-to-carceral realignment.

Criminology, Volume 62, Issue 4, 2024, pages ,623-654

By Matthew B. Ross

 1. Introduction In November 2021, the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office of Public Integrity and Accountability (NJOPIA) engaged the author of this study for the purpose of conducting an independent analysis of traffic stops made by the New Jersey State Police (NJ-SP). Based on the author’s extensive experience working with state and local policymakers to develop early warning systems for identifying police disparities, the NJ OPIA requested that the analysis focus on the central question of whether there was disparate treatment on the part of NJ-SP towards racial and ethnic minorities.2 After cleaning and linking all of the raw data provided by the New Jersey Office of Law Enforcement Professional Standards (NJ-OLEPS), the analytical sample used in this analysis consisted of 6,177,109 traffic stops made by NJ-SP from 2009 to 2021. In the full analytical sample, 60.52 percent of traffic stops were made of White non-Hispanic motorists while 18.8 percent were Black/African-American and 13.44 percent were Hispanic/Latinx. The overall volume of minority motorists stopped by NJ-SP increased from 35.34 percent in 2009 to 46.28 percent in 2021. The overarching finding from the analysis of the NJ-SP data from 2009-21 is that there was extremely strong evidence of a large and persistent disparity both is the decision to stop as well as the decision to engage in post-stop enforcement like search, vehicular exits, use of force, and arrest. In general, the results were estimated with a very high degree of statistical confidence, survived multiple robustness tests, and were found across most years and troops/stations. In the opinion of this study’s author, these disparities represent strong empirical evidence that NJ-SP is engaged in enforcement practices that result in adverse treatment towards minority motorists. Following best practices, this study applies an ensemble of the most reliable statistical tests available in the scientific literature. The intuition of this approach is that the shortcomings of any individual test are overcome by the totality of the evidence produced by a multitude of tests examining a broad set of enforcement outcomes.

Boston: Northeastern University, 2023. 44p.

By Matthew B. Ross, Jesse J. Kalinowski, Kenneth Barone

Connecticut’s novel approach to collecting and analyz-ing traffic stop data for evidence of disparate treatment is widely considered to be a model of best practice. Here,we provide an overview of Connecticut’s framework,detail solutions to the canonical empirical challenges of analyzing traffic stops, and describe a data-driven approach to early intervention. Unlike most juris-dictions that simply produce an annual traffic stop report, Connecticut has developed an ongoing system for identifying and mitigating disparity. Connecticut's Framework for identifying significant disparities on an annual basis relies on the so-called “preponderance ofevidence” approach. Drawing from the cutting-edge of the empirical social science literature, this approach applies several, as opposed to a single, rigorous empiri-cal test of disparity. For departments identified as having a disparity, Connecticut has developed a process for intervening on an annual basis. In that process, police administrators engage with researchers to conduct an empirical exploration into possible contributing factors and enforcement policies. In Connecticut, this approach has transformed what had once been a war of anecdotes into a constructive data-driven conversation about policy. Variants of the Connecticut Model have recently been adopted by the State of Rhode Island, Oregon, and California. Connecticut’s approach provides a useful model and policy framework for states and localities conducting disparity studies of police traffic stops

Criminology & Public Policy. 2020;19 pages:1289–1303.

By Madison, Wisconsin Police Department

  In August 2023, Madison City Council passed a resolution authorizing the Implementation of the Body-Worn Camera Experiment Program. The resolution included multiple attachments that provide a history of the body worn cameras (BWC), feasibility reports, example policy, public comments, Alder amendments, legal review, and Chief Barnes’ memo requesting approval to conduct the experiment. The resolution represents a culmination of several years of effort by city residents, staff and alders. The experiment program consisted of technology, research and cost estimates. The technology portion began April 1, 2024, and was completed July 14. The BWC units were worn by officers in the North District. The first two weeks consisted of setting up and assigning units to officers, testing, and training. The use of body worn cameras began in the field on April 15. The BWC units were loaned by MPD’s existing dash camera vendor for the duration of experiment. The research was conducted by an outside researcher; Dr. Broderick Turner at Virginia Tech. Police Director Eleazer Hunt and members of the BWC Committee met with Dr. Turner multiple times to identify needed data and survey questions. This report includes Dr. Turner’s findings (Appendix A) and a budget estimate for implementation (Appendix B). Estimates are based on full deployment of BWC across MPD, the acquisition of hardware, operations/storage needs, peripherals, personnel, and support several years of operation. During the experiment, an interim Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) guided the use of BWC (Appendix C). This SOP is informed by the Police Body-Worn Camera Feasibility Review Committee, MPD’s current SOP for dash cameras and audio microphones , and a review of model policies developed by the International Association of Chiefs of Police and the U.S. Department of Justice. Findings from the experiment: 1- Officers did not change behavior while wearing a BWC 2- Charges were not added when officers reviewed video 3- Technical issues related to battery life and uploading video were evident in the first half of the experiment and resolved 4- Specific situational use of BWC required clarification of the SOP 5- The limitations of the experiment included a short duration, a small number of officers participated, there was limited time for analysis (interviews), and no post-experiment analysis 6- BWC may help with trust building, legitimacy, and transparency  7- Public Records requests impacted staff time to research, redact, and provide videos to requestors  

Madison, WI: City Police Department, 2024. 47p.