Public Report on Chicago Police Training on the Use of Force

From the introduction; This Report from community representatives of Chicago’s Use of Force Community Working Group offers our feedback on the Chicago Police Department’s (CPD) training on de-escalation and the use of force. The Working Group was first convened in the summer of 2020 in response to the requirements of the federal civil rights Consent Decree designed to bring an end to the CPD’s pattern of police brutality and racial discrimination. Over the course of two years, the Working Group persuaded the CPD to make transformative changes to its policies governing police use of force. 1 Last fall, we issued a Public Report on CPD’s new policies, including areas still in need of change. 2 The new policies, if implemented and enforced on the ground, have the potential to dramatically reduce unnecessary CPD violence and improve public safety.

Second Report of the Community Representatives of Chicago’s Use of Force Working Group. 2023March 2023. 24p.

By CECILIA FARFÁN-MÉNDEZ | JASON ELIGH

More than 1.1 million people in the United States have died from opioid overdoses since 2000. In Canada, over 50,000 lives have been lost to opioid-related overdoses since 2016. Meanwhile, in Mexico, homicide—mostly committed with illegally trafficked firearms—is the leading cause of death among men aged 15 to 44. These overlapping crises reveal that the harms associated with synthetic opioids are not confined to one country but span all of North America.

This policy brief sheds light on how illicitly manufactured fentanyl (IMF) is produced and distributed within and across Mexico, the US, and Canada. The report reveals a complex and highly integrated system of production, tablet pressing, trafficking, and consumption. Far from being a product trafficked into North America, IMF is increasingly produced on its soil.

Key insights include the emergence of a new “golden triangle” of trafficking and violence between the Mexican states of Baja California, Sonora, and Sinaloa, where fentanyl production overlaps with high levels of firearm-related homicides. Fentanyl production in Mexico is closely linked to firearms trafficking from the United States, with Arizona emerging as a predominant source. In Canada, production largely serves the domestic market using chemical precursors imported directly and processed in clandestine labs. In the US, criminal actors engage in adulteration and tablet pressing—often making use of legal trade flows and customs loopholes to facilitate trafficking.

The paper also challenges common assumptions: 83.5% of those convicted of fentanyl trafficking in the US in 2024 were US citizens, and most trafficking across the Mexico–US border occurs through legal ports of entry, not between them.

Recommendations for all three countries focus on data transparency, coordinated public health responses, and transnational cooperation. The paper calls for more investment in evidence-based interventions and a shift away from unilateral or enforcement-only strategies.

Deaths in North America from overdoses and homicides linked to fentanyl are not inevitable. But addressing it requires governments to exchange know-how and coordinate action across borders, just as criminal networks do.

By The European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction and Europol

Illicit drugs are big business. They are one of the main profit-generating activities of organised crime and are estimated to represent around one-fifth of global crime proceeds. 'EU Drug Markets: In-depth analysis' is the fourth comprehensive overview of illicit drug markets in the EU by the EMCDDA and Europol and takes a broad view of these markets from production and trafficking, to distribution and use. Designed as a series of modules, each focuses on the market for a particular drug.

This resource offers a strategic and top-level summary for policymakers and decision-makers, to support the development and implementation of policies and actions in Europe, based on a robust understanding of the current drug landscape and emerging threats. It also serves practitioners working in the field and is intended to raise awareness among the general public about these issues.

By Laura Diorella Islas Limiñana

This thesis seeks to develop a better understanding of the transnational behaviour of drug trafficking organisations (DTOs) by documenting the role that Mexican DTOs had in the cocaine trafficking to Europe after 2008. This was the year when the Italian authorities announced their discoveries that there were business interaction between the Mexican DTOs and the Italian mafia groups. At the same time the Italian authorities were announcing their findings, my literature review showed a lack of analysis and documentation regarding the transnationalization of Mexican DTOs to Europe.

While most of the literature focuses on the explanation of the cartels inside Mexico, my research question focused on clarifying whether or not the Mexican DTOs are expanding their cocaine trafficking activities to Europe. At this point I considered the reports of the Italian authorities that affirm that the Mexican DTOs are relevant drug trafficking intermediaries in the cocaine trafficking routes to Europe.

To answer my research question, and to systematically describe the evolution of DTOs, a qualitative methods approach was deployed (Mohajan, 2018) with a case study design adapted from Yin (2003). My analysis was carried out through the use of multiple triangulation techniques that helped me to collect and study different types of data to understand the subject. I collected empirical information through 28 interviews with security personnel with experience in countering Mexican DTOs or in the cocaine routes to Europe. The information gathered from the security personnel, complemented by official reports and open source information, was useful to answer my research question and test my hypothesis.

The analysis showed that despite Italian authorities’ claims and perceptions, the power of the Mexican cartels is very limited when talking about their presence and links in Europe, and resulted in four key findings. Firstly, that the perception of the Mexican DTOs as having trans-Atlantic powers is erroneous, because the evidence showed that there is no transatlantic expansion. Secondly, the analysis uncovered the internal, national and international variables that were observed to alter the evolution and behaviour of the Mexican DTOs. At the internal level, the variables included the loss of leadership and the grievances between groups. At the national level the identified variables were the democratic transitions, corruption and impunity networks. And at the international level the variables were the international drug demand, the changes in the international illicit world, the situation of governance and corruption in foreign countries and the geography of the region where the illicit business are taking place.

By: The European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction
This report presents an analysis of the drug markets in the European Neighbourhood Policy-East (ENP-East) countries: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus (1), Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine. It provides a top-level overview of the information available on drug production, trafficking, sale, use and harms, as well as exploring what is known about the drivers and facilitators of drug markets across the ENP-East region. It highlights drug-related threats and their potential implications for security and health. Due to its proximity as well as economic and social ties, developments in this region have potentially important implications for the EU. The analysis presented here focuses on the drug situation over the period 2018-2021, and specifically on key developments prior to the COVID-19 pandemic through to the end of 2021. However, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and its potentially significant implications for the drug situationare also considered, although solid information to inform the analysis is lacking. The ENP-East region comprises two geographically distinct groups of countries separated by the Black Sea and Russia (Figure 1). While there are similarities in the drug markets across these countries, their geographical location has influenced their domestic drug situations, including production, trafficking, sales and use. In the north-western part of the ENP-East region lie Belarus, Moldova and Ukraine. These countries share borders with EU Member States, Russia and the Black Sea. In the south-eastern part of the region lie the Southern Caucasus countries, namely Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia. The Southern Caucasus borders Iran, Russia, Türkiye and the Black Sea. The drug markets in the region continues to undergo significant change in terms of the production, trafficking, sale and use of illicit drugs. A key recent development has been the growth of online markets, which has been linked with the availability of a broader spectrum of drugs, particularly new psychoactive substances (NPS). Thereported emergence of new trafficking routes for heroin and cocaine through the Black Sea, with involvement of international criminal networks, is another relatively recent phenomenon that highlights the need for continuing vigilance in this area. New developments have also been noted in drug production, with synthetic drug production sites identified and dismantled in several countries in the region. In addition, there are concerns that the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 may impact on drug flows and lead to increased drug-related harms, both in Ukraine and in neighbouring countries. The findings detailed in this report are based on semistructured interviews conducted between September and December 2021 with over 40 stakeholders in the six countries of the ENP-East region. Stakeholders included government representatives, law enforcement agencies, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), researchers and international organisations. To substantiate the information that emerged from these interviews, scientific literature and other data and reports published by governmental and non-governmental entities were consulted. However, it is important to note that in general there is a lack of routinely collected and detailed information on the drug situation in the region. This highlights the importance of strengthening routine drug monitoring data systems for collecting and reporting reliable and comparable information.

By Matthew Brooks, Jessica Glynn, Hannah Fawcett, Aminah Barnes, Rachael Carew, David Errickson, Maria Livanou

Objectives

Prior research indicates that jury duty can be distressing for some jurors. This study examined: (1) the influence of prior trauma characteristics (type, exposure, time since trauma), medical fear and mental health difficulties on stress and emotional responses during a mock trial and 1 week later; and (2) associations between early stress reactions during a trial on subsequent stress and emotional reactivity after exposure to skeletal evidence and 1 week later.

Methods

Mock jurors (n = 180) completed baseline self-report mental health measures, read a summary of a murder case and were then exposed to graphic skeletal evidence. Stress and/or emotional responses were collected at baseline, after reading the case summary, before and after viewing the skeletal evidence and 7 days post-trial.

Results

Participants reported a wide range of prior traumatic experiences, with nearly half reporting pre-existing mental health difficulties. Average traumatic stress symptoms tripled from baseline to follow-up, with 44% of participants meeting PTSD-type criteria 7 days later. Medical fear and mental health difficulties were positively associated with some stress and/or emotional responses throughout the trial, with mixed findings concerning trauma characteristics, stress and emotional reactivity. Initial stress and emotional responses to case evidence were linked to later stress and emotional reactions, after accounting for pre-existing trauma and mental health characteristics.

Conclusions

Past trauma experiences, mental health difficulties and immediate stress responses during a trial can exacerbate emotional and stress reactions. Addressing the psychological impacts of pre-existing trauma symptoms could improve juror well-being during this important civic duty

By Brian Elderbroom, Peter Mayer, and Felicity Rose

Key Findings:

• Families with an immediate family member incarcerated spend an average of $4,195 annually to maintain contact and provide support; spouses/co-parents spend the most ($6,225 annually), followed by adult children ($5,470 annually).

• Families spend a total of $5.6 billion annually on commissary deposits, prison accounts, and other direct support for basic necessities and other items their family members might need.

  • Black family members spend $280 per month on direct support compared to $152 per month for white family members.

• On an annual basis, Black family members spend 2.5 times more ($8,005) than white family members ($3,251). 

  • Hispanic family members spend an average of $6,367 annually, and Native American family members spend an average of $6,464 annually.

This mixed-methods report quantifies the financial costs incurred by families when a loved one is incarcerated. Drawing on a nationally representative survey of adults with an immediate family member incarcerated for at least three months, supplemented by focus groups, the study documents both direct out-of-pocket spending and longer-term financial impacts. The central finding is that families pay large, recurring costs to maintain contact and provide for incarcerated loved ones, and they suffer persistent income losses that compound intergenerationally. The authors estimate that families collectively bear an annual financial burden of $348 billion. These costs are not distributed evenly: Black, Hispanic, Native American, and low-income families shoulder a disproportionate share, devoting more of their household resources to supporting incarcerated relatives. All in all, the findings highlight the far-reaching consequences of incarceration on family financial stability and intergenerational economic opportunities.

By  Becky Clarke and Zara Manoehoetoe

The numbers of women in prison in England and Wales has risen once again (Prison Reform Trust, 2023), just as women’s imprisonment globally rises exponentially (Fair and Walmsley, 2022). Can existing ‘community-based alternatives’ shift the stubborn use of prison for girls and women? More importantly, how do such approaches engage with the concept of ‘justice’ for women? This article opens by reflecting on the recent past. What lessons must we learn from the failure of ‘gender-responsive’ policies of the last two decades? (Berman and Fox, 2010). Getting things wrong, trying again, taking risks, and experimenting; these are all principles embedded into the imagining and building abolitionist responses (Kaba, 2021). In the main sections of this article, the authors reflect together on recent attempts to convene spaces to centre women’s experiences of policing, punishment and (in)justice. In coming together in community, we are reminded of the radical roots of resistance to the criminalisation and punishment of girls and women. These collective moments offer opportunities to build new alliances and energy. The BJCJ journal was established with the aim ‘to encourage debate about the contested meanings of the concept of ‘community justice’ (Williams, 2002; p1). Our article reflects on collective spaces exploring (in)justice, in recognition that statutory responses too often fail girls and women, with institutional interventions often adding to the harm experienced by girls and women (Clarke and Chadwick, 2023; Clarke and Leah, 2023). The collective offers an opportunity to move beyond a critique of current approaches (HillCollins, 1998) to explore how grassroots spaces, shaped by abolitionist principles, can contribute to transformative justice for girls and women.

Author(s): Dante BC Hoek, Ard J Barends, Esther FJC van Ginneken
Focus: This explorative qualitative research on prison violence investigates how, and why, potentially violent situations between incarcerated men occur. Through in-depth interviews with imprisoned and formerly imprisoned men, the research explores the situational circumstances of prison violence.
Conclusion: The article identifies three distinct categories of situations where violence can occur: when incarcerated individuals perceive threats to their (1) status, (2) safety and (3) shared interests (or goals). The findings show how these particular threats impact participants’ interactions and interpretations of situations and subsequent potentially violent behaviour. 

By : Lex Stevens, Winifred Agnew-Pauley, Matthew Bacon, Helen Glasspoole-Bird, Nadine Hendrie, Caitlin Elizabeth Hughes, Charlie Lloyd, Mark Monaghan, Rivka Smith, Charlie Sutton 

This article explores how discretion is managed and exercised across senior, middle, and street levels of policing. It uses qualitative data from two studies in England. The first, a study across three police force areas, involved interviews and focus groups with 221 people who were designers, deliverers, and recipients of police-led drug diversion. The second study used 354 hours of ethnographic observation and 21 interviews to examine stop-and-search practices in one other police force. Rather than a simply expanding scope of discretion at lower levels of the hierarchy, the findings reveal a multi-level process of cascading constraints and subsidiary discretion. At each level, we observe the exercise of occupational professionalism and autonomous judgement, but higher-level constraints shape how discretion is applied in pursuit of organizational professionalism.

By Enrico Nichelatti and Adnan Abdulaziz Shahir

Trade mis-invoicing represents a significant economic challenge in Ghana, with losses estimated at 3.03 per cent of gross domestic product in 2018. We examine the potential of a universal child benefit in Ghana through a counterfactual taxation of illicit financial flows. Using microsimulation, we model two budget-neutral designs: a flat per-child transfer and a quasi-universal schedule with higher amounts for larger households. Both options lower poverty and inequality, with stronger effects in rural areas and among larger households. The universal design yields slightly greater overall poverty reduction: the quasi-universal variant better protects large families. Although such revenues cover only a limited share of the poverty gap, redirecting them can expand social protection without raising distortionary taxes. The study links tax justice to social policy expansion and questions claims that universal benefits are unaffordable in low- and lower-middle-income countries. The study assesses only first-round effects and does not address political feasibility.

By Liz Komar

A broad and growing number of crimes are criminalized at both the state and federal levels. This means that either state or federal authorities, or both, can prosecute these offenses. Long-standing political pressure for federal lawmakers to demonstrate their responsiveness to constituent concerns about crime,1 even if the crimes in question are already subject to local prosecution, has led to a federeral criminal code that encompasses a wide array of local conduct. That broad reach comes at a significant cost

By Rachel Moran

Brady lists, named after the Supreme Court decision Brady v. Maryland,1 are lists some prosecutors maintain of law enforcement officers with histories of misconduct that could impact the officers’ credibility in criminal cases.2 Brady and its progeny require prosecutors to disclose exculpatory evidence within the government’s possession or control to defendants in criminal cases.3 This includes evidence that could impeach a witness’s credibility.4 Evidence that a police officer involved in a criminal case has, for example, previously written a false police report, lied in court, or used racial slurs during an arrest may be exculpatory because it casts doubt on the officer’s truthfulness, credibility, and impartiality.5 Brady lists originated from this disclosure obligation: the lists ostensibly allow prosecutors to keep track of, and disclose to defense counsel when necessary, information that negatively impacts officers’ credibility.6 Brady lists are simple in concept and complicated in practice. Prosecutorial practices around maintaining and using Brady lists vary widely and are almost completely unregulated.7Neither federal nor most state laws require prosecutors to maintain Brady lists, and recent journalist investigations suggest that most prosecutor offices do not maintain such lists.8 The lists that do exist are not all equal. Some prosecutor agencies maintain expansive lists of police officers who are accused of or found to have committed misconduct of nearly any kind,9 while others limit their Brady lists to officers with histories of dishonesty orcriminal convictions.10 Disclosure practices are similarly inconsistent: some prosecutors maintain Brady lists as internal mechanisms for assessing credibility concerns about their own officerwitnesses and refuse to provide their lists to people outside the office.11 Others affirmatively disclose their lists to defendants in criminal cases.12 Some make the lists available to the public.

By JUSTICE (UK)

Despite the recommendations made in JUSTICE’s 2023 research paper on pre-trial remand decision-making in the Magistrates Court little substantive progress has been made to address the challenges identified. This report presents a targeted set of recommendations to address persistent issues in pre-trial remand decision-making within the Magistrates’ Courts of England and Wales. The proposals are designed to (i) ensure custodial remand is genuinely used as a last resort, (ii) enhance the quality and lawfulness of decisions, (iii) reduce unnecessary pre-trial detention, and (iv) foster a fairer justice system. The recommendations within this latest report are informed by a combination of quantitative data and qualitative evidence gathering, and have been tested through discussions with key individual and organisational stakeholders. Improving Diversity and Accessibility in the Magistracy a. The current lack of diversity in the magistracy undermines the perceived legitimacy and the quality of decision making. b. Structural barriers to joining and remaining in the magistracy should be removed, including simplifying the application process and eliminating the requirement for employer references at the pre-selection stage. c. Enhanced data collection on recruitment and attrition is required to identify obstacles faced by underrepresented groups, with the aim of building a magistracy that better reflects the communities it serves

By Murat C. Mungan. J. Shahar Dillbary

We consider a framework which brings together losses arising from rent-dissipation and the workhorse model of law enforcement. Governmental actors engage in a contest to share the proceeds from the enforcement of the law through monetary fines, which leads to rent-dissipation. This causes monetary sanctions to be costly, rendering the model used for studying nonmonetary sanctions a better fit for their analysis. The effect of rent-dissipation on optimal sanctions is directly related to the sanction elasticity of offenses measured at the classic optimum (i.e., where the expected sanction equals the direct harm from the offense). When offenses are inelastic, the optimal sanction is smaller than the classic optimum and it is decreasing in the degree of rent-dissipation; and a legislator who does not fully internalize contest costs chooses an overly-punitive sanction which is smaller than the classic optimum. The opposite results are obtained when offenses are elastic. We discuss implications and extensions.

By Stephen J. Choi, Mitu Gulati

Curious about the merits of judges Donald Trump appointed in his first term as president, we looked in an earlier study at the performance during 2020 to mid-2023 of the judges Trump appointed as compared to those appointed by other presidents. On a set of three measures--productivity, quality and independence--the Trump judges performed as well, if not better, than judges appointed by Presidents Obama and Bush. As for President Biden's appointees, they did systematically worse than the Trump appointees. Biden judicial selections were, at the time we did our prior study, however, new judges. Maybe, we wondered, these judges would do better on our measures a year or two hence? What follows are our preliminary results on that question. Our short answer is that Trump judges continue to dominate the Biden judges. 

By Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia and Peter Margulies 

The current Administration's approach to immigration law enforcement has augmented executive power and reduced procedural safeguards. That approach has raised questions under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) and the Constitution. Courts have often pushed back, although the Supreme Court has stayed judicial curbs on one area we'll discuss: Removal to a country other than the home country of the noncitizen (sometimes called third-country removal (TCR)). In other areas, such as the First Amendment rights of foreign students and the reach of the Alien Enemies Act (AEA), adjudication is moving through the courts, although the Supreme Court has imposed limits on the use of the AEA. 

By I-An Su, John H. Blume and Stephen J Ceci

More than three decades ago, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) ruled that individuals who are not competent (alternatively referred to by the Court as insane) at the time of their scheduled execution cannot be put to death. Despite the years that have passed since the Court's decision and the literal life-or-death stakes involved, competency for execution (CFE) remains underexplored in the psychological, psychiatric, and legal literature. A number of important legal and ethical issues that arise when a person on death row maintains they are not competent to be executed are still unresolved even after the landmark Supreme Court cases such as Ford v. Wainwright (1986), Panetti v. Quarterman (2007), and Madison v. Alabama (2019). In this first-of-its-kind descriptive study, we analyzed the demographic and case characteristics of the 28 successful Ford claimantsindividuals in the United States who have been found to be incompetent to be executed and compared them to the general death row population and homicide cases nationwide. Our findings reveal some similarities but also some differences between these claimants and the general death row population and homicide cases: the successful Ford claimants are exclusively male (in keeping with the general prison population on death row), relatively older, and underrepresented among White and Latinx inmates (i.e., Black claimants are more successful than their White and Latinx counterparts at evading execution). Nearly all (96%) suffer from schizophrenia, with 79% experiencing psychiatric comorbidity, yet only 54% received any significant treatment before or after the criminal offense. The claimants' cases also involve a higher proportion of child victims, male family members, and female non-family member victims, as well as more multiple-victim cases (not indiscriminate) and fewer intraracial homicides. Fewer victims are male, and more are female. However, the cases do not align with typical male-on-male violent crimes or femicide patterns, such as those involving sexual or domestic violence. Additionally, systematic psycho-legal deficiencies are prevalent, including a low rate of mental health evidence (61%) presented at trials and some cases lacking psychiatric involvement in CFE evaluations. Temporal influence and drastic state variations on CFE evaluation are also noted. Although the small sample size limits generalizability, this small-scale descriptive study offers a number of important insights into the complexities of CFE decisions and lays the groundwork for future research and policy development.

By Swethaa Ballakrishnen

Using 60 interviews with a range of minority law students and early career legal professionals (primarily differentiated by race, gender identity, religion, and disability), this Article illuminates the cruciality of empirical Critical Race Theory to understand individual deviance within the legal profession and develops a framework – blasé – for considering interactional violence that is not legally or socially cognizable as discrimination but still causes harm. These data reveal that discrimination was minimized and denied to varying degrees for all minority respondents. However, for genderqueer respondents whose identities had not achieved a high degree of sociolegal legibility, these denials had low contestability and were often without contrition. Unlike microaggressions which might have resonance in common cultural parlance as operationalizations of structural violence, what distinguishes blasé discrimination, I argue, is the ordinariness of the act in interactional parlance alongside its relative unlikeliness to be seen as problematic when confronted. It is this possibility of defense and justification in the face of being challenged that makes blasé and its ambiguous parameters worthy of our attention in identity jurisprudence. This exploration of the blasé response to discrimination sheds light on the opportunities available for revealing structural inequalities when analysis begins from the perspectives of peripheral actors.

By Grady Bridges,  J.J. Prescott

This report investigates and estimates racial disparities in prosecutorial decision-making in the Washtenaw County Prosecutor’s Office (WCPO) from 2017 to 2022. The analysis relies on currently available data resources at the WCPO and examines decision-making at four different junctures in the prosecutorial process: 1) case approval (i.e., warrant authorization) and charge selection, 2) habitual-offender designation (under Michigan law), 3) plea bargaining, and 4) diversion and deferral opportunities. Racial disparities appear most visibly at the earliest stages of the criminal justice process, with People of Color substantially overrepresented in the warrant requests the WCPO receives from law enforcement. The data further indicate that, conditional on receiving a warrant request, the WCPO is somewhat more likely to charge People of Color with a crime, although the practical difference in charging rates is small. Furthermore, the analysis uncovers statistically significant racial differences in charging outcomes among defendants with at least one authorized warrant, with the WCPO charging People of Color with more total offenses and more severe offenses than white people on average. Interestingly, the data also indicate that People of Color fare somewhat better than white people with respect to habitual-offender designation, though the use of such designations by the WCPO in recent years is rare. Currently available data indicate no other notable racial disparities in WCPO decision-making during the period of study. Limitations in current data-collection practices represent the main impediment to further examination of WCPO decision-making. Improving and expanding data collection and organization efforts will allow the WCPO to 1) better understand how disparities arise at its early phases of prosecution (e.g., charging) and 2) further explore other decision-making junctures (including plea bargaining and diversion and deferral opportunities) where data are insufficiently available.