By American Bar Association Working Group on Building Public Trust in the American Justice System

Released in June 2020, this Report provides a comprehensive overview of the role private companies play throughout the criminal justice system and how the use of these private companies impacts low-income individuals moving through the system. The Report summarizes research done by other entities, academics, journalists, and activists on specific aspects of privatization. The organization of the report tracks the sequence of a typical accused individual's experiences in the criminal justice system following arrest, demonstrating how costs compound as the individual moves through the system.

The Report acknowledges that courts and other government entities sometimes need to import expertise they lack, but it urges governments to recognize how low-income individuals too often can be relentlessly ensnared in the criminal justice system, not because they engage in ongoing criminal activity, but because they cannot pay the debts imposed by the system itself. Too often, by hiring private companies to handle what were previously governmental functions in the criminal justice system, government agencies exacerbate the cycle of mandatory fees, nonpayment, and consequent additional fees. Far too frequently, government authorities allow private companies to operate in the criminal justice system with little or no oversight and to charge fees untethered to actual costs.

The Report urges the ABA to adopt specific policy on the privatization of services in the criminal justice system, as well as to promote the policies, already in existence, calling for careful limitations on fines and fees.

Chicago: ABA, 2020. 36p.

By The Philadelphia District Attorney's Office, Data Lab

The Conviction Integrity Unit (“CIU”) was established in 2018 by District Attorney Larry Krasner. The CIU’s predecessor, the Conviction Review Unit (“CRU”), which was established in 2014, had operated for a number of years with only a small staff and a narrow mandate. The CRU only reviewed claims of actual innocence, and rarely undertook investigations into whether new evidence existed that could prove those claims. Cases where the defendant had confessed were largely excluded from consideration, as if false confessions (which occur in a quarter of DNA exonerations nationally) were always reliable. Today, the CIU is an independent unit within the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office, reporting directly to the District Attorney, and involved in one out of every ten homicide exonerations in the country. When District Attorney Krasner transformed the unit from the CRU to the CIU, he immediately tasked it with a broader mandate: not only to review past convictions for credible claims of actual innocence but also to review claims of wrongful conviction and secondarily to consider sentencing inequities. Early in his first term, District Attorney Krasner merged the CIU with the Office’s Special Investigations Unit (“SIU”). The two units share a common focus on investigating official misconduct, and their cases frequently overlap. However, as the CIU and SIU personnel have grown and expanded their caseloads, the units were separated in the summer of 2020 to better accommodate each unit’s mission

The CIU’s mission is to ensure that justice is served by prosecutors at the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office and to remedy the Office’s wrongful convictions. Pennsylvania prosecutors have limited post-con viction discretion in general and they have no legal authority to set aside convictions in the interest of justice. Since CIU prosecutors cannot unilaterally dismiss an existing conviction or free anyone we believe to be wrongfully incarcerated, the CIU makes a recommendation to the court that the petitioner be granted a new trial whenever its independent investigation leads it to conclude that a conviction lacks integrity. If warranted, the CIU will move to withdraw the charges against the petitioner or reduce the charges so that an equitable sentence can be imposed. In cases that are ultimately withdrawn or dismissed, the CIU will investigate and prosecute the actual perpetrator where feasible. However, given the inherent difficulties involved in investigating decades-old crimes where the original investigation was either botched or inadequate, identifying the real perpetrator and bringing that person to justice may be impossible. To date, the Philadelphia Police Department has declined to re-open and re-investigate old cases following exonerations. For example, Walter Ogrod was exonerated of a 1988 murder in 2020. While investigating the case, the CIU identified two alternate suspects. As of almost a year after Ogrod’s exoneration, however, police had not even begun the process of re-opening the underlying murder case. Additionally, the CIU believes that conviction integrity is more than simply fixing past mistakes and exposing misconduct. It also requires policies and processes to prevent future injustices. With this aim, the CIU helps craft office-wide policies and trainings designed to reduce the number of future wrongful convictions.

This report encompasses exonerations, commutations, and sentencing adjustments from January 1, 2018 through June 15, 2021. This report includes data on cases submitted to the CIU, active investigations, cases declined or closed, and cases awaiting review that are accurate as of May 31, 2021. Experts who have opined on the issue of best practices for conviction integrity units agree that in order to increase public understanding of and trust in such units, offices should publish annual reports detailing the results of their conviction and case reviews and actions taken. This report is the first report issued by the CIU under District Attorney Krasner and is a first-term report, rather than an annual report. Although annual reports were contemplated, they were postponed as a result of multiple factors ,including lack of resources, internal technology deficits, case load, and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Philadelphia District Attorney's Office, Data Lab. 2021. 47p.

By Kuc, Oktawian

Recent decades have brought international and municipal courts much closer together and induced meaningful cooperation. This holds true also for the International Court of Justice and domestic judicial institutions as they engage actively in an inter-judicial dialogue, particularly on the normative level. Due to the impact of globalisation and internationalisation, the World Court has expanded its jurisprudence to also accommodate references and analysis of external judicial organs and their pronouncements. Likewise, ICJ decisions are referred to and consulted by municipal courts as authoritative statements of international norms or assistance in fact determination. This monograph examines this inter-judicial dialogue in a comprehensive manner by identifying and analysing all its aspects as evidenced in respective jurisprudence. Surprisingly, the mutual conversation in judicial decisions between the World Court and national judicial institutions has drawn little attention from international legal scholarship, and the book is designed to fill this lacuna.

New York; London: Routledge, 2022.

By Stephen Koppel & Anna Stenkam

The purpose of this study is to assess racial and neighborhood disparities in the issuance of civil summonses by the New York City Police Department (NYPD). The report serves as a companion to a parallel study of criminal summonses.

Key Findings

Overall Civil Summons Trends

• Spike in Civil Summonses in 2022: The NYPD issued 27,673 civil summonses in 2022 – nearly four times the total in 2021. By comparison, criminal summonses also increased from 2021 to 2022, though by a much lesser magnitude (up 62%).

• Predominance of Public Consumption of Alcohol: The most common offense was open container of alcohol in public, making up more than four out of five civil summonses (83%) in 2022.

• Mainly Low Fines: In 2022, citywide civil summonses accounted for $443,879 in fines, with the most common amount being for $25 or less (84%).

Racial Disparities

• Disproportionate Issuance to Hispanic People: Hispanic people received over half (53%) of civil summonses in 2022, while making up 29% of NYC’s population.

• Declining Racial Disparities Since 2019: In 2022, police issued civil summonses at a rate 1.9 times higher for Black than white people, compared to 3.8 times higher in 2019. The Hispanic-white disparity fell slightly from 4.0 to 3.6. By contrast, racial disparities in criminal summons issuance had grown since 2019.

• Growing and Disparate Failure-to-Appear Rates: Failure to appear (FTA) means the individual neither paid the fine online prior to their schedule hearing date nor appeared in-person. From 2019 to 2022, failure-to-appear (FTA) rates grew from 48% to 54% overall. In 2022, FTA rates were 64% for Black, 57% for Hispanic, and 31% for white people.

Neighborhood and Income Disparities

• Disproportionate Summonses in Low-Income Neighborhoods: In 2022, the NYPD issued one-third (34%) of civil summonses in zip codes within the bottom quintile of household median incomes in the City.

• Greater Racial Disparities in Affluent Areas: While the NYPD issued fewer summonses overall in higher-income neighborhoods, among people receiving a summons, racial disparities were largest in the most affluent neighborhoods (top income quintile) – where Hispanic and Black people were 7.5 times and 5.5 times, respectively, more likely than white people to receive a summons.

This study points to growing police enforcement of minor misconduct in 2022, a change that is ostensibly at odds with the goals of police reform. While civil summonses rose alongside criminal ones, racial disparities decreased compared to 2019. However, disparities in criminal summonses increased over the same period, highlighting distinct policing approaches to each summons type.

New York: Data Collaborative for Justice at John Jay College, 2024. 20p.

By Anna Stenkamp & Michael Rempel

The purpose of this study is to assess recent trends in criminal summons practices by the New York City Police Department (NYPD), including if and how they disproportionately impact low income and/or Black and Brown communities. 

Key Findings

Overall Summons Trends:

• Steep Decline Until 2022: Criminal summonses plummeted by 90% from 2013 to 2022 (from 375,707 to 36,621). However, for the first time in a decade, criminal summonses increased by 62% in the most recent year from 2021 to 2022 (from 22,603 to 36,621).

• Most Summonses Issued in Bronx and Brooklyn: The Bronx and Brooklyn emerged as hotspots for summonses, with over 60% issued in these boroughs from 2020 to 2022. The Bronx alone accounted for 30% across these years, despite Bronx residents comprising only 17% of NYC’s population.

• Few Convictions: In 2022, just 9% of criminal summonses ended in a conviction. (Straight dismissals accounted for 63%, with 28% receiving an adjournment in contemplation of dismissal.) With less than one out of ten cases disposed as guilty, criminal summonses largely do not involve formal accountability but, rather, a “process is punishment” effect, including lost time, income or other challenges from people having to appear in court.

Racial and Socioeconomic Disparities:

• Widening Racial Disparities: From 2020 to 2022, the NYPD issued over 85% of criminal summonses to Black or Hispanic people, who combine for 52% of NYC’s population. Relative to their numbers in the general population, police issued summonses at a rate 8.9 times higher for Black than white people in 2020, increasing to 11.4 times higher in 2022.

• Income Disparities: The NYPD issued over 60% of summonses to people living in zip codes that fell below the median household income. Further, within communities of every income bracket, the NYPD disproportionately issued criminal summonses to their Black and Hispanic residents. For example, in zip codes with a median household income below $35,000, police issued 97% of summonses to Black and Hispanic people, though they made up just 44% of the population. And in affluent zip codes with a household income over $100,000, police issued 73% of summonses to Black and Hispanic people, though they comprise 24% of the population.

Neighborhood Disparities:

• Disparities Based on Zip Code: Residents of 40 (22%) of the City’s 178 zip codes accounted for over half of criminal summonses in 2022. Thirty-four of these 40 zip codes (85%) were majority or plurality Black or Hispanic.

• Racial Disparities Within Zip Codes: Across all 178 zip codes, 89% had a larger proportion of summonses issued to Black residents and 67% had a larger proportion issued to Hispanic residents than their respective shares of the zip code’s general population. Thus, NYC police are both disproportionately issuing summonses in predominantly Black and Hispanic neighborhoods; and within virtually all neighborhoods citywide, police are disproportionately issuing summonses to Black and Hispanic residents.

The disproportionate issuance of summonses targeting Black and Hispanic communities highlights systemic biases that perpetuate inequality within the criminal justice system. Addressing these disparities is crucial to fostering a fair and equitable approach to law enforcement, ensuring justice for all residents of New York City.

New York: Data Collaborative for Justice at John Jay College, 2024. 45p.

By Stephen Koppel & Michael Rempel

As part of New York City’s Police Reform and Reinvention Collaborative Plan, this study assesses overall trends and racial disparities from 2013 to 2022 in four law enforcement practices: pedestrian stops, desk appearance tickets, arrests, and prosecutions by district attorneys.

Key Findings

Pedestrian Stops

• Steep Decline in Stops Until 2022: From 2013 to 2021, the total number of stops fell by 92%. Then 2022 saw a 69% increase—the largest one-year increase in the past decade.

• Changing Borough Composition: Stops fell sharply in all boroughs since 2013. The decline was greatest in Queens and Brooklyn and smallest in the Bronx. From 2013 to 2022, the share of stops in Queens fell from 24% to 16%, but climbed from 13% to 30% in the Bronx, despite making up 17% of the City’s 2022 population.

• Widening Racial Disparities: Black and Hispanic people made up 88% of people stopped in 2022. Compared to white people, police stopped Black people at a rate 7.5 times higher in 2013, a disparity that grew to 11.8 times higher in 2022; and police stopped Hispanic people at a rate 3.5 times higher than white people in 2013, growing to 5.1 times higher in 2022.

• Increasing Arrest (“Hit”) Rates Until 2022: In 2013, just 8% of stops led to arrest. As police made fewer stops over the following years, the proportion that resulted in arrest rose: peaking at 38% in 2021, before falling to 33% in 2022. Stops led to an arrest for 32% of Hispanic and 33% of Black people in 2022 compared to 38% of white people.

Desk Appearance Tickets (DATs)

• Rising DAT Issuance Since 2019: The DAT issuance rate declined in the years leading up to reform (from 29% in 2013 to 20% in 2019), before rising by 23 percentage points from 2019-2021. However, DAT issuance fell from 43% in 2021 to 29% in 2022, in part reflecting May 2022 rollbacks to reforms that initially went into effect in 2020.

• Declining Racial Disparities: In 2013, white people were 10 percentage points more likely to receive a DAT compared to Black people and 6 percentage points more likely compared to Hispanic people. By 2022, the Black-white gap narrowed to 6 percentage points, while the Hispanic-white gap was eliminated.

Arrests

• Fewer Arrests: From 2013 to 2022, the annual number of misdemeanor arrests fell by two-thirds (from 296,956 to 102,537). This included a sharp 75% drop from 2013 to 2020, followed by 13% and 23% respective increases in 2021 and 2022.

• Similar Racial Disparities: In 2022, Black people were 6.1 times more likely than white people to be arrested for a misdemeanor, while Hispanic people were 3.9 times more likely. These disparities are comparable to a decade ago.

• Decline in Youth Arrests but Rising Disparities: In 2022, youth under the age of 25 accounted for 18% of misdemeanor arrests, down from 34% in 2013. Racial disparities widened, with Black and Hispanic youth 8.3 and 4.7 times (respectively) more likely to be arrested on a misdemeanor than white youth in 2022.

Prosecutions

• Misdemeanor prosecutions mirrored misdemeanor arrest trends, declining by two-thirds from 2013 to 2022.

New York: Data Collaborative for Justice at John Jay College, 2024. 58p.

By Olive Lu and Michael Rempel

This report addresses the extent to which reforms to the use of Desk Appearance Tickets (DATs), enacted in New York State in January 2020, led more people charged with low-level offenses to avoid pre-arraignment detention.

A previous DCJ report established pre-reform baselines by examining statewide DAT issuance and arraignment appearance rates for DATs in 2019.

Key Findings:

Rising DAT Issuance Post-Reform but Continued Inconsistent Practices

• Among charges made ineligible for custodial arrest, statewide DAT issuance increased from 38% in 2019 to 58% in 2021, followed by a decline to 50% in 2022 (in part reflecting rollbacks to the reforms put into effect May 2022).

• Upstate courts saw the largest increase in DAT issuance from 2019 to 2021 (from 29% to 59%) while Suburban NYC had the highest DAT issuance rate throughout the study period (above 70%). DAT issuance in NYC post-reform was unexpectedly low, with 45% receiving a DAT in the peak 2021 year.

• DAT rates among eight charge categories (including petit larceny, drug possession, criminal mischief, and criminal trespass) also varied widely by region.

Relative Stability in Warrant Issuance

• The statewide warrant issuance rate for failing to appear at a scheduled DAT arraignment increased from 10% in 2019 to 17% in 2022, with large fluctuations in 2020 due to pandemic-related impediments.

• Warrant rates in Suburban NYC and Upstate remained stable over the study period while NYC alone explained nearly all of the statewide increase.

Racial Disparities Persist but Shrinking in Some Places

• Statewide, Black people were consistently less likely than white people to be issued a DAT on similar charges.

• The Black-white disparity in DAT issuance decreased over the study period in NYC (from a 12 to 7 percentage-point difference) and disappeared in Suburban NYC.

• The Hispanic-white disparity decreased in Suburban NYC and disappeared in NYC.

New York: Data Collaborative for Justice at John Jay College, 2024. 34p.

By René Ropac 

This study estimated the impact of New York’s bail reform on recidivism in the State’s suburban and upstate regions. We compared re-arrest rates for people who had bail set or were remanded at arraignment in the first half of 2019 (before bail reform) with similar people who were released without bail in the first half of 2020 (after bail reform).

Key Findings:

Estimated Impact of Eliminating Bail and Detention in Select Cases 

• Overall, the results indicate that eliminating bail for select misdemeanor and nonviolent felony charges led to little change in recidivism.

  • Over two years, we found no changes in overall re-arrest and felony re-arrest; a slight increase in firearm re-arrest (2.7% vs. 2.0%); and a slight increase in violent felony re-arrest (9.5% vs. 8.1%) that became statistically insignificant when extending the follow-up period to 30 months.

Estimated Impact of Reducing the Use of Bail in Cases Remaining Legally Eligible 

• Across two research designs, releasing people who remained eligible for bail was associated with a 1 percentage-point increase in firearm re-arrest over two years, though the difference became statistically insignificant when extending the follow-up period to 30 months. Spanning measures of overall, felony, and violent felony re-arrest, no results showed that releasing people increased recidivism across both research designs; but, conversely, no results from either design pointed to reduced recidivism.

How did Pretrial Release Impact Different Subgroups? 

• The elimination of money bail increased recidivism for people charged with nonviolent felonies, with recent criminal history, and with a recent violent felony arrest, while it decreased recidivism for people charged with misdemeanors and people with no recent criminal history.

• The reduced use of bail for legally eligible cases tended to increase recidivism among people charged with violent felonies and people with a recent arrest. The starkest and most consistent recidivism increases across both research designs were among people with a recent prior violent felony arrest and among people currently charged with VFOs who had a recent criminal history.

Study Results in Context

In contrast to the results from the current study, the findings published in March 2023 for New York City were generally more favorable to bail reform, finding an overall recidivism reduction for cases subject to mandatory release and no effect in either direction for bail eligible cases. However, the subgroup results from the two studies draw a consistent picture. Across all of New York State, bail reform tended to reduce recidivism for people facing less serious charges and with limited or no recent criminal history, but tended to increase recidivism for people facing more serious charges and with recent criminal histories.

New York: Data Collaborative for Justice at John Jay College, 2024. 40p.

By Kath Murray, Susan McVie, Ben Matthews, Victoria Gorton

Since the 1960s, Fixed Penalty Notices (FPNs) have become a widely used sanction in the United Kingdom, used to deal with various low-level offences. More recently, the sanction came to prominence as the mechanism chosen to enforce the Coronavirus Health Regulations. This article critically examines the decision to employ FPNs in this context, and the implications in respect of inequality and inequity. We show that the decision was at odds with contemporaneous policing trends, and, drawing on new research evidence, argue that the Regulations stretched FPNs beyond their intended use, creating inequalities in enforcement and inequitable punishment effects. Our findings raise policy questions about the impact of the Health Regulations and what actions should be taken in the event of future pandemics.

academic.oup.com/bjc/advance-article/doi/10.1093/bjc/azae016/7645325

The British Journal of Criminology, azae016

By Andrew R. Morral, Terry L. Schell, Theo Jacobs, Rosanna Smart

The RAND Corporation launched the Gun Policy in America initiative in January 2016 with the goal of creating objective, factual resources for policymakers and the public on the effects of gun laws. As part of this mission, the research team has investigated a variety of data sources that could help shed light on key questions about whether and how gun laws affect important public health and criminal justice outcomes.

The Firearm Law Effects and Mortality Explorer is designed to provide users with information about the distribution of firearm deaths across states and demographic subgroups. In addition, it allows users to explore how those deaths might be affected by the implementation of a set of commonly enacted state firearm laws using estimates of those effects produced by the RAND research team. In the documentation that accompanies the tool, the research team describes the data sources used to produce the visualizations in the tool, the assumptions underlying the visualizations, and the statistical models that produce the law effect estimates the visualizations depict.

Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2024. 31p.

Fell, James C., Kubelka, Julie

Impaired driving continues to be a significant public health and public safety problem in the United States. In 2021 some 30 percent of the 42,915 traffic fatalities involved alcohol-impaired drivers (drivers with blood alcohol concentrations [BACs] of .08 grams per deciliter or higher). In addition, there has been a significant increase in drug-impaired driving and especially driving with delta 9-tetrahydrocannabinol, the active ingredient in cannabis, in drivers’ systems. Impaired-driving task forces (or sometimes called task teams, commissions, coalitions, councils, committees, leadership teams, or advisory groups) are mechanisms to assess the impaired-driving problem in States to document the systems in place to deal with the problem and to make recommendations for improvement.
Washington, DC: National Highway Traffic Safety Administration; 2024. 104p.

By Sarah E. Jackson, Melissa Oldham, Colin Angus, John Holmes, Jamie Brown

The last 3 years have seen substantial changes in Great Britain (GB) including the COVID-19 pandemic, cost-of-living crisis and policy changes such as minimum unit pricing. We examined changes in purchasing cross-border, illicit and home-brewed alcohol among risky drinkers over this period.

Methods

Data were used from 22,086 adult (≥18 years) increasing/higher-risk drinkers (AUDIT-C ≥5) participating in a monthly cross-sectional survey between October 2020 and August 2023. We estimated time trends in the proportion reporting obtaining alcohol from: (i) cross-border (any/within-GB/international); (ii) illicit; and (iii) home-brewed sources in the past 6 months.

Results

Between October 2020 and August 2023, the proportion reporting cross-border alcohol purchases increased (from 8.5% to 12.5% overall; prevalence ratio [PR] = 1.47 [95% CI 1.17–1.86]). This was largely driven by an increase in cross-border purchases abroad (PR = 1.52 [1.13–2.05]), with a smaller, uncertain increase in cross-border purchases within GB (PR = 1.37 [0.96–1.95]). The prevalence of cross-border alcohol purchasing was higher in Wales (13.8% [12.3–15.4%]) and Scotland (6.1% [5.4–6.8%]) than England (3.6% [3.3–3.9%]). There was little change in illicit alcohol purchasing in England or Wales (4.1% [3.7–4.4%]; 4.2% [3.2–5.1%]), but in Scotland it fell from 5.7% to 2.4% (PR = 0.42 [0.19–0.81]). Home-brewed alcohol was rare (GB: 3.1% [2.9–3.4]) and stable.

Discussion and Conclusions

The proportion of increasing/higher-risk drinkers in GB purchasing cross-border alcohol increased between October 2020 and August 2023, due to an increase in people buying alcohol abroad. Cross-border alcohol purchases within GB were more commonly reported in Wales and Scotland. The small proportion purchasing illicit alcohol did not change substantially in England or Wales, but fell by half in Scotland.

Drug and Alcohol Review; 2024

By Jenni Irish-Qhobosheane

The City of Cape Town is host to a menacing shadow economy, with money, services and goods being extorted from an increasingly wide range of businesses, including spaza shops, nightclubs, construction and transport companies, as well as individuals.

Extortion is growing rapidly and spreading throughout the city, and the groups involved are highly organized. The range of sectors and people affected is widening: from street vendors selling their wares in Mitchells Plain or Khayelitsha, to the owners of bars and restaurants in the city centre; from construction companies building roads or houses, to municipal workers and contractors providing basic services. In certain parts of the city, even private vehicles have become targets.

Geneva: Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime. 2024. 48p.

By Flore Berger, Patrick Gnonsekan and Mouhamadou Kane

 Since 2019 and 2020 respectively, the northern parts of Benin and Côte d’Ivoire have been facing growing security challenges posed by the expansion of violent extremist groups. Besides this infiltration, the new dynamics of conflict in these border areas – adjacent to nature reserves and providing a link between coastal regions and the Sahel – do not occur in a security vacuum. They occur in an already well-developed illicit environment, with its own realities in terms of actors and supply chains and their impact on communities. Research by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC) in the subregion – notably through a mapping exercise on illicit economies1 and specific reports on north-eastern Côte d’Ivoire and the tri-border area between Benin, Niger and Burkina Faso2 – has highlighted the complex but undeniable crossovers between illicit economies and conflict. Illicit economies, while not generally catalysts of conflict, play a key role in creating an environment conducive to the emergence of conflict, the maintenance of conflict and the obstruction of efforts to resolve conflict. This statement needs to be nuanced, however, because although illicit economies can fuel and sustain conflict, they can also be sources of income and resilience. GI-TOC research has also shown the strategic importance of nature reserves in the expansion of armed groups.3 In these areas, illicit economies contribute to the territorial expansion of armed groups through funding and resources. They are also entry points for armed groups to impose an alternative system of governance for local populations and even gain legitimacy within these communities. North-eastern Côte d’Ivoire and northern Benin, which border nature reserves such as the Comoé National Park and the W-Arly-Pendjari complex, respectively, are therefore pivotal regions for armed groups from Sahelian countries to expand their influence to coastal West African countries. Although state responses have had some positive effects – for example, north-eastern Côte d’Ivoire has not seen an attack since 2021 – some elements of the response, mainly based on military and  security operations, have had the opposite effect. In particular, the widespread stigmatization of the Fulani community has exacerbated grievances and fuelled tensions between different communities. State initiatives alone will not produce the expected results and must be supplemented by a community-based approach. In particular, the aim is to strengthen the resilience of communities faced with links between illicit economies and instability. To achieve a unified understanding of the problem and collective mobilization to tackle it, a holistic and sustainable peace-building strategy, aimed at breaking the link between illicit flows and instability, must complement state efforts with regional networks of individuals and organizations. There is no miracle solution to the twin challenges of crime and conflict, but two things are clear: first, interventions have little hope of success if they are not based on solid evidence; and second, state-centred programmes alone are not sufficient to enhance stability in West Africa. States’ resilience to organized crime is relatively well understood, and measurement methods have been developed, including the ENACT Organized Crime Index Africa and the GI-TOC’s Global Organized Crime Index. However, there are still gaps in our understanding of communities’ capacity for resilience when faced with the destabilizing effects of illicit economies, as well as what constitutes this resilience and why some communities are more resilient than others.     

Geneva: Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime. 2024. 40p.

By Virginia Comolli

Following the opening policy brief, a research report zooms in on the private sector. Foreign companies and entrepreneurs from different sectors and backgrounds have deepened their involvement in the islands. Legitimate business activities are often conducted in parallel with illicit ones, which in some cases amount to the bulk of revenues generated. These businesses, many of which are of Asian origin, have been able to exploit favourable tax regimes, limited monitoring and enforcement capabilities and, in certain cases, corrupt local partners and enablers, to increase their profits through illicit means. Diplomatic relations between their countries of origin and the Pacific countries in which they operate, can grant a high level of political access to these businesses and result in preferential treatment.
The study details four broad categories into which private sector criminal actors in the Pacific can be grouped:

• Environmental sector operators (fishing, logging and mining)
• The embedded diaspora
• Absentee residents
• Schemers and scammers

Geneva: Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime. 2024. 29p.

Brandon C. Welsh , Steven N. Zane , Daniel P. Mears

The present state of calls for and efforts to implement evidence-based policy provide a powerful foundation for propelling a movement toward bringing about rational, cost-efficient, and humane policies for reducing aggression, crime, and violence. The main aim of this article is to report on new developments in evidence-based policy (EBP)—what we view as giving rise to a new era in crime and violence prevention and social justice. The article describes major advances, both in research and policy, and discusses pressing challenges that confront EBP in crime/violence and justice, drawing on key findings from a new, comprehensive book project. The overall conclusion of the findings is heartening and yet sobering. Research and policy have made substantial progress, but there is much more to be done. The specific details of this work are organized around three questions that are foundational to evidence-based crime/violence and justice policy today: (a) How is research contributing to and guiding EBP? (b) What are productive and new ways to think about EBP? and (c) What are strategies for promoting greater use of EBP?

Aggression and Violent Behavior

Volume 77, July–August 2024, 101940

By Perfecta Delgado Oxholm and Jack Glaser

Communication between police and community is an inevitable part of policing. Core narratives—subjective, internal, sense-making processes that can shape behavior—that police officers hold related to communication can influence police–community interactions. There is no known research on core narratives related to police officer communication. To begin to fill the gap, this paper reports the analysis of in-depth interviews conducted to investigate how police officers understand police–community relations and the nature of encounters with community members. Communication emerged as an important theme. Five communication core narrative themes were identified: communication as central, advocacy, cover, withholding, and connection. Four of the core narrative themes were abstracted into two dimensions along which the characteristics of the communication varied. Understanding the core narratives influencing officer intergroup communication can help researchers and practitioners see the larger implications of communication, an essential component of policing and police–community relationships, and its connection to officer behavior.

 Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 26(4), 875-890.

By Amos Irwin and Rachael Eisenberg

 U.S. cities rely on police as the default responders for most 911 calls, whether they concern a person shouting at a bus stop or a child who refuses to go to school. In most cities, these kinds of issues constitute a significant portion of calls made to 911 call centers. Too often, police are tasked with handling a host of situations that are not about criminal activity, but are about other social issues, without the additional training or resources to respond appropriately. Defaulting to dis patching a police response to these types of 911 calls undermines public safety by diverting resources away from serious and violent crime while neglecting the underlying needs that drive people to call 911 to begin with It can also have a range of unintended consequences, especially for people of color and people with behavioral health disabilities who have been disproportionately harmed by the criminal justice system, where an encounter with police could escalate rather than de-escalate matters. Dispatching community responders to 911 calls can improve both short- and long term outcomes by ensuring that specially trained professionals are available to assist people with certain situations that require de-escalation, conflict resolution, and connections to community-based care. Particularly as jurisdictions across the country struggle to recruit and retain police officers, they are beginning to address these issues by dispatching community responder teams to low-risk calls instead of police. When developing community responder programs, city leaders frequently ask how their 911 call center can best identify calls and direct them to the new teams. To ensure the right response is provided in each situation, 911 call centers may need to alter how they choose which team to dispatch. 911 call centers must effectively identify eligible calls without delaying call times or overburdening their already stretched staff.   

Washington, DC: Center for American Progress, 2023. 58p.

By Lauren Slagter, Trevor Bechtel, and Amanda Nothaft

The criminal legal system should provide accountability for people who threaten public safety, respect the rights of crime victims and defendants, and treat people fairly regardless of their race, ethnicity, or socioeconomic status. However, in Washtenaw County, there is evidence that people of color have different encounters with the legal system than white people. FEBRUARY 2024 The analysis did not find evidence of racial disparities in the following areas: • In acceptance into a pre-plea diversion program, nor • In granting Holmes Youthful Trainee Act (HYTA) status, which allows young defendants to avoid a criminal record. As part of the Prosecutor Transparency Project , the University of Michigan analyzed cases referred to the Washtenaw County Prosecutor’s Office from 2017 to 2022. That analysis found the largest racial disparity occurred in requests to file charges received by the prosecutor’s office from local law enforcement. Black people appear in 49.9% of requests for charges between 2017 and 2022 but make up only 12.2% of county residents. By comparison, white people appear in 47.8% of requests for charges and make up 70% of the county’s population. This suggests the demographic composition of the cases that come into the prosecutor’s office are a significant driver of previously observed racial disparities in Washtenaw County’s criminal legal system. 

Ann Arbor: Poverty Solutions at the University of Michigan, 2024. 8p.  

By Stephen Eide

“Trans-institutionalization” refers to the shift of seriously mentally ill adults from the care of psychiatric institutions to correctional institutions. Beginning in the 1950s, public mental health agencies have pursued the deinstitutionalization of the seriously mentally ill. These government agencies intended to meet that goal through creating a system of community-based care to replace the asylum-based systems. Deinstitutionalization did not succeed as planned. Consequently, jails and prisons became the custodians of hundreds of thousands of seriously mentally ill adults who in previous eras would have been committed to an asylum.

Some dispute the magnitude of trans-institutionalization. But no one denies the high rate of serious mental illness among the incarcerated, or that jails and prisons are poor settings in which to treat serious mental illness. Correctional mental health care now stands as one of the most important mental health care systems in the nation. Jails and prisons are legally obligated to serve the seriously mentally ill, whereas community-based systems are not. More effective community-based mental health remains an important goal to pursue. But equally important is the reform of corrections-based systems. Better correctional mental health care systems will benefit both community systems and the seriously mentally ill themselves.

This report will explain how corrections-based systems function. It will place those systems in the context of debates around “jail abolition,” explain their workforce and financial challenges, and recommend the following reforms:

1. State governments should assume more responsibility for funding jail-based mental health care.

2. Correctional mental health systems have special responsibility to the seriously mentally ill and are justified in targeting resources accordingly.

3. Collect, keep, and report better data.

4. Repeal Medicaid’s Institution for Mental Diseases (IMD) exclusion.

5. Correctional institutions should make more use of long-acting injectables during discharge.

6. Eliminate overuse of administrative segregation (solitary confinement); do not abolish it.

7. Do not use telehealth when reliance on onsite clinical staff is feasible.

New York: Manhattan Institute, 2024. 28p.