By William Maloney, Raul Morales Lema, and Marcela Meléndez Arjona

The Latin America and Caribbean region faces a very different outlook from what was foreseen six months ago. Despite continued progress on reducing inflation, LAC continues to grow more slowly than any other region of the world and increasing its dynamism and job creation potential faces new and daunting challenges. First, higher and more persistent inflation than anticipated in the advanced countries has slowed global interest rate declines which constrains regional monetary authorities’ ability to loosen monetary policy. Second, higher interest payments on debt consume an increasing share of government revenue impeding progress on reducing deficits and creating fiscal space for necessary public investment. Third, rising tariffs have driven up uncertainty around the nature of the global trade order, threaten market access for exports, and call into question the nearshoring project. Fourth, increased return migration will, in some cases, stress local labor markets and dampen remittances. Fifth, organized crime, and the violence that accompanies it continues to expand, reducing the quality of life of citizens, dampening economic growth, and undermining the integrity of public institutions. Progress on the fiscal front, as well as continued productivity related reforms to make the region more able to negotiate a changing environment are needed.

Washington, DC: The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development / The World Bank, 2025. 92p.

By Maureen Taylor and Lesley McMillan

There is a significant body of research that illustrates the emotional demands of policing and the physical and psychological toll this takes on officers and staff. However, the management of these demands, particularly in more specialist roles such as those in public protection policing where the demand may be higher, are less well understood. This research explores the experiences of public protection police officers in Police Scotland through a lens of emotional labour The aims of this research were to: • Critically review the literature around the emotional impacts of policing on officers and the role of emotional labour in policing; • Establish the experience of, and impact on, officers involved in the investigation of public protection cases; assess how police officers in roles where emotional labour may be heightened, manage their emotions and the strategies they develop to do so; and • Examine how emotions and emotion management are mediated by organisational, departmental and role values, demands and culture In doing so, the research sought to answer the following research questions: 1. What is the emotional experience of police officers in public protection roles and what impact does it have on them? 2. What emotional labour do officers undertake, and what strategies of emotion management do officers employ? 3. To what extent does the theory of emotional labour explain the experiences of public protection police officers? 4. What role does the prevailing organisational culture play in the emotion management strategies of public protection policing? This report presents the findings from this research and a potential framework for understanding the factors that contribute to resilience within the context of public protection policing

Edinburgh: Scottish Institut Institute for Policing Research, 2025. 32p.

By Hayley Stillwell

Despite the foundational principle in the American criminal justice system that it is better to acquit the guilty than to convict the innocent, wrongful convictions remain a persistent issue. Wrongful convictions are sometimes caused by flawed evidence, such as eyewitness misidentifications and unreliable forensic techniques. Researchers and scholars have studied this problem of flawed evidence extensively, leading to many successful reform efforts to address this portion of the wrongful conviction problem. But there is another portion of the wrongful conviction problem that has yet to be the target of reform efforts—wrongful convictions caused by juror error. Implicit biases, forbidden assumptions, and strategic voting are jury errors that can lead to wrongful convictions, yet they are difficult problems to address given the black box of secrecy that surrounds jury deliberations. This Article proposes the use of “placebo trials” as a novel thought experiment that could transform into a real experimental method to identify and address jury error. Placebo trials simulate real trials in every way, but they are not real. As far as jurors know, however, they are sitting on a real trial. Another important characteristic of placebo trials is that the objectively correct verdict outcome is an acquittal. By inserting a variable into a placebo trial, the experiment can show with firsthand jury data whether the variable impacts acquittal rates. If a variable has such an effect, then it may lead to wrongful convictions and should be the focus of reform efforts.

56 Ariz. St. L.J. 1361 (2024 )

By The Times of London

final report. Its 10 recommendations for change include a universal digital ID system, the roll out of live facial recognition, a licence to practise for the police, victim care hubs, restriction of social media for under 16s and raising the minimum age of criminal responsibility to 14.

London: Time of London, 3035. 57p

By Conor McCormick and Brice Dickson

Available open access digitally under CC-BY-NC-ND licence. This compelling book underscores the significance of the Court of Appeal in Northern Ireland, making a significant contribution to the literature and proposing recommendations on how it could enhance both its efficiency and its reputation.

Bristol, UK: Bristol University Press, 2024.

By Katie Boyle, Diana Camps, Kirstie Ken English, Jo Edson Ferrie, Aidan Flegg, and Gaurav Mukherjee

Available open access digitally under CC-BY-NC-ND licence. This book addresses the significant violations of social rights in the UK, as well as the gaps in access to justice to remedy them. This is a unique contribution to our understanding of human rights from the perspective of access to justice with key insights for policy and practice.

2025, 253p.

By Stina Bergman Blix and Nina Törnqvist

Exploring the rationales behind legal anger, its logic and origins, this book builds on the perspectives of judges and prosecutors in Italy, Sweden, the United States, and Scotland. When do judges and prosecutors become angry in court, what do they become angry about, and which other emotions open up for anger? Anger brings people to court and is essential in evaluating wrongdoing and attributing blame, but at the same time, anger is seen as a threat to well-reasoned and just decision-making. Drawing on observations, interviews, and shadowing of legal professionals, the text demonstrates how anger is entangled with legal thought and comes into play in legal practices. By comparing the workings and displays of anger found in different legal systems and emotional cultures, the book elucidates assumptions about law, morality, truth, and emotions that we commonly take for granted. Rational Anger will be of great interest to students and scholars of criminology, criminal justice, sociology, law, social psychology, and organisation studies.

Oxford, UK; New York: Oxford University Press, 2025. 124p.

By Brandon MordueFollow

The idea that one’s punishment should depend on the crime committed rather than which judge happens to do the sentencing strikes most as uncontroversial, if not a requirement for a fair sentencing regime. Forty years ago, the passage of the Sentencing Reform Act promised just that result. Increased data availability allows us to evaluate the project’s success. The results are not encouraging.

Federal defendants are sentenced using guidelines issued by the United States Sentencing Commission that sometimes bear little relation to the underlying wrongdoing. This has created a split among judges, with some following the guidelines and others rejecting them. The consequences are arbitrariness in sentencing and unwarranted disparities across offenders.

In 2007, the Supreme Court permitted appellate courts to presume the reasonableness of guideline sentences, largely insulating those sentences from judicial review. Much has changed since then, and it is time for the presumption to go. The findings of the original data analysis presented in this Article, as well as developments since the Court’s decision, show that the claims made in support of the presumption are unfounded. In fact, some of the related case law rests upon provably false empirical premises.

Today, most sentences are not within the range set by the guidelines. Favoring the minority of sentences that are within the range results in a sentencing regime incompatible with the overriding statutory aim of avoiding unwarranted sentencing disparities. Rather than presuming the reasonableness of within-guideline sentences, the courts can chart a course correction by prioritizing the data on actual sentences from the Sentencing Commission. Such a shift would achieve more consistent sentences across offenders convicted of similar crimes.

115 J. Crim. L. & Criminology 133 (2025), 73p.

By Isis Misdary

Three separate but closely related factors have together produced this nation’s epidemic of mass incarceration. First, the enforcement of criminal law has become wholly dominated by a caste of repeat players. The chasm between this grouping and outsiders has become far more important than the prosecution-defense duality ostensibly dominating the system. Second, the system’s design and policies have become dominated by central authorities sealed in a “tough-on-crime” echo chamber. This leaves local communities largely powerless to check the devastation being visited upon them. And third, the system has ruthlessly suppressed the individuality of those facing charges. They are rarely seen, almost never heard, ignored if they try to contextualize events giving rise to the charges, and punished severely if they attempt to assert their rights, much less their innocence. Robbed of all that makes them human, their fates arouse little sympathy. Devastated communities have mounted various responses to mass incarceration. None is more exciting than the participatory defense movement. This movement seeks to involve the person facing charges as well as that person’s family and community. Together, they meet with defense counsel, gather evidence for the case, and in mitigation, prepare videos or other testimonials to influence charging and plea-bargaining decisions and undertake other efforts to support the person facing charges. Through the movement’s work on individual cases, families and communities have spotted issues within the criminal systems and the criminal laws close to home that must change, that must end. Case by case, they have started to challenge, change, and end them. Yet, for all its promise, participatory defense may face considerable challenges going forward in these areas. As a relatively new movement, it must continue to resolve significant design challenges and overcome formidable institutional and attitudinal buttresses the current system has erected.

25 Nev. L.J. 325 (2025), 92p.

By John Burns

This Note traces the evolution of bail from its origins to modern commercial bail, highlighting how the system has disproportionately affected low-income defendants. In 2023, Illinois became the first state to eliminate cash bail with the enactment of the Pretrial Fairness Act, which attempted to remedy longstanding inequities. The Note situates Illinois’s approach between New Jersey’s successful risk-based reform and California’s oversimplified and harmful “zero bail” experiment. While Illinois’s reform represents a meaningful step toward fairness, this Note argues that its reliance on a categorical approach and its limited use of pretrial assessments may unintentionally undermisne its effectiveness. The Note concludes that Illinois must go further by expanding judicial discretion and mandating the use of risk assessment tools.

Washington University Journal of Law & Policy [Vol. 78, 2025. 29p.

By Andrew Willinger and Eric Ruben

Legal scholarship is overly abstract and theoretical, making it unhelpful to judges and lawyers. That, at least, is the common critique from the bench. When it comes to the Second Amendment, however, a different pattern has emerged: judges consistently cite law review articles and look to the academy for guidance. Most recently, in United States v. Rahimi, some Justices went further, implicitly inviting more scholarly work to help the Court answer open questions raised by its novel methodological approach to the Second Amendment. This Article explores this aberrant trend.

We raise several explanations for the distinctive scholarly role in Second Amendment jurisprudence, including the Amendment's unique aspects as well as the role of legal movements in facilitating the Amendment's development. Faced with a lack of judicial precedent on both the right to keep and bear arms and originalism-in-practice, law review articles often can be more helpful than past opinions. Beyond scholarship's utility in a new area of law, we suggest that a related phenomenon-the gun rights and conservative legal movements' trifold success at facilitating the rise of the individual Second Amendment right, popularizing originalism as a methodology, and elevating originalist judges to the bench-is an important part of the story. For a half century, organizations focused on achieving both a robust right to bear arms and a conservative vision of the Constitution have become more prominent and have closely associated with both scholars and judges. If, in the usual telling, judges look askance at scholarship, this specific area of law might present an exception since it has been a joint project from the beginning.

The Article concludes that the judge-scholar collaboration that has characterized Second Amendment case law is likely to continue. Moreover, it could have ramifications far beyond the right to keep and bear arms, including for other rights that may be on the cusp of transformation and for other legal movements seeking to emulate the strategies that ushered in modern Second Amendment law.

78 SMU Law Review __ (forthcoming), Duke Law School Public Law & Legal Theory Series No. 2025-26, SMU Dedman School of Law Legal Studies Research Paper No. 696,

By Benjamin Eidelson, Deborah Hellman,

Universities are facing an unprecedented wave of claims that they have violated their obligations to Jewish students under Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. These charges center on an equally unprecedented wave of anti-Israel activity on college campuses, much of which is alleged to cross the line into antisemitism. This essay, forthcoming in the Harvard Law Review Forum, provides one of the first systematic analyses of these exceptionally high-stakes claims about Title VI.

Our analysis reveals that the Title VI claims face formidable hurdles, including some that have received surprisingly little attention thus far. Most fundamentally, Title VI’s omission of “religion” as a protected characteristic means that Jewishness is protected under the statute only insofar as it constitutes a “race” or (less likely) a “national origin.” Under existing law, however, discrimination based on the cultural practices or viewpoints that may be associated with such an immutable characteristic—as Zionism might be associated with Jewishness—is ordinarily not cognizable as discrimination based on the protected characteristic itself. Moreover, if “hostile environment” liability can be founded on offensive conduct that does not constitute covered disparate treatment in its own right, this is likely possible only pursuant to a disparate impact theory that the Trump Administration has denounced and that the Supreme Court has rejected for private suits. Any notion of harassment based on conduct’s “objective offensiveness” would also need to account for distinctive features of the university setting that likely preclude liability for much of the protest activity that has loomed large in recent public discussions of Jewish students’ experiences on campus.

Although specific facts matter and not all of the issues are clear-cut, we thus conclude that appeals to Title VI in this area are much weaker than has been widely appreciated. Of course, this does not mean that campus antisemitism is acceptable. But it does mean that, for the most part, universities have both the right and the responsibility to balance their competing commitments in this area—including commitments to both inclusion and freedom of expression—using their own considered judgment.

Harvard Public Law Working Paper 25-13

Forthcoming, Harvard Law Review Forum (June 2025)

By David Abrams and Priyanka Goonetilleke

Each year, millions of Americans rely on public defenders to fulfill their Sixth Amendment right to counsel. Despite being the linchpin of the criminal justice system, public defense remains both underfunded and understudied. This article provides empirical analysis to contribute to a critical question: How should public defender systems be structured?

Criminal justice advocates, scholars, and the American Bar Association strongly favor vertical representation in public defense. Under this model, a single public defender represents a defendant throughout their case, from initial appearance through sentencing. The alternative approach—horizontal representation—operates like an assembly line: Different attorneys handle each stage of a case, from preliminary hearings to pretrial conferences to trials. The preference for vertical representation stems from the intuitive belief that continuity of representation improves outcomes for defendants. However, no prior empirical work has tested this assumption.

Using a natural experiment created by the Defender Association of Philadelphia’s transition from a fully horizontal representation system to a partially vertical one, we find no evidence that increasing attorney continuity improves defendant outcomes.

These findings have significant implications for how public defender offices should allocate their scarce resources. While vertical representation is considered by many as the ideal, our results cast doubt on whether the additional resources and logistical challenges relative to horizontal representation are justified given the current reality of underfunded public defense. As jurisdictions nationwide grapple with a chronic lack of resources for public defense, this article provides crucial empirical evidence to inform decisions about how best to uphold defendants’ Sixth Amendment right to counsel.

.100 New York University Law Review No. 5 (forthcoming), Northwestern Law & Econ Research Paper No. 25-05, Northwestern Public Law Research Paper No. 25-22, U of Penn, Inst for Law & Econ Research Paper No. 25-10,

By Vitalie Jitariuc

The achievement of the tasks of the criminal process, which relate to the identification and punishment of persons who have committed criminal acts, is inextricably linked to the restoration of the truth in criminal cases. Only on the basis of comprehensive and thorough investigations of all aspects of socially dangerous acts can we determine the role of each person involved in the crime and establish with sufficient certainty the circumstances in which the crime was committed.

Reaserch Gate, 2024, 256p.

By C. HANNAH,* S. TADEPALLI AND P. GOPALAKRISHNAN

The practice of urban planning and building design largely follow traditional methods while transforming the structure and quality of life in the built environment. The process of managing cities requires updates and integration of new technologies and research efforts. In this context, development of smart, sustainable, energy efficient, healthy, safe and secure built environment is a priority that is shaping modern cities all over the world. Though management of Indian cities tries to address these issues to a certain extent, it can be said that, as compared to many developed countries, aspects of safety and security have not been the top priority of our planners and designers. Research on Environmental Criminology and Environmental Psychology clearly indicates the important role and benefits of crime prevention through appropriate design of the built environment. In this context, this paper highlights the role of crime prevention strategies and the relevance of environmental criminology in current building practices for addressing security concerns in India.

Creative Space, Vol. 2, No. 2,, January 2015, pp. 141–156

By Joan E. Durrant, PhD

One of Britain’s colonial legacies is the common law defence available to adults who corporally punish children. Canada inherited this defence, which became codified in 1892 as Section 43 of the Criminal Code. The aim of this Special Issue is to examine Canada's law alongside those of other former members of the British Empire that have abolished their defences - Ireland, Scotland and Wales. The first three papers in this issue will place Canada's law within its global, historical and colonial contexts. The next three papers tell the stories of how Ireland, Scotland and Wales overcame the same challenges faced in Canada to ultimately provide equal protection for children.

Department of Community Health Sciences

Max Rady College of Medicine, 7p,

By Jess Hickman, Mei Yang, Andy Tisdel, Charlie Riccardelli, Ashley Neufeld, and Amanda Coscia.

When a person facing criminal charges fails to appear for a court hearing, no one benefits. Courts must reschedule hearings and often issue warrants, consuming time and resources. Meanwhile, people who miss court may face additional charges, fees, and even jail time. Jurisdictions across the country have explored interventions such as court date notifications to improve appearance rates, but failures to appear continue to present a challenge. Part of the problem is that the underlying causes are unclear. Research suggests that people miss court for reasons like forgetting the date or not receiving notice.1 Others miss hearings due to a lack of transportation or conflicts with life responsibilities, including employment or providing dependent care. Courts need hard data on why people miss court. However, relatively few studies have systematically investigated this question, leaving courts without the information needed to make policy decisions. To fill this research gap, the Crime and Justice Institute (CJI), with funding from Arnold Ventures, partnered with Jefferson County, KY (Louisville) and Salt Lake County, UT (Salt Lake City) to survey people who were arrested on a failure to appear warrant.

Boston: Crime and Justice Institute, 2025. 7p.

By Anouschka Rajah, Conleth Burns

Recent events have propelled the criminal justice system to the forefront of public debate. The controversial early release of thousands of prisoners to ease overcrowding was one of Labour’s first acts in government. The Stockport attack, the 2024 summer riots, the media storm over ‘two-tier’ justice, David Gauke’s independent review of sentencing – all have contributed to a new and intense scrutiny of the UK’s approach to crime and punishment. The backdrop to these events is a justice system in crisis, of which the overcrowding of our prisons is only one symptom. As this report shows, victim and wider public confidence has collapsed; voters are deeply frustrated with the status quo and now rank criminal justice alongside the NHS, immigration, and the economy as a top priority for reform. The Common Ground Justice Project, which commissioned this research, aims to find a new way forward for the justice system which can command broad public support. In the context of a noisy, polarised debate, we’re starting by listening: to voters across the country, to victims, perpetrators and communities most affected by crime. To that end, More in Common conducted national polling and focus groups to better understand public attitudes to criminal justice through the lens of their British Seven Segments model. What emerges is a public ready for change, with views more complex than the popular framing of ‘tough’ vs ‘soft’ justice. While there are key differences between segments, most people are not at the extremes. They want a better balance: enforcing punishment while also improving accountability and proportionality and ensuring people who commit crime make a contribution to society rather than being a burden on the taxpayer. This is the emerging common ground that can point towards a different future: delivering a real sense of justice for victims, safer streets, and restoring public confidence – even national pride – in the British justice system. What might such a future look like? While the public shows little enthusiasm for costly prison expansion, many struggle to imagine credible alternatives. Yet our findings show that when people are presented with concrete examples of new approaches that speak to core values, they respond with openness. The will for change is clear – but to harness it, we need greater efforts to identify new ways forward that feel tangible, achievable, and properly resourced. We also found that the public segment whose views on criminal justice differ most sharply from the rest of the country (Progressive Activists) is significantly overrepresented in policy and communication roles across the public and charity sectors. For those advocating change or shaping justice policy, we hope this report underscores the importance of not only following the evidence of what works, but also speaking to the values of the British public whose trust in the system is essential. The report is just the first step, but an important one, of our journey to improve understanding of attitudes on criminal justice and light the way to a justice system that better serves victims and wider society

UK: Common Ground Justice, 2025. 41p.

By Kamrun Nahar Koly ,Jobaida Saba,Trisha Mallick,Fahmida Rashid,Juliet Watson,Barbara Barbosa Neves

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a recognised global public health concern, substantially impacting women's well-being. While there is growing research on how IPV victim-survivors seek mental health support in the Global North, it remains understudied in the Global South, particularly for those residing in slums in low-income countries like Bangladesh. Through interviews and group discussions with different stakeholders, this study explored the mental healthcare-seeking behaviour of victim-survivors of IPV residing in urban slums, barriers to service utilisation, and recommendations to strengthen care pathways. Stakeholders perceived IPV as normalised in slums, indicating sociocultural norms and interpersonal causes as significant contributors to mental health issues and events of IPV. Seeking healthcare and moral support for IPV from local dispensaries and informal sources was common; however, IPV victim-survivors had no knowledge about mental-health-related services. Low mental health literacy and lack of financial support prevented them from seeking the necessary care. Social stigma regarding accessing mental healthcare, coupled with the absence of professional service providers and community-based services, represent critical systemic challenges. Recommendations included promoting community-level awareness of IPV and mental health issues, increasing mental healthcare services, training health workers, and fostering positive masculinities in community-based interventions. Stakeholders emphasised the need to adopt culturally relevant interventions for tackling IPV and improving mental healthcare pathways, especially for the low-income population of Bangladesh

. PLOS Glob Public Health 5(5),

By Gemma Morgan, Debbie Jones, Charlotte Walker, Gayle Prideaux, Emma Jones

While the concept of co-production is becoming embedded in mental health and social care, the criminal justice system (CJS) has been slower in embracing this approach. In this article, we draw on the findings of a process evaluation of the Include UK Hub – a co-produced service for people with offending histories in Swansea, UK and, in doing so, introduce the DEVICES principles of co-production. The DEVICES is derived from the empirical evaluation data and includes the following principles – Development, Empathy, Voices, Individual, Change, Empowerment, and Spaces. These principles will appeal globally to practitioners and policymakers looking to meaningfully utilise co-production to develop services and support for people in the criminal justice system.

The Howard Journal of Crime and Justice, 64, 162–180. 2025.