By: Colin Murphy

3D printing, a technology only a few decades old, has progressed in quality and affordability. It has moved from the realm of industrial prototype, through cutting-edge design and technology, to finally end up in the homes of hobbyists and enthusiasts. This welcome and useful process has delivered new and affordable solutions to a range of subjects and fields, and has changed the shape of manufacturing from large factories to small bespoke businesses. However, this innovation has also developed a darker side and has been adopted by those with criminal intent, including for the manufacture of firearms. While converted or backstreet guns are not a new phenomenon, the advent of 3D printing has extended the range of people able to obtain a firearm to include those with no practical skills or tools or indeed any criminal connections. In the space of little over a decade, the concept of homemade guns using 3D printing techniques has evolved from a simple yet effective one-shot pistol to a semi automatic hybrid rifle. These firearms have made their way into the hands of criminals and extremists with menacing intent. They have also featured in high-profile shootings with fatal consequences. It is important to acknowledge that this nascent method of firearm production is developing at a rapid speed. Authorities and law enforcement agencies are recognising the growing threat that these firearms pose, and are adapting their understanding, approach and expertise. In addition, legislators around the world are beginning to adapt their laws to address this emerging threat. In the EU, possession of a 3D-printed firearm is an offence, but not possession of, publicity for or distribution of digital blueprints or hard copies. IN THIS BRIEFING • Introduction • 3D printing • Craft production of privately-made firearms . • Progression of 3D printed firearms • Users of 3D printed firearms • Addressing the issue

Members' Research Service PE 775.889 – August 2025

by Graeme Newman (Author)

How did Europe police its cities before the First World War, and what can those systems teach us today?

In Policing Europe: A Retelling of Fosdick's Classic, criminologist and policing scholar Graeme R. Newman presents a concise, modernized edition of Raymond B. Fosdick's landmark 1915 study of European policing. Based on nearly two years of firsthand research across England, Scotland, Germany, Austria-Hungary, France, Italy, Holland, and Belgium, Fosdick's original work remains one of the most comprehensive comparative examinations of police systems ever written. [Policing_Europe Word]

Traveling through the great capitals and industrial cities of Europe on the eve of World War I, Fosdick interviewed commissioners, detectives, patrol officers, judges, and government officials to answer questions that remain deeply relevant today:

• Should policing be controlled locally or by the national government?

• How much authority should police possess?

• What creates public trust in law enforcement?

• How should police leaders be selected and trained?

• What prevents corruption and abuse of power?

• Which organizational structures produce effective and accountable policing?

This edition preserves Fosdick's remarkable firsthand observations while updating the language for contemporary readers. It explores the contrasting traditions of British "policing by consent" and Continental state-centered policing, compares police organizations in London, Paris, Berlin, Vienna, Budapest, and Rome, and examines detective methods, recruitment, training, leadership, forensic science, and police integrity. [Policing_Europe Word]

More than a historical document, Policing Europe offers a fascinating window into the origins of many modern debates about public safety, civil liberties, professionalization, surveillance, police accountability, and the relationship between citizens and the state. Written just before a world war transformed Europe forever, it captures a vanished world while illuminating issues that continue to shape policing in the twenty-first century. [Policing_Europe Word]

Ideal for:

• Students of criminology and criminal justice

• Police professionals and policymakers

• Historians of law, government, and public administration

• Readers interested in comparative policing and European history

• Anyone seeking a deeper understanding of how modern police systems evolved

A century after its original publication, Fosdick's pioneering study remains essential reading for anyone interested in the enduring challenge of balancing order, authority, liberty, and public trust. [Policing_Europe Word]

Read-Me.Org Inc. New York-Philadelphia-Australia. 2026. p172.

by Graeme Newman (Author)

In 1920, an investigator toured seventy-two American cities and concluded that the police in every one of them were failing — not from a lack of good men, but from a century of political interference, organizational chaos, and a refusal to let any competent leader keep the job long enough to matter. A hundred years later, the argument still lands.

Raymond B. Fosdick's American Police Systems was one of the most ambitious studies of policing ever produced in the Progressive Era — a firsthand, city-by-city comparison of American departments against the professional, politically insulated forces of London, Paris, and Berlin. Fosdick found American policing outmatched at nearly every turn: murder rates that dwarfed Europe's, police chiefs who rotated out with every election, civil-service rules that protected the incompetent as readily as the honest, and city after city that tore up its own police governance and started over, never once letting a good structure — or a good leader — mature.

This edition brings that argument back, rewritten for a modern reader.

This is not a facsimile reprint. Every chapter has been surveyed against Fosdick's original text — including its extensive footnotes — and rewritten fresh, in modernized prose, at roughly a fifth of the original length. The topic structure, the argument, and the great majority of Fosdick's specific facts, cases, and comparisons survive intact; the discursive, footnote-heavy academic style of 1920 does not. Readers get the substance of a landmark study without the apparatus of a century-old monograph.
A substantial new introduction places Fosdick's argument in conversation with policing today: the persistence of American police fragmentation across eighteen thousand separate agencies, the technology Fosdick could only gesture toward (national fingerprint databases, predictive policing, body-worn cameras), the surprising afterlife of "heterogeneity" as European cities have grown as demographically diverse as the American ones Fosdick once contrasted them against, the diversity of police workforces themselves in the U.S. and U.K. today, and where Fosdick's own instincts do — and don't — anticipate contemporary arguments over the scope and funding of policing.
What's inside:
- All eleven chapters of Fosdick's original argument, modernized and condensed
- A new, extensive introduction connecting the book to policing in 2026
- The original seven city police-organization charts, reproduced as images
- Modern 5x8 trade formatting with a full table of contents
Policing America, 1920-2026 is for readers of policing history, criminal justice students, and anyone following today's debates over police reform who wants to see how far back — and how little changed — those debates actually go.
A Read-Me.Org Modern Adaptation. Modernized and edited, with an introduction, by Graeme R. Newman. Based on the 1920 original by Raymond B. Fosdick.

Read-Me.Org Inc. New York-Philadelphia-Australia. 2026. p111.

By Jeremy McDermott,  Steven Dudley

“Connections between European and Latin American criminal networks have surged in recent years, with drugs, gold, and human trafficking proving particularly lucrative in the European market.

The number of European citizens linked to criminal networks arrested in Latin America has increased significantly, especially in Colombia, Peru, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, and Argentina. The strengthening alliance between Latin American and European crime groups now poses a global threat.

Today’s Latin America’s major criminal networks, unlike the cartels of the 1980s, operate in a world of subcontracting. Groups, or nodes in the network, often specialize in specific roles or stages of the supply chain. If a node is targeted by law enforcement, the network can quickly adjust and reconfigure itself, ensuring efficiency and the uninterrupted flow of criminal commodities.

These networks pose a serious threat to the rule of law, subverting it by establishing social norms through violence to exercise control with different forms of criminal governance. In Latin America and the Caribbean, they pose the single biggest threat to democracy in the region, using corruption to penetrate the state, and violence where bribery fails. This means it is the primary motor for human rights abuses and homicides. Corruption, like cancer, is spreading through state institutions in many nations of the region. Additionally, these networks harm economic stability development, distorting local economies, deterring foreign investment and affecting international financing.

Studying these networks is crucial to understanding the flow of illicit goods from Latin America to Europe, and essential to crafting effective strategies to combat these structures. After an analysis of different variables such as their criminal economies, geographical distribution or state response, EL PACCTO 2.0 and InSight Crime, with the support of the European Multidisciplinary Platform Against Criminal Threats (EMPACT), particularly within the Operational Action 8.3, of the High Risk Criminal Networks EMPACT, have ranked the 28 most active or relevant high-risk criminal networks in Latin America and the Caribbean, identifying key factors about their operations that reveal potential opportunities for combating organized crime in the region. This work has direct implications for both Latin America and Europe.

The list ranges from criminal networks with thousands of members to small brokers or gangs operating in Latin American countries, Caribbean islands or in Central America. In addition, the current report has sought to identify the connections or influence that high-risk criminal networks may have in different countries. This has led to the creation of a specific file for each criminal network with a specific individual map. Likewise, an aggregate map of all the information on the 28 criminal networks has been designed to provide a global overview.”

Washington, DC: Insight Crime, 2025. 114p

By Nicholas Barnes

Over the last decade, organized criminal violence has reached unprecedented levels and has caused as much violent death globally as direct armed conflict. Nonetheless, the study of organized crime in political science remains limited because these organizations and their violence are not viewed as political. Building on recent innovations in the study of armed conflict, I argue that organized criminal violence should no longer be segregated from related forms of organized violence and incorporated within the political violence literature. While criminal organizations do not seek to replace or break away from the state, they have increasingly engaged in the politics of the state through the accumulation of the means of violence itself. Like other non-state armed groups, they have developed variously collaborative and competitive relationships with the state that have produced heightened levels of violence in many contexts and allowed these organizations to gather significant political authority. I propose a simple conceptual typology for incorporating the study of these organizations into the political violence literature and suggest several areas of future inquiry that will illuminate the relationship between violence and politics more generally.

Perspectives on Politics. 2017;15(4):967-987.

By Kate Bryan, Rachel Schmidt, and Ashley Neufeld, with support from Nikki Miguel and Maura McNamara.

Michigan’s sentencing structure remains among the most restrictive in the nation. While many states have adopted policies that allow earned-time credits and provide opportunities for early release or resentencing, Michigan requires individuals to serve 100 percent of their minimum sentence before parole eligibility. While recent reforms, such as record clearing, medical parole, and limits to pretrial detention, have advanced progress to the state’s system, they do not target the key challenge of long lengths of stay. Today, more than 65 percent of the state’s prison population is serving a sentence of ten years or more, with limited opportunity for review or reduction. As the prison population rises for the first time in a decade, coupled with the state’s mounting budget pressures, a comprehensive examination of the state’s length of stay challenges is necessary. The goal of this brief is to serve as a baseline to begin that deeper examination. The Crime and Justice Institute, supported by Arnold Ventures, analyzed Michigan’s publicly available prison population data to understand the key trends regarding length of stay. Key findings include: Population growth: The prison population is growing after decades of decline, up 3% since 2021, with more individuals receiving additional sentences while already incarcerated. Sentences are getting longer: Average minimum terms rose 30% in the past decade, from 9.3 years (2014) to 12 years (2023). Drug offenses saw sharpest increases: Average minimum terms for drug offenses grew 33% over  the past decade. Sentencing practices exceeding statutory maximums: Data show minimum terms beyond statutory maximums for top offenses indicating the impacts of habitual offender enhancements, consecutive sentences, and additional sentencing stacking. With the urgency of a now rising population, the reinstated Sentencing Commission provides a renewed opportunity for the state to review sentencing practices. As Michigan prepares for leadership changes in 2026, the state has an opportunity to tackle its most pressing criminal justice challenge. To advance reform, Michigan must: Leverage the Sentencing Commission to produce data-driven recommendations and introduce corresponding legislation. Use corrections data to identify policies contributing to long stays, especially those related to enhancements, habitual offenders, and additional sentences imposed on already incarcerated individuals. Analyze the fiscal impact of long sentences considering recent budget volatility and an aging prison population. Reintroduce policies to reduce length of stay early in the 2026 session, backed by fiscal and public safety data.

Boston: Crime and Justice Institute, 2026. 17p.

By New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services Justice Lab

This report describes an analysis of racial and ethnic disparities in felony case processing in New York State at three processing points: arrests made in 2019, disposition of those arrests, and prison sentences imposed after convictions resulting from those arrests. 2019 was chosen as the benchmark because arrests made that year occurred prior to the implementation of landmark changes to the state’s bail, and evidence and information disclosure (discovery) laws. As a result, this analysis provides an overview of how the system functioned prior to those reforms and before the full impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, which disrupted all facets of the state’s criminal justice system.

Albany: New York State, Division of Criminal Justice Services Justice Lab.. 2025. 22p.

By Alon Steinberg and Amanda Frugoli 

Sudden and unexpected arrest-related deaths are deeply tragic and have generated widespread concern among the public, medical professionals, and law enforcement agencies. One mechanism that has garnered considerable attention is the use of prone restraint, wherein a subject is placed face-down and controlled in this position. The safety and risks of this technique remain subjects of debate within both scientific literature and legal settings. Supporters of prone restraint’s safety frequently cite prospective epidemiologic studies that report no fatalities associated with its use. However, these studies typically involve small cohorts and are conducted over limited timeframes, potentially underestimating rare but serious outcomes. In contrast, retrospective analyses, which assess larger populations over extended periods, have identified multiple cases of fatal outcomes linked to prone restraint. Notably, some of the most comprehensive data on these fatalities come from investigative journalism, which has uncovered patterns and prevalence rates not fully captured in academic or institutional studies. Based on available evidence, we estimate the mortality rate with use of in-custody prone restraint is at approximately 1 per 4.4 million individuals per year, or 0.023 per 100,000 population annually. These findings underscore the need for more rigorous, large-scale, and transparent epidemiological studies to better inform public policy, law enforcement practices, and clinical guidelines. The potential lethality of prone restraint must be recognized, and its use re-evaluated in light of both fatal risk and ethical responsibility.

By Victor Weedn , Alon Steinberg , Pete Speth 

We postulate that most atraumatic deaths during police restraint of subjects in the prone position are due to prone restraint cardiac arrest (PRCA), rather than from restraint asphyxia or a stress‐induced cardiac condition, such as excited delirium. The prone position restricts ventilation and diminishes pulmonary perfusion. In the setting of a police encounter, metabolic demand will be high from anxiety, stress, excitement, physical struggle, and/or stimulant drugs, leading to metabolic acidosis and requiring significant hyperventilation. Although oxygen levels may be maintained, prolonged restraint in the prone position may result in an inability to adequately blow off CO2, causing blood pCO2 levels to rise rapidly. The uncompensated metabolic acidosis (low pH) will eventually result in loss of myocyte contractility. The initial electrocardiogram rhythm will generally be either pulseless electrical activity (PEA) or asystole, indicating a noncardiac etiology, more consistent with PRCA and inconsistent with a primary role of any underlying cardiac pathology or stress‐induced cardiac etiology. We point to two animal models: in one model rats unable to breathe deeply due to an external restraint die when their metabolic demand is increased, and in the other model, pressure on the chest of rats results in decreased venous return and cardiac arrest rather than death from asphyxia. We present two cases of subjects restrained in the prone position who went into cardiac arrest and had low pHs and initial PEA cardiac rhythms. Our cases demonstrate the danger of prone restraint and serve as examples of PRCA.