By Min Su & Christian Buerger

The political budget cycle theory has extensively documented how politicians manipulate policies during election years to gain an electoral advantage. This paper focuses on county sheriffs, crucial but often neglected local officials and investigates their opportunistic political behavior during elections. Using a panel data set covering 57 California county governments over four election cycles, we find compelling evidence of traffic enforcement policy manipulation by county sheriffs during election years. Specifically, a county’s per capitat traffic fines revenue is 9% lower in the election than in nonelection years. The magnitude of the political cycle intensifies when an election is competitive. Our findings contribute to the political budget cycle theory and provide timely insights into the ongoing debate surrounding law enforcement reform and local governments’ increasing reliance on fines and fees revenue.

American Journal of Political Science Volume 69, Issue 1, 2024

By Jason Eligh   

Globally, support for drug policy reform has grown over the past 10 years. Even as the drug prohibition consensus-keepers in Vienna have voted for yet another 10-year extension to their still unsuccessful 20- year strategy for global drug control at the March 2019 Commission on Narcotic Drugs High Level Review meeting, a reform movement among global member states has been gaining credibility and strength. The United Nations General Assembly Special Session on Drugs (UNGASS) meeting of member states in New York in 2016 was a soft watershed moment in the history of global drug policy. It was significant in its revelation that the global consensus on drug prohibition that had existed for 55 years now appears to be an openly fractured and vulnerable accord, one that was – and continues to be in a state of flux. UNGASS 2016 demonstrated that political space had opened for regional and national reflections on the nature of illicit drugs and countries’ domestic responses. By extension, the fragmenting of global drug policy’s ‘Vienna Consensus’ has also provided an opportunity for Africa. The continent could unify and play a leading role in shaping and implementing a new international drug policy approach. Such an approach could be grounded in the human rights, health and social development objectives of its continental Agenda 2030 goal of sustainable development, within the wider context of its Agenda 2063 goal of ‘an integrated, prosperous and peaceful Africa’.1 The purpose of this report is to reflect on the changing drug policy environment in Africa, particularly in the period leading up to and after the seminal UNGASS 2016 meeting of member states. It also examines the politics of continental drug policy prohibition and reform in the context of the growing global movement to embrace drug policy alternatives to the once universal approach of strict prohibition. Observations and recommendations are made regarding incorporating drug policy reform in the context of achieving developmental success with respect to the continental Agenda 2030 and Agenda 2063 goals  

ENACT (ENACT is implemented by the Institute for Security Studies in partnership with INTERPOL and the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime.)2019. 76p.

Narrating Law across CivilizationsBy Hiroaki Terada

This open access book explores how China had already established political and economic dualisms—political by the Common Era and economic by the 10th century—long before the West developed its dualism of state and society in the 17th and 18th centuries. In traditional China, social relations were shaped through market-like contractual means, with land freely traded and disputes resolved in state courts. Yet, the nature of ownership, contracts, and trials differed profoundly from modern Western practices. This book tackles two key themes. First, it provides a detailed analysis of rights, laws, and trials in Qing China, covering family law, land law, court systems, and statutory law. Second, it reinterprets traditional Chinese legal concepts independently of modern Western frameworks, offering a fresh perspective on legal history. By situating Traditional Chinese Law within the broader context of Traditional Western Law and Modern Law, the book presents a groundbreaking model for comparative legal history. Written by a renowned legal historian, this well-grounded and profound work ingeniously integrates legal historical research with theoretical analysis. Through insightful interpretations utilizing Qing legal documents, it represents a significant contribution to the study of legal history in recent years. This book is of interest to historians, legal scholars, sociologists, and sinologists, offering valuable insights into the unique characteristics of the traditional Chinese legal order.

Singapore: Springer Nature, 2025. 360p.

By  Anne-Marie McAlinden, Marie Keenan, James Gallen

This book critically examines justice responses to non-recent institutional abuses across the island of Ireland, comprising Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland within an international context, drawing on insights from interdisciplinary literature (eg law, political science, history, sociology, criminology, and social policy) and extensive primary research. Utilising the island of Ireland, North and South, as its primary case study, it comparatively examines the dominant forms of justice responses to non-recent institutional abuses, including prosecutions and civil litigation, inquiries, redress, and apologies in both Anglophone and non-Anglophone countries. Drawing on the literature related to restorative justice, transitional justice, and transformative justice, the book advances a re-imagined hybrid approach to justice which draws on conventional and innovative justice approaches and seeks to bridge the accountability gap between seeking and achieving justice for non-recent institutional abuses. The critical analysis of justice responses is set against the complexities of the legal, historical, cultural, institutional, and political realities of addressing non-recent institutional abuses. In including the voices of multiple key stakeholders and their experiences of justice processes—victim/survivors as well as church and state actors—in a unique project, it considers how we might reframe discourses on accountability and responsibility, improve justice processes at the level of praxis, and increase engagement between victim/survivors and institutional actors in order to better address the complexities of non-recent institutional abuses and improve justice processes and outcomes.

Oxford, UK: New York: Oxford University Press, 2025. 422p.

By Tomas Salem

This book offers a unique look into the world of policing and the frontline of Brazil’s war on drugs. It analyzes the tensions produced by attempts to modernize Rio de Janeiro’s public security policies. Since the return of democracy in 1985, Rio's police forces have waged war against armed drug gangs based in the city’s favelas, casting the people who live in these communities as internal enemies. In preparation for the Olympics in 2016, the police sought to ‘pacify’ the favelas and their populations through the establishment of Pacifying Police Units (UPPs) in many of the city’s favela communities. Drawing on eight months of ethnographic fieldwork with the police, this book follows officers across the institutional hierarchy in their daily activities, on patrol, and during training. Tracing the genealogies of contemporary forms of policing-as-warfare through the notion of ‘colonial war’ and ‘cultural war’, it highlights the material and ideational dimensions of war as a cosmological force that shapes Brazilian social relations, subjectivities, landscapes, economies, and politics. It draws on the Deleuzian notion of ‘war machine and state dynamics’ to show how practices of elimination co-exist with attempts to transform favela territories and their people and analyzes the link between the moral universe of policing and right-wing populism in Brazil. Through rich and nuanced ethnography, it offers a critical perspective on militarized policing and 21st century forms of authoritarianism.

Cham:; Springer Nature, 2024. 330p

By Phoebe Donnelly, Sabrina Karim, DeAnne Roark, and Muhibbur Rahman

Sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA) by UN peacekeepers continues to undermine the organization’s legitimacy and effectiveness. While training on SEA is required for all UN personnel deploying to UN peace operations, there is little data available on how effective these trainings are. This paper presents the first quantitative analysis of SEA training’s effectiveness, using original survey data from more than 4,000 uniformed personnel in ten countries.

The analysis reveals that SEA training has a significant positive impact on attitudes and knowledge about SEA. Personnel who completed pre-deployment SEA training were substantially more likely to recognize that SEA would violate their national policy, to consider SEA to be serious, and to express willingness to report SEA. The analysis also found that UN deployment increases the likelihood that personnel will receive various gender-related trainings beyond SEA. However, despite pre-deployment SEA training being mandatory, a significant proportion of deployed peacekeepers reported never receiving this training.

Although the quantitative analysis shows positive links between SEA training and views on SEA and reporting, the paper also explores limitations in current approaches to SEA training. Interviews and workshops with training experts underscored the need for SEA trainings to contextualize and apply the material rather than focus on prescriptive instruction. SEA training also needs to focus on behavioral and cultural change rather than mere policy compliance. The paper concludes that while current SEA training shows measurable positive effects on attitudes and knowledge, improvements in delivery methods and enforcement of training requirements are necessary to maximize this training’s effectiveness and create lasting institutional change.

New York: International Peace Institute, 2025. 16p.

By The HM Crown Prosecution Service Inspectorate (UK)

2.1. HM Crown Prosecution Service Inspectorate (HMCPSI) last inspected the quality and standard of legal decision making in Rape and Serious Sexual Offences (RASSO) casework in 2021-22 when conducting our baseline Area inspection programme. A composite report, summarising the themes, was published in September 20231 which found that pre-charge reviews in RASSO cases required improvement as our file examination showed that Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) Areas met the standard for the quality of case analysis in their pre-charge decision reviews in just over half. 2.2. Prior to that we had conducted a joint inspection with His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary Fire and Rescue Services (HMICFRS), considering the response, decision-making and effectiveness of the police and CPS at every stage of a rape case2. Before that, we published a report in 2019 that specifically focused on rape cases3. 2.3. There has been a long-standing concern regarding rape prosecutions and convictions. A stark drop in the number of rape cases referred by the police to the CPS and the volume of rape cases being charged led to recognition that significant work was needed to radically change and reverse this decline. 2.4. The CPS and police have made the investigation and prosecution of rape cases a strategic priority and there is an ongoing drive to improve the handling of this important and sensitive area of casework. Adult rape flagged4 caseloads have continued to increase nationally. The volume of live adult rape caseloads (charged cases) in the second quarter of 2024-25 (July to September 2024) was 3,813, compared to 3,263 for the second quarter of 2023-24 (July to September 2023). This is a 16.8% increase. 2.5. Our business plan for 1 April 2024 to 31 March 2025 included a thematic inspection of the CPS to assess the quality of legal decision making in rape cases and compliance with casework standards and expectations following the roll out of the national operating model (NOM) for the prosecution of adult rape cases. 2.6. We focused this inspection on the quality of early advice and pre-charge decision casework in adult rape cases following implementation of elements of the CPS adult rape NOM designed to improve the consistency and quality of decision making at this early stage of the prosecution process. 2.7. We intend to carry out further inspections of other aspects of rape casework following implementation of the NOM. These inspections are included in our 2025-26 Business Plan5 and will include an examination and assessment of the service and support provided by the CPS to victims of rape, and an assessment of casework quality, progression and trial readiness for rape cases that have proceeded beyond the pre-charge decision stage. 2.8. We recognise the importance of capturing the voice of rape victims when considering and assessing the CPS’s approach and handling of rape prosecutions. However, because we have focused this inspection on the early advice and pre-charge stage, it is difficult to assess this aspect of victim experience in isolation. Given our proposed approach to carrying out a series of inspections focused on specific aspects of the prosecution process, we intend to engage with victims and third sector groups in our planned inspection around the quality of service and support offered to victims of rape so that we can explore their experiences of the impact of the NOM in more detail throughout the prosecution process. 2.9. The CPS, at both a national strategic level and at an Area level, is working hard to drive improvement in the quality of rape casework. It has committed, and continues to commit, to this sensitive area of work by strengthening its partnership with the police to improve communication, by providing ongoing training and new guidance for its prosecutors to reflect changes in the law and assist them in understanding the complexities of rape and by increasing the scrutiny of decision-making in rape cases. 2.10. We found Area staff working on adult rape cases (and other serious sexual offences) are committed, passionate and enthusiastic about improving performance and are striving to build strong cases to achieve the best possible outcome for victims. However, there was an acceptance amongst many we spoke to that a degree of inexperience across the cadre of prosecutors within RASSO units, and the competing demands and high caseloads, sometimes meant that the quality of work at the early advice and pre-charge decision stage suffered as prosecutors struggled to devote the time required to each case. 2.11. We found that the closer working relationships that have formed and developed between local RASSO prosecutors and police investigators following implementation of the NOM has been positive, with some encouraging aspects to the quality of decision making in the early stages of adult rape casework. However, we also found aspects that require further work to ensure that strong cases are being built from the outset and that these sensitive and often evidentially challenging cases are given the best possible chance of achieving a successful outcome.     

HMCPSI Publication No. CP001 - 1325  2025. 136p.

By Bonnie Ross, Amy Pisani and Sara Rahman. 

This study presents insights from interviews with judicial officers, legal practitioners, and other justice professionals, exploring their views on the benefits and drawbacks of using audio visual links (AVL) in criminal court proceedings, along with suggestions for improving practice. 

 Key findings 

•  Advantages of AVL use – Interviewees emphasized the convenience of AVL, particularly for participants located in different regional and remote areas, and the comfort it offers to non-professional court users such as witnesses and defendants. These advantages contribute to a court process that is quicker, more cost-efficient, and more accessible for all involved. 

• Disadvantages of AVL use - The main concerns raised were around inadequate infrastructure and a loss of human connection, including diminished emotional engagement and interaction. These issues can lead to a court experience that feels impersonal and disconnected. 

• Future of AVL in court proceedings – There was broad agreement among interviewees that remote participation via AVL is a lasting feature of the justice system. Many believe that current challenges, particularly around usability and engagement, can be improved through enhanced infrastructure and technology upgrades

 Sydney: NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research., 2025. 14p.

By Pew Charitable Trusts

Community supervision, most commonly probation and parole, is a key component of correctional systems in every state and involves more people than are serving prison or jail sentences. At the end of 2020, almost 3.9 million Americans—or 1 in 66 adults—were on probation or parole in the U.S., compared with nearly 1.8 million in jails and state and federal prisons. Community supervision also presents a different set of challenges for policymakers and for the people affected by it than does incarceration. Individuals on probation and parole must earn a living, pay for housing, and care for their families, all while also attending to their own behavioral health needs. And, often, they must manage these responsibilities within the constraints of restrictive supervision rules. Failure to comply with these requirements can mean a return to incarceration, a process that in many states is a leading driver of prison admissions. To address the unique challenges of supervision systems, policymakers and other stakeholders need a greater understanding of policies that effectively support behavior change and manage probation populations. The Pew Charitable Trusts set out to help meet that need by reviewing state statutes affecting probation systems in all 50 states—which collectively supervise roughly four times as many people as do parole systems—and identified the extent to which states have adopted five key policies to help strengthen and shrink those systems. This review can provide a path for states and agencies seeking to improve their systems; offer better returns on public safety investments; and help lawmakers, practitioners, and advocates move their states toward a more evidence-based approach to community supervision. For each policy, Pew’s team established criteria—generally ranging from no adoption to the most efficient approach as demonstrated by research and current practices in the field—and used those to show each state’s existing strategy for addressing critical probation issues. For more information, see the policy descriptions, methodology (Appendix A), and list of state statutes (Appendix B). The five policies are part of a larger, comprehensive menu of supervision reforms that Pew and Arnold Ventures released in 2020, “Policy Reforms Can Strengthen Community Supervision: A Framework to Improve Probation and Parole.” That framework sought to be broad enough to account for the many differences in probation and parole systems throughout the country, such as that they may operate at a local, county, or state level, and, from state to state, can fall under the authority of the executive or judicial branch.5 But regardless of how a system operates, research suggests that these five policies can help states achieve key community supervision reform goals, including cutting the supervision population so that resources can be prioritized for higher-risk individuals, reducing instances of incarceration for technical revocations, and enabling mobility and employment 

Philadelphia: Pew Charitable Trusts, 2022. 16p.

By Beatrix Immenkamp

The EU's High-Level Group on access to data for law enforcement (HLG) has identified digital forensics as one of three key areas requiring progress to allow law enforcement agencies to fight crime effectively, together with data retention and lawful interception. Member States possess the expertise and have the capacity to engage in digital forensics, defined as the collection, analysis and preservation of digital evidence stored in any digital form on an electronic device. However, the ability of law enforcement agencies to access data stored on confiscated devices differs widely among Member States. According to the HLG, much could be gained by law enforcement agencies sharing both know-how and technical solutions, but the absence of comparable capacities among digital forensics laboratories and the general lack of standardised forensics procedures and of mechanisms enabling the recognition of skills and expertise of digital forensics experts are obstacles to cross-border cooperation. Europol, the European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation, already plays an important role in digital forensics. The Commission would like Europol to evolve further into a centre of excellence for operational expertise in this field. Encryption lies at the heart of the debate around digital forensics. Encryption is vital to protecting personal data and fundamental rights. However, it also represents an obstacle to criminal investigation, and hence a threat to security in Europe. The Commission will present a technology roadmap on encryption in 2026, to identify technological solutions that would enable law enforcement authorities to access encrypted data in a lawful manner, while safeguarding cybersecurity and fundamental rights. In its capacity as co-legislator, the European Parliament has actively engaged in shaping policies concerning law enforcement access to data, balancing the need for effective crime prevention with the protection of fundamental rights. This is one of four briefings that explore different aspects of the roadmap for effective and lawful access to data for law enforcement. These include a summary of the roadmap, and briefings on lawful interception, data retention and digital forensics.

Brussels:  EPRS | European Parliamentary Research Service , 2025. 8p.

By Aya Gruber

The Ferguson uprising and the 25 million-strong Floyd protests were a watershed, heralding a sustained national scrutiny of the routine violence of policing, or so we thought. A decade after Ferguson and five years after Floyd, police budgets have grown, racialized enforcement continues apace, and reform remains elusive. Despite the public raising their fists and voices to condemn racialized police brutality, so little has changed structurally and culturally. The resilience of policing in the face of grassroots activism, I argue, stems from not just political backlash, protester unpopularity, and fading public attention, but a deeply held cultural conviction that policing is crime fighting. This essay begins with Ferguson as a caution about the limits of protest-based police reform. From there, it traces the historical arc of policing, revealing its origins in the maintenance of racial and social hierarchies. It then turns to the contemporary investment in policing as a source of public order, despite consistent evidence that aggressive street policing fails to reduce crime and often exacerbates harm. Finally, the article critiques the liberal attachment to procedural fixes and individual prosecutions, which serve to preserve the institution’s legitimacy rather than challenge its foundations. Until there is a true challenge to the core faith that policing is about reducing harmful crime and preserving public safety, the machinery of violence will continue to thrive in the shadow of critique.  

Washington University Journal of Law & Policy , 78(1), 2025

By Tolulope Sogade

The widespread use of body-worn cameras (BWCs) by law enforcement agencies calls into question how those departments store and publicly release the large amounts of video footage they amass under public access laws. This Note identifies a changing landscape of public access law, with a close look at the federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and its state analogues, as the result of the Capitol Insurrection and the national Movement for Black Lives. Namely, legislative enactments, DOJ programs, agency policy statements, and judicial opinions all indicate a movement toward more access and potentially more proactive disclosure of government records. This Note considers what a disclosure regime of BWC footage should look like in light of the new developments in freedom of information laws; it proposes an intermediary framework for release that balances proactive disclosures and agency responses to requests for disclosure. Three policy goals should serve as guideposts to achieve this intermediary framework: minimizing privacy violations and unnecessary oversurveillance, improving cost efficiency, and assessing the need for redistribution of resources from police to other more community-improving apparatuses. The congressional investigation of the Capitol Insurrection, the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, and the Colorado Enhance Law Enforcement Integrity Act are exemplary, in some ways, of what disclosure should resemble. This model for approaching disclosure will be important for considering what types of information the public can access, what the public can do with that information, and how resources can be diverted or otherwise reconsidered as a part of disclosure regimes.

Columbia Law Review, 122 (6): 2022

By  U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS Office)

To help law enforcement agencies improve their services, processes, and reputation, agencies can disseminate this survey to community members to gather their opinions and experiences. The survey asks community members to assess five key components of their local agency: community involvement, safety, procedural justice, performance, and contact and satisfaction. The survey takes approximately five minutes to complete, and responses are confidential to the extent provided by law. This survey is available in Spanish at https://portal.cops.usdoj.gov/resourcecenter?item=COPS-W0807.

Washington, DC: COPS Office, 2025. 8p.

By  Nils Braakmann

This study explores the impact of police use of force on civilian interactions with the police, focussing on neighbourhoods with different ethnic compositions across London. Analysing the effects of three notable police-induced civilian fatalities as well as monthly fluctuations in the Metropolitan Police Service’s use of force, I find a decrease in reported crime and the proportion of crime without a suspect in Black neighbourhoods. These patterns suggest avoidance of police engagement, especially for crimes less likely to be solved. Individual survey data suggests no changes in victimization probabilities for any ethnic group, suggesting that estimates are due to reporting behaviour.

 British Journal of Criminology, 2025, 65, 182–201

By Measures for Justice

This report examines the relationship between the availability of community assets and calls for police service. Data collected on programs and services that provide support to individuals in crisis were mapped in conjunction with law enforcement calls for service data in two cities to better understand the patterns between needs and assets. The report encourages readers to consider how the public might work together with institutions to provide for the needs of the community.

Rochester, NY: Measures for Justice, 2025. 17p.

Mary K. Stohr, Dale W. Willits,  David A. Makin,. Nicholas P. Lovrich, Duane L. Stanton Sr., Mikala Meize 

In 2012 the citizens of Washington State, via Initiative 502, legalized possession of a small amount of cannabis by adults. On July 1, 2014 licensed retail outlets in Washington opened with a regulated and monitored product. The effects that this legalization would have on crime and law enforcement in the state were open questions. In this National Institute of Justice-funded study we employed a mix of quantitative and qualitative approaches geared toward addressing these questions. Research partners and participants included municipal, county, state and tribal law enforcement agencies representing 14 state, urban, suburban, rural, and tribal organizations in Washington the neighboring state of Idaho, as well as law enforcement professionals from 25 additional agencies and organizations. Focus group, joint, and individual interviews involved 153 justice system officials that included sworn officers from three multi-agency drug task forces and one gang task force. In addition, face-to-face interviews included prosecutorial representatives, officers from the Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife, and instructors from the National Association of State Boating Law Administrators. We constructed case study profiles and assessed qualitative (focus groups, interviews) and quantitative (Uniform Crime Reporting Program or UCR, calls for service records, and body/dash camera footage) data regarding how police practices and strategies, and crime itself, have been affected by legalization in Washington, and how that watershed decision in Washington has changed policing in adjacent border areas. We engaged a number of doctoral students and more than a dozen undergraduate students in the work of analyzing the data collected from the field and archival records sources. We found that marijuana legalization has not had an overall consistently positive or negative effect on matters of public safety. Instead, legalization has resulted in a varied set of outcomes, including: concern about youth access to marijuana and increased drugged driving, a belief that there is increased cross border transference of legal marijuana to states that have not legalized, reports that training and funding for cannabis-related law enforcement activities have been deficient given the complex and enlarged role the police have been given, and the persistence of the complex black market. On the “positive” front, legalization appears to have coincided with an increase in crime clearance rates in several areas of offending and an overall null effect on rates of serious crime. Importantly, the legalization of marijuana has reduced the number of persons brought into the criminal justice system by non-violent marijuana possession offenses. The police were also greatly concerned about how to best handle the detection and documentation of marijuana-related impairment in both commercial vehicle operations and traffic incidents. The state has adopted the Target Zero goal of no traffic fatalities by 2030 and the legalization of marijuana and the privatization of liquor sales have combined to make accomplishment of this worthy goal extremely difficult. Our research methodology necessarily included a number of limitations that would prevent the wholesale generalization of the results. For instance, most of the data was collected from one state (Washington) which was one of the two “pioneer” states involved in legalization in this country. Furthermore, the calls for service data were obtained from a limited number of agencies and are likely not generalizable to the entire state, much less the country. The crime data is extracted from the UCR database (as not all of Washington was National Incident Based Reporting System [NIBRS] compliant for all years under study) is known to suffer from a number of limitations, including: undercounting of some crimes, a lack of contextual information about criminal activity, and missing incidents not reported to the police. While the calls for service data address some limitations of the UCR database (for instance, calls for service data are better suited for the analysis of minor crimes), these data still do not address the limitation that only incidents reported to the police are analyzed. Put simply, if legalization resulted in a shift in criminal behavior that was not reported to the police, our quantitative analyses would be incapable of detecting it. Similarly, the body-worn camera (BWC) analysis was exploratory in nature and the data represent two agencies that are geographically and organizationally disparate. As an exploratory component, these results are not generalizable. The qualitative findings of this study offer insight into the lived experiences of officers, deputies, troopers, trainers, supervisors, administrators, and prosecutors, and are not without their limitations. Our qualitative data are limited by issues of generalizability (they may not represent the opinions of law enforcement professionals more broadly) and potentially be issues of selection bias (it is possible that those with the strongest opinions were perhaps most likely to volunteer to participate in focus groups and interviews). As with any research design employing purposive sampling, these results are not generalizable. They do not represent the lived experiences of all law enforcement officers or justice system representatives, nor adequately capture the totality of the lived experiences of this study’s participants. While we were able to obtain a large, and diverse sample of participants, we unfortunately were unable to engage officers from all municipalities in Washington, and across all law enforcement domains. These results emphasized and sought to document experiences pre- and post-legalization. While we made every effort to restrain our analysis to issues involving cannabis legalization effects on law enforcement and crime, our participants, as reflected in our findings, often gravitated towards broader frustrations involving police resourcing, training, and prosecutorial practices. Lastly, while our qualitative data is wellsuited for capturing the perceptions of police officers, they are also limited in this regard. Police perceptions of legalization may be skewed and not reflective of the broader process of legalization.     

Pullman, WA: Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology Washington State University , , 2020. 158p.

By Gabriel Weinberger

The nation's reliance on incarceration appears to have reached a peak a few years ago and there is a movement towards a major de-carceration initiative that will be driven by local jurisdictions. Current research must be focused on learning from the early wave of de-carceration experiments, which are mostly associated to drug-related crimes, to provide implications for future policymaking.

This dissertation deals with the implementation, at the local level, of various major changes to California's criminal justice system. These changes include liberalization of marijuana policies, Public Safety Realignment, and Proposition 47. The theme behind these changes has been a change in how the criminal justice system sanctions drug use. This dissertation explores an important question from each policy that can guide future policy. The first chapter explores whether localities that allowed for regulated dispensaries that sell medical marijuana to operate experienced an increase in crime rates. The second chapter describes how Public Safety Realignment changed the landscape for how social services are provided through the criminal justice system, detailing the effect on counties by using Los Angeles as a case study. Finally, the third chapter uses Los Angeles as a case study to answer whether community supervision is an adequate mechanism for engaging individuals with substance use disorder treatment.

Overall, the dissertation suggests that there may be collateral consequences from more liberal policies but that these can be addressed outside of the scope of the criminal justice system. In the context of regulating the supply of marijuana, a formerly illicit drug in California, I find that it did not result in a wave of higher crime rates. Finally, a major implication from this dissertation is that further work is required to serve the population that is affected by policies that reduce the use of incarceration for drug-related crimes. Local governments need to continue to address low-level crime caused by problematic drug use by improving their systems for providing social services without settling for using the lever of the criminal justice system.

Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2019. 126p.

By Steven Davenport

Cannabis has been legalized for non-medical purposes in Canada, Uruguay, eleven U.S. states and Washington DC, with others likely to follow. The world's first large corporate cannabis producers and retailers are operating in Canada and the United States — with the potential for continued expansions in scale and efficiency in the case of national legalization in the United States. This accelerated rate of policy change prompts novel topics of cannabis policy research, including evaluating past policy changes and identifying feasible policy responses for contemporary or anticipated issues.

This dissertation includes four papers. Three concern issues related to cannabis, with the last investigating a related issue (intoxicated driving) manifesting in alcohol policy. The first chapter identifies U.S. national-level patterns of cannabis acquisition and use and from 2002 to 2013, roughly the decade of policy liberalization that preceded the first non-medical cannabis regimes. The second chapter investigates a surprising fifteen-year trend in self-report of cannabis use disorder symptoms among daily/near-daily cannabis users, who disproportionately bear many of the consequences of cannabis use. The third chapter analyzes Washington State's recreational cannabis traceability dataset (July 2014-October 2017), documenting emerging trends, e.g. declining prices, cannabinoid profiles, and product forms. The final chapter evaluates an intervention relating to reducing alcohol-involved crashes, some lessons of which can be carried over to analogous questions with cannabis-involved crashes. That study evaluated Uruguay's zero blood-alcohol-concentration (BAC) law, exploiting a novel synthetic controls method to estimate reductions in severe and fatal injury crashes, using Chile as a control.

A central theme is the potential for a rising public health risk among adult cannabis users, and which may or may not meet clinical diagnoses for cannabis use disorder. There remain puzzles to solve. As the political-economic landscape regarding cannabis continues to evolve, public health-oriented policymakers would be wise to invest time and research in monitoring use trends in detail, and refining definitions and measurements of problematic cannabis use. It is the hope of this dissertation to support that line of inquiry.

Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 202o. 100.

By Sujeong Park

My dissertation investigates the unintended consequences of opioid policies, OxyContin reformulation and prescription drug monitoring programs (PDMP) on crime, labor supply, and child welfare. The first paper examines the reformulation effects on crime, focusing on murder, by using a difference-in-difference methodology. This study provides evidence that the reformulation policy responding to the opioid epidemic has the unintended effect of increasing murder victims. The second paper evaluates the effects of OxyContin reformulation on labor supply and Social Security Disability Insurance take-up. The analysis results show that the implementation of OxyContin reformulation increased SSDI applications and decreased labor force participation. The last paper analyzes the effects of PDMP on child welfare outcomes. I analyzed whether implementing a PDMP leads to an increase in children living with their grandparents instead of their parents. This change could occur if the PDMP decreases the supply of prescription opioids leading some people to switch to heroin or other illegal opioids and are unable to care for their children. I used a reduced form model, and my results indicate that the implementation of must-access PDMP did increase the proportion of children living with their grandparents.

Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2021. 137p.

By Wyatt Lutenbacher

Gaps in federal regulation have allowed “privately made firearms,” or “ghost guns,” to proliferate. Until August 2022, “firearm kits,” which allowed for easy assembly of functional firearms without serial numbers, could be purchased without a background check. Federal law and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (“ATF”) have historically regulated assembled weapons rather than firearm components, and as a result, firearm kits have circumvented traditional firearm regulations. As a result, state and federal regulations have now had to try to adapt accordingly. Yet in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, the United States Supreme Court unsettled many firearm regulations by creating a new test for the Second Amendment that focuses on history and tradition.

This Note posits that ghost guns are a problem not seriously addressed by federal regulations. To address these regulatory gaps, this Note will analyze proposed and potential administrative and legislative solutions, then defend them under the Bruen test. First, this Note will begin by describing the ghost gun epidemic and the relevant Second Amendment law, specifically the Bruen test. Next, it will present and analyze both current and proposed federal regulations and legislation targeting ghost guns. Finally, this Note will conclude by arguing that these current and proposed solutions are constitutional under Bruen.

42 Minn J. L. & Inequality 253 (2025)