By Alexander Heaton, Michael Thompson, Freya Rigterink

The Minneapolis Safe and Thriving Communities Report and Plan provides a vision for the future of community safety and wellbeing. The plan also delivered an actionable framework for how Minneapolis can design and build a robust continuum of services and solutions that work “upstream” to prevent social challenges from manifesting as crime and disorder; “midstream” to respond to acute law, order, and safety incidents; and “downstream” to help heal trauma and build resilience for communities in the aftermath of these challenges. The service continuum in the plan was grouped in three categories:  Preventive: Services such as peacemakers, violence prevention, diversion, etc., that address near-term social, health, and economic challenges before they manifest as criminal behavior.  Responsive: Services that address community safety incidents in real time through virtual response, civilian response, multi-disciplinary co-response, and sworn officer response.  Restorative: Services that over the long term heal trauma from violence, address the root causes of community safety challenges, and help build the capacity for community resilience. These three categories of services form a service ecosystem to holistically and equitably “wrap around” individuals, families, and communities to bring new solutions to neighborhood safety challenges and foster thriving families and communities. Through rigorous and in-depth analysis of current Minneapolis community safety services and programs, and the systems that govern them, this Findings and Action Plan identifies existing barriers and opportunities for advancing the City’s community safety goals. The analysis focuses, amongst other areas, on opportunities to improve community safety services and efficiency; address equity issues in service delivery and provision; promote transparency and use of evidence-based practices; and improve the integration of resources into a holistic ecosystem with coordinated and accountable governance structures.

Policing Project at NYU School of Law

Minneapolis: City of Minneapolis Government, 2024.142p.

By ASHLEY SPALDING, PAM THOMAS, PATIENCE MARTIN, SCOTT WEST and KAYLEE RAYMER

A new report from the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy reveals how this convoluted and opaque system extracts millions from the communities least able to bear the burden — including nearly $60 million collected from a single standard court fee imposed on all cases between 2022 and 2024. The report also highlights $91.4 million in unpaid court debt as of 2019, underscoring the long-term impact of these obligations. Geography also plays a role, with counties often charging fees that vary widely across the state, meaning that the same offense and same court experience can have very different costs, depending on where a person is arrested.

The authors offer a set of urgent policy recommendations, including eliminating jail as a consequence for unpaid fines and fees, implementing ability-to–pay assessments, and increasing data transparency and accountability across the system.

Berea: Kentucky Center for Economic Policy, 2025. 27p

By Lindsay Bass-Patel.

Since 2019, Harris County, Texas, the third largest urban jurisdiction in the United States, has eliminated a required cash bail schedule for misdemeanors, as a result of the ODonnell v. Harris County settlement. Instead, most people arrested for misdemeanors are now entitled to be released promptly without a hearing. People charged with misdemeanors that potentially present public safety risks (e.g., repeat DWIs, family violence, prior bond violations or outstanding warrants) are not automatically released, but they receive a bail hearing, where they are represented by a public defender. This report analyzes how the system has changed after these misdemeanor-focused changes were enacted, including public safety outcomes; shares accounts of people experiencing the system since these changes; and examines how these changes can guide other jurisdictions. Looking at the period before the new bail policies (2015-2019) and the period since the institution of the new bail policies (2019-2024),

Durham, NC: The Wilson Center for Science and Justice at Duke Law, 2025. 31p.

By Kristen M. Budd, Rachel Didner-Jollie

Only two U.S. states – Maine and Vermont – do not disrupt the voting rights of their citizens who are completing a felony-level prison sentence.1 Incarcerated Mainers and Vermonters retain their right to cast absentee ballots in elections. Because of the states’ unique place in the voting rights landscape, The Sentencing Project examined how their Departments of Corrections facilitate voting. We sought to determine experiences and lessons to share nationally as momentum builds in states, such as Illinois, Maryland, and Oregon, to expand voting rights to people completing a felony-level sentence in prison or jail.2

Voting is one prosocial way to maintain a connection to the community, which is particularly important during incarceration, and it helps to build a positive identity as a community member.3 The right to vote is also an internationally recognized human right.4 While voting is a cornerstone of American democracy, an estimated 1 million citizens cannot vote because they are completing a felony-level sentence in prison.5 Given racial disparities in incarceration, people of color are disproportionately blocked from the ballot box due to voting bans for people with a felony-level conviction.6

This first-of-its-kind research is a culmination of a multi-year inquiry in Maine and Vermont about how voting rights are implemented in prisons. The Sentencing Project sought to answer two interrelated questions:

What are incarcerated residents’ views about voting and the voting process?

What are the facilitators and barriers to implementing voting rights within the Department of Corrections, according to Department of Corrections staff and other stakeholders?7

Past research has found low voter turnout among people incarcerated in these states, despite incarcerated residents retaining their voting rights while completing a felony-level sentence.8 This suggests that, in practice, the absentee ballot voting process may be more complex in correctional settings.9

Our findings are based on 21 interviews with staff from the Maine and Vermont Departments of Corrections and other stakeholders who collaborated with these agencies in voting rights work, as well as our survey of incarcerated Mainers and Vermonters in which 132 incarcerated people participated. This investigation revealed:

Nearly three quarters (73%) of incarcerated survey respondents said that voting during incarceration is important to them.

Almost half (49%) of incarcerated respondents said that they did not know how to vote at their facility.

Facilitators that supported voting within the Departments of Corrections included:

Involvement of the Secretary of State’s Office, non-profit groups, and individual volunteers.

Cooperation from the Departments of Corrections’ administration and staff.

Coordination of in-person voter registration drives to assist incarcerated residents with the voter registration process.

Barriers that hindered voting within the Departments of Corrections included:

Incarcerated residents’ lack of knowledge about their voting rights and how to navigate the multiple-step process to vote absentee.

Limited information about candidates to inform voters and a lack of guidance on voting dates and deadlines.

A lack of staff training on incarcerated residents’ voting rights and how to assist incarcerated residents with voting.

Additional logistical challenges included:

Limited access to the paperwork needed to vote (e.g., registration forms, ballot requests).

Delays caused by prison mail and mail external to the facility.

A lack of person-power or capacity by corrections staff and other stakeholders to conduct voting rights work across all facilities.

Based on these findings, The Sentencing Project recommends providing more equitable access to voting and democracy during imprisonment by:

Establishing on-site polling locations in all correctional facilities that have eligible voters.

Expanding education for incarcerated residents about their voting rights and how to vote using an absentee ballot method.

Training corrections staff on incarcerated residents’ voting rights and on the process of assisting residents who are voting from prison.

Increasing access to candidates and candidate information, including hosting candidate forums within the prison.

Permitting and providing access to official government websites as additional avenues to register to vote, request ballots, track ballots, and learn about state and local ballot initiatives.

Such a vision for voting in prisons is attainable. A movement is already underway to increase access to the ballot in jails.10 Due to the fluidity of jail populations – where an average stay is 32 days – coordinating voting efforts in jails can be even more complex.11 Yet, even with such hurdles, turnout in jails with on-site polling locations has surpassed citywide turnout rates in places like Cook County, Illinois and Washington, DC.12 The successful implementation of jail-based voting demonstrates that prison-based voting is possible. Every eligible American citizen should be able to cast a ballot in elections regardless of conviction or incarceration status. In the words of one incarcerated resident in Maine, “I believe strongly [that] voting is a fundamental right for every American citizen. Being incarcerated does not mean you forfeit that right so I voted in here and will most definitely vote out of here.”

Washington, DC: The Sentencing Project, 2025. 36p.

By Douglas Phillips, Gabriel Weinberger, Michelle S. Manno

Evidence shows that employment can help keep people on parole or probation from coming back in contact with the justice system. But people who have a history of such involvement may lack educational credentials or have little work history, and must contend with employers’ bias against hiring them. Furthermore, they may require additional support—such as housing or transportation—to be ready to handle the demands of employment.

The Los Angeles County Innovative Employment Solutions Program (INVEST), established in February 2018, is designed to address the range of employment and supportive-service needs people on probation may have and support them in pursuing their employment and career goals. It operates at selected career centers in Los Angeles County. The program combines features of traditional workforce programs with some additional components. Most notably, it offers intensive training to prepare staff members to work with people on probation, collaboration between probation officers and employment staff members who work together in the same space, and additional funding for supportive services.

This report presents the findings of an evaluation of the INVEST program, which consisted of an implementation study and an outcomes study. The implementation study finds that the INVEST program is being implemented as intended, making a variety of employment services and training and educational opportunities available to clients, along with supportive services. It also finds that clients do not always take advantage of program services. The program services most frequently used are those related to finding employment quickly and services that take place as part of enrollment or very soon thereafter. Only about one-third of INVEST clients enrolled in any type of training program, and fewer than half of INVEST received any type of supportive service. This pattern suggests that people receiving services from INVEST need income from employment quickly, and may need financial support to be able to participate in education or training.

The outcomes study tracks employment and earnings for 1,232 INVEST clients who enrolled between March 1, 2018, and February 28, 2021, and compares their results with those of a group who were referred to INVEST but did not enroll. People who enrolled in INVEST had higher employment rates (by 12 percentage points) and higher earnings (by $1,931) over the course of a follow-up year (beginning about a year after enrollment and ending about two years after enrollment). This difference overwhelmingly reflects results among one subgroup of individuals who did not have any reported earnings when they enrolled. However, the comparison group for this part of the study was not constructed rigorously, so it is difficult to say with any confidence that the INVEST program is the reason for these improvements.

It was also not possible to construct a rigorous comparison group for outcomes related to involvement in the legal system. Compared with a similar group in another MDRC study in Los Angeles County, INVEST clients were less likely to be involved in the legal system in the year after enrolling. About three-quarters of INVEST clients avoided any arrest during that year.

Future research using a more rigorous study design—that was able to draw on more comprehensive data—could help to determine the program’s impacts on employment, earnings, and involvement in the criminal legal system, and to identify whom the program helps most.

New York: MDRC, 2025, 62p.

By Crest Advisory and The Tony Blair Institute for Global Change

It almost feels like a cliché to say that serious and organised crime (SOC) is evolving rapidly and continuously in scale, shape and sophistication. However, after five years leading INTERPOL’s global operational responses to crime and terrorism, I’ve seen first-hand how far these escalating threats are outstripping our well-intentioned but linear, dated and fragmented response mechanisms.

In any losing battle, it is necessary to draw back and reconsider one’s approach. That is why it is time for us to recognise that SOC is no longer simply a criminal-justice matter alone – it has become a societal threat, and it is time it was treated with the seriousness, focus and renewal of tactics this demands.

My time as Executive Director of Police Services at INTERPOL fundamentally changed not just the way I see crime but the way I see the business models behind that crime. I came into this role from specialist commands at New Scotland Yard and geographic leadership as Chief Constable of Essex. But when I began looking at crime through its actual drivers and enablers – technology, transport, communication and broader logistical systems – it became impossible to ignore just how far our current models were falling short.

The implications are profound. This unique role offered a rare perspective and it was an immense privilege. Whether it was the fallout of the Afghan government’s collapse on drug flows and human trafficking, or the levels of sophistication, reach and ruthlessness of West African organised crime groups, the conclusion was the same: the criminal threats have moved on, and we haven’t.

Working internationally, it is clear how SOC embeds itself in our economies, institutions and in some cases governance and political systems. These subtle, malign networks are built to avoid law-enforcement attention, to adapt on the fly, to exploit our media and political distractions, and our global obsession with “perimeter” mindsets. The reality is that not only is law enforcement often too busy and too consumed by existing threats to notice the emergence of new, more sinister ones, but its global architecture is fractured, duplicative and falling behind.

Nowhere is this as evident as in the use of technology, which has become the ultimate enabler for SOC. From AI and deepfakes to encrypted comms and crypto flows, organised crime groups are exploiting every tool at their disposal. They’re using entrepreneurial models to recruit, move money, manage their supply chains and to attack at speeds and volumes that overwhelm traditional policing models.

This paper makes the case plainly: in the face of such technically enabled criminal business models, if we don’t treat our data and computing power as strategic assets, we are choosing to lose.

Law enforcement is still chasing symptoms, not systems. Exceptional individuals working in law enforcement are constrained by legacy tools, bureaucratic structures and performance frameworks that were created for a bygone age. Prosecutions take years. Trials are complex and juries are expected to seize complex legal and evidential issues. Meanwhile, the criminal networks regenerate.

This paper highlights the urgent need for a bolder, more strategic and proactive set of tools that sit beyond law enforcement – including sanctions, online disruption and new global mechanisms that match the transnational nature of the threat. It is refreshing because it challenges the orthodoxy and questions the institutional inertia that prevents us from taking a fundamentally different tack: one that focuses on enablers, is rooted in disruption and built on bold, trusted partnerships.

Arrests alone will never dismantle criminal economies. Organised crime functions as an economy, and must be considered and tackled accordingly. This will require disrupting logistics, targeting financial facilitators, and redirecting seized assets to strengthen the very systems needed to fight back.

This situation also means the private sector must at long last be integrated into the frontline response. Finance, tech, logistics and data systems are being exploited daily, yet their operators remain on the sidelines, or are brought in through fragmented, ad hoc efforts. These sectors can see the damage, and wish to help, yet we just haven’t made it easy for them. This paper rightly calls for their operational integration, as part of a strategic design, as essential and included partners, not as an afterthought.

No matter how imperfect or distasteful, we must be willing to put a value on serious and organised criminal harms, exactly in the way we do with other global security threats. Too often politicians avoid attaching a price to abuse and exploitation as it highlights the scale of what is happening to the public and the media. But if we’re serious about resourcing a meaningful and sustainable response, we can no longer afford to look away. Influence, funding and political attention follow data. A serious response must follow the same logic.

In the same vein, we cannot afford to ignore the geopolitics of SOC. Today on the global stage and even at a domestic level, consensus is hard-won in a world defined by distrust, instability and polarised politics. But that’s no excuse to retreat. Democracies cannot afford to treat SOC as an abstract or future concern. We must learn the lessons from across the world – just because it is difficult to see, does not mean it is not already here, not already shaping global systems, and it demands a response as strategic, coordinated and relentless as the threat itself.

The path forward will not be easy, but the case for change is clear. Conventional structures and risk-averse strategies will not meet the moment. It is time for a new mindset: one that treats data and computing power as strategic assets, accepts disruption as vital tools, and one that is willing to experiment with new institutional models that break with convention.

The ideas set out here reflect that new mindset. They propose not incremental reform, but a fundamental rethink of how the international community responds to SOC. The goal is not simply to cope with today’s threat landscape, but to get ahead of it.

This moment demands strategic ambition and operational realism, and, above all, urgency. Criminals relish our adherence to old models. SOC has already shaped the world around us.

Our response must now do the same

London: Crest Advisory and The Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, 2025. 48p.

By Safiyah Husein, Capryce Taylor, Jacqueline Tasca, Meaghan Costa, Reza Ahmadi

John Howard Society of Ontario

“At least 10% of Ontario’s homeless population went directly from an Ontario jail to life on the streets.”

This report outlines actionable recommendations and best practices to reduce homelessness among individuals with experiences of incarceration. The insights provided are based on comprehensive discussions with people with lived experience, housing providers, community service agencies and policy professionals.

Kingston: John Howard Society of Ontario, 2025. 36p.

By Rashawn Ray, Connor Powelson, Genesis Fuentes, and Long Doan

Black Americans are 3.5 times and Black teenagers are 21 times more likely to be killed by police than their White counterparts. Generally, protective factors such as social class do little to reduce this disparity, as high-income Black Americans are just as likely to be killed by police as low-income Black Americans. Given these outcomes, it is unsurprising that the bulk of sociological research on policing examines disparities in policing outcomes between Black and Brown communities and individuals and their White counterparts. We begin by outlining this important research. In addition to focusing on the consequences of (over)policing, sociologists can make unique contributions to our understanding of the empirical limitations of contemporary policing data and the macro-, meso-, and micro-level mechanisms that contribute to policing inequalities. While we draw upon some research in other disciplines, sociologists can and should do more in these areas. Accordingly, the end of this review focuses on future directions and theoretical possibilities by centering emerging research that pivots sociology to a more direct focus on overcoming the methodological limits of police research and contributing to meaningful behavioral, organizational, and policy changes.

ANNUAL REVIEW OF SOCIOLOGY Volume 50, 2024

By Spencer Piston,1 Kaneesha R. Johnson,2 Selma Hedlund,3 and Chas Walker

We begin this article by discussing two moments, in the late 1800s and late 1900s, in which the racist views of influential political scientists fundamentally shaped research on policing. In contrast, today’s scholarship, breaking sharply with research of the past, does not attempt to justify racist policing but to study it. The dominant approach today follows a racial disparities framework, which maps out the uneven allocation of police harms. As we discuss, these studies have made valuable contributions to the field and to real-world efforts to resist the damage done by police. At the same time, however, the racial disparities framework has limitations that make it difficult for scholars to understand racist police oppression. We conclude by arguing that, to take the next step forward, future scholarship should follow the lead of and expand upon work that centers the voices of the highly policed.

Annu. Rev. Political Sci. 2025. 28:499–519

By Georgia State University, the Crime and Justice Institute, and the Council on Criminal Justice

Over the past 20 years, most American states have adopted a wide range of changes to their criminal sentencing statutes. The goals of the reforms varied. Some targeted certain offenses for greater or lesser penalties. Others aimed to cut correctional costs, expand alternatives to incarceration, and reduce recidivism. Few laws were enacted explicitly to reduce racial and ethnic disparities. Still, many policymakers hoped they would do just that, and the starkly disproportionate incarceration of Black people has been a central component of the national conversation about criminal justice reform.

New York: Council on Criminal Justice, 2024.

ByPenelope Gibbs

The criminal justice system is in crying need of more efficiency but there is little space to be innovative. So what’s not to like about a process which has revolutionised the magistrates’ court? The single justice procedure, introduced ten years ago, makes summary justice far speedier and cheaper. It needs fewer court staff and judges than a traditional open court hearing, and defendants can plead guilty and submit mitigation online. A case can be processed within weeks rather than months. Transform Justice has followed the progress of the single justice procedure (SJP) since its launch in England and Wales in 2015. We have written many articles about it, briefed journalists and made it the subject of our first ever podcast episode, but never brought our evidence together. In this report we acknowledge the potential benefits of the SJP but also express our deep concerns about the justice it delivers. Just as in the case of the Post Office Scandal, the victims are organisations and companies who are trying to protect their revenue or ensure behavioral compliance. They are both victim and prosecutor, which may cloud their objectivity in decision-making. It is in the interests of any prosecutor to produce the minimum of evidence to get a conviction and to have as few people as possible contest the charge. The SJP fits the bill. Most offences are strict liability so prosecutors don’t have to prove the suspect intended to commit a crime, nor do they need to prove their prosecution is for the public benefit (partly because no-one ever challenges them to do so). So prosecution is relatively easy. Getting convictions is easy too, because most people don’t respond to their prosecution under SJP and are convicted in their absence. A tiny minority of defendants plead not guilty. No data is available on what proportion are acquitted. Procedural justice is defined as the fairness of processes used by those in positions of authority to reach specific outcomes or decisions. This report measures the SJP against that test and finds it wanting. Many people who transgress are willing to make amends. But SJP defendants also need to know what their rights are and how to exercise them, and most don’t. So far, no-one (apart from some journalists) has been that interested in finding out about their experience and amplifying their voice. But change is coming. We hope that procedural justice and fair trial rights will be at the heart of SJP reform.

London: Transform Justice, 2025. 36p.

By Mika Hagerlid, Görel Granström

Twenty years ago, the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention presented a report that highlighted serious problems with regard to identifying, investigating, and sentencing ofenders for hate crimes. The same problems have also been described in international research from several other countries. Since then, several measures have been taken to remedy these problems, but it remains unknown whether these measures have been successful. The aim of the present study is therefore to trace developments over time, using Sweden as a case study, and to evaluate the extent to which the problems identifed earlier have been remedied. The results show that the problems identifed by the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention still remain despite a continuous process of reform. Theoretical links and parallels to international research are discussed throughout the article.

European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research (2025) 31:193–210

By Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development - OECD

Effective workplace supports can help to address the high social and economic costs of intimate partner violence (IPV) to individuals, businesses and societies. This paper highlights steps that employers and governments are taking to strengthen workplace approaches to IPV, particularly public policy measures across OECD countries to encourage an effective workplace response. Firms are taking action by developing workplace policies on IPV and establishing accompanying processes, building organisational capacity to respond to violence by upskilling staff, connecting workers with support, and offering flexible working arrangements to enable victim-survivors to continue working. Governments, too, are stepping up: several now offer employment protection for people subjected to IPV, a right to request flexible working arrangements, guidance for employers in developing workplace supports, and – in limited cases – paid domestic violence leave entitlements for employees.

OECD Employment Policy Papers, No. 13,

Paris: OECD Publishing, 2025. 49p.

By JUSTICE, Chair of the Committee George Lubega

The term ‘Behavioural Control Orders’ refers to a group of legal Orders that are imposed upon an individual via a civil court process or by an executive authority. They aim to address particular behaviours deemed to be objectionable. Sometimes the behaviours targeted constitute crimes in their own right; at other times the Orders are designed to tackle behaviour that falls below the criminal threshold. They do so by imposing restrictive conditions or requirements upon the person subject to them. These include conditions prohibiting association, being present within a particular geographical area, accessing the internet and can include electronic monitoring. Although Orders are imposed via a civil process and usually upon civil standards of evidence, breaching a condition within an Order is a criminal offence. There are an increasing number of Behavioural Control Orders (“Orders”) on the statute books of England and Wales, and their scope and availability appear to be ever-widening. Originally created to fill a gap present within the criminal law, e.g., the difficulty of prosecuting individual instances of football hooliganism, they have rapidly expanded to new areas and now cover behaviour which is, in and of itself, a criminal offence – punishable via the criminal law. For example, Orders now exist to address anti-social behaviour, protests, drug use, knife possession, gang-crime, stalking, and sexual offending, among other matters. Some Orders can differ in terms of who they protect (a specific individual, the public at large, or even a particular place); who may seek or impose an Order; whether an Order can be made on complaint, on conviction, or both; whether they can be imposed on children, or on adults only; the types of conditions and requirements that they can impose; what outcome the Order is intended to achieve and, accordingly, the legal test to be applied (including the standard of proof). The reasons for the variations is unclear and, in any event, has caused confusion across the country. This, in turn, has resulted in inconsistency in the ways in which Orders are used, and the protections afforded to victims. Surprisingly, despite their proliferation and the serious subject matter which they address, Behavioural Control Orders have never been the subject of any systematic, government-led review. It is not clear how the effectiveness of Orders should be measured, nor what ‘success’ should look like. Very little attention has been paid to whether the Behavioural Control Order ‘model’, works. The Working Party has sought to shed light on this question by examining the extent to which Orders are effective for victims, fair, accessible, proportionate, and rights compliant. Overarching Concerns Notwithstanding the variations between Orders, the Working Party identified a number of common, overarching concerns. Orders are often conceived of as a solution to complex social problems. They seek to prevent harms, protect vulnerable individuals, and offer rehabilitation to those accused of committing unwanted conduct. Whilst the policy papers accompanying their introduction stress that they are not intended to be punitive, their duration, the breadth of conditions they impose and the punishment for breach means that in practice, they are often perceived and experienced as such. Moreover, rather than diverting individuals out of the criminal justice system, the Working Party heard criticisms that Orders draw people, especially children, further intro the criminal justice system (owing to the possibility of criminal sanctions for breach). The bar for what conduct may be prohibited by an Order is very low in practice. For example, some Orders have been imposed on individuals as a result of them “closing the door too loudly" and impose conditions which prohibit “sitting on a pavement” or “wearing a bikini in the garden”. Arguably, such prohibitions are reflective of a loss of perspective on what degree of behaviour should properly be controlled by the State, and thereafter criminalised. At the same time, it risks diverting attention away from those really responsible for causing harm. On the other hand, some forms of Order can be said to criminalise individuals ‘by the back door’, by overlapping with existing criminal offences. Procedures for obtaining Orders generally do not require the rigour that proving a criminal charge does, with the tests to be applied often much broader than the wording of a statutory offence. Although proceedings for breach (as a separate offence) are brought before a criminal court, the conduct amounting to a breach may in fact be much less serious than the nature of the Order implies. Despite this, most contributors agreed that in certain circumstances, and when used appropriately, Orders could be useful tools in protecting victims from harm. This is especially true where used to protect a particular person, in the context of harms generally constituted by escalating or cumulative conduct. For example, Orders such as Stalking Protection Orders are effective, provided enforcement bodies apply for them. And Non-Molestation Orders can provide relief to victims of domestic abuse, as long as breaches are followed up and provided that victims are applying for them – not because the police have failed to help them - but because it is their preference to take action themselves. Nonetheless, more planning and consultation is required at the legislative phase, to ensure Orders are capable of achieving their aims, and enforcement bodies are set up to use them effectively. Little is currently done to assess how Orders will work in practice, and the views of interested parties, including experts and victims, and organisations working with offenders, are not meaningfully considered, nor their concerns adequately addressed. A consequence of this is that Orders can be performative in nature. The Working Party heard criticisms that Orders often reflect a “knee-jerk reaction” to high-profile issues, treating the symptom rather than the cause. It is doubtful whether a legal Order alone, can ever have a significant impact on reducing harm without the State taking responsibility for tackling the causes: inequality, poverty, inadequate housing, education and an under-resourced mental health service. Even where Orders have been found to be effective in providing relief to victims – as with Stalking Protection Orders, Non-Molestation Orders and Sexual Harm Prevention Orders - the failure to make resources available for training, enforcement and data sharing – mean that they are often deemed “a missed opportunity” and are not used widely enough. Moreover, whilst Behavioural Control Orders are meant to provide access to interventions, programmes and positive diversions – a lack of resources and available services often mean that this cannot take place. Without proper accreditation, there is also a risk that certain types of ‘perpetrator programme’ or diversionary schemes can cause further harm (continued)

London: JUSTICE, 2025. 144p.

By Özlem ÖZMEN

Martin McDonagh’s Hangmen (2015) is a contextual play as the work derives its material from an actual histori- cal event, the abolition of capital punishment in the 1960s, and presents this topic in 2015 soon after the debates of reintroducing death penalty in Britain. The play refers to two distinct socio-historical backgrounds, 1960s Britain as the context of the plot, and the twenty-first century as the context of the audience/reader. Hangmen takes place on a very specific date in history, the year in which hanging was suspended in Britain. The comical portrayal of what seems to be the last hanging case in the country makes it possible to problematise the integrity of the judicial system at the time. Presentation of the rivalry between two famous executioners in the country, Harry Allen and Albert Pierrepoint, also underlines the play’s socio-political relation to a certain context. What is equally noteworthy about Hangmen is McDonagh’s choice of this topic at a time in which the issue of capital punishment is raised again in Britain. Concerning recent arguments about the reintroduction of death penalty, it is observed that McDonagh also initiates a discussion about the legitimation of state violence through a depiction of the history of hanging. In light of this observation, the aim of this article is to discuss McDonagh’s topical dark comedy as a political intervention in the debate over death penalty in Britain by mentioning t

Özmen, Ö. (2019). Political Contextuality of Martin McDonagh’s Hangmen: An Intervention in the Debate over Capital Punishment in Britain, Gaziantep University Journal of Social Sciences, 18 IDEA Special Issue, 92-101