By Joan G. Hudson, et al.

This guidebook provides guidance for transit agencies seeking to address and mitigate assaults on passengers and transit workers. Developed through an extensive research effort—including a literature review, national assault data analysis, agency surveys, focus groups, and interviews with six transit agencies—this guidebook equips agencies with practical strategies and evidence-based recommendations to enhance safety and security in the transit environment.

Assaults on transit systems, while varying across time, location, and agency size, pose significant safety concerns for both passengers and transit workers. This guidebook begins by outlining the scope of the issue, including definitions, key facts, and the impact of the transit environment on perceived and actual security. The guidebook then presents national data trends and insights into the causes, risks, and consequences of transit-related assaults.

National Academy of Sciences.. 2025. 95p.

By Linda Ross Meyer

Exactly how is it we think the ends of justice are accomplished by sentencing someone to a term in prison? How do we relate a quantitative measure of time—months and years—to the objectives of deterring crime, punishing wrongdoers, and accomplishing justice for those touched by a criminal act? Linda Ross Meyer investigates these questions, examining the disconnect between our two basic modes of thinking about time—chronologically (seconds, minutes, hours), or phenomenologically (observing, taking note of, or being aware of the passing of time). In Sentencing in Time, Meyer asks whether—in overlooking the irreconcilability of these two modes of thinking about time—we are failing to accomplish the ends we believe the criminal justice system is designed to serve. Drawing on work in philosophy, legal theory, jurisprudence, and the history of penology, Meyer explores how, rather than condemning prisoners to an experience of time bereft of meaning, we might instead make the experience of incarceration constructively meaningful—and thus better aligned with social objectives of deterring crime, reforming offenders, and restoring justice.

Amherst, MA: Amherst College Press, 2017. 118p.