By David Olson, Don Stemen, and Patrick Griffin

Illinois is a mostly urban state. It’s also, of course, a mostly rural state—it all depends on what you’re counting.

Our statewide evaluation of the Pretrial Fairness Act (PFA) attempts to capture and document the law’s implementation and impact across Illinois. Of course, the changes the law brings, abolishing cash bail and imposing broad new restrictions on pretrial detention, are being implemented at the county level, and as evaluators we recognize that every individual county is unique. But if we’re going to provide a comprehensive and accurate picture of the way the new law is working throughout Illinois, we have to find efficient ways to combine counties for purposes of analysis. One useful way is to group them broadly into 20 urban counties—mostly clustered into the upper right-hand corner of the map but distributed here and there across Illinois—and 82 rural counties that encompass most of the state’s geographic area. Both are “Illinois.” Both need to be taken into account.Because so much of criminal justice case volume is generated in Illinois’ urban areas, where close to 90% of the population resides, state-level statistics necessarily describe urban, not rural realities. 

For some purposes, statewide “grand totals” are useful. But relying solely on them to assess the impact of the PFA in Illinois means overlooking or distorting what isgoing in mostof the state’s courthouses, jails and communities. That’s why real understanding of the law’s effects requires that we recognize and document county-level variations—and particularly the ways that individual rural counties’ PFA experiences may differ, both from one another and from typical urban experiences.

This research brief, exploring rural/urban differences in PFA implementation and impact so far, summarizes and expands on a presentation by the Center for Criminal Justice at the American Society of Criminology Annual Conference in November 2024. It is based primarily on information from three sources:

• Data provided by the newly launched Office of Statewide Pretrial Services (OSPS), concerning pretrial case-handling, assessment, and outcomes in the 78 counties (6 urban and 72 rural) in which the agency operates. (Note that the urban county data we analyzed did not include Cook County, which is not served by OSPS. We will be issuing a separate report in 2025 describing what we're learning about Cook County's experience with the PFA.)

• Jail population data from jails across the state, as reported to the Jail and Detention Standards Unit of the Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC).

• Insights gleaned from 21 confidential interviews conducted with judges, prosecutors, defenders, and other criminal justice stakeholders in a range of rural counties, both before and after the PFA took effect statewide.

Chicago: Loyola University at Chicago, Center for Criminal Justice, 2024. 13p.

By David Olsen, Patrick Griffin, Lucy Einstein, Molly Halladay-Glynn, and Bella Lira ·

During the early 1990s, violent crime in the United States reached its highest levels since the Federal Bureau of Investigation started keeping records.

One significant policy response at the federal level was the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994—popularly known as the “1994 Crime Bill”—which expanded funding for law enforcement, stiffened federal penalties for violent crimes, banned assault weapons, and made a host of other changes aimed at addressing and reducing violence. One of the most consequential components of the Crime Bill established the Violent Offender Incarceration and Truth-in-Sentencing (VOI/TIS) Incentive Formula Grants Program, which not only provided massive federal funding for new and expanded state prison construction, but set aside much of it for states that toughened up and reformed their criminal sentencing laws by adopting “Truth in Sentencing.”

Truth in Sentencing (TIS) laws mandate that those sentenced to prison for certain serious crimes actually remain imprisoned for all or a substantial portion of the court-specified sentence, no matter what early release or “good time credit” mechanisms might otherwise be employed to promote good discipline and encourage rehabilitative efforts in prison.

Illinois was one of many states that responded to the new federal funding incentives set up by the Crime Bill, enacting TIS legislation and eventually receiving a total of $124 million through the VOI/TIS grant program from 1996 through 2001.  Illinois’ original TIS scheme required that 100% of a court-imposed sentence be served following conviction for First Degree Murder, 85% for a range of other serious offenses, and 85% for specified offenses when they result in great bodily harm. TIS in Illinois was expanded to cover other offenses in 2005, 2007, and 2010.

The Legacy of Truth-In-Sentencing in Illinois

The dramatic wave of violent crime that prompted the original 1994 Crime Bill receded long ago, but the effects of the incentives created by the Crime Bill remain to this day. Many of these lasting effects were documented in a 2009 Loyola University analysis of the first ten years of Truth in Sentencing, which found among other things that TIS had greatly increased the time required to be served in prison under court-imposed sentences but did not have any significant influence on the extent and nature of disciplinary incidents in Illinois’ prisons. In fact, people subject to TIS had patterns of disciplinary infractions similar to those not subject to TIS. 

Now a new study conducted by the Center for Criminal Justice at Loyola, analyzing Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC) data through December 31, 2024, updates and expands on the 2009 report, illuminating the ways that a quarter of a century of TIS has profoundly shaped the current population of Illinois prisons.

Chicago: Loyola University, Center for Criminal Justice, 2025. 11p,

By Paul Cassell and Richard Fuwles

Cassell, Paul and Fowles, Richard, "Does Bail Reform Increase Crime? An Empirical Assessment of the Public Safety Implications of Bail Reform in Cook County, Illinois" (2020). 

Recently bail reform issues have been in the news across the country, as concerns about fair treatment of defendants and possible public safety risks from expanding pretrial release have collided. These issues involve important empirical questions, including whether releasing more defendants before trial leads to additional crimes. An opportunity to investigate this public safety issue has developed in Chicago, our nation’s third largest city. There, the Office of the Chief Judge of the Cook County Courts adopted new bail reform measures in September 2017 and reviewed them empirically in May 2019. Cook County’s Bail Reform Study concluded that the new procedures had released many more defendants before trial without any concomitant increase in crime. This article disputes the Study’s conclusions. This article explains that, contrary to the Study’s assertions, the new changes to pretrial release procedures appear to have led to a substantial increase in crimes committed by pretrial releasees in Cook County. Properly measured and estimated, after more generous release procedures were put in place, the number of released defendants charged with committing new crimes increased by 45%. And, more concerning, the number of pretrial releasees charged with committing new violent crimes increased by an estimated 33%. In addition, as reported by the Chicago Tribune, the Study’s data appears to undercount the number of releasees charged with new violent crimes; and a substantial number of aggravated domestic violence prosecutions prosecutors dropped after the changes, presumably because batterers were able to more frequently obtain release and intimidate their victims into not pursuing charges. These public safety concerns call into question whether the bail “reform” measures implemented in Cook County were cost-beneficial. And because Cook County’s procedures are state-of-the-art and track those being implemented in many parts of the country, Cook County’s experience suggests that other jurisdictions may similarly be suffering increases in crime due to bail reform.

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship. 2929,

By Dennis D. Hirsch,  Jared Ott, Angie Westover-Munoz, and Chris Yaluma

Federal and state criminal justice systems use algorithmic risk assessment tools extensively. Much of the existing scholarship on this topic engages in normative and technical analyses of these tools, or seeks to identify best practices for tool design and use. Far less work has been done on how courts and other criminal justice actors perceive and utilize these tools on the ground. This is an important gap. Judges’ and other criminal justice actors’ attitudes towards, and implementation of, algorithmic risk assessment tools profoundly affect how these tools impact defendants, incarceration rates, and the broader criminal justice system. Those who would understand, and potentially seek to improve, the courts’ use of these tools would benefit from more information on how judges actually think about and employ them. This article begins to fill in this picture. The authors surveyed Ohio Courts of Common Pleas judges and staff, and interviewed judges and other key stakeholders, to learn how they view and use algorithmic risk assessment tools. The article describes how Ohio Common Pleas Courts implement algorithmic risk assessment tools and how judges view and utilize the tools and the risk scores they generate. It then compares Ohio practice in this area to the best practices identified in the literature and, on this basis, recommends how the Ohio Courts of Common Pleas—and, by implication, other state and federal court systems—can better align their use of algorithmic risk assessment tools with core criminal justice values.

Legal Studies Research Paper No. 939, 2925

Brandon L. Garrett,  Sandra Guerra Thompson,  Dottie Carmichael,  David Shil & Songman Kang

The highest volume of cases in the U.S. criminal system are misdemeanors, and every day, hundreds of thousands of people are detained pretrial in such low-level cases. In policy and in politics, pretrial rules have swung between a focus on protecting constitutional rights and the public safety dangers posed by releasing arrestees. The Supreme Court’s ruling in United States v. Salerno sought to promote a balance between protecting individual due process rights and public safety interests. A central constitutional and pressing policy question is what trade-off exists between pretrial liberty and reoffending. The highest profile jurisdiction to examine that question is Harris County, Texas, the third largest county in the United States, which has implemented the largest-scale and farthest reaching constitutional remedies in a misdemeanor bail system. In 2019, after years of federal litigation and a preliminary injunction finding pervasive constitutional violations, Harris County entered a Consent Decree requiring comprehensive reform. This Article describes the constitutional remedies this novel Consent Decree set out and the implementation of those remedies. This Article also addresses the central question of bail: whether pretrial release comes at a cost to public safety.

We find that the constitutional rights protections of the Consent Decree appear largely successful in that people are now promptly freed in misdemeanor cases without the requirement that they pay cash bail. More surprising, perhaps, we find that public safety has also powerfully benefited. We describe a steady decline in the numbers of both misdemeanor arrests and rearrests. Few could have predicted with any certainty what the results of this large-scale bail reform would be. The result suggests there is no necessary trade-off between constitutional rights and public safety. These findings have powerful implications for rethinking the structure and application of the Salerno balancing test and for jurisdictions considering wholesale bail reform.

By Emily Ryo, Ian Peacock, Weston Ley, and Christopher Levesque

 Whether and to what extent racial minorities experience harsher treatment or face worse outcomes in court are questions of fundamental importance for any justice system. Questions of racial inequality are especially salient in the context of removal proceedings that are triggered by immigrants’ criminal history. Many individuals in crime-based removal proceedings are immigrants of color who face a host of legal disadvantages that are tantamount to double penalties for the same crime for which they have already been punished through the criminal justice system. This Article offers, for the first time, systematic empirical analyses of crime-based removal proceedings decided between 1998 and 2023 in U.S. immigration courts. Our analyses produced three key findings. First, our results show that double penalties for immigrants in crime-based removal proceedings are large and growing. Second, there are significant racial disparities in the rate at which immigrants are released from detention and the rate at which they are ordered removed from the United States. Specifically, Hispanic immigrants with drug-related charges and Black immigrants with domestic violence or firearms charges face significantly worse outcomes than their counterparts. Third, non-white immigrants fare better when their presiding judges are of the same, rather than different, race. For white immigrants, however, they generally fare better than non-white immigrants regardless of the presiding judges’ race, and this white favoritism is more pronounced among some non-white judges than white judges. These findings have important implications for scholarship on the continuing salience of race and ethnicity in criminal and civil proceedings despite facially race-neutral laws, as well as policymaking aimed at advancing racial equality in our justice system. 

Minnesota Law Review, v. 109, 2025

By David Abrams and  Priyanka Goonetilleke

Each year, millions of Americans rely on public defenders to fulfill their Sixth Amendment right to counsel. Despite being the linchpin of the criminal justice system, public defense remains both underfunded and understudied. This article provides empirical analysis to contribute to a critical question: How should public defender systems be structured? Criminal justice advocates, scholars, and the American Bar Association strongly favor vertical representation in public defense. Under this model, a single public defender represents a defendant throughout their case, from initial appearance through sentencing. The alternative approach—horizontal representation—operates like an assembly line: Different attorneys handle each stage of a case, from preliminary hearings to pretrial conferences to trials. The preference for vertical representation stems from the intuitive belief that continuity of representation improves outcomes for defendants. However, no prior empirical work has tested this assumption. Using a natural experiment created by the Defender Association of Philadelphia’s transition from a fully horizontal representation system to a partially vertical one, we find no evidence that increasing attorney continuity improves defendant outcomes. These findings have significant implications for how public defender offices should allocate their scarce resources. While vertical representation is considered by many as the ideal, our results cast doubt on whether the additional resources and logistical challenges relative to horizontal representation are justified, given the current reality of underfunded public defense. As jurisdictions nationwide grapple with a chronic lack of resources for public defense, this article provides crucial empirical evidence to inform decisions about how best to uphold defendants’ Sixth Amendment right to counsel.

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

By Thomas James Vaughan Williams, Calli Tzani & Maria Ioannou

There has been a noticeable rise in the number of mass shootings occurring in the US over the last decade with these attacks often being committed by a lone actor. This article aims to explore this, focusing on the time suspension between when the lone actor acquires their firearm and when they commit their attack. The cases involved all occurred in the US and all perpetrators obtained their firearms legally. The results found that, on average, lone actors obtained their firearms 54 days before they committed their mass shooting. Implications, limitations and future research are discussed in detail.

Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 1–9

By Elizabeth J. Davis, and Jennifer Karberg, Brittni Lambing, Ronald Frandsen, and Joseph Durso

This report presents statistics on the number of applications for background checks for firearm transfers and permits received by the FBI and state and local checking agencies in 2021 and on the number and percentage of applications that were denied. It also describes the types of permits or checks used by each state, the number of denials issued by these agencies, and the reasons for denial. The report is the 19th in a series produced by BJS. 

Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2025. 29p.

By Rose Kim, Elizabeth Wagner, Paul Nestadt, Nandita Somayaji, Josh Horwitz, and Cassandra Crifasi

46,728 people died from gun violence in the U.S. in 2023. Each day, an average of 128 people died from gun violence—one death every 11 minutes. Disturbingly, gun suicides reached an all-time high in both the total number of deaths and the overallrate. Overall, firearms remained the leading cause of death for young people 1 to 17 for the past four years, accounting for more deaths thancar crashes, overdoses, or cancers. In 2023, there were 2,566 gun deaths among young people including 118 from ages 1–4, 116 from ages 5–9, 530 from ages 10–14, and 1,802 from ages 15–17. While firearms are the leading cause of death overall for young people ages 1 to 17, they are among the leading causes, but not always the top cause, for some individual youth age groups. Gun suicides have accounted for the majority of all gun deaths each year since 1995. Gun suicides have increased in the last three years, while gun homicides have declined. In this year’s report, we examined the rise of gun suicides, their disproportionate impact on vulnerable populations, and policy recommendations to address the gun suicide epidemic. For more information on public health interventions, please see the companion piece to this report, From Crisis to Action: Public Health Recommendations for Firearm Suicide Prevention. While the burden of gun violence in the U.S. remains high, there are evidence-based, equitable solutions to save lives. These solutions are supported by most people, including gun owners. Despite this broad support, many policymakers have been unwilling to heed the evidence and enact policies that will save lives. Each year, it is our missionto provide policymakers and the public accurate and up-to-date data on gun fatalities and illustrate the enormous toll gun violence has on our country.This report is an update to GunViolence in the United States 2022: Examining the Burden Among Children and Teens. It uses firearm mortality data listed on death certificates that are provided to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and made available through the CDC WONDER Underlying Cause of Death database.The finalized data for 2023 was made available in January 2025. The lag in data availability makes it challenging to understand the burden of gun violence in real time; however, understanding the magnitude of this issue, even with the time lag, is essential to inform public health interventions to reduce violence.   

Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions, Johns Hopkins Center for Suicide Prevention. Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.2025. 24p.

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.