By Casey Witte and Emily Mooney

  Law enforcement agencies are the gatekeepers of the criminal justice system. Charged with responding to calls for service and investigating crimes, they also exercise a great deal of authority and discretion when it comes to how individuals are held accountable for misbehavior. Depending on the alleged act, state and agency, police officers can correct wrongdoing without an arrest or any court involvement. In some cases, police officers may be authorized to give an individual a warning or citation or to refer someone to community-based programming or services. Colloquially termed “diversion” opportunities due to their movement away from the formal court process, these decisions can be life-changing, particularly when a child is accused of committing a crime. Adolescents are especially prone to partake in risky behaviors, be affected by negative peer influences and struggle to adequately account for  the consequences of their actions—all of which put them at greater risk of coming into contact with the justice system. Youth misbehavior can also be a reflection of trauma or a mislabeling of typical child actions due to overbroad criminal laws, such as those that punish youth for “disorderly conduct.” Fortunately, what we know about child development suggests children naturally age-out of crime as their cognitive functions develop, and trauma can be treated outside of the justice process. Police officers can likewise work collaboratively with other community actors to ensure overbroad laws do not result in criminal justice responses to actions better dealt with by schools and parents. After all, when people are arrested, processed and marked with a criminal record all before the age of 18, the long-term consequences can be devastating. Simply being stopped by police can have detrimental effects on a young person’s future, with some research suggesting it can amplify the young person’s likelihood of future criminal activity. After an arrest, a youth is on track to earn less income over their lifetime and be substantially less-educated than their peers. And when a youth arrest is followed by a stint of detention or incarceration, research suggests young people are even more likely to return to crime, particularly when they have had few prior interactions with the justice system. This means that when we introduce our youngest to the justice system, without full consideration of effective alternatives to hold them accountable, we are at risk of crippling their future and accelerating further societal harm. In response to this problem, states and individual law enforcement agencies have begun to establish formal youth diversion programs with set eligibility criteria. These programs allow youth to avoid being formally processed further in the justice system if they complete certain requirements, such as community service. Often, they provide resources— such as referrals to counseling or job services—aimed at meeting the needs of the youth that enter these programs and addressing the factors that led to law enforcement contact. However, there is no uniform design for diversion programs nor is there a uniform understanding of which youth should be diverted. As a result, program components and utility can vary wildly from state to state or even town to town. Such is the case in the state of Maryland. From Allegany to Worcester, law enforcement-driven diversion programs— which for the purposes of this paper are defined as programs managed by law enforcement agencies to which youth can be referred rather than having their case sent to the Department of Juvenile Services (DJS)—have started to take hold, though successful iterations with proven efficacy are still few and far between.6 In recent years, many law enforcement agencies have taken a step in the right direction by creating or forming relationships with existing youth diversion programs in their communities. In some cases, diversion programs driven by State’s Attorney’s Offices have worked to divert young people prior to a DJS referral as well. However, there are still a substantial number of jurisdictions that have no law enforcement-driven diversion programs whatsoever. Accordingly, this policy study will address the importance of police diversion, the state of law enforcement-driven diversion programs in Maryland, and ultimately recommend policies aimed at creating a statewide environment in which all Maryland youth have opportunities to be diverted by law enforcement earlier and with more efficacy. 

Washington, DC: R Street, 2021. 15p

By Emma Zürcher, Lana Eekelschot, Annalena Wolcke, Lucy Strang

Police performance measurement is a complex activity that encompasses considerations of the social, legal, institutional and political contexts in which a police force operates. The definitions and methods used need to be regularly updated and adapted to reflect the constant changes in these contexts. This study follows from a broader desire, articulated by the national police force and the Ministry for Justice and Security, to improve how police performance is measured in the Netherlands. Indeed in 2014, Tilburg University and KU Leuven conducted a study to develop a new framework for productivity measurement of the Dutch police.1 While this study provided useful insights, approaches to performance measurement adopted by police forces abroad may also offer valid examples for the Netherlands and provide opportunities for general learning. Research design The study had two main goals: 1) To gather insights into how different police jurisdictions have approached performance measurement. 2) To assess what lessons these approaches can offer for improving police performance measurement in the Netherlands. A series of research questions were developed to meet these goals (see Section 1.1.2.). These questions focused on the methods and indicators used to measure performance in a selection of ten policing jurisdictions,2 including the Netherlands; the stated purposes of the performance measurement; the reliability of the approaches; identified or potential adverse side effects of measuring performance; and examples of good or innovative practice in these areas. In addition, several research questions focused on the methods and indicators used to gain insight into the performance of the Dutch police; the aspects of policing not currently captured in this framework; the lessons that approaches to performance measurement in other jurisdictions may offer the Netherlands; and the transferability of these approaches to the Netherlands. To address these research questions, the study team conducted a targeted literature review and expert and stakeholder interviews in each of these jurisdictions, including the Netherlands. The team then selected five case study jurisdictions for more in-depth data collection and analysis: England and Wales, Israel, North Rhine-Westphalia (Germany), Seattle (United States) and Sweden. Using the resulting findings, the study team focused on extracting current practices from the case study jurisdictions that had potential to offer  starting points for improving police performance measurement in the Netherlands. These are presented in the main body of this report. For the countries not selected as case studies (Australia, Canada, Finland, New Zealand and the United States), the study team prepared high-level summaries of current approaches and highlighted several relevant practices that may be of interest to policy makers for the Dutch National Police. These are presented in Annex A. To provide focus and enhance the feasibility of the research, this study looks exclusively at how police performance measurement has been approached by stakeholders who can directly influence policing policy, such as the police force and national- and local-level government stakeholders. For each of the case study jurisdictions, the research team has analysed the practices used by the relevant police force(s) and the administrative and/or political authority under which they sit. We are confident that the findings will therefore be of particular interest to decision-makers for the Dutch National Police, including police leadership at both national and regional levels and the Ministry of Justice and Security, and provide leads for improving how police performance is currently measured.        

Cambridge, UK: RAND Europe, 2023. 182p

By Olivia  Elizabeth Vere Taylor, Richard Philpot, Oliver Fitton, Zoë Walkington, Mark Levine

Introduction: Recent high-profile cases of police misconduct have revealed that officers were often aware of misconduct, but remained silent, compromising public trust in law enforcement. Here, we systematically review ‘police whistleblowing’ literature to identify barriers and facilitators to officers challenging misconduct. Methodology: Employing PRISMA guidelines, we systematically reviewed 118 relevant papers, extracting data and coding key variables including who the ‘target’ of the research was; whether reporting practices were studied, and whether practical solutions were offered. A reflexive thematic analysis then assessed consensus among researchers within the literature. Results: Five themes - 1) knowledge and rules, 2) consequences, 3) interpersonal relations, 4) responsibility, and 5) police culture and group relations – emerged as barriers and facilitators to whistleblowing. The review revealed relatively poorer representation of internal police reporting structures and limited practical solutions, with only 40 papers proposing strategies, predominantly centred on training and education. Discussion: This review highlights methodological limitations in existing research, with an overreliance on survey methods and a dominant focus on the characteristics of individuals over the structural constraints of reporting. The positive impacts of whistleblowing on policing as an institution and the development of practical strategies to overcome officers’ reluctance to report misconduct remain largely unexplored. 

Journal of Criminal Justice, 2024, 15 pages

 By Lisel Petis

The practical application of the U.S. bail system is a complex issue that intersects with overcrowded jails, socioeconomic disparities, and public safety concerns. To better understand how these issues vary from state to state and to observe trends and areas of opportunities, we undertook a comprehensive analysis of bail reform laws across all 50 states. This analysis sheds light on the landscape of pretrial justice in the United States, outlines current trends in bail reform, and explores how states can expect bail discussions to progress moving forward. Several key areas of opportunity emerged in our analysis, including expanding immediate-release options, defining time limits for setÝng bail, using pretrial risk assessments, and encouraging the presumption of unsecured release. Some important secondary issues also emerged, including considering a defendant’s ability to pay bail, emphasizing the need for statewide pretrial services, and expanding the types of offenses that are eligible for preventive detention. Additional opportunities for improvement include integrating needs assessments and pretrial support. Collectively, these themes suggest that there is value in shifting away from the traditional cash bail system and moving toward a more equitable, efÏcient, and data-driven pretrial justice framework. Although these themes provide a guide for reform, the path to a more effective bail system will likely face challenges driven by political dynamics and evolving public sentiment. To navigate this landscape, policymakers should strive for balanced, common-sense solutions, drawing inspiration from data and successful models in other states. Achieving meaningful change in the bail system will require careful consideration, bipartisan dialogue, and a commitment to addressing the multifaceted challenges within the U.S. pretrial justice system 

Washington, DC: R Street, 2024. 71p.

By Cristina Tilley

American law and American life are asymmetrical. Law divides neatly in two: public and private. But life is lived in three distinct spaces: pure public, pure private, and hybrid middle spaces that are neither state nor home. Which body of law governs the shops, gyms, and workplaces that are formally accessible to all, but functionally hostile to Black, female, poor, and other marginalized Americans? From the liberal mid-century onward, social justice advocates have treated these spaces as fundamentally public and fully remediable via public law equity commands. This article takes a broader view. It urges a tort law revival in the campaign for just middle spaces, taking as its exemplar the problem of racially oppressive policing. Inequitable policing arises from both system-level policies and personal officer biases. Public law can remake systems, but struggles to remake people. Consequently, this piece argues that the legal quest for humane policing has overemphasized public law litigation under 42 U.S.C. Section 1983 and underemphasized the private law of tort. Personal injury law, specifically the intentional infliction of emotional distress (IIED) tort, has untapped potential to influence the private bias of officers and the communities they serve. IIED invites individuation of Black litigants, self-reflection on the meaning of racial dignity in middle spaces, and construction of shared norms about civilian humanity—a panoply of exercises social psychologists have identified as the essential tools of anti-bias work. Returning to broader themes, the article builds on the example of inequitable policing to petition for full private law partnership in the bid for twenty-first century social justice.

Brooklyn Law Review , Vol. 89, No. 2, 2024

U Iowa Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2024-08

By Christopher Wildeman

This article provides a critical overview in five stages of roughly 50 years of research on the intergenerational transmission of criminal justice contact. In the first stage, I document that research on the intergenerational transmission of crime and criminal justice contact focused primarily on crime until the mid-1990s, at which point research rapidly shifted in the direction of criminal justice contact (specifically, incarceration). In the second stage, I document that research on the intergenerational transmission of crime and the intergenerational transmission of criminal justice contact tended to use the same measures—i.e., self-reported and administrative indicators of criminal justice contact with minimal information on criminal activity—but discussed them in different ways. In the third stage, I review research on the broader effects of incarceration to highlight mechanisms through which parental criminal justice contact may independently influence children's criminal activity. In the fourth stage, I review research on the intergenerational transmission of criminal justice contact. In the final stage, I conclude by calling for new data collection efforts that provide high-quality measures of both crime and criminal justice contact of both parents and children.

Annual Review of Criminology, 2020.

By Arthur H. Garrison

This article uses five years of data, 2015–2019, from the Washington Post dataset on police use of deadly force and enhances the data with 21 situational and 8 police perceived threat measure variables to put in context the use of force and the disproportionate incidents involving Blacks compared to other races. Rather than comparing percentage race outcomes of police use of force to general population or behavior proxy measures the benchmark of situational contexts of police use of force is used to interpret race percentage distributions by race within the same context. Under this analysis, the top three situations that result in police deadly force involved 1) an assault or civilian call for help, 2) a call for domestic violence, and 3) a police officer being attacked. When viewing police shootings by situation and race percentage distribution, the data shows that police use of force is differentiated. Within the same situations Blacks were more likely to be shot and killed than Whites. Blacks were more likely to be shot by the police in a traffic stop, were more likely to shot by the police mistaking them as armed, were more likely to be shot if they are perceived to be suffering mental illness and were more likely to be shot if the police are responding to call for illegal drug activity than other races in the same situations and contexts that resulted in police use of deadly force.

Journal of Race and Policy 16(1) 2022

By Scott Peterson, Ian Lambie, Claire Cartwright

Despite dropping crime rates and prison muster, pretrial population rates in New Zealand are growing faster than in other OECD nations, risking negative impacts on defendants and communities. Fourteen defendants and 18 stakeholders were interviewed about a bail support service's strengths and weaknesses. Officer-training quality, communication between stakeholders and access to practical and cultural resources were crucial to success. Defendants reported that professional staff support and having access to services were the most helpful aspects. Changes were positive overall, but the programme's implementation, resources (especially lack of housing suitable for bail), and structure (within changing pretrial legislation) were of concern.

The Howard Journal of Crime and Justice , 21 April 2024, 21 pages

By  J.J. van Berkel A. van Uden J.H. Goes

The Dutch Computer Crime Act III (CCIII) came into effect on 1 March 2019. Among other things, this Act introduces the power of the police to carry out hacking operations. The new Sections 126nba, 126uba, 126zpa in the Code of Criminal Procedure will allow specially authorised investigating officers to covertly and remotely intrude into computer systems under certain conditions and investigate them. The police can carry out investigative actions using technical tools. In principle, a technical device must be inspected and approved by an independent inspection service (de Keuringsdienst) prior to its use, in order to guarantee the reliability, traceability and integrity of the evidence. The Justice & Security Inspectorate (hereinafter Inspectorate) supervises the implementation of the hacking power. In its first Report in 2020, it concluded that the use of technical tools for hacking powers and the inspection of these tools were not yet proceeding as intended under the legal framework. In his response to the first Inspectorate Report, the then Minister of Justice and Security indicated that he would have an investigation into the safeguards of technical tools used by foreign police authorities. The present report is the result of this research. This report also supplements the previously published evaluation of the use of the hacking power in the Netherlands, carried out by the WODC.

The central research question for this study is as follows: What safeguards govern hacking powers abroad, more specifically the use of technical tools, and how does this compare with the Dutch situation? The central research question is answered on the basis of the following subquestions: 1 What countries allow ‘authorised hacking’ and on the basis of which legal ground can foreign police services carry out hacking operations in their own country? 2 What statutory conditions apply in other countries for police services to deploy the hacking power? 3 To what extent do other countries test technical tools and what has been laid down in legislation and regulations on this? 4 To what extent are there any other rules to ensure the reliability, traceability and integrity of data obtained with the use of technical tools? 5 How does the working method abroad compare with the Dutch working method regarding the approval of technical tools and any other safeguards to achieve data reliability, integrity and traceability?    

The Hague: Netherlands Ministry of Justice,  WODC Research and Documentation Centre , 2023. 154p

By Kayla Tawa

As mental health concerns and awareness around mental health challenges have increased, policymakers have prioritized mental health policy. Within these conversations, there is a broad recognition that far too often people experiencing mental health challenges encounter the criminal legal system rather than accessing mental health supports. In response, many policymakers have championed policies that aim to divert people experiencing mental health challenges away from prisons and jails and into mental health treatment. However, some of these policies, particularly those involving forced treatment, rely on carceral tactics and replicate incarceration.

Washington, DC:  Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP). 2024, 14pg

By Charles Fain Lehman

Crime, particularly violent crime, is a pressing concern for the American people. The surge in homicide and associated violence in the past three years has made voters skittish and prompted aggressive partisan finger-pointing. This increase has not, however, prompted significant investment in our criminal justice system. Ironically, as this report argues, this increase in violent crime is itself a product of fiscal neglect of that same system over the past decade.

Across a variety of measures, in fact, the American criminal justice system needs an upgrade. Police staffing rates have been dropping since the Great Recession; prisons and jails are increasingly violent; court backlogs keep growing; essential crime data are not collected; and essential criminology research is not conducted. These shortcomings contribute not only to the recent increase in violence but to America’s long-term violence and crime problems, problems that cost us tens of thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars each year.

For too long, policymakers at all levels have failed to attend to this problem. Instead, both the political left and right have subsumed criminal justice issues into the larger culture war, fighting over the worst excesses of the police or the horrors of criminal victimization. Rather, they should look to past examples of federal policymaking in which lawmakers have used the power of the purse to dramatically improve the criminal justice system’s capacity to control crime. Doing so again could ameliorate many of the major concerns voiced by both sides in the criminal justice debate.

As such, this report proposes an ambitious, $12-billion, five-year plan to bring the criminal justice system up to date. 

New York: Manhattan Institute. 2023, 33pg

by Carla McDonald-Heffernan and Carmen Robin-D’Cruz

  Children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) are hugely over-represented at all points in the criminal justice system. Evidence suggests that 70–90% of children in the justice system have some form of SEND. Yet the lack of support for their communication needs may make these children’s experiences particularly difficult and the impact of educational disruptions as a result of justice system involvement can be particularly severe. Youth diversion offers many children a pathway out of the criminal justice system. In this informal non-statutory approach, children are offered the chance to partake in a community-based intervention rather than receiving a formal out-of-court disposal or prosecution. Evidence strongly suggests that youth diversion benefits children by reducing their likelihood of coming back into the justice system or getting further entrenched into it. Youth diversion might be particularly beneficial to children with SEND. However, given the range of communication barriers that children with SEND face in navigating the system, they may be less likely to receive diversion, particularly where communication difficulties are misconstrued as behavioural issues. Unequal access to diversion may create further disparity later on in the youth justice system. As part of the Centre for Justice Innovation’s ongoing interest in supporting effective use diversion, this report aims to understand how diversion is working for children with SEND. In order to research this report, we interviewed children with SEND who had received diversion as well as a range of professionals including youth justice service (YJS) practitioners, police officers and solicitors. We also conducted a survey of YJS practitioners. We are conscious that ‘SEND’ is a deficits-focused category that has been criticised for responsibilising children rather than highlighting the system that underserves them, as well as being an all-encompassing label that does not adequately account for differences within it. We have nevertheless chosen to frame our research around ‘SEND’ rather than using other overlapping categories such as ‘neurodivergent’ or ‘additional learning needs’ firstly because this project was in part driven by our response to the Government’s Green Paper, ‘SEND Review: Right support, Right place, Right time’. The fact that SEND is still the prevailing term used in the education sector, by the youth justice service and in joint decision-making panels for youth diversion specifically was also a key consideration.

London: Centre for Justice Innovation, 2024. 39p. 

By Christopher Dowling

Police in Australia are seeing increased reporting of family, domestic and sexual violence, while facing greater pressure to secure positive outcomes for victims. Improvements in the training police receive in responding to this violence have been identified as critical to broader efforts to reduce it. This study reviews published Australian and international research on police training in responding to family, domestic and sexual violence.

The last few decades have seen a significantly expanded focus on family, domestic and sexual violence as part of police training. This, along with several notable training innovations, have underpinned a shift in police training needs from more basic concerns around correct procedure and knowledge of the law, to more advanced concerns including recognising and investigating coercive control and identifying primary aggressors. Overall, police are receptive and responsive to training, but certain types of training, particularly those with strong practical and problem-solving components, hold more promise.

Trends & issues in crime and criminal justice no. 689. 

Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology. 2024. 25p.

by Joe Russo, Samuel Peterson, Michael J. D. Vermeer, Dulani Woods, Brian A. Jackson

The Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) is responsible for the custody and care of approximately 159,000 individuals. This responsibility includes safe and secure housing in correctional facilities located across the United States. Equally important is its responsibility to provide programming and support to help ensure that individuals released from federal custody are able to successfully transition from prison to the community and refrain from criminal activity. This transition can be challenging, and, for a variety of reasons, many returning citizens ultimately reengage with the criminal justice system at some point.

Gainful employment has been recognized as a key factor in efforts to reduce recidivism. However, returning citizens who were incarcerated in federal prisons, particularly individuals with limited work histories or who have been out of the labor market for several years, face significant and well-documented barriers to employment. Preparing returning citizens for employment and supporting them through the reentry and employment processes can improve reentry outcomes and strengthen communities.

To explore challenges and opportunities associated with improving employment outcomes among BOP releasees, the National Institute of Justice — supported by the RAND Corporation, in partnership with the University of Denver — hosted a virtual workshop of BOP staff, community-based reentry service providers, researchers, national employers, and other experts. This report summarizes discussion points from the workshop and presents a wide-ranging set of needs identified by workshop participants.

Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2023. 36p.

By Sara Heller

Because successful human capital interventions often fail to scale or replicate, public investment decisions require understanding how program size, context, and implementation shape program effects. This paper uses two new randomized controlled trials of summer youth employment programs in Chicago and Philadelphia to demonstrate how multiple experiments can help explain replicability and inform the expansion of promising approaches. Even when these programs grow or change models across contexts, participation consistently reduces criminal justice involvement. It may also decrease the need for child protective services and behavioral health treatment. Experimental variation in program model and local provider generates no detectable heterogeneity, suggesting that effects replicate partly because variability in implementation does not matter. There is, however, individual-level heterogeneity that explains differences in effect magnitudes across populations and informs optimal targeting; youth at higher risk of socially costly outcomes experience larger benefits. Identifying more interventions that combine this pattern of treatment heterogeneity with robust replicability could aid efforts to reduce social inequality efficiently.

NBER WORKING PAPER 28705

Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), 2021. 47p.

By Alex Albright, Jeremy A. Cook, James J. Feigenbaum, Laura Kincaide, Jason Long, and Nathan Nunn

  The 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre resulted in the looting, burning, and leveling of 35 square blocks of a once-thriving Black neighborhood. Not only did this lead to severe economic loss, but the massacre also sent a warning to Black individuals across the country that similar events were possible in their communities. We examine the economic consequences of the massacre for Black populations in Tulsa and across the United States. We find that for the Black population of Tulsa, in the two decades that followed, the massacre led to declines in home ownership and occupational status. Outside of Tulsa, we find that the massacre also reduced home ownership. These effects were strongest in communities that were more exposed to newspaper coverage of the massacre or communities that, like Tulsa, had high levels of racial segregation. Examining effects after 1940, we find that the direct negative effects of the massacre on the home ownership of Black Tulsans, as well as the spillover effects working through newspaper coverage, persist and actually widen in the second half of the 20th Century.

  NBER Working Paper No. 28985  

Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), 2021. 64p.

By Amelia Stewart, Polly Mackenzie, Alice Dawson

In 2019 the Home Office announced a national campaign to hire 20,000 new police officers to keep our streets safe. 

Move on Upstream has reflected on the state of crime and policing in the UK and argues that such a recruitment drive will do little to tackle Britain’s real crime problems. Specifically, it will do almost nothing to address the fact that, per ONS figures, the majority of crimes in England and Wales are not reported to the police, and only 7% of the crimes that the police record result in a charge or summons.

The report proposes a new approach, one which focuses on prevention in order to reduce crime to levels current police numbers can reasonably deal with. This includes a new, local authority-based crime prevention service to help identify and deter criminal behaviour.

London: Demos, 2022. 32p.

By Jaime Arellano-Bover, Marco De Simoni, Luigi Guiso, Rocco Macchiavello, Domenico J. Marchetti, Mounu Prem

Infiltration of the legal economy by criminal organizations (OCGs) is potentially significant, though how pervasive remains uncertain. Beyond the volume, the motives driving infiltration are of serious policy concern. We introduce a conceptual framework to differentiate between OCGs’ motives for infiltrating legal firms and validate it using new data from the Italian Financial Intelligence Unit. About 2% of Italian firms appear to have links with OCGs, with three primary motives. Firms established by OCGs are predominantly used for criminal activities (functional motive). Medium-sized firms, often infiltrated post-creation, primarily reflect a competitive motive, wherein criminal activities benefit the firm. Lastly, large, well-established firms remain separate from criminal activities and are used for pecuniary and non-pecuniary returns, such as to establish political connections (pure motive). This so far unnoticed motive accounts for a substantial share of OCGs’ infiltration.

CESifo Working Paper No. 11043
CESifo, Munich, 2024

By Daniel Auer, Michaela Slotwinski, Achim Ahrens, Dominik Hangartner, Selina Kurer, Stefanie Kurt, Alois Stutzer

Despite intense policy debates, the relationship between social welfare and refugee crime remains understudied. Taking steps to address this gap, our study focuses on Switzerland, where mobility restrictions on exogenously assigned refugees coincide with cantons’ autonomy in setting social assistance rates. Linking time-varying cantonal benefit rates between 2009 and 2016 to individual-level administrative data, we find that higher social assistance reduces criminal charges, especially for petty crimes and drug offenses. In light of limited (short-run) repercussions for refugees’ labor market participation, our results suggest social assistance can be a cost-effective measure to improve refugee welfare and enhance public safety.

CESifo Working Paper No. 11051 CESifo, Munich, 2024. 

By Yuni Tang, Brenna Kirk, Folawiyo Olanrewaju, Christiaan G. Abildso, Erin L. Winstanley, Christa L. Lilly, Toni M. Rudisill

  Background: A systematic review of the literature was performed to summarize cannabis use among adolescents and young adults during the COVID-19 pandemic. Special focus was given to the prevalence of cannabis use during COVID-19, as well as factors that may explain changes in cannabis consumption patterns. Methods: The protocol of this systematic review was registered. Articles from seven publication databases were searched in January 2022. The inclusion criteria for studies were as follows: 1) published in English; 2) study instruments needed to include items on COVID-19; 3) conducted after January 1st, 2020; 4) published in a peer-reviewed journal, dissertation, or thesis; 5) study population ≤25 years of age; 6) study designs were  limited to observational analytical studies; 7) measured cannabis use. This review excluded other reviews, editorials, and conference abstracts that were not available as full text manuscripts. Independent review, risk of bias assessment, and data abstraction were performed by two authors. Results: Fifteen articles from the United States (n=11) and Canada (n=4) were included in this review. The findings of this review showed that the prevalence of cannabis use during the pandemic among adolescents and young adults were mixed. Some mental health symptoms, including depression and anxiety, were identified as the most commonly reported reasons for increased cannabis use during the pandemic. Conclusions: This review highlights the inconsistencies in the prevalence of cannabis use among adolescents and young adults during the pandemic. Therapeutic interventions for mental health and continued public health surveillance should be conducted to understand the long-term effects of cannabis use among adolescents and young adults.   

Drug and Alcohol Dependence Reports, (2024)