By Suzanne M. Strong, and Mark Motivans

This report provides statistics on the number of RICO investigations concluded and persons investigated by U.S. attorneys from fiscal year (FY) 2012 to FY 2022. It also presents statistics from FY 2018 to FY 2022 on investigations concluded by U.S. attorneys with multiple persons investigated; persons prosecuted, adjudicated, and sentenced with a RICO violation as the most serious offense; persons convicted with a RICO violation as the most serious offense or as a secondary offense; and conviction rates by state or territory.

Washington, DC:  U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2024.11p.

By Hannabeth Franchino-Olsen  , Brittney Chesworth 

This document review investigated policies that govern Batterer Intervention Programs (BIPs) across the United States. The document review systematically analyzed current state practice standards (n = 46) across the United States that guide BIPs. Data collection and abstraction took place between June of 2019 and January of 2020. Descriptive statistics were calculated for standard development and revision processes, BIP oversight, and requirements for program structure and curriculum. This review revealed key findings about standard requirements, including: (a) most do not cite research as having informed their development; (b) most have been revised in the past decade; (c) state agencies involved in BIP oversight are typically social or health agencies or a judicial board; (d) most require BIPs to provide intakes, group education, gender-exclusive groups, two facilitators and to cover a variety of topics; (e) most do not require individualized treatment or program evaluation. Additional findings around program structure, intake and assessment, and curriculum and intervention requirements are explored. Collectively, standards not changed much in the last decade and often standards do not reflect the latest research on IPV perpetration. Multidisciplinary teams, including researchers familiar with the IPV literature, should work collaboratively to revise standards based on best practices.  

Aggression and Violent Behavior Volume 77, July–August 2024, 101941

By Minnesota Senate,  Joint Transportation and Judiciary and Public Safety Committee Minnesota Senate

After George Floyd’s death, Minnesota experienced an unprecedented series of riots (primarily in the Twin Cities area) that included arson, vandalism, looting, homicides, and assaults. As these riots grew, local law enforcement and law enforcement from around the state were so completely over whelmed it was necessary to activate the entire contingent of the Minnesota National Guard in order to restore law and order. Activation of the full Minnesota National Guard had not occurred since World War II. Lives were lost,  over 1,500 businesses and buildings were burned, approximately $500 million in property damage occurred, and community morale was deeply affected. As a result of these events, the Minnesota Senate convened several joint committee hearings consisting of members from the Transportation Finance and Policy Committee and the Judiciary and Public Safety Finance and Policy and Finance Committee (the Joint Committee). The Joint Committee’s purpose was to compile the facts, reach conclusions regarding the efficiency of state and local governments’ responses, and make recommendations to prevent similar catastrophes in the future. As the hearings progressed and the facts were examined, a theme emerged highlighting the response of both the state and local governments and their respective elected officials. The main themes that led the Joint Committee to the conclusions and recommendations found in this report were: 1. Failure to Lead: Executive leadership at the state and local level failed to distinguish between demonstrators and rioters. Furthermore, leaders failed to provide the guidance Minnesotans expect from their offices. 2. Philosophical Conflict Caused a Hesitation to Confront Ideological Allies: Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and elected local leaders identified with the causes promoted by the demonstrators, causing them to lose sight of their responsibility to protect the public from criminal acts committed during the riots. 3. Underestimation of the Escalation and Organization of the Riots: Governor Walz did not realize the severity of events as they unfolded, resulting in a delayed reaction and increased violence. 4. Refusal to Confront Criminal Violence with Force: Governor Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey initially chose to negotiate with and appease the rioters rather than give law enforcement the authority to confront criminal acts with enough force to restore law and order. A primary responsibility of the Office of the Governor of the State of Minnesota and local elected officials is to protect the public. Inaction on the part of state and local officials led to an increase in violence.  This summary is based on evidence presented to the Joint Committee and throughout this report. The Joint Committee’s conclusions and recommendations contained in this report are supported by over 350 fact citations from hearings, press conferences, news articles, data practice requests, and written testimony.  

St. Paul: Joint Transportation and Judiciary and Public Safety Committee Minnesota Senate, 2020. 61p.

May Contain Markup

By Raymond T. Nimmer

Problem Identification: The document highlights the extensive issue of arrests for public drunkenness and vagrancy, which disproportionately affect skid row men and strain the criminal justice system.

Current Approaches: It discusses the effectiveness of current criminal justice approaches in addressing the needs of skid row men,often leading to a "revolving door" of arrests without meaningful intervention.

Alternative Solutions: The document explores alternative programs in cities like St. Louis and Washington, D.C., focusing on detoxification and social services rather than criminalization.

Research and Analysis: It provides a comparative analysis of traditional criminal justice systems and alternative programs,emphasizing the need for policy changes to improve outcomes for skidrow men.

Chicago American Bar Foundation , 1971, 202 pages

By  Leslie M. Barnard, Megan McCarthy, Christopher E. Knoepke, Sabrina Kaplan, James Engeln and Marian E. Betz,

Background: Extreme Risk Protection Orders (ERPOs) are a relatively new type of law that is being considered or implemented in many states in the United States. Colorado’s law went into effect on January 1, 2020, after significant controversy and concern over the potential misuse of the law to confiscate weapons; many (n = 37 of 64) counties declared themselves “2nd Amendment (2A) sanctuaries” and said they would not enforce the law. Here, we reviewed the patterns of use of the law during its first year. Methods: We obtained all court records for ERPO petitions filed between January 1 and December 31, 2020. Data elements were abstracted by trained staff using a standardized guide. We calculated the proportion of petitions that were approved or denied/dismissed, identified cases of obvious misuse, and examined patterns by 2A county status. Finding and results: In 2020, 109 ERPO petitions were filed in Colorado; of these, 61 were granted for a temporary ERPO and 49 for a full (year-long) ERPO. Most petitions filed by law enforcement officers were granted (85%), compared to only 15% of petitions filed by family or household members. Of the 37 2A sanctuary counties, 24% had at least one petition filed, versus 48% of non-2A sanctuary counties. Across the 2A counties, there were 1.52 ERPOs filed per 100,000 population, compared to 2.05 ERPOs filed per 100,000 in non-2A counties. There were 4 cases of obvious law misuse; none of those petitions resulted in an ERPO or firearm confiscation. Conclusion: State-level studies suggest ERPOs may prevent firearm injuries. Robust implementation, however, is critical for maximal effect. Understanding ERPO experiences and challenges can inform policy creation and action in other states, including identifying how best to address concerns and facilitate evaluation.

Inj. Epidemiol. 2021 8(59)     

By The Bureau of Justice Assistance and Office of Community-Oriented Policing Services

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, a tightening labor market, heightened community frustration with the policing profession, and concerns about officer safety and well-being, law enforcement agencies across the country face a historic crisis in recruiting and retaining qualified candidates. SocAs agencies continue to seek innovative ways to attract qualified potential candidates and retain current staff, the crisis demands an immediate and effective response to ensure that law enforcement agencies can maintain staffing levels sufficient to support their communities’ public safety needs. Addressing these issues may necessitate the reexamination of agencies’ foundational organizational structure and processes to more clearly and easily meet the needs and expectations of both law enforcement and the community. In response to this situation and recognizing that the way law enforcement professionals are recruited and retained has a major impact on violent crime reduction, overall public safety, and community trust—Attorney General Merrick Garland identified law enforcement recruitment and retention as a U.S. Department of Justice priority and directed the Office of Justice Programs’ Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) and the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS Office) to hold a convening. On April 18, 2023, a group of more than 30 law enforcement and community leaders from across the country met in Washington, D.C., to discuss existing best practices and emerging and transformative solutions designed to address current staffing challenges. In addition to command staff and other law enforcement leaders from key stakeholder associations, other new vocal and innovative leaders were in attendance to assist in designing a national solution. As Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta noted in her opening remarks, the issues of recruitment and retention are among the most important faced by federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial law enforcement agencies across the nation, regardless of size or location. The agenda was driven by information obtained from the participants during brief interviews conducted before the event and designed to promote meaningful, actionable discussion. This publication represents the outcomes of the convening, focusing on both short-term strategies and long-term solutions identified by participants, who shared examples of streamlining and modernizing the hiring process, incorporating technology, updating requirements, and increasing accessibility; discussed marketing strategies designed to attract service-oriented candidates; examined existing and potentially new benefits and incentives, including a focus on employee wellness and mental well-being, to entice current employees to stay; and addressed the need for transparency and accountability throughout the hiring and employment process to promote public confidence. While there is no one-size-fits-all solution for the law enforcement recruitment and retention challenges, agencies are encouraged to consider adopting strategies contained herein as they pertain to their situations.                                                                                                                                                               

Washington DC:  Bureau of Justice Assistance and Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, 2023. 60p.

By Matteo Tiratelli

This paper assembles the largest set of British survey questions about criminal justice to date (1,190 question-year pairs) and uses it to measure crime concern, punitiveness, support for the death penalty, and the prioritization of crime as a social issue from the 1960s to today. Results lend some support to existing narratives of public opinion, showing that concern and prioritization grew steadily through the 1970s before declining from the mid-2000s, and that support for the death penalty has been falling since at least the 1960s. But they contradict orthodox accounts of the 1980s as a period of rising punitiveness, showing instead that support for tougher policing and sentencing was highly volatile and subject to significant demographic variation until the late 1990s. I also show that crime concern is particularly responsive to the true rate of crime and propose a model for the interaction between these different strands of public opinion.  

The British Journal of Criminology, azae058, https://doi.org/10.1093/bjc/azae058, Published: 13 August 2024

By Phoebe Donnelly, Dyan Mazurana, and Evyn Papworth

Peacekeeping missions. In reality, however, many women (and some men) deployed as military or police peacekeepers are subjected to sexual abuse by other members of the organizations they serve. Until now, there has been little research specifically focused on this sexual abuse by uniformed peacekeepers against their peacekeeping colleagues. This paper helps fill that gap, drawing on a survey of peacekeepers as well as data from interviews and a closed-door workshop. T his research reveals that sexual abuse is a major threat to uniformed peacekeepers, especially women. Among all survey participants, approximately one in ten said they experienced sexual abuse while serving in a peacekeeping mission, while a similar proportion witnessed sexual abuse against another peacekeeper. The proportion was significantly higher for women (28 percent experienced and 26 percent witnessed) than for men (2 percent experienced and 4 percent witnessed). A large share of the incidents of abuse were perpetrated by higher-ranking men within the mission. The main factor enabling this abuse was the internal organizational cultures of the police and military forces of troop- and police-contributing countries (T/PCCs). Despite the prevalence of sexual abuse within peacekeeping missions, the UN and T/PCCs have not put in place adequate policies to effectively respond to the issue. This lack of attention is in contrast to the relatively robust architecture for reporting on and investigating sexual exploitation and abuse of host communities. Policies and attention to the sexual abuse of peacekeepers and sexual exploitation and abuse of host communities have been artificially separated, but these forms of abuse are fueled by similar dynamics of militarism and inequality. The responsibility for addressing sexual abuse within peacekeeping operations lies both with T/PCCs and with the UN, which should require the highest standards for behavior within peacekeeping missions. Existing systems for addressing sexual exploitation and abuse of host communities are generally not designed for or used to address sexual abuse of peacekeepers. As a result, peacekeepers have little confidence in mechanisms for reporting sexual abuse that they experience or witness against their colleagues. Moreover, when incidents are reported, the prevailing sentiment is that perpetrators are not held accountable due to a culture of impunity within peacekeeping missions. Because current systems are insufficient and ineffective, women peacekeepers often have to protect themselves and respond to sexual abuse on their own. If the UN and T/PCCs do not prevent and respond to sexual abuse and dismantle the patriarchal cultures that enable it, their initiatives to increase women’s meaningful participation in peacekeeping operations will fail. The UN needs to take the sexual abuse of peacekeepers as seriously as it takes peacekeepers’ sexual exploitation and abuse of host communities, especially considering the interconnected systemic causes of both types of abuse. Toward this end, the UN and T/PCCs could consider the following recommendations: 1. Transform the organizational cultures that enable sexual abuse of peacekeepers: Because they have a particularly important role to play in changing the organizational culture, mission leaders should be evaluated, in part, based on whether they create and maintain a diverse, tolerant, inclusive, safe, secure, and respectful workplace. 2. Mandate robust training to prevent sexual abuse of peacekeepers: The UN should ensure that all peacekeepers receive thorough training specifically focused on all forms of sexual abuse within militarized organizations. 3. Require T/PCCs to address sexual abuse of peacekeepers within their contingents: Among other steps, the UN should update memoranda of understanding with T/PCCs to include explicit language on preventing and addressing the sexual abuse of peacekeepers. 4. Create a robust, confidential, and victim-centric reporting and investigation infrastructure: The UN should build the capacity of existing mechanisms for addressing sexual abuse of host communities to also address sexual abuse of peacekeepers. This system must be outside of the peacekeeping mission and T/PCCs’ chain of command.

New York: International Peace Institute 2022. 34p.

By Insa Lee Koch

Liberal democracy appears in crisis. From the rise of ‘law and order’ and ever tougher forms of means-testing under ‘austerity politics’ to the outcome of Britain’s referendum on leaving the EU, commentators have argued over why democracy has taken an illiberal turn. This book shifts the focus from the ‘why’ to the ‘how’ and the ‘what’: to how citizens experience government in the first place and what democracy means to them. Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork, it takes these questions to Britain's socially abandoned council estates, once built by local authorities to house the working classes. From the perspective of these citizens, punitive shifts in welfare, housing, and policing are part of a much longer history of classed state control that has acted on their homes and neighborhoods. But this is only half of the story. Citizens also pursue their understandings of grassroots politics and care that at times align with, but at others diverge from official policies. The anthropology of state-citizen relations challenges narratives of exceptionalism that have portrayed the people as a threat to the democratic order. It also reveals the murky, sometimes contradictory desires for a personalized state that cannot easily be collapsed with popular support for authoritarian interventions. Above all, this book exposes the liberal state’s disavowal of its political and moral responsibilities at a time when mechanisms for voicing working-class citizens’ demands have been silenced.

Oxford, UK; New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. 289p.

By Michael Johnson, Jr.

The use of criminal legal fines and fees to fill state and local budgetary gaps has deep roots in a history of anti-Black racism. That history is evident in Washington, DC where the regressive nature of these financial obligations and the high costs of incarceration criminalize, extract wealth, and create collateral consequences that disproportionately impact Black and low-income communities. This report details the harms of fines and fees in DC’s criminal legal system, particularly for those unable to pay, and the perverse incentives created by using fines and fees to fund core government services. The authors use interviews with four formerly incarcerated DC residents to highlight the need for systemic reforms and provide recommendations to mitigate these harms in DC.

Key Findings:

• In federal BOP facilities, people who do not make payments towards their fines lose privileges such as access to commissary spending, denial of higher pay opportunities for work assignments, and denial of drug treatment and community-based programs.

• D.C residents can be incarcerated for up to a year for unpaid court financial obligations.

• The DOC and BOP require anyone with outstanding financial obligations to pay their debt in full as a condition of release, and failure to do so can result in re-incarceration.

• Revenue from Mayor Bowser’s addition of 342 traffic cameras in 2023 is expected to double between fiscal years 2024 and 2025.

• Criminal fines range from $100 for minor offenses to $125,000 for offenses punishable by 30 years or more.

• Workers in local DOC facilities earn up to $.50 per hour; a 15-minute phone call is more than double the hourly earnings for someone incarcerated in local DOC facilities.

• DOC charges a 9 percent surcharge on all commissary goods — on average, generating over $2 million annually between 2018 and 2023. 

• The work release program in DC requires incarcerated workers to pay fees on their wages, effectively functioning as a 20 percent income tax.

Recommendations:

• Improve transparency by investing in data systems that can collect, coordinate, and report on criminal fines and fees.

• Eliminate incarceration and supervision-related fees.

• Provide economic support for those with criminal legal involvement and their families.

Washington, DC: The DC Fiscal Policy Institute, 2024. 33p.

By Wilmington City Council

Lower-income residents in Wilmington face financial hardship as the costs and fees from the city rise. In 2022, the Wilmington City Council created the Fines and Fees Task Force to review fees, fines, and administrative sanctions imposed by all departments and recommend reforms for fairness. The task force found that generating revenue from fees and fines is inefficient and that the city’s financial department expenses, which process tickets, have increased by nearly $7 million over the past 20 years. Additionally, water bill fees have risen significantly, with Wilmington residents covering costs for a neighboring county and the city increasingly using the Water/Sewer Fund to pay for general expenses. With 1 in 4 Wilmington households earning less than $25,000 annually, the city’s reliance on fines and fees disproportionately impacts those least able to pay. The task force recommends revising the city budget to better align revenue sources with the ability to pay.

Key Findings:

• Most cities, like Wilmington, generate less than 1 percent of their general revenue from fines; in 2022, Wilmington generated 4.4 percent.

• Wilmington’s revenue from fines and forfeitures rose from 2.8 percent in 2004 to 4.4 percent in 2022.

• From 2018 to 2022, Wilmington issued over 450,000 parking and red light tickets.

• From 2018 to 2022, Wilmington issued about $42 million in parking and red-light tickets; nearly 25 percent went uncollected, 50 percent was paid to Conduent for managing the red-light program, and 20 percent went to the parking division.

• Conduent receives a 30 percent commission on all revenue from booting.

• In 2022, the city’s Water/Sewer Fund spending on other departments increased by 43 percent, paying $7.5 million in city expenses. 

• Almost 30 percent of residential water/sewer customers are delinquent on their water bills.

Recommendations:

• Stop harmful collection practices such as ending the practice of towing and booting cars for delinquent payments and adding penalties to people who can’t pay because of limited income. 

• Revise vendor contracts to reduce harm and reduce costs.

• Adjust fees to cover only the costs of providing the service.

Wilmington DE: Wilmington City Council, 2024. 19p.

By  Aravind Boddupalli, Susan Nembhard, Michael Karpman, and Sarah Morriss

Fines and fees can impose heavy burdens on those who come into contact with the criminal legal system. Using nationally representative data from the Urban Institute’s 2023 Well-Being and Basic Needs Survey, we examined the prevalence of fines and fees among nonelderly adults’ households, including the types of violations resulting in fines and fees, the populations impacted, and the consequences of these costs. About one in six adults incurred fines and fees in 2023, largely from traffic or parking tickets. Court or incarceration-related fines and fees disproportionately affected people of color and those with low incomes. Compared with adults who only incurred costs from traffic or parking tickets, those with court or incarceration-related fines and fees faced higher amounts charged, greater financial strain to make payments, and a higher likelihood of adverse consequences for being unable to pay, such as driver’s license suspensions, additional fees, or time in jail. They also faced higher rates of food insecurity and other material hardships. Our findings contribute to the growing evidence base on the impacts of fines and fees on family well-being.\

Washington, DC: Tax Policy Center, 2024. 23p.

By Thomas Sloan, Molly Pickard, Johanna Lacoe, Mia Bird and Steven Raphael

Since March 2020, Los Angeles County has experienced several distinct shifts in bail policy, shaping how people experience the pretrial process and igniting a dialogue about bail reform, equity, and safety. During the COVID-19 pandemic, LA County implemented an emergency bail schedule for most misdemeanors and low-level felonies (sometimes referred to as “zero bail”). In July 2022, LA County returned to the normal bail schedule, where a person who is arrested could pay the amount specified by the bail schedule and immediately be released from custody before their first court date. In May 2023, a successful court challenge to bail practice caused the Los Angeles Police and Sheriff's Departments to return to the emergency bail schedule. This was followed shortly thereafter by the countywide implementation of a new, more permanent approach to pretrial release decisions — the Pre-Arraignment Release Protocols (PARPs) — in October 2023. Under the PARPs, no monetary bail is set for people arrested for certain lower-level offenses, and for some offenses judges are able to consider additional information when making a release decision, such as criminal history, previous failures to appear for court, and risk assessment recommendations.

KEY FINDINGS We leverage these three distinct policy shifts to estimate the short-run effects of bail policy changes on jail populations, crime reports, and arrests. We find:

• Removing the emergency bail schedule and reverting back to cash bail increased average daily jail populations with no short term effect on citywide crime. The retraction of the emergency bail schedule in July 2022 resulted in a statistically significant increase in the average daily jail population over the following two months, and no change in arrests or crime reports.

• Reinstating the emergency bail schedule did not change the average county daily jail population or total citywide crime in the following two months, but some property crimes increased. The resumption of the emergency bail schedule in May 2023 did not cause the average daily jail population to vary from its pre-period decline, but did cause a decline in pretrial jail population beyond the pre-period trend. At the same time, there was no statistically significant change in total crime reports or arrests, but reports of property crime increased relative to the pre-period trend.

• The PARPs decreased daily overall and pretrial county jail populations in the two months after implementation, with no effect on citywide crime. The daily pretrial jail population decreased by over 200 people (or three percent) on average relative to the pre-period trend following the implementation of the PARPs. Despite the decrease in people held in jail, there was no change in any measure of reported crime during the same period. Arrests for misdemeanor offenses declined, while overall arrest trends did not change. Despite concerns that these bail reforms would lead to increases in crime, we do not observe consistent changes in total crime in the City of Los Angeles for the two months following these bail policy shifts. In addition, a return to the standard bail schedule increased daily jail populations but did not reduce crime. Early evidence from the PARPs suggests that the approach can reduce jail populations while maintaining public safety, particularly during the pretrial period.

Los Angeles: California Policy Lab, Committee on Revision of the Penal Code 2024. 51p.

By Justin Murray

The American prosecutor’s legitimacy faces unprecedented challenges. A new wave of reformist prosecutors has risen to power promising to transform the criminal justice system from within, sparking fierce backlash from defenders of the prosecutorial status quo. Central to this conflict is a debate over the nature of prosecutorial discretion, influenced by a set of claims and assumptions that this Article terms the myth of individualized enforcement. This myth posits that prosecutors base discretionary decisions on case-specific facts and equitable circumstances rather than generalizable criteria or categorical nonenforcement practices, such as the policies some reformist prosecutors have adopted that disfavor prosecuting marijuana possession or abortion offenses or seeking the death penalty.

This Article is the first to identify and critically examine the myth of individualized enforcement. It draws on a review of historical evidence and research on contemporary prosecutorial practices to show that prosecutors have long engaged in categorical nonenforcement in relation to vice laws, property offenses, and even certain areas of violent crime enforcement. By situating reformist prosecutors’ policies within this broader context, the Article exposes how the myth of individualized enforcement has been weaponized to delegitimize reform efforts while shielding conventional prosecutors from scrutiny.

The Article also excavates the deeper distinctions between reformist and conventional approaches to categorical nonenforcement that the myth of individualized enforcement serves to hide from view. Reformist prosecutors tend to adopt centralized, formal, and transparent nonenforcement policies that aim to redistribute the benefits of prosecutorial leniency to historically marginalized groups. Conventional prosecutors, in contrast, have often dispensed categorical leniency in an informal, covert manner and in contexts that tend to reproduce existing hierarchies of race, class, and gender. By surfacing these divergences, the Article aims to reorient academic and political discourse about prosecutorial reform toward the more constructive end of evaluating different visions of discretionary justice and the institutional structures that will best align prosecutorial power with democratic values.

WASH. U. L. REV. — (forthcoming 2025)

By Dubber, Markus Dirk

In The Sense of Justice, distinguished legal author Markus Dirk Dubber undertakes a critical analysis of the “sense of justice”: an overused, yet curiously understudied, concept in modern legal and political discourse. Courts cite it, scholars measure it, presidential candidates prize it, eulogists praise it, criminals lack it, and commentators bemoan its loss in times of war. But what is it? Often, the sense of justice is dismissed as little more than an emotional impulse that is out of place in a criminal justice system based on abstract legal and political norms equally applied to all. Dubber argues against simple categorization of the sense of justice. Drawing on recent work in moral philosophy, political theory, and linguistics, Dubber defines the sense of justice in terms of empathy—the emotional capacity that makes law possible by giving us vicarious access to the experiences of others. From there, he explores the way it is invoked, considered, and used in the American criminal justice system. He argues that this sense is more than an irrational emotional impulse but a valuable legal tool that should be properly used and understood.

New York: NYU Press, 2006.

By Caldwell, Ryan Ashley

Fallgirls provides an analysis of the abuses that took place at Abu Ghraib in terms of social theory, gender, and power, based on first-hand participant observations of the courts-martial of Lynndie England and Sabrina Harman. This book examines the trials themselves, including interactions with soldiers and defense teams, documents pertaining to the courts-martial, US government reports, and photographs from Abu Ghraib, in order to challenge the view that the abuses were carried out at the hands of a few rogue soldiers. With a keen focus on gender and sexuality as prominent aspects of the abuses themselves, as well as the ways in which they were portrayed and tried, Fallgirls engages with modern feminist thought and contemporary social theory in order to analyze the manner in which the abuses were framed, whilst also exploring the various lived realities of Abu Ghraib by both prisoners and soldiers alike.

Burlington, VT: Ashgate,  2012. 

Edited by Waszkiewicz, Paweł 

This book explores the role of social media in the daily practice of Polish criminal justice and how social media is, in turn, reshaping this practice. Based on empirical research, it confronts common beliefs about how police officers, prosecutors, and judges use social media in their work. Readers will find answers to the following questions: Which social media platforms are popular among law enforcement officers in Poland? How do the police use social media to investigate and prosecute crimes? What are the strategies for using social media to communicate with the community? What strategies are most successful? The findings in this book challenge some popular beliefs and theories about social media in criminal justice. As the first book to explore the use of social media in criminal justice outside of English-speaking countries, this collection of academic research will be of interest to academics focusing on criminology, criminal justice, and policing and will be useful to police leaders and officers, police social media administrators, prosecutors, and judges, who may be inspired by the research to implement new successful and more effective practices.

Abingdon, Oxon, UK: New York: Routledge, 2024.

By Lawrence E. Diver

Laurence Diver combines insight from legal theory, philosophy of technology, and programming practice to develop a new theoretical and practical approach to the design of legitimate software. The book critically engages with the rule(s) of code, arguing that, like laws, these should exhibit certain formal characteristics if they are to be acceptable in a democracy. The resulting jurisprudential affordances translate ideas of legitimacy from legal philosophy into the world of code design, to be realized through the ‘constitutional’ role played by programming languages, integrated development environments (IDEs), and agile development practice. The text interweaves theory and practice throughout, including many insights into real-world technologies, as well as case studies on blockchain applications and the Internet of Things (IoT). Whenever you use a smartphone, website, or IoT device, your behavior is determined to a great extent by a designer. Their software code defines from the outset what is possible, with very little scope to interpret the meaning of those ‘rules’ or to contest them. How can this kind of control be acceptable in a democracy? If we expect legislators to respect values of legitimacy when they create the legal rules that govern our lives, shouldn’t we expect the same from the designers whose code has a much more direct rule over us?

Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2021. 

By: Temple, Kathryn D.

A history of legal emotions in William Blackstone’s England and their relationship to justice William Blackstone’s masterpiece, Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765–1769), famously took the “ungodly jumble” of English law and transformed it into an elegant and easily transportable four-volume summary. Soon after publication, the work became an international monument not only to English law, but to universal English concepts of justice and what Blackstone called “the immutable laws of good and evil.” Most legal historians regard the Commentaries as a brilliant application of Enlightenment reasoning to English legal history. Loving Justice contends that Blackstone’s work extends beyond making sense of English law to invoke emotions such as desire, disgust, sadness, embarrassment, terror, tenderness, and happiness. By enlisting an affective aesthetics to represent English law as just, Blackstone created an evocative poetics of justice whose influence persists across the Western world. In doing so, he encouraged readers to feel as much as reason their way to justice. Ultimately, Temple argues that the Commentaries offers a complex map of our affective relationship to juridical culture, one that illuminates both individual and communal understandings of our search for justice, and is crucial for understanding both justice and injustice today.

New York: NYU Press, 2019.

By The Police Executive Research Forum

In 2022, the Department of Justice released updated guidance on Improving Law Enforcement Response to Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence by Identifying and Preventing Gender Bias. This guidance is designed to help law enforcement agencies recognize, mitigate, and prevent gender bias and other biases from compromising the response to, and investigation of, sexual assault, domestic violence, and other forms of gender-based violence. The guidance provides a set of eight basic principles that – if integrated into LEAs’ policies, training, and practices – help ensure that gender bias, either intentionally or unintentionally, does not undermine efforts to keep survivors safe and hold offenders accountable.

Washington, DC: PERF, 2022. 36p.