By Aaron Chalfin and Brittany Street

This paper reviews and distills a wide array of recent social science literature and offers an evidence-based vision for how public safety can be maintained while relying less on the use of incarceration. We offer the following lessons from the literature. First, while interventions that increase economic opportunities have been shown to be effective in reducing criminal behavior, particularly income generating crime, interventions which change how people think appear to be even more effective at reducing the types of crimes that most frequently lead to incarceration. Second, a wide variety of investments targeted towards children in disadvantaged neighborhoods appear to be effective and likely pay for themselves over time. Third, while there is a natural concern that diverting criminal defendants from traditional prosecution will erode the deterrence value of criminal sanctions, the evidence suggests that for first-time and younger offenders, individuals who have been diverted – either through a formal program or informally via “non-prosecution” – tend to be less likely to be rearrested in the future. Fourth, the evidence suggests that law enforcement can play an important role in reducing the use of incarceration when police are visible and engage in high-value activities that deter crime or focus their arrest powers more intensively on violent and/or high-volume offenders; in doing so, they have the ability to reduce crime through deterrence and focused incapacitation without increasing the footprint of the justice system. Finally, there is potential to meaningfully reduce incarceration levels through sentencing reforms without compromising public safety – so long as the reforms are structured in such a way as to target the least criminally productive offenders, while retaining in custody those offenders who are most likely to commit the costliest offenses or who are likeliest to offend in high volumes.

Institute for the Quantitative Study of Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity,, 2023. 69p

By Rebecca Hubble

The Learning Disabilities and Challenge (LDC) suite are accredited offending behaviour programmes delivered by His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) in custody and the community for adults assessed as having mild impairments in intellectual and adaptive functioning. There are four programmes within the suite: Becoming New Me Plus (BNM+), New Me Strengths (NMS), Living as New Me (LNM), and the Heathy Sex Programme (HSP). Our interim outcome evaluation attends to BNM+ and NMS only. This is because LNM and HSP are secondary programmes, i.e., they are intended to be delivered after completion of a primary programme. BNM+ is for men with LDC assessed as high or very high risk of reoffending, who present with at least one or more strong criminogenic needs across multiple domains and have a general violence, intimate partner violence and/or sexual offending conviction(s). NMS is designed for people with any offence convictions, who have been assessed as medium or above risk of reoffending, with sufficient levels of criminogenic need addressed by the programme. The aim of this interim outcome evaluation was to determine whether BNM+ and NMS participants were making positive progress against programme targets reflected in the Success Wheel Measure (SWM). The SWM, designed by HMPPS, is the core metric for measuring participant progress against programme targets for participants of BNM+ and NMS. The assessment domains are: (1) Managing Life’s Problems, (2) Healthy Thinking, (3) Positive Relationships, (4) Healthy Sex (for those with a sexual offence conviction only), and (5) Sense of Purpose (desistance from crime). The research also aimed to identify if individual (relating to the person) or programme delivery factors affected changes in SWM scores, and whether these changes varied between assessment domains.

Ministry of Justice Analytical Series 2024

London: Ministry of Justice, 2024. 48p.

By New York City. Office of the Comptroller General

In the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic, a series of high-profile, random, and tragic acts of violence have heightened New Yorkers’ attention to people living on the streets and subways with serious mental illness. Following the killing of Michelle Go in January 2022 by an individual with a long history of psychosis, 37 more people were pushed off subway platforms in just over a year. In November 2023, New York Times reporters highlighted nearly 100 random attacks by mentally ill, homeless New Yorkers “failed by a system that keeps making the same errors.”

In recent weeks, the sense of crisis has been amplified by more heartbreaking incidents. On November 18, 2024, Ramon Rivera – who cycled on and off the streets with serious mental illness for years – went on a stabbing spree, killing 3 people in broad daylight in midtown Manhattan. On December 9, a jury acquitted Daniel Penny of the killing of Jordan Neely, whose failures by the system were legion. On Sunday, December 22, 2024, Debrina Kawam who was herself homeless was cruelly burned to death on an F train at the Coney Island station. On New Year’s Eve, another New Yorker was pushed onto the tracks into an oncoming train. New Yorkers’ sense of safety on subways and in their own neighborhoods has plummeted.

In response to mounting safety concerns, New York City and State have launched a slew of initiatives and legislative efforts to confront the issue of street homelessness for people with serious mental illness. But the efforts are piecemeal. People continue to fall through the cracks and there is little public confidence that things will change.

The Adams Administration has ineffectively coordinated a Continuum of Care (CoC) – and the results are devastating. Outreach teams lose track of clients. Hospitals release patients back to the street after a few hours because there aren’t enough inpatient beds to treat them. Judges cannot refer people into programs proven to reduce recidivism and increase adherence to treatment because there are no slots.[9] Jails place just 3% of discharged people with serious mental health challenges into supportive housing.

An audit by the Comptroller’s office in 2024 of the City’s Intensive Mobile Treatment (IMT) program for homeless New Yorkers with the most severe histories of mental illness found that the City inadequately measured whether the program was decreasing incarceration because of a lack of coordination among City agencies, that outcomes and treatment measures were inconsistent, and that placements into stable housing had declined precipitously.

Despite these persistent failures, evidence from other cities – and indeed, even from New York City – argues strongly that this crisis can be solved with more diligent leadership.

Data shows that there are approximately 2,000 people with serious mental illness at risk for street homelessness cycling through City streets, subways, jails, and hospitals. At that scale, a better-coordinated system is within the grasp of a city with the resources and capacity of New

York. Indeed, the City is already spending billions on outreach, police overtime, city jails, shelters, and emergency hospitalizations, but City Hall has continuously failed to coordinate these efforts effectively to solve the problem.

At the heart of that better-coordinated system, this report centers a “housing first” approach, which evidence shows has had great success in Philadelphia, Houston, Denver, other cities throughout the United States and around the world, and even in New York City. Housing first combines existing housing vouchers and service dollars to get people off the street and directly into stable housing with wraparound services.

Data shows that 70-90% of people experiencing street homelessness with serious mental illness will accept permanent housing with a coordinated outreach strategy, and that it will keep them stably housed, off the street, and better connected to the mental health services that will stabilize them.

Of course, a strategy that is 70-90% effective does not work 10-30% of the time. For those instances, New York City will need better processes for mandated treatment. Sometimes, individuals need to be hospitalized, either voluntarily or involuntarily when they are a danger to themselves or others. For an effective continuum of care, New York should thoughtfully amend its laws to allow a wider range of medical professionals to place or keep individuals in hospitalization and required the consideration of an individual’s full medical and behavioral history.

On any given day, there are approximately 1,400 people with serious mental illness detained in NYC jails, including Rikers Island. There is an urgent need to ensure these individuals are provided with adequate mental health care while they are in detention, and before they are discharged and return back to their communities. Instead, the City releases most of these individuals without receiving mental health treatment and without placement into housing, increasing the likelihood of returning to unsheltered homelessness. In addition, individuals assigned by court order to “assisted outpatient treatment” (AOT) face significant challenges including homelessness. Without stable housing, adherence to the required treatment plans becomes more difficult, undermining the effectiveness of AOT programs.

In all these cases, ultimately individuals need to be connected to stable housing – when they are discharged from jail, when they leave the hospital, or while they are in AOT – or else they will simply return to the street, where they are far more likely to go without treatment and continue in a declining spiral. That’s why a housing first approach is a central element of any effective plan.

With better coordination and management from City Hall, with a “housing first” approach that evidence suggests will work most of the time, and with more effective mandated treatment options when it doesn’t, New York City can dramatically reduce – and even effectively end – street homelessness of people with serious mental illness.

New York: New York City Office of the Comptroller General, 2025. 99p.

By Lydia Bates, et al.

Why this guide? A wide variety of forms of misogyny and genderbased bigotry have spiked in recent years.1 This includes a documented rise in forms of male supremacist violence that are now recognized as part of the spectrum of domestic violent extremism, including threats, plots and attacks from misogynist incels. 2 3 Everyday forms of misogyny and hostile sexism, especially online, have also increased, with one study showing that misogynistic tweets positively predict domestic and family violence in the United States.4 Further, anti-feminist sentiments have been rising among Generation Z boys and young men.5 This rise in gender-based bigotry includes a surge of anti-LGBTQ+ ideas and beliefs, evidenced through the hundreds of discriminatory bills introduced across the United States in 2024.6 At the intersection of anti-Black racism, anti-LGBTQ+ hate and misogyny, Black women, girls and transgender women experience an outsized amount of harm and violence. On the community level, these harms manifest from harassment at Pride month events and attacks on LGBTQ+ friendly businesses to unequal reproductive health care access and deadly transmisogynist violence. These surges are partially explained by the sheer breadth of online spaces where gender-based hate is fostered and thrives, such as video game chats, comment trolls on mainstream social media sites, and dedicated Reddit pages focused on ways to manipulate and denigrate women. Because hateful comments, memes and short-form videos are often infused with irony, satire or other forms of humor, gender-based hate online is sometimes disguised as “just a joke” or hidden behind the excuse of having two different meanings. Hate and policing individuals’ gender have also been legitimized and normalized by politicians, elected officials, and online influencers who peddle supposed success stories of wealth and status that rely on the exploitation and domination of women. And extremist groups who embrace racism and political violence, like the Proud Boys, have joined the fray by directly targeting bookstores that host Drag Story Hours and demonstrations advocating for abortion rights. Falsely linking drag performances and LGBTQ+ people with sexual predation, sometimes called “grooming,” they have sought new ways to build sympathy among mainstream conservatives.7 Collaboration & Scope A collaborative team of experts from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and the Polarization & Extremism Research & Innovation Lab (PERIL) drafted this guide. It is part of a broader public health approach for the prevention of violence and harm stemming from extremism, manipulative disinformation and dehumanizing rhetoric. Our organizations root our development of this approach in communities’ needs and by centering support for targeted individuals and survivors. And our approach is necessarily noncarceral, so that we can emphasize education and prevention over monitoring, surveillance and other security-based approaches. This guide is a resource for caregivers who surround and support young people – parents and relatives, teachers and educators, counselors and therapists, coaches and youth mentors, and more. It includes an overview and introduction to the concepts, trends and risks related to gender-based bigotry alongside the tools to build resilience and awareness, as well as ways to intervene. It also provides strategies and resources to support survivors and targeted individuals and communities. While this guide cannot cover every harm that young people will encounter related to gender-based bigotry, we aim for as wide a breadth as possible.

Montgomery, AL: Southern Poverty Law Center, 2024.

Edited by Marisa J. Fuentes and Deborah Gray White  

The 250th anniversary of the founding of Rutgers University is a perfect moment for the Rutgers community to reconcile its past, and acknowledge its role in the enslavement and debasement of African Americans and the disfranchisement and elimination of Native American people and culture. Scarlet and Black documents the history of Rutgers's connection to slavery, which was neither casual nor accidental-nor unusual. Like most early American colleges, Rutgers depended on slaves to build its campuses and serve its students and faculty; it depended on the sale of black people to fund its very existence. Men like John Henry Livingston, (Rutgers president from 1810-1824), the Reverend Philip Milledoler, (president of Rutgers from 1824-1840), Henry Rutgers, (trustee after whom the college is named), and Theodore Frelinghuysen, (Rutgers's seventh president), were among the most ardent anti-abolitionists in the mid-Atlantic. Scarlet and black are the colors Rutgers University uses to represent itself to the nation and world. They are the colors the athletes compete in, the graduates and administrators wear on celebratory occasions, and the colors that distinguish Rutgers from every other university in the United States. This book, however, uses these colors to signify something else: the blood that was spilled on the banks of the Raritan River by those dispossessed of their land and the bodies that labored unpaid and in bondage so that Rutgers could be built and sustained. The contributors to this volume offer this history as a usable one-not to tear down or weaken this very renowned, robust, and growing institution-but to strengthen it and help direct its course for the future. The work of the Committee on Enslaved and Disenfranchised Population in Rutgers History.

New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2017. 222p.

By China Scherz,  George Mpanga, and Sarah Namirembe

Higher Powers draws on four years of collaborative fieldwork carried out with Ugandans working to reconstruct their lives after attempting to leave behind problematic alcohol use. Given the relatively recent introduction of biomedical ideas of alcoholism and addiction in Uganda, most of these people have used other therapeutic resources, including herbal aversion therapies, engagements with balubaale spirits, and forms of deliverance and spiritual warfare practiced in Pentecostal churches. While these methods are at times severe, they contain within them understandings of the self and practices of sociality that point away from models of addiction as a chronic relapsing brain disease and towards the possibility of release. Higher Powers offers a reconceptualization of addiction and recovery that may prove relevant well beyond Uganda.

Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2024.  156p.

ByThomas D. Akoensi, Justice Tankebe

Using an experimental vignette design, the study inves-tigates the effects of criminal records on the hiring deci-sions of a convenience sample of 221 human resource(HR) managers in Ghana. The HR managers were ran-domly assigned to read one of four vignettes depicting job seekers of different genders and criminal records:male with and without criminal record, female with and without criminal record. The evidence shows that a criminal record reduces employment opportunities for female offenders but not for their male counter-parts. Additionally, HR managers are willing to offer interviews to job applicants, irrespective of their crim-inal records, if they expect other managers to hire ex-convicts. The implications of these findings are dis-cussed.

The Howard Journal of Crime and Justice, online first, May 2024

By Matthew Bonn, Chelsea Cox, Marilou Gagnon. et al.

The International Guidelines on Human Rights and Drug Policy recommend that States commit to adopting a balanced, integrated, and human rights-based approach to drug policy through a set of foundational human rights principles, obligations arising from human rights standards, and obligations arising from the human rights of particular groups. Following two years of consultation with stakeholders, including people who use drugs, NGOs, legal and human rights experts, UN technical agencies and Member States, the Guidelines “do not invent new rights. Rather, they apply existing human rights law to the legal and policy context of drug control to maximise human rights protections, including in the interpretation and implementation of the drug control conventions.” In respect of the Guidelines and its obligations under UN human rights treaties, Canada must adopt stronger and more specific commitments for a human rights-based, people centered and public health approach.3 This approach must commit to the removal of criminal penalties for simple possession and a comprehensive health-based approach to drug regulation.

Ottawa, ONT: Royal Society of Canada, 2024. 52p.

By Ben Grunwald and Jeffrey Fagan

In 2000, the Supreme Court held in Illinois v. Wardlow that a suspect’s presence in a “high-crime area” is relevant in determining whether an officer has reasonable suspicion to conduct an investigative stop. Despite the importance of the decision, the Court provided no guidance about what that standard means, and over fifteen years later, we still have no idea how police officers understand and apply it in practice. This Article conducts the first empirical analysis of Wardlow by examining data on over two million investigative stops conducted by the New York Police Department from 2007 to 2012. Our results suggest that Wardlow may have been wrongly decided. Specifically, we find evidence that officers often assess whether areas are high crime using a very broad geographic lens; that they call almost every block in the city high crime; that their assessments of whether an area is high crime are nearly uncorrelated with actual crime rates; that the suspect’s race predicts whether an officer calls an area high crime as well as the actual crime rate; that the racial composition of the area and the identity of the officer are stronger predictors of whether an officer calls an area high crime than the crime rate itself; and that stops are less or as likely to result in the detection of contraband when an officer invokes high-crime area as a basis of a stop. We conclude with several policy proposals for courts, police departments, and scholars to help address these problems in the doctrine.

California Law Review 345-404 (2019

By Damon L. Perry

In Britain, no one has the right not to be offended. Words or actions that are taken by some as offensive – whether they relate to religion, sexuality or race – are not criminal as long as they are not intentionally hostile and meant, or likely, to incite hatred. The statutory guidance on Non Crime Hate Incidents, revised in March 2023, is consistent with the law in this regard. It states: “Fundamentally, offending someone is not, in and of itself, a criminal offence. To constitute an offence under hate crime legislation, the speech or behaviour in question must be threatening, abusive or insulting and be intended to, or likely to, stir up hatred”. Yet, this does not seem to be fully acknowledged in Britain’s schools. As this revealing survey of over a thousand teachers from YouGov and Policy Exchange demonstrates, since the Batley Grammar School protests, a small but significant proportion of British teachers have self-censored to avoid offence on religious grounds – 16%. (That proportion is slightly higher for teachers of certain subjects, including almost a fifth of all English teachers and art teachers – 19%). In areas with the largest Muslim populations, around 10% fewer teachers do not self-censor than those in areas with the smallest Muslim populations. A worrying proportion believe that – regardless of a teacher’s intentions – images of the prophet Muhammad should never be used in classrooms, even in the teaching of Islamic art or ethics: In addition to the 55% of teachers that would not personally use an image of Muhammad independently from the Batley Grammar School protests, an additional 9% said they personally were less likely to use it as a result of the events in Batley. The case of the teacher at Batley Grammar who went into hiding after death threats thus appears to have had a significant impact on teachers’ confidence and willingness to use materials that fall within the scope of the law. Alarmingly, half of British teachers believe that if blasphemy-related protests led by activist and advocacy groups occur outside their schools, there would be a risk to their physical safety. Despite most teachers thinking that headteachers get the balance right – between supporting them to use materials that are on the right side of the law but which might offend, and ensuring no offence is caused – they are clearly in need of greater confidence in the support they can expect from their headteachers and, in the case of activist-led protests outside their school gates, the police. Recent events have given further impetus to concerns regarding the physical safety of teachers and the security at schools. On 13 October, 2023, in Arras, France, a literature teacher, Dominque Bernard, was killed in a knife attack; the suspect, an Islamist extremist, was looking for teachers  of history or geography. The case has been compared to that of Samuel Paty, the teacher who was killed three years ago by an Islamist extremist for showing cartoons of Muhammad to a class on freedom of expression. Both teachers have been described by President Macron as champions of the values of the French republic. Although this tragic incident took place across the Channel, France’s battle with Islamist extremism is one shared with the UK. Closer to home, in the wake of the Hamas terrorist attacks on hundreds of civilians in Israel on 7 October, protests on the streets of the UK against Israeli reprisals in the name of the Palestinian “resistance” have demonstrated alarming levels of hateful extremism and antisemitism.5 Some Jewish schools were forced to close on 13 October, when Hamas called for a “Global Day of Jihad”, and several Jewish schools were vandalised with red paint. The atmosphere has been fraught. The Department for Education wrote to school leaders “to ensure that any political activity from pupils in response to the crisis does not create an ‘atmosphere of intimidation’”  etc.

London: Policy Exchange, 2024. 51p.

By Mary Louise Frampton, Ian Haney Lopez, and Jonathan Simon

Since the 1970s, Americans have witnessed a pyrrhic war on crime, with sobering numbers at once chilling and cautionary. Our imprisoned population has increased five-fold, with a commensurate spike in fiscal costs that many now see as unsupportable into the future. As American society confronts a multitude of new challenges ranging from terrorism to the disappearance of middle-class jobs to global warming, the war on crime may be up for reconsideration for the first time in a generation or more. Relatively low crime rates indicate that the public mood may be swinging toward declaring victory and moving on.
However, to declare that the war is over is dangerous and inaccurate, and After the War on Crime reveals that the impact of this war reaches far beyond statistics; simply moving on is impossible. The war has been most devastating to those affected by increased rates and longer terms of incarceration, but its reach has also reshaped a sweeping range of social institutions, including law enforcement, politics, schooling, healthcare, and social welfare. The war has also profoundly altered conceptions of race and community.
It is time to consider the tasks reconstruction must tackle. To do so requires first a critical assessment of how this war has remade our society, and then creative thinking about how government, foundations, communities, and activists should respond. After the War on Crime accelerates this reassessment with original essays by a diverse, interdisciplinary group of scholars as well as policy professionals and community activists. The volume's immediate goal is to spark a fresh conversation about the war on crime and its consequences; its long-term aspiration is to develop a clear understanding of how we got here and of where we should go.

New York; London: NYU Press, 2008.256p

 By David C. Pyrooz, John Leverso, Jose Antonio Sanchez, and James A. Densley

For more than three decades, developmental and life-course criminology has been a source of theoretical advancement, methodological innovation, and policy and practice guidance, bringing breadth and depth even to well-established areas of study, such as gangs. This review demonstrates how the developmental and life-course perspective on gangs can be further extended and better integrated within broader developments in criminology. Accordingly, we structure this review within the fourfold paradigm on human development that unites seemingly disparate areas in the study of gangs: (a) historical time and place, or the foregrounding of when and where you are; (b) linked lives, or the importance of dynamic multiplex relationships; (c) timing, or the age-grading of trajectories and transitions; and (d) human agency, or taking choice seriously. We conclude by outlining a vision that charts new directions to be addressed by the next generation of scholarship on gangs.

Annual Review of Criminology, Volume 7, Page 105 - 127

By Joe Mathewson

This book makes the case for the news media to take the lead in combatting key  threats to American society including racial injustice, economic disparity and climate change by adopting an “ethics of care” in reporting practices. Examining how traditional news coverage of race, economics and climate change has been dedicated to straightforward facts, the author asserts that journalism should now respond to societal needs by adopting a moral philosophy of the “ethics of care,” opening the door to empathetic yet factual and fair coverage of news events, with a goal to move public opinion to the point that politicians are persuaded to take effective action. The book charts a clear path for how this style of ethics can be applied by today’s journalists, tracing the emergence of this empathy-based ethics from feminist philosophy in the 1980s. It ultimately urges ethical news organizations to adopt the ethics of care, based on the human emotion prioritized by Scottish Enlightenment philosopher David Hume, and to pursue a more proactive, solutions-seeking coverage of current events.  

Abingdon, OXON, UK: New York: Routledge, 2022.199p.

By Otto Pipatti

While highly respected among evolutionary scholars, the sociologist, anthropologist and philosopher Edward Westermarck is now largely forgotten in the social sciences. This book is the first full study of his moral and social theory, focusing on the key elements of his theory of moral emotions as presented in The Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas and summarised in Ethical Relativity. Examining Westermarck’s evolutionary approach to the human mind, the author introduces important new themes to scholarship on Westermarck, including the pivotal role of emotions in human reciprocity, the evolutionary origins of human society, social solidarity, the emergence and maintenance of moral norms and moral responsibility. With attention to Westermarck’s debt to David Hume and Adam Smith, whose views on human nature, moral sentiments and sympathy Westermarck combined with Darwinian evolutionary thinking, Morality Made Visible highlights the importance of the theory of sympathy that lies at the heart of Westermarck’s work, which proves to be crucial to his understanding of morality and human social life. A rigorous examination of Westermarck’s moral and social theory in its intellectual context, this volume connects Westermarck’s work on morality to classical sociology, to the history of evolutionism in the social and behavioural sciences, and to the sociological study of morality and emotions, showing him to be the forerunner of modern evolutionary psychology and anthropology. In revealing the lasting value of his work in understanding and explaining a wide range of moral phenomena, it will appeal to scholars of sociology, anthropology and psychology with interests in social theory, morality and intellectual history.

Oxon, Abingdon, UK: New York; Routledge, 2020. 150p.

By of Justice Assistance

Co-occurrence of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and substance use disorder (SUD) are very common, so it is crucial that SUD treatment providers incorporate initial PTSD screening and ongoing PTSD symptom monitoring. Doing so will allow for early intervention opportunities and better long-term outcomes. PTSD and SUDs often occur together, and an individual with diagnosed PTSD-SUD faces several associated long-term health risks. As a result, SUD treatment providers should consider PTSD screening at the beginning of treatment programs as well as ongoing PTSD symptom monitoring. Screening and monitoring for PTSD-SUD will allow for early intervention using strategies that are tailored for a dual diagnosis. Lifetime PTSD is a common psychiatric diagnosis (occurring in approximately 6.1 percent of adults), with even higher rates among rural, low-income communities. PTSD alone is associated with several adverse health outcomes, but individuals with PTSD also are likely to suffer from other disorders, including substance use disorders (SUDs). Individuals with both PTSD and an SUD (PTSD-SUD) report more severe long-term functional impairments than individuals with only one of these diagnoses. In addition, SUD recovery rates are much lower in people with PTSD than in those without.

Washington, DC: BJA, 2023. 6p.

Edited by Gian Ege, Andreas Schloenhardt ,Christian Schwarzenegger and Monika Stempkowski

Debates about decriminalising or even legalising certain narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances have gained much momentum in recent years. On the surface, it appears that more and more jurisdictions are exploring the introduction of measures to permit, albeit in very controlled ways, the use of some narcotic drugs, if only for medical purposes. Others further agree that the so-called ‘war on drugs’ has failed to produce any meaningful success and that new ways to prevent the abuse of narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances need to be explored. Nevertheless, most jurisdictions continue to impose near-complete bans on the production, manufacturing, trade, transport, supply, sale, and possession of illicit drugs. National authorities, along with international organisations, point out that any move to decriminalise narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances is inconsistent with international law.

Berlin: Carl Grossman Verlag 2023. 250p.

By Jack Norton, Stephen Jones, Bea Halbach-Singh, Jasmine Heiss

When people are arrested and charged for activities they are forced to engage in to survive—such as driving without a license or sleeping outside—poverty becomes criminalized. In these cases, being poor is essentially made illegal. In collaboration with Free Hearts—an organization led by formerly incarcerated women—Vera researchers explain how poverty has been criminalized across Tennessee and what this means for people who live in communities in the state. The effects of the criminalization of poverty are compounded through the collection of money bail; additional fines, fees, and costs; and barriers to housing, transportation, education, and employment. With deep dives into several counties across Tennessee, the report shows how incarceration and policing are related to other systems that both punish and exacerbate poverty in the state. The report outlines actionable steps that can be taken now to build toward a vision of safety that includes all Tennesseans.

New York: Vera Institute of Justice, 2022. 58p.

By Matthew L Williams; Pete Burnap, Amir Javed, Han Liu, Sefa Ozalp

Hate crimes have risen up the hierarchy of individual and social harms, following the revelation of record high police figures and policy responses from national and devolved governments. The highest number of hate crimes in history was recorded by the police in England and Wales in 2017/18. The 94,098 hate offences represented a 17 per cent increase on the previous year and a 123 per cent increase on 2012/13. Although the Crime Survey for England and Wales has recorded a consistent decrease in total hate crime victimization (combining race, religion, sexual orientation, disability and transgender), estimations for race and religion-based hate crimes in isolation show an increase from a 112,000 annual average (April 13–March 15) to a 117,000 annual average (April 15–March 17) (ONS, 2017). This increase does not take into account the likely rise in hate victimization in the aftermath of the 2017 terror attacks in London and Manchester. Despite improvements in hate crime reporting and recording, the consensus is that a significant ‘dark figure’ remains. There continues a policy and practice needed to improve the intelligence about hate crimes, and in particular to better understand the role community tensions and events play in patterns of perpetration. The HMICFRS (2018) inspection on police responses to hate crimes evidence that forces remain largely ill-prepared to handle the dramatic increases in racially and religiously

The British Journal of Criminology, Volume 60, Issue 1, January 2020, Pages 93–117

By Kelly M. Babchishin, Leslie-Anne Keown, and Kimberly P. Mularczyk

Employment is a key factor that helps reduce reoffending rates among individuals with criminal records. The current study examined the economic outcomes of 11,158 federal offenders (Mage in 2014 = 47 years) admitted to Correctional Service of Canada institutions between January 4th, 1999 and December 31st 2001 (medianadmission year = 2000) who were released in the community for an average of 14 years. The purpose of the current study was to better understand the economic outcomes of Canadian federal offenders. More than half of the cohort of released offenders filed their taxes (5,835 of 11,158). The current study suggests that individuals with criminal records face considerable barriers when seeking employment in Canada, with only half of the individuals released from federal institutions finding employment after an average of 14 years. Individuals released from federal correctional institutions participated in the labour market less, made substantially less employment income, received more social assistance payments, and filed taxes less than the general Canadian population. After an average of 14 years post release, most individuals were underemployed with a median income of $0. Of those who reported employment, the average reported income was $14,000. This is less than half of what Canadians in the general population earn through employment. We also found that barriers to finding gainful employment following incarceration disproportionately impacted women, Indigenous, and older individuals, with these groups fairing even poorer than men, non-Indigenous, and younger individuals with criminal records. The current study suggests that more should be done to assist individuals with a criminal record secure gainful employment.

RESEARCH REPORT: 2021-R002 . Ottawa:; Public Safety Canada, 2021. 37p.

By Ireland Bellsmith, Olivia Goertzen, Kia Neilsen and Olivia Stinson

Poverty is both a source and a consequence of injustice. The following is a brief review of some of the many issues at the intersection between poverty and the justice system, and more generally, poverty and access to justice. It is based on a review of the literature as well as some of the prior work by the International Centre for Criminal Law Reform and Criminal Justice Policy, an institute of the UN Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Programme Network based in Vancouver, BC. In their first report, the National Advisory Council on Poverty (NACP) defined poverty as the deprivation of resources and the lack of power required to attain basic living standards and to facilitate social integration and inclusion, thus clearly linking poverty to social exclusion or marginalization. Although the Council agreed with that broad definition of poverty, initially used in Opportunity for All – Canada’s First Poverty Reduction Strategy, it also acknowledged that a more comprehensive definition would further emphasize the feelings of social disconnect and disempowerment that commonly characterize poverty. Poverty limits people’s access to justice and their ability to resolve conflicts and deal with everyday legal problems. It is a very disempowering and alienating experience. The resulting inability to successfully resolve legal problems is itself contributing to people’s inability to attain or maintain basic living standards. The justice system instead of empowering poor people and allowing them to fight for their rights is too often a source for them of frustration, disillusionment, and disempowerment, as well as a direct reflection of prevailing social inequality and exclusion. The experience of the justice system for marginalized victims of crime and individuals struggling with poverty is also problematic and is also contributing to and dictated by poverty. Yet, poverty is linked to higher rates of victimization and the consequences of victimization are often direr for people experiencing poverty and marginalization. Finally, the experience of people facing criminal charges or being convicted of a crime is also affected by their social and economic status. The likelihood of a criminal conviction and the consequences of a criminal conviction are directly influenced by the means of the defendants and the means and social capital of those who are convicted. The lack of support for convicted offenders, compounding their ostracization, is a further source of inequality and contributes to further entrenching them and their family in poverty and exclusion. This report presents an overview of recent research and general information gathered from persuasive articles, publications, and research studies on the topic of poverty in Canada and its implications and influence on access to justice. By evaluating different areas of justice and legal proceedings, we seek to identify emerging themes in research and analyze effective practices and those that appear to fall short. Thus far, evident themes between poverty and access to justice include unsatisfactory victim experience, conditions leading to incarceration despite the availability of alternatives, lack of legal awareness within communities, and problematic disempowerment. While current practices and legislation have sought to address these obstacles inherent to the Canadian justice system, we suggest that the circumstances of poverty continue to impede equal access to justice in a number of ways and recommend that further research be conducted to evaluate best practices.

Vancouver, BC: International Centre for Criminal Law Reform , 2022. 38p