By Richard Matzopoulos

Not much is known about the perpetrators of male homicide in South Africa, which has rates seven times the global average. For the country’s first ever male homicide study we describe the epidemiology of perpetrators, their relationship with victims and victim profiles of men killed by male versus female perpetrators. We conducted a retrospective descriptive study of routine data collected through forensic and police investigations, calculating victim and perpetrator homicide rates by age, sex, race, external cause, employment status and setting, stratified by victim-perpetrator relationships. For perpetrators, we reported suspected drug and alcohol use, prior convictions, gang-involvement and homicide by multiple perpetrators. Perpetrators were acquaintances in 63% of 5594 cases in which a main perpetrator was identified. Sharp objects followed by guns were the main external causes of death. The highest rates were recorded in urban informal areas among unemployed men across all victim-perpetrator relationship types. Recreational settings including bars featured prominently. Homicides clustered around festive periods and weekends, both of which are associated with heavy episodic drinking. Perpetrator alcohol use was reported in 41% of homicides by family members and 50% by acquaintances. Other drug use was less common (9% overall). Of 379 men killed by female perpetrators, 60% were killed by intimate partners. Perpetrator alcohol use was reported in approximately half of female-on-male murders. Female firearm use was exclusively against intimate partners. No men were killed by male intimate partners. Violence prevention, which in South Africa has mainly focused on women and children, needs to be integrated into an inclusive approach. Profiling victims and perpetrators of male homicide is an important and necessary first step to challenge prevailing masculine social constructs that men are neither vulnerable to, nor the victims of, trauma and to identify groups at risk of victimisation that could benefit from specific interventions and policies.

BMJ Global Health; Volume 9, Issue 4. 2024, 12pg

By Logan Seacrest and Jillian Snider  

   For the past decade, policymaker and public attention has focused on police use of force like never before. Yet due to a lack of standardized data, the national debate on this sensitive topic has occurred largely in an information vacuum. Using interviews with active law enforcement personnel and other primary research, this paper explores the theoretical and legal framework for police use of force; chronicles the history of data-collection efforts; describes the current information and legislative landscape; and provides real-world examples of innovative data systems. We conclude with a series of recommendations to help law enforcement leaders and policymakers design use-of-force data systems and craft practical, evidence-based transparency laws.

R Street Policy Study No. 302, 2024. 26p.

By Volkan Topalli, Timothy Dickinson, and Scott Jacques

Active offender research relies on the collection of data from noninstitutionalized criminals and has made significant contributions to our understanding of the etiology of serious crime. This review covers its history as well as its methodological, scientific, and ethical pitfalls and advantages. Because study subjects are currently and freely engaging in crime at the time of data collection, their memories, attitudes, and feelings about their criminality and specific criminal events are rich, detailed, and accurate. Contemporary approaches to active offender research employ systematized formats for data collection and analysis that improve the validity of findings and help illuminate the foreground of crime. Although active offender research has traditionally relied on qualitative techniques, we outline the potential for it to make contributions via mixed methods, experiments, and emerging computational and technological approaches, such as virtual reality simulation studies and agent-based modeling.  

Annu. Rev. Criminol. 2020. 3:189–215   

By Peter Leasure and Hunter M. Boehme

Efforts such as evidence-based policing and data-driven policing have argued for the use of research and data analysis in the decision-making process for law enforcement agencies. The current study sought to examine the importance of data collection and data analysis across Ohio law enforcement agencies and whether Ohio law enforcement agencies are interested in improving their data collection and data analysis procedures. The results showed that the majority of respondents strongly agreed or somewhat agreed that data collection and data analysis are key components of their decision-making process, and that their agency could benefit from improved data collection and data analysis procedures. However, a nontrivial number of respondents strongly disagreed or somewhat disagreed that data collection and data analysis are key components of their decision-making process, and that their agency could benefit from improved data collection and data analysis procedures. Recommendations informed by these results are discussed in detail.

Drug Enforcement and Policy Center. July 2023, 8pg

By Katherine Aguirre, Emile Badran and Robert Muggah

  Cities are where the future happens first. They are hubs of innovation, productivity and experimentation. But many cities also are sites of crime and violence. More than ever, municipal authorities, private firms and civic groups are experimenting with new ways to improve real and perceived safety in cities. In some cities, new technologies are improving the situational awareness of public authorities and citizens. In others, all encompassing surveillance and monitoring systems are challenging fundamental norms of privacy. In most developed cities, high-frequency time series information on insecurity is increasingly available. Literally thousands of gigabytes of raw data are available representing the dynamics and characteristics of crime. New high-power computer analysis is giving rise to a next generation of smart, agile and evidence-informed policing strategies. Predictive platforms in particular can enhance police operations, identifying priority targets for police intervention, and enabling more effective allocation of police resources.  

Brazil: Igarape Institute. 2019, 23pg

By James Austin, Todd Clear, and Richard Rosenfeld

Illinois is one of several states considering how to reduce its prison population amid the pandemic and calls for an end to mass incarceration. In recent years, the state has taken steps to reduce its prison population through judicial discretion, bail reform, and diversion programs. As Illinois’ prison population declines and policymakers, prosecutors, and courts consider alternatives to incarceration, what is the risk to public safety? Is crime likely to increase or decline in the state as those convicted of crimes are released or diverted to other programs? In this study, funded by The Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, the authors conclude that Illinois crime rates, which have been on the decline since the 1990s, will continue to decline in a fluctuating pattern, with moderate year-to-year changes. This will be true even if Illinois reduces its prison population by an additional 25% over five years. The authors reached this conclusion by constructing a quantitative model that accounts for Illinois crime trends over nearly four decades and provides a basis for predicting crime rates in the near future. This study is a companion to the 2020 Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation report Explaining the Past and Projecting Future Crime Rates, which examined national crime trends and reached similar conclusions about crime rates in the near future.   

New York: Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation. 2020, 23pg

By James Austin, Richard Rosenfeld and Todd Clear

Florida has benefited from the national drop in crime that began in the early 1990s. Its growth in incarceration also paralleled the steady national imprisonment rise of the last forty-five years. Florida’s rate peaked around 2010 and has been declining ever since. Policy makers would benefit from defensible projections of future trends in crime, and especially from estimates of the effect that further reductions in the number of people in jail and prison might have on those trends. The authors of this study developed quantitative models—explained here in non-technical language—of the effects of various demographic and economic factors, as well as the imprisonment rate, on Florida’s past crime rates. They then used these models to project crime trends into the 2020s, both with and without the assumption of a substantial reduction in imprisonment.

New York: Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation. 2021, 28pg

By Manuel Alejandro Salazar Mendoza

In this paper, I use aggregate data from Mexican municipalities to research the effect of shocks on the unemployment rates of Mexican migrants residing in the United States on crime rates in Mexico. Heterogeneous effects are anticipated depending on the migrants’ income level, so the impact of the shocks is studied according to the educational quartile to which they belong as an approximation of their income level. I find that unemployment shocks for migrants in the lowest educational quartile lead to increases in the theft rate, while, for migrants in the highest quartile, shocks are associated with reductions in this rate. These findings inform the literature on economic and migration mechanisms behind crime rates.

Unpublished paper, March. 2024, 46pg

By Charles A. Warnock, Ashlin R. Ondrusek, E. Jennifer Edelman, Trace Kershaw, Jessica L. Muilenburg

Cannabis use is increasingly pervasive throughout the U.S. People in treatment for substance use disorders (SUD) may be especially at-risk of harm due to this changing context of cannabis in the U.S. This study’s objective was to qualitatively describe experiences and beliefs around cannabis among people who had entered treatment for any SUD in the past 12-months.

Methods

From May to November of 2022, we conducted 27 semi-structured interviews (n=16 in Georgia, n=11 in Connecticut) with individuals in treatment for SUD in Georgia and Connecticut. Interviews were recorded, transcribed, and thematically analyzed using an emergent approach.

Results

All participants had used cannabis in the past. Four themes emerged from the interviews. Participants: (1) perceived cannabis as an important contributor to non- cannabis substance use initiation in adolescence; (2) viewed cannabis as a substance with the potential to improve health with fewer side effects than prescription medications; (3) expressed conflicting opinions regarding cannabis as a trigger or tool to manage cravings for other non-cannabis substances currently; and 4) described concerns related to negative legal, social service, and treatment-related consequences as well as negative peer perception relating to the use of cannabis.

Conclusion

Although participants described cannabis’s important role as an initiatory drug in adolescence and young adulthood, many felt that cannabis was a medicinal substance for a range of health problems. These findings suggest SUD treatment clinicians should address medicinal beliefs related to cannabis among their clients and emphasizes the need for research on cannabis use and SUD treatment outcomes.

Drug and Alcohol Dependence Reports. Online First, March 2024

By Miaomiao Dong Jackie Cha, Yuni Lee Gaojian Huang, et al.

There are direct correlations between drunk driving and car-related injuries, disabilities, and death. Autonomous vehicles (AVs) may provide useful driver support systems to prevent or reduce road accidents. However, AVs are not yet fully automated and require human drivers to take over the vehicle at times. Therefore, understanding how alcohol affects driving performance in both manual and automated driving is important because manual drives may offer insights into the takeover process in AVs. A systematic review of 53 articles from eight databases was conducted. Findings were categorized based on the human information processing model, which can be extended to the AV takeover model. The results demonstrated that different blood alcohol concentration (BAC) levels affect driving performance in various stages of the information processing model and the takeover model. However, existing studies tested limited levels of BAC, and there are few studies on AV takeover performance. Future work may focus on AVs and takeover performance. This review can also provide implications for future driving experiments and AV technology design.

San Jose, CA: Mineta Transportation Institute (MTI), 2024. 28p.

By Mark Motivans

This report provides national statistics on the federal response to crime for fiscal year 2022 and some statistics on changes over time. The report describes case processing in the federal criminal justice system, including investigations by U.S. attorneys, prosecutions and declinations, convictions and acquittals, sentencing, probation and supervised release, and imprisonment. It is the 36th in an annual series based on data from BJS’s Federal Justice Statistics Program, which began in 1979.

Highlights

• During fiscal year (FY) 2022, federal law enforcement agencies made 96,857 arrests, a 24% increase from the 78,068 arrests in FY 2021.

• In the 26,233 Drug Enforcement Administration arrests in FY 2022, the most common type of drug involved was methamphetamine (8,083 arrests), followed by other opioids, including fentanyl (5,375 arrests).

• Persons exiting federal prison in FY 2022 for nonregulatory public order offenses, including sex offenses, served more time (66 months) than persons exiting for violent offenses (56 months) or drug offenses (53 months).

• The median number of days from the receipt of an investigation to the decision by a U.S. attorney to prosecute or decline a matter was 60 days in FY 2022, down from 70 days in FY 2021.

Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics. 2023. 32p

By Sakshi Bhardwaj and Daniel Tabak

This paper investigates the effect of losing welfare benefits on local household financial distress and crime. We estimate this effect using a quasi-experiment in which Indiana outsourced and automated the processing of TANF, food stamps, and Medicaid applications. The welfare automation policy was implemented in three waves prior to its cancellation in 2009, before reaching all counties. Using consumer credit panel data, we explore this variation to find that the Indiana welfare automation program, which reduced enrollment in SNAP and TANF enrollment, significantly increased the number of accounts in collections, collections balances, bankruptcy filings, and decreased credit scores. Using data from the Uniform Crime Reporting series, we find that welfare automation policy has also increased crime, primarily property crimes.

Unpublished paper, 2023.

By The U.S.National Institute of Justice

In NIJ’s new publication Desistance From Crime: Implications for Research, Policy, and Practice, experts explore these and other critical questions surrounding the process of individuals ceasing engagement in criminal activities, referred to as “desistance.” They discuss how to conceptualize and measure desistance and offer innovative ways of using desistance-focused approaches in criminal justice practice, policy, and research.

This collection of work takes important steps in describing how a desistance framework can move the field forward across key decision points in the criminal justice system. As a result, the field will be better positioned to meet the needs of stakeholders, improve individual outcomes, and effectively reduce crime and promote public safety for communities across the United States.

Washington, DC: U.S. National Institute of Justice, 2021. 234p.

By Georg Heiler, Tuan Pham, Jan Korbel, Johannes Wachs & Stefan Thurner

We use a comprehensive longitudinal dataset on criminal acts over 6 years in a European country to study specialization in criminal careers. We present a method to cluster crime categories by their relative co-occurrence within criminal careers, deriving a natural, data-based taxonomy of criminal specialization. Defining specialists as active criminals who stay within one category of offending behavior, we study their socio-demographic attributes, geographic range, and positions in their collaboration networks relative to their generalist counterparts. Compared to generalists, specialists tend to be older, are more likely to be women, operate within a smaller geographic range, and collaborate in smaller, more tightly-knit local networks. We observe that specialists are more intensely embedded in criminal networks, suggesting a potential source of self-reinforcing dynamics in criminal careers.

Scientific Reports 13, 17160 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-43552-6

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

Annu. Rev. Criminol. 2020. 3:217–4

By Volkan Topalli, Timothy Dickinson, and Scott Jacques

Active offender research relies on the collection of data from noninstitutionalized criminals and has made significant contributions to our understanding of the etiology of serious crime. This review covers its history as well as its methodological, scientific, and ethical pitfalls and advantages. Because study subjects are currently and freely engaging in crime at the time of data collection, their memories, attitudes, and feelings about their criminality and specific criminal events are rich, detailed, and accurate. Contemporary approaches to active offender research employ systematized formats for data collection and analysis that improve the validity of findings and help illuminate the foreground of crime. Although active offender research has traditionally relied on qualitative techniques, we outline the potential for it to make contributions via mixed methods, experiments, and emerging computational and technological approaches, such as virtual reality simulation studies and agent-based modeling.

Annu. Rev. Criminol. 2020. 3:189–215

By Michael Zoorob, Daniel T. O'Brien

Crime is highly concentrated at places that lack capable place managers (i.e., landlords and their delegates). In response, numerous cities have instituted problem property interventions that pressure landowners to better manage properties suffering from decay, nuisance, or crime. This approach is distinctive in that it both targets a place and incentivizes those legally responsible to improve its management, yet little is known about the efficacy of such interventions. We assess the short- and long-term impacts of such interventions in Boston, Massachusetts, using matched difference-in-difference analyses. Problem property interventions reduced crime and disorder relative to comparable matched properties. They also led to property investment and landowner turnover, suggesting strengthened place management. In addition, drops in crime and disorder were observed at other properties on the same street, although not at other properties with the same owner throughout the city. This study, therefore, provides evidence that problem property interventions compel landowners to better manage the targeted property and that these effects have a diffusion of benefits on surrounding properties. The effect on place management, however, was limited to the target property and did not reliably generalize to the landowner's other holdings. This study reveals nuance in the ways that problem property interventions can benefit communities.

Criminology, Volume62, Issue1 February 2024 Pages 64-89

By Nick Petersen, Ojmarrh Mitchell, Shi Yan

In recent years, there has been a rise in so-called “progressive prosecutors” focused on criminal justice reforms. Although there has been considerable debate about the relationship between progressive prosecution policies and crime rates, there has been surprisingly little empirical research on the topic. Building on the limited extant research, we examined whether the inauguration of progressive prosecutors in the nation's 100 most populous counties impacted crime rates during a 21-year period (2000 to 2020). After developing an original database of progressive prosecutors in the 100 largest counties, we used heterogeneous difference-in-differences regressions to examine the influence of progressive prosecutors on crime rates. Results show that the inauguration of progressive prosecutors led to statistically higher index property (∼7%) and total crime rates (driven by rising property crimes), and these effects were strongest since 2013—a period with an increasing number of progressive prosecutors. However, violent crime rates generally were not higher after a progressive prosecutor assumed control.

Policy implications

Despite concerns that the election of progressive prosecutors leads to “surging” levels of violence, these findings suggest that progressive-oriented prosecutorial reforms led to relatively higher rates of property crime but had limited impact on rates of violent crime. In fact, in absolute terms, crime rates fell in jurisdictions with traditional and progressive prosecutors. Yet, relative property crime rates were greater after the inauguration of progressive prosecutors. Given that prior research shows progressive prosecutors reduce mass incarceration and racial inequalities, our findings indicate that higher property crime rates may be the price for these advancements.

Criminology & Public Policy Version of Record online: 18 April 2024

By Haydn Morgan and Andrew Parker

  Recent years have witnessed a growing interest at a policy level regarding the intentional use of sport and physical activity as a key component within interventions designed to support individuals who have become connected with, or are vulnerable to, engagement in the criminal justice system (Meek, 2018; Norman et al., 2024). Despite growing evidence to support the instrumental use of sport and physical activity within such interventions, both in custodial and in community settings (Morgan and Parker, 2023), there remain significant misconceptions regarding the ‘power of sport’ to prevent and/or divert engagement with crime or support efforts to rehabilitate and address reoffending. These misconceptions are largely based on assumptions regarding the ‘life lessons’ that (automatically and universally) transfer from the sport domain to other contexts. However, the evidence is clear that there are other key mechanisms in play, beyond participation, that enable sport and physical activity interventions to impact criminal justice outcomes. The aim of this paper is to introduce some of the mechanisms that have been identified in previous research which contribute to the effective implementation of sport-based criminal justice interventions. In addition, since there has been relatively limited academic consideration of how sport and physical activity might be integrated into policy and practice around probation and resettlement, the paper offers suggestions for how these mechanisms may be integrated into efforts to support probation and youth justice services.

Manchester, UK:  HM Inspectorate of Probation. 2024, 14pg

By Vivian Miller

Peter Christian "Paddy" Barrie was a seasoned fraudster who transferred his horse doping and horse substitution skills from British to North American racetracks in the 1920s. His thoroughbred ringers were entered in elite races to guarantee winnings for syndicates and betting rings in the prohibition-era United States. This case study of a professional travelling criminal and the challenges he posed for the Pinkerton National Detective Agency in the early 1930s war on crime highlights both the importance of illegal betting to urban mobsters and the need for broader and more nuanced critiques of Depression-era organised crime activities and alliances.

Journal of American Studies, 2021. 35p.