By Douglas Husak

The allegation that criminal justice systems (and that of the United States in particular) have become guilty of overcriminalization is widely accepted by academics and practitioners on nearly all points along the political spectrum (Dillon 2012). Many commentators respond by recommending that states decriminalize given kinds of conduct that supposedly exemplify the problem. I urge those who are theoretically minded to proceed cautiously and address several preliminary matters that must be resolved before genuine progress is possible. In the absence of a position on several controversial normative and conceptual issues, discussions of overcriminalization and decriminalization are bound to be oversimplified and superficial. My review is organized around six of these issues. I invite commentators to examine (a) what the criminal law is; (b) what overcriminalization means; (c) why overcriminalization is thought to be pernicious; (d) whether overcriminalization is a de jure or de facto phenomenon, i.e., whether it is a function of the law on the books or the law in action; (e) what normative criteria might be invoked to alleviate the predicament; and (f) whether and to what extent overcriminalization is a serious concern in our penal system. Even though these six issues are analytically distinct, positions about one invariably blur into commitments about the others. Although theorists rarely dissent from the claim that states are guilty of something called overcriminalization, uncertainties about the foregoing topics mar their treatments. I conclude that a deep understanding of the problem of overcriminalization depends on how these six issues are resolved.

Annual Review of Criminology, v. 6. 2023, 19pg

By Ralph B. Taylor

For close to a century, the field of community criminology has examined the causes and consequences of community crime and delinquency rates. Nevertheless, there is still a lot we do not know about the dynamics behind these connections. In this book, Ralph Taylor argues that obstacles to deepening our understanding of community/crime links arise in part because most scholars have overlooked four fundamental concerns: how conceptual frames depend on the geographic units and/or temporal units used; how to establish the meaning of theoretically central ecological empirical indicators; and how to think about the causes and consequences of non-random selection dynamics. The volume organizes these four conceptual challenges using a common meta-analytic framework. The framework pinpoints critical features of and gaps in current theories about communities and crime, connects these concerns to current debates in both criminology and the philosophy of social science, and sketches the types of theory testing needed in the future if we are to grow our understanding of the causes and consequences of community crime rates. Taylor explains that a common meta-theoretical frame provides a grammar for thinking critically about current theories and simultaneously allows presenting these four topics and their connections in a unified manner. The volume provides an orientation to current and past scholarship in this area by describing three distinct but related community crime sequences involving delinquents, adult offenders, and victims. These sequences highlight community justice dynamics thereby raising questions about frequently used crime indicators in this area of research. A groundbreaking work melding past scholarly practices in criminology with the field’s current needs, Community Criminology is an essential work for criminologists.

New York; London: New York University Press, 2015. 336p.

By David Garland

This review situates the recent, radical challenges to American criminal justice—calls to end mass incarceration, defund the police, and dismantle systemic racism—within the broader social and economic arrangements that make the US system so distinctive and so problematic. It describes the social structures, institutions, and processes that give rise to America's extraordinary penal state—as well as to its extraordinarily high rates of homicide and social disorder—and considers what these portend for the prospect of radical change. It does so by locating American crime and punishment in the structural context of America's (always-already racialized) political economy—a distinctive set of social structures and institutional legacies that render the United States more violent, more disorderly, and more reliant on penal control than any other developed nation. Drawing on a broad range of social science research findings, it argues that this peculiar political economy—a form of capitalism and democratic governance forged on the anvils of slavery and racial segregation and rendered increasingly insecure and exclusionary in the decades following deindustrialization—generates high levels of social disorganization and criminal violence and predisposes state authorities to adopt penal control as the preferred policy response.

Annual Review of Criminology v. 6. 2023, 20pg

By Richard Rosenfeld, James Austin

This report examines the effects of a small set of factors on violent and property crime rates in Chicago. The authors find that a statistical model based on the Illinois imprisonment rate and a measure of the cost of living explained past variation in crime rates with minimal error.  The authors then used the model to forecast crime rates through 2025. Both violent and property crime are forecast to drop through 2025. In addition, the report finds that were Illinois to reduce its imprisonment rate by 25%, the effect on Chicago’s rate of violent crime would be negligible. No association was found between imprisonment rates and property crime. 

New York: Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation. 2023, 20pg

By Richard Rosenfeld, James Austin

Employing a small number of predictive variables, the authors of this report created statistical models to forecast violent and property crime rates in New York City. The models estimated yearly changes in New York City’s crime rates from the early 1960s through 2021, estimates that corresponded very closely to the actual rates. The authors then used these models to forecast annual changes in crime rates through 2026. The forecast for violent crime is a slight decrease each year through 2026, while the forecast for property crime shows slight yearly increases. Finally, the projected impact on New York City’s violent crime rate of reducing the state imprisonment rate by 25% would be minimal. No association was found between imprisonment rates and property crime.

New York: Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation. 2023, 18pg

By Richard Rosenfeld, James Austin

In this report, the authors devised statistical models to “predict” past yearly changes in Los Angeles’s rates of violent and property crime from the early 1960s through 2021, employing a very small set of predictive variables known to be associated with levels of crime. The yearly changes projected for those years corresponded quite closely to the actual changes. The authors then used the models to forecast crime trends through 2026. Violent crime is forecast to decline through 2026, while property crime is expected to rise modestly in the same period. The analysis also finds that if California imprisonment rates were reduced by 20%, the effect on crime in Los Angeles would be minimal.

New York: Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation. 2023, 21pg

by Lindsey Price Jackson

This guide on Risk-Need-Responsivity: Response Recommendations for Community Courts provides best practices for court practitioners in alignment with evidence-based RNR findings, including advice on incentives and sanctions and a response matrix template.

Also included with this publication is the Center for Justice Innovation's free, non-proprietary RNR tool, the Criminal Court Assessment Tool (CCAT), available in both English and Spanish. Use of an RNR tool is often legislated for community justice programs or required by grant funding. The CCAT is available as an option for use in court-based programs in alignment with local requirements. Please contact the Center for a short, free training before using the CCAT. We also strongly recommend locally validating the tool on your jurisdiction’s population before implementing.

New York: Center for Justice Innovation. 2024, 16pg

By Louise Mansfield, Norma Daykin, Neil E. O'Connell, Daniel Bailey, Louise Forde, Robyn Smith, Jake Gifford, Garcia Ashdown-Franks

Background

Young people who enter the justice system experience complex health and social needs, and offending behaviour is increasingly recognised as a public health problem. Arts interventions can be used with the aim of preventing or reducing offending or reoffending.

Objectives

1. To evaluate evidence on the effectiveness and impact of arts interventions on keeping children and young people safe from involvement in violence and crime. 2. To explore factors impacting the implementation of arts interventions, and barriers and facilitators to participation and achievement of intended outcomes. 3. To develop a logic model of the processes by which arts interventions might work in preventing offending behaviours.

Search Methods

We searched AMED, Academic Search Complete; APA PsycInfo; CINAHL Plus; ERIC; SocIndex; SportDiscus, Medline, CENTRAL, Web of Science, Scopus, PTSDPubs and Performing Arts Periodicals Database, Sage, the US National Criminal Justice Reference Service, the Global Policing and British Library EThOS databases, and the National Police Library from inception to January 2023 without language restrictions.

Selection Criteria

We included randomised and non-randomised controlled trials and quasi-experimental study designs. We included qualitative studies conducted alongside intervention trials investigating experiences and perceptions of participants, and offering insight into the barriers and facilitators to delivering and receiving arts interventions. We included qualitative and mixed methods studies focused on delivery of arts interventions. We included studies from any global setting. We included studies with CYP (8–25 years) who were identified as at-risk of offending behaviour (secondary populations) or already in the criminal justice system (tertiary populations). We included studies of interventions involving arts participation as an intervention on its own or alongside other interventions. Primary outcomes were: (i) offending behaviour and (ii) anti-pro-social behaviours. Secondary outcomes were: participation/attendance at arts interventions, educational attainment, school attendance and engagement and exclusions, workplace engagement, wellbeing, costs and associated economic outcomes and adverse events.

Data Collection and Analysis

We included 43 studies (3 quantitative, 38 qualitative and 2 mixed methods). We used standard methodological procedures expected by The Campbell Collaboration. We used GRADE and GRADE CERQual to assess the certainty of and confidence in the evidence for quantitative and qualitative data respectively.

Main Results

We found insufficient evidence from quantitative studies to support or refute the effectiveness of arts interventions for CYP at-risk of or who have offended for any outcome. Qualitative evidence suggested that arts interventions may lead to positive emotions, the development of a sense of self, successful engagement in creative practices, and development of positive personal relationships. Arts interventions may need accessible and flexible delivery and are likely to be engaging if they have support from staff, family and community members, are delivered by professional artists, involve culturally relevant activity, a youth focus, regularity and a sustainable strategy. We found limited evidence that a lack of advocacy, low funding, insufficient wider support from key personnel in adjacent services could act as barriers to success. Methodological limitations resulted in a judgement of very low confidence in these findings.

Authors' Conclusions

We found insufficient evidence from quantitative studies to support or refute the effectiveness of arts interventions for CYP at-risk of offending or who have offended for any outcome. We report very low confidence about the evidence for understanding the processes influencing the successful design and delivery of arts interventions in this population of CYP and their impact on behavioural, psychosocial, cognitive and offending outcomes.

Campbell Systematic Reviews Volume20, Issue1 March 2024 e1377

By Maury Nation

The author reports on the motivation for developing and performing the Nashville Longitudinal Study of Youth Safety and Wellbeing (NLSYSW) as well as the project’s activities and outcomes, and resulting artifacts. The work of the NLSYSW was organized into working groups corresponding to the principal required tasks to develop the multi-sectoral dataset. The four data collection working groups focused on the following: Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools (MNPS) administrative data; MNPS survey data; contextual data; and youth mapping data. Two data management working groups focused on data anonymization and data archiving. The report describes the major tasks of each working group, the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic disruptions, and NLSYSW outputs and artifacts. The major output of the study was a compilation of multiple data sources with over two million observations and 450 variables; the report provides a list of data sources with the years of data included and a short description of each data set, and directs readers to the user guide and codebook sections for complete details.

Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University, 2023. 167p.

By Peggy C. Giordano; Monica A. Longmore; Wendy D. Manning; Jennifer E. Copp

The research described in this report sought to address social and individual-level mechanisms that drive successful and sustained criminal desistance through a mixed-method project that included analyses based on the existing six waves of the Toledo Adolescent Relationships Study (TARS) over an 18-year time span. The researchers’ goal was to more fully inform criminal justice policy priorities and help design more effective criminal recidivism intervention efforts. The researchers proposed conducting desistance narratives with a subset of male and female respondents who had evidenced a pattern of sustained criminal desistance, and contrasting those respondents with individuals who have persisted in criminal activity as well as others with patterns of intermittent criminal activity. The report details the researchers’ methodology, and notes that their goal was to incorporate insights from the narratives as well as contemporary theorizing to systematically distinguish individuals who persisted, desisted, and were intermittently involved in criminal activity. The three guiding research aims were: to identify individual-level factors linked to sustained desistance; to examine social network influences on desistance processes; and to determine gender similarities and differences in desistance processes. The report provides a discussion of outcomes and findings, and a listing of artifacts that resulted from the project.

Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University, 2023. 27p.

By David Pérez Esparza, Eugenio Weigend Vargas, Tony Payan and Carlos Pérez Ricart

Gun shows are public gatherings where licensed gun dealers and private gun owners use formal and informal venues to exchange information or sell and buy firearms, accessories, and ammunition. A major challenge is that gun shows, unlike established business locations, can be considered gray zones where regulatory loopholes facilitate the movement of legal firearms to illegal domains both domestically and internationally. Given this, they tend to feed into gun trafficking schemes. Despite this, gun shows are poorly monitored. Moreover, these events are not tracked by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) and what little is known comes from academic studies, press releases, or outdated ATF reports. To address this gap, update information, and generate a better understanding of how gun shows connect with gun trafficking, we generated a gun show dataset in the US from 2011 to 2019. We compiled information on promoted gun shows from three main sources, The National Rifle Association Magazine and the websites Gun Show Trader and Shooting Illustrator. We completed our dataset by looking at other minor sources that promoted gun shows. Our dataset encompasses information of 20,691 gun shows and suggests that 71% of them occurred in states where background checks were not required during gun sales between private individuals. We argue that scholars and practitioners will find in this dataset an original tool to analyze gun shows and their impact on public security and public health.

  Journal of Illicit Economies and Development. 2022, 11pg

By Jocelyn J. Bélanger, N. Pontus Leander, Maximilian Agostini, Jannis Kreienkamp, Wolfgang Stroebe

This research examines the notion of defensive gun ownership using the Dualistic Model of Passion. We hypothesized that an obsessive (vs. harmonious)passion for guns would be associated with a belief in a dangerous world (BDW).We expected this relationship to intensify in threatening contexts, leading to a more expansive view on defensive gun ownership. We tested this hypothesis across three threat contexts: a gun‐control message (Study 1,N= 342), a live shooting simulation (Study 2,N= 398), and the aftermath of the Christchurch mass shootings (Study 3,N= 314). In the experimental Study 1, exposure to a gun‐control message increased the intention to purchase guns among those with an obsessive passion (OP) for guns. Study 2 revealed that BDW mediated the relationship between OP and assertive modes of protection, the desire to purchase high‐stopping‐power guns, and anti‐Black racial bias in a shooting task. Study 3 showed that knowledge of the Christchurch attack intensified thelink between OP and BDW, leading to increased support for gun access, willingness to act as a citizen‐protector, and prejudice against Muslims.Comprehending these dynamics can assist policymakers incrafting messaging campaigns for firearm regulation and public safety measures that are more effective.

Aggressive Behavior, Volume 50, Issue 3. May 2024, 17pg

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