By Beatrix Immenkamp

Hate speech and hate crime can destroy lives, harm people and property, threaten individual rights, terrify communities, reduce trust between members of society, create and amplify tensions between social groups, disturb public peace and order, and endanger peaceful coexistence. Hate speech distorts public debate and, at its worst, leads to an abuse of rights that endangers the rule of law. Hate speech and hate crime are incompatible with the EU's common values and fundamental rights, as enshrined in EU Treaties and in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. EU law currently criminalises hate speech and hate crime, but only if it is related to a limited set of characteristics, namely race, colour, religion, descent or national or ethnic origin. The European Commission, with the support of the European Parliament, would like to widen the scope of the prohibition to include other protected characteristics, such as gender, sexual orientation, age and disability. In December 2021, the Commission proposed to the Council and the Parliament to extend the list of EU crimes under Article 83(1) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union to hate speech and hate crime. With this initiative, the Commission hopes to address Member States' divergent and fragmented approaches to hate speech and hate crime and to guarantee consistent protection of victims across the EU. In this context, it is important to understand how Member States currently criminalise hate speech and hate crime. This briefing therefore provides an overview of relevant legal provisions in selected EU countries. There are significant differences between Member States, strengthening the argument in favour of harmonising legislation across the EU. This briefing is to be read in conjunction with the briefing 'Hate speech and hate crime: Time to act?', published in September 2024

Brussels: EPRS | European Parliamentary Research Service, 2024. 13p.

By Blyth Crawford

This report examines the often under‑studied connections between antisemitism and anti‑gender sentiment within the neofascist militant accelerationist (NMA) movement. It considers the central importance of family within the NMA mission to maintain white racial ‘purity’, before outlining dominant antisemitic conspiracy theories prevalent between accelerationist movements such as the ‘Great Replacement’. Closely related is the ‘Cultural Marxism’ conspiracy theory which is a key point of focus of this paper. This narrative frames Jewish people as having disproportionate influence within cultural institutions, such as the media, with Jews often imagined as using this power to influence society subtly in a variety of ways that might lead to the white race being ‘replaced’. In particular, this report focuses on how the NMA movement imagines Jewish people as influencing sexual politics in ways that are regarded as being ‘anti‑family’ and therefore constitute a threat to the white race.

Key Findings

• The rigid conceptions of what constitutes a ‘real’ family typical among NMA movements has direct implications for sex and gender norms. Any sexuality or aspect of sexual politics that falls outside these strict constructions is regarded as a threat to the white race and is attributed to hostile Jewish influence.

• NMA groups’ anti‑gender narratives therefore constitute a multi‑pronged threat, combining hatred towards feminists and the LGBTQ+ community with antisemitism.

London: ICSR King’s College London 2022. 40p.

By Ioana Sendroiu, Ron Levi & John Hagan

The Roma are Europe’s largest minority group and face extensive discrimination across the continent. Drawing on a survey of Roma and non-Roma households in twelve Central and Eastern European countries, we analyze the extent to which legal cynicism, as a cognitive frame, is connected to the avoidance of helpful social institutions. We thus expand existing research on legal cynicism to focus on individuals’ contacts with potentially helpful institutions that can buffer inequality. We conclude that the interplay of legal cynicism and system avoidance, which have provided deep insights into the reproduction of structural disadvantage in American cities, also provide us with international insights into the causes of inequality and minority disadvantage across hundreds of towns in Central and Eastern Europe. In this way, legal cynicism and system avoidance work to reproduce durable inequality.

Social Forces, Volume 101, Issue 1, September 2022, Pages 281–308,

By Justice for Children

“For children deprived of liberty, who remain an inherently vulnerable group, experiences of violence are sadly a reality for a vast majority. (…) The impact of such violence is devastating, immediate, and lifelong. It impairs children’s brain development, their physical and mental health, and their ability to learn. To end violence against children in detention there is an urgent need for States and their statistical offices to collect better data and conduct more analysis of the information that is collected – both of which remain scarce.”

- Manfred Nowak

This research report maps current data collection practices, gaps, and needs for monitoring violence against children across the European Union and highlights the need for better safeguarding policies in these facilities. This research is realized in the framework of the Data for Monitoring the Safety of Imprisoned Children (Data MOSAIC) project which is implemented by Penal Reform International, Social Activities and Practice Institute (SAPI), Fundatia Terre des Hommes – Elvetia (TdH Romania) and Fundación Tierra de Hombres (TdH Spain) in collaboration with Universidade NOVA de Lisboa between 2023-2025. The project aimed at taking a step toward better-safeguarding children from violence during criminal justice detention by improving the existing data collection practices in children's detention facilities across the European Union. Within this background, this research report combines a mapping of tools and practices for data collection on VAC in criminal detention facilities in Europe, identifies gaps, needs, and promising practices, and seeks to provide relevant recommendations and elements for developing an improved monitoring system. Conducted in close collaboration with authorities, staff, and international experts, this research underpins the development of the Data MOSAIC tool, a data collection tool that aims at supporting facilities to devise more evidence-based practices and policies by enabling them to monitor VAC incidents and trends.

The Hague: Penal Reform International, 2024. 76p.

Edited By David Ehrhardt, David Oladimeji Alao, M. Sani Umar

Exploring the contentious landscape of Nigeria’s escalating violence, this book describes the changing roles of traditional authorities in combatting contemporary security challenges. Set against a backdrop of widespread security threats – including insurgency, land disputes, communal violence, regional independence movements, and widespread criminal activities – perhaps more than ever before, Nigeria’s conventional security infrastructure seems ill-equipped for the job. This book offers a fresh, empirical analysis of the roles of traditional authorities – including kings, Ezes, Obas, and Emirs – who are often hailed as potent alternatives to the state in security governance. It complicates the assumption that these traditional leaders, by virtue of their customary legitimacy and popular roots, are singularly effective in preventing and managing violence. Instead, in exploring their creative adaptation to governance roles after a dramatic postcolonial downturn, this book argues that traditional leaders can augment, but not substitute, the state in addressing insecurity. This book’s in-depth analysis will be of interest to researchers and policy makers across African and security studies, political science, anthropology, and development.

London; New York: Routledge, 2024. 313p.

By Darshana Sreedhar Mini

In the 1990s, India’s mediascape saw the efflorescence of edgy soft-porn films in the Malayalam-speaking state of Kerala. In Rated A, Darshana Sreedhar Mini examines the local and transnational influences that shaped Malayalam soft-porn cinema and maps the genre’s circulation among the Indian diaspora in the Middle East. She explores the soft-porn industry’s precarious labor structure, as well as how actresses and production personnel who are marked by their involvement with a taboo form navigate their social lives. By surveying the tense negotiations among sexuality, import policy, and censorship, this study offers a model for understanding film genres as entire fields of social relations and gendered imaginaries.

By Anthony Morgan, Timothy Cubitt, Alexandra Voce and Isabella Voce  

We conducted a randomised survey experiment involving 13,301 online Australians. Respondents were asked about their support for environmental, anti-lockdown and sovereign citizen protests. They were randomly allocated to one of three groups presented with different protest tactics—peaceful marching, disrupting traffic and violent clashes with police. Respondents were significantly more likely to oppose violent or disruptive protests than peaceful protests, regardless of the issue or movement in question. The strongest opposition was to anti-lockdown and anti-vaccination protests, followed by protests relating to the sovereign citizen movement. Protests about environmental issues had the most support. The effect of conspiratorial beliefs on support for protests varied by protest cause. Belief in conspiracy theories increased support for protest violence, relative to other tactics. Support for certain protest causes and tactics is shaped by a person’s ideological beliefs.

Trends & issues in crime and criminal justice no. 702. Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology, 2024. 23p.

By Bethany Jackson, Esther Weir, Meghan Alexander, Kimberley Hutchison, Jolaade Olatunbosun, Vicky Brotherton, and Doreen Boyd , Mary Alexander

Realigning Modern Slavery and Climate Change for Equitable Governance and Action’ is part of a larger collective of research projects aiming to understand the intersections between climate change and modern slavery and generate new evidence on how policies can recognize, address and positively influence these linkages between modern slavery and climate change. This project focuses on how modern slavery and climate change can be jointly integrated in UK Government and devolved administrations' policies. This pursuit is to demonstrate how modern slavery can be ‘mainstreamed’ into climate change action, and vice versa. The project and this report are the result of collaboration between the Rights Lab (University of Nottingham), Transparentem, and International Justice Mission (IJM) UK. Context Modern slavery and climate change intersect through complex, direct and indirect pathways that span borders and propagate through interconnected human-environmental systems. Climate change can increase vulnerabilities to modern slavery through the occurrence of changing environmental conditions and slow-onset events (such as drought), or rapid-onset events, both of which can cause climate-induced displacement or longer-term migration and heighten vulnerabilities that can be exploited (both in home and receiving countries). In response to changing environmental conditions, people may be forced to enter exploitative situations or engage in exploitative activities to provide alternative livelihoods and survive. In this regard, climate change can exacerbate pre-existing risk factors for modern slavery and disproportionally affect certain groups, notably women and girls. However, climate change action may also be a driving factor. For instance, planned relocations of communities as part of adaptive, risk management approaches can also create or exacerbate vulnerabilities to modern slavery, particularly if rights and/or livelihood opportunities are limited in receiving locations. Likewise, the ‘race to net zero’ could prompt new businesses to engage in modern slavery and human rights abuses, while the loss of certain industries could create new vulnerabilities in the absence of just transitions. The intersections and cascading risks that exist between climate change and modern slavery make it paramount that the two agendas be addressed together; yet to date, these issues have largely been treated as policy silos. Research methods This research examines the policy intersections and opportunities for strengthening alignment between modern slavery and climate change through UK policies and devolved administrations (Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland). The research addresses the following questions: 1. To what extent are anti-slavery efforts currently integrated into UK Government and devolved administrations’ climate change policies? 2. How can anti-slavery actions be better aligned and integrated (if at all) into climate change policies through existing and/or new mechanisms (i.e., ‘mainstreaming’)? To address these questions, we undertook a comprehensive evidence review, alongside policy and legal analyses, both domestically and internationally to identify potential transferable lessons. This was accompanied by in-depth interviews with governance actors (n = 17) and a focus group (October 2023) with those working on modern slavery and/or climate change policies (n = 4).

Findings and recommendations Three key emerging findings were identified as part of the study. First, policy silos currently exist because of inaction, a lack of ability and willingness to incorporate combined activities in work and disconnects of scale mean activities to combine modern slavery and climate change action are further ahead in the anti-slavery sector, than the climate change space. Second, there are perceived and real barriers associated with resource and capacity strain which mean the research community should work to support governance actors and provide evidence for the development of new streams of policy action. Finally, domestic and international legislative action can be used as a baseline for combined action addressing modern slavery and climate change. For example, the inclusion of decent work within Scotland and Northern Ireland’s climate change policies demonstrates integrated policy achievements. Our findings highlight several ways through which modern slavery and climate change agendas could be more strongly aligned and strengthened through governance mechanisms. Seventeen (17) overarching recommendations are identified according to four core themes – governance, knowledge-to-action, capacity building and finance, and support, lived experience and inclusion, and have been assigned an urgency score. The urgency scoring adopts a similar approach to that used by the latest Climate Change Risk Assessment (CCRA3) (HM Government, 2022), taking into account current levels of risks or opportunities, how this is currently being managed and the benefits of further action in the next five years. More action is needed for most recommendations, meaning that new, stronger or different government action is required over and above that already planned in the next five years. It is vital that governments step-up action to address these dual challenges simultaneously to ensure a rights-based, socially just response to climate change. Summary of recommendations Governance  G1: Strategic oversight of Greater strategic oversight is needed between the leading departments focused on modern slavery (Home Office and Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, FCDO), to include and address intersecting issues of modern slavery and climate change at domestic and international scales.  G2: Problem framing and recognition o An overarching human rights lens should be centred at the core of public policy and should be integrated across all departments (national and devolved) and their mandates.  G3: Enhanced cross-departmental collaboration of Mechanisms are needed to overcome current siloed approaches throughout the UK government and devolved administrations, including cross departmental sub-groups and establishing internal networks.  G4: Legislative change o Consider the development of new combined legislation addressing modern slavery and climate change concerns, and in the interim update current legislation to strengthen UK response to modern slavery and climate change.  G5: Alignment of Inclusion of climate change as an issue of concern in relation to modern slavery as part of the agenda pursued by the Global Commission on Modern Slavery.  G6: Intergovernmental collaboration o The UK should revive its reputation as a multi-lateral governance actor and provide international leadership around climate change and modern slavery through its role within the UN multilateral systems, the new Global Commission on Modern Slavery, through the FCDO Modern Slavery Envoy and other multi-lateral systems  (continued)   

Nottingham, UK: University of Nottingham, Rights Lab, 2024. 53p.

By Kori Cordero,  Suzanne M. Garcia, Lauren van Schilfgaarde

Intergovernmental Collaboration is intended to assist Tribal Healing to Wellness Courts interested in building intergovernmental collaborations, including tribal-state collaborations. Whether a Wellness Court has been operational for decades or is still in the planning process, collaboration is essential. This resource frames the subject by providing a brief history of Tribal Healing to Wellness Courts, discusses some common traits found in existing collaborations, and then uses those common traits to discuss actual collaborations that are operating in the Tribal Wellness Court context. (2021

West Hollywood, CA: Tribal Law and Policy Institute. 2021. 46p.

By Carrie Garrow and Catherine Retana

Using traditional storytelling as a guide,Tribal Judicial Leadership in Healing to Wellness Courts looks at leadership from a tribal perspective. Tribal Healing to Wellness team leaders and tribal judges are faced with numerous responsibilities. Tribal judges are expected to actively participate with team members, participants, and ensure the sustainability of the Tribal Healing to Wellness Court within the Judicial Branch. This publication looks to traditional stories to provide a guide for tribal judges for effective tribal judicial leadership within Tribal Healing to Wellness Courts by discussing the responsibilities of Tribal judges, the cultural components of Tribal judicial leadership, and how they interact with the Tribal Healing to Wellness Court Ten Key Components.

West Hollywood, CA: Tribal Law and Policy Institute. 2024. 230p.

By Alyssa Harrold and Grace Carson

Promising Strategies for Tribal Healing to Wellness Courts: Peer to Peer Learning through Mentor Courts describes The Tribal Law and Policy Institute’s Mentor Court Program, which was conceived to address a critical gap in the provision of Tribal specific technical assistance. While Federal and State mentor court programs offer valuable insights, they often lack focus on Tribal-specific issues such as jurisdictional complexities, limited access to resources, heightened rates of substance abuse, co-occurring disorders, cultural values, and historical trauma. Furthermore, the unique sovereign status of Tribal nations, each with its own customs, laws, and cultural needs, necessitates tailored approaches to the development and sustainability of Tribal Healing to Wellness programs. The peer-to-peer learning that occurs between Mentor Courts and Sister Courts (or mentee courts) is representative of the interconnectedness of indigenous peoples and the significance of shared knowledge. We believe that the Mentor Court/Sister Court model promotes Tribal sovereignty and self-determination within Indigenous justice systems.

West Hollywood, CA: Tribal Law and Policy Institute. 2024. 54p.

By Lauren van Schilfgaarde

Formalizing Healing to Wellness Courts in Tribal Law (2022) tracks the ways in which Tribes have drafted Wellness Courts into tribal law. Tribal Healing to Wellness Courts are restorative justice components of the Tribal Court. To the extent they operate a docket, adjudicate cases, and most critically, heal and restore members and the community, some Tribes have noted their existence in the Tribal code. Because each Tribe is structurally and culturally unique, there is no one correct way to promulgate a Wellness Court into Tribal law, or if that exercise is even necessary. This publication identifies the considerations for code drafting, identifies variations, and pushes Tribes to contemplate how the Wellness Court operates in relation to other parts of the Tribal judiciary and Tribal law.

West Hollywood, CA: Tribal Law and Policy Institute , 2023. 179p.

By Nicole Gelinas 

During Mayor Eric Adams’s first seven weeks in office, soaring violent crime in New York City’s subway system dominated the local news. Public fear and frustration peaked in mid-January, with the murder of 40-year-old Michelle Go, who was shoved from a Times Square subway platform onto the tracks in the middle of the day. Go’s alleged killer, an apparently mentally ill and homeless man who had repeatedly violated parole for a 2017 violent felony conviction, was yet another example of the city and state’s failure to treat and supervise violent mentally ill people, or to incarcerate violent offenders. Go’s death was a tragic instance of a now nearly two-year-old phenomenon. When subway ridership fell precipitously in March 2020, to as low as 6.5% of the pre-Covid normal level of 5.6 million riders each weekday, violent felonies did not fall with passenger numbers. Violent felonies rose sharply, not only on a per-rider basis but in absolute numbers. A beneficial “safety in numbers” effect, supplemented by the legacy of decades of proactive policing, had disappeared. Now the full data for 2021 are in, and a new, longer-term trend persistent through the second year of Covid has become clear. As ridership has gradually returned, to an average of 59% of normal from early November until Christmas Eve 2021, violent crime has not gradually declined in tandem. Violent crime, both per passenger and, in some categories, in raw numbers, has remained persistently higher than it was in 2019. Where there was safety in numbers before Covid and grave peril in desolation beginning in March 2020, there now exists an unhappy medium. Modest-size crowds—though larger than those in 2020—are not by themselves helping to deter violent crime. This stagnation of both crowd size and public safety is unlikely to fix itself: as people fear taking trains because of violent crime, they keep crowd levels low, thus enabling violent crime to persist at elevated levels. At the same time, the NYPD and prosecutors have not stepped in to fill the vacuum. Preventive policing, in terms of arrests and civil summonses for alleged low-level law violations, remains far below pre-Covid levels. In January 2022, before Go’s murder, new Mayor Eric Adams and Governor Kathy Hochul announced a joint state-city plan to secure the subways. (The city-run NYPD is generally responsible for public safety in the subways, not the state-run Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which runs the trains.) As of mid-March 2022, however, the plan has not yet achieved results: for the year through March 13, transit crime was up 80.3% compared with the same period in 2021. To restore order on the subways, the city must go beyond the improved mental-health treatment that the plan promises. Rather, police have to return to proactive and preventive policing and deterrence—and prosecutors need to follow through on these cases. In 2019, New York City and tristate residents depended on mass transit for three-fourths of their daily commutes into Manhattan. Without safe transit, Manhattan and the city cannot recover economically from Covid.4 

New York: The Manhattan Institute, 2022. 17p.

By Sean Garcia-Leys, Meigan Thompson, Christyn Richardson

Gang allegations made by law enforcement agents frequently prevent undocumented immigrants from gaining legal status for which they would be otherwise eligible. These allegations, made without any of the hallmarks of due process, also increase the likelihood an undocumented immigrant will be prioritized for deportation or held in immigration detention. Policy makers, elected officials, and even the law enforcement agents who make these gang allegations are often unaware of the immigration effects of these allegations. This report documents the findings of the UC Irvine School of Law Immigrant Rights Clinic (IRC) based on the IRC’s legal representation of affected immigrants, collaboration with community organizations and other legal service providers, interviews with law enforcement agents, and review of scholarly literature. First, the IRC found that gang allegations have a high risk of error as they are primarily made based on the subjective beliefs of law enforcement agents in the field and are usually made without any connection to a specific crime. This high risk of error is corroborated by the fact that these allegations are overwhelmingly made against African-Americans and Latinos. Second, the IRC learned that these allegations are stored in computer databases that are networked to other agencies, including Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Third, the IRC learned that these allegations negatively affect the eligibility of undocumented immigrants for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and other forms of immigration relief. Fourth, the IRC learned that gang allegations also affect the treatment of immigrants held in immigration detention. Considering these findings, the IRC recommends that law enforcement agencies be required to: (1) provide notice to every person who law enforcement agents document as a gang member, (2) improve existing notice practices, and (3) offer neutral review hearings where people erroneously documented as gang members may contest that documentation. By providing these basic hallmarks of due process to those law enforcement agents suspect of gang membership, the risk of unintended immigration harms to people erroneously documented as gang members can be greatly reduced.  

Irvine, CA: UCI School of Law Immigrant Rights Clinic , 2016. 30p.

By David Bright, Chad Whelan and Carlo Morselli

A large volume of criminal offending involves two or more individuals acting collaboratively. In recent years, much contemporary research on group crime has integrated research on co-offending with the study of criminal networks. However, while this research (mostly from the United States and Canada) is generating significant insights into co-offending, there is a notable absence of research on co-offending and co-offending networks in Australia. This report presents the findings of a study into co-offending using arrest data from Melbourne, Australia. The study sought to extend previous work on co-offending by analysing the range of crime types committed by individuals and co-offenders across co-offending networks.

Trends & issues in crime and criminal justice no. 597. Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology. 2020. 21p.

By  Debbie Scott, Cherie Heilbronn, Kerri Coomber, Ashlee Curtis, Foruhar Moayeri, James Wilson, Sharon Matthews, Rose Crossin, Alex Wilson, Karen Smith, Peter Miller and Dan Lubman

The acute association between interpersonal violence, alcohol and drug use, self-harm, and mental health issues is relatively unexplored. Violence-related ambulance attendances were analysed, differentiated by type of violence and by victim or aggressor of violence, as well as the co-occurrence of alcohol and drug use, self-harm, and mental health issues. Ambulance attendances related to victims of violence had few co-occurring issues beyond alcohol and drug misuse. In contrast, attendances related to aggressors were more complex, with high proportions of co-occurring mental health, self-harm, and alcohol and drug issues. These findings demonstrate the utility of ambulance data for surveillance of interpersonal violence  

Trends & issues in crime and criminal justice no. 595. Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology. 2020. 17p.

By The Refugee Council

When the new Government came into power following the general election, they inherited an asylum system in meltdown. The Illegal Migration Act 2023 and the Rwanda Plan had brought the system to a near-standstill, as the number of people waiting for an initial decision once more started to rise. This paper sets out the state of the asylum system that new ministers faced, and the early steps taken to address the resulting cost, chaos, and human misery. It presents key recommendations for the next steps the new Government should take to ensure the asylum system is fair and effective and to make it safer for people to seek protection in the UK.

Our key findings include:

• Due to the previous Government’s Illegal Migration Act 2023, in the months leading up to the general election, the productivity of the asylum system was at its lowest since the height of the COVID-19 pandemic

• As a result, the work undertaken by the previous Government to reduce the backlog had stalled with the numbers waiting for a decision increasing

• Without intervention, they are projected to have reached record levels in January 2025 with a projected 177,063 people waiting for an initial decision.

• Removing the blockages created by the Illegal Migration Act 2023, there would be an estimated 59,000 fewer people waiting for a decision by the end of January 2025 compared to if no action had been taken, saving between £151 million and £240.7 million as a result.

Our key recommendations for the government span all key areas of asylum policy and include:

• An immediate repeal of the Illegal Migrant Act and the Safety of Rwanda Act

• Introducing a clear and transparent plan for how the backlog of asylum claims will be processed and prioritised

• Moving away from the current system of private accommodation contracts and instead empowering local councils to provide value-for-money housing

• Extending the move-on period from 28 days to 56 days after someone receives a positive decision on their asylum claim

• Putting in place a team within the Home Office to review all asylum refusals that have been appealed to ensure the correct decision was made the first time

• Limiting the conduct of age determinations to staff with relevant training

• Expanding safe routes, including by making a clear commitment to refugee resettlement

• Implementing a more effective voluntary returns program.

London:   Refugee Council, 2024. 24p.

By SIQI LI and JUN LU

The data set comprises cross-sectional and panel data on different types of crime for 32 London boroughs from 2012 to 2022. It has been hand-curated to match with data on a wide range of air pollutants. The data set has been analyzed using spatial econometric modeling to measure the impact of air pollution in London on the occurrence of different types of crime. The results indicate that air pollution in London has gradually improved, having previously been the most polluted city in the world. Air pollution exerts diverse effects on the occurrence of different crimes. Among these, the occurrence of theft crime is significantly and positively affected by air pollution, while the occurrence of dangerous driving crime is slightly inhibited by air pollution. This inhibitory effect is estimated to be related to the inhibitory effect of air pollution on traveling. However, there is no significant effect of air pollution on the occurrence of weapon possession crime. This study makes recommendations for the further development of emissions reduction policies in London in the future, as well as for the prevention of crime through the control of air pollution

By Dallas Augustine, Noah Zatz, Naomi Sugie

This study addresses whether employers are using criminal records as a valuable source of information for risk management or if general stigma impacts employer hiring practices. The study finds that employer aversion to hiring people with criminal records was driven not only by concerns with future criminal behavior or other associated risks but also, in significant part, by the stigma that accompanies a criminal record. Consequently, permitting decision-makers unrestricted access to and use of criminal records allows for forms of exclusion that are based, at least in part, on stigma and stereotypes associated with contact with the criminal justice system rather than purely practical business concerns. Report authors conclude that regulating employers’ access to and use of criminal history through Ban the Box policies and other variants can both combat hiring discrimination and advance broader socioeconomic equality.

Los Angeles: The UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, 2020. 9p.

By Stephanie Brooks Holliday, Elizabeth Marsolais, Samantha Matthews

The Los Angeles County Rapid Diversion Program (RDP) is a pretrial mental health diversion program that was established in 2019. RDP serves individuals whose mental health diagnoses (which can include substance use disorders) played a role in the criminal charges that they are facing. The concept for RDP was developed with several local departments at the table, including public defense, prosecution, behavioral health services, and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. The program is now overseen by the Justice, Care and Opportunities Department (JCOD). When RDP launched, it focused on people facing low-level, nonviolent misdemeanor charges. RDP has expanded from one courthouse to seven in its first five years of operation. It now diverts qualifying people facing misdemeanor or felony charges. In addition to mental health and/or substance use disorder treatment, RDP clients receive case management services to help them address other needs (e.g., housing, obtaining benefits). Successful completion of RDP leads to the dismissal of charges. The figure depicts the RDP process.

Evaluating the Rapid Diversion Program

RAND researchers aimed to understand how RDP is being implemented, the successes and challenges that the program faces, and the characteristics of clients served by the program. The research team reviewed relevant documents, observed courtroom proceedings, conducted interviews with program implementation partners and graduates, and analyzed program data. In their assessment, the researchers found both strengths in implementation and challenges to consider while contemplating the expansion of RDP. Overall, public defenders, prosecutors, and clinicians support expanding the program.

Key Findings

Building a Diversion Program

RDP was developed on the foundation of three guiding principles that have helped address limitations to the traditional pretrial mental health diversion process under the California Penal Code, Section 1001.36: (1) identifying a set of charges that the defense, prosecution, and courts can agree are appropriate for diversion; (2) embedding clinical staff directly in the courts, which avoids the lengthy process of retaining a forensic evaluator to assess the client and then developing a treatment plan; and (3) providing case management to both address additional client needs and help ensure program compliance.

Rapid Diversion Program Client Characteristics and Outcomes

Among the findings on client characteristics and outcomes:From March 2022 to April 2024, more than 4,300 people were evaluated, and more than 1,200 were diverted.Most clients are Hispanic (about 47 percent) or Black (28 percent).About 35 percent are unhoused and 42 percent are in temporary housing when they enter the program.About one-half of the individuals approved for diversion are facing misdemeanor charges, and one-half are facing felony charges.As of April 2024, more than 660 clients had graduated from the program, and 91 percent had avoided having a new case filed for an offense occurring after graduation.

Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2024. 2p.