President Biden has called for reform of the criminal justice system to ensure fair treatment of people who are transgender who come into contact with the criminal justice system. He has done so in a context in which criminologists, public health researchers, and others, including journalists and advocates, have produced a growing body of research that documents the over criminalization and differential

This study offers an empirical insight into terrorists’ use of the Internet. Although criminology has previously been quiet on this topic, behavior‐based studies can aid in understanding the interactions between terrorists and their environments. Using a database of 231 US‐based Islamic State terrorists, four important findings are offered: (1) This cohort utilized the Internet heavily for the purposes

In 2017, Seattle, Washington, became the first city in the United States to increase its minimum wage to $15 per hour, more than double the federal minimum wage. Not only was a $15 minimum wage unprecedented, but the increase was also extremely rapid, with the minimum wage rising by nearly 60% in just 2 years. Using a synthetic differences‐in‐differences estimator, we consider the impact of Seattle's

We administered a survey experiment to a national sample of 1068 U.S. adults in April 2020 to determine the factors that shape support for various policing tactics in the midst of the COVID‐19 pandemic. Respondents were sharply divided in their views about pandemic policing tactics and were least supportive of policies that might limit public access to officers or reduce crime deterrence. Information

In the wake of repeated school shootings, today's youth have acquired the label of the “mass shooting generation.” Another fitting label would be the “armed school generation.” Most states now permit school security officers to carry firearms, and at least 466 school districts in 19 states allow teachers or staff members to be armed. In this context, understanding public opinion about guns in schools

Despite the widespread interest that de‐escalation training has attracted in law enforcement contexts over the past few years, we know little about its effectiveness in reducing use of force incidents. This study seeks to ascertain the effect of de‐escalation training on serious use of force events in Camden, a high‐crime and high‐poverty city in New Jersey. An analysis of individual officers suggested

Criminal justice practitioners increasingly seek out efficient means of community supervision supplanting face‐to‐face interactions with practices that are less onerous to administrators and clients. We examined the differential impact of remote supervision for low‐risk probationers by race. Remote reporting greatly reduces or eliminates in‐person meetings where race would be salient; however, it also

This study examined whether risk/need assessment results coincided with the placement of defendants into six types of sanctions among convicted adults from 11 counties in one state. Crosstabulations highlighted that individuals’ risk/need levels corresponded to the placement of low‐risk/need individuals to probation and high‐risk/need individuals to prison; however, intermediate sanctions were rarely

Most quantitative research examining predictors of country‐level terrorism have used worldwide samples which potentially obscures regional or country‐specific effects. This may be especially problematic for regions in which common predictors of political violence differ from what is expected based on worldwide patterns. In this paper we explore the possibility that this situation exists for several

In The Eternal Criminal Record, James Jacobs detailed how it has become increasingly difficult to escape the mark of a criminal record. One way to “wipe the slate clean” is through the official expungement of criminal records. We assess public views toward this policy using a national sample of American adults (N = 1,000). Public support for expungement is high for persons convicted of property and

Scorecards have become an increasingly common tool for public policy decision making about important issues in education, finance, and health care. Few scorecards have been applied in criminal justice and none has been developed to highlight racial disparities in incarceration. We constructed county‐level scorecards for racial disparities in incarceration rates for the New York State Permanent Commission

We analyze the disparate effects of a recent California sentencing reform on the arrest, booking, and incarceration rates experienced by California residents from different racial and ethnic groups. In November 2014, California voters passed state Proposition 47 that redefined a series of felony and “wobbler” offenses (offenses that can be charged as either a felony or misdemeanor) as straight misdemeanors

We examine the effects of mass incarceration on the admission of minority and marginal (i.e., first‐time) offenders to state prisons. Our analyses are based on six waves of data from the Survey of Inmates in State and Federal Correctional Facilities from 1973 to 2004. The results suggest that the era of mass incarceration led to increased incarceration of Hispanic offenders relative to White offenders

This study examines the effects of a 1‐day pilot training program on ethnic/racial bias in police use of stop and search powers, using a randomized controlled trial in six diverse agencies in England. We theorized the training could reduce officer bias by improving their competence to apply legitimate criteria in search decisions, and/or by reducing their reliance on ethnic/racial stereotypes. Survey

Connecticut's novel approach to collecting and analyzing traffic stop data for evidence of disparate treatment is widely considered to be a model of best practice. Here, we provide an overview of Connecticut's framework, detail solutions to the canonical empirical challenges of analyzing traffic stop, and describe a data‐driven approach to early intervention. Unlike most jurisdictions that simply produce

There is growing critical commentary and debate about the relative effectiveness of individual program and generic practice approaches to identifying evidence‐based interventions and their impact on the operation of the juvenile justice system. The central issue is whether both of these approaches to identifying evidence‐based interventions provide a valid and reliable guide to improving juvenile justice

Elliott et al.'s essay is part of what is now a series of papers in Criminology and Public Policy on contrasting ways that the evidence base on effective interventions with juvenile offenders can be used to improve juvenile justice programming. Their paper has two themes—(a) a defense of the model programs approach as promoted by the Blueprints for Healthy Youth Development evidence‐based program registry

A key take away from Elliott et al.’s critical review is the need for a program of more rigorous comparative research to assess the two main evidence‐based models for guiding juvenile justice interventions. Additionally, a sound measure of this research should be whether or not the different models are able to achieve (and sustain) population impacts. Both of these are important issues facing the evidence‐based

The apparent paradox of guns and crime is that gun homicide rates have been dropping for three decades in the United States while the number of guns in circulation has been rising. Those trends form an apparent paradox because guns are so much more lethal, given an attack, than other weapons, and in general, the more weapons in a state, the higher the rate of death from firearms. As both winners of

This article identifies the two key issues in the Firearms and Violence Task Force of the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence and briefly describes research and policy findings on these questions in the half century since the the report was published. The key issues were the impact of weapon dangerousness on the death rate from violence assault and the positive linkage between

The Stockholm Prize for 2020 was awarded for research on gun violence and its prevention, and recognizes the growing depth and scope of this field. I am honored to be a co‐recipient, together with Franklin E. Zimring. This essay focuses on three of the topics that have been on my agenda over the course of the last 45 years: how best to conceptualize and measure the problem of gun violence; the availability

This study uses an interrupted time‐series design to analyze the impacts of legislatively supported restorative justice pilot projects in Colorado on overall juvenile filing rates in implementing districts, and it compares those outcomes with nonimplementing districts. On average, pilot districts demonstrate statistically significant reductions in juvenile filing rates during the first year of funding

The death penalty remains one of the most controversial issues of criminal punishment not only because of racial/ethnic disparities, wrongful convictions, and inadequate defense representation but also because of the potential for geographic arbitrariness. The key empirical proposition embedded in the concept of geographic arbitrariness is that localities react to legally and procedurally equal capital

In criminal justice risk forecasting, one can prove that it is impossible to optimize accuracy and fairness at the same time. One can also prove that usually it is impossible optimize simultaneously all of the usual group definitions of fairness. In policy settings, one necessarily is left with tradeoffs about which many stakeholders will adamantly disagree. The result is a contentious stalemate. In

In 1979 Herman Goldstein proposed a radical reform—problem‐oriented policing (POP)—which has had tremendous impact on scholars and practitioners. Even though his paper and subsequent work led to a large body of literature on how to carry out problem‐oriented policing tactics, scholars have often ignored the question of how POP can be institutionalized in police agencies. In this article, we evaluate

During a brief interaction with motorists (i.e., a sobriety check), this study manipulated officer use (and declaration) of a body‐worn camera (BWC) (present; absent) while documenting participant BWC recollection (correct; incorrect) to assess effects on motorists’ perceptions of the encounter and of police more generally. Results (N = 361) demonstrate that perceptions of procedural justice were more

Hinkle et al. (2013) highlighted a statistical powerlessness problem in hot‐spots policing experiments in midsized cities with moderate property crime rates. The current work demonstrates that this problem is less readily resolved than previously suspected. It reviews results from a predictive policing randomized control trial in a large city with property crime rates higher than Chicago or Los Angeles

We examined the effects of an increase in school resource officer (SRO) staffing on schools in a sample of 33 public schools that enhanced SRO staffing through funding from the Department of Justice's Community Oriented Policing Services Hiring Program and a matched sample of 72 schools that did not increase SRO staffing at the same time. In longitudinal analyses of monthly school‐level administrative

The present research uses data from a police‐directed field study to explore the effects of police presence on speeding in two large cities in British Columbia, Canada. As part of the study, an inanimate but realistic‐appearing police cut‐out (“Constable Scarecrow”) was strategically positioned along roadways while motorist speed was measured using a radar‐recording device. The analyses of the multisite

Using open‐source data from the Gun Violence Archive (GVA), we analyze national‐ and state‐level trends in fatal and nonfatal firearm assaults of U.S. police officers from 2014 to 2019 (N = 1,467). Results show that (a) most firearm assaults are nonfatal, (b) there is no compelling evidence that the national rate of firearm assault on police has substantially increased during the last 6 years, and

The Henry Louis Gates Jr. arrest provides an illuminating case study to show how the omission of dispatch in police reform conversations limits our understanding of police officer action. Using conversation analysis, this article analyzes the 911 call and radio transmission from the Gates incident to dissect the function of the 911 call‐taker, and their impact on policing in the field. This analysis

Partnerships are an integral part of the working life of police, yet not a lot is known about how such partnerships work to deter and control crime problems. This article explores the impact of a Third Party Policing Partnership involving police and schools coming together to engage with parents to address their child's truancy and antisocial behavior. We report on results from an embedded behavioral

We conducted a retrospective, quasi‐experimental study of a police naloxone program to examine individual outcomes following nonfatal overdose where either police (n = 111) or emergency medical services (n = 1,229) provided a first response and administered naloxone. Individuals who received a police response were more likely to be arrested immediately following initial dispatch and had more instances

We conducted a randomized‐controlled trial (RCT) of a social interaction training program to determine its effectiveness in improving attitudes and behaviors among police officers. Survey data and a series of difference‐in‐difference tests found that participating in the training program improved attitudes with treatment group officers placing higher priorities on procedurally fair communication during

In 2017, we published an essay (Nagin & Telep, 2017) that challenged the widely held view that research had plausibly demonstrated that procedurally just treatment of citizens by police increased the citizen's willingness to comply with the law and thereby reduced crime rates. This article updates Nagin and Telep (2017) with new evidence that has appeared since its publication, while exploring in more

This study tests the effect of body‐worn cameras (BWCs) on stopped drivers’ perceptions of complying with police directives, obeying traffic laws, and cooperating with the police. A quasi‐randomized controlled trial was conducted with drivers stopped at routine traffic checkpoints. Drivers in the treatment group encountered police officers wearing BWCs, and drivers in the control group encountered

In late 2014, California voters passed Proposition 47 that redefined a set of less serious felony drug and property offenses as misdemeanors. We examine how racial and ethnic disparities in criminal court dispositions in San Francisco change in the years before (2010–2014) and after (2015–2016) the passage of Proposition 47. We decompose disparities in court dispositions into components resulting from

Safe harbor laws are designed to redirect young victims of commercial sexual exploitation away from justice system involvement by prohibiting their arrest and prosecution as criminals. A quasi‐experimental design was used to compare prostitution‐related crime and sex abuse maltreatment trends at the county level in states that have implemented safe harbor laws with a comparison group of counties in

This research leverages a remarkable natural experiment created by recent legislation in Arizona to study the impact of labor market immigration enforcement on crime. We show that Arizona's Mexican immigrant population decreased by as much as 20% in the wake of the passage of a broad‐based “E‐Verify” law requiring employers to verify the immigration status of new employees. In contrast to previous

By taking advantage of data published by the Sentencing Project to analyze whether states that use life without parole (LWOP) more often experience lower violent crime rates or greater reductions in violent crime, this study is the first to empirically assess the crime‐reducing potential of LWOP sentences. The results suggest that LWOP might produce a small absolute reduction in violent crime but that

Past and present gang scholarship is marked by debate as to the appropriate criteria for defining gangs and gang membership. Mara Salvatrucha, or MS‐13, highlights some obstacles in conceptualizing gangs and operationalizing gang membership. Although MS‐13 has generated attention in recent years, little systematic criminological research exists on the gang. Drawing on in‐depth interviews and surveys

This study examined relationships between public antipathy toward the police, demoralization, and de‐policing using pooled time‐series cross sections of 18,413 surveys from law enforcement officers in 87 U.S. agencies both before and after Ferguson and contemporaneous demonstrations. The results do not provide strong support for Ferguson Effects. Post‐Ferguson changes to job satisfaction, burnout,

This study assesses the impact of state repressive counterterrorism actions on terrorists’ targeting and lethality of the terrorism landscape in Israel. Using systematic data on government responses to terrorism and an empirical model that addresses reciprocal relationships, we analyze dynamical interactions between types of government repression with attacks against civilian or government targets

California's Proposition 47 (Prop 47), passed in November 2014, sought to scale back punishment for selected drug and property offenses, making them misdemeanors rather than felonies. Although others have examined the impacts of Proposition 47 on crime rates, here we examine the impacts on a range of recidivism outcomes specifically for individuals convicted for drug possession offenses. We focus on

The current study analyzes the crime reduction effect of a police substation operating within a business improvement district in Newark, New Jersey. Synthetic control methods were used to create a control group that was statistically equivalent to the cumulative street units in the target area. Significant reductions of burglary and motor vehicle theft were observed in the target area as compared with

De‐escalation training has been widely implemented by U.S. police agencies in the wake of adverse public reaction to recent controversial police use‐of‐force incidents. Despite vast promotion from politicians, academics, expert panels, and the public, we know little about the effects of de‐escalation training on officers and police–citizen interactions. In this article, we offer findings from a multidisciplinary

We used data from the FBI's Supplemental Homicide Reports and other publicly available databases to calculate state‐level annual incidence of fatal mass shootings for 1984–2017. Negative binomial regression models were used to estimate the associations between changes in key gun laws and fatal mass shootings. Handgun purchaser licensing laws and bans of large‐capacity magazines (LCMs) were associated

Public mass shootings tend to capture the public's attention and receive substantial coverage in both traditional media and online social networks (OSNs) and have become a salient topic in them. Motivated by this, the overarching objective of this paper is to advance our understanding of how the public responds to mass shooting events in such media outlets. Specifically, it aims to examine whether

We assess the predictive validity and differential prediction by race of one pretrial risk assessment, the Public Safety Assessment (PSA). The PSA was developed with support from the Laura and John Arnold Foundation (LJAF) to reduce the burden placed on vulnerable populations at the front end of the criminal justice system. The growing and disparate use of incarceration is one of the most pressing

Mass violence refers to victimization, resulting in multiple deaths and/or injuries. Thus, the measurement of mass violence cannot rest on a single definition or dataset. The purpose of this paper is to decompose mass violence into its various sub‐types, discuss measurement issues related to the sub‐types, evaluate potential datasets for future studies, and offer practical policy implications.

This article examines the use, impacts, and regulation of assault weapons and other high‐capacity semiautomatic firearms as they pertain to the problem of mass shootings in the United States. High‐capacity semiautomatics (which include assault weapons as a subset) are used in between 20% and 58% of all firearm mass murders, and they are used in a particularly high share of public mass shootings. Mass

This paper describes the immense difficulty of predicting that someone is going to carry out a school shooting and then turns to threat assessment as a more promising violence prevention strategy. In schools, a multidisciplinary threat assessment team investigates reported threats and develops responses that are calibrated to the seriousness of the threat and the student's educational needs. Researchers

Amid widespread agreement that public mass violence is generally the result of understandable and often discoverable thoughts and behaviors, the threat assessment model of identifying, assessing, and managing potential offenders has proven an effective safety approach across different offender types. In this article I describe two impediments to the model's efficacy – incomplete national adoption of

Mass shootings have been identified as a novel American crime problem. The term is merely a new name, however, for an older crime problem—mass murder. The social construction of the mass shooting and mass murder problems have both been driven by “mass public shootings”—incidents that occur in the absence of other criminal activity (e.g., robberies, drug deals, and gang “turf wars”) in which a gun was

Public mass shootings in the United States have become substantially more deadly over time. We document this increase, offer a model to explain it, review supporting evidence for the model, and present new findings on offenders from 1966 to 2019. It appears that societal changes have led to more public mass shooters who are motivated to kill large numbers of victims for fame or attention, as well as

In this article, I provide a qualitative analysis of ten perpetrators of mass violence, including five school shooters and five attackers in nonschool settings (a random public shooting, a familicide, and three attacks by White supremacist homegrown violent extremists). The killers are discussed in terms of body‐related issues, three psychological categories (psychopathic, psychotic, and traumatized)

A popular explanation for mass shootings is that the assailant “must have been mentally ill.” A popular policy solution is exceptionalist—enter more gun‐disqualifying psychiatric records into the background check system to keep guns away from identified people with mental illness. We synthesized research on the connection between mental illness and common violence, gun violence, homicide, and mass

In this article, we detail recent efforts in California to identify and target high‐risk firearm owners to help prevent firearm violence, including mass shootings. We begin by describing gun violence restraining orders, also known as extreme risk protection orders, which provide a judicial mechanism for firearm recovery and a time‐limited prohibition on firearm purchases. Next, we discuss California's

We investigated the extent to which the 89 mass shooters who committed their acts from 2014 through 2017 were known or suspected to commit domestic violence prior to the shooting, whether they had been engaged in the justice system in a way that could have led to domestic violence firearm restrictions, and why they were either not legally or not successfully restricted from firearm access. A total

Mass violence, almost no matter how defined, is (thankfully) rare. Rare events are difficult to study in a systematic manner. Standard statistical procedures can fail badly, and usefully accurate forecasts of rare events often are little more than an aspiration. We offer an unconventional approach for the statistical analysis of rare events illustrated by an extensive case study. We report research