In response to highly publicized, controversial police killings of Black Americans, policymakers and advocates have proposed several police reforms, including a recurrent, decades-long demand for police departments to diversify their forces to better match the racial composition of the communities they serve. We draw on a unique police agency-level dataset comprising 1,988 local police agencies and

Arrest warrants are an important and pervasive aspect of crime and justice in the United States. There are nearly three million arrest warrants active on any given day, of which several hundred thousand were issued for serious violent crimes (SVCs) such as aggravated assault, robbery, forcible sexual assault, and homicide. In more than a third of those SVC warrants, however, extradition is conditionally

Priorresearch has produced varied results regarding the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on crime rates, depending on the offenses and time periods under investigation. The current study of weekly offense rates in large U.S. cities is based on a longer time period, a greater number of offenses than prior research, and a varying number of cities for each offense (max = 28, min = 13, md = 20). We find

Despite growing national awareness that COVID-19 in jails and prisons constitutes a public health emergency in the United States, remarkably little attention has been paid to understanding how the virus affects people under community supervision. We used data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) to explore differences in the extent to which men under community supervision are vulnerable

This paper studies the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent lockdown on criminal activity in the City of Buenos Aires, Argentina. Following quarantine restrictions, we find a large, significant, robust, and immediate decline in property crime reported to official agencies, police arrests, and crime reported in victimization surveys. We observe no significant change in homicides, and a

Research Summary: We examine changes in help-seeking for domestic violence (DV) in seven U.S. cities during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using Bayesian structural time-series modeling with daily data to construct a synthetic counterfactual, we test whether calls to police and/or emergency hotlines varied in 2020 as people stayed home due to COVID-19. Across this sample, we estimate there were approximately

Risk-based firearm removal policies are relatively new, and research on their implementation and effectiveness is limited. Using an interpretive phenomenological approach, we interviewed stakeholders in California's gun violence restraining order (GVRO) process to learn about circumstances in which GVROs are appropriate. Two primary themes emerged: (1) GVROs are most useful when there is acute risk

This paper estimates the cost of wrongful convictions based on analysis of jury awards and settlements for individuals who were wrongfully convicted and incarcerated for crimes they did not commit. Key variables of interest are number of days spent in prison, days on probation, and demographics of wrongfully convicted and their families. The average “cost” of a wrongful conviction is estimated to be

This study estimates disparities in driving under the influence (DUI) convictions relative to the frequency with which racial/ethnic groups engage in alcohol-impaired driving. We use had-been-drinking crashes and self-reported alcohol-impaired driving to approximate alcohol-impaired driving frequency for racial/ethnic groups in California from 2001 to 2016. DUI conviction and had-been-drinking crash

Several of the largest U.S. police departments reported a sharp increase in officer resignations following massive public protests directed at policing in the summer of 2020. Yet, to date, no study has rigorously assessed the impact of the George Floyd protests on police resignations. We fill this void using 60 months of employment data from a large police department in the western United States. Bayesian

The COVID-19 pandemic threated public health and safety and led to a number of virus-related fraud schemes. We surveyed over 2,200 American adults to investigate their experiences with COVID-19-related frauds. Our goals were to better understand fraud targeting and victimization, as well as the impacts of fraud on victims. Over a quarter of our sample reported purchasing either a COVID-19-related product

We investigated whether higher rates of random drug testing lower substance use among people who are incarcerated and improve prison safety. To answer this question, we estimated linear panel two-way fixed effects models using naturally varying monthly rates of random drug testing across all Pennsylvania state prisons over a 45-month period during 2016–2019. Overall, we find that the testing rate is

The notion that the unjustified use of force by police officers is concentrated among a few “bad apples” is a popular descriptor that has gained traction in scholarly research and achieved considerable influence among policy makers. But is removing the bad apples likely to have an appreciable effect on police misconduct? Leveraging a simple policy simulation and data from the Chicago Police Department

Chalfin and Kaplan attend to the problem of police misconduct with a series of simulation analyses that leverage data on complaints and uses of force in the Chicago Police Department. They conclude that incapacitating officers has minimal effects on misconduct and that, given political constraints, policy makers may prefer broader reforms around accountability and management to removing “bad apples”

The onset of extreme social distancing measures is expected to have a dramatic impact on crime. Here, we examine the impact of mandated, city-wide social distancing orders aimed at limiting the spread of COVID-19 on gang-related crime in Los Angeles. We hypothesize that the unique subcultural processes surrounding gangs may supersede calls to shelter in place and allow gang-related crime to persist

We examined petition and respondent characteristics from extreme risk protection order (ERPO) cases in Oregon for the 15 months after implementation (n = 93). Most petitions were filed by law enforcement (65%) a were more likely to be granted than petitions filed by family/household members (p < 0.001). Most ERPO respondents were reported by petitioners to have histories of suicidality (73%) or interpersonal

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