In 2007, the Los Angeles mayor’s office launched a program to respond to gang violence. A new study estimated the effect of the program on violent and property crime. The study found that violent crime dropped in areas where the program offered services, but property crime did not decline. The success of the program, which […]
Passed in 2018, the First Step Act sought to address re-entry challenges for inmates in the federal prison system. The legislation called for developing an assessment tool to identify inmates for release who had the lowest likelihood of recidivism. A new study assessed how the tool was developed and is used, finding that a greater […]
Past studies on whether incarcerated people with mental illness are more likely to be placed in solitary confinement have yielded mixed results. A new study examined the issue in one state’s prisons, taking into account factors related to incarcerated men and the facilities where they were imprisoned. It found that having a mental illness was […]
Amid a sharp economic downturn in 2008, police departments around the United States experienced budget shortfalls that required them to enact cutbacks. A new study examined the effects on crime of budget shortfalls in two New Jersey cities—one of which laid off more than 10 percent of its police force while the other averted layoffs. […]
In the past decade, many law enforcement agencies have adopted the use of body-worn cameras (BWCs) to improve police conduct, accountability, and transparency, especially when it comes to using force. But it is not yet known whether BWCs actually reduce officers’ use of force. A new meta-analysis examined 30 studies of law enforcement use of […]
Although U.S. crime rates have dropped significantly since the mid-1990s, rates of incarceration peaked in 2008, and still remain high. The standard explanation for this pattern is that all people exposed to the criminal justice system today are treated more harshly than before. A new study using 45 years of incarceration data from North Carolina […]
Concern over the safety of students, teachers, and administrators in U.S. schools continues to grow, in part as a result of school shootings. In response, partnerships between schools and law enforcement agencies have increasingly placed school resource officers (SROs) in schools to boost security. Amid controversy over this practice, a new longitudinal study sought to […]
Over the past 30 years, mass shootings have fueled calls for changes in gun ownership and concealed carry legislation, but few studies have evaluated whether permissive gun policies deter mass shootings, and none have determined if their effects are the same on firearms homicides. A new study examined the impact of household gun ownership and […]
Washington State legalized cannabis sales to adults in 2012, the first U.S. state to do so. Yet little is known about how police, who are on the front lines of implementing the law, experience legalization. A new study evaluated the effects of legalizing cannabis on police officers’ law enforcement efforts in Washington. The study found […]
The Ferguson Effect is the idea that increased public criticism and distrust of police following the 2014 shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, lowered police moral, which caused officers to withdraw from proactive policing and boosted the crime rate in major U.S. cities. A new longitudinal study examined whether this effect was real. The […]