Month: March 2022

Vital City | Gun Violence is THE Crime Problem

This article discusses the impact of crime and fear of crime and not all fear of crime is equal. Gun violence disproportionately impacts peoples lives compared to property crime.

Gun violence, and the fear of gun violence, distort the lives of millions of
Americans.
— Read on www.vitalcitynyc.org/articles/gun-violence-is-the-crime-problem

Desistance From Crime – Implications for Research, Policy, and Practice

A key step in advancing our knowledge in these areas is to examine how we think about and measure the process of individuals ceasing engagement in criminal activities, referred to as “desistance.” How we conceptualize this process can afect how we evaluate the efectiveness of laws and policies intended to provide or increase public safety. How practitioners view this process — and their role in supporting it — can infuence how they engage with clients across all stages of system involvement. Furthermore, programs and initiatives are ofen judged on their ability to reduce reofending and improve other outcomes. Having a clear understanding of what we consider desistance to be, incorporating policies and interventions that support desistance, and identifying best practices to evaluate these eforts is important work.

Recidivism — often defned as criminal acts or interactions with law enforcement that result in re-arrest, reconviction, or return to prison — has been the primary outcome for criminal justice research for decades, and it continues to be. The recidivism data available from federal, state, and local systems over time provide valuable information. For example, the data can help us gauge the performance of correctional programs and whether policies are successfully providing public safety to their communities. Practitioners can also use recidivism data to assess the risk of reofending for the populations they serve. Despite the value of this information, we must expand beyond recidivism in how we understand and examine individual behavior.

This volume takes important steps in describing how a desistance framework can move the feld forward across key decision points in the criminal justice system (e.g., at time of arrest, charging, pretrial release, case processing, disposition and sentencing, and reentry). Although research has focused on desistance for some time, the term and its accompanying knowledge base are far less known than recidivism. Recidivism is a discrete measure — that is, yes or no — and has a limit to the amount of information it can provide. Capturing where an individual is in the desistance process provides more nuanced information, better supports assessment of individual progress toward less criminal behavior, and facilitates a strengths-based perspective focused on building on individual assets to promote positive change. Incorporating desistance principles into the criminal justice feld has great potential to improve outcomes, elevate practices, better support those with system involvement, and more effectively use resources to provide safety to the community.

Get the report HERE:

www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/nij/301497.pdf

Misdemeanor Prosecution | NBER

Communities across the United States are reconsidering the public safety benefits of prosecuting nonviolent misdemeanor offenses. So far there has been little empirical evidence to inform policy in this area. In this paper we report the first estimates of the causal effects of misdemeanor prosecution on defendants’ subsequent criminal justice involvement. We leverage the as-if random assignment of nonviolent misdemeanor cases to Assistant District Attorneys (ADAs) who decide whether a case should move forward with prosecution in the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office in Massachusetts. These ADAs vary in the average leniency of their prosecution decisions. We find that, for the marginal defendant, nonprosecution of a nonviolent misdemeanor offense leads to large reductions in the likelihood of a new criminal complaint over the next two years. These local average treatment effects are largest for first-time defendants, suggesting that averting initial entry into the criminal justice system has the greatest benefits. We also present evidence that a recent policy change in Suffolk County imposing a presumption of nonprosecution for a set of nonviolent misdemeanor offenses had similar beneficial effects: the likelihood of future criminal justice involvement fell, with no apparent increase in local crime rates.

Founded in 1920, the NBER is a private, non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to conducting economic research and to disseminating research findings among academics, public policy makers, and business professionals.
— Read on www.nber.org/papers/w28600

From the VERA Institute

Misdemeanor cases make up over 80 percent of the cases processed by the U.S. criminal justice system, yet we know little about the causal impacts of misdemeanor prosecution. In this talk, we will report the first estimates of the causal effects of misdemeanor prosecution on defendants’ subsequent criminal justice involvement. To do this, we leverage the quasi-random assignment of nonviolent misdemeanor cases to arraigning assistant district attorneys in the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office in Massachusetts between 2004 and 2018. We find that the marginal prosecuted misdemeanor defendant has a substantially higher risk of being charged with a subsequent criminal complaint, of being prosecuted on that complaint, and of acquiring a criminal record of that complaint, within two years of their initial case. These effects appear to work through a longer time to case disposition, an increased likelihood of acquiring a criminal record of a misdemeanor complaint, and an increased likelihood of a misdemeanor conviction in the current case.

See the VIDEO HERE:

https://www.vera.org/events/neil-a-weiner-research-speaker-series/misdemeanor-prosecution

Advancing Racial Equity: Shrinking Misdemeanor Prosecution in New York

Misdemeanors are under attack. Misdemeanors are what drives the criminal justice system at least at the local criminal court level. Misdemeanors are the crimes that directly and most often impact day to day life. This has led to a shift of the criminal justice system from being victim focused to offender focused. This has created drastic changes.

The link below has several reports on its webpage and there are also links to several additional articles.

Findings and policy recommendations from a comprehensive analysis of misdemeanor cases in NYC.
— Read on www.courtinnovation.org/publications/misdemeanor-race-NYC

Fatal Police Shootings and Race: A Review of the Evidence and Suggestions for Future Research | Manhattan Institute

Since the Ferguson unrest, a narrative has solidified around the idea that police use lethal force disproportionately and without justification against African-Americans. Some data show the strength of this perception, particularly among blacks and on the political left. In a survey conducted…
— Read on www.manhattan-institute.org/verbruggen-fatal-police-shootings

City of Minneapolis An After-Action Review of City Agencies’ Responses to Activities Directly Following George Floyd’s Death on May 25, 2020

The City’s objectives for the assessment included:

+ Providing a detailed overview of the events.

+ Identifying focus areas and observations from the interagency response that provide learning opportunities for first responders, government officials and community members.

+ Aligning responding City agencies’ plans, policies, procedures, practices and training with the National Incident Management System and other relevant best practices to ensure consistency.

+ Inform citywide preparations for future civil disturbances.

+ Identify promising practices and lessons learned.

+ Provide findings, recommendations and opportunities to enhance future responses.

+ Identify City departments affected by the recommendations of this after-action review.

s3.documentcloud.org/documents/21398382/2020-civil-unrest-after-action-review-report.pdf

Law Enforcement Statutory Database

This website is part of the National Conference of State Legislators.

This section has legislative changes for police reform. Not all legislation becomes law. This website might me the best place to search for legislative changes constituting police reform. There is a search section to search different State Laws.

Law Enforcement Statutory Database
— Read on www.ncsl.org/research/civil-and-criminal-justice/law-enforcement-statutory-database.aspx