Category: CRJ301 Police Mgt

Reforming the police through procedural justice training: A multicity randomized trial at crime hot spots | PNAS

Our study is a randomized trial in policing confirming that intensive training in procedural justice (PJ) can lead to more procedurally just behavior and less disrespectful treatment of people at high-crime places. The fact that the PJ intervention reduced arrests by police officers, positively influenced residents’ perceptions of police harassment and violence, and also reduced crime provides important guidance for police reform in a period of strong criticism of policing. This randomized trial points to the potential for PJ training not simply to encourage fair and respectful policing but also to improve evaluations of the police and crime prevention effectiveness
— Read on www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2118780119

Police Benchmark Cities Survey

Several years ago I accidentally discovered the “benchmark cities survey” and I haven’t heard it talked about in academic and policing circles. It is a fantastic resource. the Survey consists of 5 major areas: Demographics, Budget, General Performance & Service Measures, Crime & Clearance, NIBRS Crime & Clearance, and Traffic Safety. Below are links to a few different years of the survey. This survey would be helpful for police in making knowledge based decisions, students for a police administration course, and academic research.

In 1997, a group of police chiefs from around the country established the benchmark cities survey, which created measurement tool to help ensure police departments provide the best service possible within their respective communities. Overland Park Police Department has taken the lead in compiling the survey results. The survey, updated annually, provides a range of information about each department. With that information, the participating agencies can set better goals and objectives, and compare their performance in the various areas.

The Overland Park Police Department has the most current year of the survey HERE

  • The Lawrence KS PD combined all the PowerPoint presentations into a single presentation report (which is a better format):
    • The 2024 presentation is HERE (Norman, OK Police Department)
    • The 2023 presentation is HERE (Plano, TX Police Department)
    • All past benchmark cities surveys can be access at the Lawrence KS PD reports webpage HERE
    • The 2022 Survey can be accessed HERE Unfortunately this file is an Excel workbook that is the survey response form.
    • The 2021 presentation Has a broken link
    • The 2020 presentation can be accessed HERE
    • The 2019 presentation is HERE
    • The 2018 Presentation is HERE
    • The 2017 Presentation HERE
    • The 2016 report is HERE
    • The 2015 report is HERE
    • The 2014 report can’t be located
    • The 2013 report is HERE
    • Thank you Lawrence PD!!!!!

Detroit Police Department- Community Safety Strategy 2022

This is an interesting approach where DPD has a overall department wide 5-point plan that each precinct discusses how it will apply the plan in its precinct. This way the community can see how crime-fighting will take form in their neighborhood.

See the report below:

detroitmi.gov/sites/detroitmi.localhost/files/2022-03/DPD-community-safety-strategy.pdf

What really happened that night in Louisville and the shooting of Breonna Taylor?

If you only listen to news media reports you get one version of how Breonna Taylor died that night 3-13-2020. Listen to Sgt. John Mattingly on Charlie Kirk’s podcast and the listener is exposed to a vastly different version to what happened that day. One thing for certain is that evening has impacted the Taylor family and the officers at the incident beyond comprehension. What is owed to both is the truth.

The segment on the Charlie Kirk podcast interview of Sgt. John Mattingly begins at about the 15:30 minute mark can be accessed HERE and lasts for about 11 1/2 minutes until the 27:00 minute mark. Sgt. Mattingly sounds professional and believable. Why didn’t this information come out immediately after the incident? Kirk mentions that this incident has impacted police policy across the nation. Especially ending the police use of “No Knock Warrants” which weren’t even in play here. Police decisions based on lies lead to bad policing.

Official police records can be seen HERE.

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