Tag: Criminal Justice System

Catalog of Core Child Welfare Case Management Reports for Courts

This resource provides descriptions and general specifications of more than 40 Case Management Summary Reports, Case Listings, and Quality Assurance Reports, with special attention to their role in a court’s continuous quality improvement efforts for child welfare cases.
— Read on www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/catalog-core-child-welfare-case-management-reports-courts

Why school police officers may not be the most effective way to prevent violence

In an article from The Conversation: “Why school police officers may not be the most effective way to prevent violence” (available HERE) there are 5 main points raised in the article. I think that the author of the article has never closely observed or worked with a police-school partnership. The 5 points of why police should not be in schools discussed in the article are frequent talking points from the “anti-police in school” groups. I will briefly discuss each of the 5 points below.

They don’t address the root problems

Professor Behnken suggests that hardening school security and having social workers and therapists would make schools safer. Yes better physical security and appropriate therapists, social workers etc. could make schools safer. That is only part of the puzzle. Police are also part of a coordinated effort to make schools safe. Police are the enforcement part that is needed in the most unsafe schools. The police’s role is not to address root causes, the role of police in schools is to help promote a safe and positive learning environment for the 95% to 99% of students that go to school to learn without causing trouble.

Their role is not well defined

The role of the police in schools is defined specifically by the school, school district, and the police department. Each school district is their own government entity. The same with police departments, they are individual government entities. In many states its called home rule. The point here is that the school and the police department many times enter into a contract or memorandum of understanding to define the expectations and operation of police in schools. Nationally the role of police in schools might look not well defined but for each school the role and expectations of police in schools can be very specifically defined.

They do not increase students’ feelings of safety

“Most students either do not realize that their school has a school resource officer or don’t mind that one is present. In fact, most students report liking the officer at their school.” Professor Behnken this is a good thing that the school police are unnoticed and work in the background. Most of the student population probably has little contact with the school police officer. Why? Because most students (95%) behave in school and the police in school spend the majority of their time dealing with a very small percentage of the school population that commit most of the crime and disorder in school. Most of the students don’t know what the school officer has done to promote safty and a good enviornment in the school so the students can easily conclude that the officer doesn’t impact school safety. It might be uncool to want police in school.

They contribute to the ‘school-to-prison pipeline’

Professor Behnken writes “Research shows that the presence of school police officers increases the likelihood that a school will report common forms of student misbehavior, like cafeteria fights and vandalism, to law enforcement agencies”. Why shouldn’t the school report these activities to law enforcement? How is the offending student held accountable. Not every transgression in school ends with an arrest.

How are the good students valued if disorderly behavior, criminal activity, and damage to school property is ignored. Again keep in mind that about 5% of the school population engages in bad behavior. The rights of the 95% good kids need to be protected.

In today’s Juvenile Justice Systems no kid is being taking from school and placed in prison unless they earned it. A juvenile has to have committed a very serious crime (homicide, rape, robbery with a weapon, serious assault) to be removed from school and sentenced to detention. Or the student has had a very long record of criminal activity (in and out of school, most likely out of school) and a Family Court Judge might sentence then to detention. Probably 10 to 20 arrests. These examples are a direct result of the juveniles behavior and has nothing to do with having an officer in their school.

They sometimes infringe on students’ rights

Students have less rights than adults do. The 1st amendment doesn’t allow students to walk out of school to protest. Students would be disciplined for cutting school without permission and would receive their punishment from the principal and not the school officer. Students lockers and book bags can be searched at anytime by the school administrators. Police in schools probably rarely search a student or their belongings because the threshold for the police to conduct a search is much higher that when a school administrator can search.

Make sure to read the article by Professor Behnken (Here) and then share your thoughts.

NRF | The Impact of Retail Theft & Violence 2024

Retailers reported a 93% increase in the average number of shoplifting incidents per year in 2023 versus 2019 and a 90% increase in dollar loss due to shoplifting over the same time period. Conducted in partnership with the Loss Prevention Research Council and sponsored by Sensormatic Solutions, “The Impact of Retail Theft & Violence 2024” examines how theft and violence have evolved since before COVID and how retailers are combating today’s retail crime landscape.

The survey was conducted online among senior loss prevention and security executives in the retail industry June 10 through July 12. The study contains results from mid-size to large retailers across 164 retail brands, which accounted for $1.52 trillion in annual sales in 2023 or 30% of total retail sales. The brands represent a variety of retail sectors including specialty and luxury retail, home improvement, mass merchandise, grocery and pharmacy.
— Read on nrf.com/research/the-impact-of-retail-theft-violence-2024

Why Crime Matters, and What to Do About It • The Aspen Institute Economic Strategy Group

In this paper, Jennifer Doleac describes what is known about crime trends in the US and outlines the best evidence to date on the effectiveness of various approaches to reducing crime through prevention, deterrence, and rehabilitation. 

Crime in the US rose during the 1980s and early 1990s before declining steadily until 2020. During the COVID-19 pandemic, homicides, shootings, and motor vehicle thefts spiked, but by late 2023, overall rates of homicides and shootings had returned to their pre-pandemic levels. Because less serious offenses such as carjackings are much more difficult to track with nationwide data systems, we currently have an incomplete picture of how those crimes have trended in recent years across the country. Certain types of crime remain high, however, and Doleac emphasizes that crime continues to disproportionately affect certain urban areas and communities.

— Read on www.economicstrategygroup.org/publication/doleac-crime/

2024 George L. Kelling Lecture: Re-Grounding Criminology in Reality

Over the past decade, criminology, like many academic fields, has drifted away from rigorous science rooted in evidence. Ideological narratives—about race, identity, and the expendability of the criminal justice system—have gained so much dominance that bias has crept into university departments, think tanks, and even groups like the American Society of Criminology. This bias doesn’t happen in a vacuum, and the net result harms the safety of our most vulnerable communities—and creates agencies and strategies that are less efficient, resourced, and innovative. The 2024 George L. Kelling Lecture features three of America’s leading criminologists, who discuss what this ideological sway looks like from inside the academic world. They discuss how this translates into the types of research that gets funded and promoted, how this impacts public safety, and how criminologists, practitioners, policymakers, and citizens can move criminology back toward a scientific grounding.

Access the video HERE

Interview with Michelle Phelps – The Majority Report

This is the first time I listened to a podcast from “The Majority Report”. The interview was with Michelle S. Phelps, professor of sociology at the University of Minnesota, to discuss her recent book The Minneapolis Reckoning: Race, Violence, and the Politics of Policing in America. The interview begins at the 20:15 minute mark and can be access HERE. The interview ends at the 48:00 minute mark.

The podcast topic is what happened with policing in Minneapolis, MN. and police reforms more generally.

To be clear the Minneapolis Mayor and legislature (or any municipal executive and legislative branch) can end policing at anytime they want. This is unless police are part of the municipalities (or State) constitution, charter, or some other legislative prohibiting the dissolution the police department. The bottom line is that if the Mayor and Legislators have the votes they can put a end to policing in their municipality. This is true across America. Phelps said that many of the legislatures wanted to defund/dissolve the Minneapolis PD. Knowing that the Minneapolis government could have moved forward and cancelled police funding or more radically dissolved the police.

Why didn’t the Minneapolis government eliminate the police? Phelps said that Minneapolis has a large base of community activism which is highly coordinated. The “activism majority” leaned towards defunding or eliminating the police. It should have been easy for the Minneapolis government to defund or eliminate the police. Phelps said that people that vote most often were against the idea to reduce or eliminate the police and this influenced government officials.

What happened is that the rhetoric about the issue of defunding or dismantling the police eventually the turned into reality. Therefore the Minneapolis government had to stop being controversial or edgy and had to do what was the best for Minneapolis, which is keep the police and maintain funding.

There is no other municipal agency or other organization that can replace the police to fulfill it’s mission. Schools, Mental Health Services, Department of transportation, etc. none of these organizations can replace the police. Phelps said that police are only useful for being present at scene of a potential crime (deterrence) or to make arrests (but arrests are bad). Phelps forgot that police are authorized to use of force (most of the time the threat of force) which is necessary to make persons acting outside of societal norms to comply. There is no other organization better equipped, trained, or with authority than the police.

US police use force on 300,000 people a year, with numbers rising since George Floyd | The Guardian

Police in the US use force on at least 300,000 people each year, injuring an estimated 100,000 of them, according to a groundbreaking data analysis on law enforcement encounters.
Mapping Police Violence, a non-profit research group that tracks killings by US police, launched a new database, policedata.org, on Wednesday cataloging non-fatal incidents of police use of force, including stun guns, chemical sprays, K9 dog attacks, neck restraints, beanbags and baton strikes.
— Read on amp.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/aug/28/police-use-of-force-violence-data-analysis