Tag: Research

Research: Police uses of lethal force dropped dramatically in US from 2021-23 – News Bureau

The number of police-involved lethal force incidents in the U.S. dropped 24% from 2021 to 2023, according to research from the Cline Center for Advanced Social Research at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

The Cline Center’s SPOTLITE project has compiled nearly a decade’s worth of data to track and identify police uses of lethal force across the U.S.
— Read on news.illinois.edu/research-police-uses-of-lethal-force-dropped-dramatically-in-us-from-2021-23/

Police stops and naïve denominators | Crime Science

A comparison of the racial composition of police stops to the entire population of a city or jurisdiction is frequently cited as evidence of racial bias in proactive policework. This article argues that using base population is naïve to the realities of the distribution of crime and policing. Using the example of Philadelphia, PA (USA), the impact of different benchmarks to estimate racial disparity in stop data is demonstrated. The range of alterative benchmarks include the spatial distribution of calls for service, the locations of violent crimes, and the demographic composition of suspects in crime as reported by the public. The article concludes by arguing that if cities ask police departments to prioritize certain problems and places, benchmarks to which police are held accountable should better reflect those priorities.
— Read on link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s40163-025-00252-y

Trends in Gun Theft – Council on Criminal Justice

Hundreds of thousands of crimes involving firearms occur each year in the United States. In 2022, for example, guns were used in more than three quarters of murders, one third of robberies, and a quarter of aggravated assaults.1 But less is known about how people who use guns in violence acquire their weapons.

One source of guns used in crimes is theft.2 While research on the role of gun theft in gun crime is limited,3 a small but growing body of evidence suggests that stolen guns may play a significant role in violent crime. Stolen guns are more likely than other guns to be recovered in crimes,4 and gun crime appears to increase in neighborhoods from which guns have been recently stolen.5 Despite the potential importance of stolen guns as a source of guns used in crime, data on gun theft trends are limited
— Read on counciloncj.org/trends-in-gun-theft/

Factors influencing the spatial distribution of police stops and their efficacy in crime prevention and control | in Nature

Abstract
Targeted police stops are frequently carried out by police in response to real-world needs. The effectiveness of various purpose-driven police stop tactics on crime prevention and control varies. However, existing research has neither identified the associated factors of police stops nor explored their impact on crime with different factors. Therefore, this study focuses on the main urban areas of megacities along the southeast coast of China. The space is partitioned using hierarchical clustering after applying the XGBoost and SHAP algorithms to determine the factors related to police stops. Lastly, this study explores the causal effects of police stops with different associated factors on crime, using causal forests within double machine learning. There are three conclusions. First, there is a strong correlation between police stops and four variables: alarm, visiting population, criminal, and government agencies. Second, by clustering based on different associated factors of police stops, existing police stops can be classified into five categories according to their purposes: (i) composite stops positively associated with “Alarm, Visiting Population, Criminals” (AVC-CPS); (ii) composite stops positively associated with “Alarm, Visiting Population, Bus Station” (AVB-CPS); (iii) random stops with no significant positive association (NA-RPS); (iv) single police stops positively associated with “Alarm” (A-SPS); and (v) single stops positively associated with “Visiting Population” (V-SPS).
— Read on www.nature.com/articles/s41599-025-05355-0

The Past, Present, and Future of Police Body Cameras – R Street Institute

Executive Summary

Artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping the criminal justice system. Law enforcement agencies are using it to predict crime, expedite response, and streamline routine tasks. One of the most promising applications can be found in body camera programs, where AI is transforming unmanageable archives of footage into active sources of insight.

AI can now analyze hundreds of hours of video in seconds. Early pilot programs suggest that these video-reviewing tools, when guided by human oversight, can uncover critical evidence that might otherwise be overlooked, reduce pretrial bottlenecks, and identify potential instances of officer misconduct. But these benefits come with risks. Absent clear guardrails, the same technologies could drift toward government overreach, blurring the line between public safety and state surveillance.
— Read on www.rstreet.org/research/the-past-present-and-future-of-police-body-cameras/

Looking at “Ferguson” by Washington University Journal of Law and Policy

Below are links to 2 issues from the Washington University Journal of Law and Policy.
Both issues focus on the Michael Brown death involving P/O Darren Wilson in Ferguson Missouri. Volume 49, Issue 1, 2015 are articles immediately after the Brown/Wilson event. Volume 78, Issue 1, 2025 is a 10 year follow-up to the Ferguson incident.

Volume 49 • Issue 1 • 2015

Notable Articles:

Volume 78 • Issue 1 • 2025 • Ten Years and Ten Miles: Reflecting on “Ferguson”

Notable Articles: