Second-chance hiring, or an employer's commitment to hiring (at least some) people with criminal records, is simultaneously an ongoing public movement and an opaque process. To examine perceptions of second-chance policies and employers, we analyzed interview data from formerly incarcerated adults in the Greater Boston area. We find that a small portion was familiar with Ban-the-Box (BTB), a policy that had been in effect locally for more than a decade; after learning about the policy, participants indicated that it was a promising start but could unintentionally provide false hope if employers conduct criminal background checks soon thereafter. We then asked for definitions of criminal record (or in our study context, “CORI”) friendly employers. Participant descriptions fell into three categories: exclusionary, CORI-friendly under certain circumstances, and fully inclusive. Descriptions of the sometimes-friendly employers reflected individualized assessments, where the criminal history and context seemed to matter. Although partial exclusion was not ideal to participants, even the most well-reputed inclusive jobs—those connected to labor unions—carried cautions from union-member participants. Finally, we explored whether submitting evidence of rehabilitation is feasible. Most participants indicated they could readily provide a recommendation letter and/or accomplishments to an employer if provided the opportunity—but few reported having this experience.
Examining the perceptions of job applicants with criminal records can provide insight into both problems and possibilities. Existing counterintuitive empirical findings on BTB may be driven, in part, by job applicants with criminal records not being aware of (and therefore not responding to) policy changes. Even after being informed, skepticism of BTB points to the importance of employer responses throughout the decision process. We recommend four policy pathways: increasing awareness of existing policies, expanding CORI-friendliness through employer engagement, promoting broader culture change, and incorporating positive credentials into individualized assessments through formalized processes.
Miller v. Alabama and Montgomery v. Louisiana restricted states’ ability to impose life without parole for youth under age 18 (henceforth JLWOP). Since Miller, 46 pieces of legislation across 34 states and the District of Columbia have altered JLWOP sentencing policies. The current study provides the first comprehensive and scientific review of this legislation. Using policy surveillance as a methodological guide, we found that a majority of statutes (N = 28) ban JLWOP sentencing, above and beyond the Supreme Court's requirement. Many statutes also extended sentencing reforms and post-conviction relief eligibility to other types of sentencing beyond JLWOP. However, all but one statute still allows either JLWOP or life with parole as a sentencing option for minors convicted of homicide crimes and requires between 15 and 40 years, at minimum, to be served before being eligible for release. Grounding our analysis in institutional theory, we argue that the relative punitivity of the JLWOP reforms enacted was associated with measures of JLWOP institutionalization across states (i.e., pre-Miller JLWOP population and pre-Miller sentencing schema), suggesting that states where JLWOP was more routinely used were more resistant to policy reform.
The current study provides implications for future decarceration efforts. Findings suggest that state legislatures are willing to enact post-conviction relief measures (e.g., judicial review or “second look” measures) for individuals convicted of violent crimes to address over-incarceration, deviating from previous decarceration efforts focused on non-violent, low-level offenses. In spite of the promising window for juvenile justice reform that Miller provided, however, these reforms have taken a relatively modest, incremental approach toward altering extreme youth sentencing practices in the United States. Policy makers and advocates seeking to promote sentencing reform efforts should factor in how highly institutionalized a sentencing practice is in each state, as this might inform effective strategies for policy change.
Alternatives to police response to 911 calls have emerged as a leading public safety reform strategy. A key policy implementation challenge lies in determining whether alternative responders, police, or both are most appropriate for a given situation—a decision that largely falls to 911 call takers and dispatchers. This article examines how dispatch organizations have tried to structure these decisions through protocols and decision trees. Drawing on 39 interviews and 20 h of observations with 911 workers in San Francisco and Denver, we argue that these tools, as currently structured, are poorly suited to handle the uncertainty, subjectivity, and ambiguity that characterize many street crisis calls. In the absence of more thoughtfully designed guidance from leadership, we find that dispatch staff routinely work around the rules to attain the response they believe is most appropriate.
Addressing the dispatch protocol issue is critical for the success of the alternative response movement. Absent workable protocols, dispatchers sometimes default to sending the police, undermining the progress alternative response promises. Applying our learnings from Denver and San Francisco, this study points to a two-pronged approach that dispatch agencies can use to improve call diversion guidance. First, they can refine existing protocols and decision trees by grounding them in the experiential knowledge of frontline staff. Second, they can supplement these tools with more flexible forms of guidance—such as organizational value statements or collaborative decision-making frameworks—to aid decision making when protocols reach their limits. Together, these changes can produce guidance that is more responsive to the realities of dispatch work and better aligned with the goals of alternative response.
Street crimes are thought to be influenced by changes in ambient lighting; yet, most studies have focused on small-scale interventions in limited areas. It remains unclear whether enhanced lighting can improve safety on a larger, jurisdiction-wide scale. This study examined the first 10 months of Philadelphia's citywide rollout of enhanced street lighting. Between August 2023 and May 2024, 34,374 streetlights were upgraded across 13,275 street segments, converting roughly one third of the city's street segments to new LED (light-emitting diode) fixtures that provide clearer and more even lighting. We assessed the impact of these upgrades on total crimes, violent crimes, property crimes, and nuisance crimes. Our findings reveal a 15% decline in outdoor nighttime street crimes and a 21% reduction in outdoor nighttime gun violence following the streetlight upgrades. The streetlight upgrades may have contributed to 5% of the citywide decline in Philadelphia gun violence during the study period. Qualitative data also suggest that resident perceptions of safety and neighborhood vitality improved after new streetlights were installed.
Although prior research has mostly focused on small-scale implementations, our study demonstrates that improvements in street lighting can significantly reduce crime rates across large urban areas. These results support the adoption of energy-efficient LED street lighting as a crime reduction strategy for cities. Further research is needed to explore the impact of enhanced streetlight interventions on other types of crime and to determine whether the crime reduction benefits are sustained when these upgrades are implemented across the entire City of Philadelphia for an extended period.
Since 2018, at least 12 U.S. states have introduced policies to expunge certain eligible arrest and criminal conviction records through automated or algorithmic means. Drawing on interviews with governmental representatives and community stakeholders, this paper identifies strategies used to pass this legislation in Pennsylvania and Utah, the first two states to enact automated expungement policies. We frame our findings around three established theoretical frameworks of public policy making—policy entrepreneurship, issue framing, and coalition building—illustrating their combined strategic importance with data gathered from those involved on the ground in the passage and adoption of automated expungement legislation. The findings add depth and nuance to the policy-making literature, along with practical implications for future criminal legal reform initiatives.
Interviewees consistently described how key policy entrepreneurs played essential roles in the development, passage, and implementation of automated criminal record expungement by strategically framing the issue of criminal record discrimination around core values shared by conservatives and liberals, such as workforce development. Broad bipartisan coalition building enabled the scale-up of automated expungement policies within states where it has been adopted and has aided diffusion to new states. These findings can inform the approaches taken by advocates of automated expungement and other criminal justice reform initiatives, particularly in conservative or polarized political environments.
Closed-circuit television (CCTV) video surveillance cameras and gunshot detection technology (GDT) have been widely adopted by police departments in recent years. Most evaluation research on CCTV and GDT has tested the technologies’ effect on crime prevention rather than case clearance rates. The current study contributes to the literature through a matched quasi-experiment of the relative and joint effect of GDT and CCTV on fatal and nonfatal shooting investigation outcomes in Chicago, IL. Entropy balancing is used to create a weighted control group that closely resembles the treatment group. Logistic regression models incorporating the weights from the entropy matching procedure as probability weights measure the intervention effects. Treatment conditions generated null findings across all models. Although included as a control variable in the models, Chicago's Strategic Decision Support Centers (SDSCs) were positively associated with case clearance in the nonfatal shooting models.
These findings contribute to the knowledge base on police use of technology in gun violence investigations. Similar to prior research, results indicate that technology may not deliver the crime control benefits policy makers anticipate they will receive from their investments. Gun violence represents the United States’ most critical crime problem, with the decrease in clearance rates garnering significant attention in both the academic and practitioner communities. The current study suggests that investments in technology on their own may not directly improve case clearance rates. However, the findings regarding SDSCs indicate they may be a promising model for leveraging the outputs of multiple technologies to assist gun violence investigations. Increased resources should be dedicated to rigorously testing the effect of SDSCs on gun violence investigation outcomes.
We evaluated the impact of an administrative order issued in the early days of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic that aimed to reduce the size of the pretrial population in Palm Beach County, FL, by reducing bond amounts for eligible felony offenses. Our findings revealed that the administrative order was successful in reducing the average bond amounts for individuals charged with eligible felonies and that these reductions corresponded to (1) increases in the likelihood of pretrial release and (2) declines in the average custody length. Furthermore, despite these changes to the odds and pace of pretrial release, we found no evidence to suggest that the administrative order negatively affected pretrial compliance, including new criminal activity and failure to appear in court.
The COVID-19 pandemic set in motion a range of policy changes to mitigate virus spread within correctional facilities, recognizing the vulnerabilities of correctional environments and incarcerated persons. These changes resulted in immediate reductions to jail populations. However, questions quickly emerged regarding their impacts on public safety, among other considerations. The current investigation evaluated the effect of one such COVID-19 era policy shock on pretrial detention and misconduct. Our findings revealed that reducing bond amounts for individuals charged with eligible felonies contributed to increased rates of pretrial release and reduced detention lengths without jeopardizing either public safety or court efficiency. Consistent with other recent pretrial research, these findings suggest that by reducing our reliance on money bail, we can reduce financial barriers to release among justice-involved populations, ease inefficiencies in the courts, and save scarce jail resources by scaling back unnecessary pretrial detention. As the pandemic recedes, evaluations of COVID-19 era policies can help provide a framework for promising criminal justice reforms that reduce our overuse of incarceration and help contribute to a fair and impartial system.
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