Criminology & Public Policy最新文献

Objectives

This study aimed to validate a tool for coding police body-worn camera (BWC) footage to measure the dynamics of police–community encounters, including items related to community members, officer performance, and situational outcomes.

Methods

Over 1000 BWC videos were scored by five coders who participated in an iterative interrater reliability exercise to improve the agreement. Krippendorf's alphas and a multilevel simultaneous component analysis were used to assess interrater reliability and the component structure of ratings, respectively. Bootstrapped and multilevel exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were conducted to ascertain any underlying dimensions supporting officer and community member behavior, and cluster analyses were performed to examine whether interactions could be grouped into coherent categories.

Results

The lower bound of unweighted means of bootstrapped alphas ranged from 0.67 to 0.96 depending upon item type, and 21.60% of the total variance in raters was between-subjects. Factor analyses revealed only a single factor (“defensiveness”) underlying four items related to hostility directed toward officers by community members. Cluster analyses described seven categories that were highly overlapping but conceptually plausible with cluster silhouette means ranging from −0.06 to 0.13.

Conclusions

We validated a collection of interval-level coding metrics on a random sample of over 1000 interactions between police officers and community members recorded through BWCs. In doing so, we provide a roadmap for researchers and practitioners to effectively measure the dynamics of police–community encounters and officer performance within those encounters and a framework for addressing the validity and reliability of items in future studies involving the measurement of BWC footage.

Research Summary

Washington, DC has implemented second look sentencing. After serving a minimum of 15 years in prison, those convicted of a serious offense committed while under the age of 25 years can petition a judge to take a “second look” and potentially release them from incarceration. To examine both global and specific support for second look sentencing, we embedded experiments in a 2021 MTurk survey and in a follow-up 2022 YouGov survey. Two key findings emerged. First, regardless of whether a crime was committed under 18 years or under 25 years of age, a majority of the public supported second look sentencing. Opposition to the policy was low, even for petitioners convicted of murder. Second, as revealed by vignette ratings, respondents were more likely to support release when a petitioner “signaled” their reform (e.g., completed a rehabilitation program, received a recommendation from the warden) and had the support of the victim (or their family).

Policy Implications

The critique of mass imprisonment has broadened from a focus on the level of incarceration to the inordinate length of sentences being served by some prisoners. Policies are being proposed to reconsider these long sentences and to provide opportunities for earned release. Second look sentencing in DC is one of these reforms. Our research suggests that many members of the public believe in a “Shawshank redemption” effect—that those committing serious crimes as a teenager or young adult can mature into a “different person” and warrant a second look, with the possibility of early release if they have earned it. A key issue is likely to be how much weight is accorded to the preference of victims or their families in any release decision.

In an original article, I analyzed a potential causal link between the policy of de-prosecution in Philadelphia and an increase in homicides. Utilizing the traditional synthetic control method with extensive descriptive data and a donor pool of the other 99 largest cities in the United States, the results demonstrated a statistically significant increase of over 74 homicides per year in Philadelphia during 2015-19 associated with de-prosecution (p<.05). A reaction essay addressing the original article on de-prosecution has been submitted. In this reply, I correct inaccuracies in the reaction essay, explain the validity of methodological choices, discuss the reaction's misunderstanding of certain quantitative issues, and expose the ideological purposes of the reaction. In addition, I have included updated parallel research addressing the issue of de-prosecution and examine the theoretical impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the interaction between de-prosecution and homicides.

Research summary

Restorative justice (RJ) in practice has taken on many different forms. It is argued that RJ does not have definitional boundaries, making it hard to limit its essence to that of a particular program, practice, philosophy, or outcome. Therefore, this study's objective was to systematically review and statistically synthesize all available research on RJ programs and related programs and practices using meta-analytic methods. Our updated systematic search and meta-analysis identified a total of 57 unique studies including 79 evaluations (including 18 random assignment and 61 quasi-experimental designs). We extracted a total of 631 effect sizes related to delinquency, non-delinquency, and victim outcomes. The results of our meta-analysis showed that RJ programs and practices are associated with a small-to-moderate and statistically significant reduction in future delinquent behavior relative to more traditional juvenile justice responses (g = 0.23, 95% CI [0.14, 0.32]). Nevertheless, results were smaller for the more rigorous random assignment studies and nonsignificant, raising concerns about the robustness of this finding. Our most promising findings, however, were for the victim and non-delinquency outcomes.

Policy implications

The bottom line for RJ programs and practices is that the empirical evidence is supportive of these programs in moderately reducing juvenile delinquency. However, the evidence appears more promising in the area of non-delinquency outcomes for victims and youth participants involved in these programs. Taken together, the results indicate that RJ programs and practices may be effective at reducing recidivism, albeit to a small-to-moderate extent, but have the added feature of meaningfully increasing perceptions of satisfaction and fairness for victim and youth participants. These results should be viewed as encouraging for policy makers, RJ practitioners, and proponents that emphasize the centrality of the victim in the process of crime and harm resolution, as well as those interested in alternative solutions to addressing youth crime.

Research Summary

Gun violence was declared a “public health crisis” after shootings increased in many U.S. cities during the course of the COVID-19 pandemic. The public health approach to gun violence prevention offers many advantages such as an applied research model, the mobilization of a wider range of stakeholders, and a commitment to harm reduction. Too often, however, the public health community seems unaware of criminological research on gun violence and avoids including criminal justice interventions in their comprehensive plans.

Policy Implications

Communities need immediate relief from the persistent trauma of repeated shootings. Criminal justice interventions represent important responses to outbreaks of gun violence that should be included among recommended public health programs intended to address proximate and upstream causes of gun violence. Gun violence prevention policy and practice would be strengthened by more deliberate attempts to foster complementary public health and criminology research and development collaborations. More applied criminologists need to become engaged in gun violence research to meet this call.

Research summary

In the past, the Canadian government followed in the footsteps of its American counterpart by enacting “sex offender laws.” Since the 1990s, however, the Canadian criminal justice system has taken a different approach to the issue of sex offender recidivism (SOR), focusing on treatment, rehabilitation, and community risk management. This evidence-based approach has been criticized for not doing enough to prevent convicted offenders from sexually reoffending. This criticism has not been addressed empirically, leaving open the question of whether this Canadian policy shift is associated with changes in the rate of sexual recidivism. The present study uses a meta-analytic framework to look at 185 Canadian-based studies involving over 50,000 offenders, making it possible to combine 226 sexual recidivism rates. After controlling for factors such as follow-up length and the independence of samples, weighted pooled recidivism rates have declined since the 1970s by more than 60%. This trend may have gone unnoticed because it is not related to the year of publication but to the period in which the data were collected.

Policy implications

The findings have significant implications for criminal justice practices including the importance of using risk assessment tools that are regularly calibrated to reflect the evolution of sexual recidivism rates over time. Although the current study cannot provide firm conclusions about the factors responsible for this gradual drop, several hypotheses are discussed. Knowledge-based criminal justice practices, better training for professionals, and improvements in treatment programs may have had a subtle and cumulative impact on sexual recidivism rates. The importance of examining period effects on SOR using a comparative and international perspective is discussed.

Research summary

Inspired by studies on crime concentration, scholars have begun examining the spatial patterns of other issues under the police mandate, such as calls for service involving persons with perceived mental illness (PwPMI). While findings show that PwPMI calls for service concentrate in a few number of places, we do not know whether the concentration of these calls fall within a narrow bandwidth of spatial units nor whether these calls are spatially stable. Drawing on 7 years of calls for service data from the Barrie Police Service, this study tests for the temporal stability of PwPMI call for service concentrations at two units of spatial analysis and applies a longitudinal variation of the Spatial Point Pattern Test to assess the spatial stability of these calls at both the global and local levels. The results reveal that concentrations of PwPMI calls for service not only fall within a narrow proportional bandwidth of spatial units, but are spatially stable, even during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Policy implications

Existing police- and community-based efforts that respond to PwPMI in the community are tasked with responding to crises that could have been prevented with timelier intervention. Drawing from crime-focused, place-based policing strategies whose deployment is informed by the spatial concentration of crime, scholars have similarly argued that knowledge on where PwPMI calls for service concentrate can be leveraged to inform and deploy place-based efforts whose focus is to assist PwPMI in a proactive capacity. The findings of the present study further substantiates the deployment of PwPMI-focused police- and community-based resources as proactive, place-based efforts. In doing so, these efforts could not only prevent mental health crises from occurring but could prevent future police-involved calls for service and thus reduce the footprint of the police in the lives of PwPMI in a reactive capacity.

Research summary

We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of studies that examined whether providing people with a postcard, phone call, or text message reminder of their court date reduces their likelihood of failing to appear in court. We included 12 studies (N = 79,255) that compared court appearance rates between groups of people who received a reminder to groups who did not receive a reminder. Results showed that reminders significantly reduce the odds of failure to appear in court. Further, charge type moderated reminder effectiveness; court reminders had a slightly larger effect in studies that did not include people with felony charges. However, the difference in effect size as a function of charge type was small and reminders significantly reduced the odds of failure to appear in both studies that did and did not include people with felony charges. In contrast, there was no evidence that retaining people who could not be contacted in a reminder treatment group (versus excluding them from the study or intentionally assigning them to the nonreminded control group) moderated reminder effectiveness. Finally, a narrative synthesis of studies revealed that studies using more rigorous designs generally produced smaller effects compared to studies with less rigorous designs and that effects did not differ systematically as a function of reminder formats (e.g., postcard, phone call) or frequencies (e.g., one reminder or multiple).

Policy implications

Court date reminders effectively reduce failures to appear across studies, so they are an inexpensive tool for jurisdictions seeking to implement pretrial reform efforts. However, reminders offer only a modest reduction in failures to appear because they only address failures to appear that result from missing or forgetting information. Thus, reminders are not a panacea to court nonappearance. Jurisdictions should consider other programs and interventions as well. Courts could address low-barrier nonappearances with reminders and then efficiently focus more involved resources to help more people get to court.