Information and data on arrests, traffic stops, law enforcement interactions, and more
On this page, the Prison Policy Initiative has curated the best research about police and policing. You can also see a selection of our best original research on this topic on our Policing page. For research on other criminal justice topics, see our Research Library homepage.
Stop Cop Cities; Invest in Public Health SolutionsHuman Impact Partners, October, 2024“As of February 17, 2024, 69 police training facility projects were documented across the US...55 had confirmed costs ranging from $999,000 to a staggering $415 million.”
Racial/ethnic disparities in police recovery of stolen property: A previously unexplored facet of police/victim interaction Paywall :(Alexander J. Vanhee, October, 2024“Analyses of victim race suggested that Black, Asian, and Native American victims were all less likely to have their property recovered than white ones.”
A Large-Scale Study of the Police Retention CrisisBen Grunwald, June, 2024“The increase in [police leaving their jobs] after the summer of 2020 was smaller, later, less sudden, and possibly less pervasive than the retention-crisis narrative suggests.”
National Burden of Injury and Deaths From Shootings by Police in the United States, 2015-2020Julie A. Ward, Javier Cepeda, Dylan B. Jackson, et al, March, 2024“A total of 1769 people were injured annually (2015-2020) in shootings by police, 55% fatally. When a shooting injury occurred, odds of fatality were 46% higher following dispatched responses than police-initiated responses.”
Misdemeanor Enforcement Trends in New York City, 2016-2022Brennan Center for Justice, March, 2024“In 2021 and 2022, approximately half of all minor offense cases were dismissed. Overall, the proportion of non-convictions increased steadily from 47% in 2016 to 70% in 2022.”
Homicides involving Black victims are less likely to be cleared in the United StatesPaywall :(Gian Maria Campedelli, February, 2024“The likelihood of a homicide clearance is 3.4 to 4.8 percent lower for homicides involving Black victims, and this race effect is slightly higher for males and that racial disparity has moderately but significantly increased over time.”
One in Five: Disparities in Crime and Policing (Part 2) Sentencing Project, November, 2023“These racial and ethnic disparities in police contact snowball as individuals traverse the criminal legal system. They also, as discussed below, reduce the perceived legitimacy of policing.”
The "Profane Margins" of the State: Florida Sheriff Walter R. Clark and the Local History of Crime, Policing, and Incarceration Paywall :(Cindy Hahamovitch, 2023“[...] we can find sheriffs with myriad responsibilities, unbridled power, and little oversight almost everywhere in the United States.”
New data: Police use of force rising for Black, female, and older people; racial bias persists Prison Policy Initiative, December, 2022“During traffic stops, Black and Hispanic people were the most likely groups to experience a search or arrest. Meanwhile, white people were the least likely to receive a ticket and the most likely just to get off with a warning during a traffic stop.”
Justice Navigator Public AssessmentsCenter for Policing Equity, December, 2022(This platform contains analyses of policing data from seven participating departments across the country, to identify which policing practices have patterns of racial disparities, and what factors may be contributing to those disparities.)
Ticketing and Turnout: The Participatory Consequences of Low-Level Police Contact Jonathan Ben-Menachem and Kevin T. Morris, December, 2022“Few analyses directly investigate the causal effect of lower-level police contact on voter turnout. To do so, we leverage individual-level administrative ticketing data from Hillsborough County, Florida.”
Police Diversion at Arrest: A Systematic Review of the Literature Paywall :(Caroline Harmon-Darrow et al, November, 2022“Overall, police diversion programs were associated with reducing recidivism and lowering costs, although there is little association between program participation and improved behavioral health.”
Contacts Between Police and the Public, 2020Bureau of Justice Statistics, November, 2022“About 21% of U.S. residents age 16 or older had contact with police in 2020. Black (6%) and Hispanic (3%) persons were more likely to experience the threat or use of nonfatal force during their most recent police contact than white persons (2%).”
The Social Costs of PolicingVera Institute of Justice, November, 2022“[One study found that] people who were stopped and questioned or arrested by the police decreased their formal interactions with important social and welfare institutions such as medical, financial, civic, and educational institutions.”
Reducing Deaths in Law Enforcement Custody: Identifying High-Priority Needs for the Criminal Justice System Duren Banks et al, October, 2022“[Interview and virtual group] Participants concurred that there is currently insufficient data to study the effectiveness of any policies or programs designed to reduce law enforcement-related deaths.”
Reimagining Community Safety in California: From Deadly and Expensive Sheriffs to Equity and Care-Centered Wellbeing Catalyst California, October, 2022“For the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department, 88.8% of officer time spent on stops (25,269 hours) was for officer-initiated stops rather than in response to a call for service, which accounted for only 11.2% (3,189 hours) of officer time spent on stops.”
Exceptionally Lethal: American Police Killings in a Comparative Perspective Paul J. Hirschfield, September, 2022“Cross-national comparative analyses can help identify stable and malleable factors that distinguish high-FPV (fatal police violence) from low-FPV countries.”
Traffic SafetyCenter for Policing Equity, September, 2022“Racially biased enforcement sets into motion a cascade of interrelated harms for millions of people: unaffordable fines and fees, mounting debt, driver's license suspensions, lost employment, unnecessary arrests, and even injury or death.”
Restructuring Civilian Payouts for Police MisconductRashawn Ray, Center for Justice Research, July, 2022“By restructuring police-civilian payouts from taxpayer funding to police department insurances, monies typically spent on civilian payouts and lawyer fees can be used for education, jobs, and infrastructure.”
Fulfilling the Promise of Public Safety: Some Lessons from Recent Research Ben Struhl and Alexander Gard-Murray, Univ. of Pennsylvania Crime and Justice Policy Lab, June, 2022“Countries with much more robust social service provision still have police forces 80-85% the size of American forces. The public safety challenge is sufficiently complex that [we] should all consider multiple kinds of responses.”
The Usual, Racialized, Suspects: The Consequence of Police Contacts with Black and White Youth on Adult Arrest Anne McGlynn-Wright, Robert D Crutchfield, Martie L Skinner, Kevin P Haggerty, May, 2022“Our findings indicate that police encounters in childhood increase the risk of arrest in young adulthood for Black but not White respondents.”
Massachusetts Uniform Citation Data Analysis ReportSalem State University, Worcester State University, February, 2022“Hispanic motorists, followed by African American/Black motorists are most likely to receive a criminal citation whereas motorists in the Other race category, followed by White motorists were least likely to receive a criminal citation.”
Reforming the police through procedural justice training: A multicity randomized trial at crime hot spots David Weisburd et al, January, 2022“Intensive training in procedural justice (PJ) can lead to more procedurally just behavior and less disrespectful treatment of people [by police officers] at high-crime places.”
Policing the pandemic: estimating spatial and racialized inequities in New York City police enforcement of COVID-19 mandates Sandhya Kajeepeta et al, November, 2021“Findings suggest that ZIP codes with higher percentages of lower income and Black residents experienced disproportionately high rates of policing during the COVID-19 pandemic in the name of public health.”
Police Foundations: A Corporate-Sponsored Threat to Democracy and Black Lives Color of Change and LittleSis, October, 2021“[We] have compiled the most extensive research to date on the links between police foundations and corporations, identifying over 1,200 corporate donations or executives serving as board members for 23 of the largest police foundations in the country.”
Automating BanishmentStop LAPD Spying Coalition, October, 2021“Over the past decade, we have been working to build power to abolish LAPD surveillance. This report grew out of that organizing and examines the relationships of policing and surveillance to displacement, gentrification, and real estate development.”
Racial Disparities in Law Enforcement StopsPublic Policy Institute of California, October, 2021“We analyze data for almost 4 million stops by California's 15 largest law enforcement agencies in 2019, examining the extent to which people of color experience searches, enforcement, intrusiveness, and use of force differently from white people.”
Fatal police violence by race and state in the USA, 1980-2019: a network meta-regression Global Burden of Diseases 2019 Police Violence US Subnational Collaborators, October, 2021“We found that more than half of all deaths due to police violence that we estimated in the USA from 1980 to 2018 were unreported in the National Vital Statistics System.”
Police Violence Reduces Civilian Cooperation and Engagement with Law EnforcementDesmond Ang et al., September, 2021“We find evidence that high-profile acts of police violence may severely impair civilian trust and crime-reporting...[In] eight major cities, we show a sharp drop in the ratio of 911 calls to ShotSpotter shots immediately after George Floyd's death.”
Cops Don't Stop Violence: Combating Narratives Used to Defend Police Instead of Defunding Them Community Resource Hub and Interrupting Criminalization, July, 2021“Police are facing one of the greatest crises of legitimacy in a generation. So they are reaching for one of their most reliable weapons -- fear.”
The Thin Blue Waveform: Racial Disparities in Officer Prosody Undermine Institutional Trust in the Police Nicholas P. Camp et al, July, 2021“Officers communicate different levels of respect, warmth, and ease toward Black and White citizens....these interpersonal cues accumulate across interactions to shape citizens' perceptions of and trust in law enforcement.”
Policing by the NumbersCouncil on Criminal Justice, June, 2021“Efforts to develop responses that achieve the twin goals of crime control and justice must be grounded in hard data and research evidence, as well as personal and professional experience.”
Defund the Police - Invest in Community Care: A Guide to Alternative Mental Health Responses Interrupting Criminalization, May, 2021“This guide highlights considerations for real, meaningful shifts away from law enforcement and towards autonomous, self-determined community-based resources and responses to unmet mental health needs.”
Arrest Trends: Suburban Police Are Driving the Use of Arrests Vera Institute of Justice, May, 2021“In principal cities, racial disparities in arrests persist but have dropped by more than 50 percent. This progress has not occurred elsewhere; racial disparities in arrests have increased in suburban cities.”
Reducing Policing's Footprint? Racial Disparities and Arrest Trends After Misdemeanor Decriminalization and Legalization in Denver and Philadelphia Vera Institute of Justice, May, 2021“Arrests have declined by at least 40 percent for every decriminalized offense category in Philadelphia, with the steepest decreases in the years immediately following decriminalization.”
Decoupling Crisis Response from Policing -- A Step Toward Equitable Psychiatric Emergency Services New England Journal of Medicine, May, 2021“Police responses to psychiatric crises harm patients far too often, especially in minority communities, where a long history of institutional racism informs warranted distrust of law enforcement.”
Brutality in the Name of "Safety": Baton Rouge Parish Policing and Tactics The Promise of Justice Initiative, May, 2021“With a jail population rate that is 66% higher than the national average, there is statistical proof that EBR readily weaponizes over-policing and incarceration to address what are in fact social and societal problems.”
Accessing justice: The impact of discretion, 'deservedness' and distributive justice on the equitable allocation of policing resources Sarah Charman, Emma Williams, May, 2021“Indeed, the often invisible and unchecked nature of police discretion challenges its neutrality and highlights the subjective nature of such practices which are influenced by judgement, interpretation and previous experience.”
Policy AssessmentsCouncil on Crime and Justice Task Force on Policing, May, 2021“Task Force members weighed the relative value of each proposal based on the best available research and on their professional expertise and lived experiences.”
Do Police Make Too Many Arrests?Cho, Sungwoo, Felipe Goncalves, and Emily Weisburst, April, 2021“Because the observed decline in enforcement is concentrated among arrests for low-level offenses, we argue that low-level enforcement could be reduced at the margin without likely increases in crime.”
A Neglected Problem: Understanding the Effects of Personal and Vicarious Trauma on African Americans' Attitudes Toward the Police Paywall :(Daniel K. Pryce et al., April, 2021“Even for the proportion of African Americans who had positive perceptions and interactions with the police, their views of the police seemed to be further complicated by broader concerns of discriminatory treatment.”
Social Fabric: A New Model for Public Safety and Vital Neighborhoods The Square One Project, March, 2021“We have models available, but we've never made a sustained commitment to any institution other than the police and the prison system.”
Citizens, Suspects, and Enemies: Examining Police Militarization Mitt Regan, March, 2021“The conviction that police officers need [military-grade weapons] reflects a subtle cultural shift in the understanding of the nature of police work.”
Collective Bargaining Rights, Policing, and Civilian DeathsCunningham, Jamein, Donna Feir, and Rob Gillezeau, March, 2021“Using an event-study design, we find that the introduction of duty to bargain requirements with police unions has led to a significant increase in non-white civilian deaths at the hands of police during the late twentieth century.”
The role of officer race and gender in police-civilian interactions in ChicagoPaywall :(Ba, Bocar A., Dean Knox, Jonathan Mummolo, and Roman Rivera, February, 2021“Relative to white officers, Black and Hispanic officers make far fewer stops and arrests, and they use force less often, especially against Black civilians.”
Black and (Thin) Blue (Line): Corruption and Other Political Determinants of Police Killings in America Oguzhan C. Dincer and Michael Johnston, February, 2021“Our evidence suggests that police can kill Black Americans with impunity because of a lack of accountability - exemplified by corruption - that is largely determined by political influences.”
The Demand Is Still #DefundPolice: Lessons from 2020 Interrupting Criminalization, January, 2021(Over the past six months, organizers secured divestment of over $840 million dollars from police departments, investments of at least $160 million dollars in communities, and increased transparency and community control over budgets in many areas.)
Chasing Justice: Addressing Police Violence and Corruption in Maryland ACLU of Maryland, January, 2021“91% of officers' use of force was targeted toward Black residents.”
Racial prejudice predicts police militarizationTyler Jimenez, Peter J. Helm, Alexis Wilkinson, & Jamie Arndt, December, 2020“Studies 2 and 3 are the first to explicitly connect these variables, finding that racial prejudice is predictive of both support for police militarization and actual police acquisitions of military equipment.”
Emergency Department visits for depression following police killings of unarmed African AmericansPaywall :(Abhery Das, Parvati Singh, Anju K.Kulkarni, and Tim A. Bruckner, November, 2020“Police killings of unarmed African Americans correspond with an 11% increase in ED visits per 100,000 population related to depression among African Americans in the concurrent month and three months following the exposure (p < 0.05).”
Mass Extraction: The Widespread Power of U.S. Law Enforcement to Search Mobile Phones Upturn Toward Justice in Technology, October, 2020“We found that state and local law enforcement agencies have performed hundreds of thousands of cellphone extractions since 2015, often without a warrant.”
Building Safe, Thriving Communities: Research-Based Strategies for Public Safety NYU Law School Center for Race, Inequality, and the Law and the Justice Collaborative Institute, October, 2020“More and more, elected leaders and their constituents are recognizing that a path to safety and stability does not lie in a return to past, failed practices, but in an evidence-based, innovative reimagining of our law enforcement system.”
The Community Responder Model: How Cities Can Send the Right Responder to Every 911 Call Center for American Progress, October, 2020“Estimates for the share of calls that could be handled by [community responders] range from a low of 21 percent of calls in Detroit to a high of 38 percent in Seattle and Portland.”
Civic Responses to Police ViolenceDesmond Ang and Jonathan Tebes, October, 2020“We find that exposure to police violence leads to significant increases in registrations and votes. These effects are driven entirely by Blacks and Hispanics and are largest for killings of unarmed individuals.”
Defund Sheriffs: A Toolkit for Organizers Working Families, Sheriffs for Trusting Communities, Faith in Action Fund, & Community Resource Hub for Safety and Accountability, October, 2020“Defunding sheriffs should be an urgent priority for anyone concerned with mass incarceration and police violence.”
Government Misconduct and Convicting the Innocent: The Role of Prosecutors, Police and Other Law Enforcement National Registry of Exonerations, September, 2020“More than a third of all exonerations included misconduct by police officers, [and] nearly as many involved misconduct by prosecutors.”
Tracking Enforcement Trends in New York City: 2003-2018 Data Collaborative for Justice, September, 2020“There were 5.8 enforcement actions among Black people for every one enforcement action among White people in 2018.”
Understanding Police EnforcementVera Institute of Justice, September, 2020“Most calls do not relate to serious or violent crime; instead, the most frequent calls involve nuisance complaints and low-level crimes.”
NYPD Officer Misconduct AnalysisNew York University's Public Safety Lab, September, 2020“We find that precincts with higher percentages of Black residents had higher levels of excess misconduct complaints, both all and substantiated, between 2006-2019.”
Research Memo: Police Unions and the Obstacles They Pose Community Resource Hub for Safety and Accountability, September, 2020“Police unions and the LEOBR/POBR pose major obstacles to police reform, specifically in regard to accountability, transparency, and community safety.”
Officer-Involved Shootings in Texas: 2016-2019 Texas Justice Initiative, August, 2020“Shootings of civilians and their subsequent deaths caused by officers have been increasing over the four years”
Cops, Clinicians, or Both? Collaborative Approaches to Responding to Behavioral Health Emergencies National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors, August, 2020“Individuals [in behavioral health crisis] account for a quarter of police shootings and over 2 million jail bookings per year. Explicit and implicit bias magnify these problems for people of color.”
Hidden in Plain Sight: Racism, White Supremacy, and Far-Right Militancy in Law Enforcement Brennan Center for Justice, August, 2020“Alarmingly, internal FBI policy documents have also warned agents assigned to domestic terrorism cases that the white supremacist and anti-government militia groups they investigate often have "active links" to law enforcement officials.”
The Other Epidemic: Fatal Police Shootings in the Time of COVID-19 ACLU, August, 2020“From January 1, 2015, to June 30, 2020, police officers shot and killed 5,442 people.”
"Defunding the Police" and People With Mental IllnessBazelon Center for Mental Health Law, August, 2020“We should dramatically reduce the role of the police in the lives of people with mental illness. As the same time, mental health services should be expanded and racial disparities in their delivery eliminated.”
Which Side Are We On: Can Labor Support #BlackLivesMatter and Police Unions? David Unger, July, 2020“An estimated 60 to 80 percent of police officers nationwide are unionized,twice the 34 percent unionization rate for the entire public sector, and at least ten times the rate of private sector unionization.”
Police Brutality Bonds: How Wall Street Profits from Police Violence Action Center on Race & the Economy, June, 2020“In the twelve cities and counties included here, we found a total of nearly $878 million in bond borrowing to cover police related settlements and judgments.”
Sending New Yorkers to Jail: Police Unions, Campaign Contributions, and the Political Fight to Rollback Bail Reform Center for Community Alternatives, Citizen Action of New York, and the Public Policy and Education Fund of New York, June, 2020(On average, Senators who voted to expose more New Yorkers to money bail received 10 times as much in law enforcement union donations as those who voted in opposition.)
The Case for Violence Interruption Programs as an Alternative to PolicingThe Justice Collaborative Institute, June, 2020“In cities and neighborhoods across the country, [violence interruption] programs have consistently proven to effectively and efficiently reduce gun violence while also helping people to build healthier, more stable lives.”
Police Killings in the US: Inequalities by Race/Ethnicity and Socioeconomic Position People's Policy Project, June, 2020“Whites in the poorest areas have a police killing rate of 7.9 per million, compared to 2 per million in the least-poor areas. Blacks in the poorest areas have a police killing rate of 12.3 per million, compared to 6.7 per million in the least-poor areas.”
Law Enforcement Super Pacs and the Fight for ReformDemocratic Policy Center, June, 2020“This report outlines an under-investigated aspect of law enforcement union power: their use of independent expenditure groups to influence elections and their ability to hire top Democratic consultants to execute their campaigns.”
#DefundPolice Toolkit: Concrete Steps Toward Divestment from Policing & Investment in Community Safety Interrupting Criminalization: Research in Action & Movement for Black Lives, June, 2020“#DefundPolice is a strategy that goes beyond dollars and cents--it is not just about decreasing police budgets, it is about reducing the power, scope, and size of police departments.”
Widespread Desire for Policing and Criminal Justice ReformThe Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, June, 2020“Americans, regardless of race, strongly support policies that include body cameras, holding police accountable for excessive force and racially biased policing, and creating criteria for the use of force.”
Racial Disparities in NYPD's COVID-19 Policing: Unequal Enforcement of 311 Social Distancing Calls The Legal Aid Society, May, 2020“Although the official data released by the city is limited and incomplete, the data that is available demonstrates the disproportionate impacts of the NYPD's pandemic policing on Black and Latino New Yorkers.”
Catalyzing Policing Reform with Data: Policing Typology for Los Angeles Neighborhoods Urban Institute, May, 2020“However, across all groups and their varied activity levels, Black people are stopped at the highest rate.”
To Serve and Protect Each Other: How Police-Prosecutor Codependence Enables Police Misconduct Somil Trivedi and Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve, May, 2020“The persistent, codependent relationship between police and prosecutors exacerbates police misconduct and violence and is aided by prosecutors in both legal and extralegal ways.”
The Wandering OfficerBen Grunwald & John Rappaport, April, 2020“In any given year over the last three decades, an average of roughly 1,100 full-time law-enforcement officers in Florida walk the streets having been fired in the past, and almost 800 having been fired for misconduct.”
Which Police Departments Want Reform? Barriers to Evidence-Based Policymaking Samantha Goerger, Jonathan Mummolo, and Sean J. Westwood, April, 2020“Many agencies that indicate interest in transparent, evidence-based policymaking are likely engaging in cheap talk, and recoil once performance evaluations are made salient.”
Demonstrations, demoralization, and de-policingPaywall :(Christopher J. Marier and Lorie A. Fridell, March, 2020“Post-Ferguson protests in 2014 did not appreciably worsen police morale nor lead to substantial withdrawal from most police work, suggesting that the police institution is resilient to exogenous shocks.”
Reconciling Police and Communities with Apologies, Acknowledgements, or Both: A Controlled Experiment Thomas C. O'Brien, Tracey L. Meares, Tom R. Tyler, February, 2020“The evidence suggests that police leaders should combine acknowledgement of responsibility for the mistrust with an apology if they want to enlist the cooperation of people who are least likely to trust the police.”
Policing the American UniversityCivilytics Consulting LLC, February, 2020“Since reporting began, campus police departments arrests of black adults have annually increased. Recent reductions in total arrests are due to a sharp decrease in arrests of white adults.”
Gang Takedowns in the De Blasio Era: The Dangers of 'Precision Policing' The Policing and Social Justice Project at Brooklyn College, December, 2019“Gang policing replicates the harms of mass incarceration strategies that have come under increased scrutiny. It is dangerous and discriminatory and will not uplift neighborhoods struggling with intra-community violence, gang-related or otherwise.”
The Power of Observation: An Empirical Analysis of the Effects of Body Worn Cameras on Police Use of Force and Productivity Taeho Kim, October, 2019(This study finds that body worn cameras are associated with a drop of 43% in use of force, a reduction of 81% in subject injury, yet not with officer injury, or other productivity measures such as crime and clearance rates.)
Crisis Response Services for People with Mental Illnesses or Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities: A Review of the Literature on Police-based and Other First Response Models Vera Institute of Justice, October, 2019“Police-based and related crisis response services for people with mental illnesses or I/DD can play a vital role in reducing justice system contact and improving health outcomes among these vulnerable populations.”
Atlas of Surveillance: Southwestern Border Communities Electronic Frontier Foundation, October, 2019“We found 36 local government agencies using automated license plate readers (ALPR), 45 outfitting officers with body-worn cameras, and 20 flying drones.”
Policing, Poverty, and Racial Inequality in Tulsa, OklahomaHuman Rights Watch, September, 2019“Human Rights Watch found that, beyond the statistical disparities of treatment by police of the different races, black people nearly all had personal experiences of abusive policing, ranging from extreme violence towards themselves or family members, to m”
The Role of Police Unions in the 21st CenturyTexas Public Policy Foundation, September, 2019“However, police unions have more recently become involved in policy issues beyond those bounded by typical labor relations--for instance, criminal justice public policy and training; and union involvement can become problematic.”
The National Initiative for Building Community Trust and Justice: Key Process and Outcome Evaluation Findings Urban Institute, August, 2019“Although community perceptions improved in the aggregate, views of police and police legitimacy remain largely negative in the neighborhoods most affected by crime and disadvantage.”
Gatekeepers: The Role of Police in Ending Mass Incarceration Vera Institute of Justice, August, 2019“The mass enforcement of relatively minor law violations suggests that policing practices currently tend toward punitive approaches in ways that are often not necessary to achieve public safety.”
Arrest, Release, Repeat: How police and jails are misused to respond to social problems Prison Policy Initiative, August, 2019“Our analysis confirms that people who are repeatedly arrested and jailed are arrested for lower-level offenses, have unmet medical and mental health needs, and are economically marginalized.”
The 911 Call Processing System: A Review of the Literature as it Relates to Policing Vera Institute of Justice, August, 2019“Analysis of calls for service data provides a huge and largely untapped opportunity for researchers and practitioners to inform and transform policy and practice.”
Network exposure and excessive use of force: Investigating the social transmission of police misconduct Marie Ouellet, Sadaf Hashimi, Jason Gravel, and Andrew V. Papachristos, July, 2019“Our findings indicate officers' peers may serve as social conduits through which misconduct may be learned and transmitted.”
When Stop and Frisk Comes Home: Policing Public and Patrolled Housing Alexis Karteron, July, 2019“Largely because of the vast array of behavior that is regulated in public and patrolled housing, law enforcement officers have broad authority to stop, arrest, and search people in and around such locations.”
Changes in Enforcement of Low-Level and Felony Offenses Post-Ferguson: An Analysis of Arrests in St. Louis, Missouri Lee Ann Slocum, Claire Greene, Beth M. Huebner, and Richard Rosenfeld, July, 2019“We find that there was an initial reduction in low-level arrests of Whites and Blacks in the wake of Ferguson. Enforcement of misdemeanors and ordinance violations then increased and returned to expected levels, but only for Blacks.”
Confirmation Bias and Other Systemic Causes of Wrongful Convictions: A Sentinel Events Perspective Kim Rossmo and Joycelyn Pollock, July, 2019“Detectives must minimize the risk of error by accurately assessing evidence reliability and avoiding premature shifts to suspect-based investigations. Resolving issues of cognitive bias and avoiding logic/analytic mistakes are equally important.”
Fighting Crime or Raising Revenue? Testing Opposing Views of Forfeiture. Brian Kelly, June, 2019“These results add to a growing body of scholarly evidence supporting forfeiture's critics, suggesting that claims about forfeiture's value in crime fighting are exaggerated at best and that police do use forfeiture to raise revenue.”
Policing Women: Race and gender disparities in police stops, searches, and use of force Prison Policy Initiative, May, 2019“Women make up an increasing share of arrests and report much more use of force than they did twenty years ago.”
Aggressive Policing and Academic Outcomes: Examining the Impact of Police "Surges" in NYC Students' Home Neighborhoods Joscha Legewie, Chelsea Farley, Kayla Stewart, May, 2019“Aggressive policing in communities can harm Black boys' educational performance, as measured by state tests.”
Good Cop, Bad Cop: Using Civilian Allegations to Predict Police Misconduct Kyle Rozema and Max Schanzenbach, May, 2019“The worst 1 percent of officers, as measured by civilian allegations, generate almost 5 times the number of payouts and over 4 times the total damage payouts in civil rights litigation.”
The Voluntariness of Voluntary Consent: Consent Searches and the Psychology of Compliance Roseanna Sommers and Vanessa K. Bohns, April, 2019“This is problematic because it indicates that a key justification for suspicionless consent searches--that they are voluntary--relies on an assessment that is subject to bias.”
A Proposal to End Regressive Taxation through Law EnforcementThe Hamilton Project, March, 2019“Over the past few decades the directives handed down to the everyday agents of law enforcement have incrementally shifted focus away from public safety and toward public finance.”
New Era of Public Safety: A Guide to Fair, Safe, and Effective Community Policing The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, March, 2019(This report was developed to give individuals, communities, activists, advocacy organizations, law makers, and police departments the knowledge to carry out police reform.)
Cops and No Counselors: How the Lack of School Mental Health Staff is Harming Students ACLU, March, 2019“We found that schools with police reported 3.5 times as many arrests as schools without police. As a result, students with disabilities and students of color are frequently sent into the criminal system.”
Dirty Data, Bad Predictions: How Civil Rights Violations Impact Police Data, Predictive Policing Systems, and Justice Rashida Richardson, Jason Schultz, Kate Crawford, March, 2019“The failure to adequately interrogate and reform police data creation and collection practices can result in skewed predictive policing systems and create lasting consequences that will permeate throughout the criminal justice system.”
How Police Technology Aggravates Racial Inequity: A Taxonomy of Problems and a Path Forward Laura Moy, February, 2019“Police technology may (1) replicate inequity in policing, (2) mask inequity in policing, (3) transfer inequity from elsewhere to policing, (4) exacerbate inequitable policing harms, and/or (5) compromise oversight of inequity in policing.”
The Great Decoupling: The Disconnection Between Criminal Offending and Experience of Arrest Across Two Cohorts Vesla M. Weaver, Andrew Papachristos, and Michael Zanger-Tishler, February, 2019“The criminal justice system, we argue, slipped from one in which arrest was low and strongly linked to offending to one where a substantial share of Americans experienced arrest without committing a crime.”
Aggressive Policing and the Educational Performance of Minority YouthJoscha Legewie and Jeffrey Fagan, February, 2019“Aggressive policing can thus lower educational performance for some minority groups, providing evidence that the consequences of policing extend into key domains of social life, with implications for the educational trajectories of minority youth.”
Police Contact and the Legal Socialization of Urban TeensAmanda Geller and Jeffrey Fagan, February, 2019“We find that both personal and vicarious police contact are associated with increased legal cynicism...Legal cynicism is amplified in teens reporting intrusive contact but diminished among teens reporting experiences characterized by procedural justice.”
Every Three Seconds: Unlocking Police Data on Arrests Vera Institute of Justice, January, 2019“Across the United States, an arrest occurs every three seconds.”
Bias in Video Evidence: Implications for Police Body Cameras Ashley Kalle, Georgina Hammock, 2019“While watching the same video, diff erent conclusions were drawn about what transpired, who was culpable, the character of the individuals involved, and the level of force used based on observers' focus and their racial attitudes.”
Police Disciplinary AppealsStephen Rushin, 2019“Many communities have established appeals procedures that may hamper reform efforts, contribute to officer misconduct, and limit public oversight of police departments.”
Cellphones, Law Enforcement, and the Right to PrivacyBrennan Center for Justice, December, 2018“New technologies that extend the power and reach of law enforcement are likely to exacerbate existing biases in policing and add more surveillance to communities that are already extensively policed.”
The Contagiousness of Police ViolenceThibaut Horel, Trevor Campbell, Lorenzo Masoero, Raj Agrawal, Andrew Papachristos and Daria Roithmayr, November, 2018“Most remarkably, within two years, exposure to a single shooting more than doubles a network neighbor's probability of a future shooting.”
Contacts Between Police and the Public, 2015Bureau of Justice Statistics, October, 2018(When police initiated the contact, black and Hispanic residents were more likely to experience the threat or use of physical force than white residents.)
An Analysis of State Statutes Regarding the Role of Law EnforcementPaywall :(Carly E. Cortright, Wesley McCann, Dale Willits, Craig Hemmens, Mary K. Stohr, October, 2018“Our findings indicate a counterintuitive reversal in the trend, with more states removing order maintenance and peacekeeping duties from their statutes despite the wide dominance of community-oriented policing.”
Risk of Police-Involved Death by Race/Ethnicity and Place, United States, 2012-2018Paywall :(Frank Edwards, Michael H. Esposito, and Hedwig Lee, August, 2018(Police were responsible for about 8% of all homicides with adult male victims between 2012 and 2018, with Black men having the highest risk of mortality from police violence.)
Militarization fails to enhance police safety or reduce crime but may harm police reputationJonathan Mummolo, August, 2018(This article argues that militarized police units are more often deployed in communities with large shares of African American residents, they fail to enhance officer safety or reduce local crime, and may diminish police reputation in the mass public.)
Exploitative Revenues, Law Enforcement, and the Quality of Government ServiceRebecca Goldstein, Michael W. Sances, and Hye Young You, August, 2018“We find that police departments in cities that collect a greater share of their revenue from fees solve violent and property crimes at significantly lower rates.”
Emerging Issues in American Policing Volume 4, July 2018 Vera Institute of Justice, July, 2018(This quarterly digest presents innovations in the field of policing from leading academic journals and research publications.)
TRENDS: Police Militarization and the Use of Lethal Force Paywall :(Edward Lawson, Jr., July, 2018(There is a positive and significant association between militarization and the number of suspects killed, controlling for several other possible explanations.)
Officer-involved Shootings and Custodial Deaths in TexasTexas Justice Initiative, June, 2018(Overall, most deaths that occur in Texas law enforcement custody are due to natural causes, but that nearly half of all deaths of inmates housed alone in a jail cell are suicides.)
Police killings and their spillover effects on the mental health of black Americans: a population-based, quasi-experimental study Jacob Bor, Atheendar S Venkataramani, David R Williams, Alexander C Tsai, June, 2018“Police killings of unarmed black Americans have adverse effects on mental health among black American adults in the general population.”
America Under Watch: Face Surveillance in the United States Georgetown Law Center on Privacy and Technology, May, 2018“For the millions of Americans living in Detroit and Chicago, face surveillance may be an imminent reality.”
Police Stops and Searches of Indigenous People in Minneapolis: The Roles of Race, Place, and Gender Marina Mileo Gorsuch and Deborah Rho, April, 2018“Our analysis shows that Minneapolis police disproportionately stopped Native Americans in Minneapolis in non-vehicle stops and suspicious vehicle stops, but not in traffic enforcement stops.”
A Deeper Dive into Racial Disparities in Policing in VermontStephanie Seguino and Nancy Brooks, March, 2018(This report substantiates earlier analyses, finding that Black and Hispanic drivers in Vermont are more likely to be stopped and arrested than White or Asian drivers.)
Face Off: Law Enforcement Use of Face Recognition Technology Electronic Frontier Foundation, February, 2018“Law enforcement officers can use mobile devices to capture face recognition-ready photographs of people they stop on the street; surveillance cameras boast real-time face scanning and identification capabilities.”
Social Media Monitoring in Boston: Free Speech in the Crosshairs ACLU Massachusetts, February, 2018(From 2014-16 the Boston Police Dept. used a social media surveillance system to gather data irrelevant to law enforcement concerns. It treated ordinary citizens as justifiable targets of surveillance, without deterring or solving serious crimes.)
Collective Bargaining and Police Misconduct: Evidence from Florida Dhammika Dharmapala, Richard H. McAdams, and John Rappaport, January, 2018“Collective bargaining rights lead to about a 27% increase in complaints of officer misconduct for the typical sheriff's office.”
Policing the Houseless 2.0Million Dollar Hoods, December, 2017“This report documents that LAPD arrests of houseless persons continued to climb during the first six months of 2017 and that just five charge categories accounted for the majority of houseless arrests.”
2017 Police Violence ReportMapping Police Violence, December, 2017“Compiling information from media reports, obituaries, public records, and databases like Fatal Encounters and the WashingtonPost, this report represents the most comprehensive accounting of deadly police violence in 2017.”
Police Contact and Mental HealthAmanda Geller, Jeffrey Fagan, and Tom R. Tyler, December, 2017“Recent police contact is associated with increased levels of anxiety symptoms, and both quantity and intensity of recent stop experience are significantly associated with increased PTSD symptoms.”
Evidence that curtailing proactive policing can reduce major crimePaywall :(Christopher M. Sullivan & Zachary P. O'Keeffe, September, 2017“Analysing several years of unique data obtained from the NYPD, we find that civilian complaints of major crimes (such as burglary, felony assault and grand larceny) decreased during and shortly after sharp reductions in proactive policing.”
What "Stop-and-Frisk" Really Means: Discrimination & Use of Force Prison Policy Initiative, August, 2017“This report analyzes the racially disparate use of force in police stops in New York City in 2011.”
Who Does Civil Asset Forfeiture Target Most?: A Review of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department's Forfeiture Activities for Fiscal Year 2016 Nevada Policy Research Institute, August, 2017“Forfeitures disproportionately target neighborhoods with relatively high levels of minorities and low-income residents.”
Language from police body camera footage shows racial disparities in officer respect Stanford University, June, 2017“Officers speak with consistently less respect toward black versus white community members, even after controlling for the race of the officer, the severity of the infraction, the location of the stop, and the outcome of the stop.”
Increases in police use of force in the presence of body-worn cameras are driven by officer discretion: a protocol-based subgroup analysis of ten randomized experiments Journal of Experimental Criminology, May, 2017“The core of the analysis presented below is to understand what role police discretion plays in the emergent area of police BWCs.”
The Impact of Police on Criminal Justice Reform: Evidence from Cincinnati, Ohio Robin S. Engel, Nicholas Corsaro, M. Murat Ozer, May, 2017“When arrest becomes systematically viewed by police as a limited and precious commodity, to be used sparingly and for the most chronic or serious offenders, change throughout the criminal justice system will likely result.”
Consequences of Policing Prostitution: An Analysis of Individuals Arrested and Prosecuted for Commercial Sex in New York City Urban Institute, April, 2017“The history of criminalizing prostitution is long, but its modern incarnation in New York City is inextricably intertwined with "broken windows policing," which originated in the early 1990s.”
To Protect and Serve: Trends in State-Level Policing Reform, 2015-2016 Vera Institute of Justice, April, 2017“Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Utah and Washington have enacted laws that either limit the use of certain types of force, such as chokeholds, or mandate or strengthen police training on the legal boundaries of justifiable force.”
Police Union ContractsStephen Rushin, March, 2017“Across America's largest cities, many police officers receive excessive procedural protections during internal disciplinary investigations, effectively immunizing them from the consequences of misconduct.”
How Do People in High-Crime, Low-Income Communities View the Police?Urban Institute, February, 2017“27.8% of respondents agreed/strongly agreed that police almost always behave according to the law. Approximately one-third agreed or strongly agreed that police stand up for values that are important to them and often arrest people for no good reason.”
Preventing the Use of Deadly Force:Paywall :(Jay T. Jennings and Meghan E. Rubado, February, 2017“Findings show that one policy--the requirement that officers file a report when they point their guns at people but do not fire--is associated with significantly lower rates of gun deaths.”
Behind the Badge: How Police View Their Jobs, Key Issues, and Recent Fatal Encounters Between Blacks and Police Pew Research Center, January, 2017“27% of all white officers but 69% of their black colleagues say the protests that followed fatal encounters between police and black citizens have been motivated at least to some extent by a genuine desire to hold police accountable.”
Driving While Black: A Report on Racial Profiling in Metro Nashville Police Department Traffic Stops Gideon's Army, October, 2016“Between 2011-2015, MNPD (Metro Nashville Police Department) stopped an average of 1,122 per 1,000 black drivers: more black drivers than were living in Davidson County.”
Police Employment, Officers Per Capita Rates for U.S. CitiesGoverning, October, 2016“In 2016, police departments serving cities with populations exceeding 25,000 employed an average of 16.8 officers and 21.4 total personnel for every 10,000 residents.”
Demilitarizing America's Police: A Constitutional Analysis The Constitution Project, August, 2016“The use of military equipment and tactics by law enforcement has clear--and serious--constitutional implications.”
Investigation of the Baltimore City Police DepartmentU.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, August, 2016“[T]he Department of Justice concludes that there is reasonable cause to believe that BPD engages in a pattern or practice of conduct that violates the Constitution or federal law.”
The Science of Justice: Race, Arrests, and Police Use of Force Center for Policing Equity, July, 2016“[T]he analyses of 12 law enforcement departments from geographically and demographically diverse locations revealed that racial disparities in police use of force persist even when controlling for racial distribution of local arrest rates.”
Stop and frisk dropping but still ineffectivePrison Policy Initiative, May, 2016“The number of stop and frisks has gone down in recent years, but the practice is still not working.”
Police Integrity Lost: A Study of Law Enforcement Officers Arrested U.S. Department of Justice, April, 2016“This study is a quantitative content analysis of archived news articles and court records reporting on the arrest(s) of law enforcement officers in the United States from 2005-2011.”
Forfeiting the American Dream: How Civil Asset Forfeiture Exacerbates Hardship for Low-income Communities and Communities of Color Center for American Progress, April, 2016“The abuse of civil asset forfeiture falls hardest on those who are least able to weather the economic shock of losing a home, car, or financial resources—namely, low-income individuals and people of color.”
Police Perspectives Guidebook SeriesVera Institute of Justice, February, 2016“To improve relations between police and the communities they serve, this three-part guide series—written for police, by police—highlights practical, field-informed approaches to building trust with multiracial and multi-ethnic communities.”
Police Body-Worn Camera PoliciesBrennan Center for Justice, January, 2016“To help foster and inform this discussion, we have pulled together body camera policies from many police departments that have made them publicly available, as well as model policies from several organizations.”
New report reveals civil forfeiturePrison Policy Initiative, December, 2015“Criminal forfeiture accounts for only 13% of all government seizure of property. So almost 90% of forfeiture proceeds come from situations where citizens may have done nothing wrong.”
Selective Policing: Racially Disparate Enforcement of Low-Level Offenses in New Jersey ACLU of New Jersey, December, 2015“Racial disparities between Black and White arrests exist in every city studied.”
Tracking Enforcement Rates in New York City 2003-2014Misdemeanor Justice Project at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, December, 2015“This third report from the Misdemeanor Justice Project documents the changing patterns in felony arrests, misdemeanor arrests, criminal summonses, and stop, question and frisk activities in New York City from 2003-2014.”
Policing for Profit: The Abuse of Civil Asset Forfeiture Institute for Justice, November, 2015“In 1986, the Department of Justice’s Assets Forfeiture Fund took in $93.7 million in revenue from federal forfeitures. By 2014, annual deposits had reached $4.5 billion--a 4,667 percent increase.”
A Multi-Level Bayesian Analysis of Racial Bias in Police Shootings at the County-Level in the United States, 2011-2014 University of California, Davis, November, 2015“The results provide evidence of a significant bias in the killing of unarmed black Americans relative to unarmed white Americans[.]”
Police Use of Nonfatal Force, 2002-11Bureau of Justice Statistics, November, 2015“Of those who had contact, 1.6% experienced the threat or use of nonfatal force by the police during their most recent contact.”
Police Body Worn Cameras: A Policy Scorecard The Leadership Conference, Upturn, August, 2015“This scorecard evaluates the body-worn camera policies currently in place in major police departments across the country.”
Local Police Departments, 2013: Equipment and Technology Bureau of Justice Statistics, July, 2015“The percentage of local police departments that authorized their officers to use conducted energy weapons such as Tasers increased from 60% in 2007 to 81% in 2013.”
Guilty Property: How Law Enforcement Takes $1 Million in Cash from Innocent Philadelphians Every Year -- and Gets Away with It ACLU of Pennsylvania, June, 2015“Every year, Pennsylvania law enforcement agencies take roughly $14 million in cash, cars, and homes from property owners and never give it back.”
Deadly Force: Police Use of Lethal Force In The United States Amnesty International, June, 2015(No one knows how many people are killed by police in the US, but estimates range from 400 to 1000 people each year. Yet not one state in the US complies with international human rights standards on the use of lethal force by police.)
Local Police Departments, 2013: Personnel, Policies, And Practices Bureau of Justice Statistics, May, 2015“About 27% of local police officers were members of a racial or ethnic minority, compared to 15% in 1987. ”
No Right to Rest: Criminalizing Homelessness in Colorado The Denver Homeless Out Loud Report Team, April, 2015“In addition to formal citation and arrest, this survey finds evidence of extrajudicial harassment of homeless people. Both police and private security forces commonly harass and enforce punishments on homeless people, even without legal authority to do so”
Above the Law: An Investigation of Civil Asset Forfeiture in California Drug Policy Alliance, April, 2015(Asset forfeiture abuses in California reveal the troubling extent to which law enforcement agencies have violated state and federal law.)
NC Traffic StopsThe University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, April, 2015(Since 2000, the North Carolina Highway Patrol has been collecting data whenever a police officer stops a motorist, and since 2002, all sizable police departments in the state have done so.)
2014 Annual ReportDenver Office of the Independent Monitor, March, 2015“In particular, the police uses of force within District 6 during the pilot project were frequently not recorded by body worn cameras.”
Arrest-Related Deaths Program Assessment: Technical Report Bureau of Justice Statistics, March, 2015“Provides a technical assessment of the coverage of the Arrest-Related Deaths (ARD) component of the Deaths in Custody Reporting Program (DCRP).”
Arrest-Related Deaths Program: Data Quality Profile Bureau of Justice Statistics, March, 2015“Data from the ARD represent a national accounting of persons who have died during the process of arrest, including homicides by law enforcement personnel and deaths attributed to suicide, intoxication, accidental injury, and natural causes.”
Campus Law Enforcement, 2011-12Bureau of Justice Statistics, January, 2015“About 75% of the campuses were using armed officers, compared to 68% during the 2004-05 school year.”
Survey of law enforcement access to sealed non-conviction recordsCollateral Consequences Resource Center, 2015“25 states, plus two territories, the District of Columbia and the Federal system, exempt law enforcement agencies generally from sealing or expungement laws, or in a few cases have no law authorizing sealing of non-conviction records.”
Citizens Police Data ProjectInvisible Institute, 2015“28,567 allegations of misconduct were filed against Chicago Police Department officers between March 2011 and September 2015.”
Born Suspect: Stop-and-Frisk Abuses & the Continued Fight to End Racial Profiling in America NAACP, 2015“This report is an analysis of the fight to end racial profiling in New York and the potential for nationwide implementation these efforts in every jurisdiction across the country.”
Decriminalization and Depenalization of Marijuana Possession: A Case Study of Enforcement Outcomes in Prince George's County Meghan Kozlowski, Emily Glazener, James A. Mitchell, James P. Lynch, Jinney Smith, 2015“The results suggest that changing arrest policies for low-quantity marijuana possession led to increases in enforcement for other low-level misdemeanor offenses. Additionally, our findings shed light on net-widening as a potential unintended consequence.”
Hot Spots PolicingGeorge Mason University Center for Evidence-Based Crime Policy, 2015“Hot spots policing covers a range of police responses that all share in common a focus of resources on the locations where crime is highly concentrated.”
Militarization and police violence: The case of the 1033 program Casey Delehanty, Gardner-Webb University, 2015“We find a positive and statistically significant relationship between 1033 transfers and fatalities from officer-involved shootings across all models.”
Aggressive Policing and the Mental Health of Young Urban MenGeller et al., December, 2014“Participants who reported more police contact also reported more trauma and anxiety symptoms, associations tied to how many stops they reported, the intrusiveness of the encounters, and their perceptions of police fairness.”
CPD Traffic Stops and Resulting Searches in 2013ACLU of Illinois, December, 2014“City-wide. The rate of black drivers in the stops (46%) is far higher than the rate of black residents in the city population (32%).”
Over A Million Dollars A Day: The Daily Waste of the NYPD's Misdemeanor Arrest Practices Police Reform Organizing Project, December, 2014“Figures for the first nine months of 2014 show that the NYPD makes: an average of 648 misdemeanor arrests per day at the daily cost to the city of $1,134,000.”
Law enforcement duties and sudden cardiac death among police officers in the United States: case distribution study British Medical Journal, November, 2014“Stressful law enforcement duties are associated with a risk of sudden cardiac death that is markedly higher than the risk during routine/non-emergency duties.”
On the Streets of America: Human Rights Abuses in Ferguson Amnesty International, October, 2014(This briefing outlines some of the human rights concerns witnessed by Amnesty International and recommendations that need to be implemented with regards to the use of lethal force by law enforcement and the policing of protests.)
Black, Brown and Targeted: A report on Boston Police Department Street Encounters from 2007-2010 ACLU of Massachusetts, October, 2014(Most alarmingly, the analysis found that Blacks were subjected to 63% of these encounters, even though they made up just 24% of Boston's population. The analysis also showed that crime does not explain this racial disparity.)
Police Officer Body-Worn CamerasOffice of Justice Programs, September, 2014“The evaluations in Mesa and Rialto documented substantial drops in citizen complaints following deployment of the technology. The UK studies documented a similar effect.”
Investigation of the Newark Police DepartmentUnited States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, July, 2014“Approximately 75% of reports of pedestrian stops by NPD officers failed to articulate sufficient legal basis for the stop, despite the NPD policy requiring such justification.”
War Comes Home The Excessive Militarization of American Policing American Civil Liberties Union, June, 2014“Using... federal funds, state and local law enforcement agencies have amassed military arsenals purportedly to wage the failed War on Drugs, the battlegrounds of which have disproportionately been in communities of color.”
Stop-and-Frisk: A First Look Six Months of Data on Stop-and-Frisk Practices in Newark American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey, February, 2014“Although black Newarkers represent 52 percent of the city's population, they make up 75 percent of all stops.”
Officer Involved Shooting InformationPhiladelphia Police Department, 2014“An officer involved shooting is the discharge of a firearm, whether accidental or intentional, by a police officer, whether on or off duty.”
Requests for Police Assistance, 2011Bureau of Justice Statistics, September, 2013“An estimated 1 in 8 U.S. residents age 16 or older, or 31.4 million persons, requested assistance from police at least once, most commonly to report a crime, suspicious activity, or neighborhood disturbance.”
Police Behavior during Traffic and Street Stops, 2011Bureau of Justice Statistics, September, 2013“Of those involved in traffic and street stops, a smaller percentage of blacks than whites believed the police behaved properly during the stop.”
Justifiable Homicides by Law Enforcement Officers: What is the Role of Mental Illness? Treatment Advocacy Center, National Sheriff's Association, September, 2013“The transfer of responsibility for persons with mental illness from mental health professionals to law enforcement officers has brought with it major problems for the latter.”
Coming of Age with Stop and Frisk: Experiences, Perceptions, and Public Safety Implications Vera Institute of Justice, September, 2013“Young people who have been stopped more often are less willing to report crimes, even when they are the victims. Each additional stop in the span of a year is associated with an 8% drop in the person's likelihood of reporting a violent crime.”
Racial Disparities in Arrests in the District of Columbia, 2009-2011Washington Lawyers' Committee, July, 2013“While there are about as many African Americans aged 18 or older (47.6%) as there are adult whites (42%) living in this city, eight out of 10 adults arrested for a crime in Washington are African American.”
Collecting DNA at Arrest: Policies, Practices, and Implications Urban Institute, May, 2013“Arrestee DNA laws led to more profiles in CODIS, contributed to additional hits, imposed significant administrative and analytic burdens on many state crime laboratories and collecting agencies, and raised important legal and policy issues.”
Operation Ghetto StormMalcolm X Grassroots Movement, April, 2013“There is no centralized database that keeps track of extrajudicial killings by police... With no numbers, there can be no studies, no analysis of trends and no accountability.”
Mapping Muslims: NYPD Spying and its Impact on American Muslims The Muslim American Civil Liberties Coalition (MACLC), The Creating Law Enforcement Accountability & Responsibility (CLEAR), The Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF)., March, 2013“Interviewees noted deep apprehension of the NYPD's intentions and practices towards them, including day-to-day interactions with beat-police officers such as filing stolen phone complaints, asking an officer for directions, or reporting hate crimes.”
Policing and the Economic Downturn Striving for Efficiency Is the New Norm Police Executive Research Forum, February, 2013“In 2010, 58% of responding agencies said that police services in their community had already declined or would decline with the implementation of recent or planned budget cuts. In 2012 that figure dropped to 44%.”
The Crisis Continues Inside Police Internal AffairsAmerican Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey, February, 2013“164 of the local police departments we spoke to unlawfully denied complaints by telephone. Only 207 of the 371 New Jersey police departments that our volunteers spoke to indicated that they would allow complaints to be filed by telephone.”
The Health Effects of Conducted Energy Weapons The Expert Panel on the Medical and Physiological Impacts of Conducted Energy Weapons Council of Canadian Academies, 2013“Since 1998, at least 33 deaths have followed the deployment of a CEW in Canada.”
Predictive Policing: The Role of Crime Forecasting in Law Enforcement Operations RAND Corporation, 2013“Predictive policing is the application of analytical techniques--particularly quantitative techniques--to identify likely targets for police intervention and prevent crime or solve past crimes by making statistical predictions.”
Arrest in the United States, 1990-2010Bureau of Justice Statistics, October, 2012“The number of murder arrests in the U.S. fell by half between 1990 and 2010. The adult and juvenile arrest rates dropped substantially in the 1990s, while both continued to fall about 20% between 2000 and 2010, reaching their lowest levels since at least”
Engaging Police in Immigrant Communities Promising Practices from the Field Vera Institute of Justice, October, 2012“This report describes a variety of approaches to building and maintaining effective police-immigrant relations developed by a diverse group of law enforcement agencies.”
Federal Law Enforcement Officers, 2008Bureau of Justice Statistics, June, 2012“From 2004 to 2008, the number of officers employed by Customs and Border Protection increased by more than 9,000 (or 33%), the largest increase at any federal agency.”
Rethinking the Blues How We Police in the U.S. and at What Cost Justice Policy Institute, May, 2012“Crime is at the lowest levels it has been in over 30 years, but funding for police increased 445 percent between 1982 and 2007, with federal funding increasing the most at 729 percent.”
Contacts between Police and the Public, 2008Bureau of Justice Statistics, October, 2011“Black drivers were about three times as likely as white drivers and about two times as likely as Hispanic drivers to be searched during a traffic stop.”
Census Of State And Local Law Enforcement Agencies, 2008Bureau of Justice Statistics, July, 2011“From 2004 to 2008, state and local law enforcement agencies added about 9,500 more full-time sworn personnel than during the previous 4-year period.”
Tribal Law Enforcement, 2008Bureau of Justice Statistics, June, 2011“Eleven of the 25 largest tribal law enforcement agencies served jurisdictions covering more than 1,000 square miles.”
Local Police Departments, 2007Bureau of Justice Statistics, December, 2010“In 2007, 75% of local police officers were employed by departments that authorized the use of conducted energy devices such as Tasers, compared to 47% in 2003”
Aviation Units in Large Law Enforcement Agencies, 2007Bureau of Justice Statistics, July, 2009“In 2007, 92% of aviation units engaged in vehicle pursuits. Almost 90% of units performed counternarcotics missions, and about 80% conducted counterterrorism missions. Nearly 70% of units engaged in firefighting activities”
State and Local Law Enforcement Training Academies, 2006Bureau of Justice Statistics, February, 2009“Of an estimated 57,000 recruits who entered basic training programs during 2005, 86% or 49,000, successfully completed their program and graduated from the academy.”
Campus Law Enforcement, 2004-05Bureau of Justice Statistics, February, 2008“Three-quarters of campus law enforcement agencies used sworn officers with full arrest powers.”
Arrest-Related Deaths in the United States, 2003-2005Bureau of Justice Statistics, October, 2007“Three-quarters of the law enforcement homicides reported to DCRP involved arrests for a violent crime. Public-order offenders accounted for 8% of homicides, followed by property (4%) and drug offenders (2%).”
Contacts between Police and the Public, 2005Bureau of Justice Statistics, April, 2007“In 2005 police searched 9.5 percent of stopped blacks and 8.8 percent of stopped Hispanics, compared to 3.6 percent of white motorists.”
Federal Law Enforcement Officers, 2004Bureau of Justice Statistics, August, 2006“Women accounted for 16% of Federal officers in 2004. A third of Federal officers were members of a racial or ethnic minority in 2004. This included 17.7% who were Hispanic and Latino, and 11.4% who were black or African American.”
Characteristics of Drivers Stopped by Police, 2002Bureau of Justice Statistics, June, 2006“Among traffic stops of young male drivers in 2002, 11% were physically searched or had their vehicle searched by police. Among these young male drivers who were stopped, blacks (22%) and Hispanics (17%) were searched at higher rates than whites (8%).”
Census of State and Local Law Enforcement Agencies, 2004Bureau of Justice Statistics, June, 2006“Although local police employment was up slightly nationwide from 2000 to 2004, 20 of the nation's 50 largest local police departments saw a decline in sworn personnel during this period, including 6 of the 7 largest.”
Citizen Complaints about Police Use of ForceBureau of Justice Statistics, June, 2006“Large State and local law enforcement agencies... received more than 26,000 citizen complaints about officer use of force during 2002. This total figure resulted in [an] overall rate[] 6.6 complaints per 100 full-time sworn officers.”
Traffic Stop Audit Project An Institutional Ethnography of Traffic Stop Policy and Practice in the Minneapolis Police Department Council on Crime and Justice, April, 2006“The distinction between traffic law enforcement stops (e.g. speeding) and investigative stops is often blurred. Law enforcement stops are often made for investigative purposes rather than expressed criminal intent.”
Report to the Legislature of the State of Illinois: The Illinois Pilot Program on Sequential Double-Blind Identification Procedures Illinois State Police, March, 2006“The data collected shows that the sequential double-blind method led to a lower rate of suspect identifications as well as a higher rate of known false errors.”
Characteristics of Drivers Stopped by Police, 1999Bureau of Justice Statistics, March, 2002“Approximately 422,000 persons age 16 or older said the police used or threatened to use force against them at least once during 1999.”
Policing and Homicide, 1976-98: Justifiable Homicide of Felons by Police and Murder of Police by Felons Bureau of Justice Statistics, March, 2001
Contacts between Police and the Public: Findings from the 1999 National Survey Bureau of Justice Statistics, March, 2001(In 1999 an estimated 43.8 million persons age 16 or older had least one face-to-face contact with a police officer.)
Federal Law Enforcement Officers, 1998Bureau of Justice Statistics, March, 2000“Number of Federal law enforcement officers grew 11 percent in two years”
Local Police Departments, 1997Bureau of Justice Statistics, October, 1999(personnel increases in local police departments)
Sheriffs' Departments, 1997Bureau of Justice Statistics, October, 1999“personnel increases in local sheriff's departments”
Use of Force By Police: Overview of National and Local Data Bureau of Justice Statistics, October, 1999
Driving While Black: Racial Profiling On Our Nation's Highways American Civil Liberties Union, June, 1999“All the evidence to date suggests that using traffic laws for non-traffic purposes has been a disaster for people of color and has deeply eroded public confidence in law enforcement.”
Shielded from Justice: Police Brutality and Accountability in the United States Human Rights Watch, July, 1998
