Skip to page content

Criminal Law

Featured

Report
National Public Defense Workload Study
When public defenders have excessive workloads, they are forced to prioritize some cases over others. This inevitably causes harm. How might caseload limits help these lawyers better serve their clients—and help the justice system better serve all those who rely on it?
Sep 12, 2023
Research Brief
The Impact of Defense Counsel at Bail Hearings
Roughly half of U.S. counties do not provide defense counsel at bail hearings. An experiment shows that providing counsel can decrease the use of monetary bail and pretrial detention. But having a public defender at the bail hearing did result in a short-term increase in rearrests on theft charges.
Jun 30, 2023

Explore Criminal Law

Tool
Forensic DNA Surveillance Tool
This tool shows criminal justice policymakers how state policies affect the size and racial composition of forensic DNA databases. Users can view current state policies or change inputs and assumptions to see how database composition is impacted.
Aug 12, 2019
Report
Ethics in Scientific Research
An analysis of how ethics are created, monitored, and enforced finds which ethical principles are common across scientific disciplines, how these ethics might vary geographically, and how emerging topics are shaping future ethics.
Jun 5, 2019
Report
Tool Created to Help Multinational Companies Assess Risk of Bribery When Doing Business in Foreign Countries
Corruption can hinder global business investment — particularly in emerging markets — but multinational companies often have difficulty assessing the business bribery risk in other countries. A new tool, called the TRACE Matrix, can help.
May 13, 2019
Report
Prosecutor Priorities, Challenges, and Solutions
What are the most pressing challenges that prosecutors face today? What solutions could help mitigate some of these challenges? An expert panel identified priority needs and solutions for improving the effectiveness and efficiency of the prosecutorial component of the criminal justice system.
Apr 18, 2019
Journal Article
The Effects of Holistic Defense on Criminal Justice Outcomes
Using administrative data covering over half a million cases and a quasi-experimental research design, we estimate the causal effect of holistic defense on case outcomes and future offending.
Jan 29, 2019
Research Brief
Holistic Representation Can Reduce Incarceration and Save Taxpayer Dollars
A public defense model that seeks to address the underlying challenges and needs of poor offenders prevented more than 1 million days of incarceration over 10 years, without reducing public safety.
Jan 11, 2019
Report
Alcohol and international football tournaments
This case study reviews the available evidence on the connection between alcohol and international football.
Dec 11, 2018
Commentary
The Rules of the Game: Reducing Antisocial Behavior and Violence at Football Events
Violent behavior at football matches has garnered international media attention for decades even though the vast majority of matches pass without any significant violent incidents. Despite the widespread attention toward harmful behaviors, there is limited evidence on the effectiveness of current practices targeting negative fan behavior.
Aug 14, 2018
Report
Violent and Antisocial Behaviour at Football Events: Review of interventions
This report presents the findings of a study on approaches that have been taken to prevent and respond to antisocial and violent behaviours among football fans, and the extent to which these approaches proved effective.
Jul 23, 2018
Report
Why Do Some Football Fans Engage in Violent and Antisocial Behavior?
Negative behavior by fans at football (soccer) matches—such as verbal abuse, destruction of property, and assault—has garnered international media attention for decades. No single factor is responsible, but alcohol, sporting rivalries, and socio-political factors play a role.
Jul 23, 2018
Journal Article
NIJ's Multisite Evaluation of Prosecutor-Led Diversion Programs: Strategies, Impacts, and Cost-Effectiveness
This study examines 16 prosecutor-led diversion programs in 11 jurisdictions across the country, and conducts impact evaluations of five programs and cost evaluations of four programs.
May 17, 2018
Journal Article
Prosecutor-Led Pretrial Diversion: Case Studies in Eleven Jurisdictions
The primary focus of this study is to provide a national portrait of prosecutor-led diversion through case studies of the goals, history, policies, and practices of diversion programs implemented in 11 prosecutors' offices.
May 17, 2018
Journal Article
Think Mass Shootings Are Terrorism? Careful What You Wish For
Those arguing America needs a new domestic terrorism law haven't thought things through.
Jan 4, 2018
Report
Helping Law Enforcement Use Data from Mobile Applications: A Guide to the Prototype Mobile Information and Knowledge Ecosystem (MIKE) Tool
Mobile devices automatically and unobtrusively collect data about their users. This report documents a prototype tool created to help interested stakeholders better understand this mobile app ecosystem, and its use by law enforcement.
Apr 28, 2017
Journal Article
Starting from the End: A Plea for Focusing on the Consequences of Crime
Since its institutionalization as an autonomous discipline in the late 19th century, criminology's main project has been identifying the causes of crime.
Dec 29, 2015
Journal Article
Policing, Boundaries and the State: The Changing Landscape of Sovereignty and Security
This study examines institutional rearrangements of policing, boundaries and the state.
Dec 29, 2015
Report
Electronic Surveillance of Mobile Devices for Law Enforcement
Mobile phones collect and retain enormous amounts of information that can be useful in criminal investigations. However, state and local law enforcement face substantial challenges when accessing these data.
Dec 10, 2015
Report
The Potential of Blind Collaborative Justice: Testing the Impact of Expert Blinding and Consensus Building on the Validity of Forensic Testimony
RAND researchers investigated two potential contributors to biased testimony within adversarial litigation involving forensic evidence: experts' knowledge of which side they were testifying for, and lack of input from relevant scientific communities.
Aug 7, 2015
Report
Digital Evidence and the U.S. Criminal Justice System
There are significant challenges to successfully using digital evidence in criminal prosecutions. Through structured interaction with police digital forensic experts, prosecuting attorneys, a privacy advocate, and industry representatives, researchers identified and prioritized specific needs to improve utilization of digital evidence in criminal justice.
Apr 20, 2015
Tool
Interactive Tool for Ranking Digital Evidence Needs
This tool presents the prioritized needs related to digital evidence collection, management, analysis, and use and allows the user to see how their priorities would change when the importance of different digital evidence objectives are changed.
Apr 20, 2015

Previous
1
2
3
4
Next

Research conducted by

Researcher Spotlight

Maya Buenaventura

Policy Researcher

Maya Buenaventura is a policy researcher at RAND and a professor of policy analysis at the Pardee RAND Graduate School. She employs quantitative and qualitative methods on a variety of projects, including program evaluation and empirical legal studies. Prior to RAND, she was a senior research…
James M. Anderson

Director, Justice Policy Program

James Anderson is director of the Justice Policy Program and the RAND Institute for Civil Justice and a senior behavioral/social scientist at the RAND Corporation. He has been the principal investigator on a wide range of projects, ranging from policy implications of autonomous vehicle…

Explore Our People »