Publications from the RAND Justice Policy program cover topics related to public safety and the performance of the U.S. criminal justice system for federal law enforcement and other agencies, police departments, and other clients.
RAND Justice Policy also conducts research on topics related to civil justice through the RAND Institute of Civil Justice (ICJ).
RAND Justice Policy publications are categorized in the following issue areas; some publications are cross-listed in multiple categories:
RAND researchers conducted an independent evaluation of the Pathways from Prison to Postsecondary Education Project. This report focuses on the North Carolina Pathways Program, for which researchers examined the implementation of the in-prison and community components, the experiences of Pathways students and staff, factors that facilitated or hindered their participation in the program, and lessons learned.
Businesses operating overseas have inadequate tools for assessing business bribery risk and their potential risk of violating various anti-corruption laws. This report introduces a new index, the TRACE Matrix, for business bribery risk assessment. The index provides a quick and useful guide for businesses operating overseas based on a conceptual model of bribery risk and supported by data specific to firms.
This paper generates state-level, crime-specific, average variable cost estimates for crime-response services conducted by police by crime type.
State and local prosecutors face an ever-increasing array of challenges and responsibilities, including handling, storing, and using growing bodies of evidence generated through modern technology. In March 2018, the Priority Criminal Justice Needs Initiative convened an expert panel to identify priority needs and solutions for improving the effectiveness and efficiency of the prosecutorial component of the criminal justice system.
Some jurisdictions are making great strides with respect to how the criminal justice system deals with individuals with serious mental illness (SMI), but significant challenges and opportunities remain. This report presents the results of an expert workshop convened to identify the needs associated with how individuals with SMI become justice-involved and how to achieve better outcomes before and after they come under correctional control.
The Colorado State Patrol (CSP) seeks to better reflect the demographic representation of the state of Colorado. This report offers an exploratory examination of how CSP's recruiting and selection policies and procedures relate to that objective. The authors identified potential barriers to diversity in CSP's early career stages and provide recommendations to mitigate and remove these barriers.
Using national data, we test for age differences in substance use disparities among LGB adults. Contrary to hypothesized decreased minority stress in recent generations, we find that disparities were not systematically smaller in younger age groups.
The purpose of the study was to examine how educators use responsive circles. We aimed to fill a gap in the literature by offering details about their implementation based on enacted responsive circles in a large urban school setting.
In 2018, RAND researchers began an evaluation to assess the effects of the New York City Police Department's Neighborhood Policing philosophy on public safety and the public's trust in police. The results of this work will be available in 2021.
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.
