Publications on Law Enforcement

2020

• 

  The Law Enforcement Response to Homelessness: Identifying High-Priority Needs to Improve Law Enforcement Strategies for Addressing Homelessness August 25, 2020

  Sean E. Goodison, Jeremy D. Barnum, Michael J. D. Vermeer, Dulani Woods, Siara I. Sitar, Brian A. Jackson

  Police often are the first (and sometimes the only) point of government contact for persons experiencing homelessness (PEH). Police responses have shifted to approaches designed to foster positive relationships with PEH, help assess the individual needs of each person or area, and guide homeless or unsheltered individuals to the services they require. A panel of experts identified ways to address related challenges.

• 

  Would Law Enforcement Leaders Support Defunding the Police? Probably — If Communities Ask Police to Solve Fewer Problems August 20, 2020

  Michael J. D. Vermeer, Dulani Woods, Brian A. Jackson

  Police have expressed frustration with being expected to handle complex social problems, such as homelessness and substance use, that could be solved using nonenforcement strategies. In this Perspective, the authors describe police perspectives on defunding the police — i.e., budgeting less money for police and more for other public safety strategies — and explain why revisiting law enforcement's role in society could have broad appeal.

• 

  Autonomous Road Vehicles and Law Enforcement: Identifying High-Priority Needs for Law Enforcement Interactions With Autonomous Vehicles Within the Next Five Years July 16, 2020

  Sean E. Goodison, Jeremy D. Barnum, Michael J. D. Vermeer, Dulani Woods, Tatiana Lloyd-Dotta, Brian A. Jackson

  Autonomous vehicles promise many benefits, but questions remain about how law enforcement officers will interact with them. Officers likely will encounter new challenges related to technology, procedures, and constitutional authority. A panel of experts identified ways to address these challenges.

• 

  Research in Brief: Comprehensive Suicide Prevention in Law Enforcement July 14, 2020

  Rajeev Ramchand

  Any institution-from workplaces to schools to correctional settings to law enforcement agencies-seeking to prevent suicide must take a comprehensive approach. Science suggests that there are five components that define what such an approach looks like.

• 

  Costs of Responding to Crime: Police, Court, and Legal Services July 1, 2020

  Cheryl K. Montemayor, Priscillia Hunt

  How much taxpayer money is spent on police, courts, and legal services to respond to crime? RAND researchers provide estimated costs by crime type and by state in a new tool. The tool includes a map that allows users to visualize the differences in costs across the United States. Users can download parts of the data or the full data set in a variety of formats.

• 

  Countering Technology-Facilitated Abuse: Criminal Justice Strategies for Combating Nonconsensual Pornography, Sextortion, Doxing, and Swatting June 18, 2020

  Amanda R. Witwer, Lynn Langton, Michael J. D. Vermeer, Duren Banks, Dulani Woods, Brian A. Jackson

  The proliferation of online platforms that enable users to interact virtually and often anonymously has given rise to new methods of perpetrating criminal behaviors that compromise victims' privacy and safety. These types of acts can involve the use or distribution of the victim's personal information, which compromises the victim's privacy and poses a threat to their safety. A panel of experts identified ways to address this challenge.

• 

  Countering Drug-Impaired Driving: Addressing the Complexities of Gathering and Presenting Evidence in Drug-Impaired Driving Cases May 7, 2020

  Camille Gourdet, Michael J. D. Vermeer, Michael G. Planty, Duren Banks, Dulani Woods, Brian A. Jackson

  Driving under the influence of drugs (DUID) is a serious and growing threat to public safety. Addressing DUID cases involves various challenges, including identifying and characterizing impairment and presenting complex evidence in court. A panel of experts from law enforcement, forensic toxicology, the research community, and government agencies discussed the challenges related to DUID cases and identified ways to overcome these obstacles.

• 

  Fostering Innovation Across the U.S. Criminal Justice System: Identifying Opportunities to Improve Effectiveness, Efficiency, and Fairness March 23, 2020

  Brian A. Jackson, Michael J. D. Vermeer, Kristin J. Leuschner, Dulani Woods, John S. Hollywood, Duren Banks, Sean E. Goodison, Joe Russo, Shoshana R. Shelton

  In this report, the authors focus on common needs that apply to all three sections of the justice system: law enforcement, the courts, and corrections agencies. Starting with the deep pool of feedback and input collected from the practitioner community across the five-year Priority Criminal Justice Needs Initiative project, the authors abstracted insights about innovation needs for the justice system as a whole.

• 

  A Database of Criminal Justice Needs for Innovation: Requirements for Developers and Funders: User Guide March 5, 2020

  John S. Hollywood, Brian A. Jackson, Annie Brothers, Mark Barrett, Dulani Woods, Michael J. D. Vermeer

  The RAND Corporation and partners are carrying out a research effort to assess and prioritize technology needs across the criminal justice community. Since 2015, the Priority Criminal Justice Needs Initiative has published more than 20 reports identifying and prioritizing criminal justice needs for innovation. This product provides a database of all of the needs generated during the first five years of the Initiative.

2019

• 

  Real-Time Crime Centers in Chicago: Evaluation of the Chicago Police Department's Strategic Decision Support Centers December 4, 2019

  John S. Hollywood, Kenneth N. McKay, Dulani Woods, Denis Agniel

  The Chicago Police Department's Strategic Decision Support Centers (SDSCs) serve as command, control, and communications hubs for staff to gain awareness of what is happening in their districts and decide on responses. In this report, the authors evaluate the processes, organizational structures, and technologies employed in the SDSCs. They also assess the extent to which the introduction of SDSCs was associated with reductions in crime levels.

• 

  Identifying Law Enforcement Needs for Conducting Criminal Investigations Involving Evidence on the Dark Web October 29, 2019

  Sean E. Goodison, Dulani Woods, Jeremy D. Barnum, Adam R. Kemerer, Brian A. Jackson

  With the advent of the dark web, criminals can conduct their activities in ways that are difficult for law enforcement to discover, monitor, and investigate. This report describes the findings of an expert workshop of federal, state, and local law enforcement practitioners and researchers who explored how law enforcement agencies should conduct criminal investigations while dealing with evidence on the dark web.

• 

  Leveraging Technology to Enhance Community Supervision: Identifying Needs to Address Current and Emerging Concerns October 28, 2019

  Joe Russo, Dulani Woods, George B. Drake, Brian A. Jackson

  An expert workshop of correctional administrators and researchers explored how technology can be used to address key challenges faced by community corrections agencies. Participants recommended developing best practices for leveraging technology to improve officer safety, improve officer competencies, facilitate positive offender behaviors, hold offenders accountable, and improve agencies' operational effectiveness.

• 

  Changing the Narrative: Police-Community Partnerships and Racial Reconciliation September 20, 2019

  Jessica Saunders, Beau Kilmer

  This paper assesses community perceptions of crime and the police before and after the implementation of an intervention aimed at eliminating overt drug markets through focused deterrence and police-community partnerships emphasizing racial reconciliation.

• 

  Law Enforcement Efforts to Fight the Opioid Crisis: Convening Police Leaders, Multidisciplinary Partners, and Researchers to Identify Promising Practices and to Inform a Research Agenda September 6, 2019

  Sean E. Goodison, Michael J. D. Vermeer, Jeremy D. Barnum, Dulani Woods, Brian A. Jackson

  An expert panel of law enforcement leaders identified promising efforts to combat the opioid crisis, including connecting people with opioid use disorder to medication-assisted treatment; building lasting partnerships to achieve community buy-in, enable information sharing, and effectively tackle challenges; and addressing community and other stakeholder concerns before high-priority harm-reduction approaches can be pursued.

• 

  Forensic Familial and Moderate Stringency DNA Searches: Policies and Practices in the United States, England, and Wales August 12, 2019

  Tepring Piquado, Carl F. Matthies, Lucy Strang, James M. Anderson

  Forensic DNA databases help solve crimes after the investigative trail has gone cold. Familial DNA and moderate stringency searches are logical extensions in cases where there is no exact DNA match, but these methods are not widely used. The authors present evidence from current practices in the United States, England, and Wales to support policymakers as they make decisions on the use and effects of familial and moderate stringency search.

• 

  Fostering Innovation to Respond to Top Challenges in Law Enforcement: Proceedings of the National Institute of Justice's 2018 Chiefs' Panel on Priority Law Enforcement Issues and Needs July 22, 2019

  John S. Hollywood, Sean E. Goodison, Dulani Woods, Michael J. D. Vermeer, Brian A. Jackson

  An expert panel of law enforcement leaders identified challenges facing law enforcement today; their priorities are presented in this report. Panel members reported feeling that the challenges were tractable but that addressing them will take concerted and collective effort across the criminal justice community, including stakeholders from local communities, social service providers, vendors, and researchers.

• 

  Managing the Seriously Mentally Ill in Corrections April 2, 2019

  John S. Shaffer, Joe Russo, Dulani Woods, Brian A. Jackson

  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.

• 

  An Examination of Recruiting and Selection Practices to Promote Diversity for Colorado State Troopers February 28, 2019

  Tracy C. Krueger, Sean Robson, Kirsten M. Keller

  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.

• 

  What Is the Impact of NYPD's Neighborhood Policing? February 6, 2019

  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.

2018

• 

  Estimates of Law Enforcement Costs by Crime Type for Benefit-Cost Analyses April 19, 2019

  Priscillia Hunt, Jessica Saunders, Beau Kilmer

  This paper generates state-level, crime-specific, average variable cost estimates for crime-response services conducted by police by crime type.

• 

  Using Video Analytics and Sensor Fusion in Law Enforcement: Building a Research Agenda That Includes Business Cases, Privacy and Civil Rights Protections, and Needs for Innovation December 28, 2018

  John S. Hollywood, Michael J. D. Vermeer, Dulani Woods, Sean E. Goodison, Brian A. Jackson

  The diffusion of video technology means that law enforcement will increasingly have streaming video feeds from in-car and body-worn cameras that may be monitored to help protect the safety of officers and bystanders. This report examines the potential of such technologies while weighing the challenges they pose, the innovation that they need to be ideally developed and implemented, and the civil liberties protections required by their use.

• 

  Preventing Treatment Spillover Contamination in Criminological Field Experiments: The Case of Body-Worn Police Cameras December 27, 2018

  Barak Ariel, Alex Sutherland, Lawrence W. Sherman

  An examination of a body worn cameras test that was in violation of a valid experiment. The study demonstrates a clear line beyond which spillover of treatment renders experimental results misleading.

• 

  How can crowd behaviour modelling be used to prevent and respond to violence and antisocial behaviour at Qatar 2022? December 11, 2018

  Julian Glenesk, Lucy Strang, Emma Disley

  This case study explores the potential for crowd behaviour modelling to inform crowd management strategies to minimise the risk of violent or antisocial behaviour taking place during the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar, and to reduce harm if it does take place.

• 

  Violent and antisocial behaviour at football matches in the Middle East and North Africa: Scoping the evidence December 11, 2018

  Madeline Nightingale, Lucy Strang, Emma Disley, Mohyi Maziad

  This case study gathers and critically assesses the available evidence on violent and antisocial behaviour at football events in the MENA region, as well as strategies to prevent and reduce the occurrence of these behaviours.

• 

  Violent and antisocial behaviour at football events and strategies to prevent and respond to these behaviours: Final synthesis report December 11, 2018

  Lucy Strang, Emma Disley

  RAND Europe was commissioned to undertake a study into violence and disorder at major international sporting events. This study gathers and critically assesses the available evidence into the prevalence, nature and causes of violence and disorder at other major sporting events, and to draw on promising practices to prevent and respond to these harms.

• Page 1 of 5
• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• 5
• Next