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Researchers have yet to explore the validity of ‘unofficial’ media-driven and crowdsourced police-involved killings data. This omission is important because unofficial data are touted as providing ...

Peer review is the bedrock of the scientific enterprise, yet it enjoys scant validation. The federal government’s CrimeSolutions.gov initiative provides a unique opportunity to address this limitation. As part of the initiative, trained experts evaluate criminal justice evaluation research on several of the same criteria editors use to make publication decisions. Data from a sample of articles published in Social Sciences Citation Index journals were obtained from the CrimeSolutions.gov database, then used to model publication quality, operationalized as the product of the journal’s five-year impact factor and article citations per year (an article-level measure). The model explained only five percent of the variation in publication quality, raising several questions about the validity of peer review in criminal justice evaluation research.

Grounded in both organizational- and individual-level theories, this study examined the relationship between police field training officers (FTOs) and their trainees’ subsequent allegations of misconduct. Trainees in the sample were each exposed to multiple FTOs, which presented a unique methodological problem. As such, multilevel models that permitted the nesting of individual trainees within multiple higher order groups of FTOs were estimated. Results revealed that approximately one quarter of the variation in trainees’ allegations of postsupervision misconduct was attributed to FTOs, suggesting the apple (trainee) indeed falls close to the tree (FTO). Implications for FTO selection and training are discussed.

This study extends research on recidivism by examining the phenomenon via a survival mixture modeling approach, a method that is analogous to mixture modeling approaches used in trajectory analyses. Using this approach, the authors discover that multiple recidivism profiles are identifiable within a random sample of inmates released from Florida prisons between January 1998 and June 2001. Findings revealed that certain covariates predicted class membership and operated differently across the groups in predicting the hazard of recidivism, suggesting that a unilateral approach to reducing recidivism risk is an ineffective strategy. The Discussion section presents the findings in the context of theory, research, and policy.

Researchers have not yet devoted sufficient attention to the effect of prison architecture on inmate misconduct. Using data from the population of male prisoners in Texas, the authors explored the association between two prison architectural design types (as determined by satellite imagery) and inmate misconduct. The results from multilevel statistical analyses suggest that architectural design is associated with nonviolent misconduct but not violent misconduct. Policy implications and directions for future research are discussed.

While police levels may affect crime, governments may react to crime by increasing police levels. The instrumental variables (IV) approach to this problem has proven difficult due to the problem of locating instruments for police levels. Using panel data from over 5000 cities (1990–2001), we instrumented police levels with two types of federal law enforcement grants, thus yielding over-identified models. We also subjected our instruments to both relevance and validity testing, a step authors of similar studies have yet to take. We found fairly robust inverse associations between police levels and four index crime rates (homicide, robbery, assault, and burglary), but mainly in large cities.

The Substance Abuse and Crime Prevention Act (SACPA), implemented statewide in California in July 2001, mandates drug treatment rather than incarceration for certain nonviolent drug offenders. Critics of the legislation suggest that crime increased as a result of the legislation, but researchers have largely ignored this issue. Utilizing time series methodology applied across several independent data sets from Orange County, California, the effects of SACPA on crime were assessed. Results indicate that significant increases in commercial burglaries and paraphernalia arrests may have been attributed to SACPA, but the overall pattern does not support a conclusion that crime increased markedly.

Drug arrests have increased steadily for going on 30 years, yet drug use has fluctuated wildly during the same period. Some have argued (and found) that state forfeiture laws may explain variation in drug arrests. Using data from 572 law enforcement agencies, we sought to replicate such findings and test their robustness by invoking a variety of forfeiture measures. Our findings indicate that drug asset forfeiture laws (and even past forfeiture activities) have no discernible effect on drug arrest rates.

Research Summary The Local Law Enforcement Block Grants (LLEBG) Program was second only to the Community-Oriented Policing Services (COPS) Program in its funding levels. Some $3 billion was dispensed to local jurisdictions to reduce crime and improve public safety; yet the effects of LLEBG funding on crime have been all but ignored. Accordingly, panel data from more than 5,000 cities covering a 12-year period (1990–2001) were collected, and index crime rates were regressed on LLEBG funding and appropriate demographic controls. Additional controls for police levels and other federal grants were also introduced, proper checks for endogeneity of grants (and police levels) were performed, and the models were subjected to an array of robustness checks. A consistent message emerged: LLEBG Program funding was associated with significant reductions in serious crime. Policy Implications Although LLEBG funding seemed to reduce serious crime, the results also revealed that the decrease did not occur through the hiring of additional police officers, even though many funds were used for that purpose. Other mechanisms were thus at work, but the data did not provide insights into what these mechanisms were. In any case, every $1 in LLEBG funding per capita was associated with approximately 59 fewer index crimes per 100,000 people. When combined with the findings from recent studies of the effects of community policing grants on crime, this study suggests additional federal support for local law-enforcement agencies should be considered.

Research Summary Critics have argued that asset forfeiture encourages policing for profit, but their arguments have yet to transcend the anecdotal arena. We gathered data on asset forfeiture payments from a multistate sample of 572 law enforcement agencies and tested two hypotheses aimed at answering the question, is policing for profit? Although we found no clear evidence of more forfeiture in states that permit local agencies to receive the most proceeds, we did find that local law-enforcement agencies circumvent restrictive state laws (those placing limits on the proceeds they can receive) by teaming up with federal officials to participate in so-called adoptive forfeitures, which permit them to receive equitable sharing payments. This latter finding was robust to numerous specifications, not altered in models estimated on various subsamples, and not affected by extreme values. Policy Implications Our study lends a measure of support to the arguments espoused by forfeiture's critics, namely that forfeiture may be pursued for financial reasons. We cannot, however, assert that policing for profit is necessarily problematic, as it is difficult to fault financially strapped public agencies for seeking needed resources. Nor can we assert that forfeiture supersedes other criminal justice goals, such as enforcement of antidrug laws.

PurposeThe growth of formal police‐probation partnerships in the USA has been accompanied by an increased awareness of the potential threats of mission distortion. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the dynamics of mission distributionDesign/methodology/approachThe paper is based on interviews with police and community corrections officers involved in an active partnership in Spokane, Washington. The paper emphasizes the abuse of authority, stalking horse incidents, and the scope of legitimate police and probation authority.FindingsUltimately, mission distortion has the potential to undermine the credibility of police‐probation partnerships.Originality/valueThe paper offers training and policy recommendations for police and community corrections administrators.

San Bernardino's Operation Nightlight Program paired police officers with probation officers to conduct enhanced supervision of juvenile probationers. The authors conducted an interrupted time series analysis of juvenile arrests in San Bernardino and surrounding cities before and after the implementation of Nightlight. They also explored displacement and diffusion effects using Bowers and Johnson's (2003) weighted displacement quotient. Results showed (1) city-wide reductions in assault, burglary, and theft arrests; and (2) that burglary reductions in San Bernardino may have been offset by increases in contiguous cities.

The research reported here sought to determine whether there is a connection between arrests for minor offenses and subsequent reductions in serious crime, using county-level data collected from the state of California between the years 1989 and 2000. Results from a series of fixed effects regression models suggest that arrests for disorderly conduct, disturbing the peace, and public drunkenness can reduce certain crimes, notably felonious assault and burglary. Moreover, the results suggest that assault appears to decline immediately, whereas burglary declines with a delay.

Using county-level data from California for the years 1989–2000, this study explored the effect of three-strikes legislation on serious crime. It improved on most previous research in this area by controlling for how often prosecutors charged offenders under the three-strikes statute. Preliminary findings suggested that larceny was reduced by way of deterrence resulting from three-strikes and that all index crimes were reduced by way of incapacitation. Once county-specific trends were controlled for, however, the deterrent and incapacitative effects of three-strikes legislation disappeared altogether.

The argument is presented that, is contrast to expectations, the Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act (CAFRA) of 2000 will not be responsible for significant change in the practice of civil asset forfeiture, that the Act is a sheep in wolf's clothing. While it has ushered in some important procedural changes, CAFRA does not address several of what critics perceive to be the most significant problems associated with civil asset forfeiture, among them are a questionable standard of proof, equitable sharing, and the so‐called “taint doctrine.” Thus, it is likely that civil asset forfeiture will continue to be a valuable law enforcement tool in the war on drugs.

The majority of criminologists have ignored unobserved heterogeneity in macro-level models of crime. We used time-series–cross-section (TSCS) data from all 58 counties in California between the years of 1990 and 1998 to show that heterogeneity should not be ignored. The paper begins with a discussion of some of the problems inherent in TSCS data—contemporaneous correlation, serial autocorrelation, spatial autocorrelation, panel heteroskedasticity, and nonstationarity—and the techniques for detecting them. To correct these problems we estimated dynamic TSCS models (with panel corrected standard errors) for property and violent crime. The resulting parameter estimates served as a base of comparison for the additional models. Next, we controlled for heterogeneity by adding fixed effects for county and year to the dynamic TSCS models. Finally, we used equality-of-coefficients tests to demonstrate the consequences of ignoring unobserved heterogeneity in macro-level models of crime.

This paper explores the relationship between community‐policing and grants provided by the Office of Community‐Oriented Policing Services (COPS Office) in the US Justice Department. Community policing data were gathered via a survey of 700 municipal and county law enforcement agencies employing more than 100 full‐time sworn officers/deputies. Grant data were gathered on the same agencies via a Freedom of Information Act request filed with the COPS Office. Census data were used for control purposes. General findings suggest that COPS funding is strongly associated with community‐policing. Specific findings are: first, hiring grants were more associated with community‐policing than grants designed to promote innovative programs and second, agencies with several COPS grants were more likely to report community‐policing programs than agencies with fewer COPS grants.

This study tests the hypothesis that when law enforcement agencies make improvements in their citizen complaint review procedures, a likely consequence is more complaints. Findings from a survey of 700 law enforcement agencies suggest that improvements in citizen complaint procedures result in a higher incidence of complaints. Additionally, certain combinations of citizen complaint review procedures are highly associated with the incidence of complaints. Two recommendations are made: (a) researchers and policy makers need to be attuned to the fact that more complaints will be filed when complaint procedures are reformed, and (b) law enforcement agencies need to be “careful what they ask for;” a higher complaint rate, although a desirable consequence of improved complaint review procedures, could result in unanticipated consequences.

Civil asset forfeiture is no stranger to criticism, in part because law enforcement agencies can share in the proceeds obtained from forfeitures. Critics claim that this potential for “profit” in law enforcement is the driving force behind civil asset forfeiture; that the noble goals of controlling crime and curbing illicit drug use are not high priorities. The research reported in this article partially substantiates critics' claims that pecuniary concerns guide civil asset forfeiture activities. Results from a survey of 1400 municipal and county law enforcement executives revealed that a substantial proportion of law enforcement agencies are dependent on civil asset forfeiture as a necessary budgetary supplement. In an attempt to explain the “addiction,” evidence is offered that dependence on civil asset forfeiture is positively associated with revenues generated from past forfeiture activities and inversely related to fiscal expenditures. The primary implication tied to these findings is that a conflict of interest between effective crime control and creative fiscal management will persist so long as law enforcement agencies remain dependent on civil asset forfeiture.

Maritime piracy has been romanticized extensively by writers and film-makers, but has otherwise been consigned to the past. Over the last five years, however, there has been a phenomenal increase in the number of attacks on commercial seafarers and their vessels. Modern-day piracy is frequently a violent and ruthless practice, and it inspires considerable fear among the ship-owners and crew members who are responsible for carrying their cargo into the territorial waters of other nations. This paper introduces the subject of modern-day maritime piracy, reviews theoretical explanations of this emerging crime control problem, then attempts to explain the recent spate of piratical attacks by invoking a routine activities approach.

Proponents of police officer residency requirements maintain that police officers who live in the area they serve contribute to the local tax base, provide better information dissemination, and represent community interests in their agencies. However, little research has been conducted to assess the extent to which residency requirements affect public perceptions of the police. This paper explores the relationship between police residency requirements at the municipal level and citizen satisfaction with law enforcement – specifically, the connection between residency requirements and reported confidence in the abilities of the police to prevent crime, solve crime, and protect citizens. Data derived from a national survey of citizen satisfaction with criminal justice institutions conducted during 1995 and from the 1993 Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics survey of agencies with more than 100 sworn officers reveal, among other things, that residency requirements affect citizens’ perceptions of the police in a negative way.

This paper explores the impact of domestic terrorism on the public agenda. Specifically, it examines the extent to which the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing required assistance, or "accompaniment," to capture the attention of lawmakers. Accompaniment was defined in terms of governmental and popular concerns for an issue prior to a focusing event. Content analyses of The Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature, the New York Times Index, the Washington Post Index, and Congressional Quarterly, as measures of prior congressional, presidential, and public interest, suggested that domestic terrorism did not require accompaniment to achieve agenda status. Instead, unique focusing event characteristics—the intendedly violent, sudden, novel, and criminal nature of the explosion—were responsible.

The adoption of community oriented policing (COP) is likely to have an impact on patterns of civil liability claims filed against police departments and officers. We hypothesize that COP practices may lead to an increase in civil liability claims by expanding the scope of police responsibilities and roles and by altering patterns of police citizen interactions which, in turn, could affect the clarity and uses of three legal standards which support civil liability claims: negligence in state tort claims, “color of law” under Section 1983, and the “legal duty” standard. We call for further research and suggest some managerial strategies to avoid the eventualities presented.

Racial composition and unemployment have appeared as either theoretically-relevant controls or variables of substantive interest in numerous studies of crime. While there is no clear consensus in the literature as to their statistical significance, the lack of consensus has been most apparent in panel analyses with unit fixed effects. One explanation for this is that racial composition and unemployment are fairly invariant, or slow-moving, which leads to collinearity with unit dummies. A number of pertinent studies are reviewed to illustrate how two slow-moving variables, percent black and percent unemployed, have behaved inconsistently. A fixed effects vector decomposition procedure [Plumper, V., Troeger, V. E., 2007. Efficient estimation of time-invariant and rarely changing variables in finite sample panel analyses with unit fixed effects. Political Analysis, 15, 124-139.] is used to illustrate how these variables' coefficients appear positive and significant when the slow-moving process is accounted for.