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Empirical research suggests that traffic enforcement is the most common type of proactive activity police officers engage in on a daily basis. Further, agencies often use traffic enforcement to achieve both traffic safety and crime control. Given these goals, the purpose of this paper is to investigate whether (and to what extent) officers are accurately targeting their proactive traffic enforcement with crime and vehicle crashes in two agencies.

The study examines traffic enforcement patterns in two agencies to see whether proactive traffic enforcement aligns spatially with crime and vehicle crashes. This study employs negative binomial regression models with clustered standard errors to investigate this alignment at the micro-spatial level. Key variables of interest are measured with police calls for service data, traffic citation data and vehicle crash data from two law enforcement jurisdictions.

High levels of spatial association are observed between traffic accidents and crime in both agencies, lending empirical support to the underlying theories of traffic enforcement programs that also try to reduce crime (i.e. “DDACTS”). In both agencies, traffic accidents also appear to be the most prominent predictor of police proactive traffic enforcement activities, even across different times of day. However, when vehicle crashes are accounted for, the association between crime and traffic stops is weaker, even during times of day when agencies believe they are using proactive traffic enforcement as a crime deterrent.

No prior study to authors knowledge has examined the empirical association between police proactive traffic activities and crime and traffic accidents in practice. The current study seeks to fill that void by investigating the realities of traffic stops as practiced daily by police officers, and their alignment with crime and vehicle crashes. Such empirical inquiry is especially important given the prevalent use of traffic enforcement as a common proactive policing tool by police agencies to control both traffic and crime problems.

The purpose of this paper is to document the diffusion of license plate readers (LPRs) in the USA, examining the variety, evolution and tracking of their uses through a national survey.

This study employs a national, stratified, representative survey of US law enforcement agencies with 100 or more officers.

LPR technology is currently used by at least two-thirds of larger police agencies, which represents a more than threefold increase in LPR acquisition in the last 10 years. The number of LPRs per agency, while small (about eight on average), has also more than doubled. Federal and state funding, advocacy by law enforcement leaders, and the intuitive appeal of LPRs have likely contributed to this rapid adoption. While LPRs are still primarily used to detect and recover stolen automobiles in patrol, their use has expanded into other types of investigative and security functions. Despite the increased use and numbers of LPRs in policing, their use is highly discretionary and infrequently tracked.

LPRs continue to be widely used in law enforcement, despite a lack of strong research evidence for their crime prevention benefits. Further studies are needed on the most effective ways for agencies to utilize small numbers of LPRs and the potential return on investment for acquiring larger numbers of the devices.

This study tracks the history of LPR diffusion and use and goes beyond prior law enforcement surveys by examining specific uses of LPRs and the extent to which agencies track their uses and outcomes.

To measure the practice and management of proactive policing in local American police agencies and assess them in comparison to recommendations of the National Academies of Sciences (NAS) Committee on Proactive Policing.

A survey was conducted with a national sample of American police agencies having 100 or more sworn officers to obtain detailed information about the types of proactive work that officers engage in, to quantify their proactive work and to understand how the agencies measure and manage those activities. Responding agencies (n = 180) were geographically diverse and served populations of approximately half a million persons on average.

Proactivity as practiced is much more limited in scope than what the NAS envisions. Most agencies track only a few forms of proactivity and cannot readily estimate how much uncommitted time officers have available for proactive work. Measured proactivity is mostly limited to traffic stops, business and property checks and some form of directed or general preventive patrol. Many agencies have no formal policy in place to define or guide proactive activities, nor do they evaluate officer performance on proactivity with a detailed and deliberate rubric.

This is the first national survey that attempts to quantify proactive policing as practiced broadly in the United States. It provides context to the NAS recommendations and provides knowledge about the gap between practice and those recommendations.

Detective work is a mainstay of modern law enforcement, but its effectiveness has been much less evaluated than patrol work. To explore what is known about effective investigative practices and to identify evidence gaps, the authors assess the current state of empirical research on investigations.

The authors assess the empirical research about the effectiveness of criminal investigations and detective work in resolving cases and improving clearance rates.

The authors’ analysis of the literature produced 80 studies that focus on seven categories of investigations research, which include the impact that case and situational factors, demographic and neighborhood dynamics, organizational policies and practices, investigative effort, technology, patrol officers and community members have on case resolution. The authors’ assessment shows that evaluation research examining the effectiveness of various investigative activities is rare. However, the broader empirical literature indicates that a combination of organizational policies, investigative effort and certain technologies can be promising in improving investigative outcomes even in cases deemed less solvable.

From an evidence-based perspective, this review emphasizes the need for greater transparency, evaluation and accountability of investigative activities given the resources and importance afforded to criminal investigations.

This review is currently the most up-to-date review of the state of the research on what is known about effective investigative practices.

A considerable amount of police evaluation research focuses on innovative approaches to reduce crime at places. This is hardly coincidental; policing and place-based scholars have found crime is highly concentrated, and when police focus on these places, they can prevent and reduce crime. The regularity of such findings led Weisburd (2015) to assert the existence of a “law of crime concentration.” Given that bold assertion, the authors test whether the law of crime concentration is generalizable to one of the most common public safety concerns that police handle—traffic crashes.

To determine whether the law of crime concentration applies to traffic crashes, the authors examined crash locations and times in all counties in Utah across four years. Following and expanding on Weisburd's methods, the authors calculate the bandwidth of concentration for these crashes and analyze various types by severity and possible explanations for variations in crash concentrations across the state.

A small proportion of street segments and intersections experience a disproportionately high number of crashes, and the degree of concentration of crashes may be even higher than that of crime. Further, there are variations in the levels of crash concentration across counties and in the severity of injuries resulting from the crashes.

Place-based criminologists and policing scholars have not often explored traffic crashes in their analyses. Yet, traffic problems take up a significant amount of law enforcement time and resources and are often priorities for most law enforcement agencies. Given what the authors know from traffic, policing and crime and place research, targeted approaches at micro traffic crash hot spots can be beneficial for public safety prevention.

This study is the first to explore the application of Weisburd's Law of Crime Concentration to traffic crashes. Given that police spend a significant amount of time and resources on traffic-related problems in their jurisdiction, finding more effective, evidence-based approaches to address this public safety concern should be a high priority for police and researchers alike.

We present the results of one of the only in-depth studies of a police agency’s internal and external response to the coronavirus pandemic of 2020 (COVID-19). This study emphasizes the importance of law enforcement agencies conducting comprehensive case studies and after-action assessments to prepare, prevent and respond to prolonged public health crises and showcases the profound (and lingering) effects of COVID-19 on police organizations.

This multi-method case study combines document analysis, a workforce survey, a community survey, interviews and analysis of administrative data to detail and assess the agency’s internal and operational responses to the pandemic and the reactions of employees and community members to those responses.

Despite agency strategies to mitigate the pandemic’s effects, employees cited very high stress levels one year after the pandemic and a third of sworn officers considered leaving the policing profession altogether during the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic. Several policies intended by the agency to protect employee health and maintain staffing needs kept workforce levels steady but may have increased feelings of organizational injustice in both sworn and non-sworn individuals, with variation across racial and gender groups. A jurisdiction-wide community survey indicated general support for the police department’s responses but a preference for in-person rather than telephone-based responses to service calls. Officers, however, preferred continuing remote responses even after the pandemic subsided.

To the best of our knowledge, this is one of the only in-depth case studies that examine a police agency’s internal and external responses to COVID-19 and the sworn, non-sworn and community reactions to those responses.

The institutional structures established by French and British colonists continue to shape the socio-economic landscape of sub-Saharan Africa, potentially contributing to the unequal distribution of child poverty. This study, therefore, has significant relevance as it aims to estimate child poverty disparities within the context of colonial origins in Francophone and Anglophone African countries.

This study utilised data from the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) conducted between 2000 and 2019 involving 22 sub-Saharan African states. A rights-based framework was applied based on the SDG-updated Gordon et al. (2003) methodology to measure child poverty. We then compared child poverty disparities between colonial origins using one-way ANOVA tests and risk ratios to quantify the magnitude of these differences.

Critically high estimates of sanitation and housing poverty (above 70% prevalence) were observed in the two colonial settings. Children in Francophone states were 1.4 times (RR = 1.4; 95% CI: 1.1–1.8) more likely to experience higher risks of low medical access, almost twice as likely to experience low vaccine uptake (risk ratios-RR = 1.8; 95% CI: 1.2–2.8) or no formal education (RR = 1.7; 95% CI: 1.1–2.5). All other dimensions were equal between colonial origins.

Due to its cross-comparative approach, this study is restricted in making conclusive inferences regarding the causal relationship between colonialism and health/education poverty. Also, given the limited number of countries, particularly Anglophone countries, our sample may not fully represent all French and British ex-colonies. As a follow-up to this study, we intend to repeat this analysis using the harmonised Multiple Indicator Cluster (MIC) surveys, providing a larger number of countries.

Despite similar household poverty levels in both colonial settings, Francophone states had lower access to health and education services than Anglophone states. These findings indicate deeper systemic issues that may be rooted in the historical governance styles of centralisation. More effective decentralisation of healthcare and education services in Francophone countries and improved government commitment to addressing household poverty throughout sub-Saharan Africa are imperative.

In response to calls for police reform, agencies and researchers have turned their attention to alternative responses to mental health crisis calls. Jurisdictions across the United States are adopting co-responder teams that bring qualified mental or behavioral health professionals into emergency responses by the police. The current study aims to estimate the prevalence and use of these teams in the United States and to document their varieties and features.

We developed and administered a first-of-its-kind survey to a nationally representative sample of local and state law enforcement agencies. A total of 568 agencies completed the survey. The current analysis provides a descriptive account of the use and practices of co-responder programs and crisis intervention among the responding agencies.

We find there is wide variation in the staffing, operations, qualifications, characteristics and beliefs about the effectiveness of co-responder programs across the country. Additionally, there is a lack of consistent programmatic guidance for these programs that can inform their future development. Consequentially, agencies face personnel and funding challenges in implementing and maintaining these programs.

This study showcases findings from the first national survey of co-responder teams that investigates the prevalence, characteristics and operation of these teams. This information is the first step in evaluating the effectiveness of co-responder programs and, in turn, developing evidence-based guidelines and protocols for their implementation.

Although the use of license plate recognition (LPR) technology by police is becoming increasingly common, no empirical studies have examined the legal or legitimacy implications of LPR. LPR may be used for a variety of purposes, ranging from relatively routine checks of stolen vehicles to more complex surveillance functions. The purpose of this paper is to develop a “continuum of LPR uses” that provides a framework for understanding the potential legal and legitimacy issues related to LPR. The paper then analyzes results from the first random-sample community survey on the topic.

Random-sample survey (n=457).

The paper finds substantial support for many LPR uses, although the public also appears to know little about the technology. The survey also reveals that the public does not regard the uses of LPR as equivalent, but rather support is qualified depending upon the use at issue.

Previous research has not systematically categorized the wide variety of LPR uses, an oversight which has sometimes led to implicit consideration of these functions as if they are equivalent in their costs and benefits. To assist agencies concerned with community responses to LPR use, the paper points to a number of factors tending to decrease support for LPR, namely, the extent to which a use involves purposes unrelated to vehicle enforcement, the extent to which a function involves prolonged storage of individuals’ travel data, and the extent to which a use is perceived as impacting “average” members of the community.