2012 Harry F. Guggenheim Conference on Crime in America

Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy led a blue-ribbon list of speakers from the White House, leading police departments, think tanks, and universities for two days of discussions and briefings at  the 7th Annual Harry Frank. Guggenheim foundation Symposium on Crime in America, on Feb. 6th and 7th, 2012 at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.

Twenty journalists from around the nation joined participants from the criminal justice community to explore his year's topic,""The Problem That Won't Go Away: How Drugs, Race and Mass Incarceration Have Distorted American Justice (and What To Do About It)."

More than Half of Arrest-Related Deaths are Homicides by Law Enforcement: Report

A new report by the Bureau of Justice Statistics details the nature of arrest-related deaths around the country.

The Decriminalization of Assisted Dying In Canada

Should Canadians be able to choose when, and how, to die? A report commissioned by the Royal Society of Canada argues for the decriminalization of euthanasia and assisted suicide in that country.

Schools Under Lockdown

Schools  that have law enforcement officers on site are more likely to have their students arrested by police, instead of discipline being handled by school officials, found a new report from the Justice Policy Institute , possibly leading to future delinquency for involved youth.

Arrests Should Be Last Resort In Occupy Protests: Wexler

The chaotic street scene in Oakland where police clashed with Occupy Wall Street demonstrators last week was the image law enforcement had hoped to avoid, says USA Today. As a wounded protester was wheeled away, demonstrators — who have gathered around the U.S. to voice their opposition to the political influence wielded by major corporations — added allegations of police brutality to their list of societal ills. Criminologist Samuel Walker of the University of Nebraska said the demonstrations draw comparisons to the sit-ins of the 1960s when aggressive police learned the hard way how not to handle large protests. "The lesson drawn from that era was restraint," he said. "Otherwise, you risk the backlash of creating an image of a police department out of control."

The Occupy movement presents difficult challenges for police officials who are seeking to avoid physical confrontation, said Chuck Wexler of the Police Executive Research Forum. "What police do with any group of demonstrators is try to maintain a relationship with the (group's) leadership," he said, adding that communication is critical so that both sides "know the ground rules." Wexler said there "are no real leaders in this movement. There no real demands. It can be difficult. Police have lived with the images of the Vietnam era, when protests against the war turned to protests against police brutality. [ ] Arrests should almost be a last resort. Sometimes, though, your hand is forced."

FBI Moving Ahead With Revising Definition of Rape for UCR

As expected, an FBI panel will recommend a new federal definition of rape, moving the agency a step closer to updating the way it counts sex crimes...

Two Decades of Research About Violence Against Women

From studies on the effect of stalking laws to measuring the effectiveness of protective orders in cases of battered immigrant women, a new publication compiles 18 years of research on violence against women.

Cops and Crime

By Ted Gest

‘Better’ policing beats factors like imprisonment in keeping U.S. crime rates down, say two noted criminologists

Crime rates in the U.S. should continue to decline if policing remains effective, crime experts told the National Criminal Justice Association yesterday.

Law Prof. Franklin Zimring of the University of California at Berkeley based much of his conclusion on research he has done on a forthcoming book (“The City That Became Safe: New York’s Lessons for Urban Crime and Its Control,” Oxford University Press, October 2011) trying to explain the dramatic drop in New York City crime over the last two decades.

The major factor in the decline has been better policing, he says.

“Cops matter a heck of a lot more than professors and policy makers have thought,” he told the association’s annual forum on criminal justice and public safety, held this year in Jersey City, N.J.  

One particular area of police effectiveness is on drugs.

Public drug markets have disappeared in New York City, although the city still has some major drug problems, Zimring said. He didn’t elaborate on the kinds of policing he finds most effective.

He added that in the anticrime picture overall,  “prisons matter a lot less than we thought,” and the economy has not caused crime to increase, as many have theorized.

James Austin, who runs the Washington, D.C.- and California-based JFA Institute, a criminal-justice consulting firm, noted that the homicide rate in the U.S. is now back to the per-capita level it was in 1968, and “I don’t see it going up anytime soon.”

Austin was more definitive in his prediction of a continuing crime drop than was Zimring, who said that although current signs look good, “crime rates are highly variable.”

Impact of Incarceration

Austin agreed with Zimring that the impact of the nation’s high incarceration rate on crime has been overstated. He called for a “right-sizing” of the prison and jail population, noting  that if today’s count behind  bars were comparable to the 1968 level compared to the national population, it should be about 290,000 instead of the current 1.6 million.

“The [incarceration] system is way out of whack compared with the level of crime going on,” he said.

The criminologists also agreed that New York City police tactics have led to the way to lower incarceration rates in New York City and New York State. A focus  on arresting lower-level offenders has meant that there are 8,000 empty beds in the city’s big jail on Rikers Island, Austin said.

There are about 120,000 empty jail beds around the U.S., Austin added.

Despite the lower reported crime figures, much of the public may not yet be convinced that downsizing prisons and jails may be safe, Austin conceded.

(He suggested that the population behind bars might be reduced mainly by not issuing such long prison terms to felons, including “two strikes” and three strikes” sentences.)The biggest change in the near future in prison populations should come in California, which has been ordered by federal courts to cut the inmate total by more than 33,000 so that the state can afford better health care for prisoners.

Ed Note: for a look at changing public perceptions of California’s Three Strikes law, in anticipation of a 2012 referendum, please see TCR’s conference page on the issue, including recent news stories.

A third panelist, Raymond Massi, a former police captain in crime-plagued Camden, N.J., claimed his city is improving because of the progressive policing policies of Chief John Scott Thomson. Massi now coordinates anticrime activities for the U.S. Attorney’s office in New Jersey, which includes working with his former police department and other agencies.

Ted Gest is a contributing editor of The Crime Report, and president of Criminal Justice Journalists

Technology, Police Work Drives Auto Theft Totals Down

A dramatic decline in auto theft is the result of advances in anti-theft technology and aggressive police work, the Washington Post reports. Newer cars...

Community Corrections Programs Can Increase Recidivism: New Research

An Ohio study found that people in "unsuccessful" community-based correctional facilities were 32 percent more likely to re-offend than those who were not involved in a program at all.

Mayors, Police Chiefs: Federal Budget Cut Plan "Threat to Public Safety"

The U.S. Conference of Mayors, Major Cities Chiefs Association, and Police Executive Research Forum are protesting the decision of U.S. House Republican...

Is Homicide Contagious?

New research from the Center on Homicide Research found evidence that one homicide, especially by firearm, often begets another homicide in New Orleans.

The Report on U.S. Catholic Priests’ Sex Abuse: What the Critics Got Wrong

By Karen J. Terry

The lead researcher of last month’s Causes and Context report on the child sexual abuse scandals that have shaken the Catholic Church speaks out on the controversy surrounding the study, and explains why it lays out a roadmap for the future. 

Two New Reports on How Police Use Force

Two new studies published this week by the Office of Justice Programs examine police use of force, specifically "less lethal" weapons like Tasers and pepper spray.

Federal Study Details Human Trafficking Incidents

Federally funded task forces investigated 2,515 incidents of suspected human trafficking between Jan. 2008 and June 2010, says a new U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics report.