Solitary Confinement Continues in Canada Under a Different Name

Link to Article

Reports by Anthony Doob and Jane Sprott:

Understanding the Operation of Correctional Service Canada's Structured Intervention Units: Some Preliminary Findings

Is there Clear Evidence that the Problems that have been Identified with the Operation of Correctional Service Canada's "Structured Intervention Units" were Caused by the COVID-19 Outbreak? An Examination of Data from Correctional Service Canada

"Exactly one year ago, in November 2019, Structured Intervention Units (SIUs) were implemented by the Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) in federal prisons to replace the old solitary confinement system. The new regime was supposed to abolish what is typically defined as segregation. Individuals placed in an SIU would receive four hours out of their cells and two hours of meaningful human contact. Solitary confinement is often defined as isolation for 22 hours or more in a given day and no more than two hours of human contact.

However, an independent report using CSC data released at the end of October 2020 shows that SIUs are in fact solitary confinement under a different name and with fewer restrictions."



Atlas of Surveillance: Documenting Police Tech...

Link to Website

"The Atlas of Surveillance is a database of surveillance technology deployed by law enforcement in communities across the United States.

This includes drones, body-worn cameras, automated license plate readers, facial recognition, and more.

This research was compiled by more than 500 students and volunteers, and incorporates datasets from a variety of public and non-profit sources."


Traffic Without the Police

 Link to Article

"We are at a watershed moment in which growing national protest and public outcry over police injustice and brutality, especially against people of color, are animating structural police reforms. Traffic stops are the most frequent interaction between police and civilians today and are a persistent source of racial and economic injustice. Black and Latinx motorists in particular are disproportionately stopped as well as questioned, frisked, searched, cited, and arrested during traffic stops. Traffic enforcement is also a common gateway for funneling over-policed and marginalized communities into the criminal justice system....

This Article offers a different normative vision of our driving system that challenges the conventional wisdom that traffic enforcement is impossible without the police. A new legal framework for traffic enforcement is articulated, which decouples traffic enforcement from the police function. This framework offers a starting point for renewed thinking about the basic structure of traffic enforcement, the role of police in traffic enforcement, and the ways in which law and policy can be used as tools to achieve fairness and equality in traffic enforcement. The Article provides a comprehensive analysis of the important policy benefits of implementing non-police alternatives to traffic enforcement for public safety, policing, and criminal law reform, especially for people of color and other marginalized communities vulnerable to over-policing and over-criminalization in today’s driving regime. The Article concludes by addressing potential objections to removing the police from traffic enforcement."

Freedom on the Net: An Annual Study of Internet Freedom around the World

Link to Website

"Freedom on the Net is Freedom House’s annual survey and analysis of internet freedom around the world. This cutting-edge project consists of ground-breaking research and analysis, fact-based advocacy, and on-the-ground capacity building. The hallmark of our analysis is the annual Freedom on the Net report. It features a ranked, country-by-country assessment of online freedom, a global overview of the latest developments, as well as in depth country reports."


Explaining the Past and Projecting Future Crime Rates

Link to Full Report

"To date criminologists have a poor record of anticipating future crime rates. As a result, they are ill-equipped to inform policy makers about the impact of criminal justice reforms on future crime. In this report, we assess the factors that explain changes in crime during the past three decades. Our analysis shows that macro-level economic and demographic factors best explain trends in violent and property crime. Together, those factors outweigh the impact of imprisonment rates on crime. We also show that it is possible to lower imprisonment rates without causing an increase in crime. Indeed, several states have done exactly that. Finally, we present models for projecting future crime rates. Based on these models, crime is projected to decrease over the next five years."

What If Nothing Works? On Crime Licenses, Recidivism, and Quality of Life

 Link to Full Text

"We accept uncritically the 'recidivist premium,' which is the notion that habitual offenders are particularly blameworthy and should be punished harshly....

...I offer a counterintuitive proposal, which is to provide 'crime licenses' to recidivists. But I limit this prescription model to only a collection of quality-of-life offenses, like drug possession, vagrancy, and prostitution.... I present the crime license as a modest opportunity to test bolder concepts like legalization, prison abolition, and defunding police....  I draw upon successful prescription-based, radical-pragmatic reforms, like international addiction-maintenance clinics, where habitual drug users receive free heroin in safe settings. I endorse 'harm reduction,' the governance philosophy that grounds those reforms. And I imagine our system reoriented around harm reduction, with crime licenses as one pragmatic, experimental step in that direction." 

Policing Studies Measure Benefits to Crime Reduction - But Not Social Costs

Link to Article

"Perhaps one of the more unexpected events this turbulent year has been the rate at which efforts to defund police departments gained national political traction. Local governments collectively spend roughly $100 billion per year on policing, and with big cities dedicating about 15 percent (if not more) of their budgets to police, a growing number of people are asking if it may make more sense to spend some of that money elsewhere, like on drug treatment, mental health, social work, or shelter. One of the many questions raised by the defund movement: Is spending on police justifiable from a policy perspective?"

Artificial Intelligence and Predictive Policing: A Roadmap for Research

 Link to Report

"In this report, we present the initial findings from a three-year project to investigate the ethical implications of predictive policing and develop ethically sensitive and empirically informed best practices for both those developing these technologies and the police departments using them."

Police Programmes that Seek to Increase Community Connectedness for Reducing Violent Extremism Behaviour, Attitudes and Beliefs

Link to Summary

Link to Full Report

"Community connectedness and efforts to engage communities may help to mitigate the risk of individuals radicalizing to violent extremism. Police, under some circumstances, can play a key role in programmes aimed at tackling violent extremism. This includes working with communities and other agencies to tackle social isolation, economic opportunity, and norms and beliefs that lead individuals and groups to radicalize and support extremist causes.

This review looked at whether or not strategies involving police in the initiation, development or implementation of programmes aimed at community connectedness had an impact on reducing violent extremist beliefs and behaviours."

Body-Worn Cameras' Effects on Police Officer and Citizen Behavior: A Systematic Review

Link to Summary

Link to Full Report

"Law enforcement agencies have rapidly adopted BWCs in the last decade with the hope that they might improve police conduct, accountability, and transparency, especially regarding use of force.

Overall, there remains substantial uncertainty about whether BWCs can reduce officer use of force, but the variation in effects suggests there may be conditions in which BWC could be effective. BWCs also do not seem to affect other police and citizen behaviors in a consistent manner, including officers’ self‐initiated activities or arrest behaviors, dispatched calls for service, or assaults and resistance against police officers. 
BWCs can reduce the number of citizen complaints against police officers, but it is unclear whether this finding signals an improvement in the quality of police–citizen interactions or a change in reporting.

Research has not directly addressed whether BWCs can strengthen police accountability systems or police–citizen relationships."


Who Should Keep the Public Safe?

 Link to Recording

"Protests over police brutality that started in May continue to make headlines as protestors continue to make the case for defunding or abolition. Do the police still have a role to play in keeping the public safe? To discuss this, The Agenda welcomes former RCMP officer Chad Haggerty; London police chief Stephen Williams; Fareeda Adam, staff lawyer at Black Legal Action Centre; and Akwasi Owusu-Bempah, assistant professor, Department of Sociology at the University of Toronto."

Recognition Gaps and Economies of Worth in Police Encounters

 Link to Full Text

"This paper examines what arrested individuals expect from the police, and the moral grammars they rely on to evaluate police behavior. Drawing on interviews with recently arrested suspects in the Cleveland city jail, we analyze the moral grammars, or common worlds that residents invoke to reflect on interactions with law enforcement. We find that respondents care about two different moral dimensions in policing. At one level, they want police to treat them with civility and politeness, and to respect their rights - thereby treating them equally with other residents in the city. Yet at a second level, they want police to show care and empathy for their local situation. and to recognize that policing the neighborhoods in which they live is different than policing other parts of the city. As a result, we find that residents who are arrested by the police deploy two orders of worth: a civic order, grounded in fairness, legal rules, equality, and civic belonging to the polity; and a domestic order, based on a politics of community and difference, emphasizing empathy, local knowledge, and personal experience. We demonstrate how individuals assess and test the moral promise of institutions to offer moral recognition, redress, and repair."

Dartmouth Encourages Faculty to Safeguard Students as Chinese Law Targets Free Speech Globally

 Link to Article

"Protests in Hong Kong may seem far away for most Dartmouth students, but the Chinese government’s response — a new national security law with worldwide implications — has brought concerns about censorship and surveillance to Dartmouth itself. In the law’s wake, the College has issued a set of guidelines encouraging professors to take precautions when teaching about topics considered unpalatable by Beijing."

Labeling Violence

 Link to Report

"In recent years, federal and state-level criminal justice reforms have softened the punitive responses to crime that defined the quarter-century from 1980–2005. The main beneficiaries of these reforms have been non-violent criminals, who are increasingly eligible for pre- and post-charge diversion, expungement, early release from custody and early discharge from community supervision. For those convicted of violent offenses, not much has changed: sentences remain long; opportunities for release remain few; and conditions of post-release supervision are tightly enforced, leading to high rates of return to prison. The justification for a harsh response to violent crime is that such crime inflicts significant harm and represents a dramatic deviation from standards of acceptable behavior. In fact, “violent” behavior—that is, behavior that is intended to cause, or does in fact cause, physical injury to another person—is hardly anomalous. Across the life-course, and particularly in youth and young adulthood, such behaviors frequently occur among a broad spectrum of the population and rarely lead to criminal conviction. This Article explores why only some behavior is labeled violent, and what implications this fact has for sentencing and correctional management of people convicted of violent crimes, and for the broader management of the criminal justice system."


Pandemic, Social Unrest, and Crime in U.S. Cities

Link to Report

Link to August 2020 Update

"During the spring and early summer of 2020 momentous changes occurred in everyday life in the United States. The COVID-19 pandemic brought widespread quarantines and business closings. The killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer on May 25th triggered mass protests, many still ongoing, across the country. In this report, we examine the consequences of these conditions for crime rates in US cities."

How Police Fund Surveillance Technology is Part of the Problem

 Link to Article

"Law enforcement agencies at the federal, state, and local level are spending hundreds of millions of dollars a year on surveillance technology in order to track, locate, watch, and listen to people in the United States, often targeting dissidents, immigrants, and people of color. EFF has written tirelessly about the harm surveillance causes communities and its effect is well documented. What is less talked about, but no less disturbing, are the myriad ways agencies fund the hoarding of these technologies."


Women and Sexual Minority Students More Likely to Experience Discrimination

Link to Summary

Link to Full Report

"In 2019, almost half (47%) of students at Canadian postsecondary schools witnessed or experienced discrimination based on gender, gender identity or sexual orientation in a postsecondary setting.

Witnessing or experiencing these discriminatory behaviours—which occurred on campus, off campus or online situation and which involved students or other people associated with the school—was more common for students who identify as women (52%) than those who identify as men (42%)."

Government Misconduct and Convicting the Innocent: the Role of Prosecutors, Police and other Law Enforcement

Link to Full Report

"This is a report about the role of official misconduct in the conviction of innocent people. We discuss cases that are listed in the National Registry of Exonerations, an ongoing online archive that includes all known exonerations in the United States since 1989, 2,663 as of this writing. This Report describes official misconduct in the first 2,400 exonerations in the Registry, those posted by February 27, 2019....

The Report is limited to misconduct by government officials that contributed to the false convictions of defendants who were later exonerated—misconduct that distorts the evidence used to determine guilt or innocence. Concretely, that means misconduct that produces unreliable, misleading or false evidence of guilt, or that conceals, distorts or undercuts true evidence of innocence."

To Surveil and Predict: A Human Rights Analysis of Algorithmic Policing in Canada

Link to Executive Summary

Link to Full Report

"This report examines algorithmic technologies that are designed for use in criminal law enforcement systems. Algorithmic policing is an area of technological development that, in theory, is designed to enable law enforcement agencies to either automate surveillance or to draw inferences through the use of mass data processing in the hopes of predicting potential criminal activity....

In order to guide public dialogue and the development of law and policy in Canada, the report focuses on the human rights and constitutional law implications of the use of algorithmic policing technologies by law enforcement authorities."

The First Step Act of 2018: One Year of Implementation

 Link to Key Findings

Link to Full Report

"The First Step Act of 2018 includes five provisions related to sentencing reform. Each of these changes has been the subject of ongoing consideration within the criminal justice community and was the subject of Commission recommendations in its mandatory minimum reports and other work. The First Step Act has now been in effect for a full calendar year. This publication examines the impact of the First Step Act of 2018, analyzing data from the first year following its enactment, compared to data from fiscal year 2018—the last full fiscal year prior to its enactment."


Counter-Rebellion: Judges of the Alberta Court of Appeal Question the Supreme Court's Jurisprudence on Mandatory Minimum Sentences

Link to Article

"Last month the Alberta Court of Appeal issued an interesting decision that concerned the constitutionality of yet another mandatory minimum sentence, this one in section 244.2 of the Criminal Code... The mandatory minimum is four years’ imprisonment (or more if organized crime is involved). For fairly straightforward reasons given by Justice Antonio, R v Hills, 2020 ABCA 263, upholds the four-year mandatory minimum..."

But in separate concurring reasons Justices O’Ferrall and Wakeling go on to criticize the Supreme Court’s approach for dealing with such cases....

In this post, I summarize Justice Antonio’s lead opinion, as well as the common aspects of the two concurring ones, and explain why I think the Supreme Court is right and Justices O’Ferrall and Wakeling are wrong about section 12."


The Effect of Social Distancing on Police Reports of Domestic Violence

 Link to Article

"We analyze the effect of social distancing related to COVID-19 on domestic violence incidents in the U.S. using novel daily mobile device tracking data, the timing of stay-at-home orders, and dispatch and crime data from twenty-eight police departments. We find that reported incidents of domestic violence increase after local stay-at-home orders are enacted and that domestic violence increases with mobile device tracking measures of social distancing. Our result is consistent with an exposure reduction theory of domestic violence. When applied to the entire U.S., we estimate that social distancing increased domestic violence by approximately 6 percent, or more than 24,000 cases, from March 16 to April 30, 2020."

RCMP Says Improper Force Allegations Confirmed in just 1 Per Cent of Cases

"As police services everywhere cope with public pressure over their use of force policies, the RCMP is reporting that just one per cent of the more than 3,000 allegations it's received about improper use of force over the past five years turned out to be founded."

A Disparate Impact: Second Interim Report on the Inquiry into Racial Profiling and Racial Discrimination of Black Persons by the Toronto Police Service

Link to Report

"Black people are more likely to be arrested by the Toronto police.

Black people are more likely to be charged and over-charged by the Toronto Police.

Black people are more likely to be struck, shot or killed by the Toronto police.

Toronto Police Service data, obtained by the Ontario Human Rights Commission (OHRC) as part of its inquiry into racial profiling and racial discrimination of Black persons by the Toronto Police Service (TPS), confirms what Black communities have told us – that they are subjected to a disproportionate burden of law enforcement in a way that is consistent with systemic racism and anti-Black racial bias.[i]

TPS data ranging from 2013 to 2017, collected and analyzed by a team of experts, reflects the many ways Black communities are over-charged and over-policed, ranging from laying low-quality discretionary charges to police use of force, with all of its negative and detrimental physical and emotional consequences."

Criminal Justice Database and Bill Tracking

Link to Website

  • Legislative Responses for Policing - State Bill Tracking Database
  • Community Supervision Significant Enhancement Database
  • Reentry and Criminal Records Enactment Database
  • Human Trafficking Enactment Database
  • Pretrial Policy Laws Database
  • Sex Offender Enactments
  • State Sentencing and Corrections Legislation
  • Juvenile Justice Bill Tracking
  • Body-Worn Camera Laws Database

Erdogan's Private Police Force: A New Blow to Turkish Democracy

 Link to Full Text

"Turkish parliament passed a controversial bill in the past weeks providing the neighborhood watchmen (Bekci in Turkish) with extended yet unprecedented powers, including the authority to stop and search citizens, and to carry firearms and use force whenever necessary. With the introduction of the new law, the neighborhood watchmen will have almost the same powers as the police. The new legislation elicited immediate backlash from the civil and political opposition in Turkey, accusing the incumbent Justice and Development Party (AKP) of attempting to establish a paramilitary force loyal to the president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan."

Abolishing Private Prisons: A Constitutional and Moral Imperative

 Link to Full Text

"This article will show: first, that mixing profit with the core governmental function of incarceration leads to damaging consequences for prisoners, employees (of both private and public prisons), and the public at large while benefiting a small group of executives and shareholders; second, that the implementation of for-profit incarceration in the United States hampers access to justice, particularly for already marginalized groups; and third, that the serious constitutional concerns noted by Professor Robbins have been borne out, and they now deserve consideration by the United States Supreme Court."

The Opposite of Punishment: Imagining a Path to Public Redemption

 Link to Full Text

"The criminal justice system traditionally performs its public functions – condemning prohibited conduct, shaming and stigmatizing violators, promoting societal norms – through the use of negative examples: convicting and punishing violators. One could imagine, however, that the same public functions could also be performed through the use of positive examples: publicly acknowledging and celebrating offenders who have chosen a path of atonement through confession, apology, making amends, acquiescing in just punishment, and promising future law abidingness. An offender who takes this path arguably deserves official public recognition, an update of all records and databases to record the public redemption, and an exemption from all collateral consequences of conviction."


A Large-Scale Analysis of Racial Disparities in Police Stops Across the United States

Link to Full Text

"We assessed racial disparities in policing in the United States by compiling and analysing a dataset detailing nearly 100 million traffic stops conducted across the country. We found that black drivers were less likely to be stopped after sunset, when a ‘veil of darkness’ masks one’s race, suggesting bias in stop decisions. Furthermore, by examining the rate at which stopped drivers were searched and the likelihood that searches turned up contraband, we found evidence that the bar for searching black and Hispanic drivers was lower than that for searching white drivers. Finally, we found that legalization of recreational marijuana reduced the number of searches of white, black and Hispanic drivers—but the bar for searching black and Hispanic drivers was still lower than that for white drivers post-legalization. Our results indicate that police stops and search decisions suffer from persistent racial bias and point to the value of policy interventions to mitigate these disparities."

Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science Special Issue: Fatal Police Shootings: Patterns, Policy, and Prevention

Link to Table of Contents

"The promise of evidence-based policing is to reduce harm with better research for targeting, testing, and tracking police actions. The problems of using evidence-based policing to reduce harm are found in the emotional dimensions of ethics and risk. These problems are most pronounced with fatal police shootings, where the risks of injury to American police are often framed as a zero-sum choice in relation to the ethics of taking citizens’ lives. Yet evidence-based policing offers good prospects for reframing the debate over fatal police shootings, in ways that could reduce harm to both police and citizens. This volume offers substantial new evidence for initiatives at all levels of U.S. government that could help to save lives in police encounters with citizens. Putting that evidence to work remains the major challenge facing the American police."

Police Body-Worn Cameras Must Come With Clear Policies

Link to Full Text

"The police shooting deaths of Indigenous community members Chantel Moore on June 4 and Rodney Levi on June 14 in New Brunswick have reignited the debate over whether to outfit police across Canada with body-worn cameras (BWCs). Just six days after Rodney Levi was killed, police in Mississauga, Ontario, shot and killed Pakistani-Canadian Ejaz Choudry. The week before Moore’s death, Regis Korchinski-Paquet, an Afro-Indigenous woman, died when she fell from her 24th-floor balcony during an encounter with police in Toronto. Police officers in Toronto, like most law enforcement officers in Canada, do not wear BWCs, but the devices could be adopted in Canada’s largest city by the end of the summer."

The Wandering Officer

Link to Full Text

“'Wandering officers' are law-enforcement officers fired by one department, sometimes for serious misconduct, who then find work at another agency. Policing experts hold disparate views about the extent and character of the wandering-officer phenomenon. Some insist that wandering officers are everywhere—possibly increasingly so—and that they’re dangerous. Others, however, maintain that critics cherry-pick rare and egregious anecdotes that distort broader realities. In the absence of systematic data, we simply do not know how common wandering officers are or how much of a threat they pose, nor can we know whether and how to address the issue through policy reform."

America's Criminal Justice System is Rotten to the Core

Link to Article

"Before you can fairly assess the legitimacy of the ongoing protests or the quality of the government’s response, you must understand the relevant facts. And the most relevant fact is that America’s criminal justice system is rotten to its core."

Europol Reports

Beyond the Pandemic - How COVID-19 will Shape the Serious and Organised Crime Landscape in the EU

IP Crime and its Link to other Serious Crimes - Focus on Poly-Criminality

The Plight of the Police Whistleblower

Link to Article

"Even as municipal and state officials around the country react to the killing of George Floyd  with measures aimed at curbing police misconduct, members of the criminal justice community warn that little will change unless officers feel safe enough to expose wrongdoing in their ranks."

Podcast: The New Normal: Enough

Part 1
Part 2
"This episode explores the intergenerational impact and trauma of anti-Black racism and violence through the scholarly perspectives and personal experiences of Andrade, Canada Research Chair in Integrative Behavioural Ecology and the University of Toronto Scarborough’s vice-dean of faculty affairs and equity, and her guests: U of T Scarborough Assistant Professor Mark Campbell, of the department of arts, culture and media, an expert in hip hop and the music of Black communities, and Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream, Julius Haag of U of T Mississauga’s department of sociology, an expert in policing, youth justice, racialization and criminalization."


5-Key Model for Reentry

Link to Reports

"The 5-Key Model for Reentry is a data-driven reentry services approach that provides behavioral health-focused supports for individuals leaving incarceration and coming back home. Unlike many models that help people during this transition time (often called the reentry period), the 5-Key Model can be adapted for use with all individuals leaving incarceration, including those experiencing mental health or substance use disorders and high-risk individuals convicted of serious crimes."

Defunding the Police: Does Europe Offer Lessons for the U.S.?

Link to Article

"Calls to 'defund the police' have grown in the United States since the May 25 death of George Floyd, an unarmed black man, in police custody.

President Donald Trump has dismissed the movements as radical. But advocates say scaling back the remit of the police and bolstering other services is viable."



To Serve and Protect Each Other: How Police-Prosecutor Codependence Enables Police Misconduct

Link to Article

"Most Americans are rightly enraged when police shoot unarmed civilians, use excessive force, or engage in unethical practices like planting evidence. However, there is little popular understanding and scholarly attention as to why prosecutors fail to charge or otherwise hold officers accountable. This Article offers a novel contribution to the study of police misconduct by examining how prosecutors nationwide enable police misconduct on an institutional level."

Changes in Firearm Mortality Following the Implementation of State Laws Regulating Firearm Access and Use

Link to Article

"Many US states have tried to regulate firearm storage and use to reduce the 39,000 firearms-related deaths that occur each year. Looking at three classes of laws that regulate children’s access to firearms, the carrying of a concealed firearm, and the use of a firearm in self-defense, we found that state laws restricting firearm storage and use are associated with a subsequent 11% decrease in the firearms-related death rate. In a hypothetical situation in which there are 39,000 firearms deaths nationally under the permissive combination of these three laws, we expect 4,475 (80% CI, 1,761 to 6,949) more deaths nationally than under the restrictive combination of these laws."

Initial Evidence on the Relationship between the Coronavirus and Crime in the United States

Link to Full Text

"The COVID-19 pandemic led to substantial changes in the daily activities of millions of Americans, with many businesses and schools closed, public events cancelled and states introducing stay-at-home orders. This article used police-recorded open crime data to understand how the frequency of common types of crime changed in 16 large cities across the United States in the early months of 2020."


How Women's Police Stations Prevent Gender Violence

Link to Full Text

"Women’s Police Stations are unique innovations that emerged in Latin America in the second half of the 20th century to address violence against women. Variations of the model have since spread across other parts of the global south—in Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Peru, and Uruguay, and more recently in Sierra Leone, India, Ghana, Kosovo, Liberia, the Philippines, South Africa and Uganda (Jubb et al. 2010). Like traditional policing models they offer a 365-day emergency response service, employ uniformed armed officers, have the authority of the state, and the same powers. Unlike traditional policing models, officers work from a gender perspective and have additional specialist training in responding to gender violence. CMFs look nothing like a police station. Most are brightly painted converted houses with welcoming reception rooms designed to receive victims, not offenders and do not have holding cells. They employ multi-disciplinary teams of police, social workers, lawyers, psychologists and counsellors who work collaboratively with other organisations (such as local boards, local government, religious, educational, and community organisations). While CMFs provide tertiary and secondary interventions in response to discrete incidents of domestic and sexual violence, more uniquely they have a legislated mandate to engage in primary prevention at least once a month within their own communities."

Using Social and Behavioural Science to Support COVID-19 Pandemic Response

Link to Full Text

"The COVID-19 pandemic represents a massive global health crisis. Because the crisis requires large-scale behaviour change and places significant psychological burdens on individuals, insights from the social and behavioural sciences can be used to help align human behaviour with the recommendations of epidemiologists and public health experts. Here we discuss evidence from a selection of research topics relevant to pandemics, including work on navigating threats, social and cultural influences on behaviour, science communication, moral decision-making, leadership, and stress and coping. In each section, we note the nature and quality of prior research, including uncertainty and unsettled issues. We identify several insights for effective response to the COVID-19 pandemic and highlight important gaps researchers should move quickly to fill in the coming weeks and months."

The Predator in Your Pocket: A Multidisciplinary Assessment of the Stalkerware Application Industry


Access the Full Text

"Persons who engage in technology-facilitated violence, abuse, and harassment sometimes install spyware on a targeted person’s mobile phone. Spyware has a wide range of capabilities, including pervasive monitoring of text and chat messages, recording phone logs, tracking social media posts, logging website visits, activating a GPS system, registering keystrokes, and even activating phones’ microphones and cameras, as well as sometimes blocking incoming phone calls. These capabilities can afford dramatic powers and control over an individual’s everyday life. And when this software is used abusively, it can operate as a predator in a person’s pocket, magnifying the pervasive surveillance of the spyware operator."

Understanding Violent Crime Recidivism

Access the Full Text

"People convicted of violent crimes constitute a majority of the imprisoned population but are generally ignored by existing policies aimed at reducing mass incarceration. Serious efforts to shrink the large footprint of the prison system will need to recognize this fact. This point is especially pressing at the time of this writing, as states and the federal system consider large-scale prison releases motivated by the COVID-19 pandemic."

Policing the Pandemic: Tracking the Policing of Covid-19 Across Canada

Link to Website

"The Policing the Pandemic Project was launched on 4 April, 2020 to track and visualize the massive and extraordinary expansions of police power in response to the COVID-19 Pandemic and the unequal patterns of enforcement that may arise as a result. The project aims to bring to light COVID-19 related patterns of police intervention to help understand who is being targeted, what justifications are being used by police, and how marginalized people are being impacted.:

The Deterrent Effect of Surveillance Cameras on Crime

Link to Full Text

"From the US to Colombia to China, millions of public surveillance cameras are at the core of crime prevention strategies. Yet, we know little about the effects of surveillance cameras on criminal behavior, especially in developing economies. We study an installation program in Medellín and find t hat t he q uasi-random allocation of cameras led to a decrease in crimes and arrests. With no increase in the monitoring capacity and no chance to use camera footage in prosecution, these results suggest offenders were deterred rather than incapacitated. We test for spillovers and find no evidence of crime displacement or diffusion of benefits to surrounding locations."

Length of Incarceration and Recidivism

Link to Full Text

"...This study, the seventh in the recidivism series, examines the relationship between length of incarceration and recidivism."


The Science of Gun Policy

Access the Full Report

"In this report, part of the RAND Corporation's Gun Policy in America initiative, researchers seek objective information about what the scientific literature reveals about the likely effects of various gun laws. In this second edition of an earlier work, the authors add five gun policies to the 13 examined in the original analysis and expand the study time frame to incorporate a larger body of research. With those adjustments, the authors synthesize the available scientific data on the effects of 18 policies on firearm deaths, violent crime, the gun industry, defensive gun use, and other outcomes. By highlighting where scientific evidence is accumulating, the authors hope to build consensus around a shared set of facts that have been established through a transparent, nonpartisan, and impartial review process. In so doing, they also illuminate areas where more and better information could make important contributions to establishing fair and effective gun policies."

Kids in Custody Face "Lower Level" of Health Care for COVID-19, Conference Told

Link to Article

"With hundreds of young people being released from custody in response to fears about their vulnerability to the coronavirus, juvenile justice advocates are now focusing on the kids left behind.
Youths remaining in juvenile detention facilities face lower levels of access to health care if they are sickened by the virus, and should be represented by specially designated 'correctional health coordinators' in each state who can speak out for their needs, says Dr. Homer Venters, former chief medical officer for the New York City jail system."

Useful Resources - Prisons

Reports, websites and recommendations by international or region-specific associations and organisations with useful information regarding responses to COVID-19 in prison settings around the world. 

Human Rights Watch: Coronavirus

Link to Reports, News Items

Major Report: Human Rights Dimensions of COVID-19 Response


"On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared that an outbreak of COVID-19 had reached global pandemic levels. In a number of countries, the outbreak exposed shortcomings in public health and social welfare protection systems, making it harder to protect at-risk populations and reduce disease transmission. In responding to this crisis, governments should prioritize the right to health for all, as well as human rights. This means prioritizing science over politics, caring for those most at risk, avoiding censorship, and limiting lockdowns. Governments should also address the special concerns of people in prisons, jails, and migrant detention centers, older people, and people with disabilities in institutions."

Why Bail Reform is Safe and Effective: The Case of Cook County

Link to Full Report
This is a response to a critique posted March 26 entitled Does Bail Reform Increase Crime?
Link to the original study: Bail Reform in Cook County...

#Tracker-19: Live Updates of COVID-19 Impacts on Press Freedoms

"Launched by Reporters Without Borders (RSF), “Tracker 19” is a tool made for an unprecedented global crisis. So named in reference not only to Covid-19 but also article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, this project aims to evaluate the pandemic’s impacts on journalism. It will document state censorship and deliberate disinformation, and their impact on the right to reliable news and information. It will also make recommendations on how to defend journalism."

Staying Home Saves Lives, Really!

Link to Complete Article

"As coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is spreading around the world, many national and local governments have imposed social restrictive measures to limit the spread of the virus. Such quarantine measures in different cities across the world have brought a new trend in public safety improvement and crime reduction. Using daily crime reports in the US and European major cities, the aim of this project is to evaluate the effects of quarantine and "shelter-in-place" policies on different crime categories. We adopt a difference in difference strategy to evaluate the change in crime rates. Early results from Oakland and San Francisco in the U.S. suggest a drop by about 40% across the communities and crime categories in both cities. While theft, homicide, and traffic accidents have fallen sharply, domestic violence incidents show no sign of reduction from our early observations. These trends although promising a glimpse of positive outcome for the community during the outbreak, may not have a lasting impact in the long term."

Do Better Prisons Reduce Recidivism? Evidence From a Prison Construction Program

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"From the US to Colombia, from India to Uganda, many inmates suffer from underprovision of services such as surveillance or rehabilitation in overcrowded prisons. Yet, we know little about how prison quality affects long-term inmate outcomes. I study a prison construction program in Colombia and find t hat quasi-random assignment of inmates to less crowded, and higher service facilities reduced recidivism. Criminal capital is an important mechanism. Less crowded and better service facilities are associated with a lower level of unsupervised criminal contact within prisons. The program led to substantial welfare gains, even when assuming a low social cost per crime."

The Coronavirus Pandemic: Canada's Response

Analysis and Commentary from Policy Options

"The coronavirus is disrupting every aspect of life in Canada as it continues its global spread. Our contributing writers share their analyses and insights on how Canadian governments, the health-care sector, businesses and citizens can best navigate the turmoil of COVID-19 as it unfolds."

Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy: COVID-19 Research and Commentary

"Read the latest COVID-19 research and commentary from faculty and researchers at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy."

Feature E-Book: Law in the time of COVID-19

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Includes chapters on prisoners' rights, the criminal justice system, immigration, privacy, LGBT rights

Speech in a Time of War

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The prominent legal scholar Geoffrey Stone reminds us that war is a perilous time for freedom of speech. The struggle with COVID-19 seems like a war. Some have evoked executive authorities created for, and justified by, wartime exigency. Unity will be needed to defeat this “invisible enemy.” How is free speech doing in this difficult time?

Covid Crime Watch

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"...For the next 12 weeks, the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC) will publish a weekly #COVIDCrimeWatch newsletter. Rounding up a selection of news stories from the global press, the newsletter will explore existing and emerging interactions between COVID-19 and the illicit economy.  It will also include analysis and investigations drawn from our own GI-TOC field and expert networks.... 

Crime and Contagion: The Impact of a Pandemic on Organized Crime

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"The fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic is having profound impacts on society and the economy, and it will also influence and shape organized crime and illicit markets. The institutional response to the pandemic and the consequent reshaping of socio-economic norms worldwide will affect how criminal networks operate, as well as the nature of law-enforcement responses to them"


Coronavirus Transforming Jails Across the Country

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"...Across the country, the coronavirus outbreak is transforming criminal justice in the most transient and turbulent part of the system: local jails. Run mostly by country sheriffs, jails hold an ever-changing assortment of people - those who are awaiting trial and cannot afford to pay bail; those convicted of low-level offences; overflows from crowded prisons."




Coronavirus: Healthcare and Human Rights of People in Prison

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"At the time of publishing there were more than 164,000* confirmed cases of COVID- 19, the novel form of Coronavirus, affecting 110 countries with more than 6,470 deaths. In this briefing we assess the current situation of COVID-19 outbreaks and prevention measures in prisons** and wider impacts of responses to governments on people in criminal justice systems. This briefing note argues for action to be taken now and immediately, given the risk people in prison are exposed to, including prison staff."

Women in Prison: Seeking Justice Behind Bars

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"This report examines the civil rights of women in United States prisons. The population of women in prison has increased dramatically since the 1980s, and this growth has outpaced that of men in prison, yet there have been few national-level studies of the civil rights issues incarcerated women experience. The Commission studied a range of issues that impact incarcerated women, including deprivations of women’s medical needs that may violate the constitutional requirement to provide adequate medical care for all prisoners; implementation of the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA); and the sufficiency of programs to meet women’s needs after release. The Commission also examined disparities in discipline practices for women in prison compared with men, and the impacts of incarcerated women being placed far from home or having their parental rights terminated."

Criminal Prosecutions and the 2008 Financial Crisis in the US and Iceland: What Can a Small Town Icelandic Police Chief Teach the US About Prosecuting Wall Street?

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"Politicians, journalists, and academics alike highlight the paucity of criminal prosecutions for senior financial executives in the United States in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis."

"Barriers" in Canada's Legal System Complicating Fight to End Domestic Violence

This story is part of Stopping Domestic Violence, a CBC News series looking at the crisis of intimate partner violence in Canada and what can be done to end it. 

Sentencing of Women Convicted of Drug-Related Offences

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"Drug‐related offences are known to have a particular and disproportionate impact on women. This report considers five key questions relating to the sentences imposed on women for drug‐related offences across criminal justice systems in 18 jurisdictions."

Installing Fear: A Canadian Legal and Policy Analysis of Using, Developing, and Selling Smartphone Spyware...

This report is part of a two-part series on technology-facilitated violence, abuse, and harassment. Read both reports in full:


The Predator in Your Pocket: A Multidisciplinary Assessment of the Stalkerware Application Industry

Does Bail Reform Increase Crime? An Empirical Assessment of the Public Safety Implications of Bail Reforms in Cook County, Illinois



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"Recently bail reform issues have been in the news across the country, as concerns about fair treatment of defendants and possible public safety risks from expanding pretrial release have collided....

Cook County’s Bail Reform Study concluded that the new procedures had released many more defendants before trial without any concomitant increase in crime. This article disputes the Study’s conclusions. This article explains that, contrary to the Study’s assertions, the new changes to pretrial release procedures appear to have led to a substantial increase in crimes committed by pretrial releasees in Cook County."

"Justice for All": The Necessity of New Prosecutorial Accountability Measures

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"Prosecutorial misconduct is a widespread issue in the American criminal justice system today. Unethical behavior by prosecutors has been a consistent, recurring issue for decades and only continues to worsen over time. Perhaps of most concern, prosecutorial misconduct often results in the wrongful convictions of innocent people. The inequity may take on many forms, including, but not limited to, withholding exculpatory evidence, encouraging false testimony, relying on phony forensic experts, and overstating the strength of the evidence during plea negotiations."

Why a Measly Five Tons of Cocaine has Costa Rica Deeply Worried

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"...The February 15 seizure of a drug shipment that would have fetched nearly $140 million at wholesale prices at its destination was celebrated as testimony to the strides Costa Rica has taken to improve its drug interdiction capacity.


However, this success may prove to be little more than a silver lining to the dark cloud now hovering over the country. The seizure confirmed what has been increasingly evident in recent years: Costa Rica is now a major exporter of cocaine to Europe — and the shipments it sends are being handled by ever more sophisticated national networks."

The Cruelty of Supermax Detention and the Case for a Hard-Time Sentencing Discount

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"...In this Article, we make recommendations regarding the manner in which prison conditions should impact the length of a prison term. We suggest that for most prisoners, every day spent in supermax conditions should result in two days’ credit towards the expiration of the prison term. Hard-time credits are justified by the principle of proportionality, which stipulates that the seriousness of the crime should be matched by the hardship of the penalty."

The Rise of Smart Camera Networks and Why We Should Ban Them

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"There's widespread concern that video cameras will use facial recognition software to track our every public move. Far less remarked upon — but every bit as alarming — is the exponential expansion of 'smart' video surveillance networks."

From Funnels to Large-Scale Irrigation: Changing the Criminal Justice System Paradigm to Improve Public Health and Safety

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"The story of criminal justice reform in Milwaukee County is one of organic change. In the last ten years, criminal justice professionals... have come together with others to develop innovations that better serve our community.... Working in concert with social service agencies and local institutions, Milwaukee has developed evidence-based approaches that combat the origins of crime."

"Ban the Box" Policies and Criminal Recidivism

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"...recent research has shown that BTB policies may lead employers to racially discriminate in hiring. Using administrative prison data, this paper examines the direct effect of BTB policies on rates of criminal recidivism."

Indigenous People and Human Rights: BC Tribunal Report

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"On January 15, 2020, the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal released a report addressing serious access to justice concerns for Indigenous Peoples bringing human rights complaints to the Tribunal. The report, entitled Expanding Our Vision: Cultural Equality & Indigenous Peoples’ Human Rights, makes far-reaching recommendations that could transform human rights in this province."

Contextual Fairness: A Legal and Policy Analysis of Algorithmic Fairness

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"To date, all stakeholders are working intensively on policy design for artificial intelligence. All initiatives center around the requirement that AI algorithms should be fair. But what exactly does it mean? And how algorithmic fairness can be translated to legal and policy terms? These are the main questions that this paper aims to explore."

Estimating the Size of the Los Angeles County Jail Population Appropriate for Release into Community Services

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"The largest mental health facilities in the United States are now county jails.1 About 15 percent
of men and 31 percent of women incarcerated in jails have a serious and persistent mental
disorder."

Soaring Female Population, Racial Disparities Drive State Incareration Numbers

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"Although America’s world-beating incarceration rates have begun to decline, soaring female jail populations and stark racial disparities in state prisons continue to present a formidable challenge to policymakers."

The Global Expansion of AI Surveillance

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"Artificial intelligence (AI) technology is rapidly proliferating around the world. Startling developments keep emerging, from the onset of deepfake videos that blur the line between truth and falsehood, to advanced algorithms that can beat the best players in the world in multiplayer poker. Businesses harness AI capabilities to improve analytic processing; city officials tap AI to monitor traffic congestion and oversee smart energy metering. Yet a growing number of states are deploying advanced AI surveillance tools to monitor, track, and surveil citizens to accomplish a range of policy objectives—some lawful, others that violate human rights, and many of which fall into a murky middle ground."