"The stay-at-home restrictions to control the spread of COVID-19 led to unparalleled sudden change in daily life, but it is unclear how they affected urban crime globally. We collected data on daily counts of crime in 27 cities across 23 countries in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East and Asia. We conducted interrupted time series analyses to assess the impact of stay-at-home restrictions on different types of crime in each city. Our findings show that the stay-at-home policies were associated with a considerable drop in urban crime, but with substantial variation across cities and types of crime. Meta-regression results showed that more stringent restrictions over movement in public space were predictive of larger declines in crime."
Your resource for news, research, opinion and comment in the world of Criminology and Criminal Justice, brought to you by the Criminology Library, Centre for Criminology & Sociolegal Studies, University of Toronto
Sexual Assault of Sexual Minorities in the U.S. Military
"Much of the focus of research on sexual assault in the military has been on the risk faced by women. However, in civilian populations, individuals who identify as lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) are known to be at especially high risk for sexual assault.
In this report, RAND researchers examine evidence from the 2016 and 2018 Workplace and Gender Relations Survey of Active Duty Members (WGRA) survey to estimate the proportion of military sexual assaults that are against LGB service members and others who do not describe themselves as identifying as heterosexual. They find that assaults on the minority of service members who do not describe themselves as heterosexual constitute almost half of the military's sexual assault numbers. The authors discuss sexual assault risks for these individuals and recommend modifying prevention programs to better address a large and previously unquantified proportion of all military sexual assaults."
A Second Look at Injustice
"Over 200,000 people in U.S. prisons were serving life sentences in 2020—more people than were in prison with any sentence in 1970. Nearly half of the life- sentenced population is African American. Nearly one- third is age 55 or older....
Legislatorxs in 25 states, including Minnesota, Vermont, West Virginia, and Florida, have recently introduced second look bills. A federal bill allowing resentencing for youth crimes has bipartisan support. And, over 60 elected prosecutors and law enforcement leaders have called for second look legislation, with several prosecutors' offices having launched sentence review units....
[This] report presents in-depth accounts of three reform efforts that can be models for the nation."
Multiagency Programs with Police as a Partner for Reducing Radicalisation to Violence
"Multiagency partnerships involving police are often implemented to foster collaboration and reduce radicalisation to violence. There is no clear evidence to support this approach, although a small number of studies provide mixed evidence about the effectiveness of multiagency partnerships for improving collaboration. Some studies offer insights about the costs and ways to best implement multiagency programmes."
Effectiveness of School-Based Programs to Reduce Bullying Perpetration and Victimization
"Bullying is a ubiquitous form of aggression in schools worldwide. Intervention and prevention programs targeting school bullying perpetration and victimization are effective, yet more research is needed to understand variability in effectiveness.
The main findings of our review are that anti-bullying programs were effective in reducing bullying perpetration outcomes by roughly 18-19% and bullying victimization by roughly 15-16%. There are substantial variations in effects, and the reasons for these variations require further research."
"Systemic Discrimination" Contributed to Failings in Toronto Police Missing-Persons Cases, Report Finds
"An independent review of the Toronto police force's handling of missing-person cases, including the victims of serial killer Bruce McArthur, has found that 'systemic discrimination' contributed to failings in a number of investigations.
That's one of the many takeaways from a massive report led by former judge Gloria Epstein that was released Tuesday morning. You can read the full report here.
Epstein found there were 'serious flaws' in how missing-person cases have been handled in Toronto, and notes that "the police could have done better."
Can Blockchain Safeguard the Rights of At-Risk LGBT People?
"LGBT people have always found themselves at the cutting edge of technological innovation - often out of necessity. They pioneered navigating dial-up chat rooms in the 1990s and looking for hook-ups in the early days of Grindr; now, members of Iran's LGBT community are using locally created private messaging apps using Telegram's source code to evade danger....
Yet online surveillance and censorship have cast a shadow over this marginalized community. The deployment of new technologies has emboldened anti-gay governments and non-state actors to crack down on the most vulnerable LGBT people across the world....
In a bid to safeguard hard-won civil liberties, activists, NGOs, and technology companies are increasingly looking to blockchain technologies as an effective way to provide tools for sexual minorities to defend themselves against repressive governments and gain equal rights."
Can Artificial Intelligence Give Us Equal Justice?
"It’s 'misleading and counterproductive' to block the use of machine-learning algorithms in the justice system on the grounds that some of them may be subject to racial bias, according to a forthcoming study in the American Criminal Law Review.
The use of artificial intelligence by judges, prosecutors, police and other justice authorities remains 'the best means to overcome the pervasive bias and discrimination that exists in all parts of the deeply flawed criminal justice system,' said the study.
Algorithmic systems are used in a variety of ways in the U.S. justice system in practices ranging from identifying and predicting crime “hot spots” to real-time surveillance....
The study authors concede that many of the algorithms are far from perfect, but they argue that dropping them altogether would remove an important counterweight to human fallibility."
Research Shows How Safety Concerns Impact Women's Travel Patterns
"New research from Ramboll finds that personal safety concerns about walking, cycling and using public transport have a big influence on how women move around cities.
The Gender and (Smart) Mobility report calls on cities and transport planners to adopt a safety by design approach and apply a gender lens to all projects without casting women as victims. This, it says, is the key to making all citizens feel safer.
The analysis brings together existing local and national gender-segregated transport behaviour data with a survey of 3,525 people and focus groups across seven capital cities – Helsinki, Oslo, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Berlin, New Delhi, and Singapore."
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