Resource Results

Justice reinvestment is a promising model for reducing corrections costs using a data-driven and collaborative approach. This toolkit presents an overview of the justice reinvestment model for local leaders, including examples from localities that have implemented justice reinvestment.

To maintain the public safety gains of the past 20 years and the vastly improved relationships between police and the communities they serve, citizens will have to play an increasing role in sustaining and building on past crime reduction and crime prevention successes. Police foundations assist not only large but also small and medium police departments across the nation by engaging business leaders in community policing, providing extra-budgetary support for innovative law enforcement… Read More

The results from a survey of over 600 national criminal justice leaders provides a snapshot of the current state of innovation in criminal justice. It seeks to answer such questions as: Is innovation a priority? Are criminal justice leaders aware of emerging research? Do they use research to inform policymaking? What obstacles stand in the way of innovation?

This guide is written to help community policing officers decide whether improved lighting is an appropriate response to a crime or disorder problem that might be confronting a particular neighborhood or community. It assumes that a detailed problem analysis has been conducted and that police, community and business leaders, and other stakeholders are exploring ameliorative responses, particularly improved street lighting. It explains why better street lighting can help reduce fear, crime,… Read More

Improving recidivism data collection and reporting is a critical first step to advancing our knowledge about what works in sentencing and corrections policy. This brief outlines the necessary elements that every state should use when defining, collecting, analyzing, and disseminating recidivism data. It offers a blueprint for gathering a broad range of reoffending indicators, accurately comparing across groups and over time, and using the results to inform decisionmaking and improve outcomes… Read More

"This publication is one in a series of guides designed to assist in the statewide promotion of balanced and restorative justice. BARJ is a philosophy of justice that can guide the work of individuals who deal with juvenile offenders, their victims, and the communities in which they live. Implementing balanced and restorative justice: A guide for law enforcement officers is specifically designed to provide practical BARJ strategies that can be utilized by law enforcement officers on a daily… Read More

In this New Thinking podcast, Tracey L. Meares, the Walton Hale Hamilton Professor at Yale Law School, outlines the four components of procedural justice and their power to enhance perceptions of government legitimacy. She also discusses how procedural justice is incorporated into Chicago Offender Notification Forums, an anti-violence intervention that she helped design.

In the 2014 Accenture survey of citizens across eight countries, a convincing 96 percent of respondents said the public should play a role in police services. Coupled with the fact that two-thirds (66 percent) of citizens said they wanted more interaction with their local police, this public enthusiasm offers a golden opportunity to rebalance responsibilities for public safety through greater involvement from local communities.

This is one in a series of papers that will be published as a result of the Executive Session on Policing and Public Safety. This paper is about how American policing has slowly drifted away from Plato’s vision of guardians and Socrates’ view of guardian education as expressed in Plato’s Republic. This view of guardian education is humanistic. It takes shape through criminal justice education that is not only vocational but also stresses ethics, theory and the nature of virtue.

First, research shows clearly: If criminals think there’s only a slim chance they will be caught, the severity of punishment — even draconian punishment — is an ineffective deterrent to crime. Second, prisons are good for punishing criminals and keeping them off the street, but prison sentences are unlikely to deter future crime. Third, the police deter crime when they do things that strengthen a criminal’s perception of the certainty of being caught.