Resource Results

The Schenectady Public Surveillance Project (PSP) is a crime prevention project that seeks to impact crime and disorder in Schenectady, New York, through the installation of public surveillance cameras. The project was initiated in response to increasing crime rates and fear among residents in Schenectady. The overall goal of the video surveillance technology was to prevent crime and increase safety on the streets of Schenectady.

Families of justice-system involved youth have traditionally been excluded from decisions regarding their children and often are assumed to be the cause of their children’s criminal activity. In this final publication of an eight-part series detailing NCCD’s study of youth deincarceration trends in the United States, study respondents acknowledge that families are a key component to supervision strategies and improved outcomes for their youth.

Past partnerships between academics and police practitioners have sometimes been characterized by role conflicts, such as researchers reporting the “bad news” that an evaluated program was not effective in preventing crime (Weisburd 1994). For academic researchers, success or failure mattered less than commitment to the development of knowledge on what does or does not work in preventing crime. For the police, this news could be interpreted as their personal failure, and the skepticism of… Read More

In 2009, San Francisco opened a community court, the Community Justice Center (CJC), to serve the Tenderloin and adjacent neighborhoods, a traditionally high-crime area. Community courts are expressly oriented toward improving outcomes for offenders by addressing factors often linked to criminal behavior (by incorporating access to treatment and services within the criminal case management process); they also emphasize ties to a specific neighborhood. This report examines whether the CJC… Read More

The latest report in PERF's Critical Issues in Policing Series is about the various experiences of police chiefs in handling the incidents that they consider the toughest challenges they ever faced. This report is also about a national “defining moment” affecting police departments nationwide—namely, the police response to demonstrations and protests following the officer-involved shooting of Michael Brown on August 9, 2014 in Ferguson, Missouri.

Custom Notifications: Individualized Communication in the Group Violence Intervention provides practical information about "custom notifications," an independent element of GVI that enables quick, tactical, direct communication to particular group members. Custom notifications articulate that group members are valued members of the community, give individualized information about their legal risk, and offer opportunities for help. They effectively interrupt group "beefs," avoid retaliation… Read More

Policymakers and practitioners face difficult decisions when they allocate resources. As resource constraints have tightened, the role of researchers in informing evidence-based and cost-effective decisions about the use of funds, labor, materials and equipment — and even the skills of workers — has increased. We believe research that can inform decisions about resource allocation will be a central focus of criminal justice research in the years to come, with cost-benefit analysis (CBA)… Read More

PERF’s new report, “Compstat: Its Origins, Evolution, and Future in Law Enforcement Agencies,” traces how Compstat came into being, how it changed as it spread to hundreds of police agencies across the country, and where it’s headed for the future.

"Community policing has become a significant feature of modern policing, yet its meaning and implementation vary depending on where you are and with whom you speak. The future of community policing could be vulnerable to any sudden increase in the crime rate (provoking a renewed emphasis on the traditional model of professional policing) or the removal of funding support.

This report presents results from a randomized field experiment with LPRs conducted by the Police Executive Research Forum and the Mesa, Arizona Police Department (MPD) to target the problem of auto theft. The experiment sought to determine whether and to what extent LPR use improves the ability of police to recover stolen cars, apprehend auto thieves, and deter auto theft. We did this by examining the operations of a specialized 4-car MPD auto theft unit that worked in auto theft hot spots… Read More