The Crime Report (https://thecrimereport.org/category/research-analysis/)
Researchers at Duke and Northeastern Universities found a stark gap in clearance rates when comparing fatal and nonfatal gun assaults in Boston. The reason: the “sustained investigative” effort devoted to homicide cases in the first two days wasn’t matched when there was a surviving victim.
“Research increasingly tells us that our coverage of mass shootings has implications for public health,” said The Trace, a website covering gun issues. Meanwhile, President Trump promoted the views of Northeastern University criminologist James Alan Fox that there is no evidence of an “epidemic” of mass shootings.
Nearly 2,000 hate crimes have been referred to U.S. attorneys since 2009, but just 15 percent have resulted in prosecutions, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. So far, in 2019, just 17 cases—of 99 referrals under the five hate crime statutes on federal books—have been prosecuted.
A panel of experts convened by the National Council for Behavioral Health found that linking mental illness to incidents of mass violence is misleading, and offers only limited help in addressing the problem.
High-profile cases where those who committed sexual offenses were not held accountable are held up as examples of a failed system. But harsh punishments may be a counterproductive approach to an issue that requires a better systemic response, says a legal expert.
An ambitious initiative to improve police-community relations and begin the process of “reconciliation” between law enforcement and communities that have experienced a history of systemic bias by authorities has achieved some modest successes, according to an Urban Institute study released Thursday.
About one in every 1,000 African-American men in the U.S. can expect to be killed by police, according to a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The widespread practice of barring individuals with criminal records from voting disproportionately affects African Americans, and removes an important tool for reducing recidivism, said a Washington and Lee law professor.
Procedural differences among state courts and lack of adequate counsel help explain why a “vanishingly small” number of misdemeanor convictions are ever appealed, according to a new paper by Vanderbilt and Cornell University scholars.
The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University contends that the data show “clearly that reducing mass incarceration does not come at the cost of public safety.” The total number of state prisoners dropped 6 percent over the same decade, 2007 to 2017.