Transaction Search Form: please type in any of the fields below.
Date: April 30, 2024 Tue
Time: 2:17 am
Time: 2:17 am
Results for crime control
6 results foundAuthor: Travers, Kathryn Title: Women's Safety: A Shared Global Concern-Compendium of Practice and Policies Summary: This report includes 69 examples from 32 countries, and is divided into 4 main sections: municipal strategies, non-governmental initiatives, national government strategies and policies, and tools and resources. Details: Montreal: International Centre for the Prevention of Crime, 2008 Source: ICPC's 8th Annual Colioquium on Crime Prevention, Women's Safety Year: 2008 Country: Canada URL: Shelf Number: 113418 Keywords: Crime ControlFemale Victims |
Author: Ehrlich, Isaac Title: Taxing Guns vs. Taxing Crime: An Application of the "Market for Offenses Model" Summary: The interaction between offenders and potential victims has so far received relatively little attention in the literature on the economics of crime. The main objective of this paper is twofold: to extend the "market for offenses model" to deal with both product and factor markets, and to apply it to the case where guns are used for crime commission by offenders and for self-protection by potential victims. This analysis offers new insights about the association between crime and guns and the limits it imposes on the efficacy of law enforcement and regulatory policies aimed to control both crime and guns. Details: Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research, 2010. 35p. Source: Internet Resource; NBER Working Paper Series; Working Paper 16009 Year: 2010 Country: United States URL: Shelf Number: 118566 Keywords: Crime ControlEconomics of CrimeGun ViolenceGuns |
Author: Aneja, Abhay Title: The Impact of Right-to-Carry Laws and the NRC Report: Lessons for the Empirical Evaluation of Law and Policy Summary: For over a decade, there has been a spirited academic debate over the impact on crime of laws that grant citizens the presumptive right to carry concealed handguns in public - so-called right-to-carry (RTC) laws. In 2005, the National Research Council (NRC) offered a critical evaluation of the "more guns, less crime" hypothesis using county-level crime data for the period 1977-2003 15 of the 16 NRC panel members essentially concluded that the existing research was inadequate to conclude that RTC laws increased or decreased crime. One member of the NRC panel concluded that the NRC panel data regressions supported the conclusion that RTC laws decreased murder, while the 15-member majority responded that the scientific evidence did not support that conclusion. We evaluate the NRC evidence and show that, unfortunately, the regression estimates presented in the report appear to be incorrect. We improve and expand on the report's county data analysis by analyzing an additional six years of county data as well as state panel data for the period 1977-2006. While we have considerable sympathy with the NRC's majority view about the difficulty of drawing conclusions from simple panel data models, we disagree with the NRC report's judgment that cluster adjustments to correct for serial correlation are not needed. Our randomization tests show that without such adjustments the Type 1 error soars to 4'270 percent. In addition, the conclusion of the dissenting panel member that RTC laws reduce murder has no statistical support. Our paper highlights further important questions to consider when using panel data methods to resolve questions of law and policy effectiveness. We buttress the NRC's cautious conclusion about right-to-carry legislation's impact by showing how sensitive the estimated impact of RTC laws is to different data periods, the use of state versus county data, particular specifications, and the decision to control for state trends. Overall, the most consistent, albeit not uniform, finding to emerge from the array of models is that aggravated assault rises when RTC laws are adopted. For every other crime category, there is little or no indication of any consistent RTC impact on crime. It will be worth exploring whether other methodological approaches and or additional years of data will confirm the results of this panel-data analysis. Details: Paper presented at the 5th Annual Conference on Empirical Legal Studies Paper Source: Internet Resource: Accessed February 2, 2011 at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1632599 Year: 0 Country: United States URL: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1632599 Shelf Number: 120681 Keywords: Crime ControlGun ControlGunsRight-to-Carry LawsWeaspons |
Author: Aneja, Abhay Title: The Impact of Right to Carry Laws and the NRC Report: The Latest Lessons for the Empirical Evaluation of Law and Policy Summary: For over a decade, there has been a spirited academic debate over the impact on crime of laws that grant citizens the presumptive right to carry concealed handguns in public – so-called right-to-carry (RTC) laws. In 2005, the National Research Council (NRC) offered a critical evaluation of the “More Guns, Less Crime” hypothesis using county-level crime data for the period 1977-2000. 17 of the 18 NRC panel members essentially concluded that the existing research was inadequate to conclude that RTC laws increased or decreased crime. One member of the panel, though, concluded that the NRC's panel data regressions supported the conclusion that RTC laws decreased murder. We evaluate the NRC evidence, and improve and expand on the report’s county data analysis by analyzing an additional six years of county data as well as state panel data for the period 1977-2006. We also present evidence using both a more plausible version of the Lott and Mustard specification, as well as our own preferred specification (which, unlike the Lott and Mustard model used in the NRC report, does control for rates of incarceration and police). While we have considerable sympathy with the NRC’s majority view about the difficulty of drawing conclusions from simple panel data models, we disagree with the NRC report’s judgment that cluster adjustments to correct for serial correlation are not needed. Our randomization tests show that without such adjustments the Type 1 error soars to 44 – 75 percent. In addition, the conclusion of the dissenting panel member that RTC laws reduce murder has no statistical support. Our paper highlights some important questions to consider when using panel data methods to resolve questions of law and policy effectiveness. Although we agree with the NRC’s cautious conclusion regarding the effects of RTC laws, we buttress this conclusion by showing how sensitive the estimated impact of RTC laws is to different data periods, the use of state versus county data, particular specifications, and the decision to control for state trends. Overall, the most consistent, albeit not uniform, finding to emerge from both the state and county panel data models conducted over the entire 1977-2006 period with and without state trends and using three different specifications is that aggravated assault rises when RTC laws are adopted. For every other crime category, there is little or no indication of any consistent RTC impact on crime. It will be worth exploring whether other methodological approaches and/or additional years of data will confirm the results of this panel-data analysis. Details: Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research, 2012. 93p. Source: Internet Resource: NBER Working Paper No. 18294: Accessed September 5, 2012 at: http://www.nber.org/papers/w18294 Year: 2012 Country: United States URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w18294 Shelf Number: 126259 Keywords: Crime ControlGun ControlGunsRight-to-Carry LawsWeaspons |
Author: American Bar Association. National Task Force on Stand Your Ground Laws Title: A Review of the Preliminary Report & Recommendations Summary: In 2013, the National Task Force on Stand Your Ground Laws was convened by the American Bar Association entities identified below, to review and analyze the recently enacted Stand Your Ground laws in multiple states and their impact on public safety and the criminal justice system. The ABA sponsors of the Task Force include the Coalition on Racial & Ethnic Justice, the Center for Racial and Ethnic Diversity, the Commission of Racial and Ethnic Diversity in the Profession, Council for Racial and Ethnic Diversity in the Educational Pipeline, the Section on Individual Rights & Responsibilities, the Criminal Justice Section, the Young Lawyer's Division, the Standing Committee on Gun Violence, and the Commission on Youth at Risk. The Task Force members are a diverse array of leaders from law enforcement, government, public and private criminal attorneys, public and private health, academic experts, and other legal and social science experts. Further, the Task Force's membership includes appointees from the above co-sponsoring ABA entities and strategic partners, including the Association of Prosecuting Attorneys, the Urban Institute, the International Association of Chiefs of Police and the National Organization of Parents of Murdered Children. Additionally, the Task Force has an Advisory Committee of leading academic and other legal and social science experts as well as victims' rights advocates. The Task Force has conducted a comprehensive legal and multidisciplinary analysis of the impact of the Stand Your Ground laws, which have substantially expanded the bounds of self-defense law in over half of the jurisdictions in the United States. The study detailed herein is national in its scope and assess the utility of previous, current, and future laws in the area of self-defense across the United States. In examining and reporting on the potential effects Stand Your Ground laws may have on public safety, individual liberties, and the criminal justice system, the Task Force has: 1. Examined the provisions of Stand Your Ground statutes and analyzed the potential for their misapplication and their risk of injustice from multiple perspectives, e.g. the individual's right to exercise self-defense, the victim's rights, and of the rights of the criminally accused. 2. Analyzed the degree to which racial or ethnic bias impacts Stand Your Ground laws. Particular attention was paid to the role implicit bias. First, the analysis focuses on how implicit bias may impact the perception of a deadly threat as well as the ultimate use of deadly force. Second, it looks at how implicit bias impacts the investigation, prosecution, immunity, and final determination of which homicides are justified. 3. Examined the effect that the surge of new Stand Your Ground laws had on crime control objectives and public safety. 4. Reviewed law enforcement policy, administrative guidelines, statutes, and judicial rulings regarding the investigation and prosecution of Stand Your Ground cases. 5. Conducted a series of regional public hearings to learn about community awareness, perceptions of equality in enforcement and application, opinions concerning the utility of the laws, and reactions to individualized experiences involving interactions with Stand Your Ground laws. 6. Prepared a final report and recommendations. Details: American Bar Association, 2014. 71p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed September 9, 2014 at: http://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/administrative/racial_ethnic_justice/aba_natl_task_force_on_syg_laws_preliminary_report_program_book.authcheckdam.pdf Year: 2014 Country: United States URL: http://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/administrative/racial_ethnic_justice/aba_natl_task_force_on_syg_laws_preliminary_report_program_book.authcheckdam.pdf Shelf Number: 133195 Keywords: Crime ControlGun Control PolicyGun ViolenceGuns (U.S.)HomicidePublic SafetySelf-DefenseStand Your Ground Laws |
Author: Landsdowne Technologies Inc. Title: Developing and Applying an Organized Crime Harm Index: A Scoping and Feasibility Study Summary: The over-arching goal of this study is to produce a report that assesses the feasibility and utility of developing and applying rigorous methodological and analytical models that can reliably measure the harm of organized crime in Canada. Within the context of exploring the development of an Organized Crime Harm Index, this study mandated the team to: - determine if harm assessment research can produce accurate and reliable findings; - analyze the utility of harm assessment research and indices in contributing to the larger goal of organized crime control; and - assess the feasibility and cost-effectiveness of implementing an Organized Crime Harm Index in Canada. 1.1 Research Findings and Analysis Accurately and reliably assessing the harm of organized crime in Canada Do reliable data and data sources exist within Canada for research that measure the scope of and harm caused by organized crime generally and for the development of an Organized Crime Harm Index specifically? This study concludes that, in general, there are insufficient existing sources of quantifiable data in Canada that could be used to reliably measure the scope and harm of the organized criminal activities prioritized in this report. This problem is epitomized by the shortcomings of police-recorded data, which is critical for harm assessment research into organized crime. The only national source of police-recorded data is collected through the Uniform Crime Reporting survey, which under-estimates the scope of criminal activities, is not representative of the population of criminal occurrences, and does not isolate incidents committed as part of organized criminal conspiracies. Outside of the UCR survey data; there is no national, centralized database of relevant, representative police-recorded data that can be sampled for quantitative research purposes. In short, much of the existing data that can be used to measure the scope and impact of organized criminal activities suffers from reliability issues in the sense that precise and accurate estimate of the scope of the problem are difficult to produce. Do rigorous data collection methods exist that can facilitate the production of reliable estimates of the scope and harms of organized crime in Canada? To what extent can data collection methods offset the inherent weaknesses of the data? To what extent can foreign models be replicated in Canada? Most quantitative studies that measure the scope and impact of organized crime rely on traditional criminological research methods, such as household surveys (to estimate the extent and impact of victimization or consumption of illegal goods and services) or surveys of police-recorded data ( in particular the Uniform Crime Reporting survey). Canadian researchers have implemented a number of rigorous methodologies and sophisticated analytical models that can serve as a partial foundation to estimate the scope and impact of at least some of the organized crime activities examined in this report. This can be augmented by methods and analytical models used in other countries. While these rigorous research designs and analytical models can help offset some of the weaknesses of the data, they cannot completely overcome the shortcomings as far as producing precise, accurate, nationally representative estimates of the scope and impact of organized criminal activities. The data collection and analytical models are also fraught with limitations that undermine the reliability of a harm index. Moreover, the methods employed in Canada to date have not produced comprehensive estimates of the scope and impact of the prioritized criminal activities. To produce the harm estimates required of a comprehensive OCHI, new data collection methods will have to be developed for most of the criminal activities or existing ones expanded to ensure comprehensiveness in terms of fully measuring the scope and impact of the prioritized criminal activities. The contribution of harm assessments to the larger goal of organized crime control in Canada Can an OCHI and supporting research contribute to the larger goal of organized crime control in Canada? Can such models assess whether enforcement initiatives have had some effect? This study found that harm assessment research, and harm indices specifically, can contribute to criminal justice policy-making. The literature review revealed studies that advocate the utility of harm assessment research in guiding public policy and programs, especially which respect to drug trafficking and illegal drug abuse. The growing importance of evidence-based policy-making, combined with the ostensible harm reduction purpose of the criminal justice system, underlies the utility of research that measures the scope and impact of crime. Some countries, such as the U.K., Australia, and New Zealand, have attempted to measure the harm of illegal drugs and integrate these measurements into a broader policy initiative. The U.K. has developed a Drug Harm Index to capture the harms generated by the problematic use of any illegal drug and is used as an analytical tool to monitor the success of national drug strategy policies in reducing harms. Interviews and focus groups with criminal justice policy-makers and operational personnel in Canada also revealed strong support for research that measures the harms caused by organized crime. Such research would nurture a better understanding of organized crime, which in turn, can serve numerous purposes at the intelligence, operational and public policy levels. This includes identifying specific and serious harms that need to be addressed through public policy and programs; prioritizing organized crime groups and activities operational targeting; and expanding the repertoire of approaches to dealing with organized crime and its aftermath, which includes a harm reduction approach. As in the U.K., a harm index can also be used to help evaluate organized crime control strategies and, as such, may contribute to more effective and cost-effective control strategies. However, this study concludes that it is unlikely that a harm index potentially could be used to evaluate tactical law enforcement operations. The feasibility and cost-effectiveness of conducting harm assessment research Is an OCHI feasible? Are studies that measure the scope and harms of organized criminal activities feasible? Are they cost-effective? Can such models be implemented in a feasible and cost-effective manner in Canada? A national, comprehensive OCHI will be costly due, in part, to the necessity of measuring a wide range of criminal activities and the complexity of any research that attempts to measure the scope and impact of organized crime. The cost-effectiveness of implementing an OCHI is undermined by the lack of a reliable centralized national repository of relevant, quantifiable police-recorded data and the significant challenges that may be encountered in convincing law enforcement agencies to share information. An increase in the cost-effectiveness of the research may be realized by using the same instrument to collect information on different organized criminal activities (e.g., a comprehensive household victimization survey). The rigour of the research methodology and reliability of the findings positively correlates with the budget provided. Thus, inadequate funding (and other half measures) will undermine the rigour of the research and the reliability of the findings. 1.2 Conclusion This research identified numerous benefits of an OCHI in informing and assessing organized crime control strategies. All future considerations of an OCHI, however, are contingent upon the ability of the supporting research and analysis to produce reasonably precise and reliable estimates. In general, the results of any research that measures the scope and impact of organized crime must be treated as broad estimates; it is unlikely that the scope of or harms caused by organized crime can be measured with exacting precision or accuracy. This is due to the inherently hidden and secretive nature of organized crime and the significant limitations of existing data sources, data collection methods, and analytical models. Governments in other developed countries have funded research that measures the harm caused by organized crime activities, in particular illegal drugs, and have pledged to use the results to inform public policy decisions. The indices that result from the research (e.g. the U.K. Drug Harm Index) take into consideration the shortcomings and limitations of the data. Doing so, however, undermines and narrows the public policy utility of the index. Canada does boast a number of experts, rigorous research designs, sophisticated analytical models, and existing harm assessment studies that can form the basis of an OCHI. However, there are significant weaknesses in existing data sources in this country, which is compounded by shortcomings in data collection methodologies and analytical models. Because of these weaknesses and shortcomings, it is unlikely that precise and rigorous data can be inputted into and reliable and precise estimates produced from an OCHI. The development and implementation of a rigorous, comprehensive, and national OCHI in Canada is a highly ambitious and complex endeavour that will require a nation-wide criminological/criminal justice research strategy that will be unprecedented in this country. It will also be costly, reaching into the millions of dollars, with no guarantee as to the degree of precision, reliability, and accuracy of the findings or its use or utility by government policy makers. The extent to which governments and other key partners are willing to undertake the development and implementation of an OCHI will be contingent upon their willingness to invest in an ambitious, complex, and costly research project, while assuming the risks that it may not yield accurate or reliable results. Details: Ottawa: Research and National Coordination, Organized Crime Division, Law Enforcement and Policy Branch, Public Safety Canada, 2010. 186p. Source: Internet Resource: Report No. 011, 2010. Accessed October 28, 2016 at: http://publications.gc.ca/collections/collection_2012/sp-ps/PS4-99-2010-eng.pdf Year: 2010 Country: Canada URL: http://publications.gc.ca/collections/collection_2012/sp-ps/PS4-99-2010-eng.pdf Shelf Number: 144943 Keywords: Crime ControlCrime PreventionOrganized Crime |