​​This brief summarizes the results of a two-year, international research project covering drug addiction treatment versus punishment in Austria, Poland, and Spain. It features:

-An analysis of the national drug-related legislation and its application in these countries

- An evaluation of drug laws and policies by both the law enforcement and drug treatment practitioners

-An evaluation of drug-addicted offenders undergoing drug treatment versus punishment and their outcomes

The basic findings of the project can be summarized as follows: drug...

This Brief provides a detailed guide to national data sources that collect and report data on homicides in the United States, and some key international sources abroad. It provides in-depth coverage of well-known sources, and highlights more obscure sources, providing a useful tool for research design and planning across disciplines.

This Brief includes detailed discussions of the benchmark sources in the United States: police data compiled by the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Uniform Crime Reporting Programs, as well as the Center for Disease Control and Prevention's National...

This brief takes the reader through a 10-year journey of seeking to embed Evidence Based Policing within one of the largest police forces in the world - the Metropolitan Police Service in London, England - from the inside. As a topic, Evidence Based Policing has generated considerable recent interest and academic discussion - although largely remains without a consistent guiding voice for police practitioners.

The aim of the brief is to expand upon the current discussions and address this gap within the day-to-day reality of policing where translation of research is a routine...

This Brief examines the role of Police Unions in law enforcement policy development. It provides an overview of the historical and political background of police labor unions, and takes a critical look at the shifting perception of labor unions from generally positive to somewhat negative, to compare this perception with their real impact. It examines the perceived role that unions play, whether positive, negative, or neutral in the development and advancement of contemporary law enforcement agencies and their respective policies.

This work provides a multisite survey of police...

This Brief presents a framework for understanding the role of school and neighborhood contexts in the development of self-control. Through the application of Gottfredson and Hirschi's general theory of crime and Shaw and McKay's social disorganization theory, the authors of this Brief examine the importance of family socialization and school and neighborhood for self-control of youth in three Russian cities, replicating results from an earlier study in Germany.

The cases presented in the Brief found that family socialization is important for self-control, but it interacts with...

Whileconfidential informants (CI s)can play a crucial role in police investigations, they also have the potential to cause great harm ifthey are dishonest. The process by which police agencies qualify a CI to work and the strength of agency policy may be the source of the problem. This Brief examines the integrity problem involving CIs in police operations within the United States, provides an overview of pitfalls and problems related to veracity and informant integrity including the difficulties in detecting when a CI is lying, and compares the provisions of actual published police policy...

This Brief examines criminal careers by providing the most extensive and comprehensive investigation to date on the official offending, self-reported offending, and trajectories of offending of the Pittsburgh Youth Study (PYS) participants. The PYS is a longitudinal study, which was initiated in 1987, and involves repeated follow-ups on several community cohorts (starting in grades 1, 4, and 7) of inner-city boys in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. This Brief covers the Youngest and Oldest PYS cohorts (which had the most follow-up and most data available) from ages 10-30. It provides the most...

This Brief provides a quantitative and qualitative analysis of proactive strategies for management transitions in criminal justice and other public administration civic service agencies. These organizations have a unique need for managing transitions effectively.

Compared to private organizations: they have a relatively high frequency of management transitions due to the terms of elected and appointed officials, and these new managers more often come from outside the organization.

Through an mixed-methods study of criminal justice command level staff in New York state,...