Assessing Cross-Sector Stakeholder Perspectives on Oakland (CA)’s Juvenile Reentry System

We surveyed 75 staff and administrators involved in Oakland (CA)’s Second Chance Initiative from diverse agencies (e.g., probation, behavioral health, public health/medical, education, community-based service providers) to assess the local juvenile reentry system. Sharing and using data across partner agencies, mutual trust, opportunities for interagency collaboration, system-level youth and family engagement, shared governance, and limited resources repeatedly arose as areas for improvement. Many defined reentry success using positive youth developmental outcomes. Government and community perspectives around barriers and effectiveness often differed with some similarities.

State-Level Firearm Transfer Policy

The aim of the present study was to determine whether latent class analysis (LCA) could obtain a measure of the aggregate firearm transfer law environment. LCA, analysis of variance, and multinomial logistic regression were used to analyze state-level firearm transfer laws. Results indicated that a three-class solution fit the data better than a two- or four-class solution. These classes were associated with the two covariates in patterns consistent with hypotheses. Results suggest that LCA is a useful technique for classifying states based on the restrictiveness of firearm transfer laws. This classification may be useful in intervention and prevention planning.

What Factors Influence an Officer’s Decision to Shoot? The Promise and Limitations of Using Public Data

We analyze a set of 207 Dallas Police Department officer-involved shooting incidents in reference to 1,702 instances in which officers from the same agency drew their firearms but did not shoot at the suspect. We find that situational factors of whether the suspect was armed and whether an officer was injured were the best predictors of the decision to shoot. We also find that African Americans are less likely than Whites to be shot. It is important to collect data on encounters in which weapons are and are not discharged. Analyses examining only shootings is fundamentally limited in assessing racial bias.

State Implementation of the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act

The 2006 Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA), Title I of the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act, established federal standards related to the content and operation of sex offender registration and notification systems across the United States. As of early 2017, over a decade following passage, 18 of 50 states had been designated by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) as having substantially implemented SORNA—figures that might be initially interpreted as indicators of a failed policy. Yet a closer analysis suggests that SORNA implementation is complex and multifaceted and that viewing the policy’s “success” through such a binary prism may be inherently limited. In this context, the current study offers a multidimensional analysis of state-level SORNA implementation based on data abstracted from DOJ records. Findings indicate that many aspects of SORNA have been universally or widely implemented, that most states have adopted policies that are consistent with a majority of SORNA standards, and that barriers to SORNA implementation are concentrated among a limited subset of issues, notably those related to retroactive application, registration of juveniles, and means of classifying registrants. Implications for state and federal policy governing sex offender registration are discussed.

Prevalence, Form, and Function of Consolidated Public Safety Departments in the United States

Most communities in the United States provide fire and police services through separate departments, but some operate a single consolidated one for police, fire, and, frequently, emergency medical services. The number of such public safety departments has grown in recent years, but little systematic research has been done on them. This article presents results of a census and subsequent survey of public safety departments in the United States to examine their prevalence, form, and function. It reviews characteristics of their distribution, capabilities and structure, staffing and management, budget, and approach to community policing. It concludes by identifying future research needs.

Utilizing Incident-Based Crime Data to Inform Strategic Interventions

A public health approach to violence prevention involves the empirical identification of groups and communities at the highest risk for violence to inform targeted interventions. We demonstrate the utility of complete incident-level crime data toward this end. Data for 32,056 unique incidents involving homicide, aggravated assault, and robbery were extracted from the 2013 Michigan Incident Crime Reporting system, a statewide National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) data system. Differential victimization rates were calculated across demographic subgroups and jurisdictions to identify patterns in risk. Two-stage least squares regression models were estimated to examine correlates of variation in excess risk. Analyses identified young Black males and females at relatively high risk for violent victimization, and that this risk was amplified within cities with disproportionately high crime rates. Multivariate models suggested concentrated disadvantage as the most stable correlate of variation in excess risk across Michigan cities and towns. The results highlight the importance of expanding NIBRS adoption and the deployment of focused interventions involving both short-term enforcement and long-term social reinvestment.

Large-Capacity Magazines and the Casualty Counts in Mass Shootings

Do bans on large-capacity magazines (LCMs) for semiautomatic firearms have significant potential for reducing the number of deaths and injuries in mass shootings? The most common rationale for an effect of LCM use is that they allow mass killers to fire many rounds without reloading. LCMs are known to have been used in less than one third of 1% of mass shootings. News accounts of 23 shootings in which more than six people were killed or wounded and LCMs were known to have been used, occurring in the United States in 1994–2013, were examined. There was only one incident in which the shooter may have been stopped by bystander intervention when he tried to reload. In all of these 23 incidents, the shooter possessed either multiple guns or multiple magazines, meaning that the shooter, even if denied LCMs, could have continued firing without significant interruption by either switching loaded guns or changing smaller loaded magazines with only a 2- to 4-seconds delay for each magazine change. Finally, the data indicate that mass shooters maintain such slow rates of fire that the time needed to reload would not increase the time between shots and thus the time available for prospective victims to escape.

Classifying Prisoner Returns

Scholars often use administrative corrections data to identify the reasons that offenders return to prison, though such data usually obscure more complex processes underlying the cause of a return. This article describes the procedural nuances that make it difficult to record prison return paths and discusses these limitations. We focus on data elements and recording practices commonly found in administrative databases and discuss whether and how researchers may use these data to reliably identify/classify returns. We provide empirical demonstrations of these arguments using publicly available data and conclude that more extensive data are often needed to accomplish this objective.