Execution Without Trial: Police Homicide and the Constitution

This analysis of police homicide and the Constitution leads to the conclusion that the present state laws are unconstitutional, not just in the common-law states, but in the Model Penal Code and forcible felony states as well.\u27 The present laws of every state in the union deny police homicide victims fifth and fourteenth amendment rights to due process, allow the punishment of death to be imposed in a cruel and unusual fashion, and appear to deny equal protection to blacks. The only constitutional alternative apparent is to remove police homicide from the realm of punishment and confine justification for it to the self-defense doctrine, more properly called a defense-of-life doctrine. In short, the conclusion is that the police throughout the country should adopt the first section of the firearms policy of the Federal Bureau of Investigation

A Microeconomic Study of Commercial Real Estate Brokerage Firms

While residential brokerage has been widely studied, the operating characteristics on income property brokerage firms have received little attention in the literature. In this paper, we analyze results from a survey of income property brokers to measure profitability scale effects, and expenditures at the firm level. We find that while scale economies exist for expenses, net income per producer falls as firms grow; the optimally sized firm is comparatively small. Although inconsistencies with results from recent residential brokerage studies may relate to the survey period, they may also support a view that residential and income brokerage firms are structurally different.

How to Count Crime: the Cambridge Harm Index Consensus

Funder: University of CambridgeAbstract: Crime statistics require a radical transformation if they are to provide transparent information for the general public, as well as police operational decision-making. This statement provides a blueprint for such a transformation

Goldilocks and the three “Ts”: Targeting, testing, and tracking for “just right” democratic policing

Abstract: Research Summary: Police are often criticized for doing “too much” or “too little” policing in various situations. These criticisms amount to testable hypotheses about whether “less” force, or intensity, or enforcement would have been enough, or whether “more” was needed. The rise of evidence‐based policing provides a starting point for public dialogues about those hypotheses, in ways that could help to build police legitimacy. Such dialogues can be focused on the questions posed by the three “Ts”: (1) Is police action targeted in a way that is proportionate to the harm that it can prevent? (2) Has the action been tested and found effective with the kinds of targets, and their levels of harm, where it is being used? (3) Is police action tracked to ensure it is delivered in the way that has been tested, and in compliance with relevant legal requirements? In this lecture, I frame the issue as follows: Can more widespread use of better research evidence on targeting, testing, and tracking police actions, shared more clearly among the public and police, help reduce the wide range of oscillation between over‐policing and under‐policing? Policy Implications: The use of these questions in public dialogue would be especially relevant to the three biggest threats to police legitimacy in the aftermath of George Floyd's murder: (A) police killing people, (B) police stopping people, and (C) police under‐patrolling high‐crime hot spots (while over‐patrolling low‐crime areas). One result of applying the three‐Ts questions to these threats, for example, could be the end of the vast overuse of stop and search in low‐violence areas. At the same time, this approach could also lead to reductions in homicide by increasing stops in highest violence hot spots. Such changes could demonstrate how the “Goldilocks principle” for the three Ts could get policing closer to “just right” for each place and person being policed

Predicting Domestic Homicide and Serious Violence in Leicestershire with Intelligence Records of Suicidal Ideation or Self-Harm Warnings: a Retrospective Analysis

$\textit{Research Question}$ Does prior information retained in police intelligence records about an offender’s suicidal tendencies help to predict a future domestic homicide or attempted homicide? $\textit{Data}$ Records on 158,379 arrestees in 1997–2015 were examined for suicidal or selfharm warnings by date of entry and compared to 620 offenders identified in cases of domestic homicides or serious violence over the same time period. $\textit{Methods}$ The percentage of offenders in domestic homicide and serious violence cases who were known to have reported suicidal ideation prior to those crimes was compared to the overall percentage of arrested persons who had such reports. $\textit{Findings}$ Of the total 620 deadly violence offenders, 125 had a marker for suicide or self-harm, of which 35 (5.6%) were posted prior to the deadly domestic violence. Of the 80 homicide cases (excluding grievous bodily harm), 7 had suicide or self-harm markers prior to the homicidal offence, for a rate of 8.75%. These rates compare to an overall marker rate among the 158,379 arrestees in the time period studied, of whom 7,241 were identified as holding a warning marker at the point of data collection for this study in 2016, which equated to only 5% of the group, of which an estimated 38% would have occurred prior to a crime (2,752 cases), or 1.7% of the 158,379. By that metric, it is three times more likely that offenders charged with an act of deadly domestic violence had prior suicidal warning markers than offenders not charged with such crimes (5.6/1.7 = 3.3), and 5.2 times more likely for homicide offenders to have a prior marker than for all arrestees. $\textit{Conclusions}$ Police intelligence system markers for suicide or self-harm can provide valuable information for building more accurate prediction models for domestic homicide and serious assaults

Targeting Knife-Enabled Homicides for Preventive Policing: A Stratified Resource Allocation Model

Funder: University of CambridgeAbstract Research Question How can police translate differing risk levels for knife homicide into a resource allocation model that follows the evidence? Data The data for this publication are taken from the open access tables published in this journal by Massey et al. Cambridge Journal of Evidence-Based Policing, 3:1-20, (2019). Those data show the linear relationship between the number of non-fatal knife assaults in a lower super output area (LSOA) in 1 year and the risk of a knife-enable homicide in the subsequent year, as well as how many of the 4835 LSOAs fell into each of five levels of increasing homicide risk. Methods The data from Massey’s research are re-calculated to show how a hypothetical number of 15-min police patrols could be allocated across all areas on the basis of a combination of knife-enabled (KE) homicide risk level and the volume of LSOAs at each of the five levels of knife homicide risk. We display these results using both tables and multi-layered “wedding cake” images to show the size of different dimensions of each level, including proportion of total homicides and directed patrol frequency per LSOA at each of the five risk levels. Findings Based on the hypothetical allocation of 10,000 patrol visits of 15 min in length, the highest risk group, with a forecasted 6% of all KE homicides, would receive 600 police patrols, divided by the 41 LSOAs at that risk level = 15 patrols across every 10 days. At the lowest level of risk, the 2787 LSOAs would share the 3000 patrols that a group of LSOAs would recieve for having 30% of homicides, which equals 1.1 patrols every 10 days. The hypothetical premise is that every LSOA gets some patrol, but the highest risk areas get 15 times more patrol to follow the evidence of risk. The formula is to (1) allocate resources by proportion of homicide at each risk level; (2) divide the allocated resources by the number of areas in each risk level group; and (3) allocate the resulting resources per day to each area in each of the 5 levels. Conclusion Police face difficult tradeoffs between targeting more policing to fewer areas of higher risk (with more efficiency) or to more areas of lower risk (with more effectiveness). The use of a formula combining risk and volume can help guide such decisions, illustrated by a layered “wedding cake” visualization for gaining clarity and legitimacy in communications. </jats:sec

Equal Protection by Race with Stop and Frisk: a Risk-Adjusted Disparity (RAD) Index for Balanced Policing

Abstract: Research Question: Can racial equity in crime and policing be measured with the use of a Risk-Adjusted Disparity (RAD) Index of the degree to which policing across racial categories is “balanced” in its ratios of preventive police actions per 100 serious crimes committed against members of each racial category? Data: Office of National Statistics (ONS) reports on crime and policing in England and Wales, and Dorset Police data on violent crime victimization and stop-search by race of suspect across the 452 Lower-Layer Super-Output Levels in Dorset. Methods: We conceptualize the problem of equal protection under law as fundamentally protecting the lives and liberties of each citizen from criminal harms, as well as from disproportionately intrusive policing. We combine these dimensions into a single metric that defines proportionality of policing in relation to risk of violent crime victimization, such that whatever intrusion on liberty is applied for the aim of protection can be equalized across racial groups. Findings: The use of a Risk-Adjusted Disparity (RAD) Index to measure reliably the equality of police intrusions across racial groups based on victimization rates can be illustrated by adjusting for homicide. In the past decade, the population-based disparity rate shows that Blacks are stopped by police nine times more often than whites. When that rate is adjusted for the differential risk of homicide in the two groups, the disparity estimate drops from 800% to 58%. Other changes of major magnitude result from using the RAD Index. Conclusions: We conclude that an index of proactive policing using victimizations by race is more likely to lead to equal protection of law than a residential population-based metric of proactive police actions, as is commonly used in official reporting. A victim-based, Risk-Adjusted (RAD) Index for measuring racial disparity might focus police efforts on the 5% of local areas where serious violence is concentrated, and deflect stops away from the vast majority of areas that have little serious crime