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The purpose of this paper is to examine how both offenders and their families perceived their interactions with police and whether there were negative consequences of the offender-focused strategy that was implemented in a hot spots policing experiment.

Data from interviews of 32 offenders and 29 family members are examined qualitatively for themes to evaluate how the strategy was carried out and how it impacted offenders’ behavior and both groups’ perceptions of the police detectives and the strategy overall.

The results show that there was overwhelming agreement by both offenders and their family members that the police detectives who contacted them treated both groups with dignity and respect. After the contact was over, the offenders appeared to commit less crime, followed probation more closely, and had positive feelings about what the police detectives were trying to do. Improvement of the offenders’ relationships with their families was an unanticipated finding indicating a diffusion of benefits of the strategy.

The results suggest that when procedural justice principles are used in an offender-focused police intervention, positive impact can be achieved without negative consequences.

This is a rare example of an in-depth evaluation of the perceptions of offenders and family members contacted through a hot spots policing offender-focused strategy.

The purpose of this paper is to describe and test a quantitative harm-focused approach to offender selection for investigation and surveillance. The approach incorporates a measure of crime harm as well as a time-decay function that adjusts the score downward for offenders who desist from crime.

Across 10 of 21 high-crime police districts in the city of Philadelphia, the authors compare the mean harm scores of 60 prolific offenders selected by district analysts, 60 prolific offenders selected citywide by detectives assigned to the Gun Violence Reduction Task Force and the top 60 prolific offenders chosen from a harm-score generated list of known offenders in the ten high-crime districts.

The offenders on the harm-focused list have significantly greater mean harm scores than the offenders identified by the crime analysts or task force personnel. They have a significantly greater mean number of gun crime episodes in their offending history as well.

The harm-focused approach uses arrest data that may not accurately reflect convictions and which miss undetected criminal activity. A leader of a criminal organization who orchestrates criminal activities but does not engage directly may have a low harm score. Arrest data may also suffer from some inherent bias. The approach also requires the creation of a crime harm index. Determining the operational impact on overall crime reduction by focusing on offenders with higher harm scores will require further research.

Clinical methods of target selection based on officer intuition, opinion and experience may have limitations in terms of effectiveness and accuracy. They also lack transparency and may incorporate bias, a critical consideration given the current crisis in police-community trust and legitimacy. The actuarial method of weighing the harm of past offending with a crime harm score may be more acceptable and defendable to the community. It also identifies offenders with a higher frequency of involvement in gun crimes. Until methodological limitations are better understood, a compromise may be to start with the harm-score method (data-driven) and supplement this initial list through intelligence and investigative information.

The paper expands crime harm indices to quantify offender triage lists. The authors also empirically demonstrate through a case study that the approach is more effective at identifying harmful offenders than methods that solely rely on the experience or intuition of either crime analysts or detectives.

Changing environments demand that police improve their effectiveness in reducing crime, while maintaining community confidence, support and legitimacy. How can police agencies encourage third parties to take responsibility for crime problems while avoiding inequitable outcomes?

The evidence for effective policing for crime reduction is examined, with a focus on third party policing. Potential adverse outcomes are discussed, and a normative framework is proposed.

Third party policing that is both effective and legitimacy enhancing is possible, if four key principles are observed. These are conducting a broad planning approach that includes consideration of the detriments as well as the benefits of strategies especially to vulnerable community members, clearly identified goals and the use of the least coercive means possible, clearly articulated policies and protocols, and institutional and individual accountability for strategy implementation and outcomes.

There is emerging evidence about the effectiveness of regulatory approaches to crime reduction, such as third party policing, but little attention has been paid to its potential for inequitable outcomes and impact on police legitimacy.

This article aims to inform the reader of the developments around integrated offender management (IOM) arrangements with a particular focus on the issues in relation to workforce development and responding to emerging support needs.

The article is designed to take the reader through an IOM development journey, its key principles and some common issues on which the Government departments are supporting local areas.

The article emphasises that integrated offender management should not be seen as a programme or scheme. Rather, it is a locally agreed strategic framework for bringing together different offender‐focused programmes and approaches. It highlights the need for a skilled work force at both strategic and operational levels, in order to mainstream effective and efficient offender management approaches.

A focus on workforce development and training can be expected to help local areas to develop an agreed vision for the local IOM approach and raise awareness of it at all levels, to help to mainstream the approach.

The article highlights the importance of workforce development to the effectiveness of IOM and invites areas to engage with the Home Office.

Locus of control (LOC) is the manner in which one attributes their ability to make change in life. This could be through others, fate or chance (externalised), or through oneself (internalised). An internalised LOC results in greater self-belief in the ability to change one's behaviour. Non-disabled offenders with an internalised LOC are more likely to benefit from treatment through therapy and in turn have reduced rates of re-offending. The relationship between LOC and response to treatment is only understood in a limited way for offenders with intellectual disability (ID) who participate in treatment programmes. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

To better understand LOC for offenders with ID, this paper investigates its role in community-based therapy outcomes along with its use as a common pre-/post-measure of treatment success in mainstream offender populations. Drawing upon these findings information more specific to people with ID will be discussed.

This paper will then explore the importance of LOC in treating offenders with ID through a review of the current published literature, which generally indicates offenders with ID demonstrate a tendency towards an external LOC in comparison with non-disabled or non-offender groups.

Given the negative implications for treatment that external LOC may play, several significant therapeutic strategies that can contribute to development of internalised LOC are discussed, in addition to a consideration of other possible variables separate from ID that may play a role in both developing or perpetuating an external LOC.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the extent to which intelligence officers integrated at the patrol level contribute to successful case outcomes through information sharing.

This study utilizes multinomial logistic regression to analyze the outcomes of three years of Intelligence Officer Reports (IORs) submitted by officers trained in the Phoenix Police Department’s Intelligence Officer Program.

The majority of IORs are either tangible case successes or intelligence successes that have the capacity to become these, as opposed to non-successes. The type of success is impacted by a number of predictors. These include case categorization, nature of crime, information-gathering methods and perceived validity of information. Perceived reliability of information was the only non-significant predictor.

The study suggests the benefits of looking at multiple predictors of success in understanding the value of information gathered by intelligence officers in the field. Limitations include a fair amount of missing data and potential lack of generalizability to other agencies. Future research will also consider alternative ways of measuring success and the nesting of reports within officers.

The study provides insight into key factors for optimizing tangible case outcomes when institutionalizing intelligence-led policing at the patrol level.

This is the first study to consider how intelligence-led policing at the patrol level may influence case outcomes, and, in turn, what factors may contribute to this. Findings provide some initial considerations for optimizing desirable case outcomes.

The majority of the previous research on hot spots policing focuses on a single set of relatively small selected experimental areas. However, given limited resources, most law enforcement agencies dispatch hot spots intervention units to several areas on a rotation basis. The purpose of this paper is to examine policing activities in hot spots to determine if the various types of crimes were affected when deployment was applied on a rotation basis.

This study uses data from the Dallas Police Department. The differential influence of police activities, including stops, citations, and arrests, are observed against a number of aggregate crime measures (i.e. violent, property, nuisance offenses, and total index crimes). The impact of police activities have been observed for their immediate and lagged effects during the following week to measure residual deterrence effects.

It was found that the DPD's Disruption Unit's hot spots policing immediately affected violent crimes, nuisance offenses, and total index crimes, while there were no residual effects of hot spots policing. The Disruption Unit was engaged in policing activities that include motor vehicle and pedestrian stops, issuing citations, and making arrests. Among these activities, the number of police stops was the most significant factor for the reduction in violent crime and nuisance offenses.

The researchers use a patrol sector as a unit of analysis in order to compare the influence of various types of police activities on crime across a broader area. Future research should consider using an intermediate geographic unit of analysis (e.g. patrol beat).

The paper examines the differential influence of policing activities on different types of crime around hot spots when deployment was applied on a rotation basis. Both immediate and lagged effects were investigated to find residual deterrence effects of hot spots policing.

This study aims to critically evaluate the trajectory of the “Child First” guiding principle for youth justice in England and Wales, which challenges adult-centric constructions of children (when they offend) as “threatening” and asserts a range of theoretical and principled assumptions about the nature of childhood and children’s evolving capacity.

Focussing on how Child First seeks to transcend the socio-historically bifurcated (polarised/dichotomised) thinking and models/strategies/frameworks of youth justice, this study examines the extent and nature of this binary thinking and its historical and contemporary influence on responses to children’s offending, latterly manifested as more hybridised (yet still discernibly bifurcated) approaches.

Analyses identified an historical and contemporary influence on bifurcated responses to offending by children in the United Kingdom/England and Wales, subsequently manifested as more hybridised (yet still discernibly bifurcated) approaches. Analyses also identified a contemporary, progressive challenge to bifurcated youth justice thinking, policy and practice through the “Child First” guiding principle.

By tracing the trajectory of Child First as an explicit, progressive challenge to previous youth justice thinking and formal “approaches”, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, they are the first to question whether, in taking this approach, Child First represents a clean break with the past, or is just the latest in a series of strategic realignments in youth justice seeking to resolve inherent tensions between competing constructions of children and their behaviour.

The reinvigoration of restorative justice (RJ) within criminal justice has brought with it many opportunities but also significant challenges. The purpose of this paper is to explore the current considerations when providing a quality RJ service that meet the needs of victim, offender the community and the criminal justice system.

This paper is a personal viewpoint of the author obtained from working nationally in the criminal justice arena specifically advising on RJ to police forces, police and crime commissioners and others.

Findings suggest the provision of RJ in the UK is patchy, and the provision of a quality provision even more of a challenge.

Consideration given to the need for quality not to be sacrificed in the advancement of RJ and some of the implications of this.

Offers perspectives on the application of RJ in new and rapidly growing arenas.