research paper on crime in america

Search form

• Find Stories
• For Journalists

Image credit: Getty Images

Reducing gun violence: Stanford scholars tackle the issue

After 19 children and two teachers were slaughtered by a gunman at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, many Americans are asking, yet again, how to prevent future acts of senseless violence from occurring. What gun laws need to be changed? Why is it so difficult to pass regulations? How can Second Amendment rights be balanced with firearm safety? 

Stanford scholars have been studying these issues from a range of perspectives, including law, politics, economics, and medicine. Here are some of their findings.

Update: May 25, 2022: This story was originally published on Feb. 26, 2018, and has been updated to include new content.

Causes, impacts of gun violence

Uncovering the causes of gun violence has been a challenge, in part because research is limited by federal legislation that constrains research funding on the issue. Scholar Nigam Shah at the Stanford School of Medicine has written about how this has affected empirical study. But that has not deterred scholars from examining its impacts. David Studdert, also at the School of Medicine, has studied the devastating consequences of gun violence, particularly the risks it poses to public health.  

Maya Rossin-Slater, an associate professor of medicine and a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR), has also looked at the long-term impact of gun violence, specifically among American children who experienced a shooting at their school. Rossin-Slater found that they have higher rates of absenteeism, lower high school and college graduation rates, and by their mid-twenties, earn lower incomes.

Below is some of that research. 

Californians living with handgun owners more than twice as likely to die by homicide, study finds

Residents who don’t own a handgun but live with someone who does are significantly more likely to die by homicide compared with those in gun-free homes, research shows.

New study of gun violence in schools identifies long-term harms

Research from SIEPR’s Maya Rossin-Slater finds that students exposed to school shootings face “lasting, persistent” adversity in their educational and long-term economic outcomes.

Shirin Sinnar on the Buffalo shooting, hate crimes, and domestic terrorism

In the wake of the Buffalo shooting, Stanford Law School’s Shirin Sinnar discusses the scale of white supremacist violence in the U.S. and the rise of hate crimes.

Disconnect: The gap between gun violence and research in numbers

Gun violence is much discussed but little studied, largely due to federal decisions governing research funding. A new analysis highlights just how big the gap between the violence and our knowledge of it is. The answer? It’s huge.

Supporting students exposed to school shootings

Maya Rossin-Slater talks about her research into the mental health impact of severe school violence.

Panel discusses how shootings affect those unscathed by bullets

A panel of faculty members at the School of Medicine said shootings can affect the mental health of people close to the violence.

California handgun sales spiked after two mass shootings

In the six weeks after the Newtown and San Bernardino mass shootings, handguns sales jumped in California, yet there is little research on why – or on the implications for public health, according to a Stanford researcher.

Mass shootings: Public face of a much larger epidemic

While mass shootings have become the public face of gun violence, they account for less than 1% of the 40,000 firearm deaths each year.  

Short-term hospital readmissions for gun injuries cost $86 million a year

A study from Stanford researchers has found that readmissions account for 9.5% of the $911 million spent annually on gun-injury hospitalizations.

Supporting children through loss

Rabbi Patricia Karlin-Neumann talks about how to help young people experiencing grief.

Firearm injuries in children, teens costly for U.S. health care system, Stanford study finds

The average cost of initial hospitalization to treat pediatric gun injuries is about $13,000 per patient and has risen in recent decades, a Stanford Medicine study found.

Investigating psychiatric illnesses of mass shooters

Ira Glick and his collaborators studied the psychiatric state of 35 mass shooters in the United States who survived the incidents, which took place between 1982 and 2019.

The silent cost of school shootings

SIEPR’s Maya Rossin-Slater finds the average rate of antidepressant use among youths under age 20 rose by 21 percent in the local communities where fatal school shootings occurred.

New study analyzes recent gun violence research

Consensus is growing in recent research evaluating the impact of right-to-carry concealed handgun laws, showing that they increase violent crime, despite what older research says.

Handgun ownership associated with much higher suicide risk

Men who own handguns are eight times more likely to die of gun suicides than men who don’t own handguns, and women who own handguns are 35 times more likely than women who don’t.

Advice on how to cope with the threat of school shootings

Victor Carrion offers advice on how families can cope with the stress of school safety.

Reducing gun violence

Many Americans are demanding practical steps to reduce gun crime. One way is to have more stringent gun safety policies, such as legislation requiring guns to be stored safely, more stringent background checks, or as President Biden announced Tuesday, a federal ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. 

Research has shown that states with tighter policies save lives: One study by Stephanie Chao found that states with stricter gun laws have lower rates of gun deaths among children and teenagers, and states with child prevention access laws are linked with fewer gun suicides in this age group.

“If you put more regulations on firearms, it does make a difference,” said Chao, assistant professor of surgery and senior author of the study. “It does end up saving children’s lives.” Her analysis found that states with the strictest laws had a mortality rate of 2.6 per 100,000 and for states with the least strict laws, mortality rate was almost double at 5.0 per 100,000.  

John Donohue: One tragic week with two mass shootings and the uniquely American gun problem

In a Q&A, Stanford Law School gun law expert John J. Donohue III discusses mass shootings in the U.S., the challenges facing police when confronting powerful automatic weapons and the prospect of gun safety laws.

Lax state gun laws linked to more child gun deaths

States with strict gun laws have lower rates of gun deaths among children and teenagers, and laws to keep guns away from minors are linked with fewer gun suicides in this age group, a Stanford study found.

Improved gun buyer background checks would impede some mass shootings, Stanford expert says

Stanford Law Professor John Donohue says a background check system that was universal and effectively operated could impede gun acquisition by people who commit mass shootings.

How to solve more gun crimes without spending more money

Simple tweaks to how police process bullet casings could dramatically improve their forensic data.

Reducing civilian firepower would boost police and community safety, Stanford expert says

In addition to restricting the firepower a person can amass, Stanford law Professor John J. Donohue advocates efforts to build trust between communities and law enforcement agencies as a way to enhance both police and citizen safety.

Stricter gun laws reduce child and adolescent gun deaths, Stanford study finds

Laws that keep guns away from young people are especially strongly linked to lower rates of gun suicides in youth.

Gun legislation and policy

For nearly three decades, law Professor John Donohue III has studied what can be done to prevent gun violence in the United States. A lawyer and economist, Donohue explores how law and public policy are connected to gun violence, including how gun laws in the U.S. compare to other countries, as well as how legislation varies across the states, to better understand the effect that has on rates of violence. 

“The U.S. is by far the world leader in the number of guns in civilian hands,” Donohue explained . “The stricter gun laws of other ‘advanced countries’ have restrained homicidal violence, suicides and gun accidents – even when, in some cases, laws were introduced over massive protests from their armed citizens.” 

Here are some of his findings, and other research related to legislating gun safety in the U.S.

Stanford’s John Donohue on guns, mass shootings and the law in the U.S.

On Nov. 30, American students were once again the victims of a school shooting. Stanford law Professor John Donohue discusses the case and gun violence in the U.S.

How U.S. gun control compares to the rest of the world

While deaths from mass shootings are a relatively small part of the overall homicidal violence in America, they are particularly wrenching. The problem is worse in the U.S. than in most other industrialized nations. And it’s getting worse.

4 gun control steps U.S. needs now

John Donohue pens an opinion piece for CNN laying out four steps the United States should take to strengthen gun legislation.

Violent crime increases in right-to-carry states

Stanford Law School Professor John Donohue found that states that adopted right-to-carry concealed handgun laws have experienced a 13 to 15 percent increase in violent crime in the 10 years after enacting those laws.

Another mass shooting: An update on U.S. gun laws

In a Q&A, John Donohue discusses gun safety law and legislative developments.

Stanford GSE holds teach-in on research into gun violence in schools

Education scholars look at the evidence behind policy ideas to address school shootings.

Will Americans ever think differently about guns?

Stanford medicine and law professor David Studdert thinks more public health evidence is needed before cultural attitudes around gun safety and violence will change.

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

• Publications
• Account settings

Preview improvements coming to the PMC website in October 2024. Learn More or Try it out now .

• Advanced Search
• Journal List
• Springer Nature - PMC COVID-19 Collection

Reflections on Criminal Justice Reform: Challenges and Opportunities

Pamela k. lattimore.

RTI International, 3040 East Cornwallis Road, Research Triangle Park, NC 27703 USA

Associated Data

Data are cited from a variety of sources. Much of the BJS data cited are available from the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data, Interuniversity Consortium for Political and Social Research. The SVORI data and the Second Chance Act AORDP data are also available from NACJD.

Considerable efforts and resources have been expended to enact reforms to the criminal justice system over the last five decades. Concerns about dramatic increases in violent crime beginning in the late Sixties and accelerating into the 1980s led to the “War on Drugs” and the “War on Crime” that included implementation of more punitive policies and dramatic increases in incarceration and community supervision. More recent reform efforts have focused on strategies to reduce the negative impacts of policing, the disparate impacts of pretrial practices, and better strategies for reducing criminal behavior. Renewed interest in strategies and interventions to reduce criminal behavior has coincided with a focus on identifying “what works.” Recent increases in violence have shifted the national dialog from a focus on progressive reforms to reduce reliance on punitive measures and the disparate impact of the legal system on some groups to a focus on increased investment in “tough on crime” criminal justice approaches. This essay offers some reflections on the “Waged Wars” and the efforts to identify “What Works” based on nearly 40 years of work evaluating criminal justice reform efforts.

The last fifty-plus years have seen considerable efforts and resources expended to enact reforms to the criminal justice system. Some of the earliest reforms of this era were driven by dramatic increases in violence leading to more punitive policies. More recently, reform efforts have focused on strategies to reduce the negative impacts of policing, the disparate impacts of pretrial practices, and better strategies for reducing criminal behavior. Renewed interest in strategies and interventions to reduce criminal behavior has coincided with a focus on identifying “what works.” Recent increases in violence have shifted the national dialog about reform. The shift may be due to the disruptions caused by the COVID-19 epidemic or concerns about the United States returning to the escalating rise in violence and homicide in the 1980s and 1990s. Whichever proves true, the current rise of violence, at a minimum, has changed the tenor of policymaker discussions, from a focus on progressive reforms to reduce reliance on punitive measures and the disparate impact of the legal system on some groups to a focus on increased investment in “tough on crime” criminal justice approaches.

It is, then, an interesting time for those concerned about justice in America. Countervailing forces are at play that have generated a consistent call for reform, but with profound differences in views about what reform should entail. The impetus for reform is myriad: Concerns about the deaths of Black Americans by law enforcement agencies and officers who may employ excessive use of force with minorities; pressures to reduce pretrial incarceration that results in crowded jails and detention of those who have not been found guilty; prison incarcerations rates that remain the highest in the Western world; millions of individuals who live under community supervision and the burden of fees and fines that they will never be able to pay; and, in the aftermath of the worst pandemic in more than a century, increasing violence, particularly homicides and gun violence. This last change has led to fear and demands for action from communities under threat, but it exists alongside of other changes that point to the need for progressive changes rather than reversion to, or greater investment in, get-tough policies.

How did we get here? What have we learned from more than 50 years of efforts at reform? How can we do better? In this essay, I offer some reflections based on my nearly 40 years of evaluating criminal justice reform efforts. 1

Part I: Waging “War”

The landscape of criminal justice reform sits at the intersection of criminal behavior and legal system response. Perceptions of crime drive policy responses. Perceptions of those responsible for crime also drive responses. And perceptions of those responses result in demands for change. To establish context for the observations that follow, this section describes trends in crime, the population of justice-involved individuals, and the expenditures supporting the sprawling criminal justice enterprise in the United States since the mid-to-late twentieth century.

But first, my perspective: Over the last nearly 40 years, I have observed justice system reform efforts since working, while a first-year graduate student in 1983, on a National Institute of Justice (NIJ) grant that funded a randomized control trial of what would now be termed a reentry program (Lattimore et al., 1990 ). After graduate school, I spent 10 years at NIJ, where I was exposed to policy making and the relevance of research for both policy and practice. I taught for several years at a university. And, for most of my career, I have been in the trenches at a not-for-profit social science research firm. Throughout my career, I have conducted research and evaluation on a broad array of topics and have spent most of my time contemplating the challenges of reform. I’ve evaluated single programs, large federal initiatives, and efforts by philanthropies to effect reform. I’ve used administrative data to model criminal recidivism to address—to the degree statistical methods allow—various dimensions of recidivism (type, frequency, and seriousness). I’ve developed recidivism models for the practical purpose of assessing risk for those on community supervision and to explore the effects of covariates and interventions on recidivism and other outcomes. I’ve participated in research attempting to understand the shortcomings of and potential biases in justice data and the models that must necessarily use those data. While most of my work has focused on community corrections (e.g., probation and post-release interventions and behavior) and reentry, I have studied jail diversion programs, jail and pretrial reform, and efforts focused on criminal record expungement. These experiences have illuminated for me that punitiveness is built into the American criminal justice system—a punitiveness that traps many people from the time they are first arrested until they die.

Crime and Correctional Population Trends

The 1960s witnessed a dramatic rise in crime in the United States, and led to the so-called “War on Crime,” the “War on Drugs,” and a variety of policy responses, culminating with the passage of the Violent Offender Incarceration and Truth-in-Sentencing Act of 1994 (“The 1994 Crime Act”; Pub. L. 103–322). Figure  1 shows the violent crime rate in the United States from 1960 to 1994. 2 In 1960, the violent crime rate in the United States was 161 per 100,000 people; by 1994 the rate had increased more than four-fold to nearly 714 per 100,000. 3 As can be seen, the linear trend was highly explanatory (R-square = 0.96)—however, there were two obvious downturns in the trend line—between 1980 and 1985 and, perhaps, between 1991 and 1994.

US Violent Crime Rate, 1960–1994

Homicides followed a similar pattern. Figure  2 shows the number of homicides each year between 1960 and 1994. In 12 years (1960 to 1972), the number of homicides doubled from 9,100 to 18,670. By 1994, the number had grown to 23,330—but it is worth noting that there were multiple downturns over this period, including a drop of more than 4,000 between 1980 and 1984. These figures show the backdrop to the “War on Drugs” and the “War on Crime” that led reformers to call for more punitive sentencing, including mandatory minimum sentences, “three-strikes laws” that mandated long sentences for repeat offenders, and truth-in-sentencing statutes that required individuals to serve most of their sentences before being eligible for release. This was also the period when the 1966 Bail Reform Act, which sought to reduce pretrial detention through the offer of money bond, was supplanted in 1984 by the Pretrial Reform Act, which once again led to increased reliance on pretrial detention.

United States Murder and Non-negligent Manslaughter Rate, 1960–1994

The 1994 Crime Act, enacted during the Clinton Administration, continued the tough-on-crime era by enabling more incarceration and longer periods of incarceration that resulted in large increases in correctional populations. In particular, the Violent Offender Incarceration and Truth-in-Sentencing (VOI/TIS) Incentive Grant Program, funded by the Act, provided $3 billion to states to expand their jail and prisons capacities between FY1996 and FY2001 and to encourage states to eliminate indeterminate sentencing in favor of laws that required individuals to serve at least 85% of their imposed sentences.

Figure  3 shows the dramatic rise in the number of state and federal prisoners prior to passage of the 1994 Crime Act—the number of prisoners more than tripled between 1980 and 1994. 4 The increase in numbers of prisoners was not due to shifts from jail to prison or from probation to prison, given that all correctional populations increased dramatically over this 14-year period—jail populations increased 164% (183,988 to 486,474), probation increased 166% (1,118,097 to 2,981,022), and parole increased 213% (220,438 to 690,371).

State and Federal Prisoners in the US, 1960–1994

So, what happened after passage of the 1994 Crime Act? Fig.  4 shows the violent crime rate from 1960 through 2020. As can be seen, the decrease in the violent crime rate that began prior to passage of the 1994 Crime Act continued. And, notably, it preceded the influx of federal funding to put more police on the streets, build more jails and prisons, and place more individuals into the custody of local, state, and federal correctional agencies. Even with a small increase between 2019 and 2020, the violent crime rate in 2020 was 398.5 per 100,000 individuals, well below its 1991 peak of 758.2. 5

United States Violent Crime Rate (violent crimes per 100,000 population), 1960–2020

Figure  5 shows the US homicide rate from 1960 to 2020. Consistent with the overall violent crime rate, the homicide rate in 2020 remained well below the peak of 10.2 that occurred in 1981. (Rates also may have risen in 2021—as evidenced by reports of large increases in major U.S. cities—but an official report of the 2021 number and rate for the U.S. was not available as of the time of this writing.) The rise in this rate from 2019 to 2020 was more than 27%— worthy of attention and concern. It represents the largest year-over-year increase between 1960 and 2020. However, there have been other years where the rate increased about 10% (1966, 1967, 1968, 2015, and 2016), only then to drop back in subsequent years. Further, it is difficult to determine whether the COVID-19 pandemic, which has caused massive disruptions, is a factor in the increase in homicides or to know whether the homicide rate will abate as the pandemic ebbs. Finally, it bears emphasizing that during this 60-year period there have been years when the homicide rate fell by nearly 10% (e.g., 1996, 1999). From a policy perspective, it seems prudent to be responsive to increases in crime but also not to over-react to one or two years of data—particularly during times of considerable upheaval.

United States Murder and Nonnegligent Manslaughter Rate, 1960–2020

The growth in correctional populations, including prisoners, that began in the 1970s continued well into the twenty-first century—in other words, long after the crime rate began to abate in 1992. Figure  6 shows the prison population and total correctional population (state and federal prison plus jail, probation, and parole populations summed) between 1980 and 2020. Both trends peaked in 2009 at 1,615,500 prisoners and 7,405,209 incarcerated or on supervision. Year-over-year decreases, however, have been modest (Fig.  7 ), averaging about 1% (ignoring the steep decline between 2019 and 2020). The impact of factors associated with COVID-19, including policy and practice responses, resulted in a 15% decrease in the numbers of state and federal prisoners and a 14% decrease in the total number of adults under correctional control. Based on ongoing projects in pretrial and probation, as well as anecdotal evidence related to court closures and subsequent backlogs, it is reasonable to assume that some, if not most, of the decline in populations in 2020 was due to releases that exceeded new admissions as individuals completed their sentences and delays in court processing reduced new admissions. To the extent that these factors played a role, it is likely that in the immediate near term, we will see numbers rebound to values closer to what prevailed in 2019.

United States Prison and Total Correctional Populations, 1980–2020

Year-over-Year Change in Prison and Total Correctional Populations, 2981–2020

Responding with Toughness (and Dollars)

The increase in crime beginning in the 1960s led to a political demand for a punitive response emphasized by Richard Nixon’s “War on Crime” and “War on Drugs.” In 1970, Congress passed four anticrime bills that revised Federal drug laws and penalties, addressed evidence gathering against organized crime, authorized preventive detention and “no-knock” warrants, and provided $3.5 billion to state and local law enforcement. 6 Subsequent administrations continued these efforts, punctuated by the Crime Act of 1994. As described by the U.S. Department of Justice:

The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 … is the largest crime bill in the history of the country and will provide for 100,000 new police officers, $9.7 billion in funding for prisons and $6.1 billion in funding for prevention programs …. The Crime Bill provides $2.6 billion in additional funding for the FBI, DEA, INS, United States Attorneys, and other Justice Department components, as well as the Federal courts and the Treasury Department. 7

Much of the funding went to state and local agencies to encourage the adoption of mandatory minimum sentences, “three strikes” laws, and to hire 100,000 police officers and build prisons and jails. This funding was intended to steer the highly decentralized United States criminal justice “system” towards a more punitive approach to crime; this system encompasses all levels of government (local, state, and federal) and all branches of government (executive, judicial, legislative).

The nation’s crime rate peaked in 1992. So, this “largest crime bill in the history of the country” began a dramatic increase in funding for justice expenditures just as crime had already begun to decline. Figure  8 shows that expenditures increased roughly 50% in real dollars between 1997 and 2017—from $188 billion to more than $300 billion dollars (Buehler,  2021 ). 8 More than half of that increase-—$65.4 billion additional—went to police protection. Roughly $50 billion additional went to the judiciary and corrections.

United States Justice Expenditures, 1997–2017

So, what did these increases buy? Dramatically declining crime rates (Figs. ​ (Figs.4 4 and ​ and5) 5 ) suggest that numbers of crimes also declined. That can be seen in Fig.  9 , which shows offenses known and an estimate of offenses cleared for selected years between 1980 and 2019. 9 In 1991, there were 11,651,612 known property offenses and 1,682,487 known violent offenses—these numbers declined 47% and 34% by 2019.

Offenses Known and Cleared in the US, Selected Years 1980–2019

Declining numbers of crimes and dramatic increases in expenditures on policing and justice system operation would suggest that there should have been improvements in offense clearance rates during this time. This did not happen. Crime clearance rates stayed roughly constant, which means that the numbers of offenses cleared declined by percentages like declines in the number of offenses over this period—49% for property offenses and 33% for violent offenses. More than 750,000 violent offenses and more than 2 million property offenses were cleared in 1991 compared to about 500,000 violent offenses and 1 million property offenses in 2019.

Presently, as violent crime ticks up, we are hearing renewed calls for “tough-on-crime” measures. Some opinion writers have compared 2022 to Nixon’s era. Kevin Boyle noted:

[Nixon] already had his core message set in the early days of his 1968 campaign. In a February speech in New Hampshire, he said: “When a nation with the greatest tradition of the rule of law is torn apart by lawlessness, when a nation which has been the symbol of equality of opportunity is torn apart by racial strife … then I say it’s time for new leadership in the United States of America.” There it is: the fusion of crime, race and fear that Nixon believed would carry him to the presidency. 10

Responding to the recent increase in violent crime, President Joseph Biden proposed the Safer America Plan to provide $37 billion “to support law enforcement and crime prevention.” 11 The Plan includes more than $12 billion in funds for 100,000 additional police officers through the Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) program. This proposal echoes the “100,000 cops on the street” that was a centerpiece of the 1994 Crime Act, which created the COPS office and program. Unlike the 1994 Crime Act, however, the Safer America Plan does not include funding for prisons and jails. Both the 1994 Crime Act and the Safer America Plan address gun violence, strengthen penalties for drug offenses, and provide support for programs and interventions to make communities safer and to address criminal recidivism.

The previous 50 or 60 years witnessed reforms efforts other than these that largely focused on bolstering the justice system infrastructure. The 1966 Bail Reform Act sought to reduce pretrial detention through the offer of money bond, but subsequently was supplanted by the 1984 Pretrial Reform Act that once again promoted pretrial detention. 12 This century—as jail populations exceeded 700,000, with most held prior to conviction—there has been considerable attention to eliminate money bond, which disproportionately leads to pretrial detention for poor and marginalized individuals (and release for the “well-heeled”). Private philanthropy has led much of this focus on pretrial and bail reform. For example, the MacArthur Foundation has spent several hundred million dollars on their Safety and Justice Challenge since 2015 with a goal of reducing jail populations and eliminating racial and ethnic disparity. 13 The Laura and John Arnold Foundation (LJAF) took a different approach and has invested substantial sums in the development and validation of a pretrial assessment instrument (the Public Safety Assessment or PSA) that provides assessments of the likelihood an individual will fail to appear to court or be arrested for a new crime or new violent crime if released while awaiting trial. 14 Although assessment algorithms have been criticized for lack of transparency and for perpetuating racial bias, the PSA scoring algorithm is publicly available and has not shown evidence of racial bias in a series of local validations conducted by RTI for LJAF. New York and New Jersey are among the states that have attempted to reduce reliance on money bond. However, as violent crime has increased, these efforts have faced considerable pushback.

The bail bonds industry has been a vocal opponent of efforts to reduce or eliminate the use of money bond. This industry is not the only one that profits from the imposition of punishment. As Page and Soss ( 2021 ) recently reported, “Over the past 35 years, public and private actors have turned US criminal justice institutions into a vast network of revenue-generating operations. Today, practices such as fines, fees, forfeitures, prison charges, and bail premiums transfer billions of dollars from oppressed communities to governments and corporations.” Fines, fees, and forfeitures generally profit the governments and agencies that impose them—although supervision fees to private probation services benefit businesses, as do fees for electronic monitoring, and drug testing. The Prison Policy Institute reports that there are more than 4,000 companies that profit from mass incarceration. 15 Court and supervision fees can quickly add up to hundreds or even thousands of dollars, burdening people with crushing debt and the threat of jail if they don’t pay. 16 There can be other consequences as well. After Florida passed a constitutional amendment to restore voting rights to individuals once they had completed their carceral or community sentence, the State specified that the right to vote would not be restored until an individual had paid all outstanding fees and fines. In addition, mistakenly voting with outstanding fees and fines is a felony. 17

Other work to reform pretrial justice includes early provision of defense counsel, and implementation of diversion programs for individuals charged with low-level offenses or who have behavioral health issues. The sixth amendment to the United States Constitution guarantees criminal defendants in the United States a right to counsel. In some jurisdictions (and the Federal court system), this is the responsibility of an office of public defense. In others, private defense counsel is appointed by the Court. Regardless, public defense is widely understood to be poorly funded. As noted by Arnold Ventures, a philanthropy currently working to improve access to defense, “The resulting system is fragmented and underfunded; lacks quality control and oversight; and fails to safeguard the rights of the vast majority of people charged with crimes who are represented by public defenders or indigent counsel.” 18

Mental health problems are prevalent among individuals incarcerated in local jails and prisons. The Bureau of Justice Statistics, in a report by Bronson and Berzofsky ( 2017 ), reported that “prisoners and jail inmates were three to five times as likely to have met the threshold for SPD [serious psychological distress] as adults in the general U.S. population.” Bronson and Berzofsky further reported that 44% of individuals in jail reported being told they had a mental disorder. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration’s GAINS Center has been at the forefront of efforts to implement jail diversion programs for individuals with mental health or substance use disorders and has also played a significant role in the establishment of treatment courts. 19 Crisis Intervention Training (CIT) for law enforcement to improve interaction outcomes between law enforcement and individuals in crisis. The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) notes that “The lack of mental health crisis services across the U.S. has resulted in law enforcement officers serving as first responders to most crises. A Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) program is an innovative, community-based approach to improve the outcomes of these encounters.” 20 Non-law enforcement responses—such as the CAHOOTS program that was developed in Eugene, Oregon—to certain calls for service are also being tested in multiple communities. 21 Despite multiple efforts to identify appropriate alternatives to jail, individuals with mental health disorders continue to disproportionately fill the nation’s jails.

A Recapitulation

The 1970 crime bills that passed early in Nixon’s presidency set the stage for the infusion of federal dollars that has provided billions of dollars in funding for police and prisons. Between 1970 and 1994, the number of adults in state and federal prisons in the United States increased from less than 200,000 to nearly 1 million. In 2019, that number stood at more than 1.4 million down from its peak in 2009. Another 734,500 individuals were in jail and more than 4.3 million were in the community on probation or parole. Although representing a dramatic decline since these populations peaked about 2009, this still means that more than 6 million adults were under the supervision of federal, state, and local corrections agencies in 2019.

Thus, it is important to recognize that we are at a very different place from the Nixon era. Today, the numbers (and rates) of individuals who are “justice-involved” remain at near record highs. As the progressive efforts of the twenty-first century encounter headwinds, it is worth waving a caution flag as the “remedies” of the twentieth century—more police, “stop and frisk,” increased pretrial detention—are once again being proposed to address violent crime.

Part II: Finding “What Works”

The 1994 Crime Act and subsequent reauthorizations also included funding for a variety of programs, including drug courts, prison drug treatment programs, and other programs focused on facilitating reentry and reducing criminal recidivism. Subsequent legislation authorized other Federal investments that resurrected rehabilitation as a goal of correctional policy. The Serious and Violent Offender Reentry Initiative (SVORI) provided $100 million (and some limited supplements) to agencies to develop programs that began in prison and continued into the community and were intended to improve outcomes across a range of domains—community reintegration, employment, family, health (including mental health), housing, substance abuse, supervision compliance and, of course, recidivism (see Lattimore et al., 2005b ; Winterfield et al., 2006 ; Lattimore & Visher, 2013 , 2021 ; Visher et al., 2017 ). Congress did not reauthorize SVORI but instead authorized the Prisoner Reentry Initiative (PRI) managed by the U.S. Department of Labor; PRI (now the Reintegration of Ex-Offenders or RExO program) provides funding for employment-focused programs for non-violent offenders. In 2006, a third reentry-focused initiative was funded—the Marriage and Incarceration Initiative was managed by the Department of Health and Human Services and focused on strengthening marriage and families for male correctional populations. In 2008, Congress passed the Second Chance Act (SCA) to provide grants for prison and jail reentry programs. The SCA grant program administered by the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) was reauthorized in 2018; it continues to provide reentry grants to state and local agencies (see Lindquist et al., 2021 ). These initiatives all primarily focused on supporting efforts at the state and local level. The First Step Act of 2018 focused on reforms for the federal prison system. These efforts signified a substantial increase in efforts aimed at determining “what works” to reduce criminal behavior—and provided an opportunity to rebut the “nothing works” in correctional programming that followed the publication of research by Lipton ( 1975 ).

Elsewhere, I have summarized some of the research into Federal initiatives that I have conducted over the years (Lattimore, 2020 ). These studies comprise work in dozens of states, involving thousands of individuals and have included studies of drug treatment, jail diversion, jail and prison reentry, and probation. Some involved evaluation of a substantial Federal investment, such as the multi-site evaluation of SVORI.

These evaluations, as has been largely true of those conducted by others, have produced mixed results. Systematic reviews and meta-analyses focusing on the effectiveness of adult correctional programming have yielded findings of modest or negligible effects (e.g., Aos et al., 2006 ; Bitney et al., 2017 ; Lipsey & Cullen, 2007 ; MacKenzie, 2006 ; Sherman, et al., 1997 ). In an updated inventory of research- and evidence-based adult programming, the Washington State Institute for Public Policy (Wanner, 2018 ) identified a variety of programs for which evidence suggests significant if modest effect sizes. As has been identified by others (e.g., MacKenzie, 2006 ), the most effective programs focused on individual change, including, for example, cognitive behavior therapy (estimated effect size of -0.11). Treatment-oriented intensive supervision programs were found to reduce recidivism by about 15%, while surveillance-oriented intensive supervision was found to have no demonstrated effects. Several types of work and educational programs (correctional industries, basic adult education, prison-based vocational education, and job training and assistance in the community) were found to reduce recidivism between 5 and 22%. Most non-zero treatment effect sizes were between about 5% and 15%. Lipsey and Cullen ( 2007 ) also suggest 14% to 22% reductions in recidivism for adult rehabilitation treatment programs.

Two thoughts about these small effects warrant consideration. The first, of course, is why reducing criminal behavior appears to be so difficult. Second, however, is that, in recognizing the first, perhaps we should adapt more realistic expectations about what can be achieved and acknowledge that even small effects can have a meaningful impact on public safety.

Challenges: Why Is Effective Criminal Justice Reform So Difficult?

One issue with most federal funding streams is “short timelines.” For example, typical of grant programs of this type, SVORI grantees were given three years of funding. During this time, they had to develop a programmatic strategy, establish interagency working arrangements, identify program and service providers, develop a strategy for identifying potential participants, and implement their programs. Three years is a very short time to develop a program that incorporates needs assessment, provides a multiplicity of services and programs within an institution, and creates a path for continuation of services as individuals are released to various communities across a state.

The “short timelines” problem underlies, and contributes to, a variety of other considerations that can plague efforts to identify “what works.” Based on my experiences, these considerations, which I discuss further below, include the following:

• People: Justice-involved individuals have multiple needs and there is an emerging question as to whether addressing these needs is the best path to desistance.
• Programs: Interventions often lack adequate logic models and are poorly implemented.
• Methods: Evaluations frequently are underpowered and unlikely to scale the alpha 0.05 hurdle typically used to identify statistically significant effects.

First, it is important to recognize that justice-involved individuals face serious and complex challenges that are difficult to remedy. Many scholars have highlighted the myriad of challenges faced by individuals returning to the community from prison (e.g., see Petersilia, 2003 ; Travis, 2005 ; Travis & Visher, 2005 ). In interviews conducted with 1,697 men and 357 women who participated in the SVORI multisite evaluation, 95% of women and 94% of men said at the time of prison release that they needed more education. Nearly as many—86% of women and 82% of men—said they needed job training. More than two-thirds indicated that they needed help with their criminal thinking and three-quarters said they needed life skills training. They were somewhat less likely to report needing substance use disorder or mental health treatment but still—at the time of prison release—66% of the women and 37% of the men reported needing substance use treatment and 55% of the women and 22% of the men reported needing mental health treatment.

Half of these individuals had participated in SVORI programs while incarcerated and the proportions reported reflect their self-assessment of need after in-prison receipt of programming. Figure  10 shows the percentages of SVORI and non-SVORI groups who reported receiving a select set of services and programs during their incarceration. Several things standout: (1) The receipt of programs and services during incarceration was much less than the indicated need at the time of release; and (2) SVORI program participants were more likely to report receiving services than the comparison group members who were not in SVORI programs.

Self-reported service receipt during incarceration for SVORI program evaluation participants. Note: * =  p  <  = 0.05. Educ = educational programming, EmplSrv = employment-related services, CrimAtt = programs for criminal attitudes including cognitive behavior therapy, LifeSk = life skills, AODTx = substance abuse treatment, and MHTx = mental health treatment. Sample sizes were SVORI men (863), non-SVORI men (834), SVORI women (153) and non-SVORI women (204).

Source: Lattimore & Visher (2009)

More recently, Lindquist et al. ( 2021 ) completed a seven-site evaluation of Second Chance Act reentry programs that were a mix of jail- and prison-based programs. About half of the study participants reported having received substance use disorder treatment and about one-third reported having received mental health treatment. At release, they reported limited-service receipt. For example, there was no significant difference between receipt of educational programming (23% of SCA program participants compared with 17% for comparison group members). SCA program participants were more likely to report receiving any employment services (60% versus 40%), which included job assistance, employment preparation, trade or job training programs, vocational or technical certifications, and transitional job placement or subsidized employment. SCA program participants were also more likely to report receiving cognitive behavioral services (58% versus 41%). But, again, not all program participants received services despite needing them and some comparison subjects received services.

Limited access to treatment by program participants and some access to treatment by comparison subjects were also observed in a multi-site study of pre- and post-booking jail diversion programs for individuals with co-occurring substance use disorder and serious mental illness (Broner et al., 2004 ; Lattimore et al., 2003 ). Across eight study sites, 971 diverted subjects and 995 non-diverted subjects were included in this evaluation; the research found only modest differences in the receipt of services and treatment at 3- and 12-months follow-up. For example, at the 3-month interview, 26% of both groups reported receiving substance abuse counseling, and at the 12-month interview, 0.7% of those diverted versus no non-diverted participant received two or more substance abuse counseling sessions. At 3 months, 38% of the diverted subjects and 30% of the non-diverted reported mental health counseling versus 41% and 38% at 12 months, respectively.

The service needs expressed by these individuals reflect their lack of education, job experience, vocational skills, and life skills, as well as the substance abuse and mental health issues identified among justice-involved individuals. The intervention response to these needs is reflected in the variety of services prescribed in the typical “reentry program bucket.” These involve the services and programs shown in Fig.  10 , as well as case management and reentry planning to coordinate services with respect to needs.

The identification of needs followed by efforts to meet those needs underlies the Risk-Needs-Responsivity (RNR) approach to addressing justice-involved populations (e.g., Andrews & Bonta, 1994 , 2006 ; Latessa, 2020 ). The RNR approach to addressing criminal behavior is premised on the assumption that if you address identified needs that are correlated with criminal behavior, that behavior will be reduced. In other words, recidivism can be addressed by providing individuals the education and job skills and treatment they need to find gainful employment, reduce substance use, and mitigate symptoms of mental illness. Latessa ( 2020 ) recently discussed the RNR approach, reiterating the importance of assessing individual criminogenic and non-criminogenic needs to improve reentry programs. He also reiterated the importance of focusing resources on those identified as high (or higher) risk by actuarial risk assessment instruments—pointing to important work he conducted with colleagues that found that interventions reduced recidivism among high-risk individuals and increased it among low-risk individuals (Lowenkamp & Latessa, 2002 ; Latessa et al., 2010 ). This approach to reentry programming is reflected in the requirements of most federal grants—like the SVORI and SCA—that require programs to incorporate reentry planning that includes needs assessment and services that address criminogenic and non-criminogenic needs.

As noted, most justice-involved individuals have limited education and few job skills, and many have behavioral health issues, anger management issues, and limited life skills. But if addressing these deficits is the key to successfully rehabilitating large numbers of individuals caught in the carceral and community justice system, the meager results of recent research suggests two possibilities. First, this is the right approach, but poor or incomplete implementation has so far impeded findings of substantial effects (a common conclusion since the Martinson report). Second, alternatively, this approach is wrong (or insufficient), and new thinking about the “what and how” of rehabilitative programming is needed. I address the second idea next and turn to the first idea shortly.

MacKenzie ( 2006 ) and others (e.g., Andrews and Bonta, 2006 ; Andrews et al., 1990 ; Aos et al., 2006 ; Lipsey, 1995 ; Lipsey & Cullen, 2007 ) have stressed that programs focused on individual change have been found to be effective more often than those providing practical services. The SVORI evaluation also found support for this conclusion. Services we classified as “practical” (e.g., case manager, employment services, life skills, needs assessment, reentry planning, and reentry program) were associated with either no or a deleterious impact on arrest chances—although few were statistically different from a null effect. Individual-change services (e.g., anger management, programs for criminal attitudes including cognitive behavior therapy, education, help with personal relationships, and substance abuse treatment) were associated with positive impacts on arrest. The original SVORI evaluation had a follow-up period of about 2 years and findings suggested that the overall impact of SVORI program participation on rearrest and reincarceration were positive but not statistically significant. In contrast to these findings, a longer follow-up that extended at least 56 months showed participation in SVORI programs was associated with longer times to arrest and fewer arrests after release for both men and women. For the men, SVORI program participation was associated with a longer time to reincarceration and fewer reincarcerations, although the latter result was not statistically significant ( p  = 0.18). For the women, the reincarceration results were mixed and not significant.

Support for positive impacts of programs focused on individual change are consistent with theories associated with identity transformation and desistance from criminal activity. Bushway ( 2020 ) has recently discussed two alternative views of desistance, contrasting the implications of desistance either as a process (i.e., the gradual withdrawal from criminal activity) or reflective of an identify shift towards a more prosocial identity. In examining these two ideas, Bushway posits that the second suggests that individuals with a history of a high rate of offending may simply stop (as opposed to reducing the frequency of criminal acts). If individuals do (or can or will) stop, the implication is clear: policies that focus on an individual’s criminal history (e.g., for employment or parole decisions) may fail to recognize that the individual has changed. This change may be evidenced by in-prison good behavior (e.g., completing programs and staying out of trouble) or positive steps following release (e.g., actively seeking meaningful employment or engaging in positive relationships). Tellingly, Bushway ( 2020 ) notes: “Individuals involved in crime get information about how they are perceived by others through their involvement in the criminal justice system. Formal labels of ‘criminal’ are assigned and maintained by the criminal justice system. As a result, identity models are much more consistent theoretically with an empirical approach that revolves around measures of criminal justice involvement rather than criminal offending per se.” He goes on to discuss the relationship of identity-based models of stark breaks and criminal career models. In short, reflecting insights that labeling theorists have long emphasized, the labels the criminal justice system and society place on individuals may impede the desistance process that is the supposed goal of the system.

The second consideration are concerns about program design and implementation—What is the underlying logic model or theory of change? Is there adequate time to develop the program and train staff to implement it appropriately? Is the resulting program implemented with fidelity? The two or three years usually provided to implement complex programs suggest that these goals are unlikely to be met. The “notorious” findings of Martinson (1975) that “nothing works” was more appropriately interpreted as “nothing was implemented.” Unfortunately, nearly 50 years later, we largely observe something similar—not “nothing” but “something” that is far short of what was intended.

As discussed in detail by Taxman (2020), the usual approach to program development and testing skips over important formative steps, doesn’t allow time for pilot testing, and provides little opportunity for staff training or for achievement and maintenance of program fidelity (if there is even a program logic model). From an evaluator’s perspective, this short timeline imposes multiple challenges. An evaluator must identify study participants (and control or comparison subjects), follow them largely while they are in the program, and hope to have at least one year of post-program follow-up—generally without being able to accommodate the impact of likely weak implementation on evaluation power to detect effects.

Thus, it may not be surprising that effects are generally small. However, these small effects may not be negligible from a public safety perspective. In a study of the effects of non-residential drug treatment for a cohort of probationers, Lattimore et al. ( 2005a ) found that treatment reduced the number of probationers with a felony arrest by 23% during the first year and 11% over the first two years. The total number of arrests was also reduced by 17% over 12 months and 14% over 24 months. “Back of the envelope” calculations suggested that if treatment cost $1,000 per individual, it would have been cost effective to provide treatment to all members of the cohort as long as the (average) cost of arrest (and all related criminal justice processing and corrections) exceeds about $6,463.

Another example is to consider that the impact of a treatment effect in the 10% range applied across all prison releases would imply the aversion of many crimes. For example, assuming 750,000 prison releases each year over a five-year period and a 66% rearrest rate within 3 years (and no additional arrests after 3 years), then 3.75 million prisoners will be released over the five years; of these individuals, 2.475 million will be arrested at least once during the three years following release. A 10% reduction in first-time rearrests would mean 247,500 fewer first-time rearrests. To the extent that many offenders are arrested multiple times, this figure represents a lower bound on the number of averted arrests. A similar analysis could be conducted assuming 2,000,000 probation admissions each year and a 39% rearrest rate within 3 years. In this case, there would be 10,000,000 probation admissions that would generate 3.9 million first-time arrests over the three years after admission to probation. A 10% reduction in first-time rearrests would mean 390,000 fewer arrests. In total, therefore, reducing recidivism—as measured by rearrest by 10% for these hypothetical correctional populations—would translate into 637,500 averted arrests. Extrapolating further and assuming that roughly 10% of the arrests were for violent crime and 90% for property crime, and applying the inverse of the crime clearance rates for these two types of crime to generate a “crimes averted” count, we find that a 10% reduction in recidivism for these two populations would translate into 140,110 violent and 3,519,939 property crimes averted. 22 Thus, “modest” improvements in recidivism may provide substantial public benefits—in crimes averted, and lower demands on law enforcement, prosecution, and correctional resources. 23

The third consideration is the adequacy of the evaluation methods we routinely apply to this complex problem of inadequate interventions that are partially and sometimes poorly implemented. At minimum, we need to explicitly recognize the impacts of the following:

• Programs partially implemented and partially treated control conditions.
• Recidivism outcomes conditioned on an intermediate outcome.
• Follow-up periods too short to accommodate short-term failure followed by long-term success.
• Focusing on a binary indicator of recidivism ignores frequency and seriousness of offending.

The impact of partial treatment of both treatment and control groups on effect sizes and the consequential impact on statistical power is seldom discussed—either in initial estimates of needed sample sizes or in subsequent discussions of findings. As shown earlier and is true for most justice evaluations, the control or comparison condition is almost never “nothing.” Instead, it is generally “business as usual” (BAU) that means whatever the current standard of treatment entails. Thus, the treatment group may receive some services that aren’t available to the control group, but in many cases both groups have access to specific services and programs although the treatment group may get priority.

As we saw in Fig.  10 , treatment was reported by some individuals in both the SVORI and non-SVORI groups. Table ​ Table1 1 shows the implications of partial treatment using data from the SVORI evaluation. 24 The percent treated for the SVORI and non-SVORI men are shown in columns three and four. Column 2 presents the effect sizes for four interventions as identified by Wanner ( 2018 ). If we assume that the recidivism rate without treatment is 20%, 25 the observed recidivism rate for the SVORI and non-SVORI men as a result of receiving each treatment is shown in columns four and five. Column six shows that the observed differences in recidivism between the two groups in this “thought experiment” are less than two percent—an effect size that would never be detected with typical correctional program evaluations. 26

Hypothetical treatment effects with incomplete treatment of the treatment group and partial treatment of the comparison group, assuming untreated recidivism rate is 20 percent

* Estimates from Wanner ( 2018 ).

Similar findings emerge when considering the effects on recidivism of interventions such as job training programs that are intended to improve outcomes intermediate to recidivism. Consider the hypothetical impact of a prison job training program on post-release employment and recidivism. The underlying theory of change is that training will increase post-release employment and having a job will reduce recidivism. 27 Suppose the job training program boosts post-release employment by 30% and that, without the program, 50% of released individuals will find a job. A 30% improvement means that 65% of program participants will find employment. Randomly assigning 100 of 200 individuals to receive the program would result in 50 of those in the control group and 65 of those in the treatment group to find employment. (This outcome assumes everyone in the treatment group receives treatment.) Table ​ Table2 2 shows the treatment effect on recidivism under various assumptions about the impact of employment on recidivism. The table assumes a 50% recidivism rate for the unemployed so, e.g., if the effect of a job is to reduce recidivism by 10% employed individuals will have a recidivism rate of 45%. If there is no effect—i.e., recidivism is independent of being employed—we observe 50% failure for both groups and there is no effect on recidivism rates even if the program is successful at increasing employment by 30%. On the other hand, if being employed eliminates recidivism, no one who is employed will be recidivists and 50% of those unemployed will be recidivists—or 25 of the control group and 17.5 of the treated group. The last column in Table ​ Table2 2 shows the conditional effect of job training on recidivism under the various effects of employment on recidivism shown in column 1. The effects shown in the last column are the same regardless of the assumption about the recidivism rate of the unemployed. So, employment must have a very substantial effect on the recidivism rate to result in a large effect on the observed recidivism rate when, as is reasonable to assume, some members of the control group who didn’t have the training will find employment. As before, this finding underscores the need to carefully consider the mechanism affecting recidivism and potential threats to effect sizes and statistical power.

Hypothetical effects of job training on employment and recidivism assuming job training increases employment by 30% and control (untreated) employment is 50%

A third concern is that follow-up periods which typically are 2 years or less may be too short to observe positive impacts of interventions (Lattimore & Visher, 2020). Although this may seem counterintuitive, it is what was observed for the SVORI multisite evaluation. The initial SVORI evaluation focused on the impact of participation with at least 21 months of follow-up following release from prison and showed positive but insignificant differences in rearrests for the SVORI and non-SVORI groups. A subsequent NIJ award provided funding for a long-term (at least 56 months) examination of recidivism for 11 of the 12 adult programs (Visher et al., 2017 ; also see Lattimore et al., 2012 ). In contrast to the findings in the original study, participation in SVORI programs was associated with longer times to arrest and fewer arrests after release for both men and women during the extended follow-up period of at least 56 months. Although untestable post hoc, one plausible hypothesis is that the early period following release is chaotic for many individuals leaving prison and failure is likely. Only after the initial “settling out period” are individuals in a position to take advantage of what was learned during program participation. In any event, these findings suggest the need to conduct more, longer-term evaluations of reentry programs.

A final consideration is the indicator of recidivism used to judge the success of a program. Recidivism, which is a return to criminal behavior, is almost never observed. Instead, researchers and practitioners rely on proxies that are measures of justice system indicators that a crime has occurred—arrest, conviction, and incarceration for new offenses—and, for those on supervision, violation of conditions and revocation of supervision. A recent National Academy of Sciences’ publication ( 2022 ) highlights some of the limitations of recidivism as a measure of post-release outcomes, arguing that indicators of success and measures that allow for the observation of desisting behavior (defined by the panel as a process—not the sharp break advanced by Bushway) should be used instead. These are valid points but certainly in the short run the funders of interventions and those responsible for public safety are unlikely to be willing to ignore new criminal activity as an outcome.

It is worth highlighting, however, some of the limitations of the binary indicator of any new event that is the usual measure adopted by many researchers (e.g., “any new arrest within x years”) and practitioners (e.g., “return to our Department within 3 years”). These simple measures ignore important dimensions of recidivism. These include type of offense (e.g., violent, property, drug), seriousness of offense (e.g., homicide, felony assault, misdemeanor assault), and frequency of offending (equivalent to time to the recidivism event). As a result, a typical recidivism outcome treats as identical minor acts committed, e.g., 20 months following release, and serious crimes committed immediately. Note too that this binary indicator fails in terms of being able to recognize desisting behavior, that is, where time between events increases or the seriousness of the offense decreases. Survival methods and count or event models address the frequency consideration. Competing hazard models allow one to examine differences between a few categories of offending (e.g., violent, property, drug, other). The only approach that appears to have tackled the seriousness dimension is the work by Sherman and colleagues (Sherman et al., 2016 ; also, see www.crim.cam.ac.uk/research/thecambridgecrimeharminde ) who have developed a Crime Harm Index that is based on potential sentences for non-victimless crimes. To date, statistical methods that can accommodate the three dimensions simultaneously do not, to my knowledge, exist. At a minimum, however, researchers should use the methods that are available to fully explore their recidivism outcomes. Logistic regression models are easy to estimate and the results are easily interpretable. But an intervention may be useful if it increases the time to a new offense or reduces the seriousness of new criminal behavior.

The last forty years or so have seen strides at identifying interventions that are promising, but much work remains to be done to find programs that result in substantial, broad-based improvements. Challenges in program development and implementation, partial treatment of treatment groups and control groups, and limited focus on recidivism as a binary indicator of failure were highlighted as some of the issues confronting practitioners and evaluators. 28 There is reason for optimism—if expectations are realistic from both a programmatic and methodological perspective: Identify promising programs, apply best practices of implementation science, calculate reasonable statistical expectations, and build on what has been tried.

Conclusions

In the past several decades, dramatic increases in crime resulted in large-scale legislative changes and expenditures. Correctional populations dramatically increased even as crime rates plunged. In addition, despite large increases in funding to law enforcement and other justice agencies, the number of offenses cleared declined. During this time, there were multiple federal initiatives focused on reducing criminal recidivism. Some, such as the Residential Substance Abuse Treatment (RSAT) programs, focused singularly on reducing drug use, while others focused broadly on addressing the multi-faceted needs of justice-involved individuals.

These changes occurred in a context of a highly decentralized approach to criminal justice, one that creates a myriad of costs and incentives. For example, if a federally funded reentry program reduces crime, the immediate agency beneficiaries are local law enforcement (due to fewer crimes to solve), prosecution (due to fewer crimes to prosecute), and the courts (due to fewer cases to try). That can reduce admissions to prison. But for cost-savings to occur, agencies have to respond to reductions in crime by reducing costs. That tends to run counter to the natural inclination of administrators, especially if it means reducing staffing. And it runs counter to what happened as crime declined over the last roughly 30 years.

We increasingly have research evidence that some programs can reduce recidivism, but many challenges, such as underpowered research designs, sometimes undermines this evidence. Even so, it is important to note that even modest reductions in recidivism imply opportunities to avert substantial numbers of crimes and subsequent criminal justice system processing and costs.

This essay suggests that it is time to embrace the modest improvements in recidivism that have been forthcoming from programs that have been subjected to the most rigorous evaluations. And it suggests that it is time to downsize our expectations for a “silver bullet” and, instead, prepare for a long-term and sustained investment in programming that will improve, refine and augment programs and approaches that “work.” By using “what works” today as the basis for the successful adaptation of multi-faceted programs that address the multiplicity of offender needs, criminal justice policy and practice will develop the tools needed to help a heterogeneous population of prisoners successfully reenter their communities.

Finally, as policymakers grapple with a recent increase in violent crime, it is important to recognize that the “tough-on-crime” responses of the twentieth century led to a 252% increase in the number of citizens under legal system control—including a 312% increase in prison populations—between 1980 and 2000. Correctional populations peaked in 2008 but in 2019 remain 255% above 1980 levels with more than 6.5 million individuals in prisons, jails, or on probation or parole. 29 As the current administration proposes the Safer America Plan, it is important that proper attention be addressed to assure that the result of these expenditures is not to reinvigorate the mass incarceration and mass supervision that followed the adaptation of the as the 1984 Pretrial Reform Act and the Violent Offender Incarceration and Truth-in-Sentencing Act of 1994. And it is important that we attend to widespread support for high-quality implementation of programs that have been shown to reduce recidivism.

is a Principal Scientist with RTI International’s Justice Practice Area. She has more than 35 years of experience evaluating interventions, investigating the causes and correlates of criminal behavior, and developing approaches to improve criminal justice operations. She was principal investigator for multi-site, multi-method evaluations including the Multi-Site Evaluation of the Serious and Violent Offender Initiative, the Second Chase Act Adult Offender Reentry Demonstration Program Evaluation, and the HOPE Demonstration Field Experiment. She is principal investigator for research examining pretrial risk assessment, policy, and practice; state-level reforms for adult probation; implementation and impact of criminal record expungement; development and implementation of dynamic risk assessment algorithms for Georgia probation and parole; and the long-term impact of a three-state RCT of the 5-Key Reentry Program Model. She is a past Chair of the American Society of Criminology Division on Corrections and Sentencing, a Fellow of the Academy of Experimental Criminology, and a recipient of the American Correctional Association Peter P. Lejins Researcher Award, the American Society of Criminology Division on Corrections and Sentencing Distinguished Scholar Award, and the Academy of Experimental Criminology Joan McCord Award. Dr. Lattimore has published extensively, has served on the editorial boards of multiple journals, and was the inaugural co-editor of the annual series Handbook on Corrections and Sentencing published by Routledge Press.

Data Availability

1 Some of the ideas presented here were initially explored in Lattimore ( 2020 ) and Lattimore et al. ( 2021 ).

2 Data 1960 to 1984 are FBI, Uniform Crime Reports, prepared by the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data; downloaded March 5, 2006; data from 1985 to 2020 are from https://crime-data-explorer.app.cloud.gov/pages/explorer/crime/crime-trend , downloaded July 12, 2022.

3 Violent crime commands the most attention and hence is the focus here, but property crimes are much more prevalent—directly affecting many more individuals. Property crime rates also increased in the 1960s and 1970s. The property crime rate increased from 1,726.3 per 100,000 in 1960 to 4,660.2 in 1994—an 170% increase. The property crime rate peaked in 1980 at 5,353.3 per 100,000—a 210% increase over 1960.

4 Data for 1960 and 1970 prisoners are from Cahalan, M.W. and Parsons, L.A. ( 1986 ). Data from 1980–2014 are from Glaze, L., Minton, T., & West, H. (Date of version: 12/08/ 2009 ) and Kaeble, D., Glaze, L., Tsoutis, A., & Minton, T. ( 2015 ). Data from 2015–2020 are from Kluckow, DSW, & Zeng, Z. (Date of version: 3/31/ 2022 ).

5 As noted in footnote 3, property crime rates also rose between 1960 and 1980—peaking at 5,353.3 per 100,000. With some minor fluctuations, the property crime rate has declined steadily since the 1980s and was 1958.2 per 100,000 in 2020.

6 The Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970 (PL 91–513); the Organized Crime Control Act of 1970 (PL 91–452); the District of Columbia Court Reorganization and Criminal Procedure Act of 1970 (PL 91–358); and the Omnibus Crime Control Act of 1970.

7 https://www.ncjrs.gov/txtfiles/billfs.txt

8 The trend shown in Fig.  9 continued a trend. Between 1982 and 1997, total justice expenditures increased 125% from $84.1 billion to $189.5 billion (2007 dollars), Kyckelhahn, T. ( 2011 ).

9 Data are from the FBI Crime in the United States publications for 1980, 1991, 1995, 2000, 2010 and 2019 https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/ . Numbers of offenses cleared were estimated by multiplying the offenses known by the offense clearance rates reported by the FBI.

10 https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/31/opinion/richard-nixon-america-trump.html

11 https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/08/01/fact-sheet-president-bidens-safer-america-plan-2/

12 For some thoughts on recommendations for reforms for pretrial and sentencing see Lattimore, Spohn, & DeMichele ( 2021 ). This volume also has recommendations for reform across the justice system.

13 Safety and Justice Challenge.

14 https://www.arnoldventures.org/

15 https://www.prisonpolicy.org/research/economics_of_incarceration/

16 For an example of how a minor traffic offense can result in thousands of dollars in fines and fees for extensive terms of private probation see In Small-Town Georgia, A Broken Taillight Can Lead to Spiraling Debt—In These Times.

17 See for example, https://www.propublica.org/article/florida-felonies-voter-fraud

18 https://www.arnoldventures.org/work/public-defense

19 https://www.samhsa.gov/gains-center

20 https://www.nami.org/Advocacy/Crisis-Intervention/Crisis-Intervention-Team-(CIT)-Programs

21 https://www.eugene-or.gov/4508/CAHOOTS

22 In 2005, the Uniform Crime Reports reported 1,197,089 known violent offenses and 8,935,714 known property offenses or a ratio of about 1:9. Clearance rates were 45.5% for violent and 16.3% for property crimes known to police. The estimated total number of arrests for 2005 was 14,094, 186. Thus, the violent and property arrests account for about 72% of all arrests. Of course, these estimates rest on many assumptions—in some cases, these assumptions would imply that we are estimating the lower bound, since each member of our study population is allowed only one arrest while many will have many more than one. On the other hand, to the extent that individuals are arrested who have committed no offenses, the estimates would over represent the impact of a reduction in crime. The goal here was not to generate a precise estimate but to illustrate that a 10% reduction in recidivism translates into substantial reductions in crime.

23 A model-based estimate of the effect of non-residential drug treatment on 134,000 drug-involved individuals admitted to probation in Florida showed treatment reduced arrests by more than 20% (Lattimore et al., 2005a , 2005b ). This analysis was extended to a cost-effectiveness framework in which it was shown that it would be cost effective to spend $1000 treating all drug-involved probations as long as the average cost of an arrest averted (including arrest, and the costs of judicial processing and corrections) is at least $6,463.

where R = recidivism rate for the group, r = recidivism rate in the absence of treatment, T = percentage of group that is treated, and p = the percentage reduction in recidivism due to treatment (the treatment effect). Differences in outcomes are constant with respect to the assumed recidivism rate in the absence of treatment.

25 Differences in outcomes are constant with respect to the assumed recidivism rate without treatment.

26 Lipsey ( 1998 ) discusses the issue of underpowered evaluations.

27 A similar example was presented in Lattimore, Visher, & Steffey ( 2010 ).

28 Although not addressed here because of page limitations additional important methodological considerations include whether a comparison group exists for some interventions such as incarceration (see Lattimore & Visher 2021 for a brief discussion) and, even more challenging, whether replication is even possible given the heterogeneity of context and populations. For an interesting consideration of the implications of the latter for examining the impact of incarceration see Mears, Cochran & Cullen ( 2015 ).

29 Correctional populations dropped dramatically in 2020 as law enforcement and the criminal justice system adapted to COVID-19.

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

• Andrews, D.A., & Bonta, J. (1994). The psychology of criminal conduct . Anderson.
• Andrews DA, Bonta J. The psychology of criminal conduct. 4. Lexis/Nexis/Matthew Bende; 2006. [ Google Scholar ]
• Andrews DA, Ziner I, Hoge RD, Bonta J, Gendreau P, Cullen FT. Does correctional treatment work: A clinically-relevant and psychologically-informed meta-analysis. Criminology. 1990; 28 :369–404. doi: 10.1111/j.1745-9125.1990.tb01330.x. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Aos S, Miller M, Drake E. Evidence-based adult corrections programs: What works and what does not. Washington State Institute for Public Policy; 2006. [ Google Scholar ]
• Bitney K, Drake E, Grice J, Hirsch M, Lee S. The effectiveness of reentry programs for incarcerated persons: Findings for the Washington Statewide Reentry Council (Document Number 17–05- 1901) Washington State Institute for Public Policy; 2017. [ Google Scholar ]
• Broner N, Lattimore PK, Cowell AJ, Schlenger W. Effects of diversion on adults with mental illness co-occurring with substance use: Outcomes from a national multi-site study. Behavior Sciences and the Law. 2004; 22 :519–541. doi: 10.1002/bsl.605. [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Bronson, J., & Berzofsky, M. (2017). Indicators of mental health problems reported by prisoners and jail inmates, 2011–12. Bureau of Justice Statistics. NCJ 250612.
• Buehler ED. Justice expenditures and employment in the United States, 2017 , available from the National Criminal Justice Reference Service, NCJ-256093. US Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics; 2021. [ Google Scholar ]
• Bushway, S. (2020). What if people decide to desist? Implications for policy. (2020). In B. Orrell (Ed.), Rethinking reentry: An AEI working group summary (pp. 7–38). American Enterprise Institute.
• Cahalan MW, Parsons LA. Historical corrections statistics in the United States, 1850–1984 , available from the National Criminal Justice Reference Service, NCJ-10529. US Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics; 1986. [ Google Scholar ]
• Glaze, L., Minton, T., & West, H. (2009). Correctional populations in the United States . Date of version: 12/08/09, available from the National Criminal Justice Reference Service. US Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics.
• Kaeble, D., Glaze, L., Tsoutis, A., & Minton, T. (2015). Correctional populations in the United States . Date of version December 2015. Available from the National Criminal Justice Reference Service, NCJ-249513. US Department of Justice.
• Kluckow, D.S.W., & Zeng, Z. (2022). Correctional populations in the United States . Available from the National Criminal Justice Reference Service, NCJ-303184. Date of version: 3/31/2022. US Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics.
• Kyckelhahn, T. (2011 ). Justice expenditures and employment, FY 1982–2007 Statistical tables, Appendix Table 1 . Bureau of Justice Statistics Criminal Justice Expenditure and Employment Extracts Program.
• Latessa EJ. Triaging of services for individuals returning from prison. In: Orrell B, editor. Rethinking reentry: An AEI working group summary. American Enterprise Institute; 2020. pp. 7–38. [ Google Scholar ]
• Latessa, E.J., Lovins, L.B., & Smith, P. (2010). Follow-up evaluation of Ohio’s community-based correctional facility and halfway house programs—Outcome study . University of Cincinnati. https://www.uc.edu/ccjr/reports.html .
• Lattimore PK. Considering reentry program evaluation: Thoughts from the SVORI (and other) evaluations. In: Orrell B, editor. Rethinking reentry: An AEI working group summary. American Enterprise Institute; 2020. pp. 7–38. [ Google Scholar ]
• Lattimore, P. K., Barrick, K., Cowell, A. J., Dawes, D., Steffey, D. M., Tueller, S. J., & Visher, C. (2012). Prisoner reentry services: What worked for SVORI evaluation participants? Prepared for NIJ.
• Lattimore PK, Broner N, Sherman R, Frisman L, Shafer M. A comparison of pre-booking and post-booking diversion programs for mentally ill substance using individuals with justice involvement. Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice. 2003; 19 (1):30–64. doi: 10.1177/1043986202239741. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Lattimore PK, Krebs CP, Koetse W, Lindquist C, Cowell AJ. Predicting the effect of substance abuse treatment on probationer recidivism. Journal of Experimental Criminology. 2005; 1 :159–189. doi: 10.1007/s11292-005-1617-z. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Lattimore, P.K., Spohn, C., & DeMichele, M. (2021) Reimagining Pretrial and Sentencing. In The Brookings-AEI Working Group on Criminal Justice Reform, A better path forward for criminal justice (pp. 16–27) . Brookings. https://www.brookings.edu/multi-chapter-report/a-better-path-forward-for-criminal-justice/ .
• Lattimore PK, Visher C. The impact of prison reentry services on short-term outcomes: Evidence from a multi-site evaluation. Evaluation Review. 2013; 37 :274–313. doi: 10.1177/0193841X13519105. [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Lattimore, P. K., & Visher, C. A. (2021). Considerations on the multi-site evaluation of the Serious and Violent Offender Reentry Initiative. In. P. K. Lattimore, B. M. Huebner, & F. S. Taxman (Eds.), Handbook on moving corrections and sentencing forward: Building on the record (pp. 312–335). Routledge.
• Lattimore PK, Visher CA, Brumbaugh S, Lindquist C, Winterfield L. Implementation of prisoner reentry programs: Findings from the Serious and Violent Offender Reentry Initiative multi-site evaluation. Justice Research and Policy. 2005; 7 (2):87–109. doi: 10.3818/JRP.7.2.2005.87. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Lattimore PK, Visher C, Steffey DM. Prisoner reentry in the first decade of the 21st century. Victims and Offenders. 2010; 5 :253–267. doi: 10.1080/15564886.2010.485907. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Lattimore PK, Witte AD, Baker JR. Experimental assessment of the effect of vocational training on youthful property offenders. Evaluation Review. 1990; 14 :115–133. doi: 10.1177/0193841X9001400201. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Lindquist, C., Buck Willison, J., & Lattimore, P. K. (2021). Key findings and implications of the cross-site evaluation of the Bureau of Justice Assistance FY 2011 Second Chance Act Adult Offender Reentry Demonstration Projects. In. P. K. Lattimore, B. M. Huebner, & F. S. Taxman (Eds.), Handbook on moving corrections and sentencing forward: Building on the record (pp. 312–335). Routledge.
• Lipsey MW. What do we learn from 400 research studies on the effectiveness of treatment with juvenile delinquency? In: McGuire J, editor. What works reducing reoffending: Guidelines from research and practice. Wiley; 1995. pp. 63–78. [ Google Scholar ]
• Lipsey, M. W. (1998). Design sensitivity: Statistical power for applied experimental research. In: Bickman Leonard, Rog Debra J. (eds.) Handbook of applied social research methods (pp 39–68). Sage.
• Lipsey MW, Cullen FT. The effectiveness of correctional rehabilitation: A review of systematic reviews. Annual Review of Law and Social Science. 2007; 3 :297–320. doi: 10.1146/annurev.lawsocsci.3.081806.112833. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Lipton, D.S. (1975). The effectiveness of correctional treatment: a survey of treatment evaluation studies. Praeger Publishers.
• Lowenkamp, C.T., & Latessa, E.J. (2002). Evaluation of Ohio’s community-based correctional facilities and halfway house program s. University of Cincinnati. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/237720823 .
• MacKenzie D. What works in corrections? Reducing the criminal activities of offenders and delinquents. Cambridge University Press; 2006. [ Google Scholar ]
• Mears DP, Cochran JC, Cullen FT. Incarceration heterogeneity and its implications for assessing the effectiveness of imprisonment on recidivism. Criminal Justice Policy Review. 2015; 26 (7):691–712. doi: 10.1177/0887403414528950. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. (2022). The limits of recidivism: Measuring success after prison . The National Academies Press. 10.17226/26459.
• Page, J., & Soss, J. (2021). Predatory dimensions of criminal justice. Science , 374(6565), 291–294 10.1126/science.abj7782. [ PubMed ]
• Petersilia J. When prisoners come home: Parole and prisoner reentry. Oxford University Press; 2003. [ Google Scholar ]
• Sherman L, Gottfredson D, MacKenzie D, Eck J, Reuter P, Bushway S. Preventing crime: What works, what doesn’t, what’s promising. US Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice; 1997. [ Google Scholar ]
• Sherman, L., Neyroud, P.W. and Neyroud, E., 2016. The Cambridge crime harm index: Measuring total harm from crime based on sentencing guidelines. Policing: A Journal of Policy and Practice , 10 (3 ), 171–183.
• The Brookings-AEI Working Group on Criminal Justice Reform. (2021). A Better Path Forward for Criminal Justice . Brookings. https://www.brookings.edu/multi-chapter-report/a-better-path-forward-for-criminal-justice/ .
• Travis J. But they all come back: Facing the challenges of prisoner Reentry. Urban Institute Press; 2005. [ Google Scholar ]
• Travis, J., & Visher, C., eds. (2005). Prisoner reentry and crime in America . Cambridge University Press.
• Visher C, Lattimore PK, Barrick K, Tueller SJ. Evaluating the long-term effects of prisoner reentry services on recidivism: What types of services matter? Justice Quarterly. 2017; 34 (1):136–165. doi: 10.1080/07418825.2015.1115539. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Wanner P. Inventory of evidence-based, research-based, and promising programs for adult corrections (Document Number 18–02-1901) Washington State Institute for Public Policy; 2018. [ Google Scholar ]
• Winterfield L, Lattimore PK, Steffey DM, Brumbaugh SM, Lindquist CH. The serious and violent offender reentry initiative: Measuring the effects on service delivery. Western Criminology Review. 2006; 7 (2):3–19. [ Google Scholar ]

Cybercrime: Victimization, Perpetration, and Techniques

• Published: 10 November 2021
• Volume 46 , pages 837–842, ( 2021 )

Cite this article

• James Hawdon   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-0273-2227 1  

9775 Accesses

3 Citations

5 Altmetric

Explore all metrics

Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.

The creation of the World Wide Web revolutionized communication. At the turn of the twenty-first century, roughly 413 million people used the internet (Roser & Ortiz-Ospina, 2015 ). A mere 21 years later, nearly 4.7 billion people, or about 60% of the world’s population, actively use the internet (We Are Social, & DataReportal, & Hootsuite, 2021 ). The pace of innovation in information technology, from the introduction of email in the 1960s to the rise of multiple social media platforms in the early 2000s to the rise of the Internet of Things (Iot) and 5 g, has been astonishing. It is now almost inconceivable to imagine life without access to the internet. Yet the IT revolution, like all technological revolutions, has been a dual-edge sword. Indeed, the internet’s many benefits and drawbacks have been discussed in numerous forums, and these discussions will undoubtedly continue as long as we remain dependent on this technology. This special edition of the American Journal of Criminal Justice contributes to those discussions by considering one of the drawbacks: cybercime.

Cybercrime, or the use of computer technology or online networks to commit crimes, ranges from fraud and identity theft to threats and intimidation. Cybercrime and its many manifestations has clearly increased over the past 20 years. For example, cybercrime costs increased from approximately $3 trillion in 2015 to more than $6 trillion in 2021, and these are expected to increase to over $10.5 trillion by 2025 (Morgan, 2020 ). In the U.S. alone, approximately 23 percent of households experience some sort of cybercrime annually (Reinhart, 2018 ; Hawdon et al., 2020 ). Indeed, in the same way that larceny characterized the twentieth century, cybercrime is characterizing the twenty-first century (Albanese, 2005 ). And these facts just reflect the economic costs of cybercrime and do not account for the non-monetary harms caused by cyberviolence. Cyberstalking, online sexual exploitation, cyber-harassment and bullying, threats of violence, and online violent extremism are also commonly committed acts of cyberviolence (FBI, 2021 ).

In many ways, it is unsurprising that cybercrime has increased in recent years. As technology becomes more sophisticated, so do cybercriminals, and cybercriminals now target individuals, businesses, healthcare facilities, educational institutions, and governments. As more people engage in an ever-increasing variety of online activities and more businesses conduct their affairs online, it is predictable that there would be a rise in cybercrime. To use the familiar language of Routine Activity Theory (Cohen & Felson, 1979 ), we have a lot more suitable targets in insufficiently guarded space being victimized by an increasing number motivated offenders. It is also unsurprising that there is a growing body of literature dedicated to cybercrime as scholars scramble to understand the ever-evolving phenomena. Entire journals are now dedicated to its study, and new academic disciplines have been created to try to prevent it. While our understanding of cybercrime has accumulated quickly and impressively, there is so much about cybercrime that we still do not know. This special issue of the A merican Journal of Criminal Justice offers nine new articles to help fill that knowledge gap.

The articles included in this issue reflect three broad areas of cybercrime research: cybercrime victimization, cybercrime perpetration, and techniques and facilitators of cybercrime. While there is some overlap, the issue includes three papers focused on each of these three areas.

The first area covered in the special issue focuses on cybercrime victimization. This area has generated the most research to date. In part because victims of cybercrime are relatively easy to find, considerable research has been conducted on cybervictimization across a variety of cybercrimes. Three of the articles in this special issue focus on cybervictimization, and they add to the literature in interesting ways by providing cross-national perspectives, building on theoretical traditions, or providing systematic summaries of the state of field at this time.

The first article in this section by Michelle Wright and a team of colleagues investigates how adolescent from China, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, India, Japan, and the United States explain being a victim of cyberbully. The investigation compares if how adolescents explain victimization varies by setting (private vs. public), medium (offline vs cyber), and severity and if cultural differences alter these relationships. Their findings suggest the need for prevention and intervention efforts to consider the role of setting, medium, severity, and cultural values if they are to be successful.

The second paper focusing on victimization builds on the frequent finding that problematic social media use is associated with negative life experiences and provides empirical support for a theoretical link between problematic social media use and cybervictimization. The analysis, conducted by colleagues Eetu Marttila, Aki Koivula, and Pekka Räsänen, is framed in Routine Activity Theory/Lifestyle-Exposure Theory. The results indicate that not only is problematic social media use strongly correlated with cybervictimization in a between-subject analysis, but within-subject analyses also reveal that problematic social media use has a cumulative effect on victimization.

The third paper bridges research on cybercrime victimization and cybercrime perpetration and provides a glimpse at the state of knowledge about a specific form of cyberviolence. Catherine Marcum and George Higgins conduct a systematic review of literature investigating both offending and victimization of cyberstalking, cyberdating abuse, and interpersonal electronic surveillance. Using a number of electronic databases, the authors focus on 31 studies to identify correlates of involvement in these cybercrimes. Victims are disproportionately female. Other correlates of victimization include overall social media use, risky online behavior, and negative external factors such as being attached to abusive peers. Correlates of perpetration provide support for a number of leading criminological theories as perpetrators tend to have low levels of self-control, associate with delinquent peers, and have low levels of parental supervision. As more research is conducted, there is a great need for more systematic literature reviews so we can begin to better refine our understanding and identify the theoretical approaches that provide the most insight into the world of cybercrime.

There are another three articles included in this special issue that focus on cybercrime perpetration. All three articles test traditional criminological theories and find support for them. In the first, Adam Bossler uses Sykes and Matza’s ( 1957 ) techniques of neutralization to examine the effects of techniques of neutralization on college students’ willingness to commit cybercrime, specifically hacking websites to deface them or compromise foreign and domestic financial and government targets. An overall techniques of neutralization scale significantly predicts being willing to commit cyberattacks even after controlling for other relevant factors. In addition to the theoretical implications of finding strong support for Sykes and Matza’s framework, the findings also have implications for situational crime prevention efforts aimed at removing excuses for offenders.

In another article focusing on perpetration, Thomas Dearden and Katalin Parti use a national online sample of 1,109 participants and find strong support for social learning theory as measures of both online and offline social learning correlate with a measure of cyber-offending. However, the authors also argue that self-control will interact with social learning variables to further influence the likelihood of cyber-offending. Overall, they find that both social learning and self-control, individually and as an interaction, are good predictors of cyber-offending.

In the final article dedicated to investigating the perpetration of cybercrime, Ashley Reichelmann and Matthew Costello use a nationally representative sample to explore how various dimensions of American national identity relate to producing online hate materials. The analysis reveals that higher levels of salience and public self-regard are weakly related to producing online hate. However, the findings suggest that understanding the nuances of “what it means to be American” is important for fully understanding the phenomenon of cyberhate, especially in this polarizing time when what it means to “be American” is frequently questioned.

Another three articles deal with perpetrating cybercrimes or “pseudo-cybercrimes,” but their focus is on how these crimes are committed. That is, the investigations deal with using the Dark Web or the surface web to make illegal or pseudo-legal purchases of illegal or quasi-legal substances. In the first paper in the section, Eric Jardine provides a crime script for purchasing drugs on the Dark Web. The script involves four generic stages (i.e. Informational Accumulation; Account Formation; Market Exchange; Delivery/Receipt) and provides an opportunity to review known law enforcement interventions that have effectively targeted each stage of the script to reduce the use of these online markets. The paper highlights numerous steps that law enforcement could take to effectively reduce the illegal selling and purchasing of drugs on the Dark Web.

Next, Robert Perdue engages in green criminology and focuses on the illegal trade of endangered species. Noting that regulating this trade is a critical, and very difficult, challenge for conservationists and law enforcement agents, Perdue examines the role the Internet plays in critically endangered plant transactions, but instead of focusing on the Dark Web, he investigates eBay to understand the extent to which such trades occur in plain sight. He finds that nearly a third of the critically endangered plant species examined were for sale in some form on eBay. Yet, despite the evidence that there is a high degree of open trading in these species, the complexity of the international legal frameworks regulating these transactions makes it difficult to ascertain their legality. Nevertheless, at least a subset of these sales are probably unlawful.

Finally, J. Mitchell Miller and Holly Ventura Miller provide insight into the computer-facilitated gray market of pseudo-legal marijuana sales in Los Vegas, Nevada. The ethnographic study reveals how various cannabis products are illegally diverted from legal markets to the gray market, and how brokers use the Internet in clever ways to advertise their products and services to a public that is likely unaware that they are engaging in illegal activities by skirting the regulations and tight control of the legal market.

Taken together, these three papers highlight the tremendous difficulties with regulating e-commerce. While the Dark Web provides an environment to conduct illegal transactions with minimal risk, it turns out that the Dark Web may be unnecessary for many illegal cyber-purchases. Given the surface web is convenient, widely available, and scarcely policed, many cybercriminals simply commit their crimes in the open. Using the language of Routine Activity Theory again, the internet—Dark or Surface—is an environment largely devoid of capable guardians.

As a whole, I believe these nine papers speak to the current state and future promise of cybercriminology. Currently, we are building a large body of empirical studies that speak to patterns of victimization and perpetration. With respect to victimization, we have learned a lot about who is likely to be victimized and how the patterns of victimization vary by type of cybercrime. We also have a good understanding of the activities that increase the likelihood of victimization, the emotional and financial costs of being a victim, and how people view victims depending on the setting and type of victimization. The body of evidence supporting a slightly modified version of Routine Activity Theory/Lifestyle-Exposure Theory is increasingly impressive, and the papers by Marttila, Koivula, and Räsänen as well as the article by Marcum and Higgins offer additional support for aspects of this theoretical approach.

Similarly, our understanding of cybercrime perpetration has expanded exponentially in recent years. While finding samples of cybercriminals is always a challenge, the growing body of evidence suggests that the behavior of cybercriminals is largely explained by the same set of factors that can account for the behavior of more traditional criminals. That is, cybercriminals tend to have low levels of self and social control, are largely unsupervised, experience strains, and learn the how, when, and why of their crimes from their associates. The papers in this issue offer additional support for techniques of neutralization, social learning theory, and self-control theory. While there are nuanced differences in how some criminogenic factors play out in the virtual and offline worlds, our existing theories appear to be robust as many of our theories apply to both online and offline criminal behavior. A number of the differences that exist largely relate to the asynchronous nature of many online interactions. The fact that online interactions can occur synchronously as well as asynchronously expands our networks and provide additional opportunities for others beyond our immediate environment to influence us and for us to commit crimes. The full ramifications of these changes in social networks, criminogenic forces, and criminal opportunities are not understood; however, we understand these far better today than we did even just a few years ago.

We also have a far greater understanding of the techniques of committing cybercrimes. We know considerably more about the use of the Dark Web to find and purchase illegal goods and services, and we have learned that the Surface Web plays a significant role in computer-dependent crimes. Moreover, as the article by Miller and Miller highlights, information technology has helped blur the line between legal, pseudo-legal, and illegal behaviors. What work in this area really highlights is how difficult it is to monitor and police the internet. While there is certainly social control exercised on the internet, there are limits to the effectiveness of this control (see Hawdon et al., 2017 ). Yet, by understanding the patterns of victimization, the underlying causes of perpetration, and the techniques that facilitate cybercrime, we become better armed in designing strategies to prevent it, defend against it, mitigate its adverse effects, and prosecute those who commit it. All of the articles included in this issue further that understanding.

The Special Issue

The process of selecting the articles for this special issue was perhaps unusual but also rather intensive. The process began by me inviting a group of scholars to submit manuscripts for the special issue. I selected these scholars because I knew of their work and was confident they would submit quality papers that covered a wide range of topics in the area of cybercrime. After discussing their planned submissions with the authors to assure there would be good topic coverage, the authors submitted their paper. An anonymous scholar and I reviewed these initial submissions (the anonymous scholar served as a typical double-blind reviewer). Each contributing author also reviewed one or two of the included articles. Authors then revised their work based on the reviewers’ comments and resubmitted the papers. Each contributing author was then asked to read all nine revised papers. Then, the authors and I took advantage of the brief pause in the COVID-19 pandemic and gathered for a two-day workshop in Asheville, North Carolina as part of the Center for Peace Studies and Violence Prevention’s annual research workshop program. The lone exception to this was our Finnish colleagues who were unable to get a special visa to visit the U.S. at that time. These colleagues joined the workshop via Zoom. The authors/workshop participants then discussed and provided feedback on all of the articles. The authors then made final revisions to their papers based on these discussions. Thus, these papers have been through three rounds of revisions. As the editor of the special edition, I am proud of the finished product.

Albanese, J. S. (2005). Fraud: The characteristic crime of the 21st Century. Trends in Organized Crime, 8 , 5–16.

Article   Google Scholar  

Cohen, L. E., & Felson, M. (1979). Social change and crime rate trends: A routine activity approach. American Sociological Review, 44 (4), 588–608.

Federal Bureau of Investigation. (2021). 2020 Internet crime report . U.S. Government Printing Office.

Google Scholar  

Hawdon, J., Costello, C., Ratliff, T., Hall, L., & Middleton, J. (2017). Conflict management styles and cybervictimization: An extension of routine activity theory. Sociological Spectrum, 37 (4), 250–266.

Hawdon, J., Parti, K., & Dearden, T. E. (2020). Cybercrime in America amid COVID-19: The initial results from a natural experiment. American Journal of Criminal Justice, 45 , 546–562.

Morgan, S. (2020). Cybercrime to cost the World $10.5 Trillion Annually by 2025. Cybercrime Magazine , November 13, 2020. https://cybersecurityventures.com/hackerpocalypse-cybercrime-report-2016/

Reinhart, R. J. (2018). One in four Americans have experienced cybercrime. Gallup Politics . https://news.gallup.com/poll/245336/one-four-americans-experienced-cybercrime.aspx

Roser, M. H. R. & Ortiz-Ospina, E. (2015). "Internet". Published online at OurWorldInData.org. Retrieved from: ' https://ourworldindata.org/internet ' [Online Resource]

Sykes, G. M., & Matza, D. (1957). Techniques of neutralization: A theory of delinquency. American Sociological Review, 22 (6), 664–670.

We Are Social, & DataReportal, & Hootsuite. (2021). Global digital population as of January 2021 (in billions) [Graph]. In  Statista . Retrieved September 24, 2021, from https://www.statista.com/statistics/617136/digital-population-worldwide/

Download references

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA

James Hawdon

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to James Hawdon .

Additional information

Publisher's note.

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Hawdon, J. Cybercrime: Victimization, Perpetration, and Techniques. Am J Crim Just 46 , 837–842 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12103-021-09652-7

Download citation

Received : 03 July 2021

Accepted : 03 August 2021

Published : 10 November 2021

Issue Date : December 2021

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s12103-021-09652-7

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

• Find a journal
• Publish with us
• Track your research

New report suggests these best practices for reducing crime in America

Ali Rogin Ali Rogin

Andrew Corkery Andrew Corkery

Claire Mufson Claire Mufson

Leave your feedback

• Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/new-report-suggests-these-best-practices-for-reducing-crime-in-america

Crime rates surged during the COVID-19 pandemic to highs not seen in decades. But now, crime trends appear to be shifting. Adam Gelb, president and CEO of the Council on Criminal Justice, and Thaddeus Johnson, a senior research fellow for the Council on Criminal Justice, join Ali Rogin to discuss what new research says about the state of crime in America and best practices for curbing it.

Read the Full Transcript

Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors.

As the COVID-19 pandemic spread across the country, crime rates surged to highs not seen in decades. But now crime trends appear to be shifting. Ali Rogin has the latest on what new research says about the state of crime in America and the best practices for curving it.

A new report from the Council on Criminal Justice provides new insight on crime levels for the first half of this year. Data from 37 cities shows that most crime has gone down compared to last year, but levels are still higher since before the pandemic. The most notable exception is a large increase in motor vehicle theft.

At the same time the number of homicides dropped sharply over 9 percent lower than the first half of 2022. Adam Gelb is the founder, president and CEO of the Council on Criminal Justice, which is a nonprofit Think Tank focusing on criminal justice reform. And Thaddeus Johnson is a Senior Research Fellow for Council on Criminal Justice who studies policing, crime control and governance equity.

Thank you both so much for joining me.

Adam, let's start with you. Walk us through some of the main findings of this report.

Adam Gelb, President and CEO, Council on Criminal Justice: Sure, the headlines here are that we have a significant decrease in homicide 9 percent. It would be historic if it stays that way throughout the year, and then a significant increase in motor vehicle theft. The rest of the crimes are pretty flat, trending downwards, downwards somewhat slightly.

And we do still see unfortunately, elevated levels of homicide and violent crimes in particular. And with respect to all of that the actual doubling of the rate of auto theft today compared to 2019.

What are the factors behind that?

Yeah, but this is one of the most interesting things about what's happened over the last couple of years. You know, it takes three things to have a crime, you've got motive, means and opportunity. Here with a motor vehicle theft, it really highlights the role that opportunity plays. And that is, particularly with two types of models of cars, Hyundais and Kias became a lot easier to steal.

And there was a TikTok video that showed you how to do that, but a very simple way. And so all of a sudden, we see this significant rise in auto theft, not because people have different reasons for doing it. But it's just easier to do.

Thaddeus, I want to talk to you about crime reduction methods. What are some of the proven methods that you have seen in some of these communities that really work? And how much can we attribute these declines in the cities that this report looked at to those crime reduction methods?

Thaddeus Johnson:

That's the billion dollar question, right. And it's difficult to really pinpoint the exact causes of the crime trends. But at a fundamental level, we can think about the pandemic and the associated shutdowns, they disrupted the way police and service providers were able to engage and serve our communities, especially those at greatest risk of community violence.

And so one key strategy has been focusing on the small number of people and places where violent crime is concentrated. For instance, the report showed that in Philadelphia that 1 percent of the population was responsible for about 60 or 70 percent of the crimes.

And so police are turned away from the stop and frisk type of policing. And they've turned to a more intelligence driven policing that draws on police intelligence, crime mapping, risk terrain mapping, says social network analysis that identify these people does not just police, it's not just communities, we need each other. And the most effective strategies are the ones that really emphasize that relationship.

I want to pick up Adam on another thing you said, which is that crime levels are still higher than they were pre-pandemic. So how should people be looking at this? It seems like it's a mixed bag of results.

I think that's right, it is a mixed bag. Mostly it's coming down, though. And so I think it's very optimistic and we can be guardedly optimistic about where things are headed. And there's no magic wands, just to be clear, but we know what can work that just outlines several of the other things, and that we now just need the leadership and the political will to do them.

Thaddeus, I wonder, are there methods that you believe can be replicated across the country? Or is it very important to make city by city applications of these things? And essentially, no one size fits all?

No, you're absolutely right. It's person base. It's placed based. It's time based. It involves communities. It involves the police. It involves technology. It involves data driven, smart policing. And again, I will emphasize, it involves police and communities working together, particularly our communities, our most vulnerable.

And these are the places that really want the police, despite what the narratives may be nationwide, however, the trust and legitimacy of policing and the history, and many of these neighborhoods have been a big issue. And it's hard to build this without trust.

But the right cities and the smart cities have worked to engage and build those relationships, because that forms the core. And so it's not really complex. It's about relationships. It's about focusing on what's good and tailoring those things for your community based on these principles and evidence based practices.

Thaddeus, I'd like to stick with you. Why are communities of color disproportionately impacted by crime? And they're often not part of the conversation when it comes to policing methods? Why is that and how can that be changed?

Unfortunately, black and brown communities bear the brunt of violent victimization, and offending, it doesn't mean that these communities are broken that these people are inherently more valid.

And so many times these communities, they don't want to defund the police. They want to have policing there. But we have to get past this actual level of this trust. And this history that we have and oftentimes has caused them to be on the serve is also called these communities to withdraw from these table because they've been disenfranchised. They haven't been empowered.

So we have to get permission from these communities with these ideas. We can't just come in and act like we're invaders. It's important that we come in as partners and put them first.

Adam Gelb and Thaddeus Johnson with the Council on Criminal Justice. Thank you both so much for joining us.

Thanks for having us.

Listen to this Segment

Watch the Full Episode

Ali Rogin is a correspondent for PBS News Weekend and a foreign affairs producer at the PBS NewsHour.

Andrew Corkery is a national affairs producer at PBS News Weekend.

Support Provided By: Learn more

More Ways to Watch

• PBS iPhone App
• PBS iPad App

Educate your inbox

Subscribe to Here’s the Deal, our politics newsletter for analysis you won’t find anywhere else.

Thank you. Please check your inbox to confirm.

Read our research on: TikTok | Podcasts | Election 2024

Regions & Countries

Video: do americans trust the police.

While views of and experiences with police vary substantially across demographic groups, there is support for a number of police reforms.

Growing share of Americans say they want more spending on police in their area

Amid mounting public concern about violent crime in the U.S., Americans’ attitudes about police funding in their own community have shifted.

Support for Black Lives Matter declined after George Floyd protests, but has remained unchanged since

Currently, 55% of U.S. adults express at least some support for the Black Lives Matter movement, unchanged from a year ago.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter

Fresh data delivery Saturday mornings

All Police Publications

8 facts about black lives matter.

As we mark 10 years since the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag first appeared on social media, here are eight facts about the Black Lives Matter movement.

#BlackLivesMatter Turns 10

More than 44 million #BlackLivesMatter tweets from nearly 10 million distinct users currently exist on Twitter today. Over half of all existing tweets that include the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag were posted from May to September 2020.

Support for the Black Lives Matter Movement Has Dropped Considerably From Its Peak in 2020

Today, 51% of U.S. adults say they support the Black Lives Matter movement – down from 67% in June 2020. A majority of Americans say the increased focus on race and racial inequality in the past three years hasn't led to improvement for Black Americans.

Before release of video showing Tyre Nichols’ beating, public views of police conduct had improved modestly

Prior to the Tyre Nichols video release, views of police conduct in the U.S. had improved in three of four measures, with crime an exception.

For Black History Month, a look at what Black Americans say is needed to overcome racial inequality

Most Black adults (63%) say voting is an extremely or very effective strategy for Black progress; only 42% say the same of protesting.

Black Americans Have a Clear Vision for Reducing Racism but Little Hope It Will Happen

Black Americans support significant reforms to or complete overhauls of several U.S. institutions to ensure fair treatment. Yet even as they assess inequality and ideas about progress, many are pessimistic about whether society and institutions will change in ways that would reduce racism.

How Black Americans view the use of face recognition technology by police

Black Americans are critical of key aspects of policing and criminal justice. But their views on face recognition technology are more nuanced.

AI and Human Enhancement: Americans’ Openness Is Tempered by a Range of Concerns

Public views are tied to how these technologies would be used and what constraints would be in place.

Americans’ Trust in Scientists, Other Groups Declines

Trust in scientists and medical scientists has fallen below pre-pandemic levels, with 29% of U.S. adults saying they have a great deal of confidence in medical scientists to act in the best interests of the public. This is down from 40% in November 2020 and 35% in January 2019, before COVID-19 emerged. Other prominent groups – including the military, police officers and public school principals – have also seen their ratings decline.

Trust in America: Do Americans trust the police?

Refine your results.

About Pew Research Center Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts .

• Society ›
• Crime & Law Enforcement

Crime in the U.S.

State by state comparison, is crime increasing, key insights.

Detailed statistics

Most dangerous cities in the U.S. 2022, by violent crime rate

Least peaceful U.S. metropolitan areas 2012

Metropolitan areas - crime U.S. 2020, by type

Editor’s Picks Current statistics on this topic

Current statistics on this topic, violent crime.

United States crime rate in 2022, by type of crime

Metropolitan areas - crime rate U.S. 2022, by type

Public assessment of crime as a serious issue U.S. 2000-2021

Related topics

Recommended.

• United States
• Crime worldwide
• The impact of cybercrime on companies in the U.S.
• Violent crime in the U.S.
• Property crime in the U.S.
• Hate crime in the United States

Recommended statistics

• Basic Statistic Number of committed crimes in the U.S. 2022, by type
• Basic Statistic United States crime rate in 2022, by type of crime
• Basic Statistic Reported violent crime rate in the U.S. 2022, by state
• Premium Statistic Metropolitan areas - crime rate U.S. 2022, by type
• Basic Statistic Public assessment of crime as a serious issue U.S. 2000-2021
• Basic Statistic U.S. crime rate trend perception 1990-2022

Number of committed crimes in the U.S. 2022, by type

Number of committed crimes in the United States in 2022, by type of crime

Crime rate in the United States in 2022, by type of crime (per 100,000 inhabitants)

Reported violent crime rate in the U.S. 2022, by state

Reported violent crime rate in the United States in 2022, by state (per 100,000 of the population)

Crime rate in metropolitan areas in the United States in 2022, by type (per 100,000 inhabitants)

Percentage of the U.S. population that assesses crime as a serious problem from 2000 to 2021, nationwide and local

U.S. crime rate trend perception 1990-2022

Is there more crime in the U.S. than there was a year ago, or less?

• Basic Statistic U.S.: reported murder and nonnegligent manslaughter cases 1990-2022
• Basic Statistic USA - reported murder and nonnegligent manslaughter rate 1990-2022
• Basic Statistic U.S.: reported forcible rape cases 1990-2022
• Basic Statistic USA - reported forcible rape rate 1990-2022
• Basic Statistic U.S.: reported robbery cases 1990-2022
• Basic Statistic USA - reported robbery rate 1990-2022
• Basic Statistic U.S.: reported cases of aggravated assault 1990-2022
• Basic Statistic USA - reported aggravated assault rate 1990-2022

U.S.: reported murder and nonnegligent manslaughter cases 1990-2022

Number of reported murder and nonnegligent manslaughter cases in the United States from 1990 to 2022

USA - reported murder and nonnegligent manslaughter rate 1990-2022

Reported murder and nonnegligent manslaughter rate in the United States from 1990 to 2022 (per 100,000 of the population)

U.S.: reported forcible rape cases 1990-2022

Number of reported forcible rape cases in the United States from 1990 to 2022

USA - reported forcible rape rate 1990-2022

Reported forcible rape rate in the United States from 1990 to 2022 (per 100,000 of the population)

U.S.: reported robbery cases 1990-2022

Number of reported robbery cases in the United States from 1990 to 2022

USA - reported robbery rate 1990-2022

Reported robbery rate in the United States from 1990 to 2022 (per 100,000 of the population)

U.S.: reported cases of aggravated assault 1990-2022

Number of reported cases of aggravated assault in the United States from 1990 to 2022

USA - reported aggravated assault rate 1990-2022

Reported aggravated assault rate in the United States from 1990 to 2022 (per 100,000 of the population)

Property Crime

• Basic Statistic U.S.: reported larceny-theft cases 1990-2022
• Basic Statistic USA - reported larceny-theft rate 1990-2022
• Basic Statistic U.S.: reported burglary cases 1990-2022
• Basic Statistic USA - reported burglary rate 1990-2022
• Basic Statistic U.S.: reported motor vehicle theft cases 1990-2022
• Basic Statistic U.S.: reported motor vehicle theft rate 1990-2022

U.S.: reported larceny-theft cases 1990-2022

Number of reported larceny-theft cases in the United States from 1990 to 2022

USA - reported larceny-theft rate 1990-2022

Reported larceny-theft rate in the United States from 1990 to 2022 (per 100,000 of the population)

U.S.: reported burglary cases 1990-2022

Number of reported burglary cases in the United States from 1990 to 2022

USA - reported burglary rate 1990-2022

Reported burglary rate in the United States from 1990 to 2022 (per 100,000 of the population)

U.S.: reported motor vehicle theft cases 1990-2022

Number of reported motor vehicle theft cases in the United States from 1990 to 2022

U.S.: reported motor vehicle theft rate 1990-2022

Reported motor vehicle theft rate in the United States from 1990 to 2022 (per 100,000 of the population)

Crime Clearance & Arrests

• Basic Statistic Clearance rate - crime clearance rate U.S. 2022, by type
• Basic Statistic Regional distribution - crime clearance rate in the U.S. 2022
• Basic Statistic USA - number of arrests for all offenses 1990-2022
• Basic Statistic USA - arrest rate for all offenses 1990-2022
• Basic Statistic USA - number of arrests for violent offenses 1990-2022
• Basic Statistic USA - arrest rate for violent offenses 1990-2022
• Basic Statistic USA - number of arrests for property offenses 1990-2022
• Premium Statistic USA - arrest rate for property offenses 1990-2022

Clearance rate - crime clearance rate U.S. 2022, by type

Crime clearance rate in the United States in 2022, by type

Regional distribution - crime clearance rate in the U.S. 2022

Crime clearance rate in the United States in 2022, by region

USA - number of arrests for all offenses 1990-2022

Number of arrests for all offenses in the United States from 1990 to 2022

USA - arrest rate for all offenses 1990-2022

Arrest rate for all offenses in the United States from 1990 to 2022 (arrests per 100,000 people)

USA - number of arrests for violent offenses 1990-2022

Number of arrests for violent offenses in the United States from 1990 to 2022

USA - arrest rate for violent offenses 1990-2022

Arrest rate for violent offenses in the United States from 1990 to 2022 (arrests per 100,000 of the population)

USA - number of arrests for property offenses 1990-2022

Number of arrests for property offenses in United States from 1990 to 2022

USA - arrest rate for property offenses 1990-2022

Arrest rate for property offenses in the United States from 1990 to 2022 (per 100,000 of the population)

Further reports Get the best reports to understand your industry

Get the best reports to understand your industry.

Mon - Fri, 9am - 6pm (EST)

Mon - Fri, 9am - 5pm (SGT)

Mon - Fri, 10:00am - 6:00pm (JST)

Mon - Fri, 9:30am - 5pm (GMT)

• International edition
• Australia edition
• Europe edition

FBI data shows US crime plummeted in 2023 but experts warn report is incomplete

Experts say FBI’s finding crime numbers dropped should be viewed with caution but nonetheless the numbers are encouraging

Crime in the US fell significantly in 2023, according to new FBI data , with a 13% decline in murder and drops in reported violent crime and reported property offenses.

Both robbery and aggravated assault dropped by 5% from 2022, the FBI data shows, while all violent crime declined by 6%.

However, the statistics are based on figures collected from only 79% of law enforcement agencies in the US. Experts have previously warned that data can be “patchy” given inconsistency in reporting by the local agencies who supply the numbers. And the new stats are unaudited as the FBI is not scheduled to release its official figures and analysis concerning crime in 2023 until this upcoming October.

The figures come as Republicans have made crime a central issue ahead of the November presidential election. Donald Trump has repeatedly talked about murder and violent crime at the former president’s campaign rallies, and Republicans have claimed crime committed by migrants is on the rise.

“In May 2021, the justice department launched our violent crime reduction strategy aimed at addressing the spike in violent crime that occurred during the pandemic,” said Merrick Garland, the attorney general, in a statement .

“Since then, our prosecutors, agents, and grantmaking experts have worked in close partnership with police departments and communities across the country to go after the recidivists and gangs that are responsible for the greatest violence; to seize illegal guns and deadly drugs; to make critical investments in hiring more law enforcement officers; and to fund evidence-based, community violence intervention initiatives.”

The data are based on the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program, which collects crime statistics from local law enforcement agencies.

Participation in the program is voluntary, however, which means not all crime reports are collected. And many experts generally say that crime levels fluctuate for reasons that are unclear, and they are not always influenced in the short term in any meaningful way by government policies or intervention.

The figures released on Tuesday are based on data collected from 15,199 of 19,152 law enforcement agencies, the FBI said.

Experts previously told the Guardian that the FBI’s findings should be viewed with caution given the incomplete information.

“You miss the full story when you have incomplete and patchy data,” Insha Rahman, vice-president of advocacy and partnerships at Vera Institute of Justice, told the Guardian last year.

The Appeal , a news organization which focuses on the criminal legal system, has also pointed out that 50% of violent crimes, and 70% of property crimes, are never reported to the police – meaning those crimes will be missed in the data.

Nonetheless, the prominent New Orleans-based crime analyst Jeff Asher told NBC News in an article published on Tuesday that the preliminary numbers were encouraging.

“It suggests that when we get the final data in October, we will have seen likely the largest one-year decline in murder that has ever been recorded,” Asher said.

Asher also told NBC it was possible that local governments’ managing to resume certain anti-crime initiatives that were interrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic may have had a hand in the reduction shown in the FBI’s preliminary data.

Earlier this month, Trump claimed falsely that “migrant violence is leading to the worst crime wave in history” as Republicans have sought to accuse Democrats of being soft on crime.

In his State of the Union speech on 7 March, Joe Biden remarked that his administration had made “the largest investment in public safety ever”, as he said crime rates had fallen.

Most viewed

Immigrants are significantly less likely to commit crimes than the U.S.-born

• Expert Viewpoint
• Institute for Policy Research
• Weinberg College

Some Americans believe that undocumented immigrants are a criminal threat to society. Former President Donald J. Trump has leveraged this assumption to inflame the rhetoric around immigration from the U.S.-Mexico border.

A study co-led by Northwestern University economist Elisa Jácome provides the first historical comparison of incarceration rates of immigrants to U.S.-born citizens.

Using incarceration rates as a proxy for crime, a team of economists analyzed 150 years of U.S. Census data and found immigrants were consistently less likely to be incarcerated than people born in the U.S.

They also found beginning in 1960, the incarceration gap widened such that immigrants today are 60% less likely to be incarcerated than the U.S.-born. 

“Our study shows that since 1870, it has never been the case that immigrants as a group have been more incarcerated than the U.S.-born,” Jácome said.

Jácome is an assistant professor of economics and a faculty fellow with the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern.

A multi-university team of economists had previously studied the upward mobility of immigrants and found that children of low-income immigrants tended to be more upwardly mobile than U.S.-born children of low-income families.

Prompted by frequent questions about the impact of immigration on local crime rates, the researchers used data from the U.S. Census to find out whether immigrants were more likely to commit crimes than the U.S.-born.

Starting with the 1870 U.S. Census — the first to include the full population including those formerly enslaved — through the most recent in 2020, which collects data nationwide including from correctional facilities, the researchers measured the gaps between immigrant and U.S.-born levels of incarceration.

Over that 150-year period they found that immigrants’ incarceration rate was only slightly lower than that of U.S.-born men. However, in the more recent time period, immigrants are 60% less likely to be incarcerated than U.S. born citizens, and 30% less likely relative to U.S. born whites.

To explain what happened beginning in 1960, Jácome and co-authors point to globalization and skill-based technological changes as coinciding with the gap.

“A surprising finding was the extent to which immigrants with lower levels of education today are significantly less likely to commit crimes than their U.S.-born counterparts,” Jácome said. “This may indicate immigrants are more resistant to economic shocks that have affected less-educated men in recent decades.”

The researchers say policymakers should consider a variety of factors in addressing immigration issues.

“The impact of immigration on the economy is a multifaceted topic and crime is just one of the factors,” Jácome said. “To get a holistic picture, policymakers should also account for research, invention and services that are being provided because of immigrants.

“To the extent you want to make a cost-benefit statement about immigration, you must also look at benefits lost if immigration was reduced.”

The study co-authors are Ran Abramitzky, professor of economics at Stanford University; Leah Boustan, professor of economics at Princeton University; Santiago Pérez, associate professor of economics at the University of California at Davis; and Juan David Torres, doctoral student in economics at Stanford.

“ Law-Abiding Immigrants: The Incarceration Gap Between Immigrants and the U.S.-born, 1850–2020 ” was released as a working paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research in July 2023, and will be published in the American Economic Review: Insights at a later date.

Editor’s Picks

Kathryn Hahn named Northwestern commencement speaker

Northwestern to build new softball stadium, not just more bad news: what is solutions journalism, related stories.

An estimated 1.2 billion people experienced water insecurity in the prior year

Deborah cohen named executive director of roberta buffett institute for global affairs, jacobs center renovation will create collaborative space to address pressing societal issues.

US violent crime decreased in 2023, continuing to reverse pandemic-era spike: Data

New FBI statistics show violent crime in the U.S. dropping again last year, continuing a downward trend after a pandemic-era spike

WASHINGTON -- New FBI statistics show overall violent crime in the U.S. dropped again last year, continuing a downward trend after a pandemic-era spike.

Murders dropped 13% in the last three months of 2023 compared with the same period the year before, according to FBI data released this week. Violent crime overall was down 6%.

Property crime also ticked downward about 3% in the nation as a whole, though in the Northeast and in large cities over a million people it increased by about the same amount.

The quarterly report released Tuesday is based on data sent to the FBI from about 80% of the law enforcement agencies in the country. Final detailed data for 2023 is expected to be released in the fall.

President Joe Biden said the drop in the murder rate was one of the steepest in the country’s history. The $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, passed in 2021 by a Democratic-led Congress and signed by Biden, allowed cities and states to invest $15 billion on public safety, he said.

Attorney General Merrick Garland called the data encouraging and touted law enforcement efforts to target gangs, illegal guns and other issues.

The FBI’s report was in line with the findings of the nonpartisan Council on Criminal Justice, which found that homicides were down an average of 10% in a survey of 32 cities over the year before, though it found violent crime still remained higher than before the coronavirus pandemic in many cities.

Homicides showed a steep 29% increase in 2020, the largest one-year jump since the FBI began keeping records. The rise defied easy explanation, though experts said possible contributors included the massive disruption of the pandemic, gun violence, worries about the economy and intense stress.

Crime appeared to stay steady the following year, though a record-collecting overhaul at the FBI meant many big cities weren't included in the report that year.

FBI data showed violent crime across the U.S. decreased in 2022, nearing pre-pandemic levels, though property crimes rose that year.

Top Stories

'Little House on the Prairie' cast talk 50th anniversary, remember Michael Landon

• Mar 21, 1:15 PM

Woman who lied about abduction forced to pay nearly $18K in restitution

• Mar 21, 3:40 PM

Missing college student's stepdad opens up about family's difficult conversations

• Mar 20, 6:19 PM

New video, photos of Ruby Franke's son reveals details that led to her arrest

What could sway votes of 'double haters' who don't like Biden, Trump? They explain.

• 3 hours ago

ABC News Live

24/7 coverage of breaking news and live events

A new wave of 'tough-on-crime' laws aim to intimidate criminals. Experts are skeptical.

A recent wave of new policies and ballot measures makes it clear : Many politicians across the country think crime is out-of-control and tougher laws will help fix the problem.

From Louisiana to California, efforts to increase criminal penalties and give more power to police have made it on the books as politicians say they want to make their streets safer. Most Americans (58%), meanwhile, now think the country is not tough enough on crime, a reversal from just a few years earlier (41%), according to public opinion polling from Gallup .

The most recent wave of laws extend to even liberal enclaves like San Francisco, a marked turn from reforms passed years ago in the wake of George Floyd's murder, which sparked a mass awakening to the inequities of the criminal justice system.

Efforts to crack down on crime, commonly called "tough-on-crime" laws, have been studied for years and have been found to boost the number of people in jail, but there's little evidence that they're effective crime deterrent, experts say. That's in part because most people who commit crime aren’t thinking about the penalties for their actions.

Tough-on-crime laws attempt to solve crime by stigmatizing people who commit crimes rather than addressing the root causes, driving mass incarceration and disrupting families and communities while heavily impacting people of color, said Shari Stone-Mediatore, the cofounder of advocacy group Parole Illinois and a professor at Ohio-Wesleyan University.

“It’s not a productive way to deal with social problems” like drug addiction or unemployment, Stone-Mediatore said.

'A stunning turnabout': Voters and lawmakers across US move to reverse criminal justice reform

Because the latest wave of laws follow widespread criminal justice reforms, some experts note the new laws may not be as extreme as some past crime crackdowns.

"They're not going back to the way it was before," said Adam Gelb, President and CEO of the nonpartisan think tank  Council on Criminal Justice . Many recent tough-on-crime laws are essentially rolling back some of the most controversial reforms, "rather than completely rejecting a balanced approach."

He also acknowledged that some policies that have popped up recently may be intended to send a message about crime tolerance rather than stop crime directly.

‘Restored law and order’: Crime rates prompting concern by politicians

Crime rates fluctuate based on innumerable factors, which the U.S. has seen throughout history, according to Jeffrey Bellin, a professor at the William & Mary Law School and the author of “Mass Incarceration Nation: How the United States Became Addicted to Prisons and Jails and How It Can Recover.”

National data on crime rates shows that while crime went up during the early years of the COVID-19 pandemic, it has mostly returned to pre-pandemic levels or below. FBI crime reports show that violent crimes in particular, which jumped in 2020, have come back down. In 2022, there was a 6.1% decrease in murder and non-negligent manslaughter. Rape decreased 5.4% and aggravated assault dropped 1.1%, the data shows. 

Yet robbery increased 1.3%. Property crimes overall increased 7.1% in 2022, with motor vehicle thefts showing the biggest increase at 10.9%. Carjackings increased 8.1% from 2021, including those that led to injury.

“The COVID pandemic was such a shock to the system that it created all sorts of distortions, not just in terms of how people were behaving,” but also in how policing of communities was carried out, Bellin said.

In Louisiana, which just overhauled its criminal justice system and reversed previous efforts at reform in a special session, crime rates have followed a similar pattern, but the state has had one of the highest homicide rates in the country in recent years.

“(C)riminals have been thriving while our law enforcement officers are more demoralized than ever,” Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry and Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy, both Republicans, said in an opinion article published by USA TODAY’s Network in Louisiana.

“With this Special Session, the Louisiana Legislature restored law and order and put criminals on notice that they will face punishments for their crimes,” they said.

Among the legislation passed: laws that will treat all 17-year-olds who commit crimes as adults, harsher penalties for carjackings and a minimum of 25 years in jail in cases where someone distributes fentanyl in a way that appeals to children, such as the shape, color, taste or packaging design.

Meanwhile in California, San Francisco voted for two propositions that give police more leeway to pursue suspects in vehicles and expand the use of drones and surveillance cameras, and that require welfare recipients to undergo drug treatment. In Washington, D.C., the city council approved public safety measures including establishing “drug-free zones” to target drug-related loitering.

In Oregon, the first state to decriminalize illicit drugs three years ago , politicians have reinstated criminal penalties for possession of some drugs.

READ MORE: 'A stunning turnabout': Voters and lawmakers across US move to reverse criminal justice reform

Low-level offenses often targeted in crime crackdowns

When elected officials want to crack down on crime rates, they often choose to implement harsher sentences for crimes, including lower-level offenses, leading to longer prison sentences and more people in prison. The hope is that keeping criminals off the streets will lessen the amount of crime that is committed, and deter others from committing crime. 

“Tough on crime in this country is a way of thinking about how to deal with social problems that became strongly articulated in the late 70s and 80s,” Stone-Mediatore said. “Since then, study after study has shown that it does not work.” 

A good example of a tough-on-crime approach is the U.S. war on drugs that saw a sharp increase in the number of people sent to prison for drug offenses starting in the 70s, Bellin said. Yet that didn’t reduce the availability of drugs or the number of people using them, Bellin said.

Tough-on-crime laws often target crimes that are easier for police to detect, like drug offenses, rather than the types of crimes that people most care about, like sexual violence and murder, Bellin said. 

When considering what effect tough-on-crime laws have, Bellin said, “what we really mean is tough on the people we catch.”

Want to prevent crime? Make people believe they will be caught, research suggests.

According to Stone-Mediatore and Bellin, research shows people care about getting caught and often have a warped sense of whether they will be.

But laws that increase prison sentences don’t inherently deter them, because the people potentially committing crimes may not know about what those new penalties are.

The National Institute of Justice , a body of the U.S. Department of Justice, found in a 2016 analysis of a wide body of research that: 

• The severity and length of punishment is a less effective deterrent than the certainty of being caught. Police can deter crime by increasing the perception that criminals will be caught. 
• A prison sentence for every person convicted of a crime is not effective at deterring crime. Rather, people who go to prison may learn more effective crime strategies while they’re in prison.
• Research doesn’t prove that the death penalty deters people from committing homicides. 

What can result in reduced violent crimes like murder is expanding law enforcement’s ability to investigate and prosecute those more serious crimes rather than focusing on lower-level crimes like drug offenses. 

“If it's likely that you'll get caught for committing a crime, you're less likely to commit the crime,” Bellin said, regardless of how stiff the penalty is.

Contributing: Kinsey Crowley, USA TODAY; The Associated Press

Morning Rundown: Ohtani scandal comes at a pivotal moment, Gazan support for a two-state solution rises, and rare disorder causes man to see ‘demonic’ faces

The U.S. crime rate is still dropping, FBI data shows

New FBI  data  confirms previous indications that crime in the U.S. declined significantly in 2023, continuing a post-pandemic trend and belying widespread perceptions that crime is rising .

The new fourth-quarter numbers showed a 13% decline in murder in 2023 from 2022, a 6% decline in reported violent crime and a 4% decline in reported property crime. That’s based on data from around 13,000 law enforcement agencies, policing about 82% of the U.S. population, that provided the FBI with data through December.

“It suggests that when we get the final data in October, we will have seen likely the largest one-year decline in murder that has ever been recorded,” said  Jeff Asher , a former CIA analyst who now studies crime trends.

In October, the FBI will release its final and most comprehensive look at crime in 2023.

Asher and other experts say the biggest factor behind the drop in crime may simply be the resumption of anti-crime initiatives by local governments and courts that had stopped during the pandemic .

“After a terrible period of underfunding and understaffing caused by the pandemic, local governments have, by most measures, returned to pre-pandemic levels ,” wrote John Roman, a criminologist at the University of Chicago. In an interview, Roman said, “The courts were closed, a lot of cops got sick, a lot of police agencies told their officers not to interact with the public. Teachers were not in schools, not working with kids.”

Asher said, “The tools that we ordinarily have used to interrupt these cycles of violence were gone in 2020 [and] 2021.”

In a statement on Tuesday, President Joe Biden called the new numbers "good news for the American people" and touted his efforts to combat gun violence.

"Keeping communities safe is my priority," he said. "While we've made major progress, we still have more work to do."

Attorney General Merrick Garland also issued a statement praising the drop in crime and noting that, in May 2021, the Justice Department launched a strategy aimed at addressing the spike in violent crime that occurred during the pandemic.

“Since then, our prosecutors, agents, and grant-making experts have worked in close partnership with police departments and communities across the country to go after the recidivists and gangs that are responsible for the greatest violence; to seize illegal guns and deadly drugs; to make critical investments in hiring more law enforcement officers; and to fund evidence-based, community violence intervention initiatives,” he said.

As NBC News previously  reported , the drop in crime does not appear to be well understood by large majorities of Americans, according to polls. A Gallup  poll  in December found that 77% of Americans believe crime rates are worsening.

“The perception doesn’t match the actuality in a lot of places because people are bad at perceiving risk,” Asher said, adding that both traditional and social media tend to spotlight violence and disorder.

Roman noted that it’s been since 2001 that a majority of Americans have continued to believe their communities are becoming more dangerous, even as crime was dropping.

Roman also pointed out that “there is definitely more disorder in cities than there was five years ago. I don’t think that’s up for dispute.”

However, he said, "People confuse disorder and crime, so the presence of a lot of disorder can signal to regular folks that they are in a dangerous place, when they aren’t necessarily in a dangerous place.”

According to Roman, crime rates are at a point now where we are essentially back to the long-term trend from the last decade. “The question is will we go below it,” he said. “I think we will. We have made huge investments in community-based violence intervention that are really new and are of sufficient scale that they could change things. The downside is that we are facing a police staffing crisis that is very real.”

Ken Dilanian is the justice and intelligence correspondent for NBC News, based in Washington.

• Election 2024
• Entertainment
• Newsletters
• Photography
• Personal Finance
• AP Buyline Personal Finance
• Press Releases
• Israel-Hamas War
• Russia-Ukraine War
• Global elections
• Asia Pacific
• Latin America
• Middle East
• March Madness
• AP Top 25 Poll
• Movie reviews
• Book reviews
• Personal finance
• Financial Markets
• Business Highlights
• Financial wellness
• Artificial Intelligence
• Social Media

US violent crime decreased in 2023, continuing to reverse pandemic-era spike, FBI data shows

FILE - The J. Edgar Hoover FBI Building is seen June 9, 2023, in Washington. New FBI statistics show violent crime in the U.S. dropping again last year, continuing a downward trend after a pandemic-era spike. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)

• Copy Link copied

WASHINGTON (AP) — New FBI statistics show overall violent crime in the U.S. dropped again last year, continuing a downward trend after a pandemic-era spike.

Murders dropped 13% in the last three months of 2023 compared with the same period the year before, according to FBI data released this week. Violent crime overall was down 6%.

Property crime also ticked downward about 3% in the nation as a whole, though in the Northeast and in large cities over a million people it increased by about the same amount.

The quarterly report released Tuesday is based on data sent to the FBI from about 80% of the law enforcement agencies in the country. Final detailed data for 2023 is expected to be released in the fall.

President Joe Biden said the drop in the murder rate was one of the steepest in the country’s history. The $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, passed in 2021 by a Democratic-led Congress and signed by Biden, allowed cities and states to invest $15 billion on public safety, he said.

Attorney General Merrick Garland called the data encouraging and touted law enforcement efforts to target gangs, illegal guns and other issues.

The FBI’s report was in line with the findings of the nonpartisan Council on Criminal Justice, which found that homicides were down an average of 10% in a survey of 32 cities over the year before, though it found violent crime still remained higher than before the coronavirus pandemic in many cities.

Homicides showed a steep 29% increase in 2020, the largest one-year jump since the FBI began keeping records. The rise defied easy explanation, though experts said possible contributors included the massive disruption of the pandemic, gun violence, worries about the economy and intense stress.

Crime appeared to stay steady the following year, though a record-collecting overhaul at the FBI meant many big cities weren’t included in the report that year.

FBI data showed violent crime across the U.S. decreased in 2022, nearing pre-pandemic levels, though property crimes rose that year.

U.S. Crime Rate Continued to Drop Last Year, FBI Data Shows

President Joe Biden celebrated the overall dip in crime rates, saying his administration had gotten “to work on day one” to fix them.

AJ McDougall

Breaking News Reporter

Jack Berman via Getty Images

Data released Tuesday by the FBI shows that crime rates took a precipitous tumble in 2023, with the new fourth-quarter numbers continuing to reflect a post-pandemic trend that runs counter to the right-wing narrative that crime is rising nationwide.

The rate of all violent crime in the United States went down by 6 percent in 2023 as compared to the year prior, according to the data. Homicides plunged by 13 percent, robbery and aggravated assault both dipped by 5 percent, and property crime dropped by 4 percent. Motor vehicle theft, however, was the only category that saw an increase, by 11 percent.

The stats are based on numbers provided by around 15,000 law enforcement agencies, just over 79 percent of the total of 19,000 agencies in the country.

The data has not yet been audited and analyzed, with the FBI expected to release its full report in October. But crime analyst Jeff Asher told NBC News that, once that data drop occurs later this year, it is likely that the final numbers will reflect “the largest one-year decline in murder that has ever been recorded.”

The Biden administration celebrated the numbers as a win, with President Joe Biden saying in a statement that it was “good news for the American people.

“In 2020, before I took office, the prior administration oversaw the largest increase in murders ever recorded,” he continued. “My Administration got to work on day one to fix that.”

Biden touted his public safety and gun control policies, adding, “Keeping communities safe is my priority. While we’ve made major progress, we still have more work to do.”

Attorney General Merrick Garland said in his own statement that his office was “encouraged” by the data, saying it was indicative of the success of a crime-prevention strategy the Justice Department launched in May 2021 to counter the wave of violent crime that surged during the pandemic. (Homicides spiked nearly 30 percent in 2020, FBI data showed, according to Reuters .)

“Since then,” Garland said, “our prosecutors, agents, and grantmaking experts have worked in close partnership with police departments and communities across the country to go after the recidivists and gangs that are responsible for the greatest violence; to seize illegal guns and deadly drugs; to make critical investments in hiring more law enforcement officers; and to fund evidence-based, community violence intervention initiatives.”

In direct contrast to the reality reflected by the data, Americans widely perceive crime as a spiraling issue. In a Gallup poll published last November, 77 percent of respondents said they believed crime has gotten worse in the last year.

“The perception doesn’t match the actuality in a lot of places because people are bad at perceiving risk,” Asher told NBC News.

Social media hysteria, traditional media reports spotlighting gruesome crimes, and Republicans loudly attacking Biden and the Democratic Party as soft on crime don’t do anything to dissuade that perception.

When Fox News tackled the subject of falling crime rates in a segment earlier this month , a contributor blamed the downward trend on lenient prosecutors fudging the numbers.

“I mean, statistics are only reflective of what is put into the system, right?” Katie Pavlich asked. “So, if you have a number of prosecutors across the country who are downgrading serious felonies to misdemeanors, that makes it look like violent crime or burglaries…aren’t really happening.”

Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast  here .

READ THIS LIST