Police Quarterly

Courts regularly rely on scientific expert testimony in police use-of-force cases, and the Force Science Institute (FSI)—a private, for-profit entity—has emerged as an important source of purportedly scientific principles shaping police training, policies, and legal outcomes. Its “peer-reviewed” corpus is presented as scientifically authoritative and feeds into “Force Science Analyst” certification and expert consulting. Employing bibliometric analysis and three validated measures of scientific reliability, we assess a recent volume (Force Science) representing FSI’s claimed knowledge for scientific reliability. Contrary to FSI’s assertions, our findings show its published materials fail to meet the scientific rigor demanded by the Daubert standard, which governs the admissibility of scientific evidence in U.S. courts. These results highlight the need for caution and critical scrutiny of such evidence, and suggest that reliance on Force Science in legal proceedings, training programs, and policing policies risks introducing unverified concepts into high-stakes decision-making contexts.

Little is known about the decision-making processes used when police encounter suspects who have never previously been stopped or about how police decide who to question in the first place. Literature suggests suspect race plays a role, but findings are contradictory, perhaps due to the confounding effects of prior records. We therefore focus here on a suspect’s first police stop. Drawing on three theoretical accounts—focal concerns, benign neglect, and de-policing—we identify plausible explanations for racial differences in self-reported police contact and arrest outcomes. We use Add Health data and matched logistic regression to examine race effects. We find that black respondents were less likely than white respondents to be stopped, but there was no disparity in arrest. Although suspect race was associated with the decision to stop a suspect, the association’s direction did not align with that of the traditional focal concerns perspective.

Persons with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) are disproportionately affected by both violent crime and police misuse of force. Despite this, there is limited organizational knowledge around policing policies relating to this community. The current study employs data from the 2020 Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics survey (n = 2063) to examine whether organizational characteristics such as size, number of specialized units, and the extent to which the organization solicits community input on policing issues are associated with odds of possessing a formal written policy relating to persons with IDD. Findings suggest that factors relating to community policing and the formulation of policies for other specialized subpopulations were associated with odds of organizations maintaining such policies. There is a need to develop more nuanced policies which reflect the diversity of this community while also ensuring that stakeholders from the disability community are involved as co-producers of policies.

This study applies risk management strategies from commercial aviation to better understand when it is safe to send unarmed responders to 911/999 calls. By analyzing three years of community-generated call data from Seattle, Washington (727,423 calls across 356 types), this research assesses risk, or the “credible worst-case scenario” for each call type. Findings reveal nearly half (48.9%) of all call types could be safely addressed by diversified, non-police responders rather than the traditional “all-hazards” police approach. Observations that the all-hazards responder is often necessary to identify such opportunities, or what we term “Ratcliffe's Paradox,” are confirmed. This study indicates a systematic approach to risk management could enable such a diversified responses, potentially freeing up to 26% of police resources currently allocated to non-police calls. A Risk Managed Demand (RMD) could improve public safety outcomes, reduce the collateral harms of armed responses, and operationalize Alternative First Responder programs resulting in an optimal allocation of resources.

Objectives: This study assesses the effectiveness of hotspots policing in a novel context – moving hotspots. We examine the impact of preventative police presence on high-crime-harm bus routes, known as ‘Hot Bus Corridors’.

Methods: A pretest-post-test parallel groups randomised controlled trial (RCT) was conducted in London, UK, involving 556 ‘Hot Bus Corridors’ that were randomly assigned to receive either targeted visibility presence on buses or standard police presence, which served as the control group. Generalised linear models were used to estimate the treatment effect on crime levels, measured in terms of both crime counts and the Cambridge Crime Harm Index (CCHI).

Results: We observed a significant reduction in both crime counts and crime harm in the treatment bus corridors compared to the control corridors, with a more pronounced reduction during morning hours.

Conclusion: This study extends the applicability of hotspots policing to mobile environments, demonstrating its potential to enhance public safety. High-visibility police patrols in moving hotspots can increase deterrence and, consequently, effectively reduce crime within the public transportation network.