Offender profiling is an investigative tool used to narrow down the range of potential suspects for a crime by predicting the personality, behavioral, and demographic characteristics that an offender is likely to possess, based upon information collected at the crime scene. While offender profiling has been popularized by TV shows and movies such as Criminal Minds, Silence of the Lambs, and Mindhunter, the real-world impact of offender profiling is largely unknow...

This Brief examines the “militarization” of law enforcement in the United States through the lens of the stakeholders primarily responsible for implementing, funding, and enacting the practice. Largely a result of policies such as the war on drugs, war on terror, and the 1033 program, there has been a gradual but dramatic rise in the use of military-grade weapons, equipment, and tactics used by police agencies across the United States. This Brief examines the level of support for various a...

American law enforcement, and the public’s perception of police, is a topic of growing interest among academics, practitioners, and policymakers. From the 2014 events in Ferguson, MO, and the alleged "Ferguson Effect", to the debate over the impact of body-worn cameras (BWCs), police militarization, use of force, and other practices that may alter the public’s view of police legitimacy and procedural justice, there is an increasing need for research addressing these contemporary issues in ...

Now more than ever, the criminal justice system, and the programs, policies, and practices within it, are subject to increased public scrutiny, due to well-founded concerns over effectiveness, fairness, and potential unintended consequences. One of the best means to address these concerns is to draw upon evidence-based approaches demonstrated to be effective through empirical research, rather than through anecdote, standard practice, or professional experience alone (National Institute of ...

The current policing landscape has seen the rise in serious and organized crime across the globe. Criminals are innovating in real-time leveraging cyber, social media, enhanced surveillance to support their activities. In so doing, the criminal landscape has become transnational whereby collaborative networks have flourished thereby creating greater complexity and novel threats for the international policing community.As new threats to local, regional, national and global security ...