RETHINKING THE BLUES:
HOW WE POLICE IN THE U.S. AND AT WHAT COST
JUSTICE POLICY INSTITUTE | MAY 2012

Mission: Reducing the use of
incarceration and the justice
system and promoting policies
that improve the well-being of
all people and communities.

INTRODUCTION ................................................................................... 2
POLICING TODAY IN THE U.S. ........................................................... 5
WHAT DO POLICE DO? ............................................................... 5
BACKGROUND: WHY DO WE POLICE THE WAY WE DO? ...... 6
NEW POLICIES AND STRATEGIES CREATED THE
PERCEIVED NEED FOR MORE POLICE .................................... 7
EXPENDITURES ON POLICING ROSE WITH NEW POLICIES
AND STRATEGIES. .................................................................... 11
MORE POLICE ISN’T THE WAY TO MORE PUBLIC SAFETY ........ 16
THE ROLE OF COPS GRANTS IN REDUCING CRIME IS
QUESTIONABLE. ........................................................................ 17

th

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TEL (202) 558-7974
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WWW.JUSTICEPOLICY.ORG

PLACES WITH FEWER POLICE MAY BE JUST AS OR MORE
SAFE ........................................................................................... 19
WITH CRIME DOWN, POLICE FOCUS ON DRUG OFFENSES
..................................................................................................... 21
SOME TYPES OF POLICING CAN LEAD TO MORE CRIME AND
DISTRUST OF POLICE ...................................................................... 25
MILITARIZATION OF POLICE DAMAGES COMMUNITIES AND
LIVES, WITHOUT IMPROVING PUBLIC SAFETY ..................... 25
THE NEGATIVE EFFECTS OF CURRENT POLICING STRATEGIES
OUTWEIGH THE PUBLIC SAFETY BENEFITS ................................ 33
ARRESTS LEAD TO JUSTICE INVOLVEMENT WHICH HAS
SIGNIFICANT NEGATIVE CONSEQUENCES ........................... 33

Cover art “Blowback,” appears at
Busboys and Poets,
Hyattsville, MD
By artist Matthew Gifford
(443) 764-9490
kre8dotgiff@gmail.com

LAW ENFORCEMENT HAS A DISPROPORTIONATE IMPACT ON
CERTAIN COMMUNITIES .................................................................. 37
PEOPLE OF COLOR ARE DISPROPORTIONATELY ARRESTED,
ESPECIALLY FOR DRUG OFFENSES ........................................ 37
LOW INCOME COMMUNITIES, PARTICULARLY HOMELESS
COMMUNITIES, EXPERIENCE A CONCENTRATION OF
POLICE CONTACTS. .................................................................. 41
POSITIVE INVESTMENTS IN COMMUNITIES PROMOTE PUBLIC
SAFETY............................................................................................... 44
RECOMMENDATIONS ....................................................................... 49

INTRODUCTION

Although crime rates are at the lowest they have been in over 30
years, 1 the number of arrests has declined only slightly between
2009 and 2010 2 and the U.S. still spends more than $100 billion on
police every year 3 to fund 714,921 sworn police officers and an
increasing number of militarized police units.
Police play a vital role in protecting
communities and holding accountable those
who have committed violent and property
offenses. However, police forces have
morphed over the years from a locally-funded
and managed entity to protect public safety,
to also serving as a federally-funded jobs
initiative, an engine for surveillance, and a
militaristic special forces agency engaged in a
war on drugs, gangs, and youth. Federal
government funds and involvement have
helped create large police forces that are
disconnected from communities and operate
in a punitive rather than preventative way,
resulting in more arrests, more prison, and
more costs to taxpayers, among other negative
effects on communities. It is not just the sheer
number of police that lead to more arrests and
more prison, but also the style of policing,
which treats entire communities as though
they should be contained, surveilled, and
punished.
A confluence of factors created the current
policing system, including new theories about
crime prevention, the focus on individual
users in the war on drugs, a general increase
in laws, and the adoption of new policing
strategies. 4 A surge in violent crime in the
early 1990s also increased focus on police,

especially from the federal government. Even
though localities continue to fund and hire
most police, the federal government infused
more money into jurisdictions through such
laws as the Violent Crime Control and Law
Enforcement Act of 1994, which established
federal grants to fund local jurisdictions to
hire 100,000 police officers through
Community Oriented Policing Services
(COPS) grants, positions localities would then
need to fund themselves. As localities hired
thousands of new police officers, the U.S. saw
dramatic increases in arrests and prison
populations.
However, crime had already started to decline
by the time these grants were distributed and
implemented. Therefore, additional police
only contributed to increases in arrests for
both serious and minor offenses, without
significant additional impact on crime –
although law enforcement took credit for
declines. The increases in arrests were,
however, a likely major driver of incarceration
rates, which increased 39 percent from 19935
to 2010, reaching 732 per 100,000.6 And the
greatest impact of these policies was seen in
communities of color.

With violent and property crime down, a
greater percentage of arrests are now for other
types of offenses, particularly drug offenses.
These arrests, often for possession of very
small amounts of drugs, carry tremendous
costs both to society and to the people
involved, who must then face the rest of their
life with the collateral consequences of a
criminal record.
The combined numbers of police, encouraged
by federal funding and aggressive policing,
are representative of a continued misguided
approach to keeping communities safe.
Because the Department of Justice considers
“successful law enforcement policies” as those
that increase the number of people arrested
and imprisoned, governments are
shortchanging the public in regards to public
safety at a very high cost. Policymakers
should be directing funds toward true
community-based and collaborative policing
efforts, prevention, intervention, treatment,
education, and a host of other programs and
initiatives that have been shown to promote
healthy, safe communities. When arrests are
the bottom line instead of public safety and
healthy, prosperous communities, our
priorities are skewed.
This report does not argue that there should
be no law enforcement, nor does it argue that
some communities are not seriously harmed
by crime, but rather that communities and the
federal government should reconsider how
much is being spent and on what type of
policing. A balanced approach is needed that
concentrates on prevention and doesn’t result
in arrests and surveillance focused on
communities of color. Perhaps even more
importantly, communities should reject
approaches to policing that are punitive and
breed mistrust of police, undermining efforts
to preserve public safety. The following are
some of the main findings from the report:

Expenditures, not crime, drive increases
in police forces and arrests. Crime is at
the lowest levels it has been in over 30
years, but funding for police increased 445
percent between 1982 and 2007, with
federal funding increasing the most at 729
percent. While the economic slowdown
has slightly decreased law enforcement
spending, it still is not comparable to the
drop in crime rates.
More police don’t necessarily keep us
safer. Studies of federally-funded police
programs, specifically Community
Oriented Policing Services (COPS), found
that the program did not significantly
contribute to the dramatic decrease in
crime over the last 30 years. Also, there is
no clear correlation between spending
more on police and lower violent crime
rates, as state level data on both shows.
Crime is down, but arrests continue,
especially for drug offenses. Violent and
property crime rates have fallen 47
percent and 43 percent since 1991, when
the crime rate was at its highest, but
arrests have fallen only 20 percent. Instead
of making arrests for violent and property
crime, police are focusing on drug
offenses, especially small amounts of
drugs. Arrests for drug offenses have
increased 45 percent between 1993 and
2010, while arrests for violent and
property crime have fallen 27 and 22
percent, respectively.
Militaristic policing does more harm
than good. Drug task forces, S.W.A.T.
teams, gang task forces, and other
militaristic styles of policing have resulted
in corruption, deaths of innocent people,
wrongful convictions, and the
disproportionate arrest of people of color.
These types of police forces have done

very little to improve public safety, but
significantly harm communities and the
image of police.
Some communities are
disproportionately affected by policing:
People of color and lower income
communities experience law enforcement
in a concentrated way. For Black
communities, this is particularly true for
drug arrests. Although Blacks make up 13
percent of the population, they make up
31 percent of arrests for drug offenses,
while whites are 72 percent of the
population, but 67 percent of arrests.
Meanwhile both groups report similar
rates of drug use.7
The negative effects of over-policing,
including punitive, militaristic policing,
outweigh the benefits. Particularly in
times of falling violent and property
crimes, increased spending on police leads
to more arrests for low level and drug
offenses, especially in communities of
color. While police don’t “make the laws,”
the reality is that arrests are the first step
to involvement in the justice system,
which carries with it the potential for
incarceration and a host of collateral

consequences for individuals and negative
impacts on communities, including high
taxpayer costs. Any social benefit accrued
from aggressive enforcement of drug and
“quality of life” laws must be weighed
against these costs.
Community-supportive and supported
policing protects public safety without
the negative side effects. Policing
initiatives that are community-driven and
supported have had similar, if not better
public safety benefits as more aggressive,
arrest-driven policing initiatives. San
Diego’s now defunded community
supported policing initiative had similar
public safety outcomes as New York’s
zero tolerance approach, with fewer
arrests and without complaints of racial
profiling, police misconduct or abuse.
More spending on policing means fewer
resources available for other public
safety strategies that are better for
communities. Investments in community
based drug and mental health treatment,
education, and other social institutions
can make communities safer while
building their other assets and improving
life outcomes for all.

POLICING TODAY IN THE U.S.

Policing takes many forms in the United States, including
neighborhood police officers, state police, sheriffs, park police, and
transit police, to name only a few. Police are on -call 24-7 and tasked
with preventing crime, investigating crime and apprehend ing people
that are believed to have committed a crime, and keeping order in
the community, among other various services as needed. 8
In 2007, there were 714,921 full-time sworn
law enforcement personnel at the state and
local levels.9 The majority of these officers
were at the local level, making up about twothirds of sworn law enforcement personnel in
the United States. Three quarters of all police
departments employ fewer than 25 sworn
officers, and a third of all full-time sworn
police officers are employed by police
departments with 1,000 or more officers.10
As most law enforcement is at the local level,
it is not surprising that 77 percent of police
spending in 2007 was by local governments.
Law enforcement agencies use a variety of
screening procedures to hire police officers,
but only one percent require a four-year
college degree, with 16 percent having some
kind of college requirement. Most police are
men (88.1 percent in 2007) and the percent of
local police that are people of color was about
25 percent in 2007,11 which roughly
corresponds to the percentage in the general
population.12

Broadly, police work in the United States
includes the expectation that police both
enforce the law and protect individual rights.
Police have the authority to use force, while at
the same time be the protectors of public
safety. In practice, police also often become
the agency of last resort -- the people
summoned for family disputes, alcohol and
drug incidents, and mental health crises.13
Although some jurisdictions have set up task
forces specifically to train people to handle
In 2007, 77 percent of police
spending is by local
governments

Federal
14%
State
9%

Local
77%

Source: Bureau of Justice Statistics, “Employment
and Expenditure,” Accessed October, 2011.
http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/index.cfm?ty=tp&tid=5

these situations, for many jurisdictions, police
receive no such specialized training yet
remain the only ones available to handle these
issues.
Police also serve as a mechanism of social
control, which can be described as the way a
society, or certain segments of society, operate
based on designated principles.14 These
principles are often defined by people with
power and may affect some members of
society differently than others. In addition,
because police themselves are part of a system
of social control, they sometimes use their
own discretion in a variety of situations,
creating instances in which some offenses and
some people are treated differently than
others.15
Increasingly, there are efforts to redefine
social controls, and therefore policing, in
terms of the needs of smaller communities.
Such practices can help alleviate policies that
might not fit the needs of a particular
community. 16 These efforts at community
policing involve more community members in

all aspects of policing. In 2007, 16 percent of
police departments had a written community
policing plan, with 69 percent of police
departments serving more than 1 million
people having such a plan.17 However, these
modern efforts at community policing are still
highly influenced by federal policy rather
than local insight because so much federal
money pays for community policing
programs. In fact, the President’s 2013 budget
includes more than $4 billion, ostensibly for
Community Oriented Policing Services but
without requiring adherence to a communitycentered model.18

Crime is at one of the lowest levels in three
decades, yet the U.S. has more police than
ever. In 2007, there were 714,921 full-time
sworn officers in state and local jurisdictions
across the country,19 one for every 421 people
in the U.S. About 90 percent of these officers
are employed at the local level. Between 1982

The total number of state and local sworn officers increased 52 percent
between 1982 and 2007
750,000

714,921

Total Sworn Officers

700,000
650,000
600,000
550,000
500,000

470,909

450,000
400,000

Source: Bureau of Justice Statistics, Justice Expenditure and Employment Extracts 1992-2007 – Police Protection
(Washington, D.C.: 2010).

and 2007, the number of full-time officers at
the state and local level increased 52 percent.
The reasons for this steady increase in police
forces are numerous, but do not correspond
with crime trends. Some of the reasons for an
increase in police, as well as a trend toward
more militarized police forces, include an
increasingly punitive response to drug use,
growth in federal funding of local police, and
zero tolerance policing strategies.

Over the last 30 years, significant policy
changes at all levels of government around
drugs, crime control and policing strategies
have created a perceived need for more
police. While these national policy agendas
were playing out, more and more offenses
have been added to the books. For instance,
the number of federal offenses increased 48
percent between 1980 and 2008.20

The War on Drugs meant more
police to catch people using
drugs.
The beginning of the “war on drugs” dates
back to the Nixon administration,21 but in the
1980s and 1990’s new policies took aim at
people who use drugs, including the use of
more aggressive policing tactics.22 The initial
intention of a war on drugs was to target what
appeared to be an increasingly violent drug
market; its focus was to be on those
individuals and organizations that were
engaged in large scale drug trade operations
both in and outside the United States. By
emphasizing – and at times, overemphasizing
– the impact of the violent drug trade in the
U.S., there was a growing fear among the
general public of the impact of drug use on
communities. As a result, in the 1980s the

“war on drugs” no longer delineated between
drug cartels and individual users.23 This shift
in emphasis was exemplified by the
development of zero tolerance policing
models throughout the United States.24 The
term “zero tolerance” was first used related to
the federal practice of impounding of any seagoing vessel carrying any amount of drugs. In
1988, U.S. Attorney General Meese
proclaimed the program a national model and
expanded it to allow any vehicle crossing the
U.S. border with any amount of drugs to be
impounded and the occupants to be charged
in federal court.25
As a result of these policies, the number of
people incarcerated in the U.S. for drug
offenses increased 1,412 percent between 1980
and 2006.26 Now, nearly a quarter of the
people in state and federal prisons are there
for drug offenses.27

Broken Windows Theory, Zero
Tolerance, and COMPStat made
policing densely in some areas
seem an attractive policy.
“Broken Windows Theory” 28 became a major
contributor to the policing of quality-of-life
offenses such has panhandling, graffiti, and
loitering. In 1982, criminologists James Q.
Wilson and George Kelling argued that
disorder in a neighborhood – whether it is
vandalism, dilapidated buildings, or litter –
may lead to further disorder and a breakdown
of social control.29 According to their theory,
when the cycle of disorder worsens, fear of
crime will increase among neighborhood
members and actual crime rates – including
more serious or violent crimes – may increase.
Broken Windows largely attributes this
increase in fear and crime to the belief that
community outsiders feel the risk of being
caught in an area of disorder is low.30
Accordingly, in order to decrease disorder
and regain social control, law enforcement

officers should “focus resources on cracking
down on community disorder and minor
crimes before they cause serious crime
problems to arise in a neighborhood.”31
Following this approach meant more police
intervention, resulting in what is termed “hot
spot policing.” This focuses police attention
on small geographic regions where rates of
crime are particularly high,32 under the belief
that crime problems thus could be reduced
more efficiently.33
Research is at best inconclusive as to whether
Broken Windows-style “hot spot” police
crackdowns actually reduce rates of serious
crime.34 There are also negative consequences
of hot spot policing. Some research shows that
greater presence of law enforcement officers
in neighborhoods actually leads to increased
fears of crime amongst residents,35 which can
impede efforts to reinforce social control and
restore order.
Around the same time, the “CompStat”
management philosophy was implemented in
New York City, with the goal being to identify
problem areas in the City and then staff those
areas appropriately. This strategy
complemented Broken Windows and zero
tolerance approaches and has been credited
with significantly reducing crime in New
York City36 and in other cities in which it was
adopted. However, more recent information
indicates that CompStat has encouraged
police agencies to underreport crime or
intimidate victims into withdrawing their
complaints so that it appears that crime
continues to decline.37
There are also growing concerns about the
rise in citizen police mistrust that can result
when police are saturated within certain
neighborhoods. For example, in some areas
where police presence was increased, “citizen
complaints about police misconduct and

abuse of force” became much more common.38
Increased presence of police in specific
neighborhoods leads to a greater likelihood of
police citizen contact and as a result an
increased likelihood of arrest for people in
“hot spot” areas versus other neighborhoods.
The same is likely true of areas identified by
Compstat.

Chicago Alternative Policing
Strategy encouraged federal
spending on replication, although
the promise of sustained
implementation of new model has
not been met.
In response to increasing crime and
community distrust of police, the city of
Chicago implemented the Chicago Alternative
Policing Strategy (CAPS) in 1993.39 Differing
from other community policing efforts around
the country that established a few special
units to conduct community policing, CAPS
was a citywide program that required
participation from every district within
Chicago. The CAPS program had six key
elements in its design:40
The entire police department and city of
Chicago would be involved
Police officers were to have permanent
beat assignments
There was a serious commitment to
training officers on the skills to identify
and solve problems in conjunction with
the community
Communities were to play a significant
role in the program
Policing was to be linked to the delivery
of other city services
Emphasis was to be placed on crime
analysis
The CAPS model emphasized police
decentralization, the reorientation of officers
to a community policing model, interagency

partnerships and coordination with other city
service agencies, and community
involvement.41 The 25 districts of Chicago
were divided into 279 beats with an officer
permanently assigned to a specific beat and
rapid response teams that worked in tandem
with regular patrol officers on beat duty.
Throughout the implementation of CAPS,
much emphasis was placed on community
involvement and, as such, each beat would
hold a regular monthly beat meeting with
members of the community to discuss and
prioritize community safety issues.42
CAPS achieved some, but not all of its goals,
with its major failure being the inability of the
program to fully engage some segments of the
community in the model, specifically Latino
renters, low-income households and non-high
school graduates.43 However, Chicago was
successful in changing the way police officers
did their jobs, spending more time on
community-oriented problem solving. In the
prototype districts fully engaged in the CAPS
model and under evaluation, there were
perceived positive changes in the quality of
life by residents: less crime, less fear, fewer
gangs, and a greater sense of police
responsiveness.44 The most notable change
and major achievement in Chicago was the
citywide reorientation of policing.45
The success of CAPS helped to pave the way
for increased expenditures in the federal
Community Oriented Policing Services
(COPS) program. The rationale was that if
CAPS could be successful in a large diverse
city like Chicago, it could be widely
replicated. However, the COPS office has
acted more like a federal jobs program than a
model policing project focused on changing
the orientation of policing, with little
accountability on the part of grant recipients

regarding fidelity to a CAPS type model. In
fact, the number of community policing
officers in local police departments declined 54
percent from 2000 – 2007,46 showing that this
model was not incorporated into standard
practices after the initial bump in federal
funding leveled off. As a result, COPS has
shown little positive effects, and has been
criticized for removing from its core the tenet
that community policing should be organic
and locally driven and supported, rather than
dictated by federal grant requirements.47

More, new laws made
policymakers choose between
more police or lax enforcement of
some rules.
Part of the reason why we have so many
police is because we have so many laws to
enforce. Laws that criminalize certain
behaviors are made at all levels of
government. According to The Heritage
Foundation, the number of criminal offenses
in the U.S. Code increased from 3,000 in the
early 1980s to 4,000 by 2000 to over 4,450 by
2008.48 With legislators criminalizing
everything from directing laser pointers at
airplanes49 to reselling football tickets,50 police
departments can be justified in asking for
more funding and officers to enforce these
laws. The Washington Post recently released a
list of 159 minor offenses that could result in
arrest, including failing to display a license on
an eel trap, climbing a street lamp, having an
unleashed dog, and until recently, displaying
expired vehicle tags.51 But continuing to
criminalize even minor behaviors and trying
to enforce them is a never-ending cycle that
will only end up costing more in the long run
without making us safer.52

Businesses are increasingly
influencing policing.
Despite negative collateral consequences,
tactics like COMSTAT and CAPS are wellintentioned in their goals of reducing serious
and violent crime. However, increasingly
police efforts are being redirected towards
helping businesses achieve their goals of
stability and profitability.
One way this is occurring is through what are
known as Paid Detail Units (PDU). Both the
New York City and New Orleans police
departments use PDU’s.53 In New York City,
businesses pay to have uniformed police
officers – with the power to carry a gun and
arrest people – serve when and where they
demand, irrespective of other policing
patterns. According to reports from fall 2011,
corporations paid NYPD about $37 per hour
to cover the cost of the officer, plus a ten
percent administrative fee. 54 Last year, the
City’s budget included $1,184,000 in Paid
Detail fees, which at ten percent of the total
indicates that companies paid about $11.8
million to PDU police. 55 This number has
doubled in the past decade.
The growth of the Occupy movement has
brought the use of PDU’s to the forefront, as
Wall Street has been a large consumer of
private policing. Concerns include the ability
of wealthy businesses to influence police
strategies and patterns, and that arrests and
incarceration that are result of PDU activities
ultimately are paid for by taxpayers. When a
local jurisdiction pays the costs of police, there
is more accountability around the costs of
frivolous arrests and jail time than when those
efforts are being funded by private
businesses.
Another way businesses influence policing is
through Business Improvement Districts
(BIDs). Sanctioned by local government, BIDs

allow businesses to tax themselves to provide
services above and beyond what public
entities are willing or able to fund. Security
officers are one common use of BID money.
While security officers themselves generally
are not able to make arrests, when they see
someone engaging in a behavior that is
“undesirable,” as defined by the area
businesses that employ them, they can and do
call the police. A person interviewed in Los
Angeles described how this plays out: “I was
just sitting down eating my lunch when this
red shirt person told me that I can’t sit here
and eat. I have been sitting in front of the San
Julian Park for years. When I told them I was
not going to move until I finished, they called
the police.” 56 The woman was arrested and
ended up spending five nights in jail for
unpaid jaywalking tickets that had been
converted to warrants.
Businesses that seek police involvement in
managing quality of life offenses may not
realize the impact these policies have on
individuals and communities—including
their customer base. Quality of life offenses
such as loitering or public intoxication are
arguably not ideal for neighborhoods or
businesses, but police are not the only
solution, and businesses should look for
alternative ways of working with
communities to address these behaviors. This

Spending on police protection has increased 445 percent since 1982.
$120
$104 billion

Direct Expenditure
(Billions)

$100
$80

$74 billion

$60

$50 billion

$40
$19 billion
$20
$9 billion
$-

$8 billion

Police

Judiciary

Corrections

Source: Bureau of Justice Statistics, “Employment and Expenditure,” Accessed February, 2012.
http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/index.cfm?ty=tp&tid=5

could also help businesses build stronger ties
to neighborhoods, increasing their business
while improving public safety.

While all of these new laws and policies were
going into effect, funding for police also
increased, particularly at the federal level.
Local governments fund the majority of police
functions, but increases from the federal
government spread single policing ideas
across the nation, without necessarily

The District of
Columbia has
over 100
separate
policing
agencies
~D.C. Fraternal
Order of Police

ensuring that the original intention of the
policing strategy is replicable.
While most added dollars to police budgets
came at the local level, since 1993 increased
federal funding has enabled cities and towns
to add even more police in ways that arguably
provided little in the way of added public
safety. In particular, federal funds including
Community Oriented Policing Services
(COPS) and Byrne Justice Assistance Grants
(JAG) expended at the local level, have risen
dramatically, contributing to thousands of
additional police officers in the 1990s alone.
Criminal justice is funded and operated at all
levels of government (federal, state and local)
and all three levels have increased funding on
all parts of the criminal justice system,
including police, judiciary (courts) and
corrections. Since 1982, total criminal justice
spending increased 535 percent: total
spending on police increased 445 percent;
judiciary spending was up 540 percent; and
corrections spending increased 720 percent.57
While states and localities are increasingly
looking for more effective ways to use scarce

funds,58 criminal justice continues to consume
a large percentage of budgets.
Federal, state and local governments spent
about $104 billion combined on police
protection in 2007, making up about 46
percent of all criminal justice spending.59 In
1993, before the Crime Control and Law
Enforcement Act of 1994 was passed, only $44
billion was spent on police; the percentage
increase in criminal justice spending for police
was similar to that for both corrections and
the judiciary, which isn’t surprising as these
are the “downstream” costs of more arrests.
The 445 percent increase in police spending
since 1982 has been seen across all levels of
government, with the federal government
experiencing the greatest increase at 729
percent, followed by local spending increases
of 413 percent and state government spending
increasing 358 percent.

Federal Spending
Federal spending on criminal justice has
grown faster than both state and local
spending combined, although it still only
makes up about 16 percent of all criminal

Reductions in crime may have as much to do
with demographic changes and the strength of
the economy as with the efforts of a federal
crime-prevention program.
~ CONGRESSIONAL BUDGET OFFICE

justice spending.60 The federal government
spent about $20 billion on police protection in
2007.61 In 1993, prior to the passing of the
Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of
1994 the federal government spent just over
$7 billion on police protection, a 167 percent
increase from 1993 to 2007.62 Most federal law
enforcement funding is funneled through two
programs: COPS and Byrne JAG. While these
sources of funding may have been desirable to
localities over the years, requirements and
competition associated with receiving these
funds may also have caused localities to back
away from customizing their style of policing
in favor of the tactics prescribed by the federal
government.
COPS grants
In October 1993, President Clinton and the
Democratic Congress enacted the Community

Total spending on police protection increased 445 precent
between 1982 and 2007, with the fast growth seen in federal
spending, up 729 percent.
Police expenditures (billions)

$120
Federal

State

Local

Total

$104 billion

$100

$73 billion

$80
$60
$40

$19 billion
$20

$14 billion
$2 billion

$20 billion
$11 billion

$-

Source: Bureau of Justice Statistics, “Employment and Expenditure,” Accessed February, 2012.
http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/index.cfm?ty=tp&tid=5

COPS funding is less than half what it was when it started, but it is
growing again.
$1,800
$1,600
Spending in Millions

$1,400
$1,200
$1,000
$800
$600
$400
$200
$1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010
Appropriations

Carryover

ARRA

Source: Nathan James, "Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS): Background, Legislation, and Funding,"
Congressional Research Service (2011). www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL33308.pdf

Oriented Policing Services (COPS) grant as
number was never reached,65 and a number of
part of the Violent Crime Control and Law
localities laid off officers once the grant
Enforcement Act of 1994 in order to combat a
money ran out.66
rise in violent crime at that time. The COPS
program awards grants to state, local, and
The Violence Against Women and
tribal law enforcement agencies so they could
Department of Justice Reauthorization Act of
hire and train law enforcement
officers to participate in
Byrne JAG grants primarily fund law enforcement
community policing, purchase
Planning, Eval.
and deploy new crime-fighting
Drug & Technology
Treatment & 12%
technologies, and develop and
Enforcement
test new and innovative policing
Crime Victim &
5%
Corrections &
Witness
strategies.63 COPS started with a
Community
2%
Corrections
budget of $8.8 billion over a 611%
year period and aimed to
provide 3-year grants for law
Prevention &
Education
enforcement agencies across the
Law
7%
country to hire around 100,000
Enforcement
52%
new officers. The intent was that
Prosecution &
these agencies would continue
Courts
to pay these officers without
11%
federal funding after the grant
Source: Based on a 2010 survey of State Administering Agencies (SAAs) by the
expired.64 According to the
National Center for Justice Planning, a project of the National Criminal Justice
Department of Justice, this
Association. National Criminal Justice Association, Byrne JAG: Cornerstone for
Justice (Washington, D.C.: NCJA, 2011)

2005 reauthorized the COPS program through
FY2009. In addition to the funding authorized
in the budget in FY2009, COPS grants also
received $1 billion for its hiring program as
part of the American Recovery and
Reinvestment Act, 67 which was intended to
stimulate the U.S. economy and create jobs
after the onset of a serious economic
recession. The President’s fiscal year 2013
budget proposes to continue this practice of
using COPS to create jobs through $4 billion
for the immediate creation of law enforcement
jobs in 2012.68
Byrne Justice Assistance Grants (JAG)
State and local law enforcement is also funded
through the federal Byrne Justice Assistance
Grant (JAG), which was established as part of
the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988. As part of
the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2005,
the 108th Congress merged the discretionary
Edward Byrne Memorial Grant Program with
the formula-based Local Law Enforcement
Block Grant (LLEBG) program to establish the
Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance
Grant (JAG) program.69 The JAG program has
seven purpose areas under which funds may
be awarded:
Law enforcement
Prosecution and courts
Prevention and education
Corrections and community corrections
Drug treatment
Planning, evaluation, and technology
improvement
Crime victim and witness programs.
Although the Bush administration pushed to
eliminate all types of Byrne funding due to
the lack of demonstrable results, they were
reauthorized through 2012. The Byrne JAG
statute authorizes funding at $1.095 billion
per year, though appropriated levels have
never reached that threshold. In recent years,

Federal funds flow to state and local
law enforcement for homeland
security
A Center for Investigative Reporting analysis
indicates that in the past 10 years, Department of
Homeland Security (DHS) has given grants
totaling over $34 billion to state and local
governments for homeland security efforts. While
some funds have been used to enhance
intelligence gathering and interagency
communication, other funds have only served to
further militarize local police forces. With grants
administered by DHS, state and local police
forces have been infused with cash to purchase
items such as flash grenades, tanks and drones.
For instance Montgomery County, Texas was the
first local jurisdiction to purchase a weaponscapable aerial drone and recently Tampa, Florida
has added an eight-ton armored personnel
carrier to its current fleet of two tanks.
Federal government funds and involvement have
helped to not only create larger police forces, but
also police forces that are more militarized and
disconnected from communities. The increased
rhetoric of a domestic “war on drugs,” combined
in the last ten years with a “domestic war on
terror,” has served to influence a growingly
aggressive and militaristic style of policing, which
treats entire communities as though they should
be contained, surveilled, and punished.
Militarized state and local police forces operate in
a punitive rather than preventative way resulting
in more arrests, more prison, and more costs to
taxpayers, among other negative effects on
communities.
Sources:
Homeland Security Newswire, “Texas county police buys
drone that can carry weapons,” October 31, 2011.
http://www.homelandsecuritynewswire.com/texas-countypolice-buys-drone-can-carry-weapons
Kevin Wiatrowski, “Tampa police to buy vehicle,
communication system,” The Tampa Tribune, January 5,
2012. http://www2.tbo.com/news/breakingnews/2012/jan/05/4/tampa-police-to-buy-armored-vehiclecommunication--ar-344028/
Stephan Salisbury, “How to Fund an American Police State,”
The Nation, March 5, 2012.
http://www.thenation.com/article/166600/how-fund-americanpolice-state
Center for Investigative Reporting, “States spend billions on
local homeland security,” accessed March 2012.
http://projects.cironline.org/police-grants
Andrew Becker and G.W. Schulz, “Local police stockpile hightech, combat-ready gear,” the Center for Investigative
Reporting, December 21, 2011.
http://americaswarwithin.org/articles/2011/12/21/local-policestockpile-high-tech-combat-ready-gear

funding has hovered at about $450 million.70
Similar to COPS, the American Recovery and
Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) provided a
one-time boost of $2 billion to the program to
preserve or create law enforcement jobs.
The total 2010 allocation for the JAG funding
was approximately $457 million, of which
$267.5 million went to state law enforcement
efforts (much of which was re-granted to local
entities) and $178.4 million went to local law
enforcement,71 based on violent crime data
from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
While JAG can be used across all seven of
these purpose areas and the grant does not
specify that a certain percentage should be
used on a particular area, the bulk of funding

is spent on law enforcement. In FY2010,
grantees reported 52 percent of their spending
was used on law enforcement, while
prevention and education only received 7
percent of funds.72 Crime victim assistance
and witness protection received just 2 percent
of all funds. Collectively, spending on multijurisdictional task forces, which bring together
a number of different criminal justice agencies
to combat drugs or violent crime, is 23 percent
of total JAG formula spending.73 In FY2009,
more than $170 million of JAG was used to
fund drug or gang task forces,74 which have
been shown to not only lead to more arrests,
but have a disproportionate impact on
communities of color.75

USING BYRNE JAG DIFFERENTLY IN CALIFORNIA
In 2007, with funding of $20 million from Byrne JAG, California’s drug task forces reported
1
9,617 arrests, 7,558 prosecutions, and 5,378 convictions. If each of those convictions
resulted in even one year in prison, costs to state and local governments would exceed $260
million, none of which is paid by Byrne Justice Assistance Grants. In contrast, the task forces
1
seized assets worth less than $25 million.
As part of the 2009 federal stimulus package, California received $225 million in Byrne Grants
– about 10 times the state’s typical annual allocation. Concerned that such a huge injection of
dollars into task forces would exacerbate arrests and drug war waste, the Drug Policy Alliance
led a successful, precedent-setting campaign to redirect the funds to more sensible and costeffective programs.
In 2009, for the first time, California directed a total of $100 million in stimulus Byrne Grants to
intensive probation, treatment-instead-of-incarceration programs and pilot re-entry courts. If
directed to task forces, the $100 million in 2009 stimulus Byrne Grants would have been likely
to result in tens of thousands more arrests and $1.3 billion in new state costs. In contrast,
1
based on previous analyses, the $100 million investment in treatment, probation and re-entry
is expected to reduce state costs by over $250 million.
Source: Drug Policy Alliance, Federal Byrne Grants: Drug War Funds Available for Drug Treatment (Los Angeles:
DPA, September 2010).

MORE POLICE ISN’T THE WAY TO MORE
PUBLIC SAFETY

Despite decreases in crime, governments continue to spend more on
law enforcement and militaristic policing strategies. Although police
play a role in keeping communities safe, the increased presence of
police means more opportunities to make arrests, espe cially arrests
for drug offenses, which can lead to more incarceration and a host of
negative outcomes for communities.
There is enough evidence to suggest that the
number of police is not necessarily the key to
keeping communities safe, but rather
strategic, community-supported policing.
In addition, recent tight budgets, especially at
the local level, have meant that localities have
had to trim their police officers. In fact, the
COPS office recently released a report that
2011 will be the first year in 25 years that there
may be a decline in the number of police
officers.76 Fortunately, even with
unemployment on the rise, which had been
considered a driver of crime, 77 crime rates
continue to drop. Since 1991, both violent and
property crimes rates have been falling;
violent crime rates are down 43 percent since
1991 and property crime rates are down 41
percent.78

Although police and criminologists alike are
baffled by the current continuation of falling
crime rates in the U.S,79 this is an opportunity
for governments to reexamine their continued
investment in policing over other institutions,
and take into account the lack of evidence that
more police means safer communities.

In a 2002 poll, 71.1 percent of surveyed chiefs of police, sheriffs and prosecutors agreed
that providing more educational and after-school programs would make the greatest
impact in reducing youth crime and violence.1 Only 14.9 percent said that hiring more
police would have the greatest impact.
~ NATIONAL LAW ENFORCEMENT LEADERSHIP SURVEY, Fight Crime-Invest in Kids, August 2002,
www.fightcrime.org/reports/nationalkidspoll2002

Since 1991 the violent and property crime rates have declined 43 and
41 percent respectively.
6000

800

Property Crime Rate
(per 100,000)

600
4000

500

3000

400
300

2000

200
1000

Violent Crime Rate
(per 100,000)

700

5000

100

0

0

Property Crime Rate

Violent Crime Rate

Source: Federal Bureau of Investigation, “Estimated Crime in the United States – Total 1982-2009,” UCR Online
Data Tool, accessed January 2012. www.ucrdatatool.gov/Search/Crime/State/RunCrimeStatebyState.cfm

Outcomes from the Community Oriented
Policing Services grants call into question the
assumption that more expenditures on police
are the best way of keeping communities safe.
Poor results may be due to both the actual
infusion of federal dollars into local police
departments, as well as the effects of COPS
tactics. The initial increase in police officers
with the establishment of the COPS grants
program was supposed to reduce the rising
violent crime rate in the early 1990s. However,
before the COPS grants were even distributed,
the number of reported crimes had already
started to fall, and with or without COPS
grants, a number of states and localities saw
their safety impacted during the hiring time.

As of 1994, the number of reported violent
crimes had already started to fall, down 4.5
percent compared to the previous year.80
COPS-funded police officers didn’t hit the
streets until 1995.
From 1995 to 2004, this decline in violent
crimes continued for a total decrease of 24
percent. During this 10 year span of the COPS
grants, $10 billion dollars was spent on law
enforcement,81 and combined police forces
increased by almost 90,000 officers.
From 1994-1998, Delaware received $19.6
million in COPS grants. During this time
period, the number of violent crimes

[A] strategy of throwing money at the
crime problem, of simply hiring more
police officers, does not seem to help
reduce crime to a significant extent.
~ JOHN L. WORRALL AND TOMISLAV V.
KOVANDZIC, "COPS Grants and Crime
Revisited," Criminology 45, No. 1 (February
2007), pp. 159-190.

Any significant increase in crime should be cause for concern, but eliminating wasteful and
ineffective grant programs will not cause crime to increase. Federal funding programs such
as COPS have failed to achieve their intended purpose of aiding local law enforcement and
reducing crime. Instead, research has shown that these programs have been misused and
poorly administered, and state and local law enforcement have become dependent on these
funds for their routine police activities.
~ DAVID B. MUHLHAUSEN AND ERICA LITTLE, Federal Law Enforcement Grants and Crime Rates: No
Connection Except for Waste and Abuse (Washington, D.C.: The Heritage Foundation, 2007)
www.heritage.org/research/reports/2007/03/federal-law-enforcement-grants-and-crime-rates-noconnection-except-for-waste-and-abuse#_ftn30

increased 35.9 percent.82
From 1995 to 1999, Oklahoma City, which did
not receive any COPS grants, reduced its
police force by 16 percent. Despite this decline
in the number of police, the city also saw a
dramatic 32.5 percent decrease in the number
of violent crimes reported.83
Additionally, independent studies by
government agencies and conservative
organizations doubt the effectiveness of the
COPS program in having a significant impact
on crime.84

police officers. As a result, additional funding
is unwarranted.”86
According to the U.S. Government
Accountability Office, “Factors other than
COPS funds accounted for the majority of the
decline in crime during this period. For
example, between 1993 and 2000, the overall
crime rate declined by 26 percent, and the 1.3
percent decline due to COPS, amounted to
about 5 percent of the overall decline.
Similarly, COPS contributed about 7 percent
of the 32 percent decline in violent crime from
1993 to 2000.”87

A study by the Heritage Foundation found
that COPS grants designated for hiring more
officers were not responsible for the reduction
in violent crime rates at the county level from
1994 to 2000.85 In other words, the money
given to hire more officers was not the reason
for the decline in violent crimes during this
time period.

In 2006, a Center for Data Analysis evaluation
of COPS grants using data from 1990 to 1999
for 58 large cities found that the program had
done little to reduce crime. For instance, the
hiring grants did not have a statistically
significant relationship with murder, rape,
assault, burglary, larceny, or auto theft rates,
although they were associated with negligible

According to the FY 2007 U.S.
Budget, “A 2002 Program
Assessment Rating Tool
(PART) assessment rated the
COPS Hiring Grants as Results
Not Demonstrated with respect
to reducing crime.
Additionally, the program has
already achieved its mandate,
which was to help local police
agencies to hire over 100,000

"Better policing clearly plays a role in certain places, such as
New York and Los Angeles, but cannot explain across-theboard crime declines because policing hasn't improved
universally." Richard Rosenfeld, a past president of the
American Society of Criminology and a professor at the
University of Missouri-St. Louis. Miguel Llanos, “Crime in
decline, but why? Low inflation among theories,”
~ MSNBC, September 20, 2011
www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44578241/ns/us_newscrime_and_courts/t/crime-decline-why-low-inflation-amongtheories/#.TsJ_x1b6OHc

2007
State
New York
Nevada
California
New Jersey
Alaska
Delaware
Florida
Wyoming
Arizona
Maryland

Total for the U.S.
Oklahoma
Iowa
Mississippi
Maine
Indiana
South Dakota
Arkansas
North Dakota
West Virginia
Kentucky

Violent Crime Rate
Per Police Spending
Per Capita

414.1
750.6
522.6
329.3
661.2
689.2
722.6
239.3
482.7
641.9

Sworn
Police Per
Capita
39
19
19
32
16
18
23
27
24
24

$279

466.9

23

1.67

$200
$197
$196
$176
$175
$171
$169
$166
$148
$148

499.6
294.7
291.3
118.0
333.6
169.2
529.4
142.4
275.2
295.0

22
18
22
18
19
18
21
18
17
18

2.50
1.50
1.49
0.67
1.91
0.99
3.13
0.86
1.86
1.99

Police
Spending Per
Capita
$393
$385
$381
$353
$347
$346
$345
$335
$322
$317

Violent Crime
Rate

1.05
1.95
1.37
0.93
1.91
1.99
2.09
0.71
1.50
2.02

Note: Per capita justice expenditure (fiscal year 2007) and full-time equivalent justice employment per 10,000 population (July
2007) of state and local governments by activity and state 2007; Violent crime rate per 100,000 population
Source: Crime: FBI Uniform Crime Report, Crime in the United States, 2007; Per capita police and expenditure: Tracey
Kyckelhahn, Justice Expenditure and Employment Extracts 2007, Table 8. (Washington, D.C.: Bureau of Justice Statistics,
2010).

reductions in robberies; a 1 percent increase in
hiring grants was associated with a 0.01
percent decrease in robbery rates.88

States with fewer police do not necessarily
have higher crime rates. Seventy-four percent
of states with fewer police officers per capita
than the national average have lower crime
rates than the national average.89 Similarly,
states that spend less money per capita on
police protection do not necessarily have

higher crime rates. Seventy-five percent of
states that spend less than the national
average have lower crime rates than the
national average. Examining the 10 states that
spend the most and the least on police shows
that there is no relationship between spending
more on police, having more police and a
lower crime rate.
The concept that spending on policing and
hiring more police is not the only answer to
protecting public safety is being borne out at
the local level. With local governments
grappling with tight budgets, a number of
localities have stopped hiring or even laid off

Although violent and property crimes have fallen 43
percent and 41 percent, respectively, arrests have
fallen only 20 percent between 1991 and 2009.
7000

800

6000

700

5000
4000

600
500

Violent Crime Rate (per 100,000)

Property Crime rate and Adult Arrest Rater
(per 100,000)

police officers, while still
seeing drops in crime.
Therefore, police
funding or employment
do not appear to be a
significant factor in
crime rates.

Percent change in number of arrests
(1993-2010)

400
San Francisco: Due to
3000
300
budget cuts and a loss of
2000
200
grant money for certain
1000
100
drug enforcement
0
0
operations, San
Francisco has a smaller
police force and allows
Adult Arrest Rates
Property crime rate
Violent Crime rate
less overtime. At the
Source: Federal Bureau of Investigation, “Estimated Crime in the United States – Total 1982same time, the police
2009,” UCR Online Data Tool, accessed January 2012.
department made 39
www.ucrdatatool.gov/Search/Crime/State/RunCrimeStatebyState.cfm; H. Snyder and
J. Mulako-Wangota, “Arrest Data Analysis Tool” (Washington, D.C.: Bureau of Justice
percent fewer drug
Statistics, October 31, 2011) www.bjs.gov
arrests in 2010 than the
previous year and is on
track to decline another 25 percent in 2011.
does not appear that violent crime in San
During this time, violent crime fell 3 percent
Francisco has risen, so it may say something
and was expected to fall another 6 percent in
about the necessity for the war on drugs."90
2011. According to San Francisco Sheriff
Michael Hennessey, they have seen a de facto
Arizona: Because of strict budgets, many
decriminalization of drug offenses and “…it
police departments in Arizona were on a
hiring freeze and
The number of drug arrests increased 45 percent from
losing sworn officers.
1993 to 2010 while property and violent arrests fell.
The number of police
45.5%
officers fell 5.6
50.0%
percent, or by about
40.0%
900 officers from June
30.0%
2008 to June 2011.91
20.0%
From 2008 to 2010, the
number of reported
10.0%
violent crimes fell 10.2
0.0%
percent and the
-10.0%
-6.6%
-7.8%
number of property
-20.0%
crimes fell 19
-21.5%
-30.0%
percent.92 The violent
-26.8%
crime rate fell 8.7
-40.0%
All Offenses
Drug Law
Violent Crime Property Crime
All Other
percent and the
Violations
Index
Index
Offenses
property crime rate
Source: H. Snyder and J. Mulako-Wangota, “Arrest Data Analysis Tool” (Washington, D.C.:
Bureau of Justice Statistics, October 31, 2011) www.bjs.gov

fell 17.6 percent during this time.

There’s only so much time in the day, and
the focus on drugs often comes at the
expense of investigating violent crimes…

With crime decreasing even without police
and communities struggling to maximize
scarce federal dollars, now is an important
time to invest in jobs that are not law
enforcement-related. Building capacity and
jobs in other areas will not carry with them
the other negative effects of investing in
police, which will be discussed in a
subsequent section.

~ RADLEY BALKO, “Driven By Drug War Incentives,
Cops Target Pot Smokers, Brush Off Victims Of Violent
Crime,” Huffington Post November 21, 2011.

question the need for continued expenditures
on police.93 For instance, according to the 2010
Uniform Crime Report, the percent of the
estimated number of arrests for violent and
property crimes were 4 and 13 percent of all
arrests, respectively.94
One category that is driving the fairly
constant arrest rate is drug offenses, especially
possession of small amounts of drugs.
Increased police forces and climbing drug
arrests indicate that police are not dedicating
the same amount of time to combat violent
and property crime, but instead are focusing
efforts on drug arrests. While drug misuse,
addiction and sales can be concerning,
arresting people for an addiction does nothing
to address the underlying health problem and
carries a host of consequences that affect
people and their families. There are some

Violent and property crime rates have fallen
43 percent and 41 percent since 1991, when
the crime rate was at its highest in three
decades, but arrests have not fallen at the
same rate during the same period. Therefore,
the police are making arrests for other types
of offenses. In other words, while police do
have a role in protecting communities from
violent and property crime, those crimes are
not currently driving arrest rates, calling into

U.S. arrests for drug possession increased 68 percent from 1993 to
2010, while arrests for sales and manufacturing decreased 10
percent.
1,800,000
Number of Arrests

1,600,000

1,342,215

1,400,000
1,200,000
1,000,000

795,618

800,000
600,000

330,680

296,631

400,000
200,000

Sale-Manufacturing

2010

2009

2008

2007

2006

2005

2004

2003

2002

2001

2000

1999

1998

1997

1996

1995

1994

1993

0

Possession

Source: H. Snyder and J. Mulako-Wangota, “Arrest Data Analysis Tool” (Washington, D.C.: Bureau of Justice Statistics,
October 31, 2011) www.bjs.gov

Bernard Harcourt and Jens Ludwig at the University of Chicago found just that when studying
marijuana arrests in New York City: “we find no good evidence that the [marijuana possession
violation] arrests are associated with reductions in serious violent or property crimes in the city.
As a result New York City’s marijuana policing strategy seems likely to simply divert scarce
police resources away from more effective approaches that research suggests is capable of
reducing real crime.”1
~ Bernard E. Harcourt and Jens Ludwig, "Reefer Madness: Broken Windows Policing and Misdemeanor
Marijuana Arrests in New York City, 1989-2000," Criminology and Public Policy 6, no. 1, pp. 165-182, 2007.

communities that continue to struggle with
serious crime problems, and focusing on
minor drug offenses serve only as a
distraction to
reducing offenses
that cause more
harm.
In 2010, police
made more than 13
million arrests. The total number of arrests by
law enforcement fell 6.6 percent from 1993 to
2010,95 but the number of arrests for violent
crimes fell 28 percent, while the number of
arrests for drug offenses increased 45.5
percent. In 2009, about 12 percent of all arrests
were for drug abuse violations, compared to 4
percent for violent offenses.96
Police made 1,638,846 drug arrests in 2010,97
with nearly half, over 750,000 (45.8 percent),
for marijuana possession alone.98 Drug
possession—not sales or manufacturing—
makes up 82 percent of all drug arrests—
over 1.3 million arrests per year. The
number of drug possession arrests
increased 68 percent from 1993 to 2010.99
Much of this increase in possession arrests
are for possession of marijuana—up 49
percent from 1995 to 2010.100 This
phenomenon is seen both nationally and in
various localities.
New York City: A study by Harry
Levine at City University of New York
found that from 1997 to 2006, the New

York City Police Department arrested and
jailed more than 353,000 people for
possessing small amounts of marijuana;
this was 11 times
The number of
more marijuana
drug possession arrests than in the
arrests increased previous decade, and
10 times more than in
before
from 1993 to 2010 the decade
101
that.
California: The Drug Policy Alliance
reported that in 2008, police departments
in California made more than 60,000
marijuana possession arrests, three times
as many as in 1990.102 In addition, a recent
study by the Center for Juvenile and
Criminal Justice found that 20,800

68 percent

About 12 percent of all arrests in 2010
were for drug law violations.

Drug Law
Violations
12%

Violent
Crime
Index
4%
Property
Crime
Index
13%

Other
71%

Note: Drug Law Violations includes sale-manufacturing and
possession.
Source: H. Snyder and J. Mulako-Wangota, “Arrest Data Analysis
Tool” (Washington, D.C.: Bureau of Justice Statistics, October 31,
2011) www.bjs.gov

Californians were arrested for
When crime rates go up, the police say it is because
misdemeanor possession of
they are encouraging more victims to come forward,
“but when crime goes down, it’s the work of the police.”
marijuana in 1990; this rose to
54,800 in 2010, a 163 percent
~ ELI SILVERMAN, professor emeritus at John Jay College of
increase. Meanwhile, arrests for
Criminal Justice. (Richard A. Oppel, Jr., “Steady Decline in Major Crime
possession of all other illicit
Baffles Experts,” The New York Times, May 23, 2011.)
drugs, as well as for felony drug
manufacture and sale, declined sharply. In
job effectively or communities are safer.
1990, simple marijuana possession
comprised 8 percent of all drug arrests; in
Unlike violent or property offenses, to which
103
2010, it comprised 22 percent.
police must react, drug offenses are typically
not reported by citizens. Because property
This increase in arrests for drug abuse
and violent crime is down, there remain
violations has not halted or changed the use
sizeable police forces to be kept busy, and
of drugs either: the rate of current illicit drug
significant budgets to be spent down. Police
use among persons aged 12 or older in 2007 (8
who are not reacting to violent or property
percent) has remained relatively stable since
crime instead engage in the proactive pursuit
2002.104
of people committing drug offenses.105
With the increasing numbers of police across
the country since 1993, cities around the
country have seen increases in arrests. But
increasing arrests should not be used as a
bottom line for whether police are doing their

Because police must proactively look for
people committing drug offenses and there is
typically no real “victim” to make police
accountable, they can also be selective about
whom they are arresting.106 In 2010, 22.6

POLICE BREAK THE LAW IN ORDER TO MEET QUOTAS
In 2007 a detective of the New York Police Department’s drug unit was convicted of planting drugs on
an innocent couple. Yvelisse DeLeon and her boyfriend, Juan Figueroa were out running errands
before DeLeon attended a job interview later that evening. They were randomly stopped outside of
their apartment by Detective Jason Arbeeny and another officer in civilian clothes. The officers
demanded the couple get out of their vehicle and began to search the car. DeLeon testified that she
watched as Detective Arbeeny pulled out a small bag of crack cocaine and placed the drugs in her
vehicle. During the trial against Arbeeny various testimonies described how increasing quotas and
pressure from the department leads to such corruption of these drug units. Detective Stephen
Anderson testified during the trial and admitted to faking drug charges many times to meet department
quotas. He also described the common practice within the department of “flaking”: when officers frame
innocent people on drug busts. Supreme Court Justice Gustin Reichbach expressed his thoughts
about the narcotics department stating, “(the) mindset in Narcotics seemingly embraces a cowboy
culture where anything goes in the never-ending war on drugs.”
Sources:
T. Stelloh, “Detective is Found Guilty of Planting Drugs,” New York Times, November 1, 2011
www.nytimes.com/2011/11/02/nyregion/brooklyn-detective-convicted-of-planting-drugs-on-innocentpeople.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1320850862-yiEeOUOacNsYDXvLFQhP1Q
J. Dwyer, “A Story of Drugs and the Police,” New York Times, October 18, 2011
www.nytimes.com/2011/10/19/nyregion/witness-narrates-frame-up-in-police-corruption-trial.html
J. Marzulli, R. Parascandola and L. Mcshane, “Cops made money by fabricating drug charges against innocent people, Stephen
Anderson testifies,” NY Daily News, October 14, 2011. www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/cops-made-money-fabricating-drugcharges-innocent-people-stephen-anderson-testifies-article-1.960515
O. Yaniv, “Brooklyn judge ‘shocked’ by ‘cowboy culture’ of narcotics cops,” NY Daily News, November 1, 2011.
www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/brooklyn-judge-hocked-cowboy-culture-narcotics-cops-article-1.970874

million people reported using illicit
substances107 in the last month, meaning that
every single one of them could be potentially
arrested, but only 7.3 percent typically are.108
Experts agree that we can’t simply arrest our
way out of the problem despite continued
investments in funding streams, like Byrne
JAG and COPS, which only serve to put more
police on the ground. Streaming funds to
increased force size and policing efforts only
incentivizes low level drug arrests to help
increase police arrest numbers, which are
inaccurately related to public safety.
With an emphasis on number of arrests rather
than type or quality of arrest,109 it may be

easier for police and multi-jurisdictional task
forces to increase their numbers by focusing
on the low hanging fruit—the people in
possession of a small amount of drugs. As
Harry Levine determined in his study about
marijuana arrests in New York City, some
police agencies conduct performance reviews
of individual officers based on the number of
arrests. Regardless of whether this is a de
facto quota, police officers clearly have an
incentive to make as many arrests as
possible.110 Drug offenses, particularly
marijuana possession, are typically seen as
“safe” with little risk of injury to officers.111

SOME TYPES OF POLICING CAN LEAD TO
MORE CRIME AND DISTRUST OF POLICE

Researchers Dina Rose and Todd Clear have found that
concentrated patterns of arrest and incarceration can backfire,
resulting in more crime rather than less .
In communities where large numbers of
people are sent to prison for often low-level or
non-serious offenses, incarceration disrupts
the social networks that provide informal
social control. It removes the benefits these
community members normally provide that
are unrelated to their criminal behavior,
including personal and economic support for
their family members and positive association
with their neighbors.112 In addition, practices
that target specific communities for arrest can
breed feelings of distrust in police, making
people less likely to report crimes in their
communities.

The advent of special police over the last 6o
years has led to a greater emphasis on
policing by force in America. Specialized task
forces represent a growing endorsement of a
largely punitive approach to dealing with

social problems. As long as we continue to
rely on incarceration in lieu of the preventive
measures that have been proven to most
efficiently deal with public safety concerns we
will see increases in police budgets and the
number of people behind bars. The following
are examples of special police forces that have
been developed to deal with a variety of
issues ranging from drugs to immigration.

Drug Task Forces
Drug task forces were developed to increase
coordination among federal, state, and local
law enforcement efforts to curb drug crimes.
The task forces’ foci include: educating youth
on the dangers of drugs, reducing drugrelated crimes, disrupting drug trafficking,
and arresting and prosecuting those who
traffic, deal, or use drugs.113 The intended
benefit of creating a drug task force is to
increase efficiency in closing drug cases,
increase forfeiture revenues and increase drug
related arrests.114 In theory, coordinated law
enforcement efforts overcome jurisdictional
limits and result in increased enforcement
success through shared communication and
responsibilities.115

Drug task force funds largely come
from federal grants, but a significant
portion is also acquired through
drug fines and forfeiture of drugrelated assets.116 For instance, a
portion of state and local task force
budgets comes from existing legal
procedures that allow drug task
forces to seize anything that is
considered connected to drug
money – such as homes, cars and
personal financial assets. The
Comprehensive Crime Control Act
of 1984 and the Anti-Drug Abuse
Act of 1986 created new forfeiture
laws, which drug task forces can
technically use to fund their
operations.117 State laws authorize
drug task forces to turn any
forfeiture contrabands into money
for purchasing new police cars,
equipment, and buildings, which
allows for an element of selfsufficiency – and less accountability
to state and local elected officials
and the public.118

A BRIEF HISTORY OF LAW ENFORCEMENT
AND DRUG TASK FORCE POLICY
The 1914 Harrison Act – focusing on prohibition – was the
first national drug policy that emphasized law enforcement.
President Nixon declared a “war on drugs” in 1971 and
through the 1980’s President Reagan further intensified the
drug war, leading to the interdiction of drugs becoming the
U.S. “top national security priority” in the 1990s.
The complications of cross-jurisdiction drug crimes and drug
markets demonstrated the limitations in single-agency
enforcement efforts, and as a result, in 1970 a pilot task force
was created in New York City by the Bureau of Narcotics and
Dangerous Drugs (BNDD). This task force was comprised of
investigators from major state and local law enforcement
agencies along with BNDD personnel. Recognizing the need
for state and local drug enforcement cooperation, the U.S.
Drug Enforcement Administration (BNDD’s successor)
initiated State and Local Task Force programs in 1973 based
on the perceived success of New York City’s pilot program. In
2009, the DEA State and Local Task Force Program
managed 381 state and local task forces. However, states
and localities have the ability to create their own ad hoc drug
task forces as well.
Sources:
Gabriel G. Cardenas, “An Assessment of the Multijurisdictional Drug Task
Forces in Texas: A Case Study,” Texas State University, February 1, 2002.
http://ecommons.txstate.edu /cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1051&context=arp,
p. 9.
Brad W. Smith, Kenneth J. Novak, and James Frank, “Multijurisdictional Drug
Task Forces: An Analysis of Impacts,” Journal of Criminal Justice 28, no. 6
(2000), p. 543.
U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, “State & Local Task Forces.”
www.justice.gov/dea /programs /taskforces.htm

These forfeiture privileges may give
incentives for law enforcement to increase
raids and conduct illegal or improper
forfeiture of assets falsely believed to be drug
related.119 The increased attractiveness of asset
forfeiture could lead to abuses that wrongly
penalize and destroy the lives of innocent
people and their families.120
Although proponents believe task forces to be
beneficial in combating drug crime, research
has shown them to be no more productive
than general policing efforts.121 In addition to
limited research outcomes regarding the
effectiveness of drug task forces, scandals and
situations of abuse have increased concerns
about their effectiveness and illuminated
concerns about funding the Edward Byrne

JAG program. Several groups, such as the
ACLU, the American Conservative Union,
Citizens Against Government Waste, and
other tax-watch and civil libertarian groups
have pointed to dozens of major drug task
force scandals, calling for Congress to
eliminate funding for the JAG program.122
Drug task forces have also been involved in
operations that have a concentrated impact on
communities of color.
Tulia, Texas: In the summer of 1999, the small
town of Tulia, Texas was the site of what
would become an internationally famous
miscarriage of justice. That summer, Swisher
County sheriff's deputies, with the assistance
of federal funding for a drug task force,

targeted the town’s African American
community. Out of the 46 people arrested as
cocaine dealers, 39 of those arrested were
African American. Tulia's population is about
5,000, of which about 250 residents are black;
about 17 percent of the African American
population was arrested that day, with
cameras recording the debacle. All-white
juries convicted 38 of those arrested based on
weak evidence, including the uncorroborated
testimony of the lone undercover agent, Tom
Coleman, who was later convicted of perjury
in 2005. Those convicted by plea or jury were
all given harsh sentences, ranging from 20 to
341 years in prison, even though the arrests
had turned up no cocaine, no drug
paraphernalia, no weapons, no money, and no
other signs of drug dealing.123 Texas Gov. Rick
Perry pardoned 35 of those convicted in 2003,
and a year later, five years after the incident in
Tulia, those who were arrested by the drug
task force received a $5 million settlement in
their civil suit. The federally financed 26county narcotics task force responsible for the
arrests was disbanded.124
Mississippi, Operation Heat Stroke: In July
2011, a two-day law enforcement detail
dubbed "Operation Heat Stroke" and
consisting of 15 agencies, netted 15 felony
arrests as well as 55 misdemeanor offenses
and 127 traffic citations.125 The majority of
arrests were for minor offenses such as
possession of illicit drugs, driving without a
seat belt, public drunkenness and
delinquency. The task force focused mainly
on the primarily African American
community of Moss Point, where residents
lived in fear of being stopped by one of the
random sweeps. According to a report by the
ACLU of Mississippi and Justice Strategies,
“Such hyper-aggressive drug enforcement
tactics and community-wide dragnets… bring
massive upheaval to afflicted communities—

as evidenced by the experiences of Moss Point
residents.”126

Gang Task Forces (Gang Units)
Specialized gang task forces have existed
since the 1960s; however, these units became
more prevalent in the 1990s due to political
commitments to be tough on crime. In 1992,
the FBI launched the Safe Streets Violent
Crime Initiative creating the Violent Gang
Safe Streets Task Force – a series of long-term,
“proactive” task forces to address the criminal
activity that is often associated with violent
street gangs and apprehend violent fugitives.
By 2007, 365 law enforcement agencies with
100 or more sworn officers maintained a
special gang unit, and employed over 4,000
officers nationwide for this purpose.127
Gang units get the majority of their funding
from discretionary state and federal grants.
For instance, the Office of Juvenile Justice and
Delinquency Prevention provides awards of
up to $750,000 to state and local governments,
school districts, and public and private
educational institutions for youth gang
prevention.128 In 2007, the Catalog of Federal
Domestic Assistance reported that states
received $49 million in federal grants for antigang measures.129 Maintaining a gang task
force is often very costly and as a result units
all around the country have been downsized
or disbanded due to budgetary pressures. For
example, California budget cuts resulted in a
more than 50 percent reduction in gang
monitoring funds which is expected to save
California about $6 million.130
Research has found no relationship between
the formation of gang units and “the size of a
community gang or crime problem;” instead,
gang units were most likely to be formed in
cities with larger Hispanic populations and
where communities felt threatened by
minority groups.131 A 1987 study examining

Law enforcement only spend 4 percent of
time on gang prevention efforts.

Suppression
12%

Prevention
programs
4%

Support
23%
Intelligence
31%

Investigation
30%

Source: Bureau of Justice Statistics, Table 5. Law enforcement
functions performed by gang units, by percent of time spent and
average ranking, 2007

the police response to gangs in Phoenix,
Arizona found that Phoenix did not have a
serious gang problem, but that law
enforcement officers overstated the gang
problem in an effort to campaign for federal
grant dollars. The police department used the
media to construct a social image of crimeprone “Chicano youths” as dangerous threats
to the safety of the white community and
warned that the gang problem would escalate
if the police did not respond.132
Similar to Phoenix, San Diego’s efforts to fight
gang activity illustrate the misinformation
and racial biases that are often associated with
the creation of gang units. In 1998,
Jurisdictions United for Drug Gang
Enforcement (JUDGE) was created to tackle
gang activity in San Diego County, California.
To justify this program, law enforcement
officers reported that there were over 2,000
gang members operating in the area and
creating a “wave of violence” that included
“several drive-by shootings and homicides.”
Since police investigations found that gang
activity was linked to drugs, JUDGE began
targeting youth with past drug offenses and

defined gang members so broadly that
anyone could be classified as such for his
or her associations. Relying on racial
presumptions, 97 percent of those
targeted by JUDGE were black or
Hispanic.133 This level of racial disparity
shows that police gang units represent a
new form of concentrated social control
that is often directed at young males of
color.134
Prevention programs that include
counseling geared towards at-risk youth
and community education and
awareness are more cost-effective and
efficient than traditional incarceration.135
However, the 2007 Census of Law
Enforcement Gang Units has reported
that only 4 percent of specialized gang units
spend the majority of their time on preventive
measures, whereas over 60 percent of gang
units spent the greatest percentage of time on
monitoring and investigation of gang graffiti
and confirmed and suspected gang
members.136 When more emphasis is placed
on monitoring and targeting gang units than
prevention efforts, the only result is increased
police contact, arrests and ultimately
incarceration.

Special Weapons and Tactics
(S.W.A.T.)
The Los Angeles Police Department formed
the first S.W.A.T. team in 1966 to counter
sniper attacks and manage large, volatile
crowds associated with the LA-Watts riots.137
S.W.A.T teams now mainly serve drug
warrants. For instance, S.W.A.T. deployments
in the U.S. have risen from 3,000 per year in
the early 1980’s to 50,000 per year by the mid
2000’s, mostly in the form of drug raids.138
The proliferation and overuse of S.W.A.T.
teams is above all a result of federal policies
hastened by “the war on drugs” that has

taken on a
decidedly
militarized
approach.139
The 1981
Military
Cooperation
with Law
Enforcement
Act and the 1984 National Defense
Authorization Act provided police
departments with military weapons and
technologies to aid in fighting a domestic war
on drugs.140 Following suit, in 1995 the
Department of Defense and its private
industries entered a partnership of shared
technology and development efforts with the
Department of Justice.141
Given easy access to military equipment,
federal funding, and asset forfeiture
reinvestments, it’s not surprising that police
departments have developed a reliance on
paramilitary S.W.A.T. units to storm homes.
And tragic accidents are not uncommon. The
high level of force involved in S.W.A.T raids
greatly exceeds the severity of many of the
warrants being served. For instance, based on
lawsuits filed against police departments, in
the last 25 years S.W.A.T. raids have led to the

POLICE USE OF FORCE KILLS TWO
IMPROPER RAID IN MARYLAND.

S.W.A.T. deployments in
the U.S. have risen from
3,000 per year in the
early 1980’s to 50,000
per year by the mid
2000’s.
deaths of 46 people who had committed no
crime at all and another 25 deaths involving a
nonviolent offense, such as gambling or minor
drug possession.142 In addition, there have
been nearly 200 wrong-door raids in the last
15 years resulting in injuries, the killing of
pets and wrongful detainment.143
With the high cost of maintaining a S.W.A.T.
team, the prevalence of tragic accidents
associated with raids, and the civil concerns of
a militarized police force making low-level
drug seizures, S.W.A.T. raids have been
shown ineffective in increasing public safety.
In fact, with the number of raids which have
resulted in injuries, deaths of people and/or
pets, or were served on the wrong address,
the over-use of S.W.A.T. may in fact decrease
positive police-community relations, cost
departments thousands of dollars, and
reinforce the misguided police-by-force
structure prevalent in the
DOGS IN
United States.

On July 29, 2008, a police S.W.A.T. team raided the home of Berwyn
Heights, Maryland Mayor Cheye Calvo, shooting and killing his two
Labrador Retrievers. "I heard a loud crash and then 'bang, bang,
bang,'" recalled Calvo. Police stormed the house after a package
containing 32 pounds of marijuana was delivered to the residence.
The county police and sheriff who conducted the raid had failed to
contact the Berwyn Heights Police Department prior to the incident
and later acknowledged that neither Calvo nor his family knew about
the package or the suspected drug trade.
Sources: Aaron C. Davis, “Police Raid Berwyn Heights Mayor’s Home, Kill His 2 Dogs,”
Washington Post July 31, 2008. www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2008/07/30/AR2008073003299.html?sid=ST2010091302597
Ruben Castaneda, “Prince George’s settles suit by Berwyn Heights mayor over
storming of home,” Washington Post January 24, 2011. www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/story/2010/09/13/ST2010091302597.html

Immigration
Enforcement
In many jurisdictions, local
police are being pressured to
take significantly larger roles
in immigration enforcement
and policy, which has
traditionally been a federal
government responsibility.144
In 2002, the U.S. Congress
added the “Delegation of
Immigration Authority,”

commonly referred to as 287(g) to the
Immigration and Naturalization Act, or
“Secure Communities.” This section says that
the Immigration and Customs Enforcement
(ICE) agency has the authority to deputize
local law enforcement officers as federal
immigration cops and train them as such. In
effect, this means that local law enforcement
can arrest and detain people suspected of
being in the country illegally who have not
otherwise broken the law.145 This policy not
only leads to more people being arrested and
detained for immigration violations, but also
takes away resources for more serious public
safety challenges.
While jurisdictions across the country are
accessing this ICE training under 287(g), the
most notorious location is in Maricopa
County, Arizona, where the self-proclaimed
“America’s Toughest Sheriff,” Joe Arpaio,
took it upon himself to implement militaristic
tactics in enforcing immigration laws, in
addition to workplace immigration raids and
crime suppression sweeps (i.e., traffic
checkpoints) that have resulted in thousands
of arrests of undocumented immigrants. Since
2007, Maricopa County was responsible for
the deportations or forced departures of
26,146 immigrants through its 287(g)
program, accounting for nearly one-fourth of
the nationwide total of 115,841 such
deportations in that time period.146 While ICE
removed Maricopa County’s ability to arrest
people for immigration violations while on
patrol in October 2009, with the 2010 passage
of SB1070, which requires police to ask for
papers from anyone they suspect is in the
country illegally, police may continue to act as
federal border patrol agents. Thus they are
again focused on arresting people for
immigration violations, rather than other
crimes. According to the Goldwater Institute,
“[Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office’s
immigration enforcement] has diverted

resources away from basic law-enforcement
functions to highly publicized immigration
sweeps, which are ineffective in policing
illegal immigration and in reducing crime
generally….”147

Most professional law enforcement
leaders around country are fairly
united in their concerns about the
impact that making immigration
enforcement the primary function of
local policing would have on
resources, our ability to fight crime
and our ability to work with various
communities that may have
significant representation of
immigrants whether here with or
without authority. Most major law
enforcement around the country have
spoken very clearly in opposition of
having local police enforce
immigration laws.
~ POLICE CHIEF GEORGE GASCÓN, SAN
FRANCISCO POLICE DEPARTMENT (Alia
Beard Rau, “Arizona Immigration Bill: police chiefs
criticize measure,” The Arizona Republic, April 21,
2010 )

Advances in Technology has
made many feel they are more
“watched” than protected by the
police.
Over the years technology has often been
used to enhance the police’s ability to
investigate, solve and combat crimes. As
technology and policing practices continue to
advance, the use of technology surveillance
may lead to a new form of technology-based
special policing. Increased police surveillance
will likely mean more police contact and
ultimately more arrests, likely falling harder
on some communities. The following are two
areas of police surveillance that are seeing
greater use in cities across the U.S. and may
very well shape the future of policing
communities:

Surveillance Cameras:
Public surveillance camera systems are
generally made up of a network of cameras
linked to a closed circuit television to allow
recording and monitoring. Newer camera
monitoring systems often include wireless
capabilities that allow monitoring from offsite
locations and the ability to actively pan, tilt
and zoom the camera. More sophisticated
systems can incorporate motion detectors and
audio equipment to record sound or detect
gunshots.148
According to a recent
Urban Institute study
comparing the use of
camera surveillance in
Chicago, Baltimore
and Washington D.C.
the types and use of
camera surveillance
tends to vary greatly
by city.149 For instance,
Chicago has
approximately 8,000
cameras in use,
including police,
transit and public school cameras.150 The
camera system is actively monitored and used
proactively during law enforcement.
Chicago’s system is on a wireless network
allowing officers the ability to even monitor
cameras from their desks. Comparatively,
Washington D.C. only has 73 active cameras
which are primarily used for investigative
purposes.151 During the installation of the
camera network, D.C. policymakers, largely
concerned with privacy rights, established
regulations that strictly limit the extent of
active monitoring.
Aerial Drones:
Unmanned aerial surveillance drones were
originally developed for military use.
Surveillance drones can be equipped with

powerful, high-resolution, infrared and
thermal-imaging cameras that can allow
police to monitor and record public activities
largely undetected.
In 2009, the Austin, Texas Police department
was the first to use an aerial drone for
domestic police functions - surveying a
suspect’s home during a SWAT drug raid.152
Since then, the Texas Department of Public
Safety has used drones in six operations
involving drug and human trafficking. Police
Departments in Queen Anne's County, MD,
Miami-Dade County, FL,
and Mesa County, CO
have adopted pilot
programs testing the use of
aerial drones.153 With the
likely increased use of
aerial drones concerns
have been raised as to their
safety. According to
military studies,
unmanned drones have a
higher accident rate than
manned aircrafts—even
outside of combat areas.154
Nonetheless, the Federal Aviation
Administration (FAA) is considering
authorizing the use of unmanned surveillance
drones for police departments across the U.S.
by 2013.155
Motor Vehicle Violation Cameras
In an effort to reduce costs, many police
departments are using automated red-light
and speed cameras to cut down on the
number of officers assigned to patrol streets.
People whom the cameras “catch” are
generally sent a ticket in the mail, and will be
held responsible for paying fines without any
legally admissible confirmation that the
individual has received a ticket.156 These
cameras are often owned by third-party
operators; these for-profit companies share

ticket revenue with the municipality with
which they contract.157 Therefore, there is
little incentive to ensure these intersections do
not reduce yellow light time spans to issue
additional citations (a proven method of
increasing intersection safety), and little
accountability by police departments if they
aren’t.158
While these cameras may save (or even make)
money for police departments, they breed illwill toward law enforcement among the many
who have received a ticket in the mail.159
Fighting a ticket that is believed to be in error
due to faulty equipment is costly and time
consuming, particularly to working people
who may not have paid time off to go to court
(in some states, multiple hearings are
required), and if the ticketed individual is
determined to be liable for the infraction,

court costs increase the total fine.160 Refusal to
pay what a person considers an unjust ticket
in some places can lead to punitive
retribution161, and failure to respond to the
citation can result in arrest. Even when a
person acknowledges they either “slid
through” a red light or exceeded the speed
limit, they may have believed the reason was
justifiable – taking someone to the hospital,
for instance. In a face-to-face traffic stop, the
police officer may have agreed that this was
an appropriate time to bend the rules or may
even have helped the person, for instance by
providing a police escort. Instead, many
people who have had limited contact with law
enforcement now have a “bad taste in their
mouth,” which might make them less likely to
cooperate in other areas of policing, like
investigating a more serious crime.

THE NEGATIVE EFFECTS OF CURRENT
POLICING STRATEGIES OUTWEIGH THE
PUBLIC SAFETY BENEFITS

Continued expenditures on police and punitive policing have negative
effects on communities, contributing to the number of people in
prison and jail, causing distrust for the police, and even undermining
public safety.
While police may say they are “only doing
their job” in enforcing the laws that others
make, the negative consequences of much of
the policing and arrests that occur,
particularly for low level drug offenses, outweigh potential benefits, especially given
current low crime rates. Incarceration, either
in jail following an arrest or in prison
following a conviction, has been found to cost
taxpayers billions and disproportionately
harm communities of color, and yet fails to
keep communities safe.162 Furthermore, by
using law enforcement as a job-generating
initiative, localities are only raising other costs
associated with arrests and incarceration.

Policymakers are in charge of deciding
sentences for offenses, which are meted out by

judges, but police are in charge of finding and
arresting people who have committed an
offense. It follows that with more arrests
comes more incarceration. The number of
people in prisons and jails in the U.S.
increased 271 percent from 1982 to 2010,
reaching nearly 2.3 million people in 2010.163
The incarceration rate has increased 178
percent from 263 per 100,000 in 1982164 to 731
per 100,000 in 2010.165
Arrests for minor offenses, including drug
offenses, are particularly concerning given the
negative effects of putting a person in contact
with the justice system. Just as the number or
arrests for drug offenses has increased, the
largest area of growth in the prison
population is people incarcerated for drug
offenses—up 20 percent from 1990 to 2000
alone;166 28 percent of all people entering state
prisons in 2008 were convicted of a drug
offense.167 In 2008, about 18 percent of people
in state prisons and 51 percent of people in
federal prisons had drug offenses as their
most serious charge.168

The crime decline of 2008 to 2010
comes at a really inconvenient
time for the conventional
wisdom, in two respects. One,
the economy is going to hell, and
two, this is the first time in forty
years that we are not removing
more prisoners from the streets
than we’re sending back.
~ FRANKLIN ZIMRING,
CRIMINOLOGIST AT U.C.-BERKELEY
(James Verini, “Is There an “Obama Effect” on
Crime?” Slate, October 5, 2011.)

While arrests start a person on a criminal
justice track, the penalties have become more
punitive, to include mandatory sentences,
which cause people to spend years—and even
decades—behind bars for minor offenses, like
possession of a small amount of drugs. These
policies are costing us billions of dollars every
year—corrections spending reached $74
billion in 2007 – disrupting lives and
communities, and creating a lifetime of
barriers to education, jobs, and housing.169
Broader systemic reforms are necessary to
make sentences less punitive and reverse the
criminalization of a myriad of minor
behavioral infractions deemed undesirable by
lawmakers; however, in the meantime, police
can stop feeding this system by not pulling
people who pose little risk to public safety
into it unnecessarily.

Jail has negative effects for
people, families, and communities
After a person is arrested, they may spend
time in jail, which is a detention facility for
people pre-trial and for those serving short
sentences, usually run by a city or county.
Conversely, prisons are run by states and are
for people who have been sentenced to serve
a year or more. Jails have a harmful effect on

many aspects of people’s lives including their
physical and mental health, employment,
recovery from addiction, family life and
relationships with their community. This is
especially worrisome since the majority of
people in jails experience symptoms of mental
illness and many also struggle with substance
abuse. Poor treatment of disease170 in jails
exacerbates the problem and spreads diseases
through the community.171 The constant flow
of people through a jail makes it much more
likely that a person would contract
HIV/AIDS,172 tuberculosis173 and staph
infections.174 Incarceration tends to further
harm people with mental illness175, and often
it is behavior related to the person’s mental
illness that puts them in jail in the first
place.176 Jails are associated with high rates of
untreated depression,177 which leads to high
rates of suicide.178 Once a person with a
mental illness is released from jail, there is
often no effort to facilitate the treatment of the
illness, including reinstatement of benefits lost
while behind bars.179 The jail system is also illequipped to help people who have a drug
addiction, especially people who also have a
mental health problem.180

Beyond physical and mental well-being, jail
also negatively impacts a person’s earning
potential,181 educational182 and employment
prospects, even 15 years after release from
jail.183 It also negatively impacts families. The
California Research Bureau estimates that
approximately 97,000 children have parents in
jail.184 When the person going to jail is a
woman, the father is often unlikely able to
maintain custody of the child, which can
result in the child being displaced; 185 while
the child may stay with relatives, many are
sent to foster care. Having a family member in
jail puts immense levels of stress on the family
as a whole, which can further contribute to
overall declines in both mental and physical
health.186 Jails can affect a person’s
relationship with his/her community as well,
especially through a person’s ability to secure
housing upon release. In one Baltimore
survey, 63 percent of people surveyed had
owned or rented a home prior to
incarceration, but only 29 percent owned or
rented a home after release.187 Jails also offer

few services which would help a person
reenter society when released.

Youth are pulled into the justice
system by police in schools.
A recent report from the journal Pediatrics
finds that nearly one in three youth will have
been arrested by the time they turn 23.188 One
contributing factor to the common occurrence
of youth arrests is police and arrests in
schools. The presence of police in schools,
including school resource officers (SROs), has
contributed to the number of youth that come
into contact with the juvenile justice system.
Fueled by increasingly harsh approaches to
student behavior such as “zero tolerance
policies,” the past 20 years have seen an
expansion in the presence of law enforcement
in schools. According to the U.S. Department
of Justice, the number of SROs increased 38
percent between 1997 and 2007,189 supported
in part by approximately $400 million in
federal funds since 2000.190 Some cities, like
New York City, employ more officers in

As spending on police increased 445 percent, the number of people in
prisons and jails increased 275 percent from 1982 to 2007.
$100
2,000,000
$80
1,500,000
$60
1,000,000

$40

500,000

Police Spending
(Billions)

Number of people in prisons and jails

2,500,000

$20

0

$-

Incarcerated Population

Police Spending

Sources: Prison and jails: Bureau of Justice Statistics, “Correctional Populations,” Accessed January 2012.
http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/glance/tables/corr2tab.cfm; Police Spending: Includes State, Federal and Local
expenditures. Tracey Kyckelhahn, Justice Expenditure and Employment Extracts 2007 (Washington, D.C.: Bureau
of Justice Statistics, 2010)

schools than many small cities’ entire police
force.191
With this rapid increase in the presence of law
enforcement, including SROs, in schools,
districts from around the country have found
that youth are being referred to the justice
system at increased rates192 and for minor
offenses like disorderly conduct.193 Researchers
from the University of Maryland and the
University of Massachusetts recently found that
in four of the five states included in a study
about referrals to the juvenile justice system,
schools made up a greater proportion of all
referrals to juvenile courts in 2004 than in
1995.194 At the same time, although always
relatively rare, incidents of student reported
theft and violence are at the lowest rates since
1992.195

Incarceration is an expensive sideeffect of arrests.
Funding for police has also risen in tandem
with the increase in the number of people in
prison. From 1982 to 2007, the amount of

money spent on policing in the U.S. increased
by 445 percent, reaching $104 billion in
2007.196 At the same time, the number of
people incarcerated in prisons and jails
increased dramatically, reaching 2.3 million
people in 2007—a 275 percent increase since
1982.197
A study by the Justice Policy Institute found
that, controlling for crime rates, poverty,
unemployment and other factors, counties
that spend more on policing and the justice
system imprison people for drug offenses at
higher rates than counties that spend less on
law enforcement.198 This suggests that there is
a point of diminishing public safety returns
for additional police; that is, they need to
arrest people for less serious crimes in order
to keep busy, and justify budget requests. A
decrease or redirection of funding away from
policing and into social services could
decrease the negative effects of arrests and
incarceration and create safer communities in
the long term.

YOUTH JUSTICE COALITION: LOS ANGELES SPENDS TOO MUCH ON POLICE
According to a report by the Youth Justice Coalition, a nonprofit organization working to build a youthled movement to challenge race, gender and class inequality in the Los Angeles County
juvenile injustice system, over-spending on police is not making communities safer and has a negative
impact on youth. Los Angeles County alone spends $3.77 billion on police, employing 26,861 sworn
police officers over 57 law enforcement agencies. The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) makes
up about a third of this spending, at $1.17 billion. More than half of Los Angeles city’s unrestricted
funds go to the LAPD, and the LAPD makes up about 42 percent of the total city’s workforce. “Under
the unexamined claim that LA is under-policed the budgets for police continue to grow while health
clinics, libraries, social service programs, job training, placement and job development programs,
parks and community centers are consistently cut.”
For more information, see the Youth Justice Coalition’s report, Cross the Line: Why LA Must Challenge the Idea
that Police Budgets are Untouchable In Order to Support Youth & Build Safer Communities at
www.youth4justice.org
Sources:
Why LA Must Challenge the Idea that Police Budgets are Untouchable In Order to Support Youth & Build Safer Communities
(Los Angeles: Youth Justice Coalition, 2011) www.youth4justice.org
LA City 2010-2011 Budget Summary. www.ci.la.ca.us/cao/budgetsum/BudgetSummary2010-11.pdf cited in Cross the Line: Why
LA Must Challenge the Idea that Police Budgets are Untouchable In Order to Support Youth & Build Safer Communities (Los
Angeles: Youth Justice Coalition, 2011) www.youth4justice.org
City of Los Angeles Mayor’s Office. “FY 2010-2011 Authorized City Staffing.” Cited in Cross the Line: Why LA Must Challenge
the Idea that Police Budgets are Untouchable In Order to Support Youth & Build Safer Communities (Los Angeles: Youth
Justice Coalition, 2011) www.youth4justice.org

LAW ENFORCEMENT HAS A
DISPROPORTIONATE IMPACT ON
CERTAIN COMMUNITIES

There are concentrated numbers of arrests in communities of color
and low-income communities. W hile there is a multiplicity of reasons
why this might be, for drug offenses in particular it is not because of
ethnic or racial differences in use of drugs. 199
The disproportionate impact of arrest policies
on people of color leaves many families and
communities without loved ones and has a
significant impact on the economy, stability
and safety of these communities, especially
when these arrests lead to incarceration. In
addition, the concentrated impact of policing
on lower income communities is exemplified
by the criminalization of homelessness,
making people who are homeless particularly
vulnerable to arrest and involvement in the
justice system.

People of color are arrested at much higher
rates than whites across most offense
categories, with Blacks having the highest
rates of arrest across all racial groups for
whom data is available. Blacks are arrested at
nearly four times the rate of whites for violent
offenses.

Racial Profiling
In the aftermath of September 11 and
increasing suspicion of immigrants, racial
profiling in law enforcement, which long was
an issue with the African American
community, has grown to include Latinos and
Muslims. At the same time, the Black
community continues to disproportionately
experience contacts with police compared to
whites. More contacts with police mean the
potential for more arrests.
One area where racial profiling is frequently
seen is traffic stops. Even though Blacks,
Latinos and whites are stopped by police at
similar rates, Blacks are three times as likely
to be searched as whites and about two times
as likely to be searched as Latinos. Blacks
were about twice as likely to be arrested.200 An
analysis of data by the ACLU points out that
even though blacks and Hispanics are more
likely to be searched during traffic stops, they
are less likely to have contraband.201

Arrest Rate (per 100,000)

In 2009, blacks were arrested at more than double the
Also under scrutiny
rate of whites.
are “stop and frisks”
10,000
9,345
of pedestrians,
9,000
particularly in New
8,000
York City. This
7,000
controversial policing
5,443
6,000
strategy involves
4,459
5,000
police stopping
3,849
someone on the street,
4,000
and frequently,
3,000
without any clear
2,000
1,045
evidence of
1,000
wrongdoing,
0
All Races
White
Black
American
Asians and
searching the person.
Indian/Alaskan
Pacific
In 2011, 684,330 New
Natives
Islanders
Yorkers were stopped
Source: Howard Snyder and Joseph Mulako-Wangota, Arrests in the United States, 1980-2009
by the police; of these,
(Bureau of Justice Statistics: Washington, D.C., 2011).
88 percent (603,268)
were totally innocent.202 Although whites in
but 59 percent of the stop and frisks. 203
New York City make up 44 percent of the
Despite being stopped so disproportionately,
population they accounted for only 9 percent
blacks were less likely to be engaging in a
of the stop and frisks compared to blacks,
behavior for which they could be arrested. In
who make up 26 percent of the population,
2006, 21.5 blacks were stopped for each arrest
of a black person as opposed to
Although Black make up 13 percent of the
only 18.2 whites stopped for each
population in 2010, they accounted for 31
white arrest. Cops found guns,
percent of arrests for drug law violations.
drugs, or stolen property on whites
80%
72%
about twice as often as they did on
67%
70%
black suspects. 204
Percent

60%
50%
40%

31%

30%
20%

13%

10%
0%
Black
General Population

White
Drug Law Violations

Source: Arrests: Federal Bureau of Investigation, "Uniform Crime Report,
Arrests by Race, Table 43," www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-theu.s/2010/crime-in-the-u.s.-2010/tables/table-43

Population: U.S. Census Bureau, "American Factfinder, U.S. Census
2010 - Race Alone or in Combination and Hispanic or Latino: 2010,"
http://factfinder2.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productvie
w.xhtml?fpt=table

The policies that are included
below are examples of racial
profiling, as they are seemingly
race-neutral policies that have a
disproportionate effect on
communities of color, especially
black communities.

Drug Offenses
Even greater disparities are seen in
the rate of arrests for drug offenses.
Although Blacks make up 13
percent of the population, they
make up 31 percent of arrests for

drug offenses, while whites are 72 percent of
the population, but 67 percent of arrests.
Blacks were arrested for drug offenses at three
times the rate of whites in 2009. The number
of arrests of African Americans for drug
possession increased 55 percent from 1993 to
2009; for whites, this increase was 77
percent.205 While there may be a multiplicity
of reasons for these differences, it is not
because there are differences in rates of drug
use. In 2010, Blacks and whites reported
similar rates of illicit drug use within the
previous month.206

4,025 drug arrests were made by
Mississippi’s Multi-Jurisdictional Drug
Task Force (MJDTFs) from 1997 to
1998.207 The typical person arrested was
an unemployed male in his late-20s. A
disproportionate number (73 percent) of
people arrested were African American.
Almost 60 percent of arrests were for
drug possession, 38 percent were for
sale or distribution of drugs, and 1
percent of arrests were for the
manufacturing of illegal substances.
Less than 7 percent of the charges
subsequently filed were for distribution
of illegal drugs and just over 1 percent
were filed for manufacturing. Eighty
percent of the cases resulted in a
conviction, while 46 percent resulted in
a prison sentence. Nearly 90 percent of
these convictions were obtained through
plea bargains.208
California: A recent study by the Center
on Juvenile and Criminal Justice reported
that in 1990, half of people arrested in
California for marijuana possession were
African American, Latino, Asian, or other

While increased arrests of whites may more
accurately reflect the rates of drug usage in
the general population, there are still racial
disparities in drug arrests and too many
people are arrested and incarcerated for
possession of (a small amount) drugs.
Racial disparities in policing are evident in
several studies undertaken across the country:
Mississippi: Researchers at Mississippi
State University found that a total of

Blacks are arrested for drug offenses at three times
the rate of whites in 2009.
1,600
1,351.50

Arrest Rate (per 100,000)

1,400

Whites

1,200

1,039.60

Blacks

1,000
800
600

439.7

400

311.6

200

367.3

72.5

0
Total Drug Law
Violations

Sale-Manufacturing

Possession

Source: Howard Snyder and Joseph Mulako-Wangota, Arrests in the United States, 19802009 (Bureau of Justice Statistics: Washington, D.C., 2011).

Arrest Rate (per 100,000)

persons of color and
In 2009, Blacks were arrested at more than double and
35 percent were
sometimes triple the rate of whites across all ofense
under age 20. In
categories.
10,000
9,345
2010, 64 percent of
9,000
people arrested for
these offenses were
8,000
Whites
people of color and
7,000
Blacks
52 percent were
6,000
under age 20.
5,000
Marijuana
3,849
4,000
possession arrests of
teenagers of color
3,000
rose from 3,100 in
2,000
1,352
1,249
1990 to 16,400 in
548
1,000
474
440
139
2010 – an arrest
0
surge 300 percent
All Offenses
Total Drug Law
Violent Crime
Property Crime
greater than
Violations
Index
Index
population growth
Note: Total Drug Abuse Violations includes arrests for sale, manufacturing and possession.
in that group.209
Source: Howard Snyder and Joseph Mulako-Wangota, Arrests in the United States, 1980California imprisons
2009 (Bureau of Justice Statistics: Washington, D.C., 2011).
African Americans
for marijuana
offenses at 7 times the rate of Latinos, 13
or deliver drugs in Seattle were white, the
times the rate of Whites, and 20 times the
majority of those arrested were black. The
rate of Asians.210
black drug arrest rate was more than 13
New York: In a 2006 report, the New York
times higher than drug arrest rate for
Civil Liberties Union released a report
whites and black arrests for serious drugs
showing that arrests for marijuana
were 21 times higher than whites. While 8
skyrocketed between 1997 and 2006 and
percent of the city population in Seattle is
also disproportionately affected people of
black, a four month sample conducted
color. Since 1997, Blacks made up about 26
from 2005-2006 found that 67 percent of
percent of New York City’s population,
those arrested for delivery of a serious
but 52 percent of arrests, Hispanics made
drug were black. Research indicates that
up about 27 percent of the population, but
powder cocaine and ecstasy were the most
31 percent of arrests, and non-Hispanic
widely used drugs in the city, yet nearly
whites were 36 percent of the population,
three-fourths (72.9 percent) of those
but only 15 percent of arrests.
arrested for delivery of serious drugs
Additionally, whites were more likely to
were arrested for crack cocaine and nearly
report using marijuana at some point in
three-fourths (73.4 percent) of those
their lives, with 60 percent saying they
arrested were black.212
had; 50 percent of Blacks, and 40 percent
of Hispanics said they had used
Operation IMPACT
marijuana.211
Data about crime, where it happens and
Seattle, WA: A 2006 study found that
when, is sometimes thought to be a way to
although the majority of people who use
avoid disproportionately affecting

communities of color, but communities of
color often experience the most crime.213 Even
though there are a host of ways known to
significantly and permanently reduce crime
and victimization, policing is frequently the
first turned to in African American and Latino
neighborhoods. One example among many
across the country is Operation IMPACT,
which uses data to identify areas that
experience more crime and then focus law
enforcement and probation and parole on
those areas. Operation IMPACT was first
implemented in 2004 in 17 New York
counties, not including New York City
boroughs , and accounted for more than 80
percent of the most serious offenses reported
to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s
Uniform Crime Report (Part I offenses). In
2010, IMPACT funded 117 sworn positions,
analysts, and investigators and supported
partnerships between law enforcement
agencies in the state.214
The intention was to combine current data
about crime, including when, where, and how
the offenses occurred to determine how the
police should respond. The data supports
several different types of responses, primary
among them being an infusion of police into a
certain area, depending on need. Also,
IMPACT data is used to identify areas where
there might be a spike in a particular type of
crime and, then, probation and parole officers
will spontaneously visit people on
supervision in those areas, typically focusing
on people who might be under supervision
for that particular offense. IMPACT also
supports a focus on people who are known to
have committed a particular offense multiple
times and, even though there is no data to
show that drug or gang activity drives Part I
offenses, gang and drug activity surveillance.
215

IMPACT may be representative of an
evidence-based policy strategy to target areas
that are most effected by crime. However,
those same areas are also most likely to be
communities of color and lower income
communities. While it is necessary to address
serious crime in those neighborhoods, a
concentrated surveillance effort that focuses
on people that have committed offenses in the
past may not be the most effective or
community-supported means by which to do
that. Anecdotal evidence points to arrests and
re-incarceration for minor incidents such as
“mouthing off” to a parole officer during a
random stop. Such targeted, spontaneous
supervision may also impede a person on
supervision from maintaining employment or
other life responsibilities; and parole officers,
who may be providing social-work type
services to the people they supervise are put
in the difficult situation of suddenly having to
be in an aggressive policing mode,
undermining a working relationship.216 In
addition, while some aspects of this approach
may be considered community policing, the
more surveillance-based law enforcement
strategies may impede these strategies by
creating mistrust between communities and
police.

Zero tolerance policies, fueled by Broken
Windows Theory, have contributed to
increases in arrests overall, but particularly

for lower income communities and people
who are homeless. This is clearly
demonstrated in the neighborhood known as
Skid Row. Central City East, popularly known
as Skid Row, is an area located in downtown
Los Angeles that houses some of city’s most
vulnerable populations. In addition to those
suffering from drug addiction and mental
illnesses, this area is also home to the highest
concentration of homeless people in the U.S.217
In 2006, the LAPD began the Safer City
Initiative, designed to fight crime in the area
by conducting crackdowns on the homeless in
hopes of reducing violent and other serious
crime. Chief of Police William J. Bratton
unleashed a 50-officer task force to patrol the
streets of Skid Row. The concentration of
police led to about 12,000 citations written per
year with about 60 percent of those citations
simply for jaywalking. Largely, these citations
disproportionately affect those with mental
health issues and who are unable to pay
citation fines. Since a failure to pay a citation
leads to an arrest warrant, arrests in Skid Row
increased by an average of more than 750
arrests per month than in previous years.218
While the Safer City Initiative has decreased
the visibility of homelessness on Skid Row, it
has done nothing to effectively help those
dealing with homelessness, mental illness or
drug addiction other than subjecting them to

increased police contact, citations and
arrest.219
In addition, most states have implemented
laws specifically directed toward policing the
homeless which ultimately can result in more
people being arrested and admitted to jails.
The National Coalition for the Homeless and
the National Law Center on Homelessness
and Poverty released a report in 2006 which
surveyed 224 cities around the country on
their laws involving the criminalization of the
homeless.220 The report found that city
ordinances frequently serve as a prominent
tool to criminalize homelessness through
“quality of life” crimes and that these laws are
increasing.
28 percent of cities surveyed prohibit
“camping” in specific public places in the
city and 16 percent had city-wide
prohibitions on “camping”
27 percent prohibit sitting/lying in certain
public places
39 percent prohibit loitering in specific
public areas and 16 percent prohibit
loitering city-wide
43 percent prohibit begging in specific
public places; 45 percent prohibit
“aggressive panhandling” and 21 percent
have city-wide prohibitions on begging

Washington D.C. locking down neighborhoods
In June 2008, in response to a string of violent incidents, D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier and
Mayor Adrian Fenty set into motion what they called Neighborhood Safety Zones. The initiative
included plans to consolidate oversight of the city’s 5,200 closed-circuit cameras, to ask residents
whether police may search their homes for illegal guns and to establish traffic checkpoints in highcrime neighborhoods. The latter was implemented in the Trinidad neighborhood in Northeast D.C.
Motorists wishing to travel into this area were required to provide valid identification and justify
their reasons for traveling into the neighborhood. If they were unable or unwilling to do so, they
were not allowed past the barriers.
The blanket implementation of Neighborhood Safety Zones without community involvement only
served to exacerbate already fragile relationships between the police department and the
communities involved in the initiative, primarily communities of color. According to Chief Lanier,
“The Neighborhood Safety Zone initiative will help residents terrorized by violent crime to take
back their neighborhoods,” but adding more police did just the opposite. On June 20, 2008, the
Partnership for Civil Justice filed a lawsuit claiming that the checkpoints were neither effective nor
constitutional.
Chief Lanier responded to criticisms of the initiative for being ineffective and lacking community
support by citing that during the Neighborhood Safety Zones implementation, there were no
homicides in the communities with elevated police presence and that community cooperation is
vital to the department successfully carrying out its mission to take on/reduce crime, however,
there were numerous shootings throughout D.C. during that time that were not impacted by this
policy.
Sources:
Del Quentin Wilber, “Class action filed over checkpoints,” The Washington Post, June 21, 2008
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/20/AR2008062001954.html
David Lipscomb, “Residents hit crime initiatives as less personal,” The Washington Times, June 17, 2008
www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/jun/17/residents-hit-initiatives-as-less-personal/?page=all
David Lipscomb, “Police checkpoints get mixed response,” The Washington Times, June 8, 2008
www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/jun/08/police-get-mixed-response-to-checkpoints/?page=all
Mayor’s Press Release, cited by DCist, “Police to Seal Off D.C. Neighborhoods,” June 4, 2008.
http://dcist.com/2008/06/04/mpd_to_seal_off.php
Allison Klein and Clarence Williams, “Police Suspend Trinidad Checkpoint Program,” The Washington Post, June 13, 2008
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/12/AR2008061200778.html?sid=ST2008061202421

POSITIVE INVESTMENTS IN
COMMUNITIES PROMOTE PUBLIC SAFETY

On average, communities are the safest they have been in 30 years,
but some communities continue to seriously struggle with public
safety, and no one wants to live in fear of victimization . At the same
time, communities are wrestling with tight budgets and must make
choices about how to best achieve public safety. In the coming years,
federal funding for all types of initiative s, including police, is likely to
further decrease. Already, communities are cutting police forces.
It is possible, however, to get similar or better
public safety results without increasing police
presence or instituting punitive policing
strategies, and without increasing arrests and
the negative impacts that come with involving
a person in the justice system. The best way to
promote public safety is through investments
in institutions like education, employment,
housing, and treatment, as well as
investments in policing strategies that support
and are supported by communities. In fact,
true community-oriented policing may not
cost any additional funds at all, but rather a
shift in philosophy. Regardless, investments
in these social institutions are investments in
the long-term public safety of a community.
Although there is a great deal of evidence and
support for positive investments in
communities such as education, employment,
housing, and treatment,221 this section will
focus on specific models of supportive,
community-supported policing that have had
promising public safety results, while

reducing arrests and contacts with the justice
system.

San Diego’s Community Policing
Strategy
In the 1990s, San Diego and New York City
both implemented strategies to protecting
public safety with similar results, but the
approaches used were very different. Under
the direction of then-Police Commissioner
William Bratton and former mayor Rudy
Giuliani, the New York City Police
Department employed a “zero tolerance”
policy, inspired by Broken Windows Theory
to “clean up the streets” and lower crime
rates.222 San Diego, by contrast, favored a
neighborhood policing approach in which
police and citizens share the responsibility for
identifying and solving crimes and form
connections to help share information and
provide communities with resources to
combat crime problems.
Both New York City and San Diego witnessed
comparable declines in crime during the same

period.223 In San Diego, crime fell 36.8 percent
from 1990 to 1995 and arrests fell 15 percent,
but San Diego did not experience the same
level of citizen complaints of police
misconduct and abuse. The evidence from San
Diego shows that cooperative problemsolving can provide effective crime control
while promoting positive ties to the
community. According to researcher Judith
Greene, who reviewed both the New York
City and San Diego policies, “The San Diego
strategy seems better designed to support and
sustain vital elements of community social
organization that can inhibit criminality and
build safer neighborhoods over the long
run.”224

Columbia, South Carolina’s
Kobans
In 1999 in the Waverly neighborhood of
Columbia, S.C., residents employed a
Japanese-style approach to community
policing called a Koban.225 Kobans or police
mini-stations in Japan are often found within
a ten minute walk from most residents in a
neighborhood. This common form of Japanese
policing is designed to provide a security
anchor and easy police access for
communities. Koban officers are tasked with
integrating themselves into the local
community, frequently making home visits
with local residents to inquire about
experiences related to crime, give crime
prevention tips and share local neighborhood
news with residents. Most Kobans also serve
as local lost-and-founds and lend out
umbrellas on rainy days, and officers
generally undertake a mentoring role with
neighborhood youth. As a result of forming
close community ties, Koban officers are
fixtures in Japanese communities and treated
like a friend and neighbor.
Inspired by the success of Kobans in Japan,
the Eisenhower Foundation developed the

Youth Safe Haven-Police Mini-station model.
This model brought together the idea of afterschool youth safe havens, youth mentoring
and community advocacy with the Japanese
Koban-style policing. This model establishes
neighborhood-based police ministrations in
the United States where officers work to
prevent crime, assist local citizens and mentor
youth by integrating themselves into the local
community.
The Waverly model is similar to the Japanese
model in the sense that officers were
encouraged to build relationships with local
residents, use the Koban for community
meetings/events, take crime reports, and work
to identify and help prevent community
problems. The Waverly Koban had two
resident officers who lived in the Koban,
patrolled the community, and as part of their
contract agreed to work in the neighborhood
after hours and on their days off. Since the
establishment of the Koban crime has
dropped significantly more in the Waverly
neighborhood than in Columbia as a whole,
strongly indicating that the Koban was a
major factor leading to the revival of the
community. To date the Eisenhower
Foundation has partnered with local
jurisdictions to establish Koban-style youth
safe havens in Columbia, SC, Irvington, NJ,
Jackson, MS, Oakland, CA, Providence, RI,
San Juan, Puerto Rico, Toledo, OH, and
Tuskegee, AL.226

Crisis Intervention Team
Programs227
A Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) is a special
unit of the police department set up to
improve interactions with people in a mental
health crisis. Originally developed in
Memphis, Tennessee, CITs are made up
entirely of police officers who voluntarily join,
in addition to performing their regular patrol
duties. Officers in the program undergo 40

hours of specialized training in verbal
de‐escalation, and work with mental health
staff to fully understand mental illness and
see the human side of people in crisis. Since
its implementation, the number of Tactical
Apprehension Containment Team (TACT,
similar to SWAT) calls in the Memphis Police
Department fell by nearly 50 percent;228 the
CIT program had only a 2 percent arrest rate
with cases receiving specialized response;229
and the rate of referrals by law enforcement
officers to the regional psychiatric emergency
service increased by 42 percent.230

LEAD program in Seattle231
Seattle’s new pilot program known as LEAD
(Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion) is
intended to improve public health and safety
through alternatives to the criminal justice
system. Instead of arresting people for lowlevel drug offenses and prostitution, police
will offer eligible people inpatient drug
treatment, educational opportunities, housing
assistance and even microloans for would-be
business owners.232 The program is guided by
a harm reduction approach which ensures the
safety of all parties during an arrest, in the
hopes of seeing a reduction in illegal activity,
drug use, and recidivism rates.233 LEAD’s
policy coordinating group is made up of top
officials from a number of local agencies,
including the Seattle police, King County’s
Sheriff’s Office and Prosecuting Attorney’s
Office, Seattle’s City Attorney’s Office, the
American Civil Liberties Union of
Washington, and others. The four-year pilot
LEAD program is being funded by private
foundations at a cost of $950,000.

Community-based accountability
interventions
Calling the police is not a viable option for
some communities. Fear of deportation,
criminal justice impacts for harmed parties, or
general mistrust of the police causes many

people not to call them for help. The
difference between reported crime in the
National Crime Victims Survey compared to
the Uniform Crime Report234 is evidence of
this reluctance to call the police. In response,
people are disrupting harm on their own and
without police involvement in other ways.
While this is certainly happening every day
and to varying degrees, two efforts have
recently attempted to collect stories of these
interventions to disrupt harm and prepare a
toolkit for people to do it on their own.
Creative Interventions235 will soon have a
toolkit available for people and communities
to prepare their own intervention and
accountability strategies and Stop Violence
Every Day236 has a catalogue of stories of
people disrupting harm in their own way.

Finland’s high rates of contact
without arrests
In Finding Direction, The Justice Policy
Institute compared the criminal justice
systems of Australia, Canada, Germany,
Finland, United Kingdom and the U.S.237 As in
all comparative nations the entry point to the
criminal justice system is usually through
police. According to 2006 United Nations
data, the rate of police contact varied widely
by country, with Finland having the highest
rate and Canada the lowest; while the United
State’s rate of police contact was 52 percent
higher than Canada, but 61 percent lower
than Finland.238 However, while Finland had
the highest rate of police contact, it also had
the lowest rate of incarceration.239
Finland’s high police contact rate and low
incarceration rate may be due to a number of
factors, including the country’s strict penal
codes related to traffic violations,240 which
might increase police contact that doesn’t
result in arrests. More likely however,
differences in the philosophy of the role of
police and strategies of policing communities

accounts for the similarities in rates of police
contact among countries, but the vast
differences in incarceration. European nations
generally reject law enforcement policies that
have “zero tolerance” for quality of life
offenses, like graffiti, homelessness, or
panhandling,241 which are prevalent in U.S.
cities. “Zero tolerance” policies in the United
States lead to more people having contact
with the police who are subsequently arrested
and frequently incarcerated in a pretrial
detention facility or jail for a period of time. In
other countries, police may simply record
their contact with someone for a quality of life
offense, but arrest and jail time are not the
outcome. With the increased likelihood of
sentencing to prison in the United States once
entering the system,242 limiting arrests for less
serious offenses, including quality of life
offenses, could potentially reduce the number
of people in prison in the U.S.

Washington, D.C.’s Gay and
Lesbian Liaison Unit
Similar to other minority communities, the
Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender
(LGBT) community has had an often
complicated relationship with the police. A
long history of discrimination and stigma, as
wells as police conduct such as harassment,
mishandling of cases and at times targeted
enforcement efforts have led to community
distrust of police.243 While examining issues
concerning police and the LGBT community
can often be complicated due to a lack of data,
reports indicate that at times this community
has been disproportionately affected by
policing practices.244 In order to respond to
LGBT community outcries of mishandling of
cases, police misconduct, and a severe lack in
hate crimes reporting, the Washington D.C.
Metropolitan Police Department (MPD)
established the Gay and Lesbian Liaison Unit
(GLLU) in June 2000.245

Although other police departments - Atlanta,
Chicago, and Philadelphia - have gay and
lesbian liaison officers who deal with issues in
the LGBT community, D.C. was the first of its
kind to develop a separate police unit.246 In
2006 the Metropolitan Police Department
received the Ash Center’s Innovations in
American Government Award, for the
GLLU’s efforts to redefine community
policing by coupling community outreach
with traditional crime fighting in the LGBT
communities.247 Specifically the GLLU differs
from other community policing efforts by
merging three approaches: providing
educational outreach to the LGBT community,
educating peer police officers, and actively
participating in day-to-day police crime
fighting responsibilities. Officers of the GLLU
participate in outreach by integrating
themselves into the LGBT community as well
as serving as an active investigating unit
investigating crimes committed both against
and by the LGBT community.248

According to the Ash Center, since its
inception the GLLU has had a significant
impact on the safety of the LGBT community
and helped to increase the recognition of
same-sex domestic violence in the D.C. area.
With the increased presence of culturally
competent officers to the issues concerning
the LGBT community, the MPD has been able
to improve police-community relations

resulting in more members of the community
reaching out to the police department
regarding crimes, as seen in increased

reporting in hate crimes and domestic
violence calls.

RECOMMENDATIONS

The overuse of police and surveillance can lead to more arrests and
incarceration and do not have a significant impact on crime ,
especially when considering the costs. Some jurisdictions have
already started utilizing alternatives to traditional law enforcement to
police their streets, while others are focusing on the more long term
solutions to social problems.
With the money that governments spend on
police and corrections, more could be done for
sustainable solutions to public safety
challenges. If the Administration and
Congress want to spend scarce federal dollars
to improve public safety, they should invest
in programs and policies that have been
shown to have positive and long-lasting
effects on individuals and communities.
1. Reform laws and sentencing so police
don’t have to pick and choose. Police
don’t bear the sole responsibility for the
meteoric increase in the U.S. prison
population, and they alone can’t solve it.
To ask them to pick and choose which
laws to enforce and how vigorously is a
recipe for continued disparities due to
excessive discretion, and growing distrust
of police. State and federal policymakers
must take sentencing reform seriously,
reducing the harmful impacts of harsh
sentences. They must examine both drug
laws and those related to other lesser
offenses to determine where they might
be rolled back or eliminated completely.
This would end the ambiguity police now
face and allow them to focus on
improving their practices and

concentrating on reducing and addressing
harm to people and their neighborhoods.
2. Reallocate resources to positive social
investments known to improve public
safety. Research shows that investing in
services and programs that keep people
out of the justice system is more effective
at improving public safety and promoting
community well-being than investing in
law enforcement.249 For example, a
Washington State Institute for Public
Policy (WSIPP) study found that spending
one dollar in community-based drug
treatment yields over $18 in cost savings
in terms of increased public safety and
monetary savings; a dollar spent on drug
treatment in prison yields nearly $6 in
savings. Funding programs in the
community yields a higher return on the
investment. Drug treatment improves life
outcomes and increases the chances that a
person will not come into contact with the
criminal justice system.250 Putting
resources toward these positive
opportunities is the most efficacious and
cost-effective way of increasing public
safety.

3. Focus law enforcement on the most
serious offenses. Some federal law
enforcement programs like multijurisdictional task forces focus on the
number of arrests made, rather than the
type of arrests made. This leads to more
arrests for low-level offenses rather than
going after the less frequent, but more
serious offenses. Arrests for low-level
offenses have less of an impact on public
safety, but still use up considerable law
enforcement resources. Focusing law
enforcement efforts on the more serious
offenses will allow officers to use their
resources more effectively, thereby
improving public safety.
4. Implement policies that allow police to
issue citations over arrests for certain
offenses. A number of cities across the
country have started to recognize the
waste involved in arresting people for
certain low-level offenses, which result in
people spending days and sometimes

longer in jails. As such, they have started
using a citation rather than arrest system
for certain offenses, including possession
of small amounts of marijuana. Thirteen
states penalize first-offense possession of a
modest amount of marijuana with a fine
instead of possible jail time. In New York,
for example, first-offense possession of up
to 25 grams of marijuana is punishable by
a $100 civil citation. In Baltimore, police
are given the option of issuing civil or
criminal citations for certain low-level
offenses such as public intoxication or
disturbing the peace. These options allow
police and the courts to focus their
resources on more serious offenses and
save taxpayers the cost of housing
someone in a jail for a non-serious offense.
Although citations can still have a
disproportionate impact on communities
unable to pay the citation, there should be
an overall reduction in the number of
people arrested and filtered into the
justice system for minor offenses.

APPENDIX
2007
Police Spending
Per Capita

Violent Crime
Rate

Sworn Police
Per Capita

Incarceration
Rate

Alabama
Alaska

$211
$347

448.0
661.2

22
16

615
447

Arizona
Arkansas
California
Colorado
Connecticut
Delaware

$322
$169
$381
$278
$259
$346

482.7
529.4
522.6
347.8
256.0
689.2

24
21
19
21
24
18

554
502
471
465
410
482

Florida

$345

722.6

23

535

Georgia
Hawaii
Idaho
Illinois
Indiana

$224
$239
$200
$317
$175

493.2
272.8
239.4
533.2
333.6

23
23
19
30
19

563
338
483
n/a
426

Iowa
Kansas
Kentucky

$197
$244
$148

294.7
452.7
295.0

18
23
18

291
312
512

Louisiana

$277

729.5

29

865

Maine
Maryland

$176
$317

118.0
641.9

18
24

159
404

Massachusetts
Michigan
Minnesota
Mississippi
Missouri
Montana

$282
$233
$272
$196
$238
$215

431.5
536.0
288.7
291.3
504.9
287.5

31
18
17
22
23
18

246
499
181
734
506
356

Nebraska
Nevada
New Hampshire
New Jersey
New Mexico
New York

$202
$385
$225
$353
$304
$393

302.4
750.6
137.3
329.3
664.2
414.1

20
19
21
32
23
39

243
509
222
308
313
322

North Carolina
North Dakota
Ohio
Oklahoma
Oregon
Pennsylvania

$225
$166
$258
$200
$259
$215

466.4
142.4
343.2
499.6
287.6
416.5

23
18
21
22
16
21

361
221
442
665
369
365

Rhode Island

$311

227.3

25

235

State

South Carolina
South Dakota
Tennessee

$205
$171
$221

788.3
169.2
753.3

24
18
23

524
413
424

Texas
Utah
Vermont
Virginia
Washington
West Virginia

$220
$217
$228
$247
$219
$148

510.6
234.8
124.3
269.7
333.1
275.2

20
16
16
22
16
17

669
239
260
490
273
333

Wisconsin
Wyoming

$267
$335

290.9
239.3

22
27

397
394

Total

$279

466.9

23

506

Note: Local government data are estimates subject to variability
Source: Bureau of Justice Statistics

FBI Uniform Crime Report Data Tool, “Estimated Crime in the United States – Total,” accessed December 2011.
www.ucrdatatool.gov/Search/Crime/State/RunCrimeStatebyState.cfm
2 FBI Uniform Crime Report, Crime in the United States, 2010 www.fbi.gov/ucr/ucr.htm
3 Bureau of Justice Statistics, “Employment and Expenditure,” Accessed October, 2011.
http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/index.cfm?ty=tp&tid=5
4 Samuel Walker and Charles M. Katz, The Police in America: An Introduction Fifth Edition (New York, NW: McGrawHill, 2005).
5 Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics Online, Table 6.13.2009 Number and rate (per 100,000 U.S. residents) of persons
in State and Federal prisons and local jails (Albany, NY: 2010). http://www.albany.edu/sourcebook/pdf/t6132009.pdf
6 Lauren E. Glaze, Correctional Populations in the United States, 2010 (Washington, D.C.: Bureau of Justice Statistics,
2011) http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/cpus10.pdf
7 Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Office of Applied Studies (2008). Results from the 2007
National Survey on Drug Use and Health: National Findings (NSDUH Series H-34, DHHS Publication No. SMA 08-4343).
Rockville, MD.
8 Samuel Walker and Charles M. Katz, The Police in America: An Introduction Fifth Edition (New York, NW: McGrawHill, 2005).
9 Bureau of Justice Statistics, Justice Expenditure and Employment Extracts 1993-2007 – Police Protection (Washington,
D.C.: 2010).
10 Brian A. Reaves, Local Police Departments, 2007 (Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2010).
11 Brian A. Reaves, Local Police Departments, 2007 (Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2010).
12 U.S. Census Bureau, “State and Country Quick Facts – USA,” accessed March 2012.
http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html, Accessed March 5, 2012.
13 Samuel Walker and Charles M. Katz, The Police In America: An Introduction, Fifth Edition (New York, NY: McGrawHill, 2005).
14 Morris Janowitz, “Sociological Theory and Social Control,” American Journal of Sociology 81(July 1975).
15 Hubbard Taylor Buckner, “The Police: The Culture of a Social Control Agency,” Dissertation, University of
California, Berkley, 1967, 2004.
16 Samuel Walker and Charles M. Katz, The Police In America: An Introduction, Fifth Edition (New York, NY: McGrawHill, 2005).
17 Brian A. Reaves, Local Police Departments, 2007 (Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2010).
18 Justice Policy Institute, Behind the Times: President Obama’s FY2013 Budget (Washington, D.C.: 2012).
http://www.justicepolicy.org/research/3538
1

Tracey Kyckelhahn, Justice Expenditure and Employment Extracts 2007, Table 7. Police protection sworn and
nonsworn employment and payrolls and percent distribution of full-time equivalent employment by state and type
of government, March 2007 (Washington, D.C.: Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2010)
20 The Heritage Foundation, Overcriminalization: An Explosion of Federal Criminal Law (Washington, D.C.: April 2011)
http://thf_media.s3.amazonaws.com/2011/pdf/fs0086.pdf
21Misha Glenny, “The Lost War,” The Washington Post, August 19, 2007. www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2007/08/17/AR2007081701716.html; NPR, “Timeline: America’s War on Drugs,” Accessed January
2012. www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9252490
22 Drug Policy Alliance, “A Brief History of the Drug War,” Accessed January 2012. www.drugpolicy.org/facts/newsolutions-drug-policy/brief-history-drug-war
23 NPR, “Timeline: America’s War on Drugs,” Accessed January 2012.
www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9252490; Drug Policy Alliance, “A Brief History of the Drug War,”
Accessed January 2012. www.drugpolicy.org/facts/new-solutions-drug-policy/brief-history-drug-war
24Drug Policy Alliance, “A Brief History of the Drug War,” Accessed January 2012. www.drugpolicy.org/facts/newsolutions-drug-policy/brief-history-drug-war
25 Russell Skiba, Zero Tolerance, Zero Evidence: An Analysis of School Disciplinary Practice (Indiana, Indiana Public
Education Policy Center, 2000). www.indiana.edu/~safeschl/ztze.pdf
26 Allan Beck and Darrell Gilliard, Prisoners in 1994 (Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1995) and William
Sabol, Heather West, and Matthew Cooper, Prisoners in 2008 (Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2009).
27 Paul Guerino, Paige M. Harrison and William J. Sabol, Prisoners in 2010 (Washington, D.C.: Bureau of Justice
Statistics, 2011). http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/p10.pdf
28 George L. Kelling and James Q. Wilson, “Broken Windows: The Police and Neighborhood Safety,” Atlantic
Monthly, March 1982. www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/03/broken-windows/4465/1/
29 Joshua C. Hinkle and David Weisburd, “The irony of broken windows policing: A micro-place study of the
relationship between disorder, focused police crackdowns and fear of crime,” Journal of Criminal Justice 36 (2008): 503512, p. 504.
30 Joshua C. Hinkle and David Weisburd, “The irony of broken windows policing: A micro-place study of the
relationship between disorder, focused police crackdowns and fear of crime,” Journal of Criminal Justice 36 (2008): 503512., p. 504.
31 Joshua C. Hinkle and David Weisburd, “The irony of broken windows policing: A micro-place study of the
relationship between disorder, focused police crackdowns and fear of crime,” Journal of Criminal Justice 36 (2008): 503512., p. 504.
32 Anthony A. Braga, “The Effects of Hot Spots Policing on Crime,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and
Social Science 578 (2001): 104-125, p. 105.
33 Anthony A. Braga, “The Effects of Hot Spots Policing on Crime,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and
Social Science 578 (2001): 104-125, p. 105.
34 Joshua C. Hinkle and David Weisburd, “The irony of broken windows policing: A micro-place study of the
relationship between disorder, focused police crackdowns and fear of crime,” Journal of Criminal Justice 36 (2008): 503512., p. 510.
35 Joshua C. Hinkle and David Weisburd, “The irony of broken windows policing: A micro-place study of the
relationship between disorder, focused police crackdowns and fear of crime,” Journal of Criminal Justice 36 (2008): 503512., p. 509.
36 William Bratton, Cutting Crime and Restoring Order: What America Can Learn from New York's Finest, (Washington,
DC: Heritage Foundation, October 15, 1996). http://s3.amazonaws.com/thf_media/1996/pdf/hl573.pdf
37 Robert Zink, “The Trouble with Compstat,” The PBA Magazine, Summer 2004. www.nycpba.org/publications/mag04-summer/compstat.html
38 Anthony A. Braga, “The Effects of Hot Spots Policing on Crime,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and
Social Science 578 (2001): 104-125, p. 122.
39 Wesley Skogan and Susan Hartnett, Community Policing Chicago Style (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).
40 Wesley Skogan and Susan Hartnett, Community Policing Chicago Style (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).
41 Wesley Skogan and Susan Hartnett, Community Policing Chicago Style (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).
42 Wesley Skogan and Susan Hartnett, Community Policing Chicago Style (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).
19

Samuel Walker and Charles Katz, The Police in America An Introduction, 5th ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2005).
Samuel Walker and Charles Katz, The Police in America An Introduction, 5th ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2005
45 Wesley Skogan and Susan Hartnett, Community Policing Chicago Style (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997);
Samuel Walker and Charles Katz, The Police in America An Introduction, 5th ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2005
46 Brian A. Reaves, Local Police Departments, 2007 (Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2010).
43
44

47

The Heritage Foundation, Overcriminalization: An Explosion of Federal Criminal Law (Washington, D.C.: April 2011)
http://thf_media.s3.amazonaws.com/2011/pdf/fs0086.pdf
49 H.R. 386: Securing Aircraft Cockpits Against Lasers Act of 2011,
http://overcriminalized.com/LegislationDetail.aspx?id=693
50 H.R. 950: Ticket Act, http://overcriminalized.com/LegislationDetail.aspx?id=720. For more examples of
overcriminalization, see www.overcriminalized.com
51 Mike DeBonis, “Here are 159 minor things D.C. officers can arrest you for,” The Washington Post, District of DeBonis,
October 24, 2011. www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/mike-debonis/post/here-are-159-minor-things-dc-officers-canarrest-you-for/2011/10/24/gIQA4mDRDM_blog.html
52 John Baker, Jr. and Dale E. Bennett, “Measuring the Explosive Growth of Federal Crime Legislation,” Federalist
Society for Law and Public Policy Studies White Paper, May 2004,
http://fedsoc.server326.com/Publications/practicegroupnewsletters/criminallaw/crimreportfinal.pdf
53 Laura Maggi, “NOPD corruption fueled by system of paid, private details, federal officials say,” New Orleans Metro
Crime and Courts News, March 19, 2011. www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2011/03/system_of_paid_private_details.html;
Richard Eskow, “Privatizing Liberty,” The Huffington Post, November 17, 2011. www.huffingtonpost.com/rjeskow/privatizing-liberty_b_1100606.html
54 Pam Martens, “Financial Giants Put New York City Cops on Their Payroll.” Counterpunch, October 2011.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/10/10/financial-giants-put-new-york-city-cops-on-their-payroll/
55 Pam Martens, “Financial Giants Put New York City Cops on Their Payroll.” Counterpunch, October 2011.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/10/10/financial-giants-put-new-york-city-cops-on-their-payroll/
56 Pete White, Business Improvement Districts: Protecting or Provoking (Los Angeles, CA: Los Angeles Community
Action Network & Los Angeles Coalition to End Hunger & Homelessness, 2000). http://www.cangress.org/archivedocuments/Bidsreport.pdf
57 Bureau of Justice Statistics, “Employment and Expenditure,” Accessed February, 2012.
http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/index.cfm?ty=tp&tid=5
58 For examples, see Due South: Looking to the South for Criminal Justice Innovations (Justice Policy Institute, May 2011)
www.justicepolicy.org/research/2472
59 Bureau of Justice Statistics, “Employment and Expenditure,” Accessed October, 2011.
http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/index.cfm?ty=tp&tid=5
60 Bureau of Justice Statistics, “Employment and Expenditure,” Accessed October, 2011.
http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/index.cfm?ty=tp&tid=5
61 Tracey Kyckelhahn, Justice Expenditure and Employment Extracts 2007, Table 1: Percent distribution of
expenditure for the justice system by type of government, fiscal year 2007 (Washington, D.C.: Bureau of Justice
Statistics, 2010) http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=2315
62 Sue Lindgren and Lea S. Gifford, Justice Expenditure and Employment Extracts 1993, Table 1 (Washington, D.C.:
Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1999) http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=1035
63 U.S. Department of Justice, Community Oriented Policing Services Office, About Community Oriented Policing
Services Office, www.cops.usdoj.gov/Default.asp?Item=35
64 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 (Public Law 103-322).
65 Koper et al., Putting 100,000 Officers on the Street: A Survey-Based Assessment of the Federal COPS Program
(Washington, D.C.: The Urban Institute, 2002) www.sas.upenn.edu/jerrylee/research/cops_levels.pdf
66 See David B. Muhlhausen and Erica Little, Federal Law Enforcement Grants and Crime Rates: No Connection Except for
Waste and Abuse (Washington, D.C.: The Heritage Foundation, 2007)
www.heritage.org/research/reports/2007/03/federal-law-enforcement-grants-and-crime-rates-no-connection-exceptfor-waste-and-abuse#_ftn30
48

For more information on COPS grants funding, please see Nathan James, "Community Oriented Policing Services
(COPS): Background, Legislation, and Funding," Congressional Research Service (2011).
www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL33308.pdf
68 Pam Martens, “Financial Giants Put New York City Cops on Their Payroll.” Counterpunch, October 2011.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/10/10/financial-giants-put-new-york-city-cops-on-their-payroll/
69 Alexia D. Cooper and Brian A. Reaves, Justice Assistance Grant Program (JAG) 2010 (Washington, D.C.: Bureau of
Justice Statistics, 2011) http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/jagp10.pdf
70 National Criminal Justice Association, Byrne JAG: Cornerstone for Justice (Washington, D.C.: NCJA, 2011)
www.ncja.org/NCJA/Navigation/PoliciesPractices/Byrne_JAG_Impact/Byrne_JAG_Report.aspx
71 Alexia D. Cooper and Brian A. Reaves, Justice Assistance Grant Program (JAG) 2010 (Washington, D.C.: Bureau of
Justice Statistics, 2011) http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/jagp10.pdf
72 Based on a 2010 survey of State Administering Agencies (SAAs) by the National Center for Justice Planning, a
project of the National Criminal Justice Association. National Criminal Justice Association, Byrne JAG: Cornerstone for
Justice (Washington, D.C.: NCJA, 2011)
www.ncja.org/NCJA/Navigation/PoliciesPractices/Byrne_JAG_Impact/Byrne_JAG_Report.aspx
73 National Criminal Justice Association, Byrne JAG: Cornerstone for Justice (Washington, D.C.: NCJA, 2011)
www.ncja.org/NCJA/Navigation/PoliciesPractices/Byrne_JAG_Impact/Byrne_JAG_Report.aspx
74 Information was gathered in a survey of State Administering Agencies (SAAs) by the National Center for Justice
Planning, a project of the National Criminal Justice Association. It includes information on regular FY2009 Byrne JAG
spending as well as ARRA money. National Criminal Justice Association, Byrne JAG Funding by Project Type
(Washington, D.C.: NJCA, 2010) www.ncja.org/CMDownload.aspx?ContentKey=177fafce-7bee-4618-92e23acd552a2e33&ContentItemKey=75c998ad-6f53-4889-b165-2658a1ada3ba
75 Nate Blakeslee, Tulia: Race, Cocaine, and Corruption in a Small Texas Town (PublicAffairs, 2006).
76 Community Oriented Policing Services, “Impact of the Economic Downturn on American Police Agencies,”
December 2, 2011. www.cops.usdoj.gov/Default.asp?Item=2602
77 See Employment, Wages and Public Safety Brief (Washington, D.C.: Justice Policy Institute, 2007)
www.justicepolicy.org/research/1956
78 Federal Bureau of Investigation, Crime in the United States, Table 1, www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-theu.s/2010/crime-in-the-u.s.-2010/tables/10tbl01.xls
79 Richard A. Oppel, Jr., “Steady Decline in Major Crime Baffles Experts,” The New York Times, May 23, 2011.
www.nytimes.com/2011/05/24/us/24crime.html
80 FBI Uniform Crime Reports, Crime in the United States. www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/ucr
81 Eisler, Peter and Kevin Johnson, “10 years and $10B later, COPS drawing scrutiny,” USA Today, April 11, 2005.
82 David B. Muhlhausen, Do Community Oriented Policing Services grants affect violent crime rates? (Washington, D.C.:
The Heritage Foundation, May 2011) www.heritage.org
83 FBI Uniform Crime Reports, Crime in the United States. www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/ucr
84 Office of Management and Budget, Program Assessment Rating Tool, "Community Oriented Policing Services," at
www.justice.gov/ag/annualreports/pr2006/P4/p14.pdf, and "Multipurpose Law Enforcement Grants," at
http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/omb/expectmore/summary/10003806.2005.html
85 David B. Muhlhausen, Do Community Oriented Policing Services grants affect violent crime rates? (Washington, D.C.:
The Heritage Foundation, May 2011) www.heritage.org
86 Office of Management and Budget, The Budget for Fiscal Year 2007, U.S. Department of Justice,
www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/fy07/pdf/budget/justice.pdf
87 United States Government Accountability Office, COPS Grants Were a Modest Contributor to Declines in Crime in the
1990s (Washington, D.C.: GAO, October 2005) www.gao.gov/highlights/d06104high.pdf
88 David B. Muhlhausen, Impact Evaluation of COPS Grants in Large Cities (Washington, D.C.: Heritage Foundation
Center for Data Analysis Report, May 2006) www.heritage.org/research/reports/2006/05/impact-evaluation-of-copsgrants-in-large-cities
89 Tracey Kyckelhahn, Justice Expenditure and Employment Extracts 2007, Table 8. Per capita justice expenditure (fiscal
year 2007) and full-time equivalent justice employment per 10,000 population (July 2007) of state and local
governments by activity and state 2007 (Washington, D.C.: Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2010)
http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=2315
67

Ari Burack, “SF drug arrests see steep plunge, while violent crime mostly steady,” San Francisco Examiner, October
30, 2011. www.sfexaminer.com/local/2011/10/sf-drug-arrests-see-steep-plunge-while-violent-crime-mostlysteady#ixzz1dFPMCCde
91 Jackee Coe, “Arizona police departments hiring officers,” The Arizona Republic, October 23, 2011.
www.azcentral.com/community/phoenix/articles/2011/10/23/20111023arizona-police-hiring-officers.html
92 Federal Bureau of Investigation, Crime in the United States, Table 5. www.fbi.gov/ucr/ucr.htm
93 FBI Uniform Crime Reports, Crime in the United States, Table 29
94 FBI Uniform Crime Reports, Crime in the United States, 2010 Table 29. http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-inthe-u.s/2010/crime-in-the-u.s.-2010/tables/10tbl29.xls
95 FBI Uniform Crime Reports, Crime in the United States, Table 29
96 H. Snyder and J. Mulako-Wangota, “Arrest Data Analysis Tool” (Washington, D.C.: Bureau of Justice Statistics,
October 31, 2011) www.bjs.gov
97 FBI Uniform Crime Reports, Crime in the United States, Table 29. www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/ucr
98 FBI Uniform Crime Reports, Crime in the United States, www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2010/crimein-the-u.s.-2010/persons-arrested
99 H. Snyder and J. Mulako-Wangota, “Arrest Data Analysis Tool” (Washington, D.C.: Bureau of Justice Statistics,
October 31, 2011) www.bjs.gov
100 FBI Uniform Crime Reports, Crime in the United States, www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2010/crimein-the-u.s.-2010/persons-arrested
101 Harry G. Levin and Deborah Peterson Small, Marijuana Arrest Crusade: Racial Bias and Police Policy in New York City
1997 – 2007 (New York: New York Civil Liberties Union, 2008)
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/nyregion/20080429_MARIJUANA.pdf
102 Harry G. Levine, Jon B. Gettman, and Loren Siegel, Targeting Blacks for Marijuana: Possession Arrests of African
Americans in California, 2004-08 (Los Angeles: Drug Policy Alliance, June 2010).
www.drugpolicy.org/docUploads/Targeting_Blacks_for_Marijuana_06_29_10.pdf
103 Mike Males, Misdemeanor marijuana arrests are skyrocketing and other California marijuana enforcement disparities (San
Francisco, CA: Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, 2011) http://cjcj.org/files/Misdemeanor_marijuana_arrests.pdf
104 Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Office of Applied Studies (2008). Results from the
2007 National Survey on Drug Use and Health: National Findings (NSDUH Series H-34, DHHS Publication No. SMA 084343). Rockville, MD.
105 Phillip Beatty, Amanda Petteruti and Jason Ziedenberg, The Vortex: The Concentrated Racial Impact of Drug
Imprisonment and the Characteristics of Punitive Counties (Washington, D.C.: Justice Policy Institute, 2007).
http://www.justicepolicy.org/images/upload/07-12_REP_Vortex_AC-DP.pdf
106 Other such offenses may include gambling and prostitution, for example. See William L. Selke and Harold E.
Pepinsky, “The Politics of Police Reporting in Indianapolis, 1948-1978,” Law and Human Behavior 6, nos. 3/4 (1982)
107 Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Results from the 2010 National
Survey on Drug Use and Health: Summary of National Findings (Rockville, MD: 2011).
www.samhsa.gov/data/NSDUH/2k10Results/Web/PDFW/2k10Results.pdf
108 Federal Bureau of Investigation, "2010 Uniform Crime Report, Estimated Number of Arrests, Table 29," accessed
November 2011. www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2010/crime-in-the-u.s.-2010/tables/10tbl29.xls
109 See Judith Greene and Patricia Allard, Numbers Game: The Vicious Cycle of Incarceration in Mississippi’s Criminal
Justice System (ACLU of Mississippi and Justice Strategies, 2011)
www.justicestrategies.org/publications/2011/numbers-game-vicious-cycle-incarceration-mississippis-criminal-justicesystem
110 For example, see T. Stelloh, “Detective is Found Guilty of Planting Drugs,” New York Times, November 1, 2011
www.nytimes.com/2011/11/02/nyregion/brooklyn-detective-convicted-of-planting-drugs-on-innocentpeople.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1320850862-yiEeOUOacNsYDXvLFQhP1Q
111 Harry levine
112 Rose, Dina R. and Todd R. Clear, “Incarceration, Social Capital, and Crime: Implications for Social Disorganization
Theory,” Criminology 36, no. 3 (1998).
90

Gabriel G. Cardenas, “An Assessment of the Multijurisdictional Drug Task Forces in Texas: A Case Study,” Texas
State University, February 1, 2002. http://ecommons.txstate.edu /cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1051&context=arp, p. 2223
114 Brad W. Smith, Kenneth J. Novak, and James Frank, “Multijurisdictional Drug Task Forces: An Analysis of
Impacts,” Journal of Criminal Justice 28, no. 6 (2000), p. 544
115 Brad W. Smith, Kenneth J. Novak, and James Frank, “Multijurisdictional Drug Task Forces: An Analysis of
Impacts,” Journal of Criminal Justice 28, no. 6 (2000), p. 544
116 Stanley Dunlap, “Drug Task Force Funds Probed,” The Jackson Sun, March 31, 2011.
www.jacksonsun.com/article/20110331/NEWS01/103310311/Drug-task-force-fundsprobed?odyssey=tab%7Cmostpopular%7Ctext%7CFRONTPAGE
117 Gabriel G. Cardenas, “An Assessment of the Multijurisdictional Drug Task Forces in Texas: A Case Study,” Texas
State University, February 1, 2002. http://ecommons.txstate.edu /cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1051&context=arp, p. 20
118 Gabriel G. Cardenas, “An Assessment of the Multijurisdictional Drug Task Forces in Texas: A Case Study,” Texas
State University, February 1, 2002. http://ecommons.txstate.edu /cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1051&context=arp, p. 20
119 Gabriel G. Cardenas, “An Assessment of the Multijurisdictional Drug Task Forces in Texas: A Case Study,” Texas
State University, February 1, 2002. http://ecommons.txstate.edu /cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1051&context=arp, p. 20
120 Gabriel G. Cardenas, “An Assessment of the Multijurisdictional Drug Task Forces in Texas: A Case Study,” Texas
State University, February 1, 2002. http://ecommons.txstate.edu /cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1051&context=arp, p. 20
121 Brad W. Smith, Kenneth J. Novak, and James Frank, “Multijurisdictional Drug Task Forces: An Analysis of
Impacts,” Journal of Criminal Justice 28, no. 6 (2000), p. 544
122 Anthony Papa, “Anti-Drug Task Force Funding Leads to Police Corruption and Destruction of Lives,” The
Huffington Post, April 29, 2008. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/anthony-papa/anti-drug-task-forcefund_b_99219.html
123 Rebecca Lueng, “Targeted in Tulia, Texas?” CBS News, February 11, 2009.
www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/09/26/60minutes/main575291.shtml
124 Adam Liptak, “$5 Million Settlement Ends Case of Tainted Texas Sting,” The New York Times, March 11, 2004.
www.nytimes.com/2004/03/11/us/5-million-settlement-ends-case-of-tainted-texas-sting.html?ref=tomcoleman
125 Cherie Ward, “Officers Conduct ‘Operation Heatstroke’, Netting 15 Felony Arrests,” The Mississippi Press, July 11,
2011. http://blog.gulflive.com/mississippi-press-news/2011/07/officers_conduct_heatstroke_de.html
126 Judith Greene and Patricia Allard, Numbers Game: The Vicious Cycle of Incarceration in Mississippi’s Criminal Justice
System (ACLU of Mississippi and Justice Strategies, 2011) pg. 48.
www.justicestrategies.org/publications/2011/numbers-game-vicious-cycle-incarceration-mississippis-criminal-justicesystem
127 Bureau of Justice Statistics, “Gang Units in Large Local Law Enforcement Agencies, 2007,” Figure 1: Number of
specialized gang units established per year in large law enforcement agencies that had 100 or more sworn officers,
1975-2007. http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/gulllea07.pdf.
128 U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, “OJJDP FY 2011 Comprehensive
Anti-Gang Strategies and Programs,” Amount and Length of Awards,
www.grants.gov/search/announce.do;jsessionid=Ts3jTMChGpb811hGn7QTHLcP1XgT2RHZ4vc3bG1RWthn6H6ky7c
c!301391617.
129 Federal Grants Wire, “Anti-Gang Initiative (16.744),” www.federalgrantswire.com/antigang-initiative.html.
130 Sam Stanton, “California budget cuts slash monitoring of gang parolees,” The Sacramento Bee June 23, 2011.
www.sacbee.com/2011/06/23/3721220/california-budget-cuts-slash-monitoring.html#storylink=misearch
131 Katz, Charles M. and Vincent J. Webb, “The creation of specialized police gang unit: A macro-level analysis of
contingency, social threat and resource dependency explanations,” Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies
& Management, 25, no. 3 (2002) 472-506.
132 Zatz, Marjorie, “Chicano youth gangs and crime: the creation of a moral panic,” Crime, Law and Social Change 11,
no. 2 (1987): 129-158.
133 Judith Greene and Kevin Pranis, Gang Wars: The Failure of Enforcement Tactics and the Need for Effective Public Safety
Strategies (Washington, DC: Justice Policy Institute, 2007).
www.justicepolicy.org/uploads/justicepolicy/documents/07-07_rep_gangwars_gc-ps-ac-jj.pdf
113

Katz, Charles M. and Vincent J. Webb, “The creation of specialized police gang unit: A macro-level analysis of
contingency, social threat and resource dependency explanations, “Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies
& Management, 25, no. 3 (2002) 472-506.
135 Judith Greene and Kevin Pranis, Gang Wars: The Failure of Enforcement Tactics and the Need for Effective Public Safety
Strategies (Washington, D.C.: Justice Policy Institute, 2007).
www.justicepolicy.org/uploads/justicepolicy/documents/07-07_rep_gangwars_gc-ps-ac-jj.pdf, p. 95
136 Bureau of Justice Statistics, Table 5: Law enforcement functions performed by gang units, by percentage of time
spent and average ranking, 2007.
137 History of S.W.A.T., “Official Website of the Los Angeles Police Department,” June 2011.
www.lapdonline.org/metropolitan_division/content_basic_view/849
138 Radley Balko, “The Deadliest Rhetoric,” Reason Foundation, April 2011. http://reason.com/archives/2011/02/17/thedeadliest-rhetoric
139 Peter B. Kraska and Victor E. Kappeler, Militarizing American Police: The Rise and Normalization of Paramilitary Units.
(Oakland, CA: Society for the Study of Social Problems), 1997., p. 1
140 U.S. Congress, Fiscal Year 1994 National Defense Authorization Act. www.nps.gov/legal/laws/104th/104-201.pdf,
p. 219; Radley Balko, Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in America, p. 27
141 Peter B. Kraska and Victor E. Kappeler, p. 2-3; National Institute of Justice, “Technology Transfer from Defense:
Concealed Weapon Detection,” National Institute of Justice Journal, no. 229(1995), p. 35
142 Radley Balko, “The Deadliest Rhetoric,” Reason Foundation, April 2011. http://reason.com/archives/2011/02/17/thedeadliest-rhetoric
143 Radley Balko, “No SWAT: the most important Supreme Court case you’ve never heard about,” Slate Magazine,
April 2006. www.slate.com/id/2139458/
144 See Debra A. Hoffmaster, et al. Police and Immigration: How Chiefs Are Leading their Communities through the
Challenges (Washington, D.C.: Police Executive Research Forum, 2010)
www.policeforum.org/library/immigration/PERFImmigrationReportMarch2011.pdf
145 See Debra A. Hoffmaster, et al. Police and Immigration: How Chiefs Are Leading their Communities through the
Challenges (Washington, D.C.: Police Executive Research Forum, 2010)
www.policeforum.org/library/immigration/PERFImmigrationReportMarch2011.pdf
146 Suzanne Gamboa,“ Arizona Deportation Stats: Thousands Deported Even Without New Law,” The Huffington Post,
July 28, 2010 www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/28/arizona-deportation-stats_n_661755.html
147 Clint Bolick, Mission Unaccomplished: The Misplaced Priorities of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office (Phoenix, Ariz:
Goldwater Institute Policy Report, 2008). www.azcentral.com/ic/pdf/1202mission.pdf
148 Nancy La Vigne et al. Evaluating the Use of Public Surveillance Cameras for Crime Control and Prevention (Washington
D.C.: Urban Institute, 2011). www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/412403-Evaluating-the-Use-of-Public-SurveillanceCameras-for-Crime-Control-and-Prevention.pdf
149 Nancy La Vigne et al. Evaluating the Use of Public Surveillance Cameras for Crime Control and Prevention (Washington
D.C.: Urban Institute, 2011). www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/412403-Evaluating-the-Use-of-Public-SurveillanceCameras-for-Crime-Control-and-Prevention.pdf
150 Nancy La Vigne et al. Evaluating the Use of Public Surveillance Cameras for Crime Control and Prevention (Washington
D.C.: Urban Institute, 2011). www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/412403-Evaluating-the-Use-of-Public-SurveillanceCameras-for-Crime-Control-and-Prevention.pdf
151 Nancy La Vigne et al. Evaluating the Use of Public Surveillance Cameras for Crime Control and Prevention (Washington
D.C.: Urban Institute, 2011). www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/412403-Evaluating-the-Use-of-Public-SurveillanceCameras-for-Crime-Control-and-Prevention.pdf
152 Peter Finn, “Domestic use of aerial drones by law enforcement likely to prompt privacy debate,” The Washington
Post, January 23, 2011. www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2011/01/22/AR2011012204111.html?hpid=topnews&sid=ST2011012204147
153 Peter Finn, “Domestic use of aerial drones by law enforcement likely to prompt privacy debate,” The Washington
Post, January 23, 2011. www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2011/01/22/AR2011012204111.html?hpid=topnews&sid=ST2011012204147
134

Peter Finn, “Domestic use of aerial drones by law enforcement likely to prompt privacy debate,” The Washington
Post, January 23, 2011. www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2011/01/22/AR2011012204111.html?hpid=topnews&sid=ST2011012204147
155 Larry Copeland, “Police turn to drones for domestic surveillance,” USA Today, Januray 14, 2011.
www.usatoday.com/tech/news/surveillance/2011-01-13-drones_N.htm.; Peter Finn, “Domestic use of aerial drones by
law enforcement likely to prompt privacy debate,” The Washington Post, January 23, 2011.
www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2011/01/22/AR2011012204111.html?hpid=topnews&sid=ST2011012204147
156 Stephen Nohlgren, “Lawyer takes red light cameras to court, again and again,” The Tampa Bay Times, May 22nd,
2011.
157 Larry Copeland, “Red-light traffic camera deals under scrutiny,” USAToday, Ocotber 27th, 2011.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2011-10-26/red-light-camera-deals/50943554/1
158 Editorial, “Toss Your Ticket,” The Washington Times, July 1st, 2009.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jul/01/toss-your-ticket/
159 Kevin Fagan, “Red-light cameras boost coffers, rile drivers,” San Fransisco Chronicle, February 5th, 2012.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/02/04/MNGJ1N2VRO.DTL&ao=all
160 Stephen Nohlgren, “Everything you need to know about Tampa Bay’s red-light cameras,” The Tampa Bay Times,
June 20th, 2011.
161 Amanda Carey, “New Mexico Town Residents May Lose Utilities for Unpaid Red Light Violations,” ABC News,
April 26th, 2010. http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2012/04/new-mexico-town-residents-may-lose-utilities-forunpaid-red-light-violations/
162 Justice Policy Institute, Pruning Prisons: How Cutting Corrections Can Save Money and Protect Public Safety
(Washington, D.C.: 2009).
www.justicepolicy.org/uploads/justicepolicy/documents/09_05_rep_pruningprisons_ac_ps.pdf
163 Bureau of Justice Statistics, “Correctional Populations,” Accessed February 2012.
http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/glance/tables/corr2tab.cfm
164 Incarceration rate calculated using: Bureau of Justice Statistics, “Correctional Populations,” Accessed February
2012. http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/glance/tables/corr2tab.cfm; U.S. Census Bureau, “Population Estimates,”
accessed February 2012. http://www.census.gov/popest/data/historical/1980s/index.html
165 Lauren E. Glaze, Correctional Populations in the United States, 2010 (Washington, D.C.: Bureau of Justice Statistics,
2011) http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/cpus10.pdf
166 Paige M. Harrison and Allen J. Beck, Prisoners in 2001 (Washington, D.C.: Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2002)
http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/p01.pdf
167 Heather C. West, William J. Sabol, and Sarah J. Greenman, Prisoners in 2009 (Washington, D.C.: Bureau of Justice
Statistics, 2010) http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/p09.pdf Table 10.
168 Heather C. West, William J. Sabol, and Sarah J. Greenman, Prisoners in 2009 (Washington, D.C.: Bureau of Justice
Statistics, 2010) http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/p09.pdf
169 Includes State, Federal and Local expenditures. Tracey Kyckelhahn, Justice Expenditure and Employment Extracts
2007, Table 1 (Washington, D.C.: Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2010)
170 Personal interview, Art Wallenstein, Director, Montgomery County, MD Department of Correction and
Rehabilitation, May 10, 2007., Personal interview, David Fathi, ACLU National Prison Project, April 13, 2007.
171 Freudenberg, Nicholas. 2001. Jails, prisons, and the health of urban populations: A review of the impact of the
correctional system on community health. Journal of Urban Health: Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine 78(2).
172 United States Marshals Service’s Prisoner Medical Care. 2004. Office of the Inspector General. Report. No. 04-14.
173 United States Marshals Service’s Prisoner Medical Care. 2004. Office of the Inspector General. Report. No. 04-14., Bellin
E.R., Fletcher D.D., and Safyer S.M. 1993. Association of tuberculosis infection with increased time in or admission to
the New York City jail system. Journal of the American Medical Association 269: 2228-2231.
174Hefler, Jan. 2007. Jail’s contagious dispute. Philadelphia Inquirer, November 23.
175 Rosado, Ed. 2002. Diverting the mentally ill from jail. National Association of Counties Legislative Department.
176 Criminal Justice/Mental Health Consensus Project. 2002. Executive summary. Washington, DC: Council of State
Governments. www.consensusproject.org.
154

Ditton, Paula M. 1999. Mental health and treatment of inmates and probationers. Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice
Statistics; Veysey, Bonita M., Henry J. Steadman, Joseph P. Morrissey, and Matthew Johnsen. 1997. In search of
missing linkages: Continuity of care in US jails. Behavioral Science Law 15; Drain, Jeffrey, and Phyllis Solomon. 1999.
Describing and evaluating jail diversion services for persons with serious mental illness. Psychiatric Services 50.
178 Mumola, Christopher J. 2005. Suicide and homicide in state prisons and local jails. Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice
Statistics. www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/shsplj.pdf .
179 Drain, Jeffrey, and Phyllis Solomon. 1999. Describing and evaluating jail diversion services for persons with
serious mental illness. Psychiatric Services 50.
180 Karberg, Jennifer C., and Doris J. James. 2005. Substance dependence, abuse and treatment of jail inmates, 2002.
Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice Statistics.
181 Grogger, Jeff. 1995. The effect of arrests on the employment and earnings of young men. Quarterly Journal of
Economics,110: 60.
182 Harlow, Caroline W. 2003. Education and correctional populations. Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice Statistics.,
Bushway, Shawn D. 1998. The impact of an arrest on the job stability of young white American men. Journal of
Research in Crime and Delinquency 35 (4):454-479; Western and Beckett, 1999.
183 Western, Bruce, and Katherine Beckett. 1999. How unregulated is the U.S. labor market?: The penal system as a
labor market institution. The American Journal of Sociology 104., Freudenberg, N., J. Daniels, M. Crum, T. Perkins, and
B. Richie. 2005. Coming home from jail: The social and health consequences of community reentry for women, male
adolescents, and their families and communities. American Journal of Public Health 95(10).
184 Simmons, Charlene Wear. 2000. Children of incarcerated parents. California Research Bureau.
www.library.ca.gov/crb/00/notes/v7n2.pdf.
185 Christoper J. Mumola, Incarcerated Parents and Their Children (Washington, D.C.: Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2000).
http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/iptc.pdf
186 Arditti, Joyce A., Jennifer Lambert-Shute, and Karen Joest. 2003. Saturday morning at the jail: Implications of
incarceration for families and children. Family Relations 52.
187 People surveyed included people who reported being homeless, living in emergency shelters, or people who
reported living in abandoned buildings or on the street. Center for Poverty Solutions. 2003. Barriers to stability:
Homelessness and incarceration’s revolving door in Baltimore City. Baltimore: Center for Poverty Solutions. www.soros.
org/initiatives/baltimore/articles_publications/publications/
barriersstability/barriers_to_stability.pdf.
188Pediatrics cite
189 Bureau of Justice Statistics, Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics, “Local Police
Departments, 1997,” “Local Police Departments, 2000,” “Local Police Departments, 2003,” and Local Police
Departments, 2007” http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/index.cfm?ty=tp&tid=71
190 Note: No specific funds were allocated to COPS In Schools or Secure Our Schools under the American Recovery
and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), however, some jurisdictions did use general COPS funds under ARRA to fund those
programs. Sources: Community Oriented Policing Services Press Releases, 2011 – 2000
www.cops.usdoj.gov/pdf/2010AwardLists/2010-COPS-Secure-Our-Schools-(SOS)-Awards.pdf,
www.cops.usdoj.gov/pdf/2009SOSGrantRecipients.pdf, www.cops.usdoj.gov/pdf/GrantAnnounce/SOSStateSummary.pdf, http://www.cops.usdoj.gov/pdf/GrantAnnounce/2007SOSGranteeList.pdf,
www.cops.usdoj.gov/default.asp?Item=1763, www.cops.usdoj.gov/default.asp?Item=1592,
www.cops.usdoj.gov/default.asp?Item=1062, www.cops.usdoj.gov/default.asp?Item=920,
www.cops.usdoj.gov/default.asp?Item=748, www.cops.usdoj.gov/default.asp?Item=564,
www.cops.usdoj.gov/default.asp?Item=524
191 Elora Mukherjee, Criminalizing the classroom: The over-policing of New York City schools. (New York: New York Civil
Liberties Union, 2007).
192 Judith A. Browne, Derailed: The Schoolhouse to Jailhouse Track (Washington, DC: Advancement Project, 2003).
www.advancementproject.org/sites/default/files/publications/Derailerepcor_0.pdf
193 Matthew T. Theriot, “School Resource Officers and the Criminalization of Student Behavior,” Journal of Criminal
Justice 37 (2009): 280-287.
177

Michael Krezmien, Peter Leone, Mark Zablocki, and Craig Wells, “Juvenile Court Referrals and the Public Schools:
Nature and Extent of the Practice in Five States,” Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice 26(2010). States include:
Hawai’i, Arizona, Missouri, South Carolina, and West Virginia
195 National Center for Education Statistics, “Indicators of School Crime and Safety, 2010,” Table 2.1: Number of
student-reported nonfatal crimes ages 12 – 18 and rate of crimes per 1,000 students, by location, type of crime, and
year: 1992-2008. http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/iscs10.pdf
196 Includes State, Federal and Local expenditures. Tracey Kyckelhahn, Justice Expenditure and Employment Extracts
2007 (Washington, D.C.: Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2010)
197 Bureau of Justice Statistics, “Correctional Populations,” Accessed February 2012.
http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/glance/tables/corr2tab.cfm
198 Phil Beatty, Amanda Petteruti, and Jason Ziedenberg, The Vortex: The Concentrated Racial Impact of Drug
Imprisonment and the Characteristics of Punitive Counties (Washington, D.C.: Justice Policy Institute, 2007)
199 See Maia Szalavitz, “Study: Whites More Likely to Abuse Drugs Than Blacks,” Time Healthland, November 7, 2011.
http://healthland.time.com/2011/11/07/study-whites-more-likely-to-abuse-drugs-than-blacks/#ixzz1dFTCCXbs
200 Christine Eith and Matthew R. Durose, Contacts Between police and the Public, 2008 (Washington, D.C.: Bureau of
Justice Statistics). http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/cpp08.pdf
201 ACLU, “ACLU Calls on Department of Justice to Explain Omissions in Report,” accessed March 2012.
www.aclu.org/racial-justice/department-justice-statistics-show-clear-pattern-racial-profiling
202 New York Civil Liberties Union, “Stop-and-Frisk Campaign: About the Issue,” accessed March 2012.
www.nyclu.org/issues/racial-justice/stop-and-frisk-practices.
203 New York Civil Liberties Union, “Stop and Frisk Factsheet,” accessed March 2012. www.nyclu.org/node/1598; U.S.
Census Bureau, “State and County Quick Facts – New York City,” accessed March 2012
http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/36/3651000.html.
204 New York Civil Liberties Union, “Stop and Frisk Factsheet,” accessed March 2012. www.nyclu.org/node/1598; U.S.
Census Bureau, “State and County Quick Facts – New York City,” accessed March 2012
http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/36/3651000.html.
205 Howard Snyder and Joseph Mulako-Wangota, Arrests in the United States, 1980-2009 (Bureau of Justice Statistics:
Washington, D.C., 2011).
206 Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Office of Applied Studies (2008). Results from the
2007 National Survey on Drug Use and Health: National Findings (NSDUH Series H-34, DHHS Publication No. SMA 084343). Rockville, MD.
207 Dunaway, R. Gregory, Terri L. Ernest, and Peter B. Wood. 2004 “Innovative Approaches to Drug Control: An
Evaluation of Mississippi’s Multi-Jurisdictional Drug Task Force Program.” In Policing and Program Evaluation, ed.
Kent Kerley. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
208 Judith Greene and Patricia Allard, Numbers Game: The Vicious Cycle of Incarceration in Mississippi’s Criminal Justice
System (ACLU of Mississippi and Justice Strategies, 2011) www.justicestrategies.org/publications/2011/numbersgame-vicious-cycle-incarceration-mississippis-criminal-justice-system
209 Mike Males, Misdemeanor marijuana arrests are skyrocketing and other California marijuana enforcement disparities (San
Francisco, CA: Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, 2011) http://cjcj.org/files/Misdemeanor_marijuana_arrests.pdf
210 Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, Marijuana Arrests and California’s Drug War: A Report to the California
Legislature, 2010 Update (San Francisco, CA: CJCJ, 2010).
www.cjcj.org/files/Marijuana_Arrests_and_Californias_Drug_War-2010_Update.pdf
211 Harry G. Levine and Deborah Peterson Small, Marijuana Arrest Crusade: Racial Bias and Police Policy in New York
City 1997-2006 (New York: NY: New York Civil Liberties Union, 2007). www.nyclu.org/files/MARIJUANA-ARRESTCRUSADE_Final.pdf
212 Katherine Beckett, Race and Drug Law Enforcement in Seattle (Seattle, WA: ACLU Drug Law Reform Project and The
Defender Association, 2008).
http://faculty.washington.edu/kbeckett/Race%20and%20Drug%20Law%20Enforcement%20in%20Seattle_2008.pdf
213 Steven Raphael and Melissa Sills, “Urban Crime, Race, and the Criminal Justice System in the United States,” in A
Companion to Urban Economics (Blackwell Publishing, 2006), 515-535.
194

New York State Division of Correctional Services, Operation IMPACT, Annual Report 2010 (Albany, NY: New York
State Division of Correctional Services, 2010).
http://criminaljustice.state.ny.us/crimnet/ojsa/impact/2010annualreport.pdf
215 New York State Division of Correctional Services, Operation IMPACT, Annual Report 2010 (Albany, NY: New York
State Division of Correctional Services, 2010).
http://criminaljustice.state.ny.us/crimnet/ojsa/impact/2010annualreport.pdf
216 Tracy Velázquez. Information from interviews with parole officers and people on parole and parole revocation
hearing testimony, 2008.
217 Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce, “History of Downtown Los Angeles’ ‘Skid Row’,” Accessed on
November 17, 2011. www.lachamber.com/clientuploads/LUCH_committee/102208_History_of_Skid_Row.pdf
218 Professor Gary Blasi. “Policing Our Way Out of Homelessness? The First Year of the Safer Cities Initiative on Skid
Row.” UCLA School of Law. September 24, 2007. p. 33. http://lacatholicworker.org/agitator/blasi_study.pdf
219 Sonya Geis. “L.A. Police Initiative Thins Out Skid Row.” Washington Post. March 15, 2007.
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/14/AR2007031402271.html
220 National Coalition for the Homeless and the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty. 2006. A dream
denied: The criminalization of homelessness in U.S. cities.
www.nationalhomeless.org/publications/crimreport/report.pdf
221 JPI Public Safety Briefs
222 Judith A. Greene, “Zero tolerance: A case study of police policies and practices in New York City,” Crime and
Delinquency 45, no. 2 (1999): 171-187; Michael Jacobson, Downsizing prisons: How to reduce crime and end mass
incarceration (New York: New York University Press, 2005)
223 Judith A. Greene, “Zero tolerance: A case study of police policies and practices in New York City,” Crime and
Delinquency 45, no. 2 (1999): 171-187; Michael Jacobson, Downsizing prisons: How to reduce crime and end mass
incarceration (New York: New York University Press, 2005)
224 Judith A. Greene, “Zero tolerance: A case study of police policies and practices in New York City,” Crime and
Delinquency 45, no. 2 (1999): 171-187; Michael Jacobson, Downsizing prisons: How to reduce crime and end mass
incarceration (New York: New York University Press, 2005)
225 The Eisenhower Foundation, Waverly: Home of Lady Street Koban An Analysis of Growth, Decline and Renewal
(Washington, D.C.: 2005). www.eisenhowerfoundation.org/docs/ladystreet.pdf
226 The Eisenhower Foundation, The Youth Safe Haven-Police Ministation Best Practice Model (Washington, D.C.: 2010).
www.eisenhowerfoundation.org/docs/Youth_Safe_Haven_Program_Guide.pdf
227 See Justice Policy Institute, Due South: Looking to the South for Criminal Justice Innovations (Washington, D.C.: Justice
Policy Institute, May 2011) www.justicepolicy.org/research/2472
228 Randy Dupont and Sam Cochran, “Police response to mental health emergencies–Barriers to change,” Journal of the
American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law 28, no. 3 (2000): 338–344; cited in Melissa Reuland, Matthew Schwarzfeld,
Laura Draper, Law Enforcement Responses to People with Mental Illness: A Guide to Research‐Informed Policy and Practice
(New York, New York: Council of State Governments Justice Center, 2009)
229 Henry Steadman, Martha Williams Deane, Randy Borum, Joseph Morrissey, “Comparing Outcomes of Major
Models of Police Responses to Mental Health Emergencies,” Psychiatric Services 51 (2000): 645‐649
230 Randy Dupont and Sam Cochran, “Police response to mental health emergencies–Barriers to change,” Journal of the
American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law 28, no. 3 (2000): 338–344; cited in Melissa Reuland, Matthew Schwarzfeld,
Laura Draper, Law Enforcement Responses to People with Mental Illness: A Guide to Research‐Informed Policy and Practice
(New York, New York: Council of State Governments Justice Center, 2009)
231 For more information on the LEAD Project, please contact The Defender Association at 206.447.3900 or
http://rdp.defender.org/projects
232 Sara Green, “Seattle program aims to break the habit of incarceration,” The Seattle Times, October 13, 2011.
233 LFA Group, Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion (LEAD) Program and Evaluation Plan Narrative, October, 2011.
234 Bureau of Justice Statistics, “Criminal Victimization in the United States, 2005 Statistical Tables,” (Washingtoin,
DC: Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2006). http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/cvus05.pdf and Federal Bureau of
Investigation, “Uniform Crime Reports, 2005” (Washington, DC: National Archive of Criminal Justice Data, 2011).
235 Creative Interventions, “Creative Interventions” December 1, 2011. www.creative-interventions.org/
214

Stop Violence Every Day, “Storytelling and Organization Project,” December 1, 2011.
www.stopviolenceeveryday.org/
237 See: Amanda Petteruti, Finding Direction: Expanding Criminal Justice Options by Considering Policies of Other Nations
(Washington, D.C.: Justice Policy Institute: 2011).
238 United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, “The Tenth United Nations Survey of Crime Trends and Operations of
Criminal Justice Systems (Tenth CTS, 2005-2006)” June 2010. www.unodc.org/unodc/en/data-and-analysis/TenthCTS-full.html.
239 United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, “The Tenth United Nations Survey,” 2010; Amanda Petteruti, Finding
Direction: Expanding Criminal Justice Options by Considering Policies of Other Nations (Washington, D.C.: Justice Policy
Institute: 2011); International Centre for Prison Studies, “World Prison Brief: Highest to Lowest Rates,” accessed
November 2011. ww.prisonstudies.org/info/worldbrief/wpb_stats.php?area=all&category=wb_poptotal
240 S. Harrendorf and others, International Statistics on Crime and Justice (Helsinki, Finland: United Nations, 2010).
www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/Crime-statistics/International_Statistics_on_Crime_and_Justice.pdf
241 Arthur A. Jones and Robin Wiseman, Community Policing in Europe: Structure and Best Practices-- Sweden, France,
Germany (Bulgaria: Open Society Institute, Bulgaria, 2006). www.lacp.org/Articles%20-%20Expert%20%20Our%20Opinion/060908-CommunityPolicingInEurope-AJ.htm
242 Rod Morgan, “England/Wales,” in Dūnkel and Wagg, Waiting for Trial, 198.
243 Kristina Wolff and Carrie Cokely, “’To Protect and Serve?’: An Exploration of Police Conduct in Relation to the
Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Community,” Sex Cult 11(2007):1-23.
244 National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs, Hate Violence against Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender People in
the United States, 2008 (New York, New York: 2009).
www.ncavp.org/common/document_files/Reports/2008%20HV%20Report%20smaller%20file.pdf
245 Washington D.C. Metropolitan Police Department, “Gay and Lesbian Liaison Unit” accessed November 2011.
www.gllu.org/
246 Anne Hull, “The Stewards of Gay Washington,” Washington Post March 28, 2005. www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/articles/A5489-2005Mar27.html
247 Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, “Gay and Lesbian Liaison Unit,” accessed November
2011. www.innovations.harvard.edu/awards.html?id=48931
248 Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, “Gay and Lesbian Liaison Unit,” accessed November
2011. www.innovations.harvard.edu/awards.html?id=48931
249 See Justice Policy Institute, Pruning Prisons and Costs of Confinement, www.justicepolicy.org
250 Justice Policy Institute, Substance Abuse Treatment and Public Safety (Washington, D.C.: 2007)
236

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Rethinking the Blues, along with the other work of the Justice Policy Institute, is made possible by the
generous support of the Open Society Foundations and the Public Welfare Foundation.
This report was written with significant contributions by Paul Ashton, Amanda Petteruti and Nastassia
Walsh.
The Justice Policy Institute (JPI) would like to express gratitude to Rachel Herzing, Judy Greene and
Jasmine Tyler for their guidance and expertise related to this report. JPI would like to acknowledge
Matthew Gifford for providing the cover art and Shauna Fecher and the Rainbow Response Coalition
for its photographic contribution.
JPI would also like to thank Andy Andrianantoandro, Trais Cooper, Joey Kavanagh, Ben LamanMaharg, Elisabeth Mulholland, Ndapewa Fenny Nakanyete, Andrew Price, Chris Scott, Austin Siegel,
Kelsey Sullivan, Shamari Sylvan and Karina Watts for their excellent work gathering data and research.
JPI staff includes Paul Ashton, Spike Bradford, Zerline Hughes, Melissa Neal, Kellie Shaw, Tracy
Velázquez and Keith Wallington.

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