By Don Stemen and David Olson January 2023 As jurisdictions throughout the U.S. consider reducing or eliminating the use of pretrial detention and cash bail, criminologists Don Stemen and David Olson of Loyola University Chicago examine whether crime has increased in places that have implemented bail reforms since 2017. In Is Bail Reform Causing an Increase in Crime?, the authors examine eleven jurisdictions that constrained or ended use of these long-established practices and found “no clear or obvious pattern” connecting bail reforms and violent crime. They conclude that “reducing pretrial detention and eliminating money considerations from decisions about detention have had minimal negative effects on public safety” and that, considering the harmful effects of pretrial detention on defendants, bail reforms might, in fact, “improve the well-being of communities most impacted by crime.”
By Dursun Peksen November 2022 In International Sanctions against Violent Actors, Dursun Peksen, Professor of Political Science at the University of Memphis, examines the extent to which international sanctions affect political violence committed by state and nonstate actors in sanctioned countries. In this research synthesis, he observes that sanctions are effective only about 30 percent of the time and are likely to create incentives for targeted governments to employ repressive means against their citizenry and rival groups. Sanctions are most likely to succeed when focused on the military capability of one or more parties to a civil war, Peksen concludes. Paired with other forms of intervention, sanctions can amplify the pressure on targeted actors and contribute to peace and stability.
By Greg Berman March 2022 HFG’s ‘At the Crossroads’ series concludes with the publication of “Behind the Rise in Gun Violence in New York and Other American Cities,” a compilation of the twelve interviews conducted by Harry Frank Guggenheim Distinguished Fellow of Practice Greg Berman with an essay illuminating common themes and practical approaches to ending such violence.
By Edward Maguire and Megan Oakley January 2020 Police responses to recent street protest events in Ferguson, Charlottesville, and Hong Kong are merely the best known examples of incidents in which police respond to peaceful gatherings as if they were riots or fail to prevent a violent development at a stage where it could have been avoided. Policing Protests–Lessons from the Occupy Movement, Ferguson & Beyond: A Guide for Police is a clear and authoritative summary of research on policing practices that either facilitate peaceful protests and other public order events or violate basic rights, engender resentment and in some cases injury among peaceful protesters, and often result in lawsuits costing cities substantial settlements. Written by respected policing scholars Edward Maguire and Megan Oakley, it has been distributed to nearly 1,000 police agencies in the U.S. and abroad. HFG is pleased to make it available for download.
By Manuel Eisner and Amy Nivette April 2020 The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic has taken a terrible toll in lives, illness, and economic devastation. There is another domain in which this disease is having diverse effects—violence—which makes it of special interest to The Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, which is dedicated to the production of knowledge in the service of reducing violence. The implications of the pandemic for current and future violence trends are the topic of Violence and the Pandemic: Urgent Questions for Research by Manuel Eisner (University of Cambridge and University of Zurich) and Amy Nivette (Utrecht University). Their thoughtful consideration of the mechanisms that drive spikes in some forms of violence and drops in others suggests timely and compelling opportunities for crucial social-science research that can complement the urgent efforts in the biomedical community to reduce the damage this disease is inflicting on our global community.
