At a time where cutbacks on spending are a huge focal point across all government levels, the prison system, and effectively combating crime, has been intensely focused upon. With the United States having the highest rate of incarceration of any country in the world, the significance of this focus is understandable. Its prison system is much larger compared to that of other nations, and therefore is a high priority for the United States. As stated in The Economist, “No other rich country is nearly as punitive as the Land of the Free.” With such high costs associated with the prison system, understanding the most effective ways to operate the facilities and programs is necessary. When looking at the impact of the system on reducing crime, there are various programs that have different effects on crime reduction. Analyzing what has the most potential for reducing crime while taking costs into account is useful for the government in an attempt to most effectively utilize resources and the allotted budget.

Of the plethora of social problems with which government has had to contend in recent history, few have generated more controversy than the non-therapeutic use of drugs. Many of those which are currently in common use did not exist fifty years ago; but the most dramatic growth in non-therapeutic use has been experienced with a drug that man has known for centuries: marijuana.1 Known generically as Cannabis sativa, internationally as Indian hemp, popularly as marijuana, and in American slang as "pot" or "grass," the drug was introduced to the United States as an intoxicant by itinerate Mexican farm workers in the early decades of this century. The acknowledged use of marijuana in the ghettos and communities of ethnic minorities for several decades stimulated no public outcry with the exception of the sensational press campaigns which led to the passage of the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937.

The current study uses a combination of quantitative and spatial analysis to examine the impact of affordable housing administered by the Texas Department of Housing Affairs on the neighborhood crime rate, in Dallas, Texas. Pre and post construction period analysis, for duration of five years from 2000 to 2004 provided an in-depth view on the direct impact of affordable housing at the neighborhood level. The crime rates were measured alongside with the sociodemographic characteristics of the area to see any association between the two. The findings suggest that the affordable housing were mostly located in areas with higher concentration of minority population and low median household income. The results of this study showed negligible increase in crime rates but a through analysis could provide an in-depth analysis of the issue. / text

Crime and weather are common topics of conversation, but rarely simultaneously. Criminological research has investigated the two and found that there is a connection. However, this nature of the association varies depending on geography and type of crime. The current study used official crime records and public weather data to investigate the relationship between weather, in the form of temperature and precipitation, and daily crime rates of seven crime types in Malmö, Sweden from 2010 to 2015. Negative binomial regression analyses were run and controlled for a range of temporal and seasonally recurring variables to find the unique contribution of weather. The results showed that rates of assault, bicycle theft, street robbery, and vandalism increased with increasing temperature, and that rates of assault, bicycle theft and arson decreased with the presence of precipitation. Implications for theory are that environmental factors should not be overlooked in explanations of criminal behavior. As for policy implications, the results can aid crime prevention agencies in understanding how crime patterns fluctuate which in turn informs their decision-making relating to prioritization of distribution of resources.

This paper is written in a collaboration with the Swedish Police in Landskrona.Based on their request to know more about the decreasing crime rates inLandskrona the purpose of the study is to highlight and create knowledge aboutpossible explanations for these changes. The study consists of semi-structuredinterviews with different stakeholders from the Police, Municipality and theCounty Administrative Board. These individuals’ perceptions are used in order todiscover what is happening in Landskrona. During the examined ten-year period ithas been possible to distinguish a downward trend in terms of reported crimes inLandskrona. The result shows several possible explanations to this trend but, themost consistent findings are; effective collaboration mainly between the Policeand the municipality, various investments toward youths both social andeducational and huge investments in urban development. These investments areused as possible explanations for the changes in reported crime in Landskrona andperceived to play a pivotal role when it comes to understand the decreasing crimerates.

This paper investigates the impact of the 2008's financial crisis on local crime rates in Sweden. I deploy a difference-in-differences approach that contrasts the changes in reported crimes between municipalities that are more or less crisis-exposed. The results show no significant effect on any crime category nor the aggregate crime rate. However, there are indications of more densely populated municipalities experiencing an increase in crimes with underlying financial incentives, although not robust. The results are similar when the effect of the Great Recession is compared to the major financial crisis that hit Sweden in the early 90s, suggesting that economic crises do not cause any reactions in crimes. One explanation could be the increase in social grants recipients and the participation in labour market programmes. Both of which cushions the fall in income and reduces criminal motivation. The results appear robust for a variety of alternative severity measures. Potential spillovers between adjacent municipalities do not seem to be a threat as the results are similar for county-level regressions. Overall, the findings in this paper point towards the number of reported crimes being unaffected by the crisis exposure measured as the employment change and change in retail sales.

While community-oriented policing was touted as a new paradigm in American policing, little data reflects its success in reducing crime and/or increasing crime clearance rates. Researchers have failed to definitively describe community policing as a successful style of policing, leaving much more research to be done on its effectiveness as a crime reduction method. Using Trojanowicz's seminal conceptualization of community-oriented policing as the foundation, the purpose of this correlational study was to determine whether there are statistically significant associations between community-oriented policing, crime rates, and crime clearance rates for the 9 municipalities of Carteret County, North Carolina. Data for community-oriented policing methods were collected from the police agencies via personal contact with an agency representative, while data for violent crime, property crime, violent crime clearance rates, and property crime clearance rates were obtained from the State Bureau of Investigation and the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Uniform Crime Report. The results of Spearman's rho and a chi-square test for independence indicated that there was a statistically significant relationship between community-oriented policing and the violent crime rate (p = .03), the violent crime clearance rate (p = .03) and the property crime clearance rate (p = .009). This study may enhance positive social change for police agencies in North Carolina by providing specific recommendations to better implement successful community policing strategies in their communities.

Hosting 22 percent of the world’s prison population, the United States is the number one country in the world regarding incarceration rates where 1 in 109 adults are locked up behinds bars and about two-thirds of offenders will recidivate within three years of their release (Durose, Coope, & Snyder, 2014; Kaeble, Glaze, Tsoutis, & Minton, 2016; U.S. Census Bureau, 2015; Walmsley, 2013). Sweden has one of the lowest recidivism and incarceration rates in the world where only 29 percent reoffend and 1 in 2,278 of their total population is behind bars (Kriminalvården, 2017; The World Bank, 2016). The purpose of this study is to understand the underlying reasons to these differences by comparing the U.S. and Swedish criminal justice systems and to find possible solutions of improvement to diminish the incarceration, recidivism, and crime rates in the U.S. Specifically, the policing, court, and correctional systems will be further compared.

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