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1. Interactive Visualizations for Crime Data Analysis by Mixed Reality

   Sharma, S; Dronavalli, S; Chellatore, M; Pesaladinne, R (June 2024, Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality. HCII 2024. Lecture Notes in Computer Science)

   Chen, JYC; Fragomeni, G eds (Ed.)

   Crime data visualization plays a key role in understanding and dealing with criminal activities. This paper focuses on the integration of mixed reality (MR) and crime data analysis. There are many barriers and challenges when developing MR three-dimensional (3D) environments for visualization and inspection. The main problem is the lack of commonly shared data structures and interfaces between them. The rise in crime rates over the past few years is a huge source of issue for police departments and law enforcement organizations. As the crime rates significantly changed throughout time, both upward and downward, these changes are then compared to external factors, such as population, unemployment, and poverty. There is a need for visualizing the multiple crime datasets in multiple states with external factors. This work proposes a novel interactive approach for loading crime datasets into the HoloLens 2 device and displaying them in a mixed-reality setting for data analysis. By allowing people to engage and analyze datasets in a 3D space, the suggested system seeks to close the gap between data analysis and machine learning. Users can import many datasets, such as spatial, category, and numerical data, into the HoloLens 2 device and interactively visualize crime data for different states simultaneously. The system offers user-friendly capabilities for interactive data visualization in mixed reality once the data has been imported. The dataset is manipulated and transformed by users, who can also rotate, scale, and position it in 3D. To depict various characteristics and dimensions of the data, the system also supports a variety of visual encoding techniques, such as color mapping, size scaling, and spatial layout with the use of the imported datasets and the HoloLens 2’s visualization capabilities, users can discover new insights and intricate linkages within the data. Natural movements and voice instructions allow users to engage with the visible data, enabling a hands-free and immersive data exploration experience. This paper also visualizes the crime data for four different cities: Chicago, Baltimore, Dallas, and Denton. Analyzing crime against factors such as population, employment, unemployment rate, and poverty rates provides information about the complex relationship between social factors and criminal behavior. The results and outcomes of this work will help the police department and law enforcement organizations better understand crime issues and supply insight into factors affecting crime that will help them deploy resources and help their decision-making process. 

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2. The Relationship Between Crime Rates and Socio-Economic Factors in Maryland

   Zenebe, Azene; Lakew, Nega; Obisesan, Ademola; Ponnala, Nitisha; Parker, Moriah (April 2025, National Association of Business, Economics and Technology)

   Sigmond, Norman C (Ed.)

   This study aims to find how crime rates in Maryland are connected to different socioeconomic elements. This study is focused on understanding how crime rates link up with factors like unemployment, household income levels, racial backgrounds, and the level of education people have. A quantitative analysis of state-level crime data from 2010 to 2020 was used; the study employs a comprehensive range of methods. Conducted a detailed picture through descriptive analysis, then reshaped data using log and square root transformations, and tested hypotheses with a t-test. The paper further examines the relationships between variables through a correlation matrix before applying ordinary least squares regression to predict outcomes. It has been discovered that areas facing more significant economic challenges seen through higher Unemployment rates and diminished earnings frequently show an uptick in crime. The examination highlights a strong link between unemployment and criminal behavior, especially in counties where families consistently earn less. Research highlights how vital education is by showing that when people achieve higher levels of education, they tend to commit fewer crimes. The study illuminates the intricate interplay between economic factors and criminal activities, offering invaluable insights for law enforcement agencies and policymakers. These insights can guide the development of effective strategies to combat crime; ultimately, the research deepens our understanding of how economic fluctuations significantly influence crime rates in Maryland. 

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3. Law Enforcement Privilege

   https://doi.org/10.36644/mlr.123.8.law  

   Wexler, Rebecca (January 2025, Michigan Law Review)

   You can’t question a secret you haven’t been told. The criminal legal system depends on fair and open proceedings to expose and regulate unlawful and unconstitutional police conduct through the courts. If police can use claims of secrecy to systematically thwart criminal defendants’ access to evidence, judicial review will fail. And yet that is exactly what is happening under a common-law doctrine called the “law enforcement privilege.” The privilege empowers police and prosecutors to rely on the results of secret investigative methods while withholding information from the defense about how those methods work. It risks perpetuating unconstitutional conduct, enabling wrongful convictions, and rendering Fourth Amendment, Sixth Amendment, Brady, and statutory discovery laws moot. At the same time, it has a non-frivolous policy rationale. If all police investigative methods were public information, then more people committing crimes could evade detection.How can a better balance be struck? This Article argues that current law enforcement privilege doctrine creates a dangerously boundless police secrecy power because of a subtle conceptual collapse: The policy rationale itself is mistakenly used as the test for assessing claims of privilege. The Article recommends that courts instead evaluate privilege claims by reference to the marginal risk of leaking posed by in-court disclosure. Specifically, judges should demand to know what conditions law enforcement previously imposed on access to the information. The answer to that question can be adjudicated publicly without jeopardizing a legitimate privilege claim and will help judges detect mistaken, exaggerated, pretextual, or fraudulent claims to the privilege. Further, even when law enforcement has taken care with the information, if a court-ordered protective order can match or exceed the safeguards that law enforcement itself previously maintained, then judges should default to ordering disclosure. The Article concludes by suggesting a theory of the role of confidentiality in privilege law. 

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4. Trojan Horse Technologies: Smuggling Criminal-Legal Logics into Healthcare Practice

   https://doi.org/10.1177/00031224231209445  

   Chiarello, Elizabeth (November 2023, American Sociological Review)

   In the throes of an intractable overdose crisis, U.S. pharmacists have begun to engage in an unexpected practice—policing patients. Contemporary sociological theory does not explain why. Theories of professions and frontline work suggest professions closely guard jurisdictions and make decisions based on the logics of their own fields. Theories of criminal-legal expansion show that non-enforcement fields have become reoriented around crime over the past several decades, but past work largely focuses on macro-level consequences. This article uses the case of pharmacists and opioids to develop a micro-level theory of professional field reorientation around crime, the Trojan Horse Framework. Drawing on 118 longitudinal and cross-sectional interviews with pharmacists in six states, I reveal how the use of prescription drug monitoring programs (PDMPs)—surveillance technology designed for law enforcement but implemented in healthcare—in conjunction with a set of field conditions motivates pharmacists to police patients. PDMPs serve as Trojan horse technologies as their use shifts pharmacists’ routines, relationships with other professionals, and constructions of their professional roles. As a result, pharmacists route patients out of the healthcare system and leave them vulnerable to the criminal-legal system. The article concludes with policy recommendations and a discussion of future applications of the Trojan Horse Framework. 

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5. Policing the California Outercity: Drivers of Police Spending in a Changing Metropolis

   https://doi.org/10.1093/socpro/spad050  

   Ross, Ángel Mendiola (October 2023, Social Problems)

   Abstract This paper explores the intersection of two major trends in the United States over the last forty years: a substantial investment in local law enforcement and the diversification of suburbia. While previous research on police spending has focused almost exclusively on large central cities, this study broadens this perspective to assess how these dynamics play out in outer-ring suburbs. I construct a unique panel dataset of over 200 California municipalities and find that the drivers of police spending vary across the metropolis in significant ways. Fixed-effects models that control for unobserved heterogeneity across place suggest that suburbs with growing shares of renters spend more on police. Elaborating on the concept of renter threat, I show how increases in renter households are associated with increases in police expenditures across a range of model specifications in suburbia. I point to suburban homeowner concerns about crime and property values as well as the history of racial exclusion in suburbia that is often couched in economic terms as potential explanations for these findings. Results point to the enduring role of police as a contemporary mechanism of both social control and inequality in California suburbs. 

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