The J. Edgar Hoover FBI Building is seen on Jan. 28, 2019, in Washington, D.C. (Mark Wilson/Getty Images).

Violent crime and property crime in the United States dropped in 2023, continuing a downward trend following higher rates of crime during the pandemic, according to the FBI’s latest national crime report.

Murders and intentional manslaughter, known as non-negligent manslaughter, fell by 11.6% from 2022. Property crime dropped by 2.4%.

Overall, FBI data shows that violent crime fell by 3%.

Violent crime has become a major issue in the 2024 presidential race, with former President Donald Trump claiming that crime has been “through the roof” under the Biden administration.

On the campaign trail, Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, has cited findings from a different source — the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics’ National Crime Victimization Survey — to argue that crime is out of control.

While the FBI’s data reflects only crimes reported to the police, the victimization survey is based on interviews conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau and includes both reported and unreported crimes. Interviewees are asked whether they reported the crime to the police. But the survey does not include murder data and only tracks crimes against individuals aged 12 and older.

The victimization survey, released in mid-September, shows that the violent crime victimization rate rose from 16.4 per 1,000 people in 2020 to 22.5 per 1,000 in 2023. The report also notes that the 2023 rate is statistically similar to the rate in 2019, when Trump was in office.

Many crime data experts consider both sources trustworthy. But the agencies track different trends, measure crimes differently and collect data over varying time frames. Unlike the victimization survey, the FBI’s data is largely based on calls for service or police reports. Still, most crimes go unreported, which means the FBI’s data is neither entirely accurate nor complete.

The victimization surveys released throughout the peak years of the pandemic were particularly difficult to conduct, which is a key reason why, according to some experts, the FBI and the survey may show different trends.

As a result, these differences, which are often unknown or misunderstood, make it easier for anyone — including politicians — to manipulate findings to support their agendas.

Political candidates at the national, state and local levels on both sides of the aisle have used crime statistics in their campaigns this year, with some taking credit for promising trends and others using different numbers to flog their opponents. But it’s difficult to draw definitive conclusions about crime trends or attribute them to specific policies.

“There’s never any single reason why crime trends move one way or another,” said Ames Grawert, a crime data expert and senior counsel for the Brennan Center for Justice’s justice program. The Brennan Center is a left-leaning law and policy group.

“When an answer is presented that maybe makes intuitive sense or a certain political persuasion, it’s all too natural to jump to that answer. The problem is that that is just not how crime works,” Grawert told Stateline.

At an August rally in Philadelphia, the Democratic vice presidential candidate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, said: “Violent crime was up under Donald Trump. That’s not even counting the crimes he committed.”

During Trump’s first three years in office, the violent crime rate per 100,000 people actually decreased each year, according to the FBI, from 376.5 in 2017, to 370.8 in 2018, to 364.4 in 2019.

It wasn’t until 2020 that the rate surged to 386.3, the highest under Trump, which is when the country experienced the largest one-year increase in murders.

Walz’s comments overlook the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the social upheaval following George Floyd’s murder by a Minneapolis police officer in 2020. And despite the increase that year, the violent crime rate in Trump’s final year remained slightly lower than in the last year of President Barack Obama’s administration. In 2016, the rate was 386.8 per 100,000 people.

Following the release of the FBI’s annual crime report last month, U.S. Rep. Dan Bishop, a Republican running for attorney general in North Carolina, shared and later deleted a retweet on X that falsely claimed the FBI’s data showed zero homicides in Los Angeles and New Orleans last year. In fact, FBI data showed that the Los Angeles Police Department reported 325 homicides, while New Orleans police reported 198 in 2023.

Voters worry

Crime has emerged as a top issue on voters’ minds.

A Gallup poll conducted in March found that nearly 80% of Americans worry about crime and violence “a great deal” or “a fair amount,” ranking it above concerns such as the economy and illegal immigration. In another Gallup poll conducted late last year, 63% of respondents described crime in the U.S. as either extremely or very serious — the highest percentage since Gallup began asking the question in 2000.

Crime data usually lags by at least a year, depending on the agency or organization gathering and analyzing the statistics. But the lack of accurate, real-time crime data from official sources, such as federal or state agencies, may leave some voters vulnerable to political manipulation, according to some crime and voter behavior experts.

There are at least three trackers collecting and analyzing national and local crime data that aim to close the gap in real-time reporting. Developed by the Council on Criminal Justice, data consulting firm AH Datalytics and NORC at the University of Chicago, these trackers all show a similar trend of declining crime rates.

“We live in a world of sound bites, and people aren’t taking the time to digest information and fact check,” Alex Piquero, a criminology professor at the University of Miami and former director of the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics, said in an interview with Stateline. “The onus is on the voter.”

Crime trends and limitations

In 2020, when shutdowns in the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic kept people at home, homicides surged by nearly 30% — the largest single-year increase since the FBI began tracking crime.

In 2022, violent crime had fallen back to near pre-pandemic levels, and the FBI data showed a continued decline last year. The rate of violent crime dropped from about 377 incidents per 100,000 people in 2022, to around 364 per 100,000 in 2023, slightly below the 2019 rate.

The largest cities, those with populations of at least 1 million, saw the biggest drop in violent crime — nearly 7% — while cities with populations between 250,000 and 500,000 saw a slight 0.3% increase.

Rape incidents decreased by more than 9% and aggravated assault by nearly 3%. Burglary and larceny-theft decreased by 8% and 4%, respectively.

Motor vehicle theft, however, rose by 12% in 2023 compared with 2022, the highest rate of car theft since 2007, with 319 thefts per 100,000 people.

Although national data suggests an overall major decrease in crime across the country, some crime-data experts caution that that isn’t necessarily the case in individual cities and neighborhoods.

“It can be sort of simplistic to look at national trends. You have to allow the space for nuance and context about what’s happening at the local level too,” said Grawert, of the Brennan Center.

Some crime experts and politicians have criticized the FBI’s latest report, pointing out that not all law enforcement agencies have submitted their crime statistics.

The FBI is transitioning participating agencies to a new reporting system called the National Incident-Based Reporting System or NIBRS. The FBI mandated that the transition, which began in the late 1980s, be completed by 2021. This requirement resulted in a significant drop in agency participation for that year’s report because some law enforcement agencies couldn’t meet the deadline.

In 2022, the FBI relaxed the requirement, allowing agencies to use both the new and older reporting systems. Since the 2021 mandate, more law enforcement agencies have transitioned to the new reporting system.

Reporting crime data to the FBI is voluntary, and some departments may submit only a few months’ worth of data.

Although the FBI’s latest report covers 94% of the U.S. population, only 73% of all law enforcement agencies participated, using either reporting system, according to Stateline’s analysis of the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting program participation data. This means that 5,926 agencies, or 27%, did not report any data to the FBI.

The majority of the missing agencies are likely smaller rural departments that don’t participate due to limited resources and staff, according to some crime data experts.

But participation in the FBI’s crime reporting program has steadily increased over time, particularly after the drop in 2021. Many of the law enforcement agencies in the country’s largest cities submitted data for 2023, and every city agency serving a population of 1 million or more provided a full year of data, according to the FBI’s report.

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on Facebook and X.

(Aristide Economopoulos for New Jersey Monitor).

The deadliest school shooting in Georgia history occurred earlier this month when a 14-year-old gunman, armed with a military-style rifle, killed two students and two teachers and injured nine others at Apalachee High School in Winder, a city about an hour northeast of Atlanta.

And on Sunday, former President Donald Trump was the target of what the FBI described as an apparent assassination attempt at his golf club in West Palm Beach, Florida — just nine weeks after surviving another attempt on his life.

Gun policy has been a topic of debate in America for decades, and its prominence has increased as gun-related deaths and mass shootings have risen nearly every year since 2014, according to the Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit that tracks gun violence in the United States.

Many Americans despair of ever taming the epidemic, but a new report says certain laws can make a difference.

The report, published in July by Rand, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization, found that minimum age requirements for purchasing firearms appear to reduce suicides among young people. Additionally, it indicated that laws aimed at reducing children’s access to stored guns may also lower rates of firearm suicides, unintentional shootings and firearm homicides among youth.

This is the fourth time that Rand has released the report, “The Science of Gun Policy,” since 2018. Earlier editions examined the effectiveness of other gun regulations, such as background checks and concealed carry laws, and their impact on outcomes such as crime and suicide.

The “Science of Gun Policy” report examines laws individually. But a separate Rand study published in July, this one in the peer-reviewed journal JAMA Network Open, explores the combined effects of multiple state-level gun laws, including background checks, minimum age requirements, waiting periods, child access restrictions, concealed carry and stand your ground laws.

“We should try to be looking at policies jointly, because individually, each one may have a small effect, but if you start layering these restrictions on each other, they may start to really make a difference,” Terry Schell, the study’s lead author and a senior behavioral scientist at Rand, told Stateline. “That is worth thinking about.”

The study found that states with the most restrictive gun policies had a 20% lower firearm mortality rate compared with states with the most permissive laws, suggesting that comprehensive policy approaches may be more effective than individual policies in curbing gun violence.

“There should be some hope that there is a policy combination that could drive the firearm death rate down,” Schell said.

A deadly year so far

The Georgia school shooting marked the 30th mass killing in the United States this year, defined as an attack in which four or more people, excluding the perpetrator, are killed, according to a database maintained by The Associated Press, USA Today and Northeastern University. At least 131 people have died in these killings so far.

Mass shootings that occur close to election seasons often have a significant impact on the public’s perception of guns, according to gun policy experts. But much of the discussion and debate surrounding firearms has been clouded by partisan rhetoric and money, said Warren Eller, an associate professor of public management at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

“[Gun policy is] going to play a larger role, at least in the dialogue around it –– whether or not it’s meaningful dialogue, I think, is something very different,” Eller said in a phone interview with Stateline.

This year, more than a dozen states enacted a variety of new gun laws, including measures related to storage requirements, gun-free zones, bans on firearm purchase tracking and permitless carry.

Following the deadly shooting at Apalachee High School, both Republican and Democratic Georgia state lawmakers have proposed various measures to curb gun violence.

Georgia’s House speaker, Republican Rep. Jon Burns, wrote in a letter to the House Republican Caucus that lawmakers will consider new policies during the 2025 legislative session to promote student mental health, evaluate technologies to detect guns and encourage safe gun storage.

“While House Republicans have already made significant investments to strengthen security in our schools, increase access to mental healthcare, and keep our students safe, I am committed to not only continuing this work but pursuing additional policies to help ensure a tragedy like this never happens in our state again,” Burns wrote in the letter.

Burns’ proposals, however, fall short of Democratic demands for measures such as universal background checks and a red flag law, which would allow police or loved ones to petition a court to prevent an at-risk individual from purchasing or possessing a firearm.

In February, the Georgia House approved a bill to create a state income tax credit of up to $300 for purchasing gun safes, trigger locks, other security devices or instructional courses on safe firearm handling. This bill did not advance past the Senate, but a similar Senate bill that exempts gun safes and other safety devices from state sales tax went into effect in July.

Two other gun-related bills also took effect in July. The first law bans firearm purchase tracking, while the second law established a tax holiday for guns and related items.

A special panel of Georgia state senators also convened several times this year to explore potential laws aimed at safely locking up firearms and keeping them out of the hands of children.

Pushback against gun measures

The National Shooting Sports Foundation, which represents much of the national firearm industry, argues that universal background checks are ineffective and that they don’t keep firearms from reaching criminals. The foundation also contends that universal background checks would require a national registry of gun owners, which they fear could lead to confiscation.

Many of the existing red flag laws, the group argues, lack sufficient due process protections. The group encourages safe firearm storage but opposes laws mandating specific storage requirements, citing a U.S. Supreme Court decision in which the justices ruled that trigger locks, which render firearms nonfunctional, violate the Second Amendment.

Above all, the group advocates for stricter enforcement of existing laws and emphasizes that mental health should be a primary focus in addressing gun violence.

“We can’t have no-bail policies. We can’t have ‘defund the police.’ … We need to hold people accountable for their criminal actions,” Lawrence Keane, the organization’s senior vice president and general counsel, said in an interview with Stateline. “We believe that a lot of these high-profile, tragic incidents are at bottom about mental health.”

Mental health is often cited as a major factor contributing to gun violence. Although it may play a significant role, aligning specific mental health diagnoses with policy solutions is difficult, according to Eller, of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

Much of the gun violence in the United States stems from economic crime, Eller said in the interview, but many policy discussions focus narrowly on school shootings and assault weapons. Those issues should be addressed, he said, but they represent a small percentage of gun violence in this country.

Since 1982, there have been at least 24 mass shootings in U.S. schools, defined as incidents in which four or more people are killed, according to a database maintained by Mother Jones, a nonprofit news magazine. These school shootings account for about 16% of the 151 mass shootings that have occurred in the U.S. during this period.

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on Facebook and X.

(Scott Olson/Getty Images).

Violent crime in the United States dropped significantly in the first quarter of 2024 compared with the same period last year, according to the FBI’s Quarterly Uniform Crime Report released earlier this month.

The FBI’s data, collected from nearly 12,000 law enforcement agencies representing about 77% of the country’s population, suggests violent crime dropped by 15% compared with the first quarter of 2023.

The data, which covers reported crimes from January to March, shows a 26.4% decrease in murders, a 25.7% decrease in rapes, a 17.8% decrease in robberies, and a 12.5% decrease in aggravated assaults. Reported property crime also fell by 15.1%.

Nevertheless, the widespread public perception that crime is rising — a perception reinforced by presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and many other GOP candidates — could figure prominently in November’s election. And state legislative and gubernatorial candidates from both parties likely also will cite crime statistics on the stump.

In a Gallup poll conducted late last year, 63% of respondents described the crime problem in the U.S. as either extremely or very serious. This is the highest percentage since Gallup began asking the question in 2000.

In May, Trump wrongly called FBI data showing a decline in crime “fake numbers.” This month, he erroneously claimed that the FBI’s crime statistics exclude 30% of cities, including the “biggest and most violent.”

He could have been referring to the fact some departments couldn’t report data in 2021 because the FBI switched data reporting systems, but experts say the overall numbers remain valid.

President Joe Biden has also used crime statistics for political gain. In a May campaign email, Biden said that Trump “oversaw the largest increase in murder in U.S. history.” While this is not entirely inaccurate — the country did see the largest one-year increase in murders in 2020 — it omits context regarding the COVID-19 pandemic and the social upheaval following George Floyd’s murder by a Minneapolis police officer.

The latest FBI crime statistics align with other early data from 2024. In May, the Major Cities Chiefs Association released first-quarter data from a survey of 68 major metropolitan police departments showing a 17% drop in murders compared with the same period last year.

The FBI’s latest data is preliminary and unaudited, which means it will change as more law enforcement agencies refine their numbers throughout the year. National crime data is incomplete, as it only includes crimes reported to police, and not every law enforcement agency participates in the FBI’s crime reporting program.

Despite the data’s limitations, some criminologists and crime data experts say the data is reliable. Some say the FBI’s data likely overstates the decreases, suggesting the drop in violent crime is likely less dramatic but still trending downward.

“There’s a lot of uncertainty as to the accuracy of the data, so it matches but probably overstates what the trends are,” Jeff Asher, co-founder of AH Datalytics, a data consulting firm that specializes in crime data, told Stateline in an interview. “In theory, everything will get more accurate as the year goes on.”

Although national data suggests an overall major decrease in crime across the country, some criminologists caution that that isn’t necessarily the case in individual cities and neighborhoods.

“It looks good for the nation as a whole, but even with these great reductions, there are cities in the United States that have likely experienced increases that bucked the trend,” Charis Kubrin, a criminology, law and society professor at the University of California, Irvine, told Stateline.

The average American’s understanding of crime and crime statistics is heavily skewed by media coverage that focuses largely on when crimes are committed and by misleading political rhetoric, according to criminologists and crime data experts.

Instead of relying on statistics, which can feel impersonal, people tend to cling to anecdotes that resonate more emotionally. Politicians take advantage of this, Dan Gardner, author of the book “Risk: The Science and Politics of Fear,” told Stateline.

“If you are a political operative, capitalizing on fear of crime is incredibly easy to do,” Gardner said.

Telling a tragic story and framing it in a way so that voters feel they or their families could become victims of similar crimes unless they vote for a specific politician is a common, highly effective tactic, he added.

This use of fear as a motivator can drive people to the polls, Gardner said, but it also distorts public perception of crime.

“It’s a lousy way to understand the reality of personal safety and society, but it’s a very compelling form of marketing,” Gardner said.

The Council on Criminal Justice, a nonpartisan think tank, released a report this month urging police and the federal government to provide more timely crime data. The report emphasizes that crime data, especially national data, often lags up to a year, which hampers public understanding of crime trends and limits officials’ ability to make informed policy decisions to proactively address public safety issues.

“We need to accelerate improvements in our [crime] data,” John Roman, a senior fellow and the director of the Center on Public Safety and Justice at NORC at the University of Chicago, told Stateline. Roman also is the chair of the Council on Criminal Justice’s Crime Trends Working Group. “The democratization of this data is really critical to more effective policy and programming.”

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on Facebook and X.

An attendee looks at a series of banners for the National Crime Victims’ Rights Week Candlelight Vigil on the National Mall on April 24, 2024, in Washington, D.C. The Justice Department’s Office for Victims of Crime held the event to pay tribute to victims and survivors of crime and individuals who provide service and support (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images).

Groups that assist crime victims across the United States are bracing for significant financial pain after the amount available from a major federal victim services fund plunged $700 million this year.

Congress recently lowered spending to $1.2 billion from the fund, which provides grants to nonprofit and local programs across the country.

This latest round of cuts has sparked widespread concern among district attorney’s offices, rape crisis centers, domestic violence shelters, child advocacy centers and law enforcement agencies that offer victim support services. Many of these organizations and agencies now expect to have to close locations, lay off staff and cut back on services.

Meanwhile, the drop in dollars has many experts and advocates rethinking the current, uncertain system of helping crime victims. How much federal money is available every year is determined by a complex three-year average of court fees, fines and penalties that have accumulated — a number that has plummeted by billions during the past six years. The fund does not receive any taxpayer dollars.

Karrie Delaney, director of federal affairs for the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, said the slowdown of court cases during the COVID-19 pandemic and the last administration not prosecuting as many corporate cases has affected the fund more than usual.

RAINN is the country’s largest anti-sexual-violence organization. It operates the National Sexual Assault Hotline (800-656-HOPE) alongside local organizations and runs the U.S. Defense Department’s Safe Helpline. It “also carries out programs to prevent sexual violence, help survivors, and ensure that perpetrators are brought to justice,” according to its website.

“I think what’s important from RAINN’s perspective is the actual impact that those fluctuations have on the survivors that we support and organizations and service providers across the country,” Delaney said.

When the federal cap decreases, she said, organizations that support crime victims often turn to state and local governments to make up the gap. And a lot of the times there isn’t enough money to do that.

Victim services providers say that smaller groups or branches, particularly those in rural towns or counties, are at an especially high risk of closing because of the expected cutbacks. Many rely solely on federal dollars.

Shakyra Diaz, the chief of federal advocacy with the Alliance for Safety and Justice, which advocates for crime victims, said many groups are “seriously in a situation where they may have to close their doors, they may have to cut services, they may have to cut staff, they may have to tell crime victims, ‘I cannot help you right now. You have to wait six months.’”

In at least three states — California, Colorado and Maine — state legislators have proposed bills that would create new avenues for state-based funding for victim services. A couple of bills would inject general state dollars into victim services to offset the federal cuts, while one would create a new tax on firearms and ammunition, and yet another would increase criminal penalties on corporations. The money collected from taxes or fines would then go toward supporting victim services.

The federal crime victims fund gets its money from fines, forfeited bonds and financial penalties in certain federal cases.

The year-by-year uncertainty around how much money will come from federal crime cases, which directly affects how much will be available to states to distribute to victim services providers, makes it challenging for groups to budget over the long term.

“Services for victims and resources for victim services are already so tight. And so when you’re talking about taking a pot of money that’s already stretched at its best and making it smaller — it’s frankly terrifying,” said Renée Williams, the executive director of the National Center for Victims of Crime.

The federal fund was established in 1984 under the Victims of Crime Act, known as VOCA. Congress tried to stabilize the fund in 2000 by setting an annual cap on withdrawals. The cap remained below $1 billion a year until 2015, but Congress raised it to $2.3 billion that year, and in 2018 it peaked at $4.4 billion.

But in fiscal year 2023, Congress lowered it to $1.9 billion, according to data from the U.S. Department of Justice.

Then, the cap plummeted, and by fiscal year 2023, Congress had set it at $1.9 billion, according to data from the U.S. Department of Justice.

This past March, Congress again lowered the cap, to $1.2 billion, a drop of more than 35%. The cuts will not take effect until October of this year, when the federal government’s next fiscal year begins.

Victim services groups say that the demand for help has continued to surge. Some anticipate the grant process to become even more competitive.

They’re asking state lawmakers for help.

State legislation

For Stand Up Placer, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault and human trafficking in Placer County, California, the anticipated federal cuts are expected to slash about $700,000, or 22%, of the group’s budget, according to Cheryl Marcell, the organization’s CEO.

Some of the group’s services, such as legal counseling, are likely to be scaled back. Instead of serving the current caseload of 500, the group may only be able to accommodate 200 clients, Marcell said.

In California, local district attorney’s offices are grappling with how to address this funding shortfall, according to Jonathan Raven, assistant CEO of the California District Attorneys Association and former Yolo County chief deputy district attorney.

Offices are considering options such as laying off staff, requesting local funding or scaling back services altogether, Raven told Stateline.

“The people that are victimized that are the most vulnerable are no longer going to get the services that they should expect and they do deserve,” Raven said. “It’s really going to be a significant impact across California and across the country.”

State legislators in California have proposed two bills aimed at mitigating the federal cuts.

One of the bills would require state supplemental funding whenever the federal VOCA award is reduced more than 10% than the amount awarded the prior year. The bill is in committee.

The other bill, which is still under consideration in the Assembly, would increase fines levied on corporations convicted of misdemeanor and felony offenses. These fines would be used to fund a new California Crime Victims Fund.

In Colorado, the legislature passed a bill proposing a more permanent state funding source for victim services through a 9% gun and ammunition excise tax. The tax revenue would be spent on crime victim support services, mental health services, school safety and gun violence prevention.

The bill is now headed to Democratic Gov. Jared Polis, who has until June 7 to sign or veto it, according to his press secretary. If he signs it, the measure will go before voters on the November ballot.

Meanwhile, in Maine, Democratic Gov. Janet Mills signed a budget bill in April that includes a one-time allotment of $6 million for victim services.

Effects on services for victims

There are about 12,200 victim services providers in the United States, with nearly a quarter of them located in the country’s most populous states — California, Florida, Texas and New York, according to the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics’ 2017 census.

Ohio has more than 400 victim services providers, many of which receive funding from the federal crime victims fund. Last year, the state received $46.6 million.

But for fiscal year 2024, Ohio has been awarded just $26.7 million, a 42.8% decrease from 2023 and a 77% decrease from 2018.

With such a steep cut, some victim services providers in Ohio fear they will no longer be able to serve rural communities, particularly those in the Appalachian region. For the Ohio Alliance to End Sexual Violence, a statewide coalition that supports rape crisis centers, losing funding could reduce its support to the 12 counties that do not have local rape crisis centers or programs.

“It’s the places that already don’t have great access to services and that have never had access to services [that] will be the ones to have whatever access they have further reduced,” said Emily Gemar, the group’s director of public policy.

Court-appointed special advocate programs in Appalachian counties also are expected to bear the brunt of the funding cuts, according to Doug Stephens, the executive director of Ohio CASA, which oversees 47 local programs covering 60 counties that support children navigating the court system. Stephens anticipates as many as 10 local programs shutting down.

“They are working very hard to provide the same services as the big cities,” he said in an interview. “The only way they can stay open is with VOCA funding.”

In South Carolina, victim services providers and Republican Attorney General Alan Wilson are urging the state legislature to offset the looming federal cuts. Wilson has requested $15 million, which is just enough money to keep existing services.

The state Senate has proposed a $5 million allotment, while the House has put forward a $3 million proposal. Under either plan, current projects could face cuts ranging from about 15% to 30%, according to the attorney general’s office.

Richland County, South Carolina, Sheriff Leon Lott, whose department receives VOCA funding and employs victim advocates who help people go through the criminal legal system, said the state should offer more support.

“When things like this happen, people just think about dollars. What we see is the real people, we see the feelings, we see the pain and emotions they’re going through,” said Lott, a Democrat. “This loss of funding, I’m afraid, will have a negative impact on the things that we try to do with victims and may end up victimizing them even more.

“If the feds are not going to provide the money, then the state needs to do it.”

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on Facebook and Twitter.

(Darrin Klimek/Getty Images).

When the U.S. Department of Education announced last summer that federal Pell Grants would become available to incarcerated college students, lawmakers and state corrections agencies scrambled to adjust statutes and step up potential partnerships with universities.

But nearly a year later, colleges and agencies are recognizing the steep administrative challenge to winning approval from the U.S. Department of Education. So far, just one new program eligible for the federal financial aid grant — in California — has gotten off the ground.

“We’re going to see an impact — it’s coming. It’s been a bit slow to arrive because of this quality focus within the regulations,” said Ruth Delaney, who leads a program at the Vera Institute of Justice to help scale up college programs in correctional institutions. “What’s great is that there’s a lot of energy in colleges and corrections to start new prison education programs.”

Pell Grants were officially restored for incarcerated students in July 2023, following a nearly 30-year federal ban that prohibited most incarcerated students from receiving the aid. The ban was one of the provisions in the sweeping 1994 federal crime bill signed by President Bill Clinton.

More than 750,000 incarcerated students could potentially become eligible for Pell Grants. But to qualify, they must be below the family income limits and be at a prison that offers a college program approved by the federal Department of Education.

To date, only one program has been fully approved, at Pelican Bay State Prison in northern California. Students there will be eligible to receive Pell Grants starting next fall to study for a degree in communications from California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt.

Still, officials from state corrections agencies in Maryland, Michigan and Wisconsin told Stateline that since Pell dollars became available, more colleges and universities have become interested in establishing prison education programs. Since last summer, 44 state corrections agencies and the federal Bureau of Prisons have developed applications or other systems to approve prison education programs, according to the Vera Institute of Justice.

“There are people in prison who have been waiting 30 years for this opportunity to come back, and they are just so eager to enroll,” Delaney said in an interview. “Anything we can do to move quickly to get high-quality programs in place — that’s what we’d like to see.”

State action

The Pell Grant, awarded by the U.S. Department of Education, is provided to low-income students across the country to help cover college expenses. Most students apply online using the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA. Incarcerated students are usually required to submit paper applications because internet access is restricted. The current maximum grant is $7,395 for a full academic year.

While states pay to house incarcerated people in their prison systems, many don’t pay for higher education; prison college programs often rely on alternative funding, such as donations and state grants. Some are a part of a federal pilot program called the Second Chance Pell Experimental Sites Initiative, which has included about 40,000 incarcerated learners. Otherwise, students have to pay out of their own pockets or use scholarships and donations from nonprofits and colleges.

No matter how it’s paid for, the goal of providing college-level instruction in prisons is to make it easier for incarcerated people to reenter society once they are released and to connect them to meaningful, good-paying jobs.

“College saved my life. It was a place where I could be free. I could read, I could learn, and I could grow. It was very transformative for me, and I realized that my life wasn’t over,” said Alexa Garza, who obtained two associate degrees and a bachelor’s degree while incarcerated in Texas. Garza now works as a Texas policy analyst and higher education justice initiatives analyst for The Education Trust, an education access advocacy group.

Prison education advocates say it’s important for schools to expand the college experience in prison beyond just offering classes. That means fostering meaningful relationships between professors and students.

“I didn’t have family in the courtroom. I had professors in the courtroom,” said William Freeman, who served time in Maryland and now leads the Justice Policy Fellowship at The Education Trust. “Now, I’m a first-gen everything — college graduate, homeowner. I don’t think my parents ever made the kind of money I’m making now.”

Many state lawmakers have worked, with varying outcomes, to boost prison college programs in anticipation that Pell Grants could help more incarcerated students earn degrees.

In Washington state, for example, a law set to take effect in June will allow more incarcerated learners to seek both federal and state financial aid grants to cover the costs of postsecondary education programs.

Maryland’s legislature has sent Democratic Gov. Wes Moore a bill that would require that the state corrections department help incarcerated students in accessing Pell Grants and set goals for participation. Moore’s office said the legislation is under consideration.

A Florida bill that would have allowed students to be eligible for in-state tuition even if they had been incarcerated in the state in the past year made it out of House and Senate committees but was tabled before the legislature adjourned.

And in Montana, lawmakers grilled state corrections officials after a legislative audit found that prison education and workforce programs are limited, featuring long waitlists and inequitable access between private and public facilities.

New programs and partnerships

Corrections agencies and colleges in several states have recently announced new partnerships, with some soon to become Pell-eligible.

Maryland’s corrections department recently announced a memorandum of understanding with the University System of Maryland to provide incarcerated students with the opportunity to obtain bachelor’s degrees or credit-based certificates from any of the 12 system universities. The university system will also be able to accept Pell Grants.

Danielle Cox, the state corrections department’s education director, said she aims to have a college or university program at every state facility by 2027.

In Utah, female incarcerated students at the Utah State Correctional Facility can apply to a new bachelor’s program at the University of Utah through the school’s Prison Education Project. At least 11 of 15 prospective students already have received their admissions decisions, according to Erin Castro, an associate professor of higher education at the University of Utah and co-founder of the Prison Education Project.

“This is the first time that the flagship public institution is admitting a currently incarcerated cohort,” Castro said.

The Nebraska Department of Correctional Services and Southeast Community College are expanding their partnership to offer more higher education opportunities to students in five state facilities. The college enrolled 229 students this spring semester, and also is working on gaining the federal approval to offer Pell Grants as an official prison education program.

The college now offers an associate of arts degree in academic transfer, and in the fall will offer an associate of applied science in business and more career and technical education programs.

Bureaucratic barriers

But navigating the new application process from the U.S. Department of Education has required significantly more administrative labor, some advocates say.

At least one university so far has decided to pull the plug on its prison education program. Georgia State University cited the feds’ new rules for Pell Grants and a $24 million budget cut as reasons to close its program this summer, according to Open Campus, a nonprofit news outlet that reports on higher ed. The program has been in operation since 2016.

“The shape and tenor of this new system is causing significant damage to the framework of college-in-prison,” Jessica Neptune, the director of national engagement for the Bard Prison Initiative at Bard College in New York, wrote in an email to Stateline.

“Much of the recent policy work related to Pell, especially, is moving in a direction that makes it harder and harder for colleges to just be colleges and not criminal justice interventions,” she said.

The Department of Education did not directly respond to advocates’ concerns about the new application requirements, but said it held a “negotiated rulemaking process that enlisted significant stakeholder input to put forward the best regulations possible.”

Some prison education advocates also argue that the new bureaucratic process isolates the mission of educating incarcerated students from that of other students and encourages the “othering” of current or formerly incarcerated individuals.

“Whenever we are creating separate systems for individuals — particularly when they’re incarcerated — that reinforce processes, isolation and marginalization, it is not going to go well,” said Dyjuan Tatro, a senior government affairs officer with the Bard Prison Initiative and a Bard College alum.

“Incarcerated students should have the same access to Pell Grants, full stop, as any other students in this country,” Tatro said.

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on Facebook and Twitter.

(Douglas Sacha/Getty Images).

Fueled by public outrage over the 2020 murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer and other high-profile incidents of police violence, a seismic shift swept across the United States shortly afterward, with a wave of initiatives aimed at reining in police powers and reimagining criminal-legal systems.

Yet less than half a decade later, political leaders from coast to coast are embracing a return to “tough-on-crime” policies, often undoing the changes of recent years.

This resurgence is most palpable in the nation’s major urban centers, traditionally bastions of progressive politics. San Francisco voters earlier this month approved ballot initiatives that would require drug screenings for welfare recipients and would loosen restrictions on police operations. The District of Columbia, too, has pivoted toward a harder stance on crime, with its mayor signing into law a sweeping package that toughens penalties for gun crimes, establishes drug-free zones and allows police to collect DNA from suspects before a conviction.

Local and state leaders in blue and red states — including California, Georgia, Louisiana, Oregon, Tennessee and Vermont — also have looked to toughen their approaches to crime and public safety in a variety of ways. Lawmakers have proposed bills that would stiffen retail theft charges, re-criminalize certain hard street drugs, keep more suspects in jail in lieu of bail and expand police powers.

Many are passing with bipartisan support.

“The issue for most people isn’t whether something is up or down by 10%. It’s that they are seeing randomness and brazenness, and getting a sense of lawlessness,” said Adam Gelb, the president and CEO of the Council on Criminal Justice, a nonpartisan think tank. “Some of what we’re seeing is more like … shaving off the edges of some of the policies that felt too lenient.”

The percentage of Americans who think the United States is “not tough enough” on crime grew for the first time in 30 years, according to a Gallup poll released in November. Fifty-eight percent of respondents said they believe the criminal-legal system is too soft, up from 41% in 2020.

While national crime data is notoriously difficult to track and understand, violent crime across the United States decreased in 2022 — dropping to about the same level as before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the FBI’s annual crime report. Property crimes rose during the same period. Crime data compiled by the Council on Criminal Justice also suggests that most types of crime are reverting toward pre-pandemic levels.

Georgia’s legislature earlier this year passed a bill that would add 30 additional felony and misdemeanor crimes to the state’s list of bail-restricted offenses, meaning that people accused of those crimes would be required to post cash bail. Republican Gov. Brian Kemp hasn’t said whether he will sign the bill.

Last week, the Tennessee Senate passed a bill that would prohibit local governments from altering police traffic stop policies. If signed into law, it would overturn a Memphis city ordinance that bans pretextual traffic stops, which is when police use minor traffic infractions such as broken taillights as grounds to investigate motorists for more serious crimes.

Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek, a Democrat who leads the first state to decriminalize drugs, announced in early March she plans to sign legislation that would redefine the possession of small amounts of hard drugs, such as fentanyl or methamphetamine, as a misdemeanor punishable by a maximum of six months in jail.

The bill also would allow law enforcement to take action to prevent the distribution and use of controlled substances in public areas, such as parks or sidewalks.

“What we did is we tried to make sure that we could blend together our public safety in a behavioral health approach when folks are caught with drugs,” said Oregon state Rep. Jason Kropf, a Democrat and one of the bill’s lead authors.

Still, critics of the new legislation argue that re-criminalizing drug use would disproportionately affect Black, Latino and Indigenous communities, and further burden Oregon’s already overwhelmed criminal justice system. There are more than 2,800 people in the state currently unrepresented in court and about half are facing misdemeanor charges, according to the Oregon Judicial Department’s dashboard.

Some of these concerns are why Oregon state Sen. Floyd Prozanski, a Democrat, voted against the new legislation.

“I do believe that this [bill] will in fact reinstitute the war on drugs,” Prozanski said in an interview. “We’re just gonna compound the problem to what’s happened in the current caseload without attorneys — cases being dismissed, cases being delayed. And that doesn’t help anyone in the system, including victims of crime.”

Why some lawmakers are reworking policies

Some criminal justice advocates and experts perceive the recent trend of states dialing back reforms as impulsive reactions to what might be a temporary, pandemic-related spike in certain crimes. They argue that these measures are more about sending a political message than finding solutions.

“Some of the knee-jerk reactions aren’t even responsive to the actual problem at hand,” said David Muhammad, the executive director of the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform, an advocacy and research group.

Others, though, say recent votes are a “rejection of pro-criminal policies” that prioritized the rights of offenders over the needs of crime victims.

“This is a return to normalcy — to common sense. The fact is that their ideas failed. They were bad,” said Charles Stimson, a senior legal fellow and deputy director of the Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.

“This isn’t a Democrat or Republican thing or a blue or red state thing. This is a law and order versus chaos thing. Period.”

In Vermont, Republican Gov. Phil Scott urged lawmakers this year to revisit criminal justice reform legislation passed a few years ago, bills that he signed into law. Among them is the state’s “Raise the Age” law, which reclassified 18-year-old adults as juveniles within the criminal justice system. He has urged lawmakers to postpone the plan to do the same for 19-year-old adults. Scott said the state isn’t ready to house those suspects as juveniles.

“I wish I had better anticipated the challenge,” he said in his State of the State address earlier this year.

Last week, the Vermont House approved a bill that would stiffen repeat retail theft violations, allowing aggregation of stolen goods’ value to shift charges from misdemeanors to felonies. The bill will now go to the Senate for consideration.

Meanwhile, in California, a bipartisan effort is underway to amend Proposition 47, which was passed by voters in 2014. It raised the threshold to $950 of stolen goods for shoplifting to be considered a felony and reclassified some drug charges from felonies to misdemeanors. The proposition was widely supported as a way to reduce prison overcrowding. Now, a new bill would, as in Vermont, allow prosecutors to charge repeat retail theft offenders on a cumulative basis for goods stolen.

“Shoplifting, smash-and-grab thefts, and other acts of retail theft trends are causing retailers to close their businesses and endangering customers and employees,” Democratic Assemblymember James Ramos, the bill’s lead author, said in a news release. “Since the pandemic, these crimes have increased. That is not the direction California needs to go.”

Rollbacks in Louisiana

Louisiana earned national attention in 2017 when then-Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, signed a legislative package intended to reduce the state prison population and bolster alternatives to incarceration. Louisiana saved nearly $153 million, and the number of people held in state custody decreased by 1,627 people, or 11%, from 2016 to 2023, according to state records.

The state again earned national attention this winter after lawmakers met for a special session on public safety and considered a slew of bills. These included allowing 17-year-olds to be charged as adults, unsealing some juvenile criminal records, limiting post-conviction appeals and expanding the state’s methods of performing executions to include nitrogen gas and electrocution.

A proposal to move Louisiana’s public defender system under the governor’s direct control was also discussed. The bill raised concerns among attorneys, public defenders and retired judges, according to the Louisiana Illuminator.

“I definitely believe there’s a fear now that public defense will be affected by politics,” said Alaina Bloodworth, who is from Louisiana and is the executive director of the Black Public Defender Association, in an interview.

To date, Republican Gov. Jeff Landry has signed 19 bills into law, encompassing measures such as allowing concealed carry of a gun without a permit, imposing harsher penalties for carjackings and treating all 17-year-olds charged with crimes, including misdemeanors, as adults.

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on Facebook and Twitter.

(Getty Images).

Crime is shaping up as a potent election issue, and one of the key points of debate is over bail: Which suspects should be jailed before trial, and which ones should be released on bond — and for how much money?

Some conservatives argue that lenient bail policies put suspects who are likely to commit crimes before their upcoming court hearings, or who might skip bail altogether, back on the street. But some progressives say research does not support that contention. They argue that detaining defendants because they can’t afford financial bonds is unfair, and note that such defendants are disproportionately Black, Latino and low income.

Illinois, New Jersey and New Mexico have moved away from the use of money bonds. But other states, such as Georgia and New York, are moving in the opposite direction, implementing stricter rules. Tennessee is considering a constitutional amendment that would give judges more discretion to deny bail amid concerns about rising crime rates.

Politicians on both sides of the debate often connect bail policy to crime rates. But experts say doing so is problematic, because so much of the crime data that states and cities use is unreliable.

The reality, experts say, is that most crime data is too unreliable to pinpoint specific policies as the sole cause of increasing or decreasing crime rates. The bail system also is oftentimes misunderstood as a form of punishment rather than the process for releasing individuals before trial under certain conditions.

“There’s nothing out there that shows a correlation or a connection of any sort between increasing the rates of pretrial release and the rates of crime,” said Spurgeon Kennedy, vice president of the Crime and Justice Institute, a nonprofit criminal justice research organization. Kennedy previously served as president of the National Association of Pretrial Services Agencies.

These misconceptions about crime can leave voters vulnerable to misinformation ahead of local and national elections.

“If you ask the typical person on the streets, ‘Do you think crime is up or down over the last year,’ they will tell you, ‘Oh, it’s up. It’s way up.’ But we’ve seen reductions in crime overall and also in violent crime,” Kennedy said. “So the facts don’t follow the argument, and that’s unfortunate because that makes it much more easier to keep this out as a political football.”

Both chambers of Georgia’s legislature passed a bill this month that would add 30 additional felony and misdemeanor crimes to the state’s list of bail-restricted offenses, which means that people accused of those crimes would be required to post cash bail. They include charges of unlawful assembly, racketeering, domestic terrorism and possession of marijuana.

The bill also would prevent any individuals or organizations from posting cash bail more than three times per year unless they establish themselves as bail bonding companies, severely limiting charitable bail funds. The bill is now headed to Republican Gov. Brian Kemp’s desk.

Some criminal justice advocates say the bill, if enacted, would clash with changes made by a 2018 law to the state’s legal system for people accused of misdemeanors. That law, which was championed by former Republican Gov. Nathan Deal, mandates that judges take into account the financial circumstances of the accused when setting bail.

Proponents of the new bill, which was first introduced last year, argue that the measure is necessary to deter crime, support victims of crimes and hold repeat offenders accountable. State Sen. Randy Robertson, who sponsored the bill, said it focuses on people accused of violent crimes.

“What we’re focusing on is trying to get the nonviolent individuals back out into the workforce and back to their families,” Robertson said in an interview. Robertson, a Republican, argued that the bill would also lead to a “dramatic decrease” in the state’s jail population because it offers a pathway for organizations, such as churches and nonprofits, to set themselves up as bail bonding companies.

Those organizations would have to meet the same legal requirements as bond companies, including undergoing background checks, paying fees, and having an application approved by a local sheriff’s department.

Some opponents, though, argue that it would lead to overcrowding of jails and disproportionately harm low-income and Black and Hispanic communities. The ACLU of Georgia has threatened to sue the state if the bill is signed into law, arguing that it’s unconstitutional.

Robertson said that some of the criticisms raised are “rehash complaints” he has heard for the past 25 or 30 years.

“There has been no evidence, independent research that shows placing low bails, allowing judges to set bails at whatever they choose to, keeps a disproportionate amount of individuals held in our jails,” Robertson said. “I don’t think that [this bill] touches the third rail of constitutionality at all.”

Pretrial data and research

Several research studies, though, suggest that setting money bail isn’t effective in ensuring court appearances or improving public safety.

Pretrial policy experts say that being in jail for even a few days or weeks can cost people their homes or jobs or damage their personal relationships, said Matt Alsdorf, an associate director with the Center for Effective Public Policy and the co-director of the group’s Advancing Pretrial Policy and Research project.

“The use of unnecessary detention has negative impacts, even if you’re just looking at it through a public safety or crime prevention lens,” he said.

Pretrial recidivism has long been studied by criminal justice experts: A 2013 study of more than 150,000 people who were jailed in Kentucky found that longer detention periods increased the likelihood that people would be rearrested both during the pretrial period and within the first two years following the closure of their case. The study also found that people who were held for two or three days had a 9% greater likelihood of failing to appear in court than people who were held for one day.

Furthermore, a study published in the Criminology & Public Policy journal last year found that Black defendants were 34% more likely than white defendants to be recommended to be held behind bars until their cases were resolved.

“The money bond system is a very regressive system that effectively ends up acting as a means of incarcerating populations that are typically already disadvantaged,” Alsdorf said.

In places that have relaxed their bail practices, audits show that pretrial jail populations usually drop following the changes. In some jurisdictions, there also are fewer arrests for certain types of offenses.

In Houston, a lawsuit claiming misdemeanor bail practices in Harris County were unconstitutional led to a settlement and consent decree in 2019. The county is required to release most people charged with misdemeanors on a personal bond, meaning defendants simply promise to attend their next court date.

In the latest independent monitoring report on the system, from 2023, observers wrote that the changes “have saved Harris County and residents many millions of dollars, improved the lives of tens of thousands of persons,” and resulted in “no increase in new offenses by persons arrested for misdemeanors.”

Brandon Garrett, the lead monitor and a Duke University School of Law professor, said in an interview that racial disparities “vanished overnight” after bail practices were relaxed. The monitors have also found an overall decline of about 8% in misdemeanor arrests between 2019 and 2022.

“There were real concerns about the racial disparities of the old cash bail system, and it was pretty remarkable just how quickly those disparities — in terms of who ended up in jail and who didn’t — vanished,” Garrett said.

‘Intentional and deliberate’

In 2017, New Jersey moved away from the use of cash bail in favor of the Public Safety Assessment, an algorithm tool that uses nine factors from an individual’s criminal history to predict their likelihood of returning to court for future hearings and remaining crime-free while on pretrial release.

The changes encouraged more “intentional and deliberate” detention hearings, recalled now-retired trial court Judge Martin Cronin, who sat on the committee that unanimously recommended the switch to a more risk-based bail system.

Cronin, now a consultant with Pretrial Justice Solutions, LLC, said the state’s new system offers more accountability and transparency.

“You’re focused on what are the permissible reasons for detention and how does the record tie into that, individualized to that defendant who’s in front of you,” Cronin told Stateline. “There is real accountability there. … It’s a fundamentally different process.”

Between 2015 and 2023, New Jersey’s pretrial jail population decreased by 27.2%, according to the state judiciary’s Criminal Justice Reform Statistics report last year.

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on Facebook and Twitter.

An incarcerated student raises his hand during a college-level English class at San Quentin State Prison in San Quentin, Calif. Figures from several states show fewer convicted criminals are being re-arrested after leaving prison. But there is no national standard to compare jurisdictions and programs (Eric Risberg/The Associated Press).

Several states this year have reported lower rates of recidivism, showing that fewer convicted criminals are being re-arrested after leaving prison.

But those statistics hardly tell the full story.

Recidivism rates across the country can vary greatly because of how they’re defined, how the data is collected and how it’s presented to the public. So it can be difficult to say that, for example, one state is doing better than another in rehabilitating formerly incarcerated residents.

“You have to be very, very careful. You have to compare apples to apples and oranges to oranges,” Charis Kubrin, a criminology, law and society professor at the University of California, Irvine, said in an interview with Stateline. Kubrin also is a member of the Council on Criminal Justice, a nonpartisan research think tank.

The statistics are used to evaluate a corrections system’s performance. They can help assess how effective rehabilitative or reentry programs and post-sentence probation programs are in lowering the number of reoffenders with certain criminal histories, such as substance use.

Recidivism data tracks the number of convicted offenders who engage in new criminal activities after being released from prison or jail within a specific time frame, typically ranging from one to five years.

A reduced recidivism rate may indicate that efforts by prison staff and probation or parole officers to rehabilitate individuals are effective, said Evan Green-Lowe, the director of state engagement at Recidiviz, a tech nonprofit that partners with state criminal justice agencies.

“It is one of the metrics that state correctional leadership and state community supervision leadership pay close attention to,” Green-Lowe wrote in an email to Stateline.

Among the states that reported lower recidivism rates this year, Iowa, Kentucky, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia all have pointed to reentry or other rehabilitative programs as part of the reason.

“These programs make a huge difference,” said Scott Richeson, the Virginia Department of Corrections’ deputy director of programs, education and reentry, in an interview with Stateline. Richeson said the recividism rate for incarcerated people who participate in career and technical education programs is 12%.

Some criminologists argue that attributing lower recidivism rates to a specific program fails to consider other influencing factors, such as population shifts and — recently — the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Over the next couple of years, state-reported recidivism rates likely will continue to decline for individuals who were released in 2019 and 2020, as prisons and jails released more people during the peak years of the pandemic, said Shawn Bushway, an economist and criminologist with the nonprofit and nonpartisan research group RAND Corporation.

Most states measure recidivism by tracking former inmates who were held in state prisons or facilities and return to the state prison system within three years. Experts say the absence of a national standard makes it challenging to compare jurisdictions and programs.

State officials should specify how the rate was calculated, what type of offenses or acts count as recidivism, potential limitations, such as incomplete data, and the frequency of reoffenses, according to Elsa Chen, a professor and the chair of the political science department at Santa Clara University.

Public understanding of recidivism

Politicians and officials sometimes use flawed crime data to burnish their crime-fighting bona fides, and they can tout lower recidivism rates as evidence of their success in rehabilitating criminals.

In May, for example, just five months before Kentucky’s gubernatorial election, Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear announced at a news conference that the state had achieved its lowest recidivism rate in history at 27.15% for individuals held in state custody. Kentucky defines recidivism as a return to state custody within two years of release, either due to committing a new felony or a technical violation of supervision.

“When we get somebody who is leaving prison in a stable position — in a good job, with the services they need, maybe in treatment if they need it — they are less likely to reoffend, which makes our communities safer,” Beshear said during the news conference. “It means fewer crimes are happening.”

The Kentucky Department of Corrections didn’t answer emailed questions and didn’t make anyone available for an interview.

But some experts argue that Beshear’s characterization — implying a connection between recidivism and public safety — is inaccurate because recidivism solely gauges whether an individual reoffends.

“It can have harmful effects on public understanding because the public believes they’re being told something by a responsible person that directly assesses public safety, and [recidivism] does not measure public safety,” Jeffrey Butts, a research professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, told Stateline.

Some state officials say recidivism rates show how effective their programming is, while acknowledging the state-by-state differences.

“I don’t think it’s misleading at all because I see all the work and the data that we have available is very reliable,” said Richeson, with the Virginia Department of Corrections. “It’s hard to compare across states because there are differences in every system.”

Virginia measures recidivism by tracking former state inmates who return to the state prison system within three years post-release.

“We feel that’s the best indicator of services that we are providing,” she said.

Richeson said her state’s emphasis on safety within the prisons helps incarcerated residents feel more comfortable being involved in rehabilitation.

“We could not do any of these programs were it not for having safe and secure prisons, so it really is how the whole system works together. It’s not just one program,” she said. “We want to create long-term public safety when people get out.”

What the data says

In recidivism studies, the act of reoffending may be defined differently. It can, for example, include violating parole, being arrested, being convicted of a crime or returning to prison. Some studies consider all these outcomes as recidivism, while others count only one or two.

Some states only consider felonies as recidivism, excluding less serious misdemeanors that may result in local jail time rather than a state prison sentence. And states vary in categorizing crimes as felonies or misdemeanors, adding even more complexity.

“Those are policy differences that end up structuring or creating the metric of recidivism,” Butts said. “Unless you investigate all those things and can control for them, you’re still not informing the public in a responsible way.”

States also are inconsistent in the time periods covered by recidivism studies. Most include new offenses within three to five years; others examine a much shorter time frame, such as six months to a year.

Recidivism rates might appear higher in highly policed areas, where residents are more likely to come into contact with police. And in some states, recidivism includes missteps such as missing a meeting with a parole officer, technically not a criminal offense but still counted as one.

“When somebody has recidivated, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they’ve committed any new crimes,” Chen said. “That’s something that is not obvious to most people in the public.”

Official data also can miss counting former prisoners who break the law but go undetected. This is why some criminologists argue that recidivism studies should include self-reports of criminal behavior and differentiate among various types of recidivism, such as violent crimes, property crimes and technical violations.

“In an ideal system, you would have measures of recidivism that span all of these different things,” Kubrin, the law and society professor, said.

State recidivism rates

States this year have pointed to rehabilitation and reentry programs as major contributors to their drops in recidivism.

In Iowa, the recidivism rate for fiscal year 2023 stands at 34.3%, down 2.7 percentage points from last year. The state defines recidivism as an individual being released from an Iowa prison and being re-incarcerated within three years for any reason.

A news release announcing Iowa’s third consecutive drop in recidivism attributed the decrease to various programs, improved reentry practices and increased access to educational and job skills training.

The Iowa Department of Corrections also examines outcomes such as employment and wages, housing stability, program completion and probation, parole and work-release revocations, according to Sarah Fineran, the agency’s research director.

Tennessee saw its recidivism rate drop to 29.6% this year for people released in 2019, the lowest rate in more than a decade. The Tennessee Department of Correction defines recidivism as re-arrest, re-conviction or return to prison within three years after release.

The Virginia Department of Corrections in January announced its recidivism rate dropped to 20.6%, which includes people released from the state prison system in 2018 who were re-incarcerated within three years.

This is the seventh consecutive year that Virginia has had the second-lowest or the lowest rate of recidivism in the nation, according to the department’s news release and analysis.

South Carolina, too, boasts one of the lowest recidivism rates in the country at 17%. The South Carolina Department of Corrections defines recidivism as someone who is re-incarcerated within three years of release.

“It’s never just one thing, but a combination of interventions. [The South Carolina Department of Corrections] takes a holistic approach based on the needs of the individual offender,” Chrysti Shain, the department’s director of communications, wrote in an email to Stateline. “We want to release inmates who have a real second chance.”

Measuring success

Some advocates say that using alternative factors such as employment or housing provides much better indicators of success after being released from prison.

“Recidivism by itself is not a true measure of the success of reentry programming or of incarceration rates,” said Ann Fisher, the executive director of Virginia CARES, a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting formerly incarcerated people in Virginia. “It’s just not a true picture.”

A 2022 report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine suggests pairing recidivism rates with indicators that capture progress away from crime, such as reductions in the seriousness of criminal activity or an increased duration between release and a criminal act, known as “desistance.”

The report also recommends developing new measures of post-release success that consider factors such as personal well-being, education, employment, housing, family and social supports, health, civic and community engagement and legal involvement.

“Measures of desistance from crime are much more accurate and realistic in looking at changes in criminal activity after release from prison,” said Chen, of Santa Clara University, who is one of the report’s authors. “Those are much more nuanced than just whether or not they’ve had another interaction with the criminal legal system.”

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on Facebook and Twitter.

A door displays a sign for bail bond services in Los Angeles. Los Angeles County, the nation’s most populous, is one of many jurisdictions working to change its bail protocols. The Los Angeles Superior Court implemented a zero cash bail system in October (Mario Tama/Getty Images).

States can’t figure out what to do about cash bail.

The system — in which an arrested suspect pays cash to avoid sitting in jail until their court date and gets the money back when they appear — is deeply entrenched in the nation’s history as a way to ensure defendants return to face justice.

But cash bail is undergoing a reckoning as policymakers debate its disproportionate effects on underserved communities and people with low incomes who sometimes can’t afford bail — as well as just how much the system truly keeps the public safe.

This year some states such as Illinois and jurisdictions such as Los Angeles County in California and Cuyahoga County in Ohio scaled back their bail systems, even eliminating cash bail entirely for low-level offenses in some cases.

Policymakers in other places, meanwhile, are moving in the opposite direction.

Republican lawmakers in at least 14 states — including Georgia, Indiana, Missouri and Wisconsin — introduced about 20 bills this year aimed at increasing the number of non-bailable offenses and either encouraging or requiring judges to consider defendants’ criminal records when setting bail, according to analysis by The Associated Press.

And in New York state, where changes to curtail the use of bail took effect in 2020, lawmakers have made several rounds of rollbacks amid concerns about rising crime rates.

Some bail policy advocates argue that these changes may contribute to racial and socioeconomic discrimination by relying on one’s ability to post bail and undermine the idea that those accused of a crime are presumed innocent until proven guilty.

“There’s no single answer to effective bail reform,” Meghan Guevara, executive partner with the Pretrial Justice Institute, a criminal justice advocacy group, told Stateline.

Measures to increase the use of cash bail or to include certain factors in assessing bail eligibility saw varying levels of success. In Wisconsin, voters approved a state constitutional amendment in April allowing judges to consider factors such as a defendant’s past convictions and the need to protect the public from bodily harm in “violent crime” cases.

Missouri Republican Gov. Mike Parson signed legislation in July that requires judges who are setting bail to first consider factors such as a suspect’s flight risk, potential danger to others, past convictions for violent crimes and previous failures to appear in court.

In Indiana, lawmakers in April passed their first swipe at Senate Joint Resolution 1, which would amend language in the state’s constitution and enable judges to deny bail to those they consider a “substantial risk.” The bill must pass again in 2025 before appearing on the ballot in 2026.

In Georgia, lawmakers considered legislation that sought to impose cash or property bail for dozens of additional crimes, including misdemeanors. It failed due to disagreements between the House and Senate, but Republican state Rep. Houston Gaines, who sponsored the measure in the House, expects the bill to pass in the next legislative session.

Gaines, in an emailed statement, said: “Eliminating cash bail has been a disaster in places it’s been tried — even New York has reversed course on some of its radical policies. We can’t afford to create a revolving door of criminals who don’t show up for court and victimize other individuals.”

Political backlash and rollbacks

Between 2017 and 2019, a bipartisan movement for changes to bail systems gained momentum at both the local and state levels. Some states, such as New Mexico, New Jersey and Kentucky, sharply curtailed their cash bail systems by almost entirely eliminating cash bail, expanding release programs and moving toward risk-based assessments to determine pretrial release.

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic strained crowded jails and detention centers, and agencies eased bail systems to reduce exposure.

Between 2019 and 2020, homicide rates increased 30% — one of the largest year-over-year increases on record, according to data released by the FBI and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Homicide gun deaths also surged 35% in 2020, the largest year-over-year increase recorded in more than 25 years. Despite these increases, the overall violent crime rate in the country did not increase during the pandemic, according to federal crime surveys.

In California and New York, policymakers rolled back their pre-pandemic changes to cash bail.

“Fears about public safety are in many ways greatly overblown and misplaced,” said Sharlyn Grace, a senior policy adviser at the law office of the Cook County Public Defender in Illinois. “It is exceedingly rare for someone who’s released pretrial to be arrested and accused of a new offense that involves violence against another person.”

A report released by the New York City Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice in 2021 found that about 95% of individuals arrested and released between January and September 2020 were not rearrested while awaiting trial, and there was a very little difference in rearrest rates before and after bail reform in the state.

New York had passed a sweeping overhaul in 2019, largely ending the use of money bail for misdemeanors and lower-level felonies, with a focus on imposing the “least restrictive” release conditions. The state’s bail law has undergone multiple rounds of revisions since then, primarily driven by calls from Republicans to amend or completely reverse the law.

In early 2020, New York expanded bail options, particularly in cases involving harm to a person or property. In 2022, the state further broadened the definition of “harm” and clarified factors judges must consider, such as criminal history, when setting release conditions.

This year, negotiations over additional changes led to the removal of the requirement for the “least restrictive” release, a proposal announced by Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul last spring.

Some state Democrats and criminal justice advocacy groups have strongly criticized these changes, arguing that the most recent revisions represent a rollback in progress.

“These rollbacks have had a serious effect on our pretrial population, and we’re still seeing the same kinds of wealth-based and racial inequities that were the drivers of bail reform in the first instance,” said Jullian Harris-Calvin, the director of the Greater Justice New York program under the Vera Institute of Justice, a national nonprofit criminal justice advocacy group.

Money bail remains prohibited for most misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies in New York, with some exceptions related to rearrested individuals.

In 2018, then-California Gov. Jerry Brown, a Democrat, signed Senate Bill 10 into law, which would have made the Golden State the first to end the use of cash bail for all detained suspects awaiting trials. The American Bail Coalition, a nonprofit trade association representing the bail industry, pushed back hard, organizing Californians Against the Reckless Bail Scheme to lead a repeal effort through a veto referendum.

Voters repealed the measure in 2020. Some who opposed the law said the proposed risk assessment tool — which generally measures factors such as flight risk, public safety risk and criminal history — could potentially cause more harm than good, said Allie Preston, a senior policy analyst for criminal justice reform with the left-leaning policy institute Center for American Progress. Some bail policy advocates say using risk assessment tools in the pretrial process may contribute to more racial and socioeconomic inequities.

Jeff Clayton, the executive director of the American Bail Coalition, said in an interview that risk-based assessments are problematic because “there’s no scientific way to predict pretrial risk in terms of a particular defendant.” Clayton added that setting a bail amount offers more flexibility, which may be beneficial in some cases.

“The question is, can we engineer the alternate system better than the existing system of monetary bonds, posting bonds and staying in jail that’s existed throughout history?” Clayton said. “There’s reasons to suggest that we can’t do a better job.”

Although statewide change to California’s bail system failed, a few jurisdictions in the state have introduced other changes to their bail systems. Santa Clara County and the city of San Francisco both use risk assessment tools and offer other services to help those released pretrial return for their court dates and address needs, such as transportation.

The Los Angeles County Superior Court implemented a zero cash bail system in October. Under the new bail protocols, those charged with nonviolent or less serious crimes will be detained before arraignment only if a judge determines they present a threat to the community or a potential flight risk instead of whether they are capable of posting bail. In cases of violent and serious felonies, however, the bail system remains intact.

“[Los Angeles County’s new] bail policy is a really important step towards promoting safety and justice and away from a system where the rich are able to buy their freedom and the poor languish in jail,” said Claire Simonich, the associate director of Vera California, an initiative under the Vera Institute of Justice.

Some residents, county officials and members of law enforcement say the new policy will compromise law enforcement’s ability to address crime. And at least a dozen municipalities in Los Angeles County filed a lawsuit in September to block the new system from taking effect.

More legislative efforts

Lawmakers in some states have pushed for further changes in their legislative sessions.

Connecticut state Rep. Steven Stafstrom, a Democrat, said the problem in his state stems from an outdated constitutional provision that limits the state’s ability to deny bail, primarily reserving bail for capital offenses. But the state abolished the death penalty more than a decade ago. Since capital offenses no longer exist in Connecticut, there are limited legal grounds for holding people pretrial, especially if they have the financial means to post bail.

“We really need to first repeal that provision out of the state constitution and then move much more towards a risk-based system that takes into account someone’s risk and likelihood to flee as opposed to simply their ability to pay,” Stafstrom said in an interview with Stateline.

In Minnesota, a bill introduced by Democrats this year would limit the use of cash bail by the courts for misdemeanor offenses.

In Cuyahoga County, Ohio, where Cleveland is located, informal changes to the court’s culture and practices have reduced the number of people required to pay cash bail, according to The Marshall Project, a news outlet focused on criminal justice. The state supreme court also made changes in 2020 and 2021 aimed at reducing the number of people jailed before trial. Last year, voters passed a measure that requires judges to consider certain factors when setting bail, including public safety.

The adoption of alternative approaches, such as pretrial risk assessments, is gaining ground across the country. Some two dozen different risk assessment tools are in use in at least 26 states, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on Facebook and Twitter.

The Charleston County Consolidated Emergency Communications Center in South Carolina is using Amazon Connect, an omnichannel cloud contact center by Amazon Web Services, to answer non-emergency calls (Photo courtesy of Jim Lake).

In the middle of a storm, 911 call centers often find themselves inundated with reports of fallen trees, flooded roads and panicked residents. Every call matters, but with multiple reports of the same incident pouring in, the pressure on emergency services can become overwhelming.

Amid the chaos, a technological ally has emerged: artificial intelligence. In the United States, AI is quietly transforming how non-emergency calls are handled in dispatch centers. An AI-powered system can triage and coordinate the flood of reports, promptly alerting the relevant agencies.

For now, AI-powered systems only manage non-emergency calls, which typically come from a non-911 phone number but are answered in the same centers, allowing human dispatchers to focus on emergencies.

The integration of AI technology into 911 centers is partly a response to an acute staffing crisis and the pressing need to address the mental health challenges that emergency responders face. While AI-powered systems in 911 centers offer potential benefits, such as managing call surges and reducing dispatcher workloads, concerns linger among experts about the possibility that these systems may overprescribe police response or make mistakes due to biases.

So far, fewer than a dozen localities in seven states across the country are using or testing artificial intelligence in their 911 centers. But, as in other industries, leaders are wondering how AI can transform workplaces.

“For me, I think that the use of AI for non-emergency calls is a fantastic idea,” said Ty Wooten, the director of government affairs for the International Academies of Emergency Dispatch, an organization that helps set standards for emergency dispatch centers. “I see the huge benefit of being able to alleviate those calls out of the 911 center queue so that the 911 call takers can really focus … on the ones that really matter.”

Emergency call centers are struggling to find workers. Between 2019 and 2022, 1 in 4 jobs at 911 centers were vacant, according to a report published in June of this year from the International Academies of Emergency Dispatch and the National Association of State 911 Administrators. As emergency call centers continue to grapple with understaffing issues, some 911 calls may go unanswered or get stuck in lengthy queues.

“That subsequent loss of staff makes everyone have to work more, which then burns people out and creates more turnover,” Wooten said in an interview. “It’s this vicious cycle.”

For now, there’s little regulation on how artificial intelligence can help. Only a few states have set AI regulatory frameworks. And the definition of AI itself remains uncertain in many states.

Public safety agencies often approach new technologies, including artificial intelligence, with caution because of concerns about service disruptions, said Brandon Abley, the director of technology for the National Emergency Number Association, a nonprofit professional group.

“[Emergency call centers] are not really stumbling over themselves to try and implement AI in their operations because generally, they don’t want huge disruptions to their operations unless they’re very, very certain,” Abley said in an interview with Stateline.

And there could be disadvantages, he added. For example, dispatchers could face heightened mental health challenges if they have to manage more emergency calls because an AI system is taking the bulk of administrative or non-emergency calls.

“We think it looks promising,” Abley said, “but we’re also cautious.”

Boosting efficiency and reducing workload

The testing or implementation of AI systems for call-taking in 911 centers already has begun in municipalities in Colorado, Maryland, Missouri, Oregon, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia.

Among the driving forces is the dual role that call center personnel play. In most public safety centers, the same people answer both emergency and non-emergency calls. With a shrinking workforce, some governments see AI as a solution to alleviate part of the workload.

Among the tech companies offering products to 911 centers is Amazon Web Services, a subsidiary of Amazon that provides cloud computing services, including Amazon Connect, a cloud-based contact center designed to provide verbal assistance. Carbyne is another software company focused on emergency communications services that uses AI for live two-way translation and triaging calls.

In South Carolina, for example, Amazon Connect is used for non-emergency calls in Charleston County’s Consolidated Emergency Communication Center. When a caller dials the county’s non-emergency line, Amazon Connect will answer and ask the caller what they need help with. The system will redirect the caller to appropriate resources, allowing human dispatchers to focus on emergency call-taking. If the system cannot understand the caller, it will send the call to a human dispatcher.

The center spends about $2,800 per month on its Amazon Connect subscription, which Jim Lake, the center’s director, said is cheaper than hiring staff solely for answering non-emergency calls. The system has reduced the volume of calls to the administrative line by 36% since March, Lake told Stateline.

“Those are calls that our 911 public safety telecommunicators don’t want to take. They are not emergencies. So we’re showing them that we’re making their jobs more efficient and giving them the opportunity to do more on those emergency calls,” Lake said.

Several other call centers — including the Arlington County Emergency Communications Center in Virginia, the St. Louis County Police Department in Missouri and the Jefferson County Communications Center Authority in Colorado — also are adopting the Amazon Connect system or similar technologies.

Since Jefferson County began using Amazon Connect’s program last December, AI has processed about 40% of the emergency center’s administrative calls.

“We’re processing just under a million calls a year, so for us to handle it through technology — freeing up personnel to handle more acuity-style calls — works much better for us,” said Jeff Streeter, the center’s executive director.

While there are concerns about AI displacing dispatchers’ jobs, many leaders of 911 call centers emphasize that their goal is to make existing roles more manageable.

“I cannot stress enough that it does not take away jobs, especially in the 911 industry. It’s there to help them enhance their job,” said Jacob Saur, the emergency communications center administrator for Arlington County Public Safety Communications and Emergency Management. “I just cannot see in any way, shape or form an automated bot answering a 911 call.”

Brian Battles, the communications administrative specialist for the St. Louis County Police Department’s Bureau of Communications, which oversees the county’s 911 operations, echoed this perspective.

“It has been very beneficial to the call takers, who are already overworked,” Battles said. “Anything we can do to relieve that stress while actually providing a more efficient service to the citizens is a no-brainer on our part.”

Addressing bias and funding

Like other new criminal justice technology, concerns about bias loom large with AI systems.

“All AI models are only as good as their developers,” Daniela Gilbert, the director of the Vera Institute of Justice’s Redefining Public Safety initiative, wrote in an email. The potential is there, she wrote, for AI to replicate human biases on a large scale.

“If these systems are [designed] to take calls, rather than assisting call takers, it would remove a human empathy that is so often essential in crisis situations,” Gilbert wrote. “Imagine being in a time of stress and great need and having to negotiate with a bot.”

If, for example, developers have a particular bias that favors police response, AI systems may overprescribe police involvement when alternative resources might be more suitable, Gilbert wrote.

Martha Buyer, a telecommunications law attorney and 911 expert, emphasized that AI systems are prone to errors, which could lead to liability issues. The systems must be capable of accommodating a diverse range of callers, including those who speak languages other than English or have specific needs related to their abilities, Buyer added.

“To have an AI system answer a 911 call — that’s so fraught with liability I don’t even want to think about it,” she said. “Timing is critical.”

Artificial intelligence systems aren’t available everywhere in part because many dispatch call centers find themselves stuck in a technological time warp, relying on old systems that struggle to keep pace with rapid tech advancements.

“The reality is the system of 911 as it is today across the country is still kind of operated off technology that was developed in the 1930s,” said Wooten, of the International Academies of Emergency Dispatch. “That technology has to be upgraded, and we have to get that to a point where we understand and it is more equitable.”

Even as cellphones have become ubiquitous, for example, some outdated systems grapple to accurately pinpoint a mobile phone caller’s location. Instead of obtaining precise GPS coordinates, these centers might only get the location of the nearby cell tower, hampering response efforts.

“Nobody ever plans on needing to call 911, so from a government perspective, it’s often pushed to the side in terms of funding,” Buyer said.

Wooten said that despite AI’s potential, many centers need basic tech improvements before getting involved with artificial intelligence.

“We really have to get the infrastructure in place and taken care of first before we will ever be able to see the benefits and understanding of what other future technologies, whether that be AI or any other future technology.”

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on Facebook and Twitter.

(Getty Images).

Max Gruver spent the early morning hours of Sept. 14, 2017, heavily intoxicated and passed out on a couch inside the Phi Delta Theta chapter house at Louisiana State University.

He had been forced to repeatedly chug 190-proof Diesel liquor in a hazing ritual called “Bible Study,” during which pledges are quizzed on fraternity facts. The incident caused Gruver, a freshman majoring in political communications, to inhale his own vomit into his lungs.

By the time fraternity members finally sought medical aid the next morning, Gruver’s pulse was weak and they couldn’t tell if he was breathing. Gruver’s blood alcohol level was .495, more than six times Louisiana’s legal driving limit, when he died from what an autopsy concluded was “acute alcohol intoxication with aspiration.” He was 18.

As college students begin a new semester this fall, many will participate in rituals to bring in new members of a Greek fraternity or sorority, a sports team or other club. Sometimes, the initiations involve heavy alcohol use or physical assaults. Although awareness of hazing and its dangers has grown significantly, it still happens.

In June, New Mexico State University agreed to pay $8 million to settle a lawsuit over hazing allegations in the men’s basketball program. Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham said she will be introducing anti-hazing and abuse legislation next year. In July, Northwestern University fired its head football coach after an investigation found widespread hazing on the team. And Boston College suspended its swim and dive team this month following hazing allegations.

At least 44 states and the District of Columbia have anti-hazing laws in place, most recently Ohio in 2021 and Pennsylvania in 2018. Kentucky and Washington strengthened their laws this past legislative session. Six states — Alaska, Hawaii, Montana, New Mexico, South Dakota and Wyoming — have none, according to StopHazing, an anti-hazing advocacy and research organization.

But state anti-hazing laws, most of which were approved in the past 15 years, differ in their definitions and the criminal penalties they impose. Depending on the state, participating in hazing activities may result in a fine, misdemeanor charge or a felony charge if the hazing results in serious bodily harm or death.

Some experts and anti-hazing advocates say the penalties in some states aren’t harsh enough to deter organizations from participating in hazing. And even in states that have laws, incidents like the one that left Max Gruver dead don’t necessarily lead to serious criminal charges.

Four former LSU students and ex-members of Phi Delta Theta were indicted in connection with Gruver’s death. Three of them faced misdemeanor hazing charges, while the fourth faced a felony charge of negligent homicide. The university also banned Phi Delta Theta from its campus until at least 2033.

Gruver’s parents — Rae Ann and Stephen Gruver — pressed for stiffer penalties for hazing, prompting Louisiana to enact the Max Gruver Act in 2018, which made hazing that results in serious bodily harm or death a felony; introduced a statewide definition of hazing; and mandated that hazing incidents and disciplinary actions taken against members of student groups be reported to the respective host institutions.

“It’s unfortunate that with the death of our son — it took that to get Louisiana to change their laws,” Stephen Gruver told Stateline. “It’s something that can be prevented; this never should have happened to our son.”

Since then, the Gruvers, along with parents of other hazing victims, have advocated for stricter state and federal penalties for hazing and greater transparency when such incidents occur.

“If you don’t have a strong enough law, it’s not a deterrent for these kids and they’re just going to keep on being bad actors because they just don’t care,” Stephen Gruver said.

Hazing’s wide reach

Hazing, a practice rooted in tradition and camaraderie, has long been a controversial and pervasive issue on college campuses. While hazing incidents have garnered significant national attention over the past decade, the earliest account of hazing is believed to date back to the fourth century — when Plato observed young boys playing “practical jokes” on other students in school, according to a book written by journalist and anti-hazing advocate Hank Nuwer. The first anti-hazing law in the United States was enacted in New York in 1894.

In the U.S., more than 280 people allegedly have died due to hazing since 1838, according to the U.S. Hazing Deaths Database. The database is maintained by Nuwer. Hazing deaths are not currently tracked by any U.S. government entity.

In 2017, the year of Gruver’s death, at least six other young adults also died a result of alleged hazing activities. Between 2018 and 2021, at least 23 people allegedly died due to hazing activities. No hazing deaths were reported in 2022.

According to a 2008 study by two University of Maine professors, more than half of college students involved with student organizations experience hazing, which often involves “alcohol consumption, humiliation, isolation, sleep-deprivation, and sex acts.” The study, which is considered the most comprehensive analysis of hazing in the United States, also found that about 47% of students come to college having already experienced hazing.

“Hazing is prevalent throughout society. It’s not just a college thing. It’s really seen anywhere that there’s a differing power dynamic,” Todd Shelton, the executive director of the Hazing Prevention Network, told Stateline. Hazing appears in settings such as high schools, other student groups, the military and professional workplaces.

In many states, hazing carries misdemeanor charges — a fact that some advocates argue does little to effectively deter hazing incidents.

“Where hazing is a minor misdemeanor, it’s not taken seriously by law enforcement because it’s not worth the effort to prosecute,” Shelton said. “One of the biggest hurdles is getting the penalty or statute to match the seriousness of the crime.”

In Kentucky, Lofton’s Law was signed into law in March, increasing the penalty for hazing that leads to death or serious physical injury to a Class D felony, punishable by up to five years in prison. Reckless participation in hazing can result in a misdemeanor.

And in Washington state, the Sam Martinez Stop Hazing Law, which was passed unanimously and signed into law in May, makes hazing a gross misdemeanor instead of a misdemeanor; if the hazing results in substantial bodily harm, it rises to a felony. The law bumps up penalties for hazing from a maximum of 90 days to up to a year — and up to five years for the felony charge.

Washington became the 15th state to elevate hazing to a felony if it causes severe injury or death.

“For the first time we’re talking about hazing in a very real way. There’s been a culture of secrecy, in my view, of hazing for many, many years,” Rep. Mari Leavitt, a Democrat who wrote the bill, said in an interview with Stateline. “Students will recognize that there is a pretty significant consequence for choosing to behave in these barbaric activities and it can change the trajectory of their lives.”

The new law follows the passage of Sam’s Law in 2022, named after the same student, which updated the definition of hazing and required universities and colleges, as well as fraternity and sorority chapters, to make hazing investigation records public.

“The more that people are aware, and willing to talk about it and willing to report what they see, that will start to change that culture of secrecy to something that holds people accountable and also is transparent in terms of what’s happening across states,” Leavitt said.

Anti-hazing movement

In 15 states, a major weakness in the anti-hazing law, according to StopHazing, is the absence of a “consent clause,” which asserts that an individual’s willingness to participate in potentially hazardous actions — as when a student agrees to a certain activity — does not protect those involved from hazing charges. Some anti-hazing laws explicitly spell out that consent is not a defense.

“The consent clause … is really important in terms of documenting hazing and having policy be really effective,” said Elizabeth Allan, the principal of StopHazing and a professor of higher education at the University of Maine. Allan co-wrote the 2008 national study on hazing.

Advocacy groups also have been pushing for national anti-hazing legislation to establish uniform definitions and penalties.

Proposed federal legislation, originally known as the Report and Educate About Campus Hazing Act, or REACH Act, was initially introduced in Congress in 2021. This year, it is set to be reintroduced under a new name, the Stop Campus Hazing Act. The legislation encompasses a range of transparency and prevention measures, including mandatory public reporting of hazing incidents and the implementation of comprehensive prevention programs.

“Hazing is often underreported, underrecognized and it’s really not being taken as seriously as it should be given the harmful impact that it has on individuals and communities,” said Jessica Mertz, the executive director of the Clery Center, a nonprofit dedicated to promoting campus safety.

Among Greek fraternities and sororities, discussions around cracking down on hazing have gained momentum. Still, critics argue that most state anti-hazing laws should impose tougher penalties on national Greek life organizations and institutions, rather than individuals.

“As a founding member of the Anti-Hazing Coalition, the North American Interfraternity Conference and our member fraternities advocate for stronger federal and state hazing laws to increase criminal penalties and provide greater transparency to hold individuals accountable when found to be involved in hazing,” Judson Horras, CEO of the North American Interfraternity Conference, said in a statement.

“While in this partnership, we have seen stronger state laws passed in over a dozen states and are encouraged by the introduction of the bipartisan Stop Campus Hazing Act in the 118th Congress last week,” the statement said.

A 2020 paper by a Penn State University professor and published in the Journal of College and University Law underscores this argument. Law professor Justin J. Swofford argues that for legislation to be most effective in deterring future hazing injuries and deaths, there must be greater criminal and civil penalties imposed on both schools and fraternities.

However, some voices within the Greek life community question whether genuine change is achievable. Lucy Taylor, who disaffiliated from Alpha Phi at the University of Maryland and hosts “SNAPPED,” a podcast exploring Greek life, suggests that change within Greek organizations can often appear performative.

These initiatives may encompass disciplinary committees, mandatory anti-hazing programs or even the hiring of security teams, Taylor said.

“They make it seem like change is happening, but those things that they’re doing to create change don’t actually have any power. If they wanted hazing to be gone, it would have been gone years ago,” Taylor said. “They don’t do anything or they don’t do what they’re intended to do, and the hazing culture just becomes even more secret.

“The more secret it becomes, the worse it gets.”

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on Facebook and Twitter.

A forensic analyst removes a pair of underwear from an evidence bag for testing in a sexual assault case in the biology lab at the Houston Forensic Science Center in Houston. Texas is among at least 40 states and the District of Columbia that have implemented or committed to establishing a rape kit tracking system, according to the End the Backlog website run by the nonprofit Joyful Heart Foundation (Pat Sullivan/The Associated Press)

It can take hours for a sexual assault victim to undergo the multiple swabs, hair samples, blood and urine collections, and other invasive procedures of a sexual assault examination. And then it can take months, sometimes years, for investigators to process that evidence kit.

But now, responding to demands from survivors and their advocates, more states have committed to tackling yearslong investigative backlogs — and dozens are adopting tracking systems that allow patients to follow the forensic paths of their own sexual assault kits.

The tracking systems aim to address historical challenges, such as inadequate forensic evidence handling, delays in case processing and underreporting of assaults. The systems can streamline communication among law enforcement agencies, forensic laboratories and survivors, for example. Perhaps most importantly, the accountability and transparency that come with tracking the assault kits also can speed up a case’s resolution.

“The overarching purpose is to restore dignity and sort of try to tip the balance of power from folks who have been sexually assaulted,” said Colorado state Rep. Meg Froelich, a Democrat who authored her state’s rape kit tracking law, in an interview with Stateline.

“What we’re trying to do is get folks to come forward,” she said, “and to feel that the process is there for them to achieve what they need for healing and closure.”

At least 40 states and the District of Columbia have implemented or committed to establishing a sexual assault kit tracking system in the past nine years, including several coming on board this year, according to the End the Backlog website run by the nonprofit advocacy group Joyful Heart Foundation. The foundation supports survivors of sexual assault, domestic violence and child abuse.

Alaska and Florida launched their online sexual assault kit tracking portals this summer. Colorado and Louisiana enacted legislation in May and June, respectively, to establish their own tracking systems.

Advocates say providing a tool to monitor the progress of their kits gives survivors a sense of control and participation in the investigative process, which can be crucial in their healing journey. Moreover, the transparency offered by tracking systems ensures that law enforcement agencies are held accountable for timely kit processing.

“This is just one more tool to evaluate the whole entire system, whether it’s the [sexual assault nurse examiners], the crime lab, the police departments, so that we are doing the best service to these survivors,” said Monica Taylor, the special projects coordinator for the Louisiana attorney general’s office, in an interview with Stateline.

“This tracking system is going to help them go from being a victim to being a survivor, and taking some of the control and power back into their lives,” she said.

Tracking systems also allow advocates to fully support survivors who may have concerns about delays, said Nicole Kass Colvin, the manager of coordinated community responses for the Ohio Alliance to End Sexual Violence. Prior to the launch of Ohio’s tracking system in 2020, monitoring a kit’s progress was challenging, often requiring survivors to contact law enforcement for updates, Colvin recalled.

“If there was a mistake made somewhere within the process, we [now] can see where that error is and rectify it, rather than that kit being lost for years with no idea of knowing what happened or where it might be,” she said.

Sexual assault kit tracking systems are typically web portals designed to trace the kits’ movement throughout their chain of custody.

With the collection of a rape evidence kit at a medical facility, a unique tracking or serial number is assigned and provided to the survivor. Law enforcement typically picks up the kits, then sends them to a crime lab for testing.

After testing, the kit may be stored at the crime lab or another secure location for several months or years, depending on the state’s storage requirements.

The evidence can be used to link the assault to a suspect in existing DNA databases, or to develop a DNA profile that can be used in the future. Processing times for rape kits vary by state; for instance, it can take up to 120 days in Florida, 60 days in Alaska and just 30 days in Ohio.

Addressing backlog, empowering survivors

The exact scope of the rape kit testing backlog remains unclear. But as of Sept. 7, there are at least 59,894 untested kits in 23 states, according to data collected by the Joyful Heart Foundation.

Among the contributing factors to the backlog are victim-blaming attitudes, budget cuts, reduced crime lab staff, and bias against women and victims of sex crimes, according to a white paper published in 2017 by the U.S. Justice Department’s Office on Violence Against Women.

In recent years, the issue has eroded public trust in law enforcement, the agency noted. In some instances, untested rape kits were linked to cases dating back to the 1980s.

Sexual assault survivors, from Houston in 2020 to Memphis in 2023, have filed class-action lawsuits against city officials over processing delays.

A statewide sexual assault kit tracker has quickened the pace of forensic testing in some states, and in some cases allowed states to identify and address delays. Several states have reduced their backlogs of unsubmitted rape kits, those that were never even sent to a lab for testing.

Alaska, for example, cleared its backlog of untested kits that were held by law enforcement in 2021 and completed result analyses in 2022, according to the Alaska Department of Public Safety’s communication director, Austin McDaniel.

In 2022, 75 untested sexual assault kits were found at the state’s crime lab — down from 558 in 2021, according to statistics published by the state’s public safety department.

Similarly, New Hampshire reduced its backlog from 582 kits in 2019 to just one kit in 2022, according to an analysis by USAFacts, a nonpartisan data center.

The kits have significant investigative value. In Ohio, for example, state investigators plowing through a backlog of 13,931 kits found 5,349 hits in a DNA database. The state has now cleared its backlog entirely.

North Carolina and Michigan also have reduced their backlog significantly. From 2018 to 2022, North Carolina saw a 99% reduction in unsubmitted kits, while Michigan achieved a 95% reduction during the same period. USAFacts also found that in some states, such as Louisiana and Maryland, the number of unsubmitted kits held by law enforcement increased between 2018 and 2022. Both states’ tracking systems are currently in development.

Under Louisiana’s new law, the state’s sexual assault kit tracking system will be created by the Louisiana State Police.The agency must have a plan by January, and all police and health care providers who store rape kits must fully participate by July 1, 2024.

Rape kit tracking systems play a pivotal role in empowering survivors and enhancing transparency in the criminal justice system, said Morgan Lamandre, the president and CEO of Sexual Trauma Awareness & Response, a Louisiana-based nonprofit advocacy and support group.

“Having this system in place for Louisiana is another step in the right direction for survivors to be taken seriously, for survivors to be treated with real fairness, dignity and respect,” Lamandre said in an interview with Stateline.

Technology and funding

The path to establishing state tracking systems varies widely. Some states have passed laws, while others have set up their trackers through agency action or funding priorities, according to Mateo Cello, a policy implementation associate with the Joyful Heart Foundation. New Hampshire, for example, secured federal money in 2019 to develop a tracking system, but doesn’t have a law on the books.

In some states, tracking systems exist only in specific cities or counties. Before the launch of Michigan’s statewide system, Wayne County partnered with UPS to create a sexual assault kit tracking system in Detroit, using the same technology the company uses to track packages.

Technological approaches also differ, with some states buying software from private companies and others, such as Idaho, building their systems in-house. Multiple vendors and systems, such as SAMS-Track and Track-Kit by Invita Healthcare Technologies, now sell tracking software for evidence kits.

Some states have relied on their own coffers to fund rape kit tracking projects, while others have used grants awarded by the Justice Department’s Office on Violence Against Women or the Sexual Assault Kit Initiative, which is funded by the Bureau of Justice Assistance, a federal agency that awards grants for state, local and tribal criminal justice projects.

“One of the main barriers is the initial cost,” Cello said. “A lot of states get scared by how much implementing a tracking system can cost, so these federal grants definitely help ease some of the states’ worries in terms of creating a tracking system.”

The Sexual Assault Kit Initiative has awarded more than $140 million since 2015 to 23 state agencies, three state law enforcement agencies and nine state attorney general offices in 30 states. Much of the money goes to tracking, though some states have used it to tackle backlogs or hire staff.

“There’s definitely been a lot of progress. That doesn’t mean that it’s done. There’s still a lot more work to do,” Cello said.

“We’d like to see all 50 states get a tracking system.”

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on Facebook and Twitter.

A backpack is seen near evidence markers at the site of a shooting near Edmondson Westside High School in January in Baltimore. The city launched its curfew for juveniles in May in an effort to curtail a recent surge in teen gun violence (Julio Cortez/The Associated Press).

In response to growing public concern over crime, cities and counties throughout the United States are returning to a familiar tool: curfews for young people.

Proponents argue curfews curb crime and protect youth by keeping them off the streets. But research suggests curfews are ineffective, and some juvenile justice advocates and experts warn of unintended consequences such as increased racial profiling, and strained relationships between police and teens.

More than a dozen cities and counties have reinstated or enforced juvenile curfews this year, including Washington, D.C.; Memphis, Tennessee; New Smyrna Beach, Florida; Sea Isle City, New Jersey; and Fulton County, Georgia. Philadelphia and Chicago made their curfews permanent last year.

Vicksburg, Mississippi, recently reinstated its curfew following a shooting in January that killed a 13-year-old and left two others injured. The city also has implemented a community policing program and allocated $200,000 in funding for a center where children and their families can receive mentoring, tutoring and mental health support.

“If you limit the opportunity for youth to be out at 11 o’clock, 12 o’clock, one o’clock and two o’clock in the morning, you limit and control that exposure, and then you put it back where it ought to be — in the home,” Vicksburg Mayor George Flaggs Jr. told Stateline. “I’m a stern believer that you can’t be too punitive. … You have to deal with it from a holistic point of view and that is, include the family, the school and the community.”

Both he and police Chief Penny Jones said crime rates in the community have decreased since the curfew started.

“Kids will get use [sic] to it and it will become the norm. We just want to be sure our youth are safe,” Jones wrote in an email.

But some elected officials moved in the other direction. In June, Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law a statewide ban on curfews that prohibits both cities and counties from implementing them. The ban will take effect in September.

Texas state Rep. David Cook, a Republican who wrote the bill, said he hopes to see “a better relationship between juveniles and law enforcement agencies” as a result of the statewide ban on curfews. Cook also raised concerns that curfews could violate constitutional rights.

“There’s a lot that we can do as a state to improve the juvenile system,” Cook said in an interview with Stateline. “The more that we can have community-based programs, the better off juveniles are going to be with regard to trying to reform their behavior for a better future.”

The District of Columbia is one of the latest cities to enforce a juvenile curfew. The city’s curfew targets seven specific areas and prohibits those under the age of 17 from being outdoors past 11 p.m. on weekdays and midnight on weekends. Minors who violate the curfew will be taken to the Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services, where they will be reunited with their families and provided with rehabilitative services and support.

“Our goal isn’t to arrest our young people, but we want to ensure the safety of our youth here in the District of Columbia,” said Pamela Smith, the city’s police chief, during a news conference this month.

Some cities, including Baltimore and Atlanta, likewise are changing how they handle curfews — opting to reduce or eliminate fines and other penalties and instead provide violators with educational and community-based programs, such as counseling, mentoring and recreational activities. In other jurisdictions, parents and guardians can still receive fines or even go to jail if their kids violate curfew.

Are curfews effective?

In 1996, President Bill Clinton called on cities and towns to impose nightly curfews on teenagers. Today more than 400 towns, cities and counties have enacted youth curfew laws, according to the National Youth Rights Association.

But U.S. juvenile curfews are “ineffective at reducing crime and victimization,” according to a review summarizing the findings of 12 studies that was published in 2016 by the Campbell Collaboration, an international social science research network. The review also found a slight increase in crime during curfew hours and no effect on non-curfew hours.

A paper published in 2014 by the Social Science Research Network measured the effect of the District of Columbia’s juvenile curfews on gun violence by analyzing ShotSpotter data from January 2006 through June 2013. The authors found that gunfire incidents increased by 150% when the curfew was in effect. The authors also suggested that curfews keep bystanders and witnesses from the streets, reducing their deterrent effects on crime.

But some local officials have said curfew enforcement led to a decrease in crime within their jurisdictions.

In Prince George’s County, Maryland, where local leaders enforced a juvenile curfew last year, officials reported a 20% decrease in overall crime during curfew hours in the first month of enforcement.

Experts also worry that curfews will disproportionately affect young people of color.

Juvenile curfews may result in increased racial profiling, said William Carbone, a lecturer and the executive director of the Tow Youth Justice Institute at the University of New Haven.

“I don’t have a lot of faith in curfews at all,” Carbone said in an interview with Stateline. “When you implement a measure, like curfews, you run the risk of creating worse relationships between the youth and the police, and run the risk of profiling. … It’s just one of the areas where kids of color are disproportionately disadvantaged.”

Carbone said curfews may also move crime from one area to another because “kids don’t obey geographic boundaries.”

“If there’s a curfew in one location, [minors] could move to another location. It doesn’t stop the crime,” Carbone said.

Curfews are more likely to harm youth of color because of existing disparities in law enforcement interactions, Candice Jones, the president and CEO of the Public Welfare Foundation, a justice advocacy group, wrote in an email.

“They could be doing something legitimate — coming home from a game late or friend’s house studying — but now a curfew has given cause for them to have an interaction with law enforcement, which we know can be particularly dangerous for Black and Brown youth.”

At least 11,680 children under the age of 17 were arrested in 2020 for curfew violations or loitering, according to statistics released by the Department of Justice’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. Federal data shows that for decades, Black minors have been arrested for curfew and loitering charges at two or three times the rate of their white counterparts. The overall juvenile arrest rate, which includes all offenses, peaked in 1996 and has since declined.

Alternative solutions to youth crime

Some curfew opponents point to approaches such as cognitive behavior therapy, a type of talk therapy that helps identify thought patterns and tries to change them, and tailored drug or mental health treatment programs as more effective strategies, Carbone said.

“Treatments and interventions, and as little contact with police and courts as possible, are very important ingredients in trying to prevent juvenile crime,” Carbone said.

Carbone asserted that diversion — approaches that redirect youth away from the juvenile justice system — works as a proactive measure to engage and prevent youth crime.

“It’s very powerful to a young person when they go into a courtroom and the person on the bench, for example, wearing the long black robe, pounds a gavel and says, ‘I find you delinquent.’ Kids tend to internalize that and then live up to it,” Carbone said.

To counter this, advocates suggest communities should prioritize comprehensive yearlong programs that allow children to engage in sports, cultural, arts and other social activities.

In Maryland, the Department of Juvenile Services in June launched the Safe Summer initiative, which aims to direct additional resources to counties grappling with higher rates of youth violence and create youth employment opportunities. Connecticut lawmakers passed a bill that expands diversionary programs in the state and encourages police to direct children to juvenile review boards instead of court proceedings.

In Tacoma, Washington, city leaders launched the city’s first free summer youth program, offering recreational activities such as basketball tournaments, video games, art and music.

Rather than punishing children and their families with fines for curfew violations, communities should invest in social services and address the root causes of juvenile delinquency, said Dafna Gozani, a senior policy attorney with the National Center for Youth, a nonprofit law firm and juvenile justice advocacy group.

“We see that communities that have access to resources have the least amount of youth crime, and that’s not by coincidence,” Gozani said. “We also see that it is incredibly expensive to support the carceral system and that’s at the expense of investing in things like education, health care, pro-social activities — all the things that actually prevent kids from coming into the system.”

Axl, a 19-year-old Kentucky resident who requested to be identified by only his first name for privacy reasons, found immense value in participating in the program offered by Youth Advocate Programs, a national nonprofit that provides community-based alternatives to out-of-home placements.

He said the program helped him develop healthy coping mechanisms, strengthen his communication skills and embrace his transgender identity.

“I did have a lot of support in the program and it helped me learn not to be scared to be who I want to be. It showed that I can be different and not have to blend in with everyone else,” Axl said.

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on Facebook and Twitter.

In this image taken from police body camera footage provided by Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department on June 24, 2023, a sheriff's deputy arrests one of two people in a grocery store parking lot in Lancaster, Calif. The Los Angeles County sheriff has opened an investigation into two deputies' actions after a bystander's cellphone footage showed one of them tackling a woman while she filmed her husband being handcuffed in what the scandal-ridden department described as disturbing. (Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department via AP)

Faced with growing calls for the public release of police disciplinary records, lawmakers in almost every state have grappled with how to balance revealing law enforcement misdeeds and protecting officers’ privacy and safety.

Fueled by public outrage over the 2020 murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer and other high-profile incidents of police violence, state policymakers have offered a variety of police oversight and transparency bills.

Between May 2020 and April 2023, lawmakers in nearly every state and the District of Columbia introduced almost 500 bills addressing police investigations and discipline, including providing access to disciplinary records, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Sixty-five of the bills have been enacted.

Delaware in June became the most recent to pass transparency legislation, expected to be signed into law this month. California, Colorado, Illinois, Massachusetts, Maryland and New York also are among the states that have opened police disciplinary records to the public in recent years.

But police records in most states remain largely confidential or have some release restrictions. And even in states with open records laws, advocates seeking records have faced barriers, leading to lawsuits.

In Missouri, lawmakers in 2021 passed a “law enforcement bill of rights” that gives officers special legal protections and closes files to police misconduct.

Advocates for transparency argue that the release of disciplinary records empowers residents, journalists and civil rights activists to identify patterns of misconduct and hold officers accountable.

“Police misconduct records should be available to the public in most situations, if not all situations, because these are folks who have a lot of power and authority,” said Lauren Bonds, executive director of the National Police Accountability Project, which advocates for more transparency. “They have the power to lawfully take a person’s life. The stakes are just so high when there’s a police officer who’s got a lengthy record of misconduct.”

But some police unions and law enforcement organizations have raised concerns about officer safety and privacy, with names and other identifying information made public. They emphasize that the focus should be on serious misconduct rather than minor infractions like being tardy, worry about false accusations and want officers to have due process.

“What’s included should be substantiated. It should be included only after the officer was provided due process, and it should be significant misconduct,” said Bill Johnson, the executive director of the National Association of Police Organizations, in an interview with Stateline. He said that includes an officer having the opportunity to respond to allegations and having a “neutral fact finder” investigate.

“If it’s going to be something that’s useful, where you are safeguarding the public against persons who should not be in law enforcement, you have to be careful about, ‘What are we really talking about here? What gets included and how do we know that we can rely on this?’”

In Missouri, civil rights experts argue the bill of rights created by the state’s new law poses a major roadblock to police accountability — and gives officers far more due process rights than civilians.

Ongoing debate

Even states that have recently enacted laws face ongoing debate.

In Maryland, where records have been available through public records requests since October 2021, public interest groups and news organizations have filed lawsuits citing exorbitant fees, missed deadlines and outright denials of records requests by law enforcement agencies.

And in New Jersey, the state Supreme Court issued a ruling in June that requires individuals who sue for public records to pay the entire cost of their own attorneys, regardless of the case’s outcome. Public interest and transparency advocates fear the decision will create additional hurdles for people seeking access to police records, including disciplinary reports and dashboard camera videos.

Delaware is the latest state to pass legislation that will require substantiated reports of misconduct, such as use of force that results in serious physical injury and sexual assault or harassment, to be reported to the state’s Criminal Justice Council and posted publicly on the council’s website. Democratic Gov. John Carney is expected to sign the legislation into law on Aug. 7, according to state Rep. Melissa Minor-Brown, a Democrat who sponsored the bill.

“After we witnessed the situation that happened with George Floyd and we saw the public outcry, we knew that something had to be done,” Minor-Brown said in an interview with Stateline. “We owe it to the community. I owe it to my son, to my daughter, to my husband, to my colleagues, to those who do not have a seat at the table, to those whose voices aren’t heard, to those who have experienced injustice.”

It took lawmakers about three years to push through the legislation. While transparency advocates supported previous versions of the bill, they opposed the current version, arguing that it falls short of achieving full transparency and external oversight. The ACLU of Delaware noted, for example, that police departments will decide whether to investigate complaints and that only specific categories of misconduct are covered.

“It does not necessarily meet the standards that we think is enough to increase trust between communities and the police,” said Javonne Rich, the group’s policy and advocacy director, in an interview with Stateline. “All the information that will be made public will be what the police department wants to be made public.”

But Delaware Attorney General Kathy Jennings, a Democrat, endorsed the new bill, as did representatives from several police agencies. During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in June, a witness read a supportive statement from Jamie Leonard, who leads the Delaware Fraternal Order of Police union, WHYY reported.

“We wanted to lift the veil of secrecy that so many believe surrounds our profession,’’ Leonard’s statement said, according to WHYY, the Philadelphia public radio station. “We want to provide access to information that includes names on cases where we believe our officers fell short of the standard expected by our agencies, by other officers, and by our community.”

Minor-Brown, the Delaware state representative, said that although the bill may not entirely meet advocates’ expectations, it represents a “huge step in the right direction.”

“I hear what the advocates are saying and there’s definitely going to be some space for tweaking,” Minor-Brown said. “We could have not moved forward based off of some of the advocates feeling like it wasn’t enough, and then we could have gotten nowhere. I was not willing to not move anywhere because we weren’t at 100%.”

California concerns

In 2018, California made records on officer use-of-force incidents, sexual assault cases and acts of dishonesty available through public records requests. Another law enacted in 2021 established a decertification process for law enforcement officers involved in serious misconduct.

But this year, a provision enacted in the state’s budget shifts back to local police departments the responsibility of releasing their records, instead of having the state’s Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training do so.

The measure, backed by Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom as a cost-saving measure in the face of a large budget deficit, drew strong criticism from criminal justice and press freedom groups, The Associated Press reported.

The state commission backed the bill. The measure “continues to ensure public access to police misconduct records in a way that improves efficiencies, reduces duplicative efforts, and saves substantial taxpayer money,” wrote Meagan Poulos, the commission’s legislative liaison and public information officer, in an emailed statement.

But transparency advocates argue that the public should have a central clearinghouse for the records and that some local police departments may resist releasing such information.

“There has been significant resistance to disclosure. Others have been more proactive,” said David Loy, the legal director of the First Amendment Coalition, a nonpartisan group that aims to protect free speech rights, in an interview with Stateline. “It impacts the entire community. … Information is power, and without transparency, there’s no accountability at any level.”

Some police unions and law enforcement organizations have raised concerns about officer safety and privacy in California and nationwide. They fear that releasing unrestricted personnel records, which may include names and other identifying information, could expose individual officers to undue scrutiny and even endanger their safety and professional reputation.

“We understand that’s not the intent of why these things are getting released, but it is an unintended consequence of releasing names. … They could be doxxed, they could be harassed, there could be protests in front of their house. And because of the nature of the work we do, it’s very concerning,” said Lolita Harper, the executive director of the Sheriff’s Employees’ Benefit Association and a former detective for the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department, in an interview with Stateline.

Many law enforcement groups recognize the importance of accountability and transparency in fostering community trust and say that making disciplinary records accessible plays a significant role in achieving that goal.

“The utmost thing is to have that trust with the public, so with the specifics that at least the California legislation requires … we can understand that compromise with where the legislation was coming from and if that helps the public to have more trust than we understand it,” Harper said.

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on Facebook and Twitter.

This article has been updated since it was initially published.

Industry supporters say regulatory consistency also could steer consumers away from illicit sources, which can be even more dangerous (Ethan Miller/Getty Images).

Amid the growing acceptance and legalization of cannabis use across the country, a concerning reality has emerged: The state-by-state patchwork of safety regulations can leave marijuana consumers wandering through a haze of uncertainty, exposing them to potential risks.

Under federal law, marijuana is illegal — period. So, it’s up to individual states to determine their own regulations and safety standards.

Those inconsistent regulations are part of a broad debate about the U.S. cannabis industry. The 47 states that allow at least some cannabis use (cannabis is still illegal in Idaho, Kansas and Nebraska) have taken various approaches to issues such as the allowable amount of euphoria-inducing tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, in a product.

“We don’t really know what’s going on behind the doors of each and every lab in each and every state,” said Anna Schwabe, a cannabis geneticist and the director of cannabis education, research and development for 420 Organics, in an interview with Stateline. “I don’t really have any sense of or any level of comfort for the numbers that they’re putting out.”

Most states require legal cannabis products to be tested by licensed laboratories for potency and for contaminants such as pesticides and heavy metals.

Still, the lack of uniform testing standards has led to inconsistent lab results. Some labs that test products on behalf of farms have been caught inflating THC levels to cater to the demand for potent products, leading to a practice called “lab shopping” by producers, according to Leafly, an online platform dedicated to all things cannabis.

“Some businesses will decide to contract with those labs because it means that their products will test stronger [in THC] and in theory, be more attractive to consumers,” said Morgan Fox, the political director for the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, known as NORML. “This is pretty unethical, and also an unfortunate byproduct of a financially competitive testing market.”

Some states have had to issue recalls due to products being cleared for sale despite the presence of harmful contaminants. In May 2022, the Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority suspended Scale Laboratories’ testing license after regulators uncovered more than 140 approved samples with mold, salmonella or E. coli. The authority also recalled 99 products related to the lab’s alleged rules violations.

An estimated 64,000-pound marijuana recall in Michigan in 2021 was linked to at least 18 health complaints, including increased seizure activity, allergic reactions, paranoia and a chemical burning sensation.

The Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission, which regulates the production and sale of marijuana in that state, issued a recall in late June for several batches of cannabis flower that tested positive for mold and heavy metals, including cadmium and mercury. The recalled flower was harvested before testing requirements were updated to include tests for microbiological contaminants and heavy metals.

“Having some standards of operation across the board would dramatically decrease the variation that we see among labs, but then we would have to have some sort of regulatory oversight to make sure everybody is following the rules [on THC levels and testing practices], which we already don’t have,” Schwabe said.

Testing methods

Labs across the country have different methods of testing cannabis for potency and contamination, which may be part of the reason why there’s so much variation, Schwabe said. Some states run the labs and have a more standardized testing approach, while others offer licenses to independent labs.

Inconsistent state cannabis regulations could have potentially dire implications for consumer health, according to a 2022 study published in the Environmental Health Perspectives journal. The study found that state-level regulatory disparities pose an increased risk of contaminant exposure for immunocompromised people who could contract potentially fatal infections, while also causing confusion among cannabis growers, manufacturers and testing laboratories.

The study also found that identical cannabis samples could be considered acceptable in one jurisdiction but not in others.

Cannabis consumers also face the challenge of navigating inconsistencies in THC potency and marijuana strain names across different dispensaries and states, Schwabe said.

“If you’re thinking that Durban Poison is your go-to strain to alleviate whatever symptoms you are having and it works well for you, if you wanted to refill your medicine in a different state or at a different dispensary, you might end up getting something that’s not what you’re used to,” Schwabe said.

What is permissible in one state may be prohibited or regulated differently in another, said Karmen Hanson, a senior fellow with the health program of the National Conference of State Legislatures, a think tank working on behalf of state lawmakers.

“Legislators generally want to just have a program that works for their state in the way that they feel is best for their state, and that’s why they all look different,” Hanson said in an interview with Stateline. “What’s going to work in Colorado isn’t going to work for North Dakota or Texas.”

Moreover, cannabis programs are constantly evolving as states learn from one another and adapt their laws and regulations based on factors such as emerging research or public health concerns, said Michelle Rutter Friberg, the National Cannabis Industry Association’s director of government relations.

“States are still very interested in the revenue, but they’re also more interested in things like getting rid of an illicit market, making sure that the products that people are consuming are safe or trying to end the war on drugs by legalizing cannabis and doing so in an equitable way,” Rutter Friberg said in an interview.

Keeping consumers safe

Industry supporters say regulatory consistency also could steer consumers away from illicit sources, which can be even more dangerous.

“You don’t know what’s in it, especially at a time when we’re talking about things like fentanyl. That’s more of a reason now than ever to talk about the regulation of products like this,” Rutter Friberg said.

States have implemented various initiatives to ensure product safety and to protect consumers. In several states, including Colorado and Washington, edibles are limited to 10 mg of THC per serving, with a maximum of 10 servings or 100 mg of THC per package. In Connecticut, edibles are limited to 5 mg of THC per serving and a maximum of 100 mg of THC per package. And in Massachusetts, edibles are limited to 5.5 mg of THC per serving and up to 110 mg of THC per package.

The Colorado legislature in 2017 began prohibiting the production and sale of edibles shaped like humans, animals or fruits in an effort to reduce their appeal to children. Similar measures, including child-resistant packaging, have been implemented in other states to make cannabis products less accessible to children.

Some marijuana advocates argue that federal legalization could provide a solution by establishing consistent standards and harmonizing regulations across state lines. Alongside potential research funding, they say, federal legalization could be a way to streamline the cannabis industry and enhance consumer safety.

“If [the federal government] legalized it, that would open the doors tremendously and wipe out some of the issues that we have,” Schwabe said. “We could all work together as one industry and start working on some of the things we don’t know … and start working toward making it safe for everybody.”

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on Facebook and Twitter.

A transgender teenager, born and raised in Missouri, prepares to leave the state as he and his parents pursue a safer environment (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

Democratic governors and state lawmakers across the country are mobilizing against a surge of Republican restrictions on transgender health care by establishing their states as sanctuaries for gender-affirming care.

Earlier this month, Democratic Gov. Wes Moore signed an executive order making Maryland the 11th state, plus the District of Columbia, to declare itself a sanctuary. A bill in New York has cleared the legislature and is awaiting the signature of Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul.

Last year, California became the first state to declare itself a sanctuary. It has since been joined by Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, Vermont and Washington. A growing number of cities, including New York City; Kansas City, Missouri; and West Hollywood, California, also have become sanctuaries.

These states and cities are emerging as havens with legal protections to shield health care providers, transgender people and their supporters from lawsuits and criminal penalties levied by other states.

Maryland’s executive order prohibits the use of state resources, such as incarceration facilities, to comply with subpoenas against transgender people and their health care providers. It mandates that all state agencies “take whatever action is necessary” to protect those involved in providing, receiving or assisting in travel for gender-affirming care.

The order also ensures that transgender people will not be extradited from Maryland for seeking gender-affirming care, and doctors will not lose their licenses for providing such care. Similar measures have been implemented by other sanctuary states.

New York Democratic Assemblymember Harry Bronson, who led the effort to pass the sanctuary bill in the lower house, highlighted his state’s commitment to embracing and protecting transgender people.

“That’s what New York state is saying by this piece of legislation, that we love you for who you are, and we’re going to support you for who you are,” Bronson said in an interview with Stateline. “We’re going to make sure that whatever legal means we have, we’re going to make sure that you’re protected from those who will hate.”

Republican-led efforts to curtail or criminalize providing or receiving gender-affirming medical treatment have gained momentum in recent years, fueled by concerns over parental rights, religious beliefs and the ongoing debate surrounding gender identity.

At least 20 states have restricted or banned gender-affirming care for minors, according to data from the Movement Advancement Project, a nonprofit think tank that advocates for LGBTQ+ rights.

At least five states — Alabama, Florida, Idaho, North Dakota and Oklahoma — have made it a felony to provide gender-affirming care to minors. In other states, laws range from banning the use of public funds or state property to provide care or promote social transitioning, to prohibiting out-of-state providers from delivering telehealth care.

On Tuesday, a federal judge struck down Arkansas’ ban on gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors. The ban, which had been blocked from going into effect for nearly two years, prohibited physicians from providing “gender transition” treatments such as hormones, puberty blockers and surgeries to those under age 18.

Idaho’s Vulnerable Child Protection Act, which was signed into law in April by Republican Gov. Brad Little, bans puberty blockers, hormones and surgeries for minors. The law also makes providing gender-affirming health care for minors a felony with a penalty of up to 10 years in prison.

“In signing this bill, I recognize our society plays a role in protecting minors from surgeries or treatments that can irreversibly damage their healthy bodies,” Little wrote in a transmittal letter to state lawmakers. “However, as policymakers we should take great caution whenever we consider allowing the government to interfere with loving parents and their decisions about what is best for their children.”

Some states, including Arizona, Georgia and Texas, approved bans with exceptions, such as allowing medication or nonsurgical gender-affirming care and allowing minors who were diagnosed or receiving treatment prior to the law’s passage to continue or wean off medication.

Many of the laws explicitly bar gender-affirming treatments such as hormone therapy and surgeries for transgender minors. Proponents argue that they protect children from making potentially irreversible medical decisions, while preserving parental authority.

“There is no doubt that these procedures are ‘abuse’ under Texas law, and thus must be halted,” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a February statement. “The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) has a responsibility to act accordingly. I’ll do everything I can to protect against those who take advantage of and harm young Texans.” (Paxton has since been suspended from office and faces an impeachment trial.)

Olivia Hunt, the policy director for the advocacy group National Center for Transgender Equality, said proponents of transgender health care bans often misrepresent transition-related health care as new or experimental to garner support.

“The science reliably shows that the proponents of anti-trans policies are simply wrong,” Hunt said in an interview with Stateline.

Gender-affirming care encompasses both medical and non-medical services, such as social affirmation, puberty blockers, hormone therapy and surgical procedures, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Social affirmation involves adopting or using a name, hairstyles, clothing, pronouns and restrooms or other facilities that correspond to one’s gender identity, according to the department.

Surgeries are typically reserved for adults, although they may be considered for adolescents on a case-by-case basis, the department said.

Leading medical associations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, endorse gender-affirming care as safe and effective. The American Medical Association considers it medically necessary, highlighting the importance of these interventions in supporting the well-being of transgender individuals.

However, some European nations, including Norway, Finland, Sweden and the United Kingdom, recently have introduced restrictions on gender-affirming care for minors.

Research conducted by public health authorities in England, Finland and Sweden has not shown “meaningful improvements in youth’s mental health” as a result of gender-affirming care, according to an article published in the journal Current Sexual Health Reports in April. The article also suggested that puberty blockers may hinder bone development.

Attitudes toward transgender people and issues in the United States are divided, according to polling data from the Pew Research Center. Although the survey found that 64% of adults support transgender nondiscrimination laws, 60% also hold the belief that a person’s gender is determined by the sex assigned at birth, and 46% support legislation that would prohibit gender-affirming health care for minors.

At least 130 bills restricting gender-affirming health care have been introduced in state legislatures across the country this session — a roughly threefold increase from 43 bills last year, according to American Civil Liberties Union data.

The consequences of transgender health care bans are profound, Hunt said. These restrictions may exacerbate gender dysphoria — a disconnect between a person’s gender identity and their assigned sex at birth — leading to heightened rates of depression, anxiety and self-harm, according to research cited by the Association of American Medical Colleges Center for Health Justice.

“Having your civil rights up as a matter of public debate is one of the most stressful things that you can do to anybody who’s part of a marginalized population,” Hunt added.

In addition to simply declaring themselves sanctuaries, Hunt said, states that want to support the health care needs of transgender people should pay attention to insurance coverage and affordability.

“When politicians are considering these sanctuary refuge laws, they also need to look at what they’re doing to ensure broader equity for people who are trying to rely on them to actually access care, access social services and be able to lead fulfilled lives as part of the communities they’re moving into,” she said.

Transgender health care bans have led a growing number of transgender people to seek refuge elsewhere.

“Trans people who can afford to do so and have the flexibility to do so are often picking up and leaving,” Hunt said. “That’s creating people who are refugees within our own country. That’s something that every lawmaker that’s voting in favor of these bills — those that are attacking their own constituents — should be deeply ashamed of.”

Recent polling data gathered by Data for Progress, a progressive think tank and polling firm, showed that at least 43% of transgender adults have considered relocating and another 8% have already relocated due to anti-LGBTQ+ legislation.

Sheresse Jackson, a transgender woman who relocated from Philadelphia to Baltimore about a year ago, said she discovered a newfound sense of belonging and purpose in her new home.

“I love Baltimore. I love being trans. I wouldn’t change it for nothing in the world,” she said in an interview with Stateline. “I can say it’s making me a better person to be Sheresse because back home, I had my mind on the streets still — running around doing nothing with my life other than working. But being Sheresse, now I’m in school to try to get my CNA [certified nursing assistant] license and my high school diploma.”

Maryland’s sanctuary status, Jackson said, fosters an environment in which transgender people can experience a sense of safety, acceptance and comfort.

“To make [Maryland] a sanctuary state, that will be good for other trans people that’s in the closet and for the ones that’s out because you’ll have a place where you can come to feel safe and comfortable,” Jackson said.

Prior to becoming a sanctuary state, Maryland enacted the Trans Health Equity Act, which eliminated state-imposed restrictions on who can receive gender-affirming care, leaving the decision-making process to patients and their doctors. Moreover, the law overturned the previous prohibition on gender-affirming care for Medicaid recipients under 18.

Maryland state Del. Kris Fair, one of the bill’s sponsors and the chair of the LGBTQ+ Caucus, emphasized the importance of providing equitable health care options for the transgender community.

“Ensuring that trans people have access to the same medical health care options that every other American has is a critical piece towards ensuring that there is a sense of equity in our society,” Fair said.

This article was initially published by Stateline, an affiliate of States Newsroom.