Personal experiences with public officials influence how those officials are perceived. We question whether these experiential effects extend to other officials. If people draw on what they know to make inferences about unfamiliar evaluative targets, then interactions with one actor may shape evaluations of other independent actors. Focusing on police and courts, analyses of data from two surveys reveal that personal interactions with public officials produce spillover effects on appraisals of officials in different sectors. The findings indicate that experiential spillover constitutes an underappreciated force in public opinion, one that operates outside the control of the actors being evaluated.

The study aimed to analyse the European experience of investigating criminal offences in the field of official activity and the peculiarities of its adaptation to the Ukrainian context. The study employed a combination of case study methods, formal legal analysis, content analysis, comparative legal analysis, contextual analysis and PESTEL (political, economic, social, technological, environmental and legal) analysis. The analysis of international experience was conducted in the context of European Union member states that have successfully established effective systems for investigating crimes in the public sector, including Germany, France and Poland. The study found that the approaches and strategies implemented in Ukraine have several shortcomings that significantly reduce the effectiveness of criminal investigations, including a widening gap between the number of registered offences and the number of notices of suspicion served. The reason for the identified discrepancy is the lack of coordination between the subjects of criminal investigations, as well as the lack of transparency of the investigation process and accountability of the parties involved. To overcome these shortcomings, the study recommended adapting the German experience in the field of round-the-clock interaction between the subjects of a criminal investigation, which guarantees quick access to information and prompt permission to conduct investigative actions. Adaptation of the French experience in conducting investigations was recommended to ensure cross-control of the investigation subjects and improve the efficiency of their work. The Polish experience of utilizing electronic resources in criminal proceedings was recommended to enhance interdisciplinary cooperation among the parties involved in the investigation. Adopting the best international practices can be used to enhance the detection statistics of criminal offences and increase public confidence in the country’s system for investigating and prosecuting criminal misconduct in office.

In 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote Letter from Birmingham Jail in response to white clergy members who had urged him to cease demonstrating against segregation laws, follow the standards of law and order, and pursue change through official governmental channels. These remonstrations mirror arguments invoked to delegitimize dissent and provide support for legal but immoral governmental policies such as American slavery, Nazi atrocities, and apartheid. At the heart of religious justifications for such arguments is Romans 13:1–7, which endorses human government as God ordained but can be interpreted to require unqualified obedience to law. It is also the go to passage used by Christians to describe the role and authority of police officers in their law enforcement capacity. The way Romans 13 has often been interpreted and applied, however, is exegetically and theologically problematic. Most importantly, the passage is not describing the role of individual police officers as is often argued, but rather the operation of human government as an institution. This flawed starting point has led to a cascade of other interpretive errors, which include describing police officers as agents of God’s wrath and delegitimizing dissent against unjust laws. It also promotes some of the most pernicious features of American law enforcement, including the alienating idea of police as the thin blue line, the we-they mentality that demeans those being policed, the use of warrior to describe the policing role, the militarization of law enforcement, and the systemic racism that plagues U.S. policing. In this article, the author offers a more exegetically and theologically accurate reading of Romans 13, with very different implications for role of law enforcement, and gestures toward a much-needed Christian theology of policing.

This paper examines the consequences of post-release management programs, arguing that these initiatives extend penal power beyond formal sentencing through mechanisms such as surveillance, discretionary policing, and information sharing. While prolific offender programs are framed as risk-management strategies rather than punishment, they operate in ways that mirror carceral control, restricting autonomy and increasing individuals’ susceptibility to criminalization. Drawing on qualitative interviews with crime analysts and police officers, I analyze how the prolific label structures police interactions, justifies heightened scrutiny and reinforces recidivist assumptions that shape sentencing and enforcement decisions. The findings challenge clear-cut distinctions between carceral and non-carceral interventions, highlighting how penal control functions fluidly across legal and administrative domains. By linking empirical findings to broader theoretical discussions of punishment, surveillance, and risk governance, this study contributes to ongoing debates on the expansion of state power in contemporary criminal justice.

Research on the ethics of life and death in organizations has overlooked the growing role of social media in shaping the ethical implications of organizational regulations on death. More specifically, while recent research suggests that memes are increasingly used to influence the reputation and perception of organizational actions, research on their roles in legitimating the organization of death is scant. This paper analyzes Internet memes legitimizing police slaughter in Brazilian favelas. Three primary discourses were identified: denying life worthiness, establishing actors deserving death, and upholding the police organization as executioners of death. This paper contributes to research on the ethics of organizational death in three different ways in a context of political polarization and growing authoritarism. First, it discusses how social media creates a legitimate discourse that makes death visible and gloats over its victims. Second, this discourse is enabled by social media memes, which divert the ethical debate on life and death, replacing it with superficial and transient engagement. Third, we discuss how memes can reinforce the role of the state police enforcement apparatus as an expression of racialized inequalities.

This article explores the underlying causes of vigilantism, moving beyond existing explanations to propose a novel perspective: state absenteeism. Drawing upon an original dataset collected at the subnational level in Guatemala, the study utilizes police station data as a proxy measure of state presence. This research article sheds light on the intricate dynamics driving vigilantism by analyzing the interplay between state actions, security provision, and the emergence of extralegal justice mechanisms. Empirical findings suggest that existing theories do not fully explain the surge in vigilantism, underscoring the importance of considering state provision of security at the subnational level. This theoretical and empirical contribution highlights the role of uneven state presence in shaping responses to insecurity and calls for more equitable and locally responsive security provision to address the root causes of extralegal justice.

Front-line workers mediate law on the books and law in action, translating higher-level laws into local policy. One important mediating institution is the police. Whereas most research analyzes how the law empowers police to label certain denizens “criminals” – both within and outside criminal legal contexts – this article demonstrates how policing also affects who is recognized as an innocent crime victim. Synthesizing existing scholarship, I theorize three paths through which police can affect legal recognition of crime victims: criminalization, minimization, and legal estrangement. I then test the extent to which these processes affect victims’ access to public benefits provided under victim compensation law. Drawing on never-before-analyzed administrative data from 18 U.S. states (N = 768,382), I find police account for more than half of all victim benefits denials. These denials are racialized and gendered: Police are significantly more likely to criminalize and be estranged from Black male victims and significantly more likely to minimize the injuries of Black female victims. Additional qualitative data suggest police systematically perceive Black men as not truly innocent and Black survivors of gender-based violence as not truly victims. These findings advance our understanding of the expansive role of police in society as well as the porous boundary between social provision and social control.

Calls to defund the police gained prominence with the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement and take various forms. Depending on what will be defunded, the idea has attracted support from different parts of the political spectrum. The politicized nature of the debate often cuts short reflection on how best to assess proposals to defund the police. This article takes up that task. It begins by developing a typology of defund measures: abolitionist cuts, abolitionist reallocation, disaggregative cuts, and disaggregative reallocation. It then outlines a framework to evaluate policing and defund measures, drawing on criteria from the ethics of defensive force. Since policing relies on force, it faces a high justificatory bar and must satisfy the principles of just aim, proportionality, and necessity. The state should not fund unjustified forms of policing that violate those principles. Different violations, though, demand different policy responses.

There is a lack of knowledge on deaths related to police use of force across Canada. Tracking (In)Justice is a research project that is trying to make sense of the life and death outcomes of policing through developing a collaborative, interdisciplinary, and open-source database using publicly available sources. With a collaborative data governance approach, which includes communities most impacted and families of those killed by police, we document and analyze 745 cases of police-involved deaths when intentional force is used across Canada from 2000 to 2023. The data indicate a steady rise in deaths, in particular shooting deaths, as well as that Black and Indigenous people are over-represented. We conclude with reflections on the ethical complexities of datafication, knowledge development of what we call death data and the challenges of enumerating deaths, pitfalls of official sources, the data needs of communities, and the living nature of the Tracking (In)Justice project.