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<jats:p> The Editorial Committee of the Annual Review of Criminology has launched a new section within the journal in which we invite one or more authors to write a more personal and yet scholarly article that puts forth their perspective on an important and timely topic. For Volume 4, we asked Dr. Phillip Atiba Goff and Dr. Cynthia Lum to provide their perspectives on policing. </jats:p><jats:p> We hope our readers enjoy this new and exciting series of “Perspectives.” </jats:p>

<jats:p> Public attention to sexual harassment has increased sharply with the rise of the #MeToo movement, although the phenomenon has sustained strong scientific and policy interest for almost 50 years. A large and impressive interdisciplinary scholarly literature has emerged over this period, yet the criminology of sexual harassment has been slow to develop. This review considers how criminological theory and research can advance knowledge on sexual harassment—and how theory and research on sexual harassment can advance criminological knowledge. We review classic and contemporary studies and highlight points of engagement in these literatures, particularly regarding life-course research and violence against women. After outlining prospects for a criminology of sexual harassment that more squarely addresses perpetrators as well as victims, we discuss how criminological insights might contribute to policy efforts directed toward prevention and control. </jats:p>

<jats:p> This review explores those varied bodies of work that have sought to understand crowd behavior and violent crowd conduct in particular. Although the study of such collective conduct was once considered central to social science, this has long ceased to be the case and in many respects the study of protest and riot now receives relatively little attention, especially within criminology. In addition to offering a critical overview of work in this field, this review argues in favor of an expanded conception of its subject matter. In recent times, scholarly concern has increasingly been focused on questions of etiology, i.e., asking how and why events such as riots occur, with the consequence that less attention is paid to other, arguably equally important questions, including how riots spread, how they end, and, critically, what happens in their aftermath. Accordingly, as a corrective, the review proposes a life-cycle model of riots. </jats:p>

<jats:p> Surprisingly, scholars studying mass atrocity and genocide have frequently sidelined criminological theories and concepts. Other disciplines have addressed these crimes while mostly ignoring criminological insights and theories. In this review, we assess the potential of criminological theories to contribute to explaining and preventing mass atrocities and genocide, highlight criminological insights from the study of these crimes, and unlock the existing criminological knowledge base for application in the context of these crimes. We begin by outlining how mass atrocities and genocide are similar to other crimes that criminologists have routinely studied. We then turn toward frameworks of structural causation, focusing on the state and community levels. Subsequently, we address microlevel theories that inform why individuals commit such violence, ranging from theories of choice, the life course, and techniques of neutralization to social learning theory and theories of desistance from crime. Finally, we address the victims of genocide and mass atrocity, including the factors associated with victim labels and victimhood itself. </jats:p>

<jats:p> This review outlines approaches to explanations of crime that incorporate the concept of human mobility—or the patterns of movement throughout space of individuals or populations in the context of everyday routines—with a focus on novel strategies for the collection of geographically referenced data on mobility patterns. We identify three approaches to understanding mobility–crime linkages: ( a) Place and neighborhood approaches characterize local spatial units of analysis of varying size with respect to the intersection in space and time of potential offenders, victims, and guardians; ( b) person-centered approaches emphasize the spatial trajectories of individuals and person–place interactions that influence crime risk; and ( c) ecological network approaches consider links between persons or collectivities based on shared activity locations, capturing influences of broader systems of interconnection on spatial- and individual-level variation in crime. We review data collection strategies for the measurement of mobility across these approaches, considering both the challenges and promise of mobility-based research for criminology. </jats:p>

<jats:p> Over the past decade, a growing body of literature has emerged under the umbrella of narrative criminology. We trace the origins of this field to narrative scholarship in the social sciences more broadly and review the recent history of criminological engagement in this field. We then review contemporary developments, paying particular attention to research around desistance and victimology. Our review highlights the most important critiques and challenges for narrative criminology and suggests fruitful directions in moving forward. We conclude by making a case for the consolidation and integration of narrative criminology, in hopes that this movement becomes more than an isolated clique. </jats:p>

<jats:p> One of the central debates animating the interpretation of gun research for public policy is the question of whether the presence of firearms independently makes violent situations more lethal, known as an instrumentality effect, or whether determined offenders will simply substitute other weapons to affect fatalities in the absence of guns. The latter position assumes sufficient intentionality among homicide assailants to kill their victims, irrespective of the tools available to do so. Studies on the lethality of guns, the likelihood of injury by weapon type, offender intent, and firearm availability provide considerable evidence that guns contribute to fatalities that would otherwise have been nonfatal assaults. The increasing lethality of guns, based on size and technology, and identifiable gaps in existing gun control policies mean that new and innovative policy interventions are required to reduce firearm fatalities and to alleviate the substantial economic and social costs associated with gun violence. </jats:p>

<jats:p> Employers would prefer not to hire people who will engage in criminal behavior for which the employer incurs costs. In the United States, employers are allowed to use publicly available conviction information to try to predict which candidates are at higher or lower risk of criminal activity. This open-records approach stands in stark contrast to closed-records systems in Europe, where only the government has access to this information and only the government can make determinations about potential employee risk. In this review, we find that ( a) US employers’ use of conviction information is not clearly aligned with the risk of future criminal behavior or employer costs, and ( b) using such information leads to hiring errors that pose costs to society. Perversely, we find that many of these problems come from government statutes around negligent-hiring lawsuits rather than from inherent preferences on the part of employers. We suggest research that would improve the use of conviction history to predict future criminal risk, and we discuss a hybrid policy for the United States in which the government, not employers, makes the final determination about employee risk. We argue that this approach may result in both better risk predictions and better alignment between employer and societal goals, creating advantages for employers, candidates, and society. </jats:p>

<jats:p> I review the growing body of research that either directly assesses the effect of Ban the Box (BTB) on the employment prospects of those with criminal histories, tests for spillover effects operating through statistical discrimination, or assesses the labor-market impacts of related screening practices. I begin with a theoretical discussion that works through how widespread reluctance to hire those with criminal histories is likely to generate market-level employment and earnings penalties for various groups of workers, and how the size and distribution of these penalties likely depend on the information available to employers. I then turn to a review of research over the past 15 years or so that either directly assesses the impact of BTB or addresses highly related and relevant research questions. The weight of the empirical evidence suggests that BTB does not improve the employment prospects of those with criminal histories at private-sector employers, although there is some evidence of an improvement in employment prospects in the public sector. Regarding spillover effects operating through statistical discrimination, several studies indicate that BTB harms the employment prospects of African-American men. Furthermore, research on the effects of credit checks, occupational licensing, and drug testing appears to indicate that more information available to the employer improves the employment prospects of African Americans. Collectively, these findings imply that in the absence of objective information, employers place weight on stereotypes about the characteristics of black workers that are generally negative and inaccurate. </jats:p>

<jats:p> There are widespread concerns about the use of artificial intelligence in law enforcement. Predictive policing and risk assessment are salient examples. Worries include the accuracy of forecasts that guide both activities, the prospect of bias, and an apparent lack of operational transparency. Nearly breathless media coverage of artificial intelligence helps shape the narrative. In this review, we address these issues by first unpacking depictions of artificial intelligence. Its use in predictive policing to forecast crimes in time and space is largely an exercise in spatial statistics that in principle can make policing more effective and more surgical. Its use in criminal justice risk assessment to forecast who will commit crimes is largely an exercise in adaptive, nonparametric regression. It can in principle allow law enforcement agencies to better provide for public safety with the least restrictive means necessary, which can mean far less use of incarceration. None of this is mysterious. Nevertheless, concerns about accuracy, fairness, and transparency are real, and there are tradeoffs between them for which there can be no technical fix. You can't have it all. Solutions will be found through political and legislative processes achieving an acceptable balance between competing priorities. </jats:p>