Associate Professor Christopher M. Campbell - Time will tell: Examining the potential effects of pre-arrest diversion efforts for drug offences using interrupted time-series analyses

Fulbright Scholarship Fellow Associate Professor Christopher M. Campbell delivers a seminar on their research - To combat drug use and possession while reducing systemic social harm (e.g., conviction records and incarceration) some localized jurisdictions in England have made an effort to divert some of the lowest-level offences to treatment, away from system sanctions. In an effort to gauge the aggregate impact of pre-arrest (police-led) diversion, we employ a synthetic control design in an interrupted time series analysis. Relying on quarterly data over the last 10 years from several policing areas in England, we compare jurisdictions that engaged in a systematic diversion effort (e.g., West Midlands) to those that did not, while controlling for multiple factors on which the jurisdictions may differ (e.g., police workforce size, unemployment, population). The detectable impact of pre-arrest diversion on key outcomes and implications regarding police reported crime, cautions, and prosecutions are discussed.  For more information about the IAS, please visit - https://www.lboro.ac.uk/research/ias