COVID, Crime & Criminal Justice: Affirming the Call for System Reform Research

Early into the COVID-19 pandemic, Miller & Blumstein (2020) outlined a theoretical research program (TRP) oriented around themes of contagion control and containment, legal amnesty, system leniency, nonenforcement, and tele-justice. Here, two and a half years later, these lingering themes are revisited to advocate for empirical research informing criminal justice system reform. The pandemic created rare natural experiment research conditions that enable unique and potentially valuable insights on necessitated innovations that may indicate future justice practices and policies. Given the sweeping effects of the shutdown, examples are numerous ranging from staffing analyses to estimate agencies’ personnel needs to ensure that basic public safety functions can be met after early retirements and resignations from virus risk and anti-police sentiment, the use of virtual communication in various legal proceedings at arrest, incarceration, and release junctures, and, especially, the risks versus benefits of early release. In addition to better identifying who should be jailed pre-trial, prioritization of calls for service, triaging of court cases, and hygiene and sanitation issues within facilities are other important examples central to a COVID and crime TRP. Attending research could demonstrate the utility of normative operations and identify shortfalls to be addressed during anomic conditions prior to another shutdown or similar event and present, through comparison of innovative and traditional derived outcomes, system reform and improvement opportunities. By seizing upon rare data made possible by natural experimental COVID generated conditions, researchers can meaningfully investigate the ongoing applicability of justice system adaptations mandated by the pandemic in terms of effectiveness and efficiency toward the interrelated goals of evidence-based practice discovery and justice reform.