Has the COVID-19 crisis increased or decreased overall levels of violence? Preliminary evidence suggests that the pandemic is driving an increase in domestic violence, hate crimes, and social unrest patterns that will take some time to discern. Authors Manuel Eisner and Amy Nivette identify key research topics and questions to explore how the pandemic has affected violence levels in the U.S. and abroad.

Did a reduction in policing following the 2014 killing of Michael Brown, a Black man, by police in Ferguson, Missouri, and similar incidents in other cities drive an increase in homicides? Criminologist Richard Rosenfeld and HFG Director of Research Joel Wallman studied arrest rates in 53 U.S. cities and found no evidence for a “Ferguson Effect” that would link the homicide spike to de-policing following police killings of Black citizens.

In The White Power Movement at War on Democracy, University of Chicago historian Kathleen Belew traces the origins of the white power movement and connects its most violent manifestations—from the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building in 1995 to the 2021 siege of the U.S. Capitol—as part of a global, distributed effort to assert and maintain white dominance.

In “Who Got the Camera?,” Rod Brunson, the Thomas P. O’Neill Jr. Professor of Public Life in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Northeastern University, summarizes a body of research, including his own key studies, that is crucial for understanding the problem of police killings of Black Americans.

In Mass Shootings: Causes and Prevention, criminal justice journalist Mark Obbie summarizes key findings from leading research on mass shootings. This synthesis presents 15 policy recommendations that if implemented could reduce the occurrence and fatality of mass shootings in the U.S.