Byrne Quoted in Memo to Boston City Council

James Byrne

An article by Prof. James Byrne of the Criminal Justice Department has been quoted in a memo to the Boston City Council regarding a resolution pertaining to that city’s police policy of no-warrant searches.

In the memo, Carol Rose, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Massachusetts, says her organization has “grave concerns” about the no-warrant policy and supports a Council resolution on the subject “as a way to protect targeted families from the potentially serious negative consequences of this policy.”

Rose quoted from a piece by Byrne in the journal Criminology and Public Policy in which he said there is “mounting evidence that non-coercive crime prevention strategies - increased educational level of residents, reducing the number of people living in poverty - will have a greater crime reduction effect at the same or lesser cost” than inherently coercive policing strategies, such as no-warrant searches.

Byrne is senior editor of the journal.