De-prosecution is a policy not to prosecute certain criminal offenses, regardless of whether the crimes were committed. The research question here is whether the application of a de-prosecution policy has an effect on the number of homicides for large cities in the United States. Philadelphia presents a natural experiment to examine this question. During 2010-2014, the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office maintained a consistent and robust number of prosecutions and sentencings.

The second edition of the Clinician’s Guide to Evidence-Based Practices: Behavioral Health and Addictions provides practitioners with the skills to retrieve and use research in order to benefit patients suffering from mental and addictive disorders. Practice must be informed and guided by research, yet so much of the research literature feels inaccessible and overwhelming, too removed and too large to guide what we do daily with our patients. This book overcomes these challenges to evidence-based practice (EBP) by serving as a practical, how-to guide for graduate students and behavioral health practitioners. Following three realistic patients throughout, the Clinician’s Guide canvases the entire EBP process: asking the right questions, accessing the best available research, appraising the research, translating that research into practice, integrating that research with clinician expertise and patient characteristics, evaluating the entire enterprise, attending to the ethical considerations, and, when done, moving the EBP process forward by teaching it to others. This revised and updated edition includes a separate chapter on filtered sources for accessing the best available research, a series of hands-on Skill Exercises in each chapter to provide practical use of the material, a new section on barriers to successful implementation, and a companion website with expanded content, interactive examples, and hyperlinked references.

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In an original article, I analyzed a potential causal link between the policy of de‐prosecution in Philadelphia and an increase in homicides. Utilizing the traditional synthetic control method with extensive descriptive data and a donor pool of the other 99 largest cities in the United States, the results demonstrated a statistically significant increase of over 74 homicides per year in Philadelphia during 2015‐19 associated with de‐prosecution (p<.05). A reaction essay addressing the original article on de‐prosecution has been submitted. In this reply, I correct inaccuracies in the reaction essay, explain the validity of methodological choices, discuss the reaction's misunderstanding of certain quantitative issues, and expose the ideological purposes of the reaction. In addition, I have included updated parallel research addressing the issue of de‐prosecution and examine the theoretical impact of the Covid‐19 pandemic on the interaction between de‐prosecution and homicides.

This chapter assists practitioners in translating the research evidence into direct applications to their patients. It reviews the imperative of translational research and the stance of the reflective practitioner. The chapter helps practitioners translate the results of randomized clinical trials into practice by applying the CONSORT checklist. It considers potential harms that might accrue to patients in applying the research. The chapter also examines the process of identifying discredited practices—interventions that do not work—and reflects on how to proceed in the face of inconsistent evidence. The chapter concludes by applying clinical decision analysis, using decision trees to explore choices at critical junctures.