Research

Background

Ramsey County has posted one of the sharpest vehicle-crime turnarounds in the country. KSTP reported St. Paul auto thefts down 36 percent year over year in 2023, from 961 to 613 in the first seven months, with carjackings down 50 percent over the same window, from 40 to 20. By early 2026 the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office put the auto-theft decline at about 61 percent over three years. The Carjacking and Auto Theft (CAT) team, stood up in 2021 with about $2.5 million in state grant money and roughly eight deputies, credits a focused-deterrence approach built on intelligence, hotspot targeting and rapid intervention with a small core of juvenile offenders. Deputy Chief Paul Ford framed the goal as catching kids young and diverting them away from crime.

Across the river the trend runs the other way. CBS Minnesota found roughly five times more cars stolen in Minneapolis than St. Paul in early 2026, about 1,054 to 195 in the first two months. The Star Tribune described St. Paul reining in car theft while Minneapolis hit record highs. Reporters have tied the Minneapolis surge to the absence of a dedicated task force, staffing shortages and juvenile offenders using new theft methods.

That contrast is the heart of this commission. When a focused crackdown works in one county, what happens to the people and the places involved.

Midwest Safety News is commissioning an independent researcher to study the decline through perceptions, from two angles: the offenders who were stopped and the residents and victims who lived through it.

Research questions

Offenders. Among apprehended carjacking and auto theft offenders in Ramsey County, what do they intend to do next: desist, keep offending in Ramsey County or displace to a place like Minneapolis. How do they explain the decline and what do they see as the real deterrent: the CAT team, tougher penalties, technology or something else.

Communities and victims. Among residents of the neighborhoods that carried the heaviest carjacking burden and among the most vulnerable victims, how did a focused crackdown change views of the police. Did visible, effective enforcement raise trust, perceived fairness and confidence in police quality or did heavier enforcement strain the relationship. Is there any sign of spatial displacement toward Hennepin County, in the data or in what people report.

Bonus component (paid on delivery)

The single most valuable thing this study could do is check talk against action. If a researcher can link what offenders say they will do to what they actually did, we will pay a bonus on top of the base commission.

Concretely: take the offenders’ stated intentions (desist, stay in Ramsey County or move elsewhere) and match them against later behavior in administrative records: re-arrests, re-offenses and, critically, where those offenses happened. That turns the displacement question from opinion into evidence. If the people who said they would move to Minneapolis show up in Hennepin County records, that is the story in hard numbers.

This is the hard part and it may not be fully reachable, which is why it is a bonus rather than a base requirement. Expect obstacles: data-use agreements with the state or county, a follow-up window long enough to observe behavior and the fact that many offenders in this population are juveniles, whose records are largely confidential under Minnesota law. A workable path may run through a local agency partner doing the match internally and sharing de-identified results or through a consent-based follow-up with adult participants. We are open to either.

Approach

This is a perceptions study, not a causal evaluation, though it should be quantitatively literate. We expect a blend of:

• Semi-structured interviews with apprehended or formerly apprehended offenders, reached through defense counsel, diversion programs or supervision agencies.
• A survey or interviews with victims and with residents of the highest-burden neighborhoods, measuring trust, procedural justice, police legitimacy and perceived police quality, with comparisons across neighborhood income and exposure to crime.
• A brief secondary-data section setting the Ramsey decline beside the Minneapolis surge to frame the displacement question.

Survey-experiment or conjoint designs are welcome where they sharpen the measurement. The work should engage the relevant framing, including desistance, perceptual deterrence, procedural justice and crime displacement.

Ethics and rigor

Because this work involves justice-involved subjects and surveys of residents and victims, the researcher must spell out their human-subjects approach: IRB review or an equivalent ethics process, informed consent and confidentiality protections. Stated intentions and recalled attitudes have well-known limits and the writeup should treat them as perceptions rather than proof. Please include anonymized instruments and a short methods note with the final piece.

Deliverables

• One long-form feature written for a general audience, ready to publish on Midwest Safety News.
• A short methods and data appendix, including the survey instruments and key tables.
• Optional: a one-page brief of the findings for local officials and community partners.

Who we are looking for

A policing scholar or team with a track record measuring public perceptions of police, legitimacy and procedural justice, ideally with survey-experiment or quasi-experimental methods. Local residence is not required, since much of this runs through resident and victim surveys paired with administrative data and a local agency partner. Early-career researchers are welcome and lived experience with the justice system is an asset.

Stipend

This is a paid commission in the range of $8,000 to $25,000, scaled to scope. A lighter version centers on victim and resident perceptions with secondary data. A fuller version adds offender interviews, a neighborhood survey and formal ethics review. A behavioral-validation bonus of up to $5,000 is available on delivery of the intention-versus-behavior match described above. We are happy to size it with the researcher we select.

How to respond

Send a short letter of interest, two pages is plenty, covering the questions you would prioritize, your proposed approach and access plan, your background and a rough budget. There is no fixed deadline and we review notes as they come in.

Contact: alex@midwest-safety.com

Midwest Safety News, the News Desk