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Fall 2005 |
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 Our colleges and universities:
How secure?
Colleges and universities are among our
most vulnerable and exploitable targets for
individuals and organizations seeking to
cause harm and fear. In some jurisdictions,
threat assessments have cited colleges and
universities as potential targets of terrorist
activity, while other jurisdictions have ignored
them in homeland security planning.
In a COPS-sponsored project led by the Mid-Atlantic Regional Community Policing Institute,
a national summit on campus public
safety held in late 2004 established direction
and made recommendations for developing
a national strategy, programs, information sharing
resources, funding, and other initiatives
for protecting our colleges and
universities.
National Summit on Campus Public Safety: Strategies for Colleges and Universities in a
Homeland Security Environment, 84 pages
 One-stop crime-fighting
technology information
A COPS CD provides more than 50 documents
and resources related to law enforcement
and crime-fighting technology.
Information provided by the COPS Office,
U.S. Department of Justice, and other federal
agencies covers IT guides and reports, crime
mapping and crime analysis, interoperable
communications and information sharing,
surveillance video and in-car cameras, and
311 nonemergency call systems.
Tech Docs: Technology Resources for Law Enforcement
 Drugs and crime: How much do you know?
To help law enforcement understand and
deal with the problems of drugs and crime,
the COPS Office, U.S. Department of Justice,
and other Federal agencies provided more
than 140 publications and resources for the
creation of this CD. It includes information on
club drugs, cocaine, ecstasy, methamphetamine,
marijuana, and drugs and crime-fighting
policy and research.
Drugs and Crime
 Fighting child pornography
on the Internet
The treatment of children as sexual objects
has existed through the ages, and so, too, has
the production of erotic literature and drawings
involving children. Pornography in the
modern sense began with the invention of
the camera in the early 19th century. Almost
immediately, sexualized images involving
children were produced, traded, and collected.
Even so, child pornography remained
a restricted activity through most of the 20th
century. Images generally were locally produced,
of poor quality, expensive, and difficult
to obtain. The relaxation of censorship
standards in the 1960s led to an increase in
the availability of child pornography, and by
1977, some 250 child pornography magazines
were circulating in the United States—many imported from Europe. Despite
concern about the extent of child pornography,
law enforcement agencies had considerable
success in stemming the traffic in these
traditional hardcopy forms. The advent of the
Internet in the 1980s, however, has changed
dramatically the scale and nature of the child
pornography problem and has also required
new approaches to investigation and control.
This guide, one in a series of Problem-Specific
Guides published by COPS, describes the
problem and reviews the factors that increase
the risks of Internet child pornography.
It then identifies a series of questions
that might assist local law enforcement in
analyzing a local Internet child pornography
problem. Finally, it reviews responses to the
problem and what is known about these
from evaluative research and police practice.
Internet Child Pornography
 Bulletin details characteristics
of juvenile arrests in 2003
This Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency
Prevention (OJJDP) bulletin provides
a summary and an analysis of national and
State juvenile arrest data presented in the FBI
report Crime in the United States 2003. As the
bulletin notes, the juvenile violent crime arrest
rate in 2003 reached its lowest level since
1980. The juvenile arrest rate for each of the
offenses tracked in the FBI’s Violent Crime Index
(murder, forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated
assault) has declined steadily since
the mid-1990s; for murder, the rate fell 77
percent from its 1993 peak through 2003.
Juvenile Arrests 2003, 12 pages
 School resource officers make
schools safe
A school resource officer (SRO) is vital to ensuring
that a school is a safe environment in
which students feel secure. SROs serve in
multiple roles: law enforcement officer, educator,
problem solver, and community liaison.
Many SRO programs, however, have difficulty
recruiting, screening, retaining, training, and
supervising the SROs. A Guide to Developing,
Maintaining, and Succeeding With Your School
Resource Officer Program, published by the
COPS Office, presents the results of a study
conducted by Abt Associates Inc. of SRO
program operations that address the problem
areas. The report will enable other jurisdictions
to benefit from the experiences of
the programs studied.
A Guide to Developing, Maintaining, and
Succeeding With Your School Resource
Officer Program, 251 pages
 A second COPS Office publication, SRO Performance
Evaluation: A Guide to Getting Results,
prepared by Circle Solutions, Inc., and its
companion CD, is an 11-step guide to help
law enforcement and school personnel use
SRO performance assessment to address
school crime and disorder problems and
achieve results.
SRO Performance Evaluation: A Guide to Getting Results, 76 pages
CD: Same title
 Guide offers insights into
investigating child fatalities
Investigating Child Fatalities, the latest publication
in OJJDP’s popular Portable Guides to
Investigating Child Abuse series, is a practical,
step-by-step guide for law enforcement officers
investigating child fatality cases in which
the investigator believes that abuse or neglect
may have caused or contributed to the
child’s death. It describes how child fatalities
differ from other homicide cases and offers
guidelines for conducting the investigation,
documenting the case, questioning witnesses,
interrogating suspects, and testifying
in court. The guide will also be useful for child
protective services investigators, prosecutors,
child fatality review team members, and
other professionals who are involved in
these cases.
Investigating Child Fatalities, 37 pages
 Good news about juvenile
victimization
Juveniles 12–17 years old, like all other age
groups, experienced a decline in violent
crime victimizations from 1993 through 2003.
The largest decreases were among younger
teens, 12–14 years old. Using data from the
National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS)
and the FBI‘s Supplementary Homicide Reports,
this report provides details about violent
crimes involving juveniles as victims or
offenders, including weapon use, injury,
victim/offender relationship, crime location,
peak hours for serious violent crime against
juveniles, gang involvement, and characteristics
of the offender.
Juvenile Victimization and Offending,
1993–2003, 10 pages
 Deaths in Custody
BJS’s Deaths in Custody collection collects
quarterly inmate death records from each of
the Nation’s 50 State prison systems, 50 State
juvenile correctional authorities, and 3,095 local
jails. In addition, this program collects
quarterly records of all deaths during the
process of arrest by each of the Nation’s
17,784 State and local law enforcement agencies.
These death records include information
on the deceased’s personal characteristics
(age, gender, and race/ethnicity), his or her
criminal background (legal status, offense
types, length of stay in custody), as well as
details of the death itself (the date, time,
location, and cause of each death, as well as
information on autopsies and medical treatment
provided for illnesses/diseases).
For more information about the Deaths in
Custody collection, visit http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/correct.htm#custody. The first
report from this effort, Suicide and Homicide
in State Prisons and Local Jails, was released in
August 2005.
 Inmate suicide and homicide
rates declined
Suicide had been the leading cause of jail inmate
deaths in 1983, but in 2002 the death
rate from illnesses and natural causes was
higher. State prison suicide rates, which have
historically been much lower than the rate in
jails, also dropped sharply. State prison homicide
rates, which have historically been much
higher than the rate in jails, also dropped
sharply, while local jail inmate homicide rates
fell slightly. This report is based on the first
findings from the Deaths in Custody Reporting
Program. It also answers the following
questions:
- What types of inmates were most likely
to commit suicide or to be victims of
homicide?
- What time of day did the deaths occur?
- How long had the inmates been
incarcerated?
- Were there any differences in mortality
rates by facility size?
- How do correctional homicide and
suicide rates compare to those in the
general population?
Suicide and Homicide in State Prisons and
Local Jails, 12 pages
 Allegations of sexual violence in
correctional facilities analyzed
In 2004, more than 8,000 allegations of sexual
violence were reported nationwide by correctional
authorities. These authorities substantiated
nearly 2,100 incidents of sexual violence.
Rates of substantiated incidents were highest
in juvenile facilities. This report presents data
from the Survey on Sexual Violence, 2004, an
administrative records collection of incidents
of inmate-on-inmate and staff-on-inmate sexual
violence reported to correctional authorities.
It covers such topics as how sexual
violence is measured; the number of nonconsensual
sexual acts and abusive sexual contacts;
staff sexual misconduct and harassment;
and how investigations are handled.
The Survey on Sexual Violence and this report
are initial steps in a multiphase strategy
to measure prison rape as required under the
Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003 (Public
Law 108–79).
Sexual Violence Reported by Correctional Authorities, 2004, 38 pages
 More than two-thirds of jail
inmates met the criteria for
substance dependence or abuse
This report outlines the results from the 2002
Survey of Inmates in Local Jails that, for the
first time, measured the prevalence of substance
dependence or abuse based on the
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental
Disorders (DSM–IV). The survey found that jail
inmates are much more likely to meet the criteria
of substance dependence or abuse than
the general population. The report presents
measures of dependence and abuse by gender,
race, Hispanic origin, age, and most
serious offense. It also compares the levels of
prior substance use, dependence, abuse, and
treatment by selected characteristics, such as
family background, criminal record, type of
substance, and offense. The report also
discusses the inmate’s substance abuse
treatment or participation in other programs
before and after entering jail.
Substance Dependence, Abuse, and
Treatment of Jail Inmates, 2002, 12 pages
 Is gang violence increasing?
Violent crimes for which victims identified
the offender as a gang member peaked in
1996 at 10 percent of all violent crime, and
decreased until 1998 to about 6 percent, not
significantly changing since then. On average
for each year, gang members committed
about 373,000 of the 6.6 million violent victimizations.
Using data from the National
Crime Victimization Survey and the FBI’s Supplementary
Homicide Reports, this crime
data brief contains estimates of the number
and rate of violent crimes committed by
gang members; the demographic characteristics
(such as race, age, and gender) of the
victims of violence by gang members; and
the characteristics of the incident such as police
notification and number of offenders.
Violence by Gang Members, 1993–2003, 2 pages
 Taking a closer look at the
incidence of statutory rape
This OJJDP bulletin draws on data from the
FBI’s National Incident-Based Reporting
System to examine victims and offenders in
statutory rape incidents. At the national level
currently, almost nothing is known about the
incidence of statutory rape. This bulletin provides
the first large-scale look at the patterns
of and law enforcement’s responses to statutory
rape. An analysis of the data characterizes
victim and offender attributes (age,
gender, relationship) and law enforcement’s
response to the incident.
Statutory Rape Known to Law Enforcement,
4 pages
 Family violence and the justice
system’s response described
Data on family violence from a wide variety
of BJS and FBI collections provides statistical
snapshots of family violence at different
stages in the administration of justice. This report
includes statistics on the extent of violent
crime among families, family violence
reported to police, arrests and prosecutions
for family violence, and characteristics of offenders
in jail and prison for family violence.
Findings include the following: Family violence
accounted for 11 percent of all reported
and unreported violence between
1998 and 2002; the majority of crimes of violence
among family members were acts of
assault that occurred in private between men
and women; and family violence offenders
demonstrated a history of involvement with
the criminal justice system.
Family Violence Statistics: Including
Statistics on Strangers and Acquaintances,
76 pages
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