Title: NIJ Journal 243

Series: Journal

Author: National Institute of Justice

Published: NIJ, April 2000

Subject: Criminal justice system

86 pages

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U.S. Department of Justice

Office of Justice Programs

National Institute of Justice



NIJ Journal 243

April 2000



---------------------------



Director's Message



The publication of this issue of the NIJ Journal happens to occur in

the same month I conclude my tenure as director of NIJ. It's a happy

coincidence because this issue of the NIJ Journal truly exemplifies the

many ways NIJ fulfills its mission to help policymakers and practitioners.



The stories in this issue illustrate NIJ's commitment to disseminate

research-based information to the field. Charles Wellford and James

Cronin, for example, present findings from their study of homicide

clearance rates and offer specific steps law enforcement agencies can

take to increase the number of homicide cases they close. Laurence

Steinberg discusses youth violence in the context of schools, families,

and parenting. He reminds us that despite recent media attention of

several horrific incidents, research shows us that schools are among

the safest places for children. Nora Fitzgerald and Jack Riley, on the

other hand, point out what we don't know--that research-based

investigation revealed very little hard evidence about the prevalence

and incidence of drug-facilitated rape. But based on what we do

know, Gail Abarbanel was able to provide some practical guidance

and recommendations for law enforcement and victim advocates.



The findings in this issue were made possible for the most part by

using Federal dollars to apply the principles of scientific inquiry to

investigate issues and solve problems. To enhance this aspect of NIJ's

mission, the Department of Justice recently proposed to Congress

that one percent of the Office of Justice Programs budget (which in

fiscal year 2000 is $4 billion) be set aside for research and development.

Such a significant commitment would boost funding for criminal

justice research and development closer to the levels found in

many other national-level scientific endeavors. It would increase NIJ's

ability to help State and local policymakers and practitioners develop

programs and policies based on research.



As I leave and watch from a distance NIJ's progress, I will see the

seeds that were planted during the past 6 years begin to bear fruit--

especially in the areas of violence against women, technology development

in general and DNA technology in particular, and in our understanding of

policing organizations. With expanded resources and growing support from the

fields of research and practice, I am confident that the findings from vigorous

scientific inquiry can make an even greater contribution to producing safe and

just communities.



Jeremy Travis

Director



---------------------------



NIJ--BUILDING KNOWLEDGE TO MEET THE CHALLENGE OF

CRIME AND JUSTICE



National Institute of Justice

Jeremy Travis

Director



The NIJ Journal is published by the National Institute of Justice, the research

arm of the U.S. Department of Justice, to announce the Institute's policy-relevant

research results and initiatives. The Attorney General has deter-mined

that publication of this periodical is necessary in the transaction of the public

business required by law of the Department of Justice.



Opinions or points of view expressed in this document are those of the authors

and do not necessarily reflect the official position of the U.S. Department of

Justice.



For more information about NIJ activities, products, and publications, visit NIJ

on the World Wide Web at http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij.



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NIJ Journal Editorial Board



David Boyd

Deputy Director for the Office of Science and Technology



Sally T. Hillsman

Deputy Director for the Office of Research and Evaluation



Edwin Zedlewski

Acting Deputy Director for the Office of Development and Communications



Christy A. Visher

Science Advisor to the Director



Patrick M. Clark

Cheryl A. Crawford

A. Trent DePersia

James O. Finckenauer

Sharla P. Rausch

Gerald P. Soucy



Editor

Jolene Hernon



Production by:

Palladian Partners, Inc.



Brenner Brown, Managing Editor

Catharine Rankin, Assistant Editor



---------------------------



Contents



features



Clearing Up Homicide Clearance Rates

Charles Wellford and James Cronin



Drug-Facilitated Rape: Looking for the Missing Pieces Nora Fitzgerald and K.

Jack Riley



Can We Talk? Public Safety and the Interoperability Challenge 

Brenna Smith and Tom Tolman



Departing Thoughts From an NIJ Director 

Jeremy Travis and Alfred Blumstein



Youth Violence: Do Parents and Families Make a Difference?

Laurence Steinberg



at-a-glance

Recent Research Findings



departments

New & Noteworthy

Events

Solicitations & Awards



---------------------------



Clearing Up Homicide Clearance Rates



by Charles Wellford and James Cronin



Law enforcement's ability to make arrests following crimes appears to have

significantly diminished in recent years. This is especially true for homicide:

From 1980 to 1996, the rate at which homicide cases were cleared nationally

decreased more than 7 percent (see figure 1). (The clearance rate is the

proportion of crimes in a jurisdiction for which the police report an arrest.) 



Although the rates nationally are declining, some cities have continued to show

fairly high clearance rates for homicide as well as for total crime. Others have

had much lower rates than the average. What makes one department's

clearance rates better than another? It turns out to be more than the way the

department defines and counts its clearance rates or how many homicides

occur each year. 



Researchers from the University of Maryland, working with the Justice

Research and Statistics Association, designed a multi-State study in four large

cities to identify the factors that affected the clearance of homicides during 1994

and 1995. 



They found that certain persistent factors are related to an agency's ability to

clear homicide cases. These factors can be divided into two categories: (1)

Police practices and procedures, over which the police have complete control,

such as the actions of the first officer on the scene and the number of detectives

assigned to the case, and (2) case characteristics, over which the police have

no control, such as type of weapon used and involvement of drugs. 



Key police-related characteristics include how many detectives are assigned to

the case and for how long, how quickly detectives arrive at the scene, and--

what appears to be very important--the activities undertaken by the first officer

on the scene. (See "What Kinds of Cases Are More Likely to Be Closed?" on

next page.)



The findings suggest that a law enforcement agency's policies and practices can

have a substantial impact on the clearance of homicide cases and can be

increased by improving certain investigation policies and procedures involving

the actions taken by the first officer to the scene, how quickly detectives arrive

on the scene and the subsequent actions they take, and how many resources

the agency dedicates to the investigation. 



Factors That Appear to Affect Homicide Clearance Rates



Surprisingly, very little research has been conducted on the determinants of

clearance rates for any type of crime, including homicide. The homicide study's

review of existing literature revealed no comparative studies or systematic

attempts to understand homicide clearance. The few studies of burglary and

robbery clearance that are available were used to guide the development of the

homicide study.[1] 



Some scholars have speculated about what factors affect homicide clearance

rates. Riedel and Rinehart[2] and Cardarelli and Cavanaugh,[3] for example,

have demonstrated the decline in clearances and have suggested several

reasons:



-- Changes in the nature of homicides. In the past, homicide was understood 

primarily to be a crime of passion involving family members or close

acquaintances. These existing social relationships and the way in which the

crime was carried out made identifying the alleged offender relatively easy.

This, in turn, led to higher rates of clearance. In recent years, however,

homicides are more often stranger-to-stranger crimes and involve more 

activity in the illegal drug market. Identification of alleged offenders in

stranger-to-stranger crimes and drug market-related homicides is much less

likely. 



-- Changes in police resources. As police resources were stretched when crime

rates were rising through the 1980's, the ability to devote substantial numbers of

experienced personnel and other resources to police investigations may have

diminished. This change in the way police departments responded also could

have had a negative impact on rates of clearance.



-- Changes in bystander behavior. One proposition is that the willingness of

citizens to cooperate with police, particularly in large urban areas, has

decreased and therefore the role of third parties as witnesses and sources of

information has decreased. As a result, it has become more difficult for police

to identify alleged offenders, especially those in stranger-to-stranger crimes. 



These suggestions provide interesting anecdotal hypotheses that might explain

the national trend in declining homicide clearance, but they have not been

subjected to systematic research, and none of the explanations are easily

reconciled with the stability of the clearance rates found in the four cities in the

study. Analysis of clearance rates in these cities from 1980 through 1994, for

example, showed that clearance rates remained virtually the same: The city with

a high total clearance rate and high homicide rate remained consistently so

throughout this period, as did the cities with high clearance rates/low homicide

rates, low clearance rates/high homicide rates, and low clearance rates/low

homicide rates. (See "Cities, Number of Cases, Definitions, and Data

Collection Methods.")



As Maxwell has observed, the absence of systematic research is in part the

result of limitations with the national data on homicides.[4] The primary sources

of homicide data are the supplemental homicide reports filed with the Federal

Bureau of Investigation. These reports are quite useful for basic descriptions of

homicides, but they do not contain information on whether the offense was

cleared and, if so, how. They also do not provide detailed information on 

the nature of the offense or, more important for the study of homicide clearance

rates, on the nature of the investigation. 



The existing research literature helps to document the decline in the rates of

clearance, suggests possible explanations for the decline, and establishes that

national data are not useful in advancing our understanding of clearance. But

the literature does not help law enforcement agencies develop policies and

procedures that might increase the rate of homicide clearance. 



Police Actions Can Lead to High Clearance Rates



The homicide clearance study examined 215 factors in homicide cases to

determine the relationship of each factor to whether the case was cleared by

arrest. Of the 215 factors analyzed, 51 were found to be significantly and

positively associated with closing a homicide case. These factors include both

police practices and case characteristics, and 37 of the 51 factors appear 

to be within the control of police. (See "What Kinds of Cases Are More Likely

to Be Closed?" page 4) When the researchers conducted further analysis of the

51 significant variables in relationship to homicide clearance (i.e., analyzed them 

simultaneously), they found that 15 remained significant. 



The probability of clearance increases significantly when the first officer on the

scene quickly notifies the homicide unit, the medical examiners, and the crime

lab and attempts to locate witnesses, secure the area, and identify potential

witnesses in the neighborhood. 



The data indicate that the number of detectives assigned to a case is particularly

important: Assigning a minimum of three detectives and perhaps four appears to

increase the likelihood of clearing it. Assigning more than 4 detectives does not

appear to make a difference unless an agency makes a massive investment of

11 or more detectives. Only one city, which had a high homicide clearance 

rate, routinely used a great number of homicide detectives on a case. That city

used 11 detectives in 63 percent of the 200 cases in its sample. 



The city with the consistently highest clearance rates also was the city that was

much more likely to devote 11 detectives during the initial days of investigation. 



The length of time it takes detectives to arrive at the scene also is key. Cases in

which the detective arrived within 30 minutes were more likely to be cleared.

These findings have clear implications for departments considering how many

detectives to assign to homicide cases, as well as related policies about

overtime and the availability of take-home cars for detectives.



The findings also suggest the growing importance of computer checks of

various types, particularly checks on guns, suspects, and victims. Cases in

which computer checks--using the local Criminal Justice Information System--

were conducted on the victim, suspect, witnesses, and guns were more likely 

to be cleared. 



Drug cases continue to be the most difficult for police to solve, but the results of

the homicide clearance study show that even in drug cases, police response can

lead to an arrest. 



In addition to helping agencies determine what they can do differently to

improve their homicide clearance rate, this research also may be useful in

developing measures of police performance. Homicide cases, like all other

cases, begin with different levels of "solvability" and differ in regard to the

probability of an arrest. But the research suggests that few homicide cases,

given the right initial response, the right timing, and the right dedication of

resources, cannot be cleared. 



NCJ 181728



Notes



1. See Eck, J.E., Solving Crimes: The Investigation of Burglary and Robbery,

Washington, D.C.: Police Executive Research Forum, 1983; and Greenwood,

P.W., J.M. Chaiken, and J. Petersilia, The Criminal Investigation Process,

Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath, 1977.



2. Riedel, M., and A. Rinehart. "Clearance, Missing Data, and Murder." Paper

presented at the annual meeting of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences,

1994.



3. Cardarelli, A.P., and D. Cava-naugh, "Uncleared Homicides in the United

States: An Exploratory Study of Trends and Patterns." Paper presented at the

annual meeting of the American Society of Criminology, 1992.



4. Maxwell, M.G., "Circumstances in Supplementary Homicide Reports,"

Criminology 27 (1989): 671-695.



---------------------------



about the authors



Charles Wellford, Ph.D., is Chair and Professor of Criminology and Criminal

Justice at the University of Maryland, College Park, and Director of the

Maryland Justice Analysis Center. James Cronin is a Research Associate with

the Bureau of Governmental Research at the University of Maryland. 



To obtain the full report upon which this article is based, see "For More

Information" at the end of this article. The project was supported by NIJ grant

number 1996-IJ-CX-0047 to the Justice Research and Statistics Association.



---------------------------



What Kinds of Cases Are More Likely to Be Closed?



Researchers analyzed 215 possible predictors of clearance and found 51

factors that were statistically significant--factors that, if present, were likely to

lead to the case being closed. When these significant variables were analyzed

simultaneously (using multivariate analysis techniques), the following appeared

to be key to closing the case:



Factors Within Police Control That Lead to Closure



Initial Response: 



-- The first officer on the scene immediately notifies the homicide unit, medical

examiner's office, and crime lab. 



-- The first officer on the scene secures the area and attempts to locate 

witnesses.



-- A detective arrives at the scene within 30 minutes. 



Actions of Detectives:



-- Three or four detectives are assigned to the case.* 



-- Detectives describe the crime scene, including measurements, in their notes. 



-- Detectives follow up on all witness information.



-- Detectives attend the postmortem examination.



Other Police Responses:



-- A computer check, using the local Criminal Justice Information System, is

conducted on the suspect, the gun, and any witnesses.* 



-- A witness at the crime scene provides valuable information about the

circumstances of the death, the motivation, the identification of the suspect or

victim, and the whereabouts of the suspect.*



-- Witnesses, friends, acquaintances, and neighbors of the victim are 

interviewed.*



-- The medical examiner prepares a body chart of the victim.*



-- The attending physician and medical personnel are interviewed. 



-- Confidential informants are used.



Factors Outside Police Control That are Related to Closure 



-- The suspect is African American or Hispanic.*



-- The homicide occurs in a private location (e.g., a home or club) rather than a

public location (e.g., a city street).* 



-- An eyewitness observes the homicide.*



-- A weapon is found at the crime scene. 



-- The homicide is not drug-related.* 



-- The victim is a member of a gang or drug organization.



-- The conflict is over money or property other than drugs.



-- The homicide is committed in an attempt to get money to buy drugs. 



-- The suspect kills the victim to avoid retaliation. 



Typical Scenarios 



-- Actions of the first officer on the scene. The homicide was more likely to be

cleared if the first officer on the scene notified the homicide unit, the medical

examiner, or the crime lab, or if the officer attempted to locate witnesses. The

case was more likely to be closed if the crime scene was measured. 



-- Detectives. A case was more likely to be solved if 3, 4, or 11 detectives

were assigned to the case, compared to just 1 detective. The case was more

likely to be solved if it took the detectives less than 30 minutes to arrive at the

crime scene. The case was more likely to be solved if the detectives followed

up on witness information and attended the postmortem examination. 



-- Drugs. The presence of drugs in a case has an effect on its closing. Cases

were less likely to be closed when drugs were a circumstance. 



-- Weapons. Cases in which the victim was killed by a rifle, knife, or personal

weapon (hands or feet) were more likely to be solved than cases in which the

victim was killed with a handgun. Furthermore, the case was more likely to be

cleared if the police identified the weapon used to kill the victim or a weapon

was found at the scene. 



-- Motivation. The case was more likely to be closed if the homicide

preempted an anticipated retaliatory attack, involved a conflict over money or

property other than drugs, or the suspect was defending him- or herself. The

case was less likely to be closed if the homicide was punishment for informing. 



-- Witnesses and sources of information. A case was more likely to be closed

when witnesses were at the crime scene and provided valuable information,

including the circumstances of death, the motivation for the homicide,

identification of the suspect, identification of the victim, and location of the

suspect. The crime was more likely to be closed when a neighborhood survey

provided valuable information, when friends and neighbors of the victim were

interviewed, and when confidential informants provided valuable information or

came forward on their own. When police used surveillance in a case, the case

was more likely to be solved.



-- Computer checks. When computer checks were conducted on a suspect or

a gun, the case was more likely to be solved, but when computer checks were

conducted on the victim or witnesses, the case was less likely to be solved.



-- Medical examiner. Cases were more likely to be solved when the medical

examiner collected specimens, recovered a projectile, or prepared a body

chart.



* These are among the top 15 factors that were found to be most highly

correlated with clearing the case in the multivariate analysis.



---------------------------



Cities, Number of Cases, Definitions, and Data Collection Methods



The study examined 798 homicides in four large American cities (198 to 200

cases in each city) during 1994 and 1995. The researchers chose large cities

because of their substantial number of homicides in relation to the United States

as a whole.



The cities were selected to maximize variation on homicide and total index

crime clearance rates measured from 1980 through 1993: 



-- City A: low homicide clearance rates, low total clearance rates.



-- City B: high homicide clearance rates, low total clearance rates.



-- City C: low homicide clearance rates, high total clearance rates. 



-- City D: high homicide clearance rates, high total clearance rates. 



To encourage participation in the study, cities were assured that their names

would not be revealed. 



The cases were selected so that the proportion of open and closed homicide

cases in the sample matched that of the entire homicide caseload for those

years for that city. This resulted in a total of 589 (74 percent) solved cases and

209 (26 percent) unsolved cases in the sample. Of the 589 closed cases, 50

percent were solved within 1 week; 93.2 percent were solved within 1 year.



The predominate motivation, as classified by the data collectors who read the

files, for committing the homicide for all cases was "other conflict" (43.0

percent). "Other conflict" involves an argument between the victim and offender

that does not involve money or drugs. The second largest motivation for the

homicide was "drug-related" (26.4 percent), which includes failure to pay a

drug debt, robbery during a drug deal, and conflict over drug territory. The

third greatest motivation for the homicide was "retaliation" (22.7 percent). 



Definition of a Closed Case



The research design considered a case closed when an arrest was made, the

homicide was a murder/suicide situation, or the homicide was in self-defense. If

a warrant was issued but the suspect was not taken into custody, the case was 

considered open. 



An arrest warrant was issued and the suspect was arrested in 80 percent of 

the closed cases. In the remaining closed cases, the suspect was already in

custody (17 percent), the homicide was a murder/suicide (2 percent), or the

homicide was in self-defense (1 percent). A warrant was issued but the suspect

was not taken into custody in 8 percent of the open cases.



Data Collection Methods



Data were collected from open and closed cases by researchers from the

Statistical Analysis Centers in the States where each city was located. Two

data collection instruments were employed:



-- The Homicide Attribute Coding Instrument provided a detailed description

of the circumstances surrounding the homicide case, along with information

regarding prior criminal records of victims and suspects, the relationship

between victims and suspects, drug use by suspects or victims at the time of the

incident, number of eyewitnesses, and suspected motivation for the homicide. 



-- The Investigative Instrument provided information on the process used by

homicide detectives to investigate the case, such as the status of the case, the

number of detectives assigned to the case, what evidence was found at the

crime scene and what types of checks and tests were performed on the

evidence found, whether search warrants were issued, who was interviewed,

and what information was obtained by following up on the initial stages of the

investigation.



---------------------------



For More Information



To download a copy of the full report, visit the Justice Research and Statistics

Association Web site: http://www.jrsa.org. Paper copies are available from the

National Criminal Justice Reference Service at 1-800-851-3420, P.O. Box

6000, Rockville, MD 20849-6000 (NCJ 181356). Photocopying fees apply.

Copies also are available for $15 from the Justice Research and Statistics

Association, 777 North Capitol Street NE., Suite 801, Washington, D.C.

20002, 202-842-9330. 



---------------------------



Acknowledgments



The authors would like to thank the Justice Research and Statistics Association;

the four State Statistical Analysis Centers that collected the data for this study:

California, Maryland, Michigan, and Wisconsin; and Phyllis McDonald, our

grant monitor at the National Institute of Justice, for their assistance with this

project. Members of the project advisory group provided valuable suggestions

and ideas: Thomas Barnes, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department; John

Firman, International Association of Chiefs of Police; Lawrence Sherman,

University of Maryland; and Richard Williams, Madison (Wisconsin) Police

Department. The following homicide detectives provided valuable experience

and expertise in homicide investigations during the planning stages of this

project: Bud Campbell and Larry Nodiff, Philadelphia Police Department; Errol

Etting and Timothy Keel, Baltimore City Police Department; and Michael

Sullivan, District of Columbia Metropolitan Police Department.



---------------------------



Drug-Facilitated Rape: Looking for the Missing Pieces



by Nora Fitzgerald and K. Jack Riley



More than 430,000 sexual assaults occur annually in the United States,

according to victimization surveys.[1] Many of these assaults involve alcohol

and drugs,[2] which are often used voluntarily by both victim and offender.[3,4]

But in the mid- and late 1990's, ethnographers and rape crisis centers began

hearing reports of drugs, often referred to as "roofies" and "liquid ecstasy,"

being administered clandestinely to immobilize victims, impair their memory, and

thus facilitate rape. Two drugs in particular were mentioned in these reports:

Rohypnol (the pharmaceutical trade name for flunitrazepam) and GHB

(gamma-hydroxybutyrate).



These drugs can produce loss of consciousness and the inability to recall recent

events. Victims may not be aware that they have ingested drugs or that they

have been raped while under the influence of drugs.[5] Reports of such assaults

and increases in the recreational consumption of the drugs used in these assaults

have brought drug-facilitated rape into sharp focus in recent years. 



This article summarizes findings about drug-facilitated rape learned by

researchers at the U.S. Department of Justice in response to a request from the

Attorney General for more information about this new phenomenon. (See "How

This Article Came to Be.")



What Are Rape-Facilitating Drugs?



Sexual assault victims who believe drugs were surreptitiously given to them

typically report remembering sensations of drunkenness that do not correspond

with the amounts of alcohol consumed, unexplained gaps in memory, altered

levels of consciousness, and unexplainable signs of physical trauma. The most

commonly implicated drugs are Rohypnol and GHB.



Rohypnol, or flunitrazepam, belongs to a class of drugs called benzodiazepines

and is approved for use in 80 countries, but not in the United States or Canada.

It is available only in pill form, is tasteless, odorless, and colorless, and

dissolves to some degree in liquid. 



Benzodiazepines are used primarily to produce sedation, sleep, or muscle

relaxation; to reduce seizures and anxiety; and to produce anterograde amnesia,

a desired effect for some surgical procedures. Anterograde amnesia is a

condition in which events that occurred during the time the drug was in effect

are forgotten, in contrast to retrograde amnesia, in which events prior to the

intervening agent are forgotten. 



Rohypnol mentally and physically incapacitates an individual, particularly when

used in combination with alcohol, and is capable of producing anterograde

amnesia. 



GHB, a drug first synthesized in the 1920's, occurs naturally in the human body

in minute amounts. It was under development as an anesthetic agent in the late

1950's and early 1960's, but no commercial products were developed from 

these efforts. Until the FDA banned the drug in 1990, it was available through

health food stores and marketed as both a sleep aid and as a body-building

supplement. Several vendors distributed products containing GHB under trade

names such as "Gamma Hydrate" and "Somatomax PM." 



GHB is marketed in some European countries as an adjunct to anesthesia and

currently is being tested for treatment of narcolepsy as well as alcohol addiction

and withdrawal (with mixed results) in Europe and the United States.[6]



How Common Is Drug-Facilitated Rape?



No one really knows how common drug-facilitated rape is because today's

research tools do not offer a means of measuring the number of incidents.

However, recent findings from ethnographic research and school-based surveys

can provide insight into the voluntary use of these drugs. 



Flunitrazepam first appeared in early warning ethnographic systems in

December 1993, when it was reported among Miami high school students.



By 1995, the Community Epidemiology Working Group (CEWG) found that

use of Rohypnol was spreading in Florida and Texas. Pulse Check reported

Rohypnol use was rising, particularly among youth and young adults.

Ethnographers in Florida and Texas reported that local law enforcement agents

were seizing more Rohypnol tablets, often still in the manufacturer's packaging. 



In 1996, Monitoring the Future (MTF) began tracking Rohypnol. In 1999,

MTF found that 0.5 percent of 8th graders and 1.0 percent of 10th and 12th

graders had reported using Rohypnol in 1998, a level slightly below those found

a year earlier.[7] Such rates appear low in comparison to marijuana or

amphetamine use, but they are not trivial--10th and 12th graders report similar 

levels of heroin use.[8]



In 1997, Pulse Check noted that although Rohypnol continued to be available

in Florida and Texas, distribution had slowed.



In 1998, Texas' statewide student survey, which uses the same methodology

and many of the same items as MTF, found that 1.3 to 2.1 percent of Texas

students in grades 8 to 12 reported use of Rohypnol during the school year.[9]

Later in 1998, Pulse Check reported that Rohypnol was in use in Florida,

Hawaii, Minnesota, and Texas.



Mention of widespread recreational use of GHB only recently has been

reported by CEWG in December 1997. In winter 1998, Pulse Check reported

use of GHB in many urban areas.



The Drug Abuse Warning Network (DAWN) also has captured information

about GHB because of over-doses. The Drug Enforcement Administration has

documented approximately 650 overdoses and 20 deaths related to GHB.

MTF added questions about GHB to its year 2000 survey. 



Available law enforcement statistics on seizures and trafficking (primarily from

the Drug Enforcement Administration) tend to corroborate the ethnographic

and survey data. 



Ethnographic measures may not represent the true scale of the drugs' use,

however, and more rigorous scientific measures have not been in place long

enough to give researchers the ability to project accurate trends. 



Another factor complicating science's ability to measure the incidence and

prevalence of these drugs is the lack of law enforcement evidence.

Investigations of suspected drug-facilitated assaults often turn out to be

inconclusive because many victims do not seek assistance until hours or days

later, in part because the drugs have impaired recall and in part because victims

may not recognize the signs of sexual assault. By the time they do report a

suspected assault, conclusive forensic evidence may have been lost. Even when 

victims do suspect a drug-facilitated rape and seek help immediately, law

enforcement agencies may not know how to collect evidence appropriately or

how to test urine using the sensitive method required. (See further discussion of

investigation policies below and in the sidebar "Learning From Victims.")



To add more complexity to the puzzle, school-based surveys seem to suggest

that Rohypnol and GHB are consumed voluntarily, perhaps increasingly so,

because these drugs are cheap, easy to share, and easy to hide. Use appears to

be concentrated among populations that also are at the highest risk of sexual

assault, including middle school, high school, and college-age students.



The good news is that public awareness about the drugs and their effects

appears to be increasing.



What Is Being Done to Reduce Drug-Facilitated Rape?



Although current measuring methods do not reveal exactly how widespread

drug-facilitated rape is, research does make it clear that the risk is real.



Since reports of drug-facilitated rape first started appearing, policymakers at

the Federal level have moved to address the situation. One step was to improve

enforcement at the U.S.-Mexican border of the ban on importation of

flunitrazepam. Then in October 1996, President Clinton signed the

Drug-Induced Rape Prevention and Punishment Act, which provides harsh

penalties for distribution or possession of flunitrazepam. In February 2000, the

President signed similar legislation related to GHB.



The Office for Victims of Crime (OVC) within the Department of Justice

currently is providing training and technical assistance for a model program

designed to promote promising practices in sexual assault medical evidentiary

exams. The program, which promotes the use of specially trained sexual assault

nurse examiners, has developed a guide that addresses the issues of

drug-facilitated rape, with specific information and guidance regarding

comprehensive drug testing and an exam protocol.



National and local victim service organizations have responded to the situation

by developing campaigns to raise awareness. A Los Angeles County task force

developed a rape kit and procedures designed to improve the way evidence is

gathered in suspected cases of drug-facilitated rape. The task force members

included the Rape Treatment Center at Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center,

the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office, the Los Angeles Police

Department, and the County of Los Angeles Sheriff's Department crime labs.



What Are the Implications for Decisionmakers?



Practices and strategies to reduce sexual assault may help reduce

drug-facilitated sexual assault, but there are unique aspects to drug-facilitated

rape that demand tailored strategies.



Environment Within Which the Crime Occurs. Drug-facilitated rape may be

initiated in social settings, like parties and clubs, not traditionally considered

high-risk environments. Prevention strategies must consider reaching new

audiences, such as bartenders, party hosts, cab drivers, and others who might

frequent places where drug-facilitated rapes are initiated or who might see the

victim immediately prior to the assault.



Education of Targeted Audiences. Educational programs need to be targeted to

high-risk populations--high school and college-age people and people who

frequent nightclubs and resorts--rather than to more general audiences.



Investigation Policies. The most numerous implications relate to forensic and

investigation practices.



-- Interviewing Techniques. Drug-facilitated rape cases require interview

techniques that can help identify a sexual assault case when the victim 

has memory gaps around the incident or isn't aware of being raped. When an

interviewer suspects the victim has ingested a rape drug, the victim should be

asked to provide both urine and blood samples using established timeframes

and guidelines for collection and preservation of forensic evidence. 



-- In addition, even though the victim's memory of the assault may be extremely

limited, consent should be obtained to conduct a thorough and complete

medical/evidentiary examination. Oral, anal, and vaginal samples should be

taken even when there is no visible trauma. 



-- Importance of a Urine Specimen. Rape drugs are more likely to be detected

in urine than in blood, and the urine specimen should be collected as soon as

possible. This can be done prior to commencement of the law enforcement

interview and the forensic medical examination. Appropriate measures should 

be implemented to ensure that other potential evidence, such as sperm or

semen, is protected when urine specimens are collected. 



-- Law enforcement personnel, who are often the "first responders," should be

aware of the importance of urine specimens in these cases. Victims should be

transported immediately for medical care. If the victim must urinate before

arriving at a medical care facility, the urine specimen should be saved in a clean

container and brought to the medical facility. The chain of custody should be

documented. 



-- Crime Scene Evidence. The crime scene also should be secured and

examined immediately or critical evidence may be irretrievably lost. Drug-

facilitated rape cases may involve multiple crime scenes, for example, the

location of the drugging, the location of the sexual assault, locations where

illegal substances were produced or stored, and any vehicle used to transport

the victim. 



-- Investigators should be trained to look for specific types of evidence that

have been present in other cases. Drug-related evidence may be found in the

glasses from which the victim drank, containers used to mix drinks, and trash

cans where these items were discarded. In one case, traces of GHB were

found in the box of salt that was used to make margaritas. GHB is often carried

in small bottles, such as eye drop bottles. It is often administered in sweet

drinks, such as fruit nectars and liqueurs, to mask its salty taste. 



-- Recipes for making GHB may be found on an offender's computer. In

several cases, rapists who used drugs to incapacitate their victims also

photographed or videotaped them. These pictures led to the identification of

additional victims of the same offenders. 



-- Rape Evidence Kits. Standardized rape kits should be updated to include

instructions and containers for the collection of urine specimens as well as blood

in all cases in which drug-facilitated rape is suspected. In jurisdictions that do

not have a standardized rape kit, a multi-agency task force composed of police

officers, prosecutors, hospital personnel, crime lab technicians, and rape crisis

counselors should develop one and monitor compliance. A forensic laboratory

with the capability of conducting toxicology tests should be identified because

not all crime labs have the specialized equipment needed to test for rape drugs.

Procedures should be implemented to preserve the chain of custody 

of the evidence. 



Where Do We Go From Here? 



Only four substantial studies of the prevalence and incidence of drug-facilitated

rape were under way in late 1999 when this article was prepared, but none will

provide an accurate measure of the situation. Three do not interview victims 

and therefore cannot factor in recreational use of Rohypnol or GHB. The

fourth, a study by the University of Cincinnati and funded by NIJ, asks victims

specifically if someone has ever placed Rohypnol in a beverage but does not

link the responses to sexual assault victimizations or recreational use. 



To understand more about drug-facilitated rape, a research agenda should

include the following: 



-- Expansion of existing Federal data systems to provide information on

drug-facilitated rape. The National Crime Victimization Survey may be an

appropriate means for collecting population-based information on the incidence

of this offense.



-- Collection of new data in the fields of pharmacology and offender profiling.



-- Ethnographic studies to develop a better understanding of the nature of this

offense, including the most likely victims and the risk factors for victimization.



-- A major multiyear, multimethod research initiative structured as four separate

studies designed to measure the incidence of drug-facilitated rape among

suspected cases, within the general population, among high-risk populations,

and in the context of acquaintance rape. 



-- Funding for development of new drug detection technologies, such as hair

analysis methods.



Some of the ethnographic and newspaper reporting on Rohypnol and GHB,

which the Department of Justice working group tracked, has been driven in part

by sporadic signs of increased recreational use and overdoses. But the more

important impetus for further study appears to be reports from people who turn

to rape counseling centers and clinics with complaints and suspicions that they

have been victimized. 







NCJ 181731



Notes



1. Perkins, Craig, and Patsy Klaus, Criminal Victimization 1994, National

Crime Victimization Survey Report, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of

Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, April 1996 (NCJ 158022). The number of

rapes reported on victimization surveys, however, differs widely from the

number reported to the police. In 1996, 95,770 forcible rapes were reported

to the police, representing approximately 28 percent of the number of rape

victims reported in the National Crime Victimization Survey.



2. Levine, E.M., and E.J. Kanin, "Sexual Violence Among Dates and

Acquaintances: Trends and Their Implications for Marriage and Family,"

Journal of Family Violence 2(1):55-65 (1987).



3. Richardson, D.R., and G.S. Hammock, "Alcohol and Acquaintance Rape,"

in A. Parrot and L. Bechhofer (eds.), Acquaintance Rape: The Hidden Crime,

New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1991, 83-95.



4. A national survey based on a sample of students in higher education showed

that 55 percent of female student victims of acquaintance rape and 74 percent

of male student perpetrators self-reported using alcohol immediately before the

assault. See Koss, Mary, "Hidden Rape: Sexual Aggression and Victimization

in a National Sample of Students in Higher Education," in Ann W. Burgess

(ed.) Rape and Sexual Assault, vol. II, NY: Garland Publishing, 1988. 



5. Calhoun, S.R., D.R. Wesson, G.P. Galloway, and D.E. Smith, "Abuse of

Flunitrazepam (Rohypnol) and Other Benzodiazepines in Austin and South

Texas," Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, 28(2) (April-June 1996).



6. "Gamma Hydroxy Butyrate Use--New York and Texas, 1995-1996,"

Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, 46(13):281-283 (April 4, 1997).

Rosen, M.I., H.R. Pearsall, S.W. Woods, and T.R. Costen, "Effects of

Gamma-Hydroxybutyric Acid (GHB) in Opioid-Dependent Patients," Journal

of Substance Abuse Treatment, 14(2):149-154 (March 1997).



7. Conversation with Lloyd John-ston, Principal Investigator of Monitoring the

Future, University of Michigan, Institute for Social Research, January 1, 2000.



8. Among 10th graders, 1.4 percent reported heroin use in 1998; 1.1 percent

of 12th graders reported heroin use in that same year. 



9. Among Hispanic students, the rates increase from 1.9 to 3.5 percent. In one

school district on the Texas-Mexico border, 14 percent of the students

reported ever having used Rohypnol, and 5.3 percent reported using it in the

past month. See Maxwell, J.C., and L.Y. Liu, 1998 Texas School Survey of

Substance Use Among Students: Grades 7-12, Texas Commission on Alcohol

and Drug Abuse, 1999.



---------------------------



about the authors



Nora Fitzgerald is a Social Science Analyst at the National Institute of Justice. 

K. Jack Riley, Ph.D., is Director of the Criminal Justice Program at RAND.

Fitzgerald and Riley (who at the time was Director of NIJ's Arrestee Drug

Abuse Monitoring program) led the Department of Justice working group that

conducted the research and wrote the report upon which this article is based.



---------------------------



How This Article Came to Be 



In December 1997, the U.S. Attorney General directed the Department of

Justice to assess the problems posed by drugs being used to facilitate rape. 

A working group chaired by NIJ Director Jeremy Travis and representatives

from several other Justice Department agencies began meeting regularly to

structure the inquiry and review progress. 



The group's overarching objective was to assess the state of knowledge about

drug-facilitated rape and report back to the Attorney General within several

months. 



The group's first step was to determine how often drug-facilitated rape occurs.

There are no national statistics for this offense (such as would be provided by

the Uniform Crime Reports, the National Criminal Victimization Survey, or the

National Judicial Reporting Program), so the group conducted a thorough

review of other, nonnational-level research. This search revealed that no

empirical data exist to answer the question. 



The investigation then turned to a number of other data sources representing

different perspectives: ethnographers, the print media, Internet-based data, law

enforcement, victim advocates, policymakers, and the pharmaceutical industry.

The search uncovered a considerable amount of conflicting information amid

differing viewpoints. 



The working group learned a great deal from its investigation but could draw no

conclusions beyond a clear recognition that the incidence of this offense is

extraordinarily difficult to measure, that existing indicators are incapable of

monitoring the problem, and that the true magnitude of the problem cannot be

known with certainty from the scientific methods that have been used to date. 



To learn how to obtain a copy of the full report, see "For More Information" on

page 15. 



---------------------------



Description of Data Sources 



Monitoring the Future (MTF): This ongoing survey of 8th, 10th, and 12th

graders uses a national probability sample. Sponsored by the National Institute

on Drug Abuse. Visit http://www.monitoringthefuture.org.



Drug Abuse Warning Network (DAWN): DAWN records instances of

emergency room visits and deaths related to particular drugs. Sponsored by the

Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. Visit

http://www.samhsa.gov and http://www.health.org/pubs/dawn/index.htm.



Community Epidemiology Working Group (CEWG): This ethnographic

reporting system, in place in 21 metropolitan areas, supplements findings from

national drug data systems. Sponsored by the National Institute on Drug

Abuse. Visit http://www.nida.nih.gov.



Pulse Check: This ethnographic reporting system covers 20 metropolitan areas.

Sponsored by the White House's Office of National Drug Control Policy. Visit

http://www.whitehousedrugpolicy.gov.



---------------------------



Learning From Victims



by Gail Abarbanel, LCSW



Gail Abarbanel is the director of the Rape Treatment Center (RTC) at 

Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center. Established in 1974, the RTC has

treated more than 20,000 sexual assault victims. The RTC's informational

materials on drug-facilitated rape are distributed throughout the United States.



In late 1995, the Rape Treatment Center at Santa Monica-UCLA Medical

Center began to see a new pattern in sexual assault cases. Victims were coming

in who believed they had been drugged surreptitiously to incapacitate them for

the purpose of sexually assaulting them. Many of these cases followed a similar

pattern. Victims were in what seemed like a comfortable social environment,

such as a restaurant, party, or club. Unbeknownst to them, someone slipped a

drug into their drink. As they consumed the drink, they began to feel disoriented

or sick. The next thing they remembered was waking up hours later, sometimes

in a different location. 



When they regained consciousness, some victims were unsure if they had been

sexually assaulted. Others found signs that they had been: They were

undressed; they had semen stains on their bodies and/or clothing; they had

vaginal or anal trauma, such as soreness and/or lacerations. All of these victims

reported significant memory impairment. Most could not recall what was done

to them, who participated, or how many people were present while they were

unconscious. Some could remember brief, intermittent periods of awakening,

during which they were aware of their surroundings but were unable to move or

speak. They felt "paralyzed." One victim said, "I came to and saw this guy on

top of me about to rape me, but I couldn't move my arms or legs. Then I

passed out again." 



It was apparent to the staff at the Rape Treatment Center that some rapists

were using a powerful new weapon to overpower, disable, and control their

victims. 



When victims began to report these crimes to the authorities, their cases often

were dismissed. One victim was told, "He has his memory, you don't have

yours. There's no evidence. The case is closed." 



In many instances, crucial physical evidence was never gathered from victims or

crime scenes. For example, even when sexual assault evidentiary examinations

were conducted, urine specimens needed to detect traces of the drugs were

omitted because, in most jurisdictions, urine samples were not routinely

included in standardized rape kits. As a result of these deficiencies, many

victims felt revictimized by the agencies that were supposed to help them.



When these cases initially appeared, there was little information in the 

professional literature or in news coverage about rape drugs or drug-facilitated

sexual assaults. Victims were a crucial source of information. Their reports

helped define this emerging crime pattern by identifying the characteristics of

these crimes that distinguished them from other sexual assaults. 



In addition, the problems victims encountered suggested an urgent need for a

comprehensive, broad-based community response, including new protocols for

hospitals, police departments, and crime labs; updated rape evidence kits;

training for police officers, prosecutors, rape crisis centers, and other victim 

service providers; public policy and legislative reforms; research; and public

education and prevention programs. 



What Victims Have Taught Us



How Rape Drugs Facilitate Sexual Assaults. Rape drugs make it relatively easy

for rapists to gain control of their victims. Perpetrators do not have to

overcome any form of resistance. They do not have to use physical force. They

do not have to threaten to harm the victim to get compliance. Nor do they have

to be concerned about a victim's screams attracting attention. The drugs they

administer immobilize and silence the victim. 



How Victims are Prevented From Detecting Threats to Their Safety. Victims of

these crimes do not sense any threat to their safety when the assailant is

incapacitating them. The "weapon" used to overpower and disable them is

invisible. It is hidden in a drink. 



How Victims are Inhibited From Exercising Self-Defense. The ability to sense

danger is critical to a person's ability to implement self-defense strategies. When

faced with the threat of being raped, most people employ one or more

protective measures, such as verbally negotiating with the assailant, cognitively

assessing their options, screaming, stalling, attempting to escape, and/or

physically resisting. If these efforts fail to prevent the rape, victims may "fight

back" in other ways. They may use their sensory and cognitive abilities to

memorize details about the assailant's physical characteristics, the location of

the crime, and other factors that can later be used to aid authorities in

apprehending and prosecuting the offender. 



The incapacitating effects of rape drugs rob victims of their ability to use these

coping strategies. One victim said, "Rape is never a fair fight, but I didn't even

have a chance to defend myself."



How Rapists Can Appear to Be Rescuers. When victims are drugged in places

where other people are present, such as restaurants, clubs, bars, and parties,

the rapist may appear to bystanders and witnesses to be a rescuer. The

behavioral effects of rape drugs look very much like the effects of voluntary

alcohol consumption. To onlookers, the victim may seem drunk. When the

rapist carries or leads the victim to another location where the sexual assault will

be committed, he may be viewed as "helping" or transporting a vulnerable

person to a safe place. 



How Rape Drugs Affect Reporting Patterns. Victimization surveys 

consistently indicate very low reporting rates among rape victims. Delayed

reports also are common, particularly in acquaintance rapes. The reasons 

are well documented in the literature. In drug-facilitated rapes, additional

factors may account for low and delayed reporting, including the immediate and

residual effects of the drugs (the victim may be unconscious for several hours

after the assault and may have hangover effects after regaining consciousness);

feelings of guilt or self-blame because of prior voluntary ingestion of alcohol

and/or drugs; confusion and uncertainty about what happened; and reluctance

to make an accusation without personal knowledge or memory of the assault

circumstances. 



How Victims' Inability to Recall What Happened Affects the System's

Response. Many aspects of a rape investigation are facilitated by a victim's

ability to describe what happened. The victim's narrative helps guide the

medical/evidentiary examination and the police investigation. In addition, it may

be an important consideration in prosecutor filing decisions and judgments

about credibility. When victims of drug-facilitated rapes cannot give a complete

narrative, they often encounter suspicion, disbelief, and/or frustration. Their

inability to supply information that could assist the investigation and/or

prosecution compounds their sense of helplessness.



How People Misjudge and Minimize Victims' Trauma. Because most victims of

drug-facilitated rapes have no memory of the sexual assault, people may

mistakenly minimize the trauma they suffered. One victim was told, "You're

lucky you can't remember, you won't suffer as much as other victims." For all

rape victims, the loss of control experienced during an assault is profoundly

traumatic. In drug-facilitated rapes, the additional deprivation of cognition

during the assault, combined with anterograde amnesia afterwards, subjects the 

victim to an extreme form of powerlessness.



How Drugging Is a Unique Form of Trauma. Many of the difficulties victims

face in the aftermath of these assaults are due to the effects of the drugs given

by offenders. The surreptitious drugging of a victim is, in and of itself, a cruel

and criminal violation of the person. Some victims describe this aspect of the

trauma as "mind rape." The drugging should be recognized as a separate and

distinct act of victimization in addition to any other acts of abuse and

degradation to which the victim was subjected. 



How Being Unable to Forget Compares With Being Unable to Remember. In

the aftermath of rape, most victims suffer acute stress disorder and

post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms. One of the most disturbing symptoms

is their inability to forget what happened. The trauma is reexperienced

repeatedly. Victims commonly have recurrent, intrusive recollections of the

rape, including thoughts, flashbacks, and nightmares. For victims of

drug-facilitated rapes, this aspect of the aftermath may be experienced 

differently. Because they cannot recall what happened during a significant time

period, they have to cope with a gap in their memory. They experience the

horror, powerlessness, and humiliation of not knowing what was done to them.

They can only imagine what happened. One victim said, "I would rather have

the nightmare." 



---------------------------



For More Information



-- Fitzgerald, N., K.J. Riley, T. Alston, C. Mamalian, M. Mendez, A. Resnick,

B. Taylor, and J. Wiseman, Report to the Attorney General From the

Drug-Facilitated Rape Working Group, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of

Justice, National Institute of Justice, 1998 (NCJ 181396). To obtain a copy,

contact the National Criminal Justice Reference Service at P.O. Box 6000,

Rockville, MD 20849-6000, 1-800-851-3420. 



-- Nora Fitzgerald, Social Science Analyst, National Institute of Justice, 810

Seventh Street NW., Washington, D.C. 20531, 202-305-1547,

fitzgera@ojp.usdoj.gov.



-- The National Institute on Drug Abuse's party drugs Web site:

http://www.clubdrugs.org.



-- Anglin, D., K.L. Spears, and H. Range Hutson, "Flunitrazepam and Its

Involvement in Date or Acquaintance Rape," Journal of Academic Emergency

Medicine 4(4) (1997). 



-- Calhoun, S.R., D.R. Wesson, G.P. Galloway, and D.E. Smith, "Abuse of

Flunitrazepam (Rohypnol) and Other Benzodiazepines in Austin and South

Texas," Journal of Psychoactive Drugs 28(2) (April-June 1996).



-- Inciardi, J.A., and C.A. Saum, "Rohypnol Misuse in the United States,"

Journal of Substance Use and Misuse 32(6):723 (1997). 



-- Woods, J.H., and Gail Winger, "Abuse Liability of Flunitrazepam," Journal

of Clinical Psychopharmacology 17,(3) (June 1997), Supp. 2.



---------------------------



Can We Talk? Public Safety and the Interoperability Challenge



by Brenna Smith and Tom Tolman



In their routine day-to-day operations, many public safety agencies can transmit

mug shots, fingerprints, and videos of crime scenes to their communications

centers. But when agencies from multiple jurisdictions need to mount a

coordinated response (for example, during a high-speed pursuit across

geographic boundaries), they may not be able to talk to each other via their

radios in real time because their separate radio equipment is incompatible.

When disaster strikes--a bombing, plane crash, or natural disaster--they even

may be forced to use hand signals or runners to relay messages. 



In an era when news, data, and pictures can be sent instantaneously to the

farthest reaches of the earth, it is hard to believe that police officers, firefighters,

and emergency medical service personnel may not be able to talk to each other

by radio.



Both the fairly common incident as well as the rare headline-grabbing event

(such as the Oklahoma City bombing or Columbine shootings) test the ability of

public safety agencies to coordinate and respond immediately. But in many

cases, precious seconds can be lost while dispatchers translate and relay 

emergency communications. 



The ability to share information in real time between agencies is called

interoperability. The basic idea is this: Persons who need to exchange

information should be able to do so, even when they are using different

technologies from different manufacturers, without the need for custom

hardware or software to integrate them all. It's a little like the incompatibilities

between various computer operating systems (e.g., Windows, Macintosh,

Unix)--but a lot more complicated. Broadly defined, interoperability refers to

the ability to transmit all types of communications electronically, including voice, 

data, and images. This article focuses on one aspect: The ability of public safety

agencies to talk to each other via radios. 



Why Do We Have This Problem? 



Many factors contribute to lack of interoperability. Public safety agencies report

that incompatible radio frequency bands and limited funding to update

equipment are their biggest problems,[1] but John Clark, former Deputy Chief

of Public Safety for the Federal Communications Commission, sees the issue in

larger terms. Clark says, "The problem with public safety interoperability is a

problem of management, leadership, institutional control, and institutional 

culture." 



Limited Radio "Spectrum." In the early years of radio communication, public

safety agencies used radio spectrum only for voice transmissions. Today, 

public safety agencies are using radio spectrum for much more than voice

transmissions. Just as consumers can now use their wireless telephones to

download their e-mail, so too can police officers use systems originally

dedicated to voice transmissions to send crime scene data, videos, fingerprints,

and mug shots. The trend toward wireless communications and the

convergence of different telecommunication processes is causing more and

more "traffic congestion" over the air waves.



Electronic transmissions are sent over a finite natural resource called radio

spectrum. John Clark calls radio spectrum the "electromagnetic real estate in

the sky." Spectrum is divided into bands, such as VHF and UHF. These in turn

are divided into frequencies or megahertz (MHz). For example, 25-50 MHz

resides at the lower end of the VHF band while 764-776 MHz resides 

at the upper end of the UHF band. (See figure 1, next page.)



Originally, public safety agencies were assigned the lower frequencies and

bands. As the lower bands were becoming busy and congested, technology

was improving to allow the use of higher bands, and the Federal

Communication Commission, which assigns State and local radio spectrum,

allotted more spectrum to public safety agencies. 



Today, public safety agencies are assigned frequencies across 10 different

bands of radio spectrum, from low to high. Unfortunately, affordable

technology does not exist to allow one radio to communicate across all the

frequencies. Hence, a city's police department may be assigned one frequency

while the city's emergency medical services another. The result: They cannot

talk to each other. In the Oklahoma City bombing, the city police operated on

one frequency, the fire department on another, the county on another, and the

State on still another. Mark Schwarz, an Oklahoma City Council member and

former president of the National League of Cities, recounts how at one point

during the early minutes of the disaster, the fire department suspected that

another bomb remained inside the building and ordered all personnel to

evacuate. Only the firefighters got the message immediately. If there had been a

second bomb, all the other first responders would have lost precious minutes

while their dispatch centers received the fire department message and relayed it

over their frequencies. 



Diversity and Age of Equipment. More than 18,000 law enforcement agencies

and 35,000 fire and emergency medical agencies operate in the United States.

Of necessity, the vast majority purchase communications equipment

independently of each other. Most of their components are old (20-year-old

radios are not uncommon) and work well only with equipment made by the

same manufacturer. But even agencies with the newest equipment find that their

radios cannot work with equipment from other manufacturers. 



Donald Appleby, Project Director of Pennsylvania's Statewide Radio Systems,

tells of a jurisdiction that installed seven different types of radios in an

ambulance so EMT personnel could communicate with other first responders,

like fire and police. According to Appleby, "We had so many radios, we had 

to color-code the microphones to know which was which." The cost of the

equipment rivaled the cost of the ambulance itself.



Coordination and Cooperation. Without doubt, one of the biggest challenges to

solving interoperability problems is the organizational and political obstacles of

making decisions that cross geographic and political boundaries. It is quite

common for one jurisdiction's rules and regulations to conflict with a

neighboring jurisdiction. Leaders who want to make strategic plans and

cooperative purchasing decisions commonly find coordination to be extremely

difficult because of political preferences, competing priorities in resources, and

the complexity of varying and sometimes incompatible laws across jurisdictions.



Technical solutions can be attained, but without coordination, cooperation, and

planning among agencies, the technologies cannot be implemented to their

greatest potential. 



Potential Solutions



Although there is no silver bullet or single solution to achieving interoperability,

several approaches can foster enhanced communication among agencies. One

such approach is the use of digital radio systems. Digital systems improve

interoperability indirectly because they generally operate more efficiently with

radio spectrum. Digital systems also offer more options or functionality, such as

the ability to use "talk groups" that relay information to multiple users at once

and improved encryption capability so that information transmitted over digital 

systems can be made secure. In addition, signals transmitted over digital

systems are clearer over longer distances. Michigan is implementing a statewide

effort to streamline communication by moving all of its public safety agencies to

an 800 MHz statewide digital system. But digital systems only help if they are

"trunked" so that users are automatically routed to an open channel and need

not wait for an open channel. 



Some public safety agencies are trying another approach: Using products and

services that traditionally have been sold only to consumers, such as satellite

paging systems, cellular phones, and personal communication systems (PCS's)

that transmit both voice and data. These alternatives are helping to alleviate

existing public safety spectrum congestion and to expand the geographic

boundaries of signal areas.



Sharing radio towers is another approach. The city leaders of Upper St. Clair,

Pennsylvania, a suburb of Pittsburgh, have partnered with a commercial radio

enterprise to improve interoperability for their public safety services. The city

has allowed a commercial enterprise to build a radio tower on a site that would

not otherwise be available to them. In exchange for permission to build the

tower, the commercial enterprise has agreed to let the city use the tower for

police transmissions. 



Although there are many issues to be ironed out regarding the use of

commercially available services for public safety, some agencies are already

putting the benefits into practice. The Alexandria (Virginia) Police Department,

for example, is using a commercially available product (called "Cellular Digital

Packet Data," or CDPD) to wirelessly transmit information to and from laptop

computers in patrol vehicles. 



NIJ's Effort to Support Solutions



The National Institute of Justice, with its history of developing standards for law

enforcement products and its close working relationships with State and local

public safety agencies, has taken steps to assist in solving interoperability

problems.



San Diego County Integrates 12 Agencies. One of the earliest interoperability

projects (operational since 1996) connected the dispatch centers (radio

communication systems) of 12 agencies operating in San Diego County,

including the Border Patrol, Immigration and Naturalization Service, California

Highway Patrol, and San Diego Police Department. The Border Tactical

Communication System, or BORTAC as the project is called, was undertaken

jointly with the Office of National Drug Control Policy and the U.S. Navy's

Public Safety Center in San Diego. 



Leaders of the participating agencies engaged in considerable early planning,

significant negotiation, and substantial discussion of the tradeoffs before the

project could become a reality. Territorial issues, personality differences, and

legal and liability concerns all hampered the project. Eventually, off-the-shelf

communications circuits and radio system software were used to link the

agencies' various radio systems. 



Now, with BORTAC in place, officers are able to speak directly to one

another, eliminating the need for dispatchers to relay information. Officers in

two or more agencies can talk together, and multiple, independent

conversations can occur simultaneously. For example, the Border Patrol can

talk to the San Diego Sheriff's Department about one matter while the

Immigration and Naturalization Service, San Diego Fire Department, and

Emergency Medical Service personnel are talking about something else.



Public safety agencies use BORTAC several times each month for an array of

activities, including regional auto-theft task force operations, counterdrug

sweeps, police pursuits, special cross-border events, and gang suppression. In

one case, a felon who had threatened officers with a weapon tried to escape on 

a motorcycle. Three neighboring agencies were patched through BORTAC and

apprehended the suspect without injury to the officers. 



The BORTAC model is now being enhanced and replicated in Imperial County

and Los Angeles County, California, and in Brownsville, Texas. 



AGILE: A Comprehensive Effort. Created in 1998, AGILE (Advanced

Generation of Interoperability for Law Enforcement) pulls together all

interoperability efforts within NIJ and serves as the point of contact for

coordinating interoperability initiatives with other projects, both within the

Department of Justice as well as with other Federal, State, and local

agencies.[2]



AGILE has four main components: (1) supporting research and development;

(2) testing, evaluating, and piloting technologies; (3) developing standards; and

(4) educating and reaching out to end users and policymakers.



-- Supporting research and development. AGILE is supporting or "seeding"

research and development of interoperability technology in order to expand

knowledge of the issues and spawn possible solutions. In 2000, the AGILE

team plans to invest in the development and deployment of technologies such as

high-bandwidth communications, security, software, wireless communications,

and knowledge mining. NIJ anticipates release later this year of a focused

interoperability solicitation to address technology research and development

gaps.



-- Testing, evaluating, and piloting technologies. Developing technologies is only

the first step. (What's needed next is to create pilot programs to make sure the

technologies work as intended.) One of NIJ's pilot sites is the Alexandria

(Virginia) Police Department. Alexandria is an "operational laboratory," which

means the technologies have moved from the test lab into a real-life, day-to-day

setting. The feedback and evaluation from Alexandria's experience will

contribute to a better understanding of the technologies' impact on policies,

procedures, training, organization, and operational readiness. In December

1999, NIJ deployed a communications switch that links disparate radio systems

so that over-the-air communication is now feasible among the Alexandria Police

Department's 800 MHz system, the District of Columbia's Metropolitan Police

Department's UHF system, and the U.S. Parks Police's VHF system.



AGILE team members are documenting Alexandria's response to the

requirements of the equipment and the ways the system accepts and manages

the transmission of voice, data, and image information. NIJ anticipates that this

and other pilot projects will provide information about the lessons learned--

both good and bad--from the Alexandria experience. 



-- Developing standards. NIJ has a long history of involvement with the

development of national standards for law enforcement.[3] Building on that

tradition, the AGILE team is identifying existing standards related to

interoperability that can be adopted or adapted by manufacturers and public

safety agencies. The team is evaluating competing or multiple standards as part

of the process of developing standards to fill any gaps.[4]



-- Reaching out through education and outreach. AGILE's education and

outreach component will entail a public awareness campaign aimed at

decisionmakers to emphasize the urgency of the problem, propose solutions,

and facilitate multi-agency cooperation.



AGILE also is probing ways to address the coordination and cooperation

issues related to interoperability. The team is examining how the use of

emerging communications technologies affects Federal, State, regional, and

local operations; documenting how the use of these technologies affects public

safety agencies' training, security needs and policies, procurement, and

equipment replacement policies; and providing information to understand the

financial impact. 



AGILE is a big step forward in collecting, evaluating, and disseminating

information about the lessons learned about interoperable technology from a

living laboratory. AGILE will inform decisionmakers about issues related to

funding, development of standards, and difficulties in procuring and 

maintaining equipment and will encourage the investment necessary to bring the

public more fully into the information age. 



The Future of Interoperability



Solving interoperability problems will require different levels of commitment

from various user groups and close cooperation and open dialog between

regulating officials and the manufacturing community. Solutions also must take

into account the substantial embedded infrastructure currently being used by

public safety agencies, their unique budgetary constraints, and the critical lack

of additional funding available to most agencies. 



A number of steps can be taken to enhance public safety communications. The

first is a reallocation of spectrum from other uses to public safety use and a

more efficient and cooperative use of present spectrum. Greater sharing of

resources, such as radio towers and spectrum, both within the public safety

community and with other users, will improve efficiency and enhance

interoperability.



The creation of standards for communications equipment will go a long way

toward fostering interoperability. But the development of standards is a slow,

time-consuming process that must be considered a long-term solution. 



These critical areas will require further attention at all levels of government and

by all public safety agencies and, as noted earlier by John Clark, a concerted

effort to overcome institutional control and culture.







NCJ 181729 



Notes



1. Taylor, Mary J., Robert C. Epper, and Thomas K. Tolman, Wireless

Communications and Interoperability Among State and Local Law

Enforcement Agencies, Research in Brief, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department

of Justice, National Institute of Justice, January 1998 (NCJ 168945).



2. In addition to AGILE, the other primary Department of Justice

interoperability projects include the Global Criminal Justice Information

Network, a technology-based approach to helping the justice community share

information globally, and the Public Safety Wireless Network, a joint

Justice-Treasury Department undertaking to develop a nationwide, wireless

telecommunications network for use by public safety agencies at all levels of

government. 



3. NIJ, for example, was responsible for the development of national standards

for body armor and has now issued standards for products ranging from

hand-cuffs to police cars.



4. NIJ is working with organizations dedicated to establishing standards in these

arenas, including the Telecommunications Industry Association, the Institute of

Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and the Internet Engineering Task Force.



---------------------------



about the authors



Brenna Smith manages the AGILE team for the Research and Technology

Division of NIJ's Office of Science and Technology. Tom Tolman is the

Communications Technology Manager at NIJ's National Law Enforcement and

Corrections Technology Center-Rocky Mountain Region.



---------------------------



For More Information



-- For information about AGILE, contact NIJ staff Brenna Smith (202-305-

3305) or Tom Coty (202-524-7683). 



-- For information about BORTAC, contact Bob Waldron, Director,

NLECTC-Western Region at 310-336-2124.



-- Taylor, Mary J., Robert C. Epper, and Thomas K. Tolman, Wireless

Communications and Interoperability Among State and Local Law

Enforcement Agencies, Research in Brief, Washington, D.C., U.S. Department

of Justice, National Institute of Justice, January 1998 (NCJ 168945). This

study surveyed thousands of law enforcement agencies; the data and analysis

provide a valuable glimpse into the problems State and local agencies face. 



-- "Why Can't We Talk?" videotape. This 13-minute tape for high- to midlevel

State and local public officials explores the issue and emphasizes the need for

changing the way jurisdictions plan and coordinate the design of their

communications systems. Emergency services personnel, police officials,

firefighters, and public policymakers relate their experiences with

interoperability problems--and their proposed solutions. Free copies are

available from the National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology

Center by calling 1-800-248-2742. 



-- National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Center-Rocky

Mountain, Understanding Wireless Communications in Public Safety,

Guidebook to Technology, Issues, Planning and Management. Obtain a copy

by visiting http://www.nlectc. org/nlectcrm or calling 1-800-248-2742. 



-- A discussion of costs and funding issues can be found in "Report on Funding

Mechanisms for Public Safety Radio Communications" (December 1997) and 

"Report on Funding Strategy for Public Safety Radio Communications"

(October 1998). Both reports were prepared by Booz-Allen & Hamilton for

the Public Safety Wireless Network and are available at the Network's Web

site, http://www.pswn.gov.



The Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) (http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bja) offers

several programs to assist State and local municipalities interested in

interoperability: 



-- The Edward Byrne Memorial State and Local Law Enforcement Assistance

Program provides funds through two types of grant programs: Discretionary

and formula. Discretionary funds are awarded directly to public and private

agencies and private nonprofit organizations. Formula funds, which are

awarded to the States, in turn make awards to State and local units of

governments.



-- The Local Law Enforcement Block Grants Program provides funds to units

of local government to underwrite projects to reduce crime and improve public

safety. Public safety agencies have used these funds to upgrade radio systems

and improve information sharing. 



Web-Based Sources



-- Visit the Justice Technology Information Network (JUSTNET) at

http://www.nlectc.org, or call the National Law Enforcement and Corrections

Technology Center at 1-800-248-2742.



-- Visit the Public Safety Wireless Network (PSWN) program, a joint initiative

of the Departments of Justice and Treasury at http://www.pswn.gov, or call

PSWN at 1-800-565-PSWN. 



-- Visit the Federal Communications Commission's Wireless

Telecommunications Bureau at http://www.fcc.gov/wtb/publicsafety, or call the

Bureau at 202-418-0680. 



---------------------------



Departing Thoughts From an NIJ Director



NIJ Director Jeremy Travis recently announced that he will be leaving the

Institute after 5H years to become a Senior Fellow at the Urban Institute in

Washington, D.C. On the afternoon of February 18, Mr. Travis sat down to

discuss his tenure with esteemed criminologist Alfred Blumstein, the J. Erik

Jonsson University Professor of Urban Systems and Operations Research at

the H. John Heinz III School of Public Policy and Management at Carnegie

Mellon University. Professor Blumstein is a former dean of the Heinz School

and is the Director of the National Consortium on Violence Research. What

follows is an excerpt of the conversation between Mr. Travis and Professor

Blumstein. 



AB: Jeremy, many of us are sorry to learn that you're leaving, after 

one of the most impressive tenures as NIJ director. I think the world outside is

really impressed with what's happened and what's been accomplished. What

are you most proud of?



JT: I'm most proud of establishing NIJ's place in the world as an organization

that's committed to science, committed to independent research activities, and

particularly committed to finding relationships that are productive between

researchers and practitioners.



AB: I think that's widely recognized as an important accomplishment. What's

your sense of how likely that transformation is to continue? What are some of

the threats you see to its continuing? And how do we ensure that it will continue?



JT: Well, the good news is that at the local level we are seeing new relationships

between researchers and practitioners and policymakers that can't be stopped.

And those relationships are evolving and becoming a way of doing business that

is seen as valuable in itself.



AB: But NIJ did some "pump priming" in this regard...



JT: I think we've played a significant role in accelerating what may have been a

naturally occurring phenomenon. We made investments that brought research

and police partners together. Then we replicated that in the correctional world,

in the violence against women world, and in other areas as well. We've tried to

foster a sense of comfort between research and practice so that each has

something to teach the other. I think NIJ has played a very valuable role--

valuable beyond our dollars--in encouraging different ways of thinking on both

sides of the equation.



AB: Different ways of both thinking and organizing...



JT: ...and willingness to reexamine the core ways of doing business. That

momentum cannot be stopped because it is of value to both parties. I also think

the funding that's made this possible is very secure, in part because the political

situation in this country is such that the Federal government will always now be

asked to do something about crime, and we've been successful in asserting the

principle that for each Federal crime policy initiative, money should be set aside

to conduct research and evaluation.



AB: Is that a principle reflected in statute that is going to continue, or is it

subject to change by a change in administration?



JT: The set-aside principle is a principle that is now reflected in statute. Some

modifications are now being proposed to make that clearer and establish the

level of funding. But the principle is there in statute. So between a Democratic

administration and a Republican Congress, this is now seen as the way that we

do business. And my hope for the longer term is that we will be able not only to

conduct research that is tied to Federal initiatives, but also be able to conduct

long-term research projects--that take 5 to 10 years--so we can explore new

areas of crime policy on behalf of the country. For example, we have very little

research underway on organized crime, on economic crimes, and on emerging

issues, such as cybercrime. Those require a long-term research agenda that will

help define the research questions, the research methods, and the research

opportunities. But we need to be ahead of that curve rather than merely

conducting research that is a parallel enterprise to the Federal crime initiatives.



Maintaining an Independent Research Program



AB: You mentioned that you're proud of establishing NIJ as an organization

that's committed to independent research activities. What insulations are in

place to keep the next Attorney General, the next President, and perhaps the

next director of NIJ, from tearing down some of the strong protections you've

built-up to maintain an independent research program?



JT: The best insulations we have and have had for many years are the two

pillars of our statutory authorization, which say, first, that the decision-making

authority of the National Institute of Justice is the sole authority of the director.

So I have never had to consult with the higher-ups about what grant to award.

I've made those decisions within this office. And that's a very important

principle, it's a very important legal protection, and it's a very important

statement Congress has made [to ensure] an independent research program

within the Department of Justice.



A second insulation is the final decision-making authority the NIJ director has to

publish. Our publications are ours alone. They receive the scientific protections

of peer review and editing to make sure that they're accessible to the field, but

the final decision to publish is reserved to the NIJ director. 



AB: Now, to the extent that a new director is, let's say, an agent of a political

Attorney General--that independence is thereby inherently undermined. What

happens then?



JT: Two things. One is we have built a very strong professional staff that, to

their core, believes in these values. Secondly, we've built a strong network

outside of the Institute--researchers and practitioners and policymakers, and

members of Congress alike--that believes in these principles.



AB: And that institutional network includes, for example, the National Academy

of Sciences Committee on Law and Justice...and what others?



JT: I think all the professional associations, the universities, and the high-quality

research organizations--they have an interest in the independence of the

research product of their faculty and staff. We all have the same interest, which

is to ensure that the research process is respected for its independence and its

integrity. And to the extent that interest is shared outside of NIJ, our internal

ability to advance with independence and integrity is strengthened.



NIJ's Contribution to Research on Violence, Policing, and Sentencing and

Corrections



AB: We've been talking about some of the organizational issues that have been

important, and they really are important. But would you comment on substantive

areas that you think have been important developments?



JT: Well, I think our research on violence has been a valuable contribution to

our understanding and to improving practice--and that's in the areas of family

violence, homicides generally, and gun violence. In those three areas, we've

made contributions that will help to focus and localize some of the practitioner

and policy responses in ways that will improve practice and already have. For

example, the work we did in Boston with the Boston Gun Project.[1] That

relatively small research grant to Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School

of Government has helped us to think about juvenile violence in very innovative, 

very valuable ways.



Secondly, I think the research portfolio on policing will define a new era of

policing. We have done research on organizational change that was never

possible before because it's very expensive research. We're asking the question,

'What does it mean to change the culture of an organization toward a new way

of doing business?'



AB: Would you say something about those projects?



JT: We've been able to support longitudinal studies of police departments as the

unit of analysis in six jurisdictions for, it will be ultimately 6 to 10 years. We're

not just studying policing, we're studying the police, we're studying the police

organization.[2]



And I think of particular importance has been the growth in our research and

policy engagement on the issues of sentencing and corrections. When I came to

NIJ in 1994, I was stunned to learn that this research organization was funding

very little on what is the major policy challenge of our generation, which is

sentencing and corrections. 



AB: The whole incarceration issue...



JT: Right. And so we have funded a very robust research portfolio on those

issues, trying to understand the impact of various sentencing options, to look at

alternative sentencing policies, to look at prison management.



AB: In that realm, one of the important areas where NIJ made investments in

the past was in crime-control theory, with particular emphasis on deterrence and

incapacitation. One of the important contributions was, for example, the RAND

inmate survey, which investigated individual offending rates or the distribution of

lambda. We don't have anything more recent than a survey that was done more

than 20 years ago.[3]



JT: I will identify this as a major regret. We wanted to be able to update the

lambda estimates, in part because they provide the basis for so much policy

debate and discussion and because they have been critiqued by scholars as

being inadequate or limited. I think that in the next 5 years, the Institute will be 

able to mount a major initiative to reestimate the rates of offending.



AB: The crime-control theory program represented the development of an

important knowledge base that was a step removed from the issues of

sentencing and corrections, but it provided an important input to the policy

process. The lambda estimates were only a part of that. That level of

fundamental research--and it's clearly applied research, but it's not directly

applied to practice--should be an important component of the research agenda

for NIJ.



JT: We identified this internally as an initiative we wanted to undertake, but with

the budget cutback we had this past year particularly, we were not able to even

get it started. With the increased funds we've asked for in the 2001 budget and

with the greater discretion we've also asked for, this is high on our list.



NIJ's Growing Budget



AB: One of the characteristics of your administration has been an impressive

growth in the gross budget of NIJ. Tell me something about that growth. (See

"Sources of NIJ Funds, in Millions, FY 1994-1999.")



JT: The Institute's budget has grown enormously...



AB: From what to what?



JT: ...when I arrived it was about $24 million a year. The President's budget for

2001 requests over $200 million. That growth has come in a number of areas

and through a number of funding mechanisms. And the growth, importantly, has

been for a variety of scientific efforts and, increasingly, in the physical 

sciences and forensic sciences. Some of our most exciting work is about the

DNA issue and technology developments that are very important to the field.[4]



AB: What portion of the $200 million goes into that?



JT: Next year it'll be over half.



AB: So it's over $100 million.



JT: Right. It's $125 million. So the growth in the Institute's budget has, in part,

tracked the needs of the field. The work that we've done in the violence against

women area, for example--there's clearly a strong consensus within the country

that we need to pay more attention to the phenomenon of family violence. That

national interest has made one small area of our portfolio increase by about 10

times. 



Some of the growth has been by virtue of our partnerships with our colleague

offices within the Department of Justice. So the $40 million we've invested in

policing research has been by virtue of our partnership with the Office of

Community Oriented Policing Services. And that has been important to help

inform the changes in policing. 



A lot of the growth also is in what I call research infrastructure. For example, the

Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring (ADAM) program,5 which will ultimately

grow to a $20-million-a-year program from a $2-million-a-year program when I

arrived, is an investment in research infrastructure so that we can understand the

world of offending at the local level.



Similarly, the development of an international program is a type of

infrastructure. It's a way of thinking about research opportunities in the global

criminal justice community that we didn't think about 5 years ago.



Another example is the development of our network of technology centers,[6]

which bring science and technology to the field to work on police and other

criminal justice issues, to help people think about new technologies that address

new and old problems. So infrastructure has been very important, and that's a

role that NIJ uniquely can play in helping to advance practice and science.



Funding for a Long-Term Research Agenda



AB: Even when NIJ's budget was $25 million, a lot of that was devoted to

infrastructure, like the National Criminal Justice Reference Service. What was

the size of the discretionary research program then, and how has that grown or

shrunk today?[7]



JT: Our truly discretionary research program, which is that amount of money

left over from our ongoing initiatives, and not including the special research

programs like that on policing...



AB: ...which have their own discretionary quality because they're targeted...



JT: The decisions are discretionary. But our truly discretionary budget for

substantive research is about $3 million a year.



AB: It's still as low as $3 million a year.



JT: This year, because our budget was reduced, our discretionary budget was

reduced, and because we had earmarks against our discretionary budget, this

year it will be even less--about $2 million.



AB: And that's a ludicrous number in view of the $100 to $200 billion the

Nation spends on crime and justice.



JT: Right. If you were to apply the industry formula and say that we should have

a 5-percent research and development budget against that $100 billion, we

would be able to do a lot more research, and good for the country, I think. But

it still has been a time of enormous growth, and other science agencies have

also experienced growth. So this has been a good time for science in the

Federal sphere, and we have lots of reasons to be very grateful for the support

we've gotten. The President's budget this year, the proposed budget for 2001,

requests a 1-percent setaside of the entire OJP budget to come to NIJ for

research...



AB: ...for discretionary research...



JT: Yes, 1 percent of the entire budget of $4 billion...



AB: ...so that would be $40 million...



JT: ...$40 million...for a research budget that is cutting-edge, that is long-term,

that addresses issues that are not now within the other funding streams. 



AB: Is this a setaside in addition to whatever setasides come in the other

streams?



JT: Yes. With a 1-percent setaside, we would be able to tackle things like

organized crime, economic crime, estimates of offending, and a list of unmet

research priorities. Practitioners and communities want to know about these

crime phenomena, but we can't meet their research agenda. A 1-percent

setaside would be more than growth. It would give us the ability to define a

long-term research agenda. Take, for example, the Project on Human

Development in Chicago Neighborhoods.[8] Because of the ground-breaking

work done in that study, we have opportunities to learn a lot more about what

happens at the community level. We intend to do some of that kind of

investigation through our COMPASS initiative[9] and others. But imagine a

world in which we could mount a number of research sites around the country

where we were simultaneously asking about informal social control and social

capital. We'd be able to look at the variety of experiences that Americans have

with crime.



Connecting Research to Practice



AB: One of the issues that is always of concern is the notion that research should

generate new insights, new information, new methods that get translated into

action. Would you say that NIJ's research has an effective and continuing link to

practice? 



JT: We have a number of stellar examples of initiatives that closely link research

and practice. 



AB: What are some of those?



JT: We have the Breaking the Cycle10 initiative, which is testing a hypothesis

regarding the impact of a systemwide use of drug treatment and other

interventions to reduce drug use. In another demonstration project, we are

asking what would happen if judges became involved in managing interventions

and sanctions for batterers to try to reduce violence within intimate

relationships.[11]



AB: Are these evaluations of ongoing projects?



JT: No. These projects are designed to test research-based hypotheses. That's

different from evaluating something that's already underway. In these types of

approaches, we explicitly set out to use our research knowledge to test a very

different way of doing business. The program is designed to yield research

findings. 



I think the other stellar example of the relationship between research and

practice is the effort to apply the lessons learned from the Boston Gun Project-

-to put researchers and practitioners into very different relationships in which the

research partners help define the strategies for intervention in an iterative,

ongoing, symbiotic way, hand-in-hand with a practitioner team that is trying

different approaches. We've now done this in five other cities, and we have

different research partners in all of them.[12] 



AB: And each city is doing it differently based on its own ideas...



JT: ...own data, own definition of what the crime problem is, their own

willingness to collaborate with each other and combine resources. But the

researcher is now doing not only analytical work but also is saying, 'Well, let's

think about the theoretical implications of trying strategy A versus strategy B.' 



AB: And what are some of the theoretical issues that have emerged? I have a

sense that there were a number of principles: One, collaboration across the

agencies; two, priority setting and communication of those priorities. 



JT: What we're learning from Boston and its offspring are some very important

lessons on deterrence. What are the governmental--and private--actions that

have impacts on the behaviors of young people, such that we have some

understanding of them in deterrence theory?



AB: What makes that particularly intriguing is that almost all of deterrence

research has focused on some aggregate measures of sanction policy. 



JT: Exactly. And in Boston and its offspring, we are saying that to deter Johnny

from engaging in criminal behavior, you have to speak to Johnny about his

behavior. You have to speak to his peer group. You have to speak to his

mother. 



AB: It demonstrates a necessity to communicate salient messages that are much

closer to the audience whose behavior you're trying to change, as opposed to

enacting new legislation, for example.



JT: The flip side of this is that we are also asking the very important question,

'What is the least we have to do to achieve the highest deterrent yield?'

Because there's also the risk that, in terms of enforcement or controlling of

behavior, we do more than is necessary to get the desired outcome.



AB: Not only the least we have to do, but what is the optimum we have to do.

In many cases, if we try to do more than that, we come out being

counterproductive because we're diminishing the saliency of the message.



JT: To place a researcher in an environment like that, an environment that is in

essence a natural laboratory, and give the researchers the ability to ask

questions and get feedback about behavioral changes from specific

interventions, that is a relationship between research and practice that we've

never seen before.



The Impact of Research on Drug Policy



AB: Drug treatment is another area where research has made a major impact

on policy and practice. Could you say something about that? Is it in part

through drug courts?



JT: In part. But I think it's broader than that. I think NIJ also is making

contributions to the national discussion about drug policy because we are able

to describe drug use and drug markets and drug users in ways that we couldn't

before.



AB: Predominantly through ADAM...



JT: ...predominantly through ADAM. I think that's our signature contribution.

But secondly, we have been able to test drug interventions in ways that have

significant implications for policy. Particularly in the area of drug courts, but also

in the areas of in-prison drug treatment and postrelease drug testing and

treatment. We are looking at the efficacy of a mix of sanctions--imprisonment,

testing, treatment, family support--the relationship between carrots and sticks

and how they can be finely calibrated to change behavior.



AB: Carrots and sticks in the sense of support and threats.



JT: Right. The behaviors we want to change are both drug-using behavior and

other antisocial behaviors. Half to three-quarters of the criminal justice

population has a history of drug use. Given the nexus between drug use and the

criminal justice population, NIJ's contribution of a solid research base on how

criminal justice involvement can be used to reduce drug use--through drug courts

or some sort of judicial intervention involving drug treatment--that's a real

accomplishment. 



AB: You mentioned the regret about being unable to update the RAND study.

Are there other things you didn't accomplish that you wish you had?



JT: When I leave a job...there's always a short list... There are so many things I

hope get carried out--COMPASS, reentry courts,[13] the 1-percent setaside,

the international program. They are not yet done, but I think they're pretty strong

seedlings. I wish we had made our argument earlier about the need for a

1-percent setaside for a long-term research agenda in areas not covered by our

other setasides. And I wish I could be here after OJP is reorganized[14]

(something I hope will happen) because I think the relationship between the

research function and the program development function in OJP will be even

stronger. 



A Future at the Urban Institute



AB: You're now off to a program at the Urban Institute. Could you tell us

something about your plans there and what issues you expect to pursue at the

Urban Institute?



JT: Well, I'm very fortunate to be joining a research organization with a

wonderful, rich tradition and history that is interested in asking me to help them

build their research program on crime and justice issues and to increase the

policy engagement on those issues. And so, in some ways, I'll be continuing to

think about things that I care about passionately in a different setting.



My personal agenda is to focus thinking on the issues of crime and justice when

seen in the community context. I'm really committed to looking at these as being

localized issues where a number of policymakers and community groups 

and agencies of the criminal justice system have roles to play in producing

communities that are safer and more just. I think the Urban Institute, because of

its work on those issues in urban settings, with its family focus, education focus,

and welfare policy focus, is a place where I can do that.



NIJ's New Public Image



AB: Which of your accomplishments at NIJ has given you the most personal

satisfaction?



JT: I'm proudest of the fact that when people around the country say that NIJ is

involved with something, everyone knows it's of high quality and has met high

standards.



AB: So it's the standing in the [criminal justice] community, both the practitioner

community and the research community.



JT: And the community. The public has an understanding of NIJ that it didn't

have before. The mission and the value of the Institute are the strongest they've

ever been. For example, on one day recently, NIJ was on the news because the

Attorney General had told Congress that she was asking us to develop a broad

agenda on cybercrime to help respond to this new area of crime. And on the

same day, a national newspaper was reporting that we were developing a new

initiative on managing the reentry of prisoners back to the community to increase

the social functioning of those offenders and the overall safety of those

communities. That was a great day.



NCJ 181730



Notes



1. The Boston Gun Project enlisted the community and implemented

problem-solving policing to solve the city's juvenile homicide problem. The

Project was completed in two phases--an attack on the drug market that

supplied guns to youths and an outreach program for area gangs to set

standards for acceptable behavior. If these standards were violated, community

police and prosecutors took every available legal action against the offender.

See Kennedy, David, "Pulling Levers: Getting Deterrence Right," NIJ Journal

(July 1998, JR 000263).



2. The studies are examining policing strategies and organizations in Chicago

and Joliet/Aurora, Illinois; Dallas, Texas; Madison, Wisconsin; Tempe,

Arizona; and Washington, D.C. Findings will be released in late 2000. 



3. For more information, see Chaiken, Jan M., and Marcia R. Chaiken,

Varieties of Criminal Behavior, Los Angeles: RAND Corporation, August

1982; and Blumstein, Alfred, Jacqueline Cohen, Jeffery A. Roth, and Christy A.

Visher, Criminal Careers and "Career Criminals," volume II, Washington, D.C.:

National Academy Press, 1986.



4.The purpose of the National Commission on the Future of DNA Evidence

is to provide the Attorney General with recommendations on the use of current

and future DNA methods, applications and technologies in the operation of the

criminal justice system, from the crime scene to the courtroom. For more

information, visit the Commission's Web page at http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/dna.



For more information about NIJ's overall technology research and

development activities, visit http://www.nlectc.org.



5. The Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring (ADAM) program is an NIJ-funded

project that tracks drug use trends among booked arrestees in urban areas of

the United States. Currently operating in 35 sites, ADAM is the only national

drug data project using drug testing techniques on arrestees. For more

information, visit the program's Web site at http://www.adam-nij.net.



6. The National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Centers

(NLECTC) are composed of a national center, four regional centers, and four

special offices located throughout the country. Their mission is to be a

comprehensive source of product and technology information. For more

information, visit the program's Web site at http://www.nlectc.org. 



7. The Institute's discretionary budget is the portion of the budget that is not

already obligated either by Congress through earmarks or by NIJ through 

its ongoing initiatives.



8. The Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods began in

1988 with funding from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation,

NIJ, the National Institute of Mental Health, the U.S. Department of Education,

and the Administration for Children, Youth and Families. It is an

interdisciplinary study investigating the factors that contribute to juvenile and

adult crime, drug abuse, and violence. To do this, the Project has combined

two studies: A thorough examination of Chicago's neighborhoods and a

longitudinal study of 6,000 area youth. The researchers are looking at the

different circumstances (such as child care and exposure to violence) in each

youth's (or child's) life and how these factors affect criminal outcomes. For

more information, visit its Web site at http://phdcn.harvard.edu.



9. Community Mapping, Planning, and Analysis for Safety Strategies, or

COMPASS, is an NIJ and U.S. Department of Justice initiative to develop and

implement a group of crime data systems in select U.S. jurisdictions. Each

system will allow better evaluation of the crime problems facing a particular site.

It is currently in its developmental stage at a pilot site in Seattle, Washington.



10. Breaking the Cycle is an NIJ-initiated program that is testing the hypothesis

that arrestee drug testing and mandatory drug abuse treatment, among other

interventions, for offenders with histories of drug abuse will decrease future

substance abuse and criminal activity. The program currently is in place in three

adult and two juvenile U.S. court systems. For more information, see "Building

Knowledge About Crime and Justice," National Institute of Justice Research

Prospectus, 2000, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice, National

Institute of Justice, November 1999 (NCJ 178903), pages 6-7, and Harrell,

Adele, Foster Cook, and John Carver, "Breaking the Cycle of Drug Abuse in

Birmingham," NIJ Journal (July 1998, JR 000236).



11. The Judicial Oversight Demonstration Program is coordinating community

responses to domestic violence in three communities by holding offenders

accountable through frequent judicial oversight, graduated sanctions, provision

of batterer intervention programs, and intensive supervision. The demonstration

is jointly funded by the Violence Against Women Office and the National

Institute of Justice.



12. The Strategic Approaches to Community Safety Initiative (SACSI) is

taking place in five U.S. cities--Indianapolis, Indiana; Memphis, Tennessee;

New Haven, Connecticut; Portland, Oregon; and Winston-Salem, North

Carolina. The Initiative's goal is to promote collaborative efforts between

researchers and local, State, and Federal crime agencies to help identify and

solve community crime problems. This is to be accomplished through crime

data retrieval and analysis to inform the design and implementation of

strategies to combat, prevent, and reduce crime trends. For more information,

see Coleman, Veronica, Walter C. Holton, Jr., Kristine Olson, Stephen C.

Robinson, and Judith Stewart, "Using Knowledge and Teamwork to Reduce

Crime," NIJ Journal (October 1999, JR 000241).



13. Reentry courts are court systems that manage, through the use of

graduated sanctions and positive reinforcement, the release of prisoners into the

community. These courts also use additional resources to provide a smoother

reentry into society, with the goal that this will lower recidivism rates among

offenders. The Office of Justice Programs is managing a demonstration initiative

involving reentry in nine States: California, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Iowa,

Kentucky, New York, Ohio, and West Virginia.



14. Congress has asked OJP to reorganize in order to improve service delivery

to the criminal justice field. The plan will create subject matter-based program

offices, an Office of Grants Management/State Desks, and an Information

Central Office to provide "one-stop shopping" for information about grants,

training, and conferences. A central feature of the reorganization would create a

unified research program in NIJ. More information about the restructuring

proposal is available from OJP's Office of Congressional and Public Affairs at

202-307-0703.



---------------------------



Youth Violence: Do Parents and Families Make a Difference?



By Laurence Steinberg



What follows is an adaptation of Dr. Steinberg's insightful and

thought-provoking statement to the U.S. House of Representatives' 

Bipartisan Working Group on Youth Violence on September 15, 1999,

described below. The Working Group asked Dr. Steinberg to address issues

concerning the role of parents and families in the genesis and prevention of youth 

violence. 



I am pleased to be able to address the Bipartisan Working Group 

on Youth Violence--a matter of national importance. (See "The Bipartisan

Working Group on Youth Violence.") I want to commend the committee for

taking on this task, for doing so within a climate of bipartisanship, and 

for selecting a range of briefing topics that reflects the complicated and

multifaceted nature of the phenomenon of youth violence in America.



You have asked me to address issues concerning the role of parents and

families in the genesis and prevention of youth violence. I shall do this, but

before I do, I'd like to make a few introductory comments that will place my

remarks in a broader context. I do this because I can think of very few topics

that inspire more heated, or more misinformed, debate than that of juvenile

violence, and I want to make sure that whatever this group recommends 

is based on solid evidence and not inflamed rhetoric.



Youth Violence--Increasing or Decreasing?



Let me begin by correcting a commonly held misconception. In your statement

about the purpose of the working group, you indicate that the group's goal is to

identify causes and advance solutions to fight the rise of youth violence in our

Nation today. I think it is important to point out, however, that youth violence is 

not on the rise in America today. According to reports from the U.S.

Department of Justice, the juvenile homicide arrest rate has dropped steadily

and dramatically since 1993. (See figure 1, next page.) This occurred, as you

know, along with a steady decline in violent crime among all age groups.[1] But

the steepest decline in violence during the 1990's, and especially during the last 5

years, has been among young people. The percentage of violent crimes

attributed to youth is lower today than it was 25 years ago. (See figure 2.)



This welcome decline in youth violence in America also includes a decline in

school-related violence. Despite the attention given to school violence by the

mass media over the past year, the number of violent school-related deaths in

the United States is lower today than it was in 1992.[2] Statistically speaking,

schools are among the safest places for children to be. Yes, 12 children were

killed at Columbine High School in one horrific incident. But more than 12

children die from gunfire in the United States every single day--not in school, but

in their homes and neighborhoods. So if we are concerned about preventing

youth violence in America, we need to focus on settings other than schools. We

can put security systems inside each and every school in America, but this will

barely affect the overall rate of youth violence because only a very small portion

of violence committed by or against young people occurs in schools. In terms of

preventing youth violence, there are better ways to spend our tax dollars than

equipping schools with security systems and metal detectors.



My intent is not to minimize the extent or seriousness of the problem of youth

violence in America. No level of violence against America's children is

acceptable. At the same time, however, one of the most important functions this

committee can serve is to make sure that the record is set straight and that the

American public is not unduly alarmed by incendiary remarks about

"superpredators" and unsafe schools. Youth crime is declining. Youth violence

is declining. School violence is declining. American schools, by and large, are

safe places for children.



Restricting Young People's Access to Firearms



I understand that the committee has been asked specifically to look at issues

beyond gun control, perhaps in an effort to stimulate, or simulate, bipartisanship.

Yes, the problem of youth violence in America is attributable to many 

factors in addition to the easy access that young people have to lethal weapons.

But I would be remiss as a social scientist if I did not say that there is

overwhelming evidence that the availability of guns is the single most important

factor that distinguishes youth violence in this country from youth violence in

other parts of the world.[3] Our young people are no more violent than young

people from other nations. What is different about youth violence in America is

not that the violence our young people commit is more frequent, but that it is

more lethal, and this is because of the weapons they use. Analyses of crime

trends from FBI data show quite clearly that the rate of nongun-related violence

among American youth has remained constant over time and that all of the

increase in youthful violence during the past 25 years has been in gun-related

incidents. (See figure 3.) It is the nature of youth violence, not its prevalence, that

has changed. 



This does not mean that we should ignore other factors, like those you will be

discussing over the coming weeks. They are important, too. But it does call for

some truth-in-advertising in the committee's report. If we are serious about

reducing youth violence in America, we need to restrict the access that young

people have to guns. I know it, you know it, and the American people know it.



The Role of the Family



I doubt that there is an influence on the development of antisocial behavior

among young people that is stronger than that of the family. My goal in this

presentation is to share with you what social scientists have learned about the

role of the family in the genesis of youth violence and to suggest some possible

ways of using parents and communities to help prevent violent incidents among

our young people.



There is no single cause of youth violence, but when there is a common factor

that cuts across different cases, it is usually some type of family dysfunction.

Many young people who become involved in violence come from families in

which there is a long history of domestic violence. Many young people who are

violent have been raised in homes that have been, if not technically abusive,

hostile and conflict-ridden. Many come from families in which parents are

negligent or disengaged from their child-rearing responsibilities. Exposure to

violence or abuse in the home, exposure to hostile and punitive parenting, or

growing up in a home environment in which parents are not sufficiently involved

in their child's life are among the most important risk factors for the child's

subsequent involvement in violent and other types of antisocial behavior.



Modeling. There are a number of psychological pathways that connect parental

aggression, hostility, and disengagement to violence and other types of

antisocial behavior in adolescence. One certain pathway is through modeling:

When children are exposed to violence in the home, they come to see violence

as relatively more acceptable, and they are more likely to resort to violence to

solve problems. This is often referred to as the "cycle of violence," and there is

good evidence that the acceptability of violence in interpersonal relationships is

often carried from one generation to the next. Children who are themselves the

victims of violence, or who witness violence against others in their home, are at

risk for becoming violent themselves at some later point in time.



Biological Factors. A second pathway connecting experiences in the family with

subsequent violence involves the developing brain. Here we do not know as

much as we would like to know, but the knowledge base is expanding rapidly,

and it looks as though some children may be biologically more inclined toward

violence by the time they reach adolescence. This does not necessarily mean

that violence is genetically transmitted, however, because, as many of you

know, early experience in the family can affect brain development in profound

ways. It is likely that poor prenatal care, prenatal exposure to drugs and

alcohol, exposure to high levels of lead in the environment, and early abuse or

neglect can alter brain development in ways that lead some children to have

more difficulty controlling aggressive impulses.



Mental Health. A third pathway connecting family dysfunction with adolescent

violence is through the development of mental health problems. I understand

that this working group will devote one of its subsequent meetings to a

discussion of mental health and its relation to youth violence, but it is relevant 

to raise this issue in the context of today's discussion. Children with serious

mental health problems, including conduct disorder, depression, post-traumatic

stress disorder, substance abuse problems, and anxiety disorders, are far more

likely than other youngsters to become involved in antisocial and violent

activities. Among the most powerful predictors of mental health problems

among children and adolescents are poor family relationships. Children whose

parents are hostile and punitive, as well as those whose parents are neglectful,

are at risk for developing all sorts of mental health problems, and children with

mental health problems are at risk for developing patterns of antisocial and

violent behavior.



Parenting and Personality Development. A fourth link between negative

parenting and youthful violence is through the impact that negative parenting has

on youngsters' personality development. Two particular pathways stand out as

very important. First, children who have been exposed to hostile parenting are

more likely than others to develop problems in controlling their emotions--

psychologists call this emotion regulation--and this places these children at risk

for letting aggressive impulses spiral out of control. Second, children who have

themselves been victims of violence at home are likely to develop a biased way

of looking at the world. They see other people's actions as intentionally hostile

when their actions may actually be innocuous. They may interpret a strange look

from someone else or an accidental bump while standing in a school lunch line as

deliberate and malicious, and they may lash out as a result. 



Academic Performance. A fifth pathway linking family problems with

adolescent violence is through the impact of negative parenting on youngsters'

academic performance. There is now some very good research indicating that

involvement in aggressive and antisocial behavior during adolescence is

frequently preceded by school problems of one sort or another, including

academic failure and conduct problems. Children who have problems in school

often gravitate toward peer groups of other troubled children, and these peer

groups frequently become involved in antisocial behavior. Engagement in

school is a strong protective factor against antisocial behavior, and positive

family relationships are predictive of school engagement.



Peer Pressure. A final pathway connecting family problems with subsequent

violence concerns the role that the family plays in influencing adolescents'

susceptibility to peer pressure. One of the most important differences between

the criminal behavior of adolescents versus that of adults is that adolescents tend

to offend in groups, along with other adolescents. This is not to say that peers

are an inherently negative influence on teenagers' behavior, but it is to note 

that a large proportion of violent acts committed by adolescents are committed

within the context of peer pressure. Many adolescents will do risky, dangerous,

or illegal things when in the company of their peers that they would not do when

on their own. Adolescents who are most able to resist peer pressure are those

who have strong and positive relationships at home. In contrast, a lack of

parental involvement or supervision places adolescents at risk for involvement in

antisocial peer activities and increases youngsters' vulnerability to negative peer

influence. Thus, even if large numbers of adolescents are unsupervised after

school because their parents are working, not all unsupervised adolescents will

engage in acts they know are wrong simply because their friends pressure them

to do so.



What the Research Tells Us



Research conducted by my colleagues and myself, reported in the 1996 book,

Beyond the Classroom: Why School Reform Has Failed and What Parents

Need to Do, is informative in this regard. In this study of a diverse sample of

more than 20,000 American teenagers from nine different high schools, we

looked at the prevalence and consequences of different types of parenting. By

far, the adolescents who had the greatest number of problems--not just with

antisocial behavior, but also in school, in personality development, and in general

mental health--came from families in which parents were hostile, aloof, 

or uninvolved. These predictors of adolescent dysfunction were identical across

ethnic, socioeconomic, and household groups, in that children from homes

characterized by negative parenting were at risk for problems regardless of their

ethnicity or income and regardless of whether their parents were married,

divorced, single, or remarried. In other words, the quality of the parent-child

relationship matters much more than the social demographics of the household. 



Perhaps the most worrisome finding in our book concerns the high level of

parental disengagement we saw in our sample. About one-fourth of the students

in our sample were allowed to decide what classes to take in school without

discussing the decision with their parents. About 30 percent of parents did not

know how their child was doing in school. One-third of parents did not know

how their child spends his or her spare time. One-fourth of the students we

surveyed said their family "never" did anything together for fun, and only 30

percent said their parents spend some time talking with them each day.

Our estimate of the prevalence of parental disengagement at somewhere

between 25 and 30 percent is in accord with data reported in other national 

surveys.



In our study, the problems associated with disengaged parenting were evident

across all of the outcomes we studied, including antisocial behavior.

Adolescents from disengaged homes were substantially more likely to show

psychological immaturity and adjustment difficulties, as evidenced by less

self-reliance, lower self-esteem, and diminished social competence.

Adolescents from these sorts of homes were more likely to show psychological

problems, both in terms of various types of misconduct (drug use, delinquency,

etc.) and in terms of various types of distress (anxiety, depression,

psychosomatic complaints). And adolescents from disengaged homes were less

interested in and less successful in school.



Parental engagement in their children's lives is one of the most important--if not

the single most important--contributors to children's healthy psychological

development. Not only our studies, but also those of several other researchers,

show quite clearly that adolescents whose parents are not sufficiently engaged in

their lives are more likely to get into trouble than are other youngsters. Parental

disengagement is a very good predictor of many of the problem behaviors

whose levels have reached alarming proportions: Alcohol and drug abuse,

delinquency and violence, suicide, and sexual precocity. The fact that nearly one

in three parents is disengaged from their adolescent's life is a clear reason to

worry about the future well-being of America's young people.



I want to stress here that parental aggression, hostility