Title: NIJ Journal, October 2000 Series: Journal Author: National Institute of Justice Published: October 2000 Subject: Criminal justice system 66 pages 144,000 bytes --------------------------- Figures, charts, forms, and tables are not included in this ASCII plain-text file. To view this document in its entirety, download the Adobe Acrobat graphic file available from this Web site or order a print copy from NCJRS at 800-851- 3420 (877-712-9279 for TTY users). --------------------------- U.S. Department of Justice Office of Justice Programs National Institute of Justice October 2000 NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF JUSTICE Journal Getting to Know Neighborhoods by G. Thomas Kingsley and Kathryn L.S. Pettit Harnessing Prosecutor Information by Elizabeth Glazer Toward the Ideal of Community Justice by Todd R. Clear and David R. Karp Meth Update Standardizing Violence Against Women Data and At-A-Glance o Connecting Crack and Crime --by Daniel Cork o Events that Deter Delinquency --by John H. Laub o Youthful Offenders and Psychiatric Disorders --by Linda A. Teplin o Reducing Drug Use --by Faye S. Taxman --------------------------- Building Knowledge to Meet the Challenge of Crime and Justice National Institute of Justice Julie E. Samuels Acting 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 determined 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. Subscription information e-mail puborder@ncjrs.org In the subject line, put "NIJ Journal Subscription" phone 301-519-5500 800-851-3420 mail NCJRS P.O. Box 6000 Rockville, MD 20849-6000 World Wide Web address http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij/journals Contact NIJ National Institute of Justice 810 7th Street, NW., Washington, D.C. 20531, U.S.A. NIJ Journal Editorial Board David Boyd, Deputy Director NIJ Director, Office of Science and Technology Sally T. Hillsman, Deputy Director NIJ Director, Office of Research and Evaluation Edwin Zedlewski Acting Director, Office of Development and Communications 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. Amy Benavides, Managing Editor Catharine Rankin, Assistant Editor --------------------------- Director's Message Community, cooperation, and connections are concepts that tie together this issue of the Journal. These concepts are especially important to the law enforcement community as data analysis evolves into one of the most valuable tools for communication and information sharing. In the cover story, Tom Kingsley and Kathryn S. Pettit offer an overview of the National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership, an advanced information system with integrated and periodically updated information on conditions in 13 neighborhoods. These data include births, deaths, crime, health, education, public assistance, and property conditions, among others, and are helpful in planning, identifying low-income neighborhoods, and monitoring and evaluating programs. Elizabeth Glazer's article describes the development and use of a computer system that, at the press of a button, shows the activity of multiple Federal agencies in any given area. The concept was simple: if all the information stored in paper files throughout the Southern District of New York's U.S. Attorney's Office was placed in one database, information that had previously taken days to gather would only take hours to process. The U.S. Attorney's Office can use this one-stop information source to look beyond their individual cases to solve problems that they and other agencies are working on. The Workshop on Building Data Systems and Responding to Violence Against Women (VAW) focuses on ways to standardize disparate data. VAW statistics have been plagued by different reporting standards, and the Departments of Justice and Health and Human Services, along with attending practitioners and researchers, are attempting to normalize the information to allow for more universal and accurate data interpretation. Recommendations dealt with defining violence, measuring the number of victims, and ensuring victim's confidentiality and safety. Todd R. Clear and David R. Karp explore the relatively new concept of community justice in their article. The roles and relationships of the victim, offender, and community are examined, as well as the role of the justice system. Two models also are presented--one in Austin, Texas, and one statewide in Vermont--to provide more tangible examples of how these citizen-based initiatives work and how they interact with more traditional criminal justice practices. And finally, the article on the Methamphetamine Interagency Task Force discusses the growing concern about meth use in communities across the United States. The Task Force, cochaired by Attorney General Janet Reno and Office of National Drug Control Policy Director Barry McCaffrey, conducted four meetings to discuss the drug's history, current state of drug use, and possible future issues with the intent of providing guidance for combating meth. Julie E. Samuels Acting Director --------------------------- Contents o features Harnessing Information in a Prosecutor's Office --Elizabeth Glazer Methamphetamine: An Update on an Emerging Problem Getting to Know Neighborhoods --G. Thomas Kingsley and Kathryn L.S. Pettit Measuring Violence Against Women: Recommendations From an Interagency Workshop Toward the Ideal of Community Justice --Todd R. Clear and David R. Karp o at-a-glance Recent Research Findings Connecting Crack Markets, Guns, and Youth Homicide --Daniel Cork Turning Points That Lead Away From Delinquency --John H. Laub Psychiatric Disorders of Youthful Offenders --Linda A. Teplin Testing, Treatment, and Sanctions to Reduce Drug Use --Faye S. Taxman o departments New & Noteworthy Events Solicitations & Awards --------------------------- Harnessing Information in a Prosecutor's Office by Elizabeth Glazer Suppose you are a Federal prosecutor working with a joint FBI/local police task force determined to stop a slew of deadly crimes committed by a neighborhood robbery crew. You are about to meet with the investigators on the task force to discuss the schedule for carrying out arrests planned for tomorrow. But as the meeting starts, two of the investigators say they've both heard that another Federal agency--they aren't sure which one--has recently executed a search warrant in the same building where you plan to make your arrests. You need to find out quickly who conducted the search and whether it connects to your case. You must know so you can both protect the safety of the officers and determine if the two investigations intersect. What do you do? Your jurisdiction is home to a score of Federal agencies. Can you find the right person in time? If you do, will that person tell you the information you need about the search warrant? Federal law enforcement officers face this type of scenario almost every day-- with varying degrees of urgency. Many State and local jurisdictions, too, host a variety of law enforcement agencies working on often overlapping targets and topics. This article describes a solution one U.S. Attorney's Office found to integrate seemingly disparate pieces of information and solve problems more effectively. State and local prosecutors with similar kinds of problems may find that the solution works for them as well. Managing the Information Is the Drug Enforcement Administration's investigation of a drug ring's local market related to the Internal Revenue Service's examination of money remitters' customers around the corner? Is the gun runner under Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms' (ATF) surveillance--whose real identity the agency has not yet determined--possibly the illegal alien the Immigration and Naturalization Service's fugitive squad is seeking? Can FBI knowledge about the criminal activities of the Latin Kings' Supreme Crown be enhanced if agents speak to the Crown's neighbor, whom the Secret Service just picked up on a "clone phone" violation? Computerized mapping technology has now given us a ready way to answer those questions. Using computers, maps, and a relational database, a team of prosecutors, computer programmers, and clerical staff in the office of Mary Jo White of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York (USAO SDNY) created a system that, at the press of a button, shows which agencies are working in a particular geographic area. The system takes advantage of two common facts of life in all large, urban prosecutors' offices: --Criminal communities are usually organized by geography; the agencies investigating them usually are not. Law enforcement agencies divide investigations by crime, but criminals form networks that do not always respect those demarcations. Criminal relationships in a local community are more likely to be defined by geography than by the nature of the crime. In addition, criminals operating in a particular neighborhood are likely to know one another, even if Federal investigative agencies segregate them by their specialty. For example, a neighborhood drug dealer is likely to know not only who deals drugs in the neighborhood, but also who puts "traps" in cars, launders money, and carries out hits. He knows this in the same way and for the same reason a law-abiding citizen knows where in the neighborhood to buy groceries, repair a car, wash clothes, and find a doctor. --Most of the information gathered by the multitude of Federal agencies investigating cases eventually makes its way to the U.S. Attorney's Office. The Federal prosecutor's office becomes the intersection for exchanging a wealth of data, facts, and intelligence and for sorting out the interrelationships between all the pieces of information. Whether the agency is the Department of Agriculture working on a food stamp fraud case in a neighborhood grocery or the ATF investigating gun running out of that same grocery, the U.S. Attorney will be the common point of contact. The prosecutor will be the one who cuts the subpoena on the store's records for Agriculture and authorizes the taping of the gun deal for ATF. But in many offices, these connections are not easily discovered because different prosecutors are responsible for each of these cases, and neither they nor the investigating agencies have any simple method of discovering their joint interests. Prosecutors in USAO SDNY felt the full effects of this situation when they began concentrating heavily on the prosecution, through racketeering laws, of violent neighborhood gangs. In a few short years, the Office had charged more than 300 defendants with more than 200 murders; and in each neighborhood where a gang was incapacitated, the murder rate plunged well below the citywide averages. The investigation of each gang uncovered connections to bits and pieces of other agencies' investigations--both active and closed. And each target provided a rich set of connections and relationships with past and future targets from the neighborhood under scrutiny. It was the realization that these intense connections among neighborhood felons could be harnessed via today's technology that prompted USAO SDNY to develop a methodical means of discovering patterns of criminal activity. They hit upon computerized mapping as a way to cut across the different agencies that were the sources of the information. Developing the Solution The idea was simple: collect key information about cases in a single place so that interconnections could be easily identified. What would the key information be? At a minimum it would include: (1) addresses for arrests and residences of defendants and victims, (2) crime locations, and (3) areas and topics of cooperation of Federal witnesses. If possible, key information also would include the addresses of suspects and locations under investigation, relevant telephone numbers, locations of search warrants, and wiretaps. Such key information exists in paper folders throughout a prosecutor's office, but it is not easily searched and can be difficult to identify. Electronic organization of the information permits its more systematic use. Although the idea was simple, the logistics of its execution were not. At the outset, the project faced the challenge of developing a system with little money, expertise, or personnel. To address the lack of money and expertise, the Office worked with geographers and researchers at Hunter College at the City University of New York, who in turn received a small grant from NIJ.[1] The group, led by Professor Victor Goldsmith, was highly trained in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and had helped the New York City Police Department in enhancing its crime mapping system. To address the lack of personnel, the Office drafted student interns, paralegals, secretaries, and others to assemble and clean the data. The system was dubbed "Rackets" because the impetus for collecting and tracking the information came from the Office's extensive work in racketeering cases brought against gangs. Making Rackets a Reality During the first 6 months of the project, a Hunter College graduate student, Colin Reilly, developed a working model of a database and corresponding geocoding system. (Geocoding is the process by which addresses in a data file are assigned coordinates that describe their location on the earth's surface, enabling them to be mapped.) Reilly's goal was to turn data from the U.S. Marshals Service and USAO into a system that staff with limited computer knowledge could use to produce maps showing all Federal law enforcement activity in SDNY. He developed the system using a custom database, a mapping program, and geographic base files (or city maps). (See "The Nuts and Bolts of Rackets.") As the programming work progressed, the team faced the daunting task of determining a method of accurately capturing information about pending cases. Because the U.S. Marshals Service books and photographs every defendant arrested in the Federal system, collecting its data seemed a logical first place to start. Under the direction of George Zarur, the Marshals Services' Information Systems Section provided, in computer readable form, an electronic download of the pedigree information the Marshals Service took on each arrested defendant (for example, address of the arrest and arrestee). But the first download contained approximately 17,000 records--one for every prisoner ever processed electronically by the Marshals Service in the Southern District of New York. The team had to accurately and painstakingly winnow down these records to find the approximately 6,000 defendants involved in open cases. The team then began reviewing information from the Department of Justice database to identify which defendants had been charged together and with what offenses. This required accurate substantive information about USAO's current cases and investigations. A fleet of summer interns began conducting an officewide inventory of pending cases being handled by the 150 prosecutors in the Office. Next the team merged the data from the Marshals Service on active defendants with the information about cases from the Justice Department computers. Unfortunately, the two sources used different protocols (that is, the format of names in the two databases was not congruent enough to be matched by a computer). The team thus had to match the names by hand. A group of secretaries, students, paralegals, and investigators accomplished the task in 3 weeks. As a complete and accurate database was being built, the team also was developing a system to keep the data accurate and up-to-date. Currently, support staff in each unit of USAO SDNY collect updates from each Assistant United States Attorney (AUSA) every few days. A staff of two people operate the system: a part-time graduate student does the bulk of the maintenance, and an analyst keeps track of updates and responds to requests for information from the office. Every day, arrest data from the Marshals Service are downloaded and matched with information already in the database. Every week, AUSA's provide information, such as which defendants are cooperating or what guns have been seized by Federal agents. To maintain privacy and confidentiality, Rackets operates on one stand-alone computer workstation within the Office and is not shared outside USAO SDNY. Within the Office, all requests for information are funneled through one individual. Requests for data and maps are submitted to the Rackets analyst who produces reports and provides information to AUSA's. These security measures are important in protecting sensitive information as well as in complying with Federal statutes restricting development of criminal intelligence databases (Section 28 CFR Part 23). Benefits of Rackets Rackets was designed to give prosecutors basic information about various cases across geographic areas. But it does more than that. It saves time. Rackets provides a service that lightens the daily workload: Federal rules of discovery require prosecutors to give defense counsel a copy of the booking form and often a photograph of each defendant. This task is now accomplished automatically by Rackets, saving numerous hours of work for both the Marshals Service and USAO. In addition, the information is more legible and the photographs are clearer than the faxed forms and photographs previously obtained. It answers questions about cases and caseloads. Rackets responds to approximately 50 requests a month for information. The requests range from simple questions (such as determining which prosecutor is responsible for a particular case) to more complex questions (such as identifying Federal cooperators familiar with a certain area or identifying agencies working in a particular region). It gives background information. Rackets allows a prosecutor to enter a street address or intersection into the computer and create both a map and a report about crime patterns in that neighborhood. The location can be as small as the street corner of an intersection or as big as the entire city. It analyzes special problems. When one neighborhood recently experienced a sudden rise in shootings and murders, Rackets allowed USAO to carefully examine every arrest made in that neighborhood (regardless of the arresting agency) and quickly develop a list of witnesses to a number of the unsolved crimes. Similarly, Rackets enhances collaborative problem solving. USAO SDNY, like many other USAO's, chairs crime prevention efforts in several neighborhoods through the Department of Justice's Weed and Seed effort. The Office uses Rackets to examine systematically every case and investigation initiated in Weed and Seed neighborhoods to ensure that no link is missed. Rackets also provides an important base for combining data from many sources. For example, when ATF traces guns used to commit crimes to the store that first sold the gun, Rackets can map the location of purchases, color-code the data by State, and use the data as a starting point to determine if guns from particular States are fueling the spiking rate of shootings in certain neighborhoods. Where Does Mapping Analysis Go From Here? The potential for USAO to apply data analysis and computer mapping in other ways depends on the Office's ability to continue to mobilize staff and maintain the accuracy and timeliness of the system. USAO SDNY has been particularly successful in solving homicides by using information provided by defendants who cooperate with the Government--and who often are members of the murderous groups USAO targets. As a first step in determining whether a particular individual will be a candidate for cooperation, defendants must tell prosecutors truthfully about every crime they have committed, whether related to a specific arrest charge or not. The Office thus becomes the repository of enormous amounts of information about violent crimes committed throughout the city. By overlaying (or merging) a computerized map of the city's unsolved homicides with a map of homicides revealed by cooperators, numerous leads can be developed to solve those crimes. In forfeiture cases, Rackets can be used to identify the array of drug activity that takes place at a particular location, regardless of the investigating agency. In police corruption cases, the system can identify potential witnesses and map alleged violations by precinct. In money laundering cases, related "smurfing" activity can be identified by mapping the banks and remitters engaged in suspect activity. Other features can be added easily so that the Office can create visual aids for trial or for debriefing witnesses. For example, Rackets has incorporated aerial photographs of New York City so that a photograph as well as a map pops up when a particular address is entered. These photos help jurors and witnesses visualize the relationships between places. The current system, which downloads the Marshals Service's digitalized photographs of defendants, also could be enhanced to become a centralized Federal catchment for electronic photo-arrays. As prosecutors become more involved in strategically planning the use of their resources--in combination with other, sometimes unusual partners--to accomplish drops in crime, maps showing crime patterns could be combined with maps showing income or housing patterns. For example, USAO SDNY has used Rackets in a Weed and Seed site to better determine where to locate resources for youth. By comparing existing resources with neighborhood crime hot spots, the Office pinpointed the best place to locate a neighborhood Safe Haven. Replicating the System Replicating the system should be much simpler than creating it from scratch. The relational database structure that supports the system has been created, and, at the Federal level, the Department of Justice's case-tracking system has been improved. USAO SDNY hopes to standardize Rackets so that it can be used in any prosecutor's office. Local prosecutors who work with various investigative agencies may also find that a mapping system produces information that simultaneously cuts across agency lines and synthesizes cases coming from a variety of sources. A district attorney whose jurisdiction extends across a county with a number of municipalities will prosecute cases developed by many agencies that enforce the law in those cities, towns, and unincorporated areas. A burglary ring could be operating countywide and several investigating agencies may have made contact with victims or suspects, but until all the contacts pop up on a prosecutor's map, no one can see the connections. A prosecutor's mapping system can be a powerful tool for the rational and effective deployment of law enforcement resources to reduce crime. It can contribute to better use of attorney time, more efficient use of resources, more effective problem solving, and stronger coordination of efforts. By building more comprehensive cases, Rackets can give prosecutors--at the press of a button--a glimpse of the relationships and intersections among many law enforcement agencies' information. It has become one tool Federal prosecutors can use to help reduce crime by helping prosecutors build solid, comprehensive cases. NCJ 184444 Notes 1. NIJ grant number 1998-LB-VX-0004. --------------------------- about the author Elizabeth Glazer is the Chief, Crime Control Strategies, in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York. She assembled and managed the team that created Rackets and implemented it in the U.S. Attorney's Office. Contact her at the U.S. Attorney's Office, One St. Andrew's Plaza, New York, NY 10007, 212-637-2510, elizabeth.glazer@usdoj.gov. --------------------------- Dictionary of Terms Money remitter: A person or entity fraudulently transferring money within the United States or abroad by wire or other means without a license (18 U.S.C. [section] 1960). Car traps: Secret hiding places in cars that can be opened only when certain actions are taken. For example, a trap door might pop open only if the windshield wipers are turned on at the same time as the front seat adjustment lever is pulled. Smurfing: The act of avoiding banking regulations related to cash deposits of $10,000 or more (18 U.S.C. [section] 5313, 5324) by repeatedly depositing sums of just under $10,000. Drug lords, for example, try to smurf cash through their accounts to avoid detection of the large sums of money they receive. Weed and Seed: The Weed and Seed strategy relies upon "weeding out" targeted crime problems and "seeding" in stabilizing neighborhood programs, accomplishing each in partnership with an array of local and Federal agencies. For more information, visit the Executive Office of Weed and Seed at http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/eows. --------------------------- The Nuts and Bolts of Rackets by Colin Reilly, Geographic Information Systems Specialist, Parsons Brinckerhoff. The components of a system like Rackets include hardware, software, and personnel: Hardware. Minimum recommended requirements include one high-end computer with at least 128 MB of memory running Windows NT (approximate cost: $3,500) and one tape backup (approximate cost: $500). Software. Rackets uses several software components. A customized relational database is connected to a mapping program to analyze, query, and visualize large amounts of data. Three types of software are needed: --A custom database. Rackets uses Microsoft Access [Trademark][1] as its relational database and Visual Basic for Applications [Trademark][2] (approximate cost: $350). --Mapping programs. Rackets uses a desktop GIS software program (ArcView [Trademark][3]) customized with Avenue [Trademark][4] to simplify and automate numerous mapping tasks (approximate cost: $1,200). --Geographic base files. These files show a community's streets, rivers, parks, schools, and other geographic features. Together, they form the "skeleton" upon which data are displayed on a map. Numerous vendors supply street-based geographic data for the SDNY area; most are based on the U.S. Census Bureau's TIGER files. USAO experimented with several systems before selecting the most beneficial. The Office decided to use Geographic Data Technologies' Dynamap 2000 street network because this package showed the greatest degree of accuracy (approximate cost: $600 per U.S. county). Personnel. Ideally, the system needs a dedicated full-time computer analyst familiar with GIS analysis and relational database technology to conduct both maintenance and analysis. In addition, a project manager is needed to oversee operations and ensure processes for accurate and timely data entry. 1 Microsoft Access is a database management system sold by Microsoft, Inc. 2 Visual Basic [Trademark] is a programming language developed and sold by Microsoft, Inc. 3 ArcView [Trademark] is a desktop mapping program developed by Environmental Systems Research Institute, Inc. 4 Avenue [Trademark] is the scripting language included with the purchase of ArcView [Trademark]. --------------------------- For More Information --NIJ's Crime Mapping Research Center, http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/cmrc, 810 7th Street NW, Washington, DC 20531, 202-514-3431. The CMRC offers research, evaluation, development, and dissemination about GIS technology and the spatial analysis of crime. --NIJ's Crime Mapping and Analysis Program, http://www.nlectc.org/nlectcrm, 2050 East Illiff Avenue, Denver, CO 80208, 1-800-416-8086. This program of the National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Center offers training and practical application assistance. --------------------------- Methamphetamine: An Update on an Emerging Problem Once seen most commonly in the West and Southwest, methamphetamine (also known as "meth," "speed," "crank," and "crystal") has begun to spread throughout the United States. Since the early 1990's, it has gradually moved into the Midwest and South and is now found in many major metropolitan areas throughout the country, although less so in the Northeast. (See "What is Methamphetamine?") Of particular concern are the emerging manufacture and use of methamphetamine in rural settings and its increasing use among populations not previously known to use the drug. To respond to the growing and widespread use of the drug, Congress authorized creation of the Methamphetamine Interagency Task Force as part of the Comprehensive Methamphetamine Control Act of 1996. The Task Force's Mandate The legislation directed the Task Force to examine the impact of methamphetamine and other synthetic stimulants and to evaluate, design, and implement Federal strategies for educating the public about methamphetamine, preventing and treating its use, and helping law enforcement respond to it. The Task Force was cochaired by Attorney General Janet Reno and Office of National Drug Control Policy Director Barry McCaffrey. The Task Force held four formal meetings: -- May 1998, Washington, D.C. presentations by researchers, practitioners, and others began the process of assembling baseline knowledge about the methamphetamine problem. -- October 1998, Omaha, Nebraska perspectives from people confronting the methamphetamine problem locally aided understanding of the drug's impact. -- May 1999, San Diego, California the Task Force's official report was reviewed to ensure it reflected the substance, nuances, and principles Task Force members believed should guide future policy discussions about methamphetamine. -- November 1999, Washington, D.C. national, State, and local stakeholders from a variety of disciplines were convened to provide input on how to implement the Task Force's recommendations. The Findings During the course of its work, the Task Force explored meth's history and the current and future state of the problem in the United States, with the goal of providing guidance for a national plan to combat it. Although much more remains to be learned, the Task Force concluded the following: --Methamphetamine is a dangerous, addictive drug, and the population of users is expanding but not well defined. --There is a lack of data about the prevalence of methamphetamine use and abuse. --The precursor chemicals used to produce methamphetamine are relatively inexpensive, widely available, easy to transport, and difficult to regulate. --There is no single source country or single specific trafficking route for methamphetamine. --The clandestine laboratories where methamphetamine is produced domestically pose significant hazards to law enforcement officials, nearby residents, and--through environmental hazards--the general public. --Methamphetamine can be destructive to the human body, affecting neurological, behavioral, and psychological functioning long after use has stopped. --Episodes of violent behavior have been associated with methamphetamine use. --Information for treatment providers on effective strategies has not been adequately disseminated to the various providers involved with methamphetamine abusers. --Methamphetamine abuse in rural and suburban areas presents a challenge for treatment providers because resources and training opportunities are particularly scarce in these areas. --The general lack of public understanding about methamphetamine, including its risks and consequences, requires expanded public education efforts. The Recommendations The Task Force developed a set of principles, needs, and research priorities for future efforts implementing a national strategy for combating methamphetamine use. These are contained in the final report. (To obtain a copy of the report, see "For More Information.") A few of the key Task Force recommendations are as follows: Prevention and education. Methamphetamine prevention and education efforts should involve the entire community, including educators, youths, parents, vendors of the materials used in the manufacture of methamphetamine, law enforcement officials, business leaders, members of the faith community, social service providers, and representatives of other government agencies and organizations. Treatment. A number of obstacles exist in treating methamphetamine abusers-- limited access, funding, professional training, and research, especially in rural areas. Although treatment approaches designed specifically for methamphetamine abuse are rare, some have been successful, and new approaches are being developed. Research suggests that meth treatment must be of sufficient duration to address adequately the extended timetable of meth recovery. Law enforcement. Law enforcement activities should be linked to other criminal justice efforts, especially those of the judiciary. Sanctions to combat pervasive methamphetamine use that complement treatment efforts include comprehensive drug testing, diversion into treatment of arrestees who test positive, the implementation of drug courts, the use of graduated sanctions, and court-enforced abstinence. Implementation themes. An effective strategy for addressing methamphetamine needs to involve all levels of government. Federal agencies can take specific actions as well as provide services to communities, especially rural communities, to assist them in addressing methamphetamine. NCJ 184445 --------------------------- What is Methamphetamine? Also known as "meth," "crank," "ice," and other names, methamphetamine is a synthetic psychostimulant that produces intoxication, dependence, and psychosis. Methamphetamine is a mood-altering drug that induces behavioral effects such as increased activity and decreased appetite; the high lasts 8 to 24 hours. Although there is an initial general sense of well-being, methamphetamine use has been associated with both long- and short-term problems, such as brain damage, cognitive impairment and memory loss, stroke, paranoia, anorexia, hyperthermia, hepatitis and HIV transmission (through needle sharing), and violence. Like cocaine, methamphetamine is a Schedule II drug, available only through a highly restricted prescription procedure. (Schedule I drugs are considered the most dangerous drugs with no recognized medical use, while Schedule V is reserved for the least dangerous drugs.) Medical uses for methamphetamine include treatment for narcolepsy, attention deficit disorder, and obesity. The drug is manufactured illegally by domestic clandestine laboratories and by Mexican sources; it is distributed through established drug trafficking routes. It can be produced using over-the-counter drugs, household products, and other readily available chemicals. In addition to the obvious health and crime concerns associated with the drug, the laboratories themselves pose a fire and public safety threat. For More Information The Task Force's final report is available electronically in two formats: (1) pdf format at http://www.ncjrs.org/pdffiles1/nij/180155.pdf, or (2) html format at http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij/methintf/index.html. Other sources of information about methamphetamine: --Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring Program http://www.adam-nij.net --Center for Substance Abuse Prevention http://www.samhsa.gov/csap --Center for Substance Abuse Treatment http://www.samhsa.gov/csat --Drug Enforcement Administration http://www.usdoj.gov/dea --Drug-Free Communities Support Program http://www.whitehousedrugpolicy.gov/prevent/drugfree.html --National Clearinghouse on Alcohol and Drug Information http://www.health.org --National Institute on Drug Abuse http://www.nida.nih.gov --Safe and Drug-Free Schools Program http://www.ed.gov/offices/OESE/SDFS --White House Office of National Drug Control Policy http://www.whitehousedrugpolicy.gov --------------------------- Getting to Know Neighborhoods by G. Thomas Kingsley and Kathryn L.S. Pettit What if you were a community leader and you could receive regular reports that assembled the facts and figures about a specific neighborhood and its level of crime, public health, education, and housing? And you could get it within days and without committing a dozen people to the task? In the 1990's, nonprofit institutions in several cities started a project to achieve this goal. They began constructing computer-based information systems that would give them data on a variety of conditions and trends at the neighborhood level so they could identify on-the-ground patterns of problems and opportunities, plan well-targeted responses, and, ultimately, track results. By 1995, six cities (Atlanta, Boston, Cleveland, Denver, Oakland, and Providence) had built advanced information systems with integrated and periodically updated information on neighborhood conditions. They had overcome the resistance of public agencies to sharing administrative data, and because of the steep decline in the cost of new information tools and technologies, they had shown that such systems could be locally self-sustaining. These databanks cover an extensive array of social welfare issues, including births, deaths, crime, health status, educational performance, public assistance, and property conditions. In 1995, the six nonprofits joined the Urban Institute in Washington, D.C., to establish the National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership (NNIP) with the aim of further coordinating the use of such systems in local policymaking and community building. Today, 13 organizations comprise the NNIP. The partners are listed at the end of this article in the "For More Information" section. Goals of the Project The NNIP partners work to democratize information rather than prepare reports for their own research purposes. They provide information to community leaders so that institutions and residents can build their capacity to enhance decision making by using data. The partners work to use information as a bridge to encourage collaboration in local policymaking, especially between neighborhood groups and the citywide establishment. NNIP's long-term agenda (now mainly funded by the Annie E. Casey and Rockefeller Foundations) has four parts: --Advance the use of information in community capacity building by developing and field testing a variety of tools, such as databases, how-to handbooks, training curriculums, Web sites, and reports. --Use information to support better local policymaking by mounting well-focused analyses of spatial data. --Incorporate partners' data and information from other sources to create a national database that will shed light on how inner-city neighborhoods are changing across the country. --Help other cities build the capacity to develop neighborhood indicators by sharing data, knowledge, and experience. The NNIP partners concentrate on neighborhood data because conditions are not uniform within a city or county, especially when it comes to poverty and its attendant effects. Citywide data can disguise major differences among neighborhoods. Clearly, knowledge of the characteristics of neighborhoods and their inhabitants is critical to many programs, such as health services, code enforcement, fire prevention, and community policing. Defining "Neighborhood" Agreeing on a neighborhood's boundary can be extremely difficult, so NNIP has not adopted a single definition of "neighborhood." Instead, the partners store all data on a small area basis (e.g., single address, block, and block group) so the data can be displayed at different levels to serve the varying needs of users. In other words, the neighborhood is whatever a particular user defines it to be. This flexibility permits service agencies to obtain data for their own service districts (for example, a police beat or a neighborhood school's boundaries), city planners to use comprehensive data for any standard set of neighborhoods they have defined, and community groups to set any boundaries they want for their projects. Impartial Information Requests Increase Early on, most of the NNIP partners prepared analyses of their communities across a range of social factors associated with neighborhood change: Boston's In the Midst of Plenty,[1] Cleveland's Analysis of Poverty and Related Conditions in Cleveland Area Neighborhoods,[2] Denver's Poverty in Denver--Facing the Facts,[3] and Oakland's A Chance for Every Child.[4] These and other early applications soon proved their worth, and the partners have had more requests for information than they can handle. For example, Cleveland's system was accessed by 373 separate users during an 8-month period in 1995. All six NNIP cities used their data as the primary basis for applying to participate in the Empowerment Zone/Enterprise Community program supported by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. All six cities won funding. The NNIP partners have developed a reputation for impartiality, as providers of reliable information not beholden to any interests. While they work to bring important issues to the attention of decision makers and seek funding for analyses of those issues, they are not advocates of particular institutional approaches or programs. None represents the government or works exclusively for any one faction in their communities. Although some now receive funds from government entities for analysis they perform under contract, all receive their core funding from a mix of national and local foundations and private businesses that represent longer term community interests. NNIP partners have become a one-stop shop for a variety of data users who no longer need to call several different agencies and piece together information. For example, when the police department gives its full data file to NNIP, it can then simply refer all requests for police data to the NNIP partner. The benefits--in time as well as money--multiply for those who need neighborhood data from multiple sources. Why not set up such a data provider within a local government agency? This could be made to work in some circumstances, but generally, NNIP does not advise it. The problem is that the types of information that are useful in understanding neighborhood change come from separate local governments (i.e., from counties and special agencies as well as the city itself). In interviews, several local officials said they would prefer to obtain the neighborhood data they need from a broadly accountable source like an NNIP partner rather than rely on an agency in a sister government. Types of Access and Requests NNIP data are accessible in three ways. The easiest and quickest for both parties occurs when requesters can simply access and manipulate the database directly (as is possible with the Boston, Cleveland, and Providence systems) and the systems staff are not involved. At the next level, the requester asks for tables, maps, or other data that require a fairly limited time commitment from the systems staff. At the most challenging level, the requester asks for not only a printout of information in the existing database, but also a professional analysis of the data by the research partner and/or hands-on work with stakeholders to help them analyze and understand the implications of the data. These assignments take much more time. Partners normally charge a fee for studies they conduct for agencies or businesses, but their work with community groups is always performed for free. In all sites, the range of requesters, types of requests, and applications has been tremendous. An analysis of the 116 requests received by the Piton Foundation in Denver between 1991 and 1995 shows this breakdown: 26 percent were from nonprofit health and social service providers, 20 percent were from local government agencies, 14 percent were from neighborhood organizations, 13 percent were from boards of education and individual schools, 8 percent were from foundations and interest groups, 7 percent were from State and Federal agencies, 7 percent were from newspapers and other media, and the remaining 5 percent were from church-based programs. The types of requests and their uses fall into several categories: Strategic planning. It is in this area that several NNIP partners have made their most noteworthy contributions--by providing data to and working with city-level leadership coalitions in strategic planning on social issues. One example is the Oakland Urban Strategies Council's collaboration with the local school system and social service agencies to develop new ways to integrate services around children in needy families. (See "Oakland Integrates Social Services Around Schools,") Building awareness and dialogue. NNIP partners issue frequent reports on special topics that, over time, build greater public understanding of policy topics with which they are concerned. An example is the collaboration of the Piton Foundation, neighborhood groups, and Denver newspapers to cover newsworthy events in neighborhoods proactively, avoiding the negative distortion that accompanies selective reporting on evening newscasts. (See "Denver's Westside Neighborhood Leadership Program.") Accurately identifying low-income neighborhoods. NNIP has helped avoid misallocations of resources. One example occurred in Georgia when the General Assembly created a job tax credit program. Forty of the State's 159 counties qualified for the program, but a number of observers saw serious inequities in the county-based scheme: Several counties that had not qualified according to the "least developed" criteria actually contained pockets of poverty that were among the most economically distressed areas in the State. To remedy the situation, Atlanta's Data and Policy Analysis Center analyzed census tract data and identified 236 tracts in nonqualifying counties that had economic conditions worse than those in qualifying counties. In 1993, the General Assembly passed legislation to extend the tax credits to residents of these zones. Program monitoring and evaluation. Neighborhood indicators offer a good deal of promise as an aid to quantifying performance measures for some government and nonprofit programs. Suppose, for example, that trends in the rates of child maltreatment, structural fires, and student test scores vary substantially in two neighborhoods. It is impossible to pinpoint the reason for the variances and the effects of public programs unless data can be assembled that show trends in neighborhood social, economic, and physical conditions and how those conditions relate to programmatic activities. Formal program evaluations can benefit in the same way. Governments and foundations have spent a great deal of money on evaluations that prove inconclusive, mainly because the evaluators could not collect sufficiently complete and accurate data on changes in the neighborhood to properly interpret a program's effects. Realistically, the only way an adequate range of information on changing neighborhood circumstances can be provided is through the development in each city of the kind of ongoing data assembly now provided by the NNIP partners. Community building. Most NNIP partners give their highest priority to providing data to community groups who are designing their own performance and monitoring measures. In so doing, they are endorsing the principles of comprehensive, community-led collaboration. NNIP partners encourage residents to learn about their neighborhoods--and their comparative advantages and disadvantages--as they design action programs and build a tradition of collaboration. NNIP partners also recognize the value of other vital information besides their own and all endorse "asset mapping"--interviews and surveys to discover neighborhood strengths, such as home-based businesses and cultural resources, that administrative recordkeeping may never capture. Meeting private-sector needs. The private sector also is a potential user of NNIP data, particularly as private interests (especially retailers) consider investment in inner-city neighborhoods. A number of retailers, including Woolworth's and Pathmark, have found that some of their urban locations are more profitable than their suburban ones. Neighborhood indicator data could be useful in several ways to private concerns. First, data on the location, tax status, and other characteristics of vacant parcels could help investors select good locations for investment. Second, spatial data on consumer characteristics and preferences in inner-city communities could guide private firms in deciding how best to market their products or services in these areas. Third, information on the characteristics of local institutions could reveal attractive partnering opportunities for joint ventures in local development. The System's Costs The cost of developing a neighborhood indicator system should be affordable for mid-sized and larger metropolitan areas. Purchasing both data from the Census Bureau and other sources and the required computer hardware and software is inexpensive. In fact, staffing costs are by far the most expensive element of a system. In general, minimum costs for the first 2 years are likely to be around $125,000 per year, although annual outlays for most NNIP partners are two to three times that amount. In the start-up period, the bulk of the money would have to be raised in the form of general support from national and local foundations and the local business community. In-kind contributions (office space, clerical help, and so forth) could reduce the cash component substantially. During the second year, it should be possible to start bringing in income from fees charged for data services. Because the fundamental mission of NNIP systems is to further local public purposes, however, the philanthropic and business sectors in a metropolitan area should be willing to cover a reasonable part of the long-term operating costs. Directions NNIP local institutions and the partnership as a whole have made great strides in moving the field of neighborhood indicators forward. Toward the first goal (advancing the use of information in community capacity building), NNIP cosponsored a conference with the National Community Building Network (NCBN) in the fall of 1998 to further the use of information in community capacity building. Toward the second goal (using information to support better local policymaking), NNIP has supported reports, such as Exploring Welfare-to-Work Challenges in Five Metropolitan Regions, that illustrate the use of cross-site neighborhood data to reveal both the patterns within a region and the differences among regional patterns. To advance the third goal (incorporating partners' data and information from other sources), NNIP plans to incorporate local and national data to profile and illuminate the changes in inner-city neighborhoods for Annie E. Casey's Making Connections cities. And for the fourth goal (helping other cities build the capacity to develop neighborhood indicators), NNIP partners have hosted site visits and produced technical and community-building guidebooks. NNIP launched its Web site (http://www.urban.org/nnip) in the fall of 1999 to enable more cities to learn about neighborhood indicators systems as well as provide easy access to NNIP publications. The NNIP partners are looking now toward the future of neighborhood indicators systems and the use of data for community change. In December 1999, NNIP expanded to include institutions in five new cities: Baltimore, Indianapolis, Miami, Milwaukee, and Philadelphia. The addition of their insight and experience has both broadened and strengthened the partnership's ability to progress in its main goals. With the support of the Annie E. Casey Foundation, NNIP gathered local practitioners and national experts at the Neighborhood Indicators 2000 conference in July 2000. The panels and discussions explored how we can best take advantage of new developments in technology, data availability, and policy analysis in building and using neighborhood indicators capacity. With rapidly advancing technology and an increased recognition of the importance of neighborhood-level indicators, the partnership expects the next 5 years to be even more productive than the first five. NCJ 184446 Notes 1. Boston Persistent Poverty Project, In the Midst of Plenty, Boston: Boston Foundation, 1989. 2. Coulton, Claudia J., Julian Chow, and Shanta Pandey, Analysis of Poverty and Related Conditions in Cleveland Area Neighborhoods, Cleveland: Center on Urban Poverty and Social Change, Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences, Case Western Reserve University, 1990. 3. Bailey, Terri J., Poverty in Denver--Facing the Facts, Denver: Piton Foundation, 1991. 4. Urban Strategies Council, A Chance for Every Child: Prospects for Oakland's Infants, Children, and Youth in the 1990's and Beyond, Oakland: Urban Strategies Council, July 1991. --------------------------- about the authors G. Thomas Kingsley and Kathryn L.S. Pettit are researchers at the Urban Institute, where they also serve as key staff for the National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership. --------------------------- Oakland Integrates Social Services Around Schools Schools have long recognized that students' difficulties often emanate from problems at home, but the efforts of the schools and other agencies to help are sometimes fragmented and contradictory. Schools and social service agencies too often become involved only in times of crisis rather than working to address root causes. Oakland was able to do something about this situation. NNIP's local partner, the Urban Strategies Council (USC), with its advanced data processing capabilities and a large amount of relevant information already on hand, was able to secure, process, and link data from school and social agencies for the students and families of one elementary school. The resulting report revealed a striking overlap in services and prompted a similar study for a much larger population--students at eight schools. The study showed that almost two out of three students used public services and more than a third used at least two different services. The report also documented that the system was investing much more in crisis services than prevention and that there were important differences in the service needs of different racial groups and the types of services provided for them. The final outcome: new and improved working relationships between representatives of different agencies who recognized they faced a common challenge. They had to "acquaint themselves with agencies outside of their normal scope of work" in defining the questions they hoped the data would answer, and then, after the results were in, "discuss the kinds of joint action they might undertake, patterns of service use, relationships among agencies, and the ultimate effectiveness of existing programs."[1] The group came up with the idea of redeploying staff from different agencies to form a "family support team" around individual schools. The team would "develop new collaborative strategies for working with troubled families, taking on the crisis situations most taxing for schools, and leaving school resources to be focused on prevention, on establishing more positive activities, and on outreach to parents."[2] This concept has been tested in several schools since, and wider implementation is underway. USC continues to monitor performance and provide guidance and support. Visit the Urban Strategies Council at http://www.urbanstrategies.org. 1. Casey, Maria Campbell, "Using Data as an Advocacy Tool: What It Takes," Georgia Academy Journal (Summer 1995): 7-15. 2. Ibid. --------------------------- Denver's Westside Neighborhood Leadership Program The Westside Neighborhood Leadership Program is a grassroots effort operating in five of Denver's poorest, largely Latino neighborhoods. Program founders believed that among their residents were latent leaders, the next generation of activists who had the drive but lacked the skills to assert themselves. They developed a leadership curriculum, negotiated approvals, and obtained funding for the program, which now boasts 59 graduates, most of whom have gone on to assume key leadership roles in the community. Struck by disparaging news reports about their neighborhoods, community leaders asked the Piton Data Initiative to develop a component of the leadership curriculum to teach people how to obtain and use neighborhood data effectively. The Piton Data Initiative now trains each new class of leaders on what data are available, how to obtain and interpret them, how to develop their own data, and how to use data in policy initiatives. The program has yielded concrete results. One parent used school-specific special education data from Piton to successfully argue for more effective screening for behavioral and emotional disabilities to avoid the disproportionate tracking of children of color into special education programs. Another parent, concerned about the extremely high turnover among children in her school, used Piton data to create special programs to identify children at risk of being repeatedly uprooted, to work with the parents to stabilize them, and to work with the children to ensure continuity of education when they did have to change schools. Another graduate founded a youth arts recognition program and used the data to encourage local businesses to support the group's efforts by making donations and opening their facilities to display artwork. Visit The Piton Foundation at http://www.piton.org. --------------------------- For More Information NIJ-supported projects with aspects similar to NNIP: --SACSI (Strategic Approaches to Community Safety Initiative) is a new way of solving a community's crime problems. It relies on data and information analysis, boosts the U.S. Attorney's role as a key community problem solver, and asks researchers to serve as navigators--observing, analyzing, and recommending changes in direction. It has been operational in Indianapolis, Memphis, New Haven, Portland (Oregon), and Winston-Salem for two years and will become operational in five more sites in 2000: Detroit, St. Louis, Atlanta, Rochester, and Albuquerque. --COMPASS (Community Mapping, Planning, and Analysis for Safety Strategies) builds on the SACSI model and starts by developing a broad data infrastructure to identify the nature of local crime problems, develop strategies to reduce crime, and evaluate the effectiveness of strategies. It is currently operational in Seattle and will be operational in at least one additional site in 2001. For more information about SACSI and COMPASS, contact Erin Dalton at 202-514-5752, daltona@ojp.usdoj.gov. Organizations in the National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership: Atlanta--The Atlanta Project: http://www.arch.gatech.edu/~dapa Baltimore--Baltimore Neighborhood Indicators Alliance Association of Baltimore Area Grantmakers: http://www.rag.org/abag Boston--Boston Foundation Boston Community-Building Network: http://www.tbf.org Cleveland--Center for Urban Poverty and Social Change Mandel School for Applied Social Science Case Western Reserve University: http://povertycenter.cwru.edu Denver--Piton Foundation: http://www.piton.org Indianapolis--United Way Community Service Council, Indianapolis: http://www.savi.org Miami--Community Services Planning Center Florida Department of Children and Families: http://www.state.fl.us/cf_web/district11 Milwaukee--Nonprofit Center of Milwaukee Neighborhood Data Center: http://www.uwm.edu/people/mbarndt/mindex.htm Oakland--Urban Strategies Council: http://www.urbanstrategies.org Philadelphia--Reinvestment Fund, Philadelphia: http://www.trfund.com Providence--The Providence Plan: http://www.providenceplan.org Washington, D.C.--DC Agenda: http://www.dcagenda.org NNIP--Urban Institute: http://www.urban.org/nnip --------------------------- Measuring Violence Against Women: Recommendations From an Interagency Workshop Scholars have had difficulty measuring the levels and types of violence against women. The difficulty arises from differences in defining rape, sexual assault, and intimate partner violence; counting the incidence; and interpreting the numbers. The result is varying estimates of the nature and extent of these important social problems over the years. Now the Departments of Justice (DOJ) and Health and Human Services (DHHS) are cooperating with both practitioners and researchers to build more uniform ways to collect, analyze, and interpret information on violence against adolescent and adult women. The goal is for research to better contribute to the development and implementation of effective programs and policies that monitor and respond to this public health and criminal justice issue. Staff from DOJ and DHHS, researchers, and practitioners from the public health and criminal justice fields have been examining the opportunities and challenges of the many current measurement strategies associated with understanding violence against women, which encompasses many behaviors and different relationships. A series of meetings and conversations has been held to sort through the issues associated with acts of violence against women that involve intimate partner violence and sexual violence by any perpetrator. Starting the process. A 1998 research and statistical briefing for Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala and Attorney General Janet Reno focused on the nature and extent of violence against women and highlighted both current knowledge and gaps needing to be addressed. As a result of that briefing, a steering committee was formed and a workshop scheduled to begin a long-term effort to advance the measurement of violence against women and the conduct of sound research.[1] (See "Lead Steering Committee Members.") General goals of the workshop were: --To share information on the current state of data collection on and measurement of violence against women, especially intimate partner violence and sexual violence. --To identify the gaps in and limitations of existing data systems for collecting information about these types of violence against women. --To make recommendations about data collection and measurement that would assist researchers in better describing and tracking violence against women in order to better prevent and respond to it. Background papers commissioned on several key issues, including definitional and methodological issues and the collection of national, State, and local data that reflect both public health and criminal justice perspectives, formed the basis for the workshop discussions. Jacquelyn Campbell, Ph.D., Associate Dean, Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing, gave the opening plenary presentation. The commissioned papers were then presented and discussed by participants in a large workshop and in four smaller workgroups. The final plenary session was spent reviewing and discussing the recommendations developed within the workgroups. The general recommendations about five complex issues were as follows: Defining violence. Violence is a term that encompasses a broad range of maltreatment against women, which can be divided into five major components: physical violence, sexual violence, threats of physical and/or sexual violence, stalking, and psychological/emotional abuse. Participants suggested that in future writings the phrase "violence and abuse against women" be used to refer to the combination of all five components, whereas the first three components alone should be called "violence against women." Estimating the size of the problem. Participants concluded that violence against women is a complex, multidimensional phenomenon that cannot be captured by a single number or statistic. No single survey, measurement system, or approach adequately provides all the detailed information needed to understand these problems and improve the many criminal justice, health care, and social service policies and programs aimed at combating violence against women. Although no single or existing measurement tool is sufficient to gauge and track all dimensions of violence against women, the workshop participants concluded that personal interview surveys (conducted at the national, State, or local levels) are a better tool for measuring the extent of violence against women than systematic reviews of records (such as medical, crime, or service delivery records). This conclusion also recognizes the fact that surveys provide different types of information. Therefore, the specific strengths of various surveys should be analyzed to clearly identify what contributions they make to understanding the different dimensions of the problem. Interpreting data. More emphasis is needed on methodological studies that explore the implications of using different data sources and data collection methods for deepening our understanding of violence against women. The format and wording of questions clearly affects the types of responses researchers receive. In addition, the context in which such questions about violence against women are asked also affects the responses. For example, responses to questions posed on a health-related survey may differ from responses to similar questions included as part of a crime victimization survey. It is necessary to understand more systematically the implications of data gathered for different purposes in different contexts in order to provide useful interpretations of the data. Ensuring confidentiality and safety. More effort is needed to develop data collection strategies that ensure that the information provided by victims remains confidential and to enhance research strategies that do not jeopardize victim safety. Continuing scientific collaboration. Participants strongly agreed on the value of this joint DHHS/DOJ effort and recommended that the two departments continue to foster communication and collaboration on these critical scientific issues. Violence against women--including both intimate partner violence and sexual violence--is a major public concern that needs to be better understood by researchers so they can contribute more effectively to the work of policymakers, practitioners, and advocates in both the health and criminal justice sectors. Participants in all four workgroups emphasized that their discussions and recommendations reflect the beginning of a process to develop greater uniformity across the many research and statistical sectors and intellectual disciplines contributing to our knowledge about violence against women. The discussions were a critical phase in a long-term, cross-department, cross-disciplinary effort to improve our ability to monitor violence against women and to develop programs and policies that effectively respond to and prevent it. Notes 1. The workshop was funded by the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control and the National Center for Health Statistics at the Centers for Disease Control, DHHS, and the Bureau of Justice Statistics and the National Institute of Justice at the Office of Justice Programs, DOJ. NCJ 184447 --------------------------- Lead Steering Committee Members Planning for the Workshop on Building Data Systems for Monitoring and Responding to Violence Against Women was led by four steering committee members: Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control --National Center for Injury Prevention and Control: Linda Saltzman, 770-488-4280, les1@cdc.gov. --National Center for Health Statistics: Lois A. Fingerhut, 301-458-4213, laf4@cdc.gov. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs --National Institute of Justice: Christy Visher (who is no longer with NIJ). Contact Bernie Auchter, 202-307-0154, auchter@ojp.usdoj.gov. --Bureau of Justice Statistics: Michael Rand, 202-616-3494, randm@ojp.usdoj.gov. --------------------------- For More Information --The commissioned papers for the workshop form the basis for two special issues of the journal, Violence Against Women, published in July and August 2000 (volume 6, numbers 7 and 8), available from Sage Publications, http://www.sagepub.com. --A full summary of the workshop recommendations will be published in the Recommendations and Reports series of the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, vol. 49, no. RR-11 (October 27, 2000), which is available at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Web site (http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/mmwr_rr.html). --------------------------- Toward the Ideal of Community Justice by Todd R. Clear and David R. Karp In recent years, there has been a rapid growth in approaches to criminal justice that center on "community." Most familiar is community policing, now almost universally accepted as the new orthodoxy in the field, but the community paradigm has been adopted in virtually every component of the criminal justice system, from prosecution through corrections. Neighborhood-based prosecution centers in jurisdictions such as Portland, Oregon, and New York City; community courts in Manhattan and elsewhere; reparative probation statewide in Vermont; and community justice councils in Travis County, Texas, are among the manifestations. The trend, however, is not confined to the United States. Indeed, some initiatives underway in this country were originated abroad. Family group conferencing for juvenile offenses, now being adopted here, began in New Zealand and is widespread in Australia. Sentencing circles are rooted in the traditional peacemaking rituals of both Native Canadians and Native Americans. Community Justice Defined Two central elements grafted from policing--problem solving and community orientation--animate community justice. The approach, which is proactive rather than focused on criminal events, is handled on a case-by-case basis. Community justice taps into the problem-solving skills of citizens instead of relying solely on the expertise of professionals. It is localized and flexible rather than centralized and standardized. And whereas in traditional criminal justice the outcome of a case generally involves restricting the offender's freedom, in community justice, restoring what the victim and the community have lost as a result of the crime is at the forefront. In this respect, it closely resembles restorative justice.[1] Community justice might be best described as an ethic that transforms the aim of the justice system into enhancing community life or sustaining community. To achieve that aim, the community partners with the justice system to share responsibility for social control. This means some control devolves from the justice system, a powerful mechanism of formal social control, to the community, which through churches, schools, civic organizations, families, and similar institutions, exercises the informal social control that fosters civil behavior and public safety. Still in an embryonic stage, community justice is not yet a fully identifiable practice, nor is it based on a systematically derived theory or grounded in a body of empirical research. Without a full articulation of the philosophy underlying community justice, it might be dismissed as a fad or as a term applied to programs that consist of little substantive change. The ideal of community justice is presented here to begin elaboration of the concept and to guide practitioners who may be interested in adopting the approach. Crime, Communities, and Criminal Justice As currently configured, the justice system responds to crime in ways that may actually diminish the quality of life of a community. Strong mechanisms of informal social control in a community not only help reduce crime, but by augmenting the work of the agents of formal control, make that work easier.[2] By contrast, when informal social controls are weak, formal social control fills the void, and as it becomes the main regulating force, citizens may begin to view it as the appropriate agent to deal with all conflict, not just crime.[3] Incarcerating large segments of a neighborhood's population is evidence of strong formal social control, but it signals the breakdown of informal control mechanisms and can further weaken an already fragile social order.[4] Community justice, by contrast, is based on the notion that formal social control is neither the only response to crime nor the one best suited to improve the quality of community life. "Supportive" Justice. In exercising conventional formal control, the justice system functions as a force acting upon the community, whereas in a community justice model it is a resource to strengthen and support the community in dealing with crime and disorder. Drawing on the community's capacity for self-regulation, the justice system helps build up the forces of social control that occur naturally in a community. Under community justice, offender accountability for crime remains a vital element, but it is set in the context of repairing the damage to both victims and the community. Embracing the idea of community is a profound shift because it changes the focus of justice from what is to be done about people (offenders) to what is to be done about the places in which people live and work. And while in the community justice paradigm incarceration remains a means to ensure public safety, what to do about released offenders also becomes a concern. Underlying Community Ideals. Community justice is guided by certain fundamental moral and social ideals of effectively functioning communities. As ideals, they are never fully realized, but they can serve as benchmarks against which public policy and programs based on community justice are measured. They extend beyond the protection of rights that is a hallmark of traditional liberalism and embrace contemporary concern for cultivating meaningful social relationships, responsible citizenship, and democratic participation.[5] Strengthening social ties refers to the role of community in imparting wisdom; inspiring a sense of belonging; responding collectively to individuals' needs; promoting relations based on reciprocal interests, commitment, and cooperation; and fostering self-definition and realization. By promoting intimate, supportive relationships in this way, communities serve as a countervailing force to the tendency of complex societies to base human relations on marketplace considerations. Communities promote the common good while protecting the rights of individuals, an ideal expressed as reconciling order and autonomy. Far from being incompatible, order and autonomy are interdependent. Indeed, autonomy depends on a foundation of order. When conflict arises, the community justice ideal would be neither to balance the two nor to choose one over the other, but rather to recognize collective needs while acknowledging each individual's full autonomy as a shared interest. Ideally, obedience to the law derives from motives other than self-interest or fear of sanctions. People obey the law because they believe it is morally valid and thus they see enforcement as legitimate. This ideal, voluntary cooperation, refers to the cultivation of socially astute, emotionally intelligent citizens who are as concerned with and engaged in the life of the community as they are with their own lives. Concern for the collective good becomes the motivating force in obeying the law. Beyond the Adversarial Model. These community ideals are "operationalized" or fulfilled through such institutions as schools, churches, and civic associations; through the multiple informal mechanisms that socialize community members by transmitting behavioral norms and standards; and through civic activism, which enables people to assess their own views and demonstrate common purpose. The current adversarial configuration of the justice system militates against the full realization of these ideals. Thus, for example, when criminal justice is reduced to fighting and controlling crime, aggressive and even brutal police tactics can shatter a normative order based on institutional legitimacy and individual autonomy. If cooperation is a product of coercion, the spirit of voluntarism vital to a community declines, and narrow self-interest replaces it. Crime increases fear, and because the justice system does not address that fear, the response to crime can be withdrawal from civic participation. By offering a model in which crime is understood as something that happens to a community, community justice builds and sustains communities. It does so by applying democratic principles that increase the roles and responsibilities of offenders, victims, and other members of the community affected by a crime, thereby engaging them more fully in community life. In the same sense, the egalitarian principles on which community justice is based help ensure commitment to crime prevention by cultivating concern, particularly for societal inequities. Principles of Democratic Community Justice In community justice, criminal events are considered and dealt with as social acts that shatter community life. They are not simply violations of the law but renunciation by offenders of their moral and social obligations to the community as a whole as well as to the victim. When crime is viewed this way, it shows the State's role as sole arbiter of the offender-victim conflict to be flawed, because community members are isolated from that conflict. At the heart of community justice is civic participation. Through the problem-solving process, all parties carry out tasks derived from their relationship to the criminal event. These tasks are based on principles that define an essentially democratic vision of justice: Citizens participate in processes that affirm community standards of conduct, restore the quality of community life, and reduce the likelihood of further crime. The tasks of each party are reciprocal, linking them in a network of mutual obligation. (See figure 1.) The Roles of Victim, Offender, and Community. The offender must strive for readmission to the community. This involves admitting the wrong, working to undo the effects of the offense, and taking steps to convince the community that the crime will not occur again. Victims, too, have responsibilities. In community justice their goal is to recover their capacity to fully function in the community. Recovery begins when the victim articulates the losses, intangible as well as tangible, and estimates the resources, financial and otherwise, needed to restore the losses. Because community laws have been violated and community life disrupted, it is incumbent on community institutions to play a role in recovery. That may involve clarifying norms and standards of conduct, expressing to the offender in particular what is and is not acceptable. (For an example of how this operates in practice, see "Vermont's Reparative Probation: Upholding Standards of Community Behavior," page 24.) The community provides opportunities for making restitution and offers the support and supervision needed for the offender to live in the community crime-free. To the victim, the community provides support in achieving recovery. The Role of the Justice System. For the justice system, the role shifts from that of defender of law and order to that of resource to the community, bearing ultimate responsibility for the justice process. In the community justice model, the justice system helps the victim, community, and offender to carry out their tasks by designing and managing a process that facilitates participation. In the ideal conception, community justice workers assume that role. Community justice workers might, for example, organize and convene victim-offender mediation sessions, family group conferences, reparative citizen boards, sentencing circles, or similar practices based on restorative justice.6 The justice system also would design and oversee a risk management plan that differs from the conventional approach in allowing the community to accept or reject it. Principles of Egalitarian Community Justice Community justice works not just through the personal response of each individual stakeholder--victim, offender, and community--after a crime is committed. It works by cultivating the community's social obligation to prevent crime. In this more broad conception, the ideal of justice is fundamentally egalitarian. Egalitarianism in this context means applying principles relevant to key indicators of the quality of community life: Community members treat each other fairly (equality), tolerate the attitudes and behaviors of others (inclusion), balance self-interest with concern for the collective good (mutuality), and are willing to put the common good above their own wants and needs (stewardship).[7] Community justice is responsive not only to crime, but also to the conditions such as economic deprivation that may foster it. From Crime Control to Crime Prevention The principle of equality refers to fair treatment of all community members, grounded in repudiation of social subordination.[8] Because neighborhood disadvantage correlates strongly with criminality,[9] it suggests community justice must respond to social inequity if the quality of community life is to improve. Whether that can be done is open to question, however, given the demise of the manufacturing sector that once meant full employment in the cities and the persistent spatial isolation of an economic underclass (consisting disproportionately of African Americans) in many urban cores. Reducing the marginalization of those who challenge the accepted code of behavior and fail to conform is an ongoing pursuit in community justice. The tension between tolerating nonconformity and promoting predictability of social interaction is resolved with "pre-emptive strikes" of socialization and informal social control. Shaming is one such means.[10] It works because people want to avoid disapproval. The risk is that shaming may stigmatize the deviant and lead to ostracism, which in turn may impel the deviating person to seek the company of other outcasts. The challenge is to build the norm violator's stake in the community by cultivating a sense of inclusion. Rational choice theorists have long pondered whether or not cooperation is possible among "egoists"[11]--that is, whether there can be common purpose among people who are less concerned about the general welfare than about their own lives. The issue has been explored in the experimental gaming literature,[12] where at least one theorist has concluded that while self-interest yields short-term benefits, cooperation achieves the greatest long-term gains.[13] That highlights the imperative of building long-term relationships based on mutual interest, which offer the greatest incentive to cooperate. In the context of community justice, the issue translates as how to mobilize support for crime prevention and develop strategies that reduce incentives to commit crime. The principle of mutuality assumes mobilization is feasible because people have a stake in community life, but there need to be strategies that make this stake manifest. Stewardship is the principle that may place the greatest demand on community members because it requires that they empathize with people whom they may not know personally. In the words of criminologist James Q. Wilson, stewardship involves the creation of a "moral sense" based on sympathy, fairness, self-control, and duty.[14] Stewards of the community not only demonstrate concern for the welfare of the whole, but they are willing even to sacrifice their own desires and needs. Like equality, stewardship may require tackling structural societal problems. As a principle of justice, it requires examining local standards of behavior and adjudicating the conflict between them and acts that may not reflect those standards. In such examination, a chief concern is the effect of individual acts on the good of the whole. (For an example of how this operates in practice, see "Austin's Community Justice Councils: Promoting Stewardship of the Community.") Can It Work? Particularly for practitioners who wish to develop community justice initiatives, it is important to note that there is no standard formula for adopting the principles. The design will depend on the nature of community organizations, justice system practices, and crime problems in the targeted neighborhood. Myriad models are plausible, and a community might adopt and reject several options before finding a good fit. Community justice is not problem-free. Citizens are not likely to be eager to participate; justice system officials also may be resistant. The history of community organizing and community development offers ample proof of the difficulty of mobilizing and engaging people, particularly on a sustained basis. Operational difficulties will abound. Offenders will fail--sometimes dramatically so. Yet there are reasons to believe community justice is a good idea. Any call for change that does not recognize the loss of credibility in the justice system is bound to fail. Because it is the community that has lost faith, faith can be restored to the extent the community is involved. The ideal of community has an almost inherent appeal, as it holds out the prospect for inclusion--providing incentives for victims and offenders to participate--and offers opportunities to improve the quality of community life. Finally, community justice is already happening, as criminal justice agencies throughout the country reach out to the communities they serve, bring them more actively into the justice process, and form partnerships with organizations representing local interests. What remains is for those interested in advancing the aims of community justice to harvest the results achieved thus far and use them to further develop the concept. NCJ 184448 Notes 1. Community justice is more broadly conceived than restorative justice. Like restorative justice, it attends to the sanctioning of offenders, but community justice also addresses crime prevention. Community justice focuses explicitly on the location of justice activities at the local level and concentrates on community outcomes. For a more extensive description of restorative justice and community justice, see Incorporating Restorative and Community Justice into American Sentencing and Corrections, by Leena Kurki, Research in Brief-- Sentencing & Corrections: Issues for the 21st Century, Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice/Corrections Program Office, September 1999 (NCJ 175723). 2. Bursik, Robert J., and Harold G. Grasmick, Neighborhoods and Crime: The Dimensions of Effective Community Control, New York: Lexington Books, 1993. 3. Black, Donald, The Behavior of Law, New York: Academic Press, 1976. 4. Clear, Todd R., and Dina R. Rose, When Neighbors Go to Jail: Impact on Attitudes About Formal and Informal Social Control, Research Preview, Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice, July 1999 (FS 000243). 5. Selznick, Philip, Moral Common-wealth: Social Theory and the Promise of Community, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1992. 6. Bazemore, Gordon, "The 'Community' in Community Justice: Issues, Themes, and Questions for the New Neighborhood Sanctioning Models," in Community Justice: An Emerging Field, ed. David R. Karp, Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998: 327-371. 7. This conceptualization was borrowed from Philip Selznick. See his "Social Justice: A Communitarian Perspective," in The Responsive Community 6 (1996): 13-25. 8. Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice, Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 1971; and Selznick, "Social Justice." 9. Braithwaite, John, Inequality, Crime, and Public Policy, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979; and Sampson, Robert J., "The Community," in Crime, ed. James Q. Wilson and Joan Petersilia, San Francisco: Institute for Contemporary Studies, 1995: 193-216. 10. Braithwaite, John, Crime, Shame, and Reintegration, Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1989; and Karp, David R., "Judicial and Judicious Use of Shame Penalties," Crime and Delinquency 44 (1998): 277- 294. 11. Yamagishi, Toshio, "Social Dilemmas," in Sociological Perspectives on Social Psychology, ed. Karen S. Cook, Gary A. Fine, and James House, Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1994: 317. 12. Pruitt, Dean G., and Melvin J. Kimmell, "Twenty Years of Experimental Gaming: Critique, Synthesis, and Suggestions for the Future," Annual Review of Psychology 28 (1977): 363-392. 13. Axelrod, Robert, The Evolution of Cooperation, New York: Basic Books, 1984. 14. Wilson, James Q., The Moral Sense, New York: Free Press, 1993. --------------------------- about the authors Todd R. Clear, Ph.D., is Distinguished Professor in the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York; David R. Karp, Ph.D., is a Professor in the Department of Sociology at Skidmore College. --------------------------- Vermont's Reparative Probation: Upholding Standards of Community Behavior Vermont's Reparative Probation Program exemplifies how democratic community justice seeks to reaffirm norms and standards of acceptable conduct. Offenders and their victims come together in a forum in which the offender acknowledges his or her wrong-doing and has the opportunity to express remorse and make amends. Community Reparative Boards, consisting of citizens who have a stake in the outcome, represent the community as the custodian of behavioral norms.[1] In what is essentially a community-based restorative justice program, more than 60 boards operating throughout the State handle the cases of people whom the courts have sentenced to reparative probation for non-violent offenses, including some property felonies. The sentence is conditioned on the offender's meeting with the board, which negotiates an agreement or contract specifying how the offender will repair the harm inflicted on the victim and the community. Victims meet with the board if they wish to do so, and all participants, including the victims, must agree to the terms of the contract. The board works with the offender in three ways. First, it seeks to demonstrate to him or her the effects of the crime on the victim and the community; second, it identifies ways the offender can repair the damage; and third, it works with the offender to devise a strategy to reduce the likelihood of reoffending. With the victim, the board works to acknowledge the harm done, to listen to the victim's concerns, and to demonstrate that the community cares and will act on the victim's behalf. The Community Reparative Boards of Vermont create a vital opportunity for citizen participation in the justice system. The boards do not establish guilt or innocence, but rather clarify, communicate, and enforce standards of acceptable behavior following the court's decision. By removing sanctioning from the courtroom to the informal problem-solving setting of the community, the process forces offenders to face their peers directly.[2] 1. See Perry, John G., and John F. Gorczyk, "Restructuring Corrections: Using Market Research in Vermont," Corrections Management Quarterly 1 (1997): 26-35. 2. The success of Vermont's program led to its designation in 1998 as a winner in the prestigious Innovations in American Government competition. --------------------------- Austin's Community Justice Councils: Promoting Stewardship of the Community The State of Texas provides a vehicle for citizens' decision making in the justice process through a structure that enables them to participate at the local level. That structure, authorized by the legislature for all counties, is the Community Justice Council, The councils, which develop community justice plans tailored to local jurisdictions, exemplify the notion that the broader, collective good of the community is the focus of justice. In this new paradigm, citizens act on behalf of the common good, responsible particularly for the needs of the community's most vulnerable and disadvantaged members.[1] Austin (Travis County) has been at the forefront of this movement, with the County District Attorney, who wrote the Community Justice Councils statute, providing much of the leadership. Here, the Community Justice Council consists of elected officials, including prosecutors, legislators, city council and school board members, and judges. While the Council develops the community justice plans for Austin and the surrounding county, the closely allied Community Justice Task Force, made up of such officials as the chief of the Austin police department and the school superintendent, serves in an advisory capacity. The voice of citizens is heard through the Neighborhood Protection Action Committee, which is comprised of activists who represent various neighborhoods and advise the Council. Coordination among these three bodies is key to their functioning. It enables the council to develop community justice plans that are comprehensive and geared toward local needs. One outcome was the establishment of a Community Justice Center--a community correctional facility--close to a neighborhood troubled by crime and economic hardship. Thanks to the infrastructure of the council, all parties worked together on tasks ranging from site selection and facility design to the development of programs and services to promote reintegration of offenders into the community. 1. See Earle, Ronald, "Community Justice: The Austin Experience," Texas Probation 11 (1996): 6-11. --------------------------- For More Information The ideal of community justice presented here is one of a number of conceptions of how to build greater community participation in the justice system. Others can be found in the following sampling of resources: --Balanced and Restorative Justice: Program Summary, Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice: Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, 1994 (NCJ 149727). --"Beyond Community Policing: Community Justice," by Thomas J. Quinn, Police Chief 64(10) (October 1997): 107-108. --Change Lenses: A New Focus for Crime and Justice, by Howard Zehr, Scottsdale, PA: Herald Press, 1990. --"The Community," by Robert J. Sampson, in Crime, ed. J.Q. Wilson and J. Petersilia, San Francisco: Institute for Contemporary Studies, 1995: 193-216. --"Community Courts: Prospects and Limits," by David B. Rottman, National Institute of Justice Journal 231, August 1996: 46-51. --Community Prosecution Profiles, by Victor Wolf and Robert V. Wolf, New York: Center for Court Innovation, 2000. --"Conferences, Circles, Boards, and Mediation: The 'New Wave' of Community Justice Decisionmaking," by Gordon Bazemore and Curt Taylor Griffiths, Federal Probation 61(2) (June 1997): 25-37. --Crime, Shame, and Reintegration, by John Braithwaite, Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1989. --Engaging the Community: A Guide for Community Justice Planners, by Greg Berman and David Anderson, New York: Center for Court Innovation, 1999. --Incorporating Restorative and Community Justice into American Sentencing and Corrections, by Leena Kurki, Research in Brief--Sentencing & Corrections: Issues for the 21st Century, Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice/Corrections Program Office, September 1999, NCJ 175723. --Juvenile and Family Drug Courts: An Overview, rev. ed., Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice; Office of Justice Programs, Drug Courts Program Office, 1999. --Model Courts Serve Abused and Neglected Children, by Mary Mentaberry, Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, OJJDP Fact Sheet #90, January 1999 (FS 9990). --Neighborhoods and Crime: The Dimensions of Effective Community Control, by Robert J. Bursik and Harold G. Grasmick, New York: Lexington Books, 1993. --Responding to the Community: Principles for Planning and Creating a Community Court, by John Feinblatt and Greg Berman, Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Assistance, November 1997 (NCJ 166821). --Restorative Community Justice: Background, Program Examples, and Research Findings, by Thomas J. Quinn, Technical Assistance Report, Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice, 1996. --"Restorative Justice," by John Braithwaite, in Handbook of Crime and Punishment, ed. M. Tonry, New York: Oxford University Press, 1998: 323-344. --"Restorative Justice and Earned Redemption," by Gordon Bazemore, American Behavioral Scientist 41 (1998): 768-813. --Restorative Juvenile Justice: Repairing the Harm of Youth Crime, ed. Gordon Bazemore and Lode Walgrave, Monsey, NY: Criminal Justice Press, 1999. --Restoring Justice, by Daniel Van Ness and Karen Heetderks Strong, Cincinnati, OH: Anderson Publishing Company, 1997. --"Therapeutic Jurisprudence and the Emergence of Problem-Solving Courts," by David Rottman and Pamela Casey, National Institute of Justice Journal, July 1999:12-19 (JR 000240). --Victim Meets Offender: The Impact of Restorative Justice and Mediation, by Mark S. Umbreit, Monsey, NY: Criminal Justice Press, 1994. The authors' own perspective on community justice is more fully elaborated in: --The Community Justice Ideal: Preventing Crime and Achieving Justice, by Todd R. Clear and David R. Karp, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1999 (supported by NIJ grant number 1997-IJ-CX-0032). --"Community Justice: A Conceptual Framework," by David R. Karp and Todd R. Clear, in Boundary Changes in Criminal Justice Organizations: Criminal Justice 2000, Volume 2, ed. Charles M. Friel, Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice, July 2000: 323-368 (NCJ 182409). --Community Justice: An Emerging Field, ed. David R. Karp, Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998. Related to community justice are the following sampling of problem-solving policing and community-oriented policing: --Community Policing, Chicago Style, by Wesley G. Skogan, New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. --Problem-Oriented Policing, by Herman Goldstein, New York: McGraw-Hill Publishing Company, 1990. --Problem-Oriented Policing (POP): Crime-Specific Problems, Critical Issues, and Making POP Work, volume 1, ed. T.O. Shelly and A.C. Grant, Washington, DC: Police Executive Research Forum, 1998. --Problem-Oriented Policing (POP): Crime-Specific Problems, Critical Issues, and Making POP Work, volume 2, ed., Corina Sole Brito and Tracy Allan, Washington, DC: Police Executive Research Forum, 1999. --Tackling Crime and Other Public Safety Problems: Case Studies in Problem Solving, by Rana Sampson and Michael S. Scott, Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, 1999. --------------------------- At-A-Glance: Recent Research Findings Connecting Crack Markets, Guns, and Youth Homicide Journal article, Daniel Cork, "Examining Space-Time Interaction in City-Level Homicide Data: Crack Markets and the Diffusion of Guns Among Youth," Journal of Quantitative Criminology 15(4) (1999): 379-406 (NIJ 180974). The mid-1980's marked an important change in juvenile homicide trends in the United States: Between 1984 and 1993, the juvenile homicide rate increased by over 150 percent. To help explain why this large increase occurred, Daniel Cork has used city-level data to study the dynamics between juvenile homicide and crack "epidemics," a phenomenon previously only explored using national-level data. Testing Blumstein's Hypothesis Cork's analysis tests a hypothesis suggested by Alfred Blumstein [see A. Blumstein, "Youth Violence, Guns, and the Illicit-Drug Industry," Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 86 (1995): 10-36], who argued that the arrival of crack stimulated an increased availability of guns among juveniles. The greater availability of guns, he argued, was responsible for the sharp upswing in juvenile homicide experienced in the United States in the mid-1980's. Cork's research involves fitting a formal diffusion model--including a change-point representing onset time--to homicide and crack arrest data for the years 1976 through 1996. Data series are compiled from the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Supplemental Homicide Reports and Age, Sex, and Race arrest tables. Cities selected for study included all those with populations of 100,000 or greater, though model fits were not attainable for all cities due to low counts. Homicide and Crack Connection Cork shows that most of the studied cities registered a sudden increase in juvenile gun homicide within 2 years of a similar, sharp increase in crack arrests among juveniles. He determines that the movement of the two processes is similar, starting on the East and West coasts and working their way toward other regions of the Nation. The evidence also suggests some signs that the spread of guns was a slower, more extended process than was the establishment of thriving crack markets in particular cities. Most cities experienced a growth in young adult (ages 18-24) gun homicides at roughly the same time as the juvenile homicides. This did not necessarily represent an expansion of new-found gun availability, however, because the spread of guns among young adults moved at half the rate that they did among juveniles. This may be because juveniles have a higher degree of networking-- through schools and social circles--than older age groups. Among older offenders, no growth was experienced at all. Finally, little to no clear growth was discernible in juvenile nongun homicide, further reinforcing Blumstein's claim that the spike in homicide among juveniles owed to new-found guns in impulsive hands (1995). The explanation that seems best suited to account for these findings is that suggested by the Blumstein hypothesis: that the emergence of crack markets in individual cities stimulated an increase in the number of guns among juveniles, leading to dramatic growth in juvenile gun homicide. For more information --Daniel Cork, Committee on National Statistics, National Research Council, 2101 Constitution Avenue, NW., Washington, DC 20418, 202-334-3096, dcork@nas.edu. Turning Points That Lead Away From Delinquency NIJ Research Seminar, John H. Laub, grant numbers 1987-IJ-CX-0022 and 1989-IJ-CX-0036. Based on the book by Robert J. Sampson and John H. Laub, Crime in the Making: Pathways and Turning Points Through Life, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993. John H. Laub and Leana C. Allen, "Life Course Criminology and Community Corrections," Texas Probation XIV(3), July 1999, 11-21. As a 69-year-old former delinquent recounted, "I'd say the turning point was, number one, the Army. You get into an outfit, you had a sense of belonging, you made your friends. . . Then I met the wife. I'd probably say that would be [another] turning point. Got married, then naturally, kids come. So now you got to get a better job, you got to make more money. And that's how I got to the Navy Yard and tried to improve myself." This former delinquent unknowingly states a major finding of a recent follow-up study of delinquents who were part of a study, begun in 1940, conducted by Sheldon and Eleanor Glueck of the Harvard Law School. John H. Laub and Robert Sampson used the Gluecks' unique data archive--the Unraveling Juvenile Delinquency study--to understand factors that lead away from delinquency. See "Unraveling Juvenile Delinquency." Based on life-history interviews with 52 men ranging in age from 62 to 70 from the original group of 500 juvenile delinquents who were studied, Laub and Sampson conclude that although there are multiple pathways to desistance, four significant factors are: (1) marriage and spouses, (2) military service, (3) work, and (4) neighborhood change. Key Factors What appears to be important about these processes is that they all involve, to varying degrees, the following items: --A "knifing off" of the past from the present. --New situations that provide both supervision and monitoring as well as new opportunities for social support and growth. --New situations that provide the opportunity for transforming identity. The Gluecks' Unraveling study sought to answer an enduring question: What factors differentiate boys reared in poor neighborhoods who become serious and persistent delinquents from boys reared in the same neighborhoods who do not become delinquent or antisocial? If the trajectory of a delinquent's life is uninterrupted, Sampson and Laub's theory predicts a continuation of criminal involvement starting with childhood antisocial behavior leading to serious juvenile delinquency and finally to adult crime. This behavior often extends into other adult domains, including problems in marriage, employment, or with drugs or alcohol. Change is Possible Change, however, is possible through formal and informal interventions. For example, youths who enter the military and use the GI Bill can increase their socioeconomic status. Community corrections programs may work in the same manner, by providing offenders with a break from their harmful lifestyle while receiving treatment that may increase their chances for employment, education, and social capital while decreasing their criminal behavior. Impact of Prison Sampson and Laub find that lengthy prison terms damage the future job prospects of offenders and loosen their bonds to society, thereby increasing the likelihood of continued involvement in crime throughout their lives. This has implications for community corrections, to the extent that community-based sentences can satisfy the important principle of just desserts without the devastating impact on employability and interpersonal relationships that comes with a prison sentence. Community-based programs that combine effective surveillance and control of offenders and improve informal social controls and social support are likely to reduce future criminal behavior. For more information --John H. Laub, Department of Criminology, 2220 LeFrak Hall, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, 301-405-8070, jlaub@crim.umd.edu. Psychiatric Disorders of Youthful Offenders NIJ Research in Progress Seminar, "Mental Health of Youthful Offenders," Linda A. Teplin, funded by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention and other Federal agencies, available on videotape from NCJRS (NCJ 182371). Preliminary findings from the Northwestern Juvenile Project, a longitudinal study examining how psychiatric disorders and comorbidity develop over time, show that two-thirds of juveniles in a sample of more than 1,800 youths held in Chicago's Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center tested positive for at least one drug, and two-thirds were diagnosed with at least one psychiatric disorder. Linda A. Teplin, project director, discussed preliminary results of the study during a recent NIJ Research in Progress seminar. The data presented here are subject to change as the research progresses and may not be cited without permission. Research Design The project grew from Teplin's earlier studies of psychiatric disorders among adult detainees. Teplin considered the focus on children to be a logical progression from the adult studies because most incarcerated adults first got into trouble and experienced mental health problems as children. Researchers also were interested in exploring whether a potential parallel exists between adult and juvenile experiences with the mental health and criminal justice systems, i.e., have juvenile detention centers become the "poor child's mental hospital," just as jails, in the wake of limited mental health options, serve as the hospital for mentally ill adults? The study aims to answer two specific questions: --How many detained children have drug, alcohol, and mental disorders, particularly co-occurring disorders? --Do detained children who need mental health treatment receive the services to which they are constitutionally entitled? Chicago was chosen as the study site because of its racial and ethnic diversity, particularly among the Latino population, and because State and local agencies are providing a high level of cooperation. Over a period of 2H years, Northwestern researchers interviewed 1,830 youths between the ages of 10 and 18 within 1 to 3 days of their admission to the detention center. Subjects were paid for participating and received additional money for providing a urine sample. Researchers stratified the sample by race/ethnicity, gender, age, and severity of charge; they oversampled girls (because previous studies had neglected them), younger children (so researchers could study early patterns of behavior), whites, and juveniles processed as adults. Findings Preliminary urinalysis results showed that 67 percent of detainees tested positive for any drug; only 6 percent tested positive for drugs other than cannabis. The researchers considered the high rate of substance abuse alarming because for this population of young, low-income, troubled children, cannabis use may lead to the use of other drugs. Preliminary analysis showed that almost 66 percent of boys and 73 percent of girls were diagnosed with one or more psychiatric disorders. Twenty-two percent of girls were diagnosed with major depression, making them more likely to develop psychiatric disorders and other problems and have poor outcomes as they age. Also, nearly 50 percent of detainees were diagnosed with alcohol or drug dependence. The early data showed high rates of comorbidity: 14 percent of the sample had both an affective disorder (e.g. major depression, manic episode) and a conduct disorder. Twenty-eight percent of the sample had both a conduct/behavior disorder and substance abuse/dependence. In addition, in the preliminary analysis 69 percent of detainees with an affective disorder, 66 percent with an anxiety disorder, and 73 percent with a disruptive behavior disorder had either drug or alcohol abuse/dependence, compared with 30 percent of those not diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder. Meanwhile, of those with either drug or alcohol dependence, 26 percent also had an affective disorder, 29 percent had an anxiety disorder, and 61 percent had a disruptive behavior disorder. As this issue of the NIJ Journal goes to press, 32 youth (1.75 percent) have died, all but 7 of gunshot wounds. Further Work The Northwestern Juvenile Project is a large-scale longitudinal study of psychiatric disorders among youth in the juvenile justice system. As the 5-year study continues, all subjects are being interviewed at 3 years and then again at 4H years. Approximately 1,000 detainees are interviewed every 6 months. Researchers are focusing on the prevalence and sequence of disorders; mental health services use; and patterns of violence, drug use, and HIV/AIDS risk behaviors over time. For more information --Linda A. Teplin, Professor of Psychiatry and Director, Psycho-Legal Studies Program, Northwestern University Medical School, 710 N. Lake Shore Drive, Suite 900, Chicago, IL 60611, 312-503-3500, l-teplin@northwestern.edu. Testing, Treatment, and Sanctions to Reduce Drug Use NIJ Research in Progress Seminar, "Controlling Drug-Involved Offenders With Sanctions and Treatment," Faye S. Taxman, grant number 1997-RT-VX-K005, available on videotape from NCJRS (NCJ 181900). Providing drug testing, treatment, and sanctions to offenders during the first 3 months of supervision appears to reduce positive drug tests and rearrest rates, according to preliminary findings from a recent evaluation of the first year of Maryland's Break the Cycle (BTC) project. In a Research in Progress seminar held at NIJ, Faye S. Taxman, University of Maryland, discussed the development and implementation of the BTC project and findings from an evaluation of the project's first year. Maryland's BTC program focuses on supervised offenders with court-ordered or parole board-ordered conditions for treatment. Focus on Systems and Process The BTC strategy aims to increase safety by reducing recidivism among criminal offenders addicted to illicit drugs. BTC became operational in October 1998, though implementation dates vary by jurisdiction. BTC takes a systematic approach to offender treatment: It integrates public safety and public health operations to create a seamless system for addicted offenders throughout the criminal justice system. Integration is achieved through: --Increased information sharing across agencies regarding offender progress. --Shared decision making at key points during the process, namely, drug testing, assessment, supervision plan, treatment plan, and noncompliance issues. --Shared responsibility for offender and process outcomes among treatment agencies, supervision agencies, and the judiciary. The systemic approach focuses on creating policies and procedures that span organizational boundaries (e.g., treatment agencies, supervision agencies, and so forth) to create consistent responses to the offender population. Program Implementation and Evaluation Findings for Year 1 The BTC strategy involves three components: drug testing, a continuum of treatment services, and sanctions and rewards. Testing. BTC uses a regressive testing schedule: Offenders are tested more frequently during the first 3 months and then twice per week for the next 3 months, during which they are under supervision. Drug testing then occurs randomly if the offender does not test positive for the remainder of the supervision period. Testing decreases only if test results remain negative. Offenders with positive tests are subjected to a system of graduated sanctions that are designed to increase compliance. More than 19,000 offenders with drug testing and treatment conditions of release (including sentenced offenders and drug court participants) were tested with more than 320,000 drug tests. Offenders were selected to participate if they would be under supervision long enough (i.e., a minimum of 6 months) to warrant involvement in treatment to have a sustained effect. This targeting of offenders with 6 months or more of supervision is needed to effectively use the scarce treatment resources. Evaluation findings suggest that differences can occur with a prescribed testing schedule; more frequent drug testing resulted in a more expeditious and significant drop in the rates of positive drug tests. For offenders who were tested at the twice per week schedule, the drug test positive rate declined by 44 percent within 60 days. Offenders drug tested at the once per week schedule had a 31-percent decline in 60 days, and those tested monthly had a negligible decrease of 3 percent in 60 days. The study found that at intake, across the seven jurisdictions, 34 percent of the offenders tested positive with a decline to 16 percent within 16 drug tests (60 days) or a total decline of 53 percent. No-shows at the first intake were reported to be 33 percent, which decreased to 14 percent at the sixteenth test. Drug testing provides an inexpensive mechanism of supervising offenders in the community; like day reporting centers, drug testing requires the offender to be present at set times, which increases accountability for his or her actions. The testing protocol had a dramatic impact on drug test positive rates for offenders, regardless of drug of choice, as shown in figure 1. Even with a drug testing condition (judicial- or parole board-ordered), not all of the offenders tested positive. This suggests that the judiciary and/or parole board are in need of more information before assigning drug testing and/or treatment conditions. However, testing alone did little to affect the positive test rate after 60 days of testing; the positive rate remained stable. Taxman suggested that more rigorous applications of testing, treatment, and sanctions are needed to influence this plateau. It is also this group, which continues to test positive or to be a no-show, that should be targeted for scarce treatment resources. A systemic approach with consistent drug testing provides a sound approach to identify drug-involved offenders who continue to test positive during supervision. Treatment. Another first-year emphasis was developing and implementing treatment and criminal justice procedures consistent with best practices in the field. The BTC approach involves the use of treatment for those offenders who continue to test positive. Prior to BTC, most offenders were placed in outpatient services with one or two counseling sessions per week. Under BTC, more intensive services (e.g., more sessions, intensive outpatient services, and longer duration of services) were to be delivered to drug-involved offenders. Site visits revealed that prior to BTC, a common problem in the treatment delivery system was that offenders were missing treatment assessments and/or appointments. Each site developed a strategic plan to address this problem, which involved the treatment agency informing the supervision agency within 24 hours of a no-show or, if available, the use of an automated management information system (HATS) to share information between the agencies. Both strategies are being evaluated to determine the impact on no-show rates. Sanctions. Administrative and special court-ordered sanctions were developed for offenders who tested positive or who failed to show up for treatment or supervision appointments. The sanctions were swift (within 24 hours), certain (uniform for all offenders), and progressive (increasingly severe). Administrative sanctions redefined the normal supervision of offenders by overlaying a set schedule of responses to noncompliant behavior and a set of rewards for compliant behavior. Administrative sanctions included verbal warnings, supervisory meetings, and increased reporting. Taxman noted that the use of sanctions has been a major shift in the daily work of supervision agencies. The change from a discretionary response pattern to a set schedule has required additional training of staff in communication skills and sanction application. Judicial-ordered sanctions are available in four jurisdictions and involve a set schedule of responses that progresses for each positive drug test result and no-show. The first year results showed a low usage rate of the sanctions, as agents became more familiar with the technique and application. Taxman suggested that additional training about the sanctions process might improve implementation. For more information --Faye S. Taxman, Director, Bureau of Governmental Research, University of Maryland, 4511 Knox Road, Suite 301, College Park, MD 20740, 301-403-4403, ftaxman@bgr.umd.edu. --------------------------- How to Get At-A-Glance Materials Materials are available at: --NIJ's Web site at http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij, or --NCJRS, puborder@ncjrs.org, 1-800-851-3420, P.O. Box 6000, Rockville, MD 20849-6000. The summaries in this section are based on the following: Research in Progress Seminars. At these seminars, scholars discuss their ongoing research and preliminary findings with an audience of researchers and criminal justice professionals. Sixty-minute VHS videotapes of the Research in Progress seminars are available from the National Criminal Justice Reference Service (NCJRS) at 1-800-851-3420. Videotaped seminars are $19 ($24 in Canada and other countries). NIJ Final Reports. These final submissions from NIJ grantees typically are available from NCJRS through interlibrary loan. In some cases, photocopies may be obtained for a fee. For information about these reports and possible fees, contact NCJRS. NIJ Publications. Some of the information here is summarized from recent NIJ publications, which are available from the NIJ Web site or by contacting NCJRS. Refer to the documents' accession (ACN) or NCJ numbers. --------------------------- Unraveling Juvenile Delinquency A novel aspect of the Unraveling study was the matching design, in which 500 delinquents and 500 nondelinquents were matched case-by-case on age (average age 14), ethnicity (all white ethnics--mainly English, Irish, and Italian), intelligence (mean IQ 92), and neighborhood socioeconomic status (poor, disadvantaged neighborhoods). The original sample of delinquents and nondelinquents was followed up at age 25 and again at age 32 from 1949 to 1965. From 1988 to 1992, with support from the National Institute of Justice, among others, Laub and Sampson recoded, computerized, and reanalyzed the longitudinal data for the sample, up to age 32. In 1994, with primary financial support from the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, Laub and Sampson launched a new follow-up study of the original delinquents as they approached age 70. They collected criminal records, death records, and located and reinterviewed a subset of the original delinquent subjects. --------------------------- DID YOU RECEIVE YOUR COPY OF THE NIJ JOURNAL? The NIJ Journal is no longer automatically sent to you. You need to subscribe. To receive a free subscription, contact NCJRS at 1-800-851-3420, P.O. Box 6000, Rockville, MD 20849-6000. Or send an e-mail to puborder@ncjrs.org. In the subject line, put "NIJ Journal subscription." Be sure to include your name, address, telephone number, and e-mail address. The NIJ Journal is published quarterly. Each issue contains several feature stories, as well as brief summaries of NIJ activities. The articles discuss a wide range of criminal justice policy issues and concerns and are geared to the busy decisionmaker, policymaker, researcher, practitioner, and community leader. The NIJ Journal focuses on the practical applications of research findings rather than the more technical or scholarly methodology. Recent NIJ Journal features include: --Peter Reuter on drug use measures and what they tell us --Christopher Stone on race, crime, and the administration of justice --Peter Finn on putting exoffenders back to work --Jan Chaiken on crime and incarceration at the end of the millennium --Jan van Dijk and Kristiina Kangaspunta on comparing crime across countries ...and other articles about police officer stress, a new way to detect interpersonal violence, how insects are being used as investigative tools, and using telemedicine in prisons. Like all NIJ publications, the NIJ Journal is available online. Visit http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij/journals. --------------------------- New & Noteworthy What Is the State of Our Knowledge? Explore current scientific knowledge about crime and justice in the four volumes of essays that make up the Crime and Justice 2000 series. These volumes were the centerpiece of the Research and Evaluation Conference held in July 2000 in Washington, D.C. --Volume 1: The Nature of Crime: Continuity and Change Addresses the extent to which crime and its effects are linked to social, cultural, economic, and physical changes over the past century and into the next. --Volume 2: Boundary Changes in Criminal Justice Organizations Seeks to identify and account for fundamental changes in criminal and juvenile justice agencies, their policies, and interrelationships. --Volume 3: Changes in Decision Making and Discretion in the Criminal Justice System Identifies and explains trends in decision processes, the location and exercise of discretion, and research and theory on discretion and decision making in the justice context. --Volume 4: Measurement and Analysis of Crime and Justice Describes current knowledge, trends, and future directions in the measurement and analysis of crime and the criminal justice system. Download copies from the NIJ Web page at http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij or contact the National Criminal Justice Reference Service (NCJRS) at 1-800- 851-3420 and press option #2 to talk to a publication specialist, or write to NCJRS, P.O. Box 6000, Rockville, MD 20849-6000. Investigator Guides: Explosion/Bombing and Fire/Arson Crime Scenes This summer, NIJ released two more volumes in a series of hands-on, practical guides for public safety officers who investigate, identify, preserve, and collect forensic evidence. The series, which is designed to enhance the standard of practice in crime scene investigations, is being developed by key experts who handle these types of investigations every day and who are highly experienced in improved investigatory procedures. The two most recent guides are A Guide for Explosion and Bombing Scene Investigation (NCJ 181869) and Fire and Arson Scene Evidence: A Guide for Public Safety Personnel (NCJ 181584). Like others in the series, both guides lay out protocols for collecting the kind of evidence that yields successful laboratory analysis and provides the criminal justice system with reliable evidence. The guides are suitable for both highly complex and visible cases and those that attract less attention and fewer responses but may be just as complex for the investigator. They discuss prioritizing initial response efforts, evaluating the scene, documenting the scene, processing the evidence at the scene, and completing and recording the scene investigation. Other titles in the series include: --Crime Scene Investigation: A Guide for Law Enforcement, January 2000, NCJ 178280. --Death Investigation: A Guide for the Scene Investigator, November 1999, NCJ 167568. --Eyewitness Evidence: A Guide for Law Enforcement, October 1999, NCJ 178240 Copies are available on NIJ's Web page at http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij or on the National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Center Web page at http://www.nlectc.org or by contacting NCJRS at P.O. Box 6000, Rockville, MD 20849-6000. Evaluation of COPS Now Available Late in 1994, the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) was created to fulfill the congressional mandate of Title I of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 (the Crime Act) to put more police officers on the streets. Title I also required that the COPS program be independently evaluated. Findings are now available from the evaluation of the process COPS has used to achieve its goals. Findings include the following: --The program accelerated the transition to locally defined versions of community-oriented policing in agencies that already were developing their own programs. --The 10 percent of jurisdictions that reported the highest murder counts received 50 percent of total COPS awards. On average, core cities received substantially larger awards per 10,000 residents than did the rest of the country, but the average award per 1,000 index crimes was less than two-thirds of that elsewhere. --By May 1999, 100,500 officers and equivalents had been funded. Of them, preliminary estimates indicate that between 84,700 and 89,400 will have been deployed by 2003. Because some officers will have departed before others begin service, the federally funded increase (based on awards through May 1999) in policing levels will peak in 2001 between 69,000 and 84,600 before falling to 62,700-83,900 in 2003. These estimates will be revised as data collected in mid-2000 are analyzed. The COPS Office has continued to award grants since May 1999. --The program accelerated transitions to locally defined versions of community policing. COPS funds seem more likely to have fueled movements toward adoption of community policing that were already accelerating than to have caused the acceleration. --An analysis found that the 1 percent of COPS grantees with the largest 1997 murder counts received 31 percent of all COPS funds awarded through 1997. The 10 percent of grantees with the highest murder counts received 50 percent of total COPS awards. The complete Research Report, National Evaluation of the COPS Program-- Title I of the 1994 Crime Act, details the findings of the independent process evaluation of the program's first 4 years. A shorter Research in Brief, The COPS Program After 4 Years--National Evaluation, summarizes the major findings of the full report. The research team conducted three waves of surveys, site evaluations, and case studies. They found that departments accomplished their goals in one of three ways. Some departments hired police officers to engage in community-oriented policing activities. Other departments redeployed existing officers to community policing by increasing officer productivity through technology acquisition. Still other departments freed up officers for community policing by filling some administrative and specialist positions with civilians. Visit the NIJ Web site (http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij) to download copies of the full report, National Evaluation of the COPS Program--Title I of the 1994 Crime Act (NCJ 183643), and the shorter Research in Brief, The COPS Program After 4 Years--National Evaluation (NCJ 183644). Or obtain hard copies by contacting NCJRS at 1-800-851-3420. Improved CrimeStat Software Released A new supplemental statistical tool to aid law enforcement agencies and criminal justice researchers in their crime mapping efforts is now available. Version 1.1 of CrimeStat, a Windows-based spatial statistics software program used in the analysis of crime incident locations, is an update to the program released in November 1999 and includes many improvements that make the software more versatile and user friendly. General improvements include: --Problems running in Windows 98 have been fixed. The new version works properly with Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows NT, and Windows 2000. --The ability to exclude missing values, such as blank records, has been added. --The screen resizes itself better for different monitor sizes. --Graphical output of grid files and ArcView 'shp' files has been improved. --MapInfo 'dat' files are supported. --General ASCII 'grd' files are supported. --'Mif' files are restructured, allowing them to be read by Maptitude. Additional statistics include: --Geometric, harmonic, and triangulated means. --Modification of the nearest neighbor and Ripley's K routines to allow edge corrections. --Modification of the K-means clustering routine to allow more user control over initial seed selection. --A whole new journey to crime module that includes journey to crime calibration and estimation routines. Additional documentation has been added for these changes, including an entire chapter on the journey to crime (Jtc) estimation, which provides background to the method, the various options for running the routines, and a preliminary evaluation of the accuracy of these types of methods. To download the free update and the additional documentation, visit the Crime Mapping Research Center Web site at www.ojp.usdoj.gov/cmrc. Events Annual Research and Evaluation Conference Discusses "Change" More than 890 people attended this year's Annual Conference on Research and Evaluation, sponsored by NIJ and other OJP offices and bureaus. The theme was "Change: Past, Present, and Future." The theme of the conference reflected the content of four volumes in the newly published Criminal Justice 2000 series. (See page 35 for a complete description of Criminal Justice 2000.) Plenary panels featured discussions about the nature of crime, policy changes related to incarceration and deinstitutionalization, and new problem-solving paradigms. Acting NIJ Director Julie E. Samuels hosted a question-and-answer session on NIJ issues and future plans. More than 50 sessions were held during the 3-day meeting. Keeping Schools Safe "Security Technologies for School Safety" was the topic of a recent gathering for school principals and administrators, school security personnel, and law enforcement officers. About 250 people attended the July conference in Dallas to learn more about strategies and special programs, gain better understanding of the appropriate and inappropriate uses of security technologies, and inspect a wide range of security technologies. The conference was the first national forum for school administrators to focus on the application of security technology. The 3-day gathering was cosponsored by NIJ, the Departments of Education and Energy, and Sandia National Laboratories. Using DNA for Investigations Law Enforcement Summit. In July, NIJ hosted the National Law Enforcement Summit on DNA Technology to discuss the concerns law enforcement agencies have about integrating DNA evidence into the investigative process. The summit was held in response to a recent recommendation by the National Commission on the Future of DNA Evidence. (See the January 1999 issue of the NIJ Journal for more about the DNA Commission. Go to http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/journals.) More than 100 police chiefs, sheriffs, and other law enforcement officials attended the Summit to learn more about funding opportunities, educational resources, and investigative models. IACP Conference. NIJ will sponsor a DNA-related program at the annual conference of the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) in November. The program will offer guidelines on the application of DNA technology to old or cold cases. Participants will learn how to collect evidence not ordinarily considered when looking for DNA but which can yield valuable DNA results. Also at the IACP conference will be an exhibit of NIJ's National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Centers. International ADAM Holds 3rd Annual Meeting The countries participating in the International Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring (I-ADAM) program are working to standardize drug surveillance systems across nations so that comparative research can be conducted on the prevalence, incidence, and consequences of drug use. Seven countries are actively collecting I-ADAM data. They are: Australia, Chile, England, Malaysia, Scotland, South Africa, and the United States. I-ADAM held its 3rd Annual Conference on September 21-23 in Washington, D.C. The NIJ-sponsored event provided a forum for the I-ADAM partners to assemble, share experiences, and discuss strategic planning issues. In addition to the individual country status reports from each I-ADAM partner, meeting attendees focused on recent I-ADAM research findings, analysis of I-ADAM data, data availability and sharing, I-ADAM instrument enhancement and developments, cross-site comparability and training issues, different laboratory methods of drug testing, and future directions for I-ADAM. For more information about I-ADAM, contact Bruce Taylor, Deputy Director, ADAM, at 202-305-1764, taylorb@ojp.usdoj.gov, or visit the I-ADAM Web site at http://www.adam-nij.net/iadam.htm. --------------------------- Fourth Annual International Crime Mapping Research Conference December 9-12, 2000 San Diego, California To what degree does location influence crime rates? Are certain areas more prone to criminal activities simply because of where they are? Find out at "Wheredunit? Investigating the Role of Place in Crime and Criminality," the 4th Annual International Crime Mapping Research Conference. This year's conference includes workshops, plenary sessions, and panels on a variety of topics. From beginner to expert, analyst to manager, there are sessions that will educate you and keep you on the cutting edge of spatial analysis in criminal justice. For more information about the conference and the Crime Mapping Research Center, visit the Center's Web site at http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/cmrc. Register now at http://www.nijpcs.org/wheredunit --------------------------- Solicitations & Awards Graduate Research Fellows 2000 Announced NIJ's Graduate Research Fellowship Program provides dissertation research support to outstanding doctoral students undertaking independent research on issues in crime and justice. The Graduate Research Fellows for 2000 are: --Edward Allen Hindelang Criminal Justice Research Center State University of New York at Albany Policing by Injunction: Problem-Oriented Characteristics of Civil Gang Abatement James R. Acker, Ph.D., Faculty Advisor --Sarah Dugan Goodrum Department of Sociology University of Texas at Austin Homicide Bereavement and the Criminal Justice System Mark Stafford, Ph.D., Faculty Advisor --Caterina Gouvis School of Public Affairs American University Routine Activities of Youth: The Importance of Place and Time in Understanding Victimization In and Around Schools James P. Lynch, Ph.D., Faculty Advisor --Jarret S. Lovell Rutgers, State University of New Jersey Media Power and Information Control: A Study of Police Organizations and Media Relations George L. Kelling, Ph.D., Faculty Advisor --Jeff Maahs Department of Criminal Justice University of Cincinnati Maternal Risk Factors, Early Life Events, and Deviant Outcomes: Assessing Pathways From Birth Through Adolescence Paul Mazerolle, Ph.D., Faculty Advisor --Stephanie M. Myers Hindelang Criminal Justice Research Center State University of New York at Albany Policing Juveniles: The Impact of Officer and Situational Characteristics on the Use of Authority and Provision of Support Robert E. Worden, Ph.D., Faculty Advisor --Amie Schuck Hindelang Criminal Justice Research Center State University of New York at Albany Understanding the Role of Communities in the Long-Term Criminal Consequences of Childhood Maltreatment Cathy Spatz Widom, Ph.D., Faculty Advisor --Thomas Wadsworth Department of Sociology University of Washington Neighborhoods, Jobs, and Criminal Involvement Robert Crutchfield, Ph.D., Faculty Advisor The next Graduate Research Fellowship application deadline is January 15. For information about the program, visit http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij/funding.htm. Secondary Data Analysis Solicitation The NIJ Data Resources Program was established to ensure the preservation and availability of research and evaluation data collected through NIJ-funded research. Data sets collected through NIJ-funded research are archived and made available to others in order to support new research to replicate original findings or test new hypotheses. The next two deadlines to submit proposals for analysis of existing data are January 25 and May 25. For more information about the Data Resources Program, visit the NIJ Web site at http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij/dataprog.htm. More SACSI Sites Selected The Strategic Approaches to Community Safety Initiative (SACSI) is a new way of making communities safer. It relies on data and information analysis, boosts the U.S. Attorney's role as a key community problem-solver, and asks researchers to serve as navigators--observing, analyzing, and recommending changes in direction. (For more information about SACSI, see "Using Knowledge and Teamwork to Reduce Crime" in the October 1999 issue of the NIJ Journal, available at http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij/journals.) The Department of Justice has selected 5 additional sites to join the 5 original SACSI sites. The new sites are: the Eastern District of Missouri (St. Louis), the Eastern District of Michigan (Detroit), the Northern District of Georgia (Atlanta), the Western District of New York (Rochester), and the District of New Mexico (Albuquerque). NIJ is now in the process of selecting research partners at each of the 5 new sites. For more information about SACSI, contact Erin Dalton at 202-514-5752. 2001 Solicitation for Investigator-Initiated Research NIJ has issued open solicitations to the criminal justice research field to propose innovative research endeavors. Under NIJ's investigator-initiated program, applicants may submit proposals to explore a wide range of research and evaluation topics relevant to criminal justice policy or practice, supporting NIJ's broad portfolio of both basic and applied studies. Awards are usually 1- to 2-year grants ranging from $25,000 to $300,000. The next applications are due by January 17, 2001, and will include research on violence against women. Visit the NIJ Web site at http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij for the latest information on all NIJ's solicitations. --------------------------- First W.E.B. DuBois Fellow Announced NIJ's first W.E.B. DuBois Fellow is Becky Tatum, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Georgia State University, Department of Criminal Justice, for her proposal "The Role of Social Support on Adolescent Crime: Identifying Race, Class, and Gender Variations." The W.E.B. DuBois Fellowship supports innovative research that will enhance justice and advance public policy decision making on issues related to crime, violence, and the administration of justice. Fellows are selected because they make a clear contribution to the effort to advance the field of knowledge regarding the confluence of crime, justice, and culture in various societal contexts. W.E.B. DuBois (1868-1963) was one of the foremost early leaders in the struggle for racial equality in the United States. A founder of the NAACP, he was a scholar as well as an activist; his book The Souls of Black Folk is a classic exposition of "the meaning of being black." As a social scientist, DuBois challenged discriminatory ideologies and institutions and advocated social change. His classic study, "The Philadelphia Negro," published in 1899, was a groundbreaking sociological study of that city's black community, one of the first research projects to combine urban ethnography, social history, and descriptive statistics. The next W.E.B. DuBois Fellowship Application deadline is February 1, 2001. For information about the program, please contact Cynthia A. Mamalian at 202-514-5981 or mamalian@ojp.usdoj.gov. --------------------------- U.S. Department of Justice Office of Justice Programs 810 Seventh Street N.W. Washington, DC 20531 Janet Reno Attorney General Daniel Marcus Acting Associate Attorney General Mary Lou Leary Acting Assistant Attorney General Julie E. Samuels Acting Director, National Institute of Justice Office of Justice Programs World Wide Web Site http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov National Institute of Justice World Wide Web Site http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij The National Criminal Justice Reference Service (NCJRS), a centralized national clearinghouse of criminal justice information, is sponsored by the Office of Justice Programs agencies and the Office of National Drug Control Policy. Registered users of NCJRS receive the NIJ Journal and NCJRS Catalog free. To become a registered user, write NCJRS User Services, P.O. Box 6000, Rockville, MD 20849-6000, call 800-851-3420, or e-mail askncjrs@ncjrs.org. Visit the NCJRS World Wide Web site at http://www.ncjrs.org. The National Institute of Justice is a component of the Office of Justice Programs, which also includes the Bureau of Justice Assistance, the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, and the Office for Victims of Crime. JR000245