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Standards

Standards and Conformity Assessment for Criminal Justice Restraints

Restraints are critical pieces of equipment carried by law enforcement, corrections, and court officers. To help ensure that restraints meet minimal requirements, the National Institute of Justice published NIJ Standard 1001.00, Criminal Justice Restraints (pdf, 66 pages) in 2014 and Revision A in 2019 (pdf, 62 pages).[1]

Standard 1001.00 specifies the minimum requirements for form and fit, performance, testing, documentation, and labeling of...

De-escalation Training: What Works, Implementation Lessons, and Taking It to Scale; Plenary at the 2023 NIJ Research Conference

August 2023

Police use of force, while infrequently used, is a tremendous concern to public safety in the United States when officers employ it excessively or inappropriately, causing injury or death and eroding public trust in law enforcement. This plenary from the 2023 NIJ Research Conference describes the Integrating, Communications, Assessment, and Tactics (ICAT) de-escalation training program developed by the Police Executive Research Forum to guide officers in defusing critical incidents.

Embodying Evidence to Action: Tracking the Impact of Three Key NIJ Research Investments; Opening Plenary of the 2023 NIJ Research Conference

August 2023

This plenary featured three significant areas of NIJ research investment that have had a tremendous impact on both the research community and the field of practice: advances in forensic DNA, police body armor standards, and place-based analyses of public safety. Each topic was explored by a collection of people representing the researcher, practitioner, policymaker, and advocacy perspectives, exploring how evidence generation resulted in changes that improved public safety and yielded more equitable criminal justice outcomes.

Criminal Justice Testing and Evaluation Consortium

The Criminal Justice Testing and Evaluation Consortium (CJTEC) uses research-based methodologies to enhance the capabilities of law enforcement, courts, and corrections agencies, and act as an honest broker for the nation’s criminal justice practitioners to provide objective and rigorous testing and evaluation of existing technologies, policies, and practices.

CJTEC provides four key assets in collaboration with the National Institute of Justice:

  • Technology Foraging: CJTEC monitors...

Ballistic Resistant Body Armor and the NIJ Mark

The NIJ Compliance Testing Program’s (NIJ CTP) goal is to improve criminal justice practitioners’ confidence about the products they own and about how those products meet applicable requirements and perform as expected. To achieve this goal, the NIJ CTP must evaluate products independently and communicate the evaluation results to practitioners.

Although the NIJ CTP maintains a list of compliant products for practitioners to reference, additional...

The Evidence We Leave Behind (Part 2)

June 2022
Gregory Dutton, a physical scientist at NIJ, and science writer Jim Dawson continue their conversation on the microbiome: what it is, how it applies to forensics, and the evolution of its role in forensic science.