NIJ at the 2022 American Society of Criminology Annual Meeting

Thu, Nov 17, 8:00 to 9:20am, International 3, International Level

Project Safe Neighborhoods (PSN) is a DOJ-sponsored initiative to reduce violent crime, particularly gun crime, by fostering cooperation by criminal justice agencies and local partners to develop and implement strategic approaches.

This panel presents information about the enhanced PSN model implemented since 2018 and the national evaluation being conducted by RTI International and the Justice Research and Statistics Association. The evaluation includes a national assessment including all 94 districts across the U.S. and territories and case studies in 10 carefully selected districts. Both components address outcomes (violent crime, arrests and prosecutions), implementation (e.g., how PSN principles were implemented; partnership composition and functioning) and how implementation is associated with outcomes.

Following an overview of PSN and the national evaluation, the project team will delve into the design and initial findings of the national assessment and case studies, respectively. They will also discuss the implications for the evaluation of the FBI’s move away from the UCR Summary Reporting System to incident-based data and how the project team is adapting to this changing environment.

See panel details in the ASC 2022 Program: Multilevel Evaluation of Project Safe Neighborhoods

Thu, Nov 17, 9:30 to 10:50am, International 3, International Level

In FY 2019 and FY 2020, the National Institute of Justice funded research studies to address nuanced questions about the relationship between immigration status and crime perpetration and victimization in the United States. The research literature at that time indicated immigrants were generally less likely to commit crime than native-born citizens; however, this weak or negative association was less accurate for more assimilated immigrants and for second and later generation immigrants who were born in the U.S. This research was limited in several key ways, including failing to account for significant variation across types of immigrants, limitations in the measurement of crime, and failing to examine how the broader context, such as geographic locations as well as immigration policies and practices may influence the immigration-crime relationship. The four papers on this panel each report on analyses of large datasets developed by the project staff using a variety of types of national, state, and local publicly available and restricted use datasets to address prior limitations in examining this relationship.

See panel details in the ASC 2022 Program: Exploring the Relationship between Immigration Status and Crime: New Approaches with Large Datasets

Thu, Nov 17, 11:00am to 12:20pm, A705, Atrium Level

The Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) of 1994 and its reauthorizations in 2000, 2005, and 2013 were legislated to address gender-based violence on a national level, including responses to and prevention of violence against women, accountability for violent crimes, and victim safety. This legislation has supported federal, state, local, and private partners to implement policies and programs and conduct research directly related to gender-based violence. However, questions remain about the effectiveness of those mandates. Presenters in this panel session will provide an overview of the policies, programs, and research that have been mandated by VAWA and its reauthorizations and finish with a discussion of how to measure the outcomes of these mandates that fall under the umbrella of the VAWA and navigate the challenges of evaluating this multi-faceted approach to addressing gender-based violence.

See panel details in the ASC 2022 Program: Violence Against Women Act: Moving Towards Measurement and Evaluation of Gender-based Violence Legislation and Interventions

Thu, Nov 17, 11:00am to 12:20pm, International 3, International Level

A great deal of research has been conducted on trafficking in persons, particularly since the passage of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (2000), which provided guidance for identifying and defining sex- and labor-related human trafficking. Compared with research on sex trafficking, much less is known about trafficking for the purposes of labor, particularly regarding within the United States with U.S. citizen victims. Additional complexities needing examination include how labor trafficking differs from exploitation among U.S. citizen adults and children, how labor trafficking is experienced by youth who are U.S. citizens compared with foreign nationals, and differences in how labor and sex trafficking victims are treated, how their cases are handled, and whether the traffickers are prosecuted and convicted. The studies in this panel, funded by the National Institute of Justice, are the first to address these critical knowledge gaps, advancing our understanding of how labor trafficking and exploitation occurs in the United States. Promising practices in labor trafficking identification and response are identified, and the final study explores how law enforcement and victim service providers may need to differently tailor their approaches for labor trafficking versus sex trafficking investigations. Implications for policy will be discussed.

See panel details in the ASC 2022 Program: Advancing our Understanding of Labor Trafficking in the United States

Thu, Nov 17, 2:00 to 3:20pm, International 3, International Level

Since 2014, the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) has made an unprecedented level of investment in research and evaluation studies to improve knowledge on what works to keep K-12 schools and students safe and identify the root causes and consequences of school violence. With approximately 100 studies coming to conclusion in recent years, NIJ has sought to aggregate and disseminate findings from these studies. This aggregation effort is intended to assess what we have learned, help policymakers more readily use this knowledge and to identify outstanding research questions. This session highlights key efforts to aggregate knowledge and offers perspectives on how to proceed to address knowledge gaps.

See panel details in the ASC 2022 Program: School Safety Research and Evaluation: What Have We Learned? What Questions Remain?

Thu, Nov 17, 3:30 to 4:50pm, International 3, International Level

With funding from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention and management by the National Institute of Justice, the Urban Institute (Urban) undertook a translational research effort to synthesize the relevant evidence base and examine the current state of practice to provide actionable guidance for promising and evidence-based strategies to reduce youth group/gang and gun violence.

Researchers from Urban will present findings from the research synthesis and environmental scan of practice, as well as the key considerations put forth in a practice guide for local stakeholders looking to implement violence reduction efforts. The panel also features an expert discussant who will situate the findings of this project in the long-term trajectory of developing and refining practice to reduce youth gun violence associated with gangs.

See panel details in the ASC 2022 Program: Research-Based Practice to Reduce Youth Gun and Gang/Group Violence

Wed, Nov 16, 11:00am to 12:20pm, M102, Marquis Level

NIJ Social Science Analyst Barbara Tatem Kelley chairs this panel. The NIJ is advancing a portfolio of expansions and extensions of existing longitudinal research studies that focus on delinquency and crime throughout the life-course of the individual. Investigators are utilizing a holistic approach to the study of adolescent development, and the emergence, persistence, and desistance of delinquent and criminal offending. This panel will focus on three ongoing longitudinal studies: (1) the Northwestern Juvenile Project and the life outcomes for the sample of individuals detained as juveniles; (2) the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development—Social Development Study which examines delinquency and victimization as related to a wide host of variables including cognitive development and substance use; and (3) the Crossroads Study and influences on desistance from crime. This research is intended to identify malleable risk and protective factors, which can be effectively targeted in efforts to prevent the onset of delinquency and to intervene in the lives of juvenile and young adult offenders to catalyze desistance and a productive life course.

See panel details in the ASC 2022 Program: Through Lens of Longitudinal Research: Examining Victimization, Offending, Justice System Involvement, Desistance, and Life Outcomes 

Wed, Nov 16, 9:30 to 10:50am, A704, Atrium Level

As part of the panel, NIJ Social Science Analyst Kaitlyn Sill will present "Evidence-Based Guidance for Justice: The Role of the National Institute of Justice."

See panel details in the ASC 2022 Program: Generating Evidence to Empower Crime and Justice Policy to Reduce Harm: ASC’s Panel from AAAS Meeting

Wed, Nov 16, 5:00 to 6:20pm, International 2, International Level

NIJ Computer Scientist Joel Hunt will chair this panel. In 2017, the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) was awarded funding from the National Institute of Justice to study the impact of cocooning (notifying neighbors of the burglary to increase their risk awareness and provide target hardening suggestions to decrease their risk for near repeat offenses) and procedural justice dialogues on residential burglaries and citizens’ perceptions of crime, disorder, and policing using a randomized controlled trial (RCT). The RCT began in summer 2021 after facing several challenges, including the COVID-19 pandemic and a change to the project location from Prince George’s County (MD) to Tucson (AZ). This panel will describe the purpose and goals of the project, challenges encountered during the implementation and evaluation of the program, findings from the repeat and near-repeat analyses and community survey, and implications for future policy and research.

See panel details in the ASC 2022 Program: Cocooning & Procedural Justice Dialectics: An RCT to Assess Burglary Reduction & Resident Perspectives in Tucson

Wed, Nov 16, 8:00 to 9:20am, M301, Marquis Level

NIJ Social Science Analyst Jennifer K. Grotpeter will chair this panel. Much criminological research on immigration in the United States has focused on crime perpetration, but a growing body of research examines deleterious experiences faced by immigrants. The studies in this panel take varied approaches to examining immigrants’ experiences in two contexts: youth in schools and adults in the community. The first study, funded under the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) Comprehensive School Safety Initiative, examines the extent to which first- and second-generation youth experience school safety, school discipline, and juvenile justice differently than non-immigrant students in Texas schools. NIJ funded the second and third studies of research on immigration status and crime, both of which take mixed methods approaches to the study of criminal victimization experienced by immigrants to the United States. One study uses surveys and interviews to study how Hispanic and Asian authorized and unauthorized residents living in California conceptualize and respond to the risk of victimization in their communities, while the final study leverages secondary data and interviews with immigrants in Arizona to better understand their experiences of violent victimization.

See panel details in the ASC 2022 Program: Examining Adverse Experiences of First and Second Generation Immigrants: School- and Community-based Samples

Wed, Nov 16, 3:30 to 4:50pm, International 1, International Level

NIJ Social Science Analyst Kaitlyn Sill will chair this panel. Government agencies began creating online registries of evidence-based programs and practices in the late 1990s as a means to prioritize programs and eliminate interventions that were shown to be ineffective. Today, multiple government registries collect, review, rate, and subsequently categorize hundreds of evaluation studies, including the National Institute of Justice’s CrimeSolutions database. This panel includes presentations to describe multiple efforts to further enhance the information provided on that database.

See panel details in the ASC 2022 Program: Exploring New Tools to Enhance CrimeSolutions

Thu, Nov 17, 5:00 to 6:20pm, A703, Atrium Level

This panel will present findings from a portfolio of federally-funded research examining how approaches to data and measurement affect tracking and understanding juvenile reoffending, and the implications for juvenile justice practice and programming. Specifically, this panel will highlight (1) the current national landscape and best practices of juvenile recidivism measurement, (2) the impact of measurement approaches on rates and predictors of juvenile recidivism, (3) the effect of dynamic risk trajectories on understanding recidivism and the use of risk assessment, and (4) the dynamic impact of needs scores on predictions of recidivism and the implications for programming.

NIJ Senior Advisor Ben Adams will present "Advancing the Juvenile Recidivism Measurement and Data Use "

See panel details in the ASC 2022 Program: NIJ-Supported Research on Understanding and Measuring Juvenile Reoffending

Thu, Nov 17, 3:30 to 4:50pm, M106, Marquis Level

NIJ Social Science Analyst Kaitlyn Sill chairs this panel.

This panel will present findings from research and evaluation studies of elder abuse/fraud prevention and intervention programs. Specifically, this panel will highlight rigorous evaluations of the impacts of: 1) a mailed intervention used by the United States Postal Inspection Service (USPIS) to reduce rates of repeat victimization by mass marketing fraud; 2) a 12-week home-visiting program focused on older adult resilience; and 3) a community-based financial mistreatment prevention model for older adults living with dementia. Discussion will include policy and practice implications for efforts to effectively address elder abuse and fraud.

See panel details in the ASC 2022 Program: Studies of Elder Abuse/Fraud Prevention and Intervention Programs

Thu, Nov 17, 11:00am to 12:20pm, L404, Lobby Level

In 2021, the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) held a data challenge, inviting participants to predict recidivism for a group of Georgia parolees. NIJ offered awards for the teams who were most accurate in predicting recidivism overall, for male individuals on parole, for female individuals on parole, and for the predictions with the least amount of racial bias. This session highlights what was learned from this data challenge with speakers from the National Institute of Justice, Georgia Department of Community Supervision, and five of the winning teams.

NIJ Computer Scientist Joel Hunt will lead off the panel with a introduction to the NIJ Recidivism Forecasting Challenge. 

See panel details in the ASC 2022 Program: Findings and Insights from the National Institute of Justice Recidivism Forecasting Challenge

Thu, Nov 17, 8:00 to 9:20am, M104, Marquis Level

NIJ Social Science Analyst Barbara Tatem Kelley will chair this panel. Behavioral threat assessment is an increasingly common technique used by K-12 schools in the United States to systematically 1) evaluate the likelihood that a student will carry out a violent act given an explicit threat or behavior indicative of a threat and 2) determine how to respond. This panel will share findings from studies, including National Institute of Justice (NIJ)-funded projects, examining questions regarding the implementation and impact of various threat assessment efforts.

See panel details in the ASC 2022 Program: Assessing Threats to Prevent Violence at K-12 Schools

Thu, Nov 17, 5:00 to 6:20pm, M302, Marquis Level

In 2017, the National Institute of Justice executed a collaborative agreement with Rutgers University to establish the Rutgers Violence Against Women Research Consortium. The overarching goal of the Consortium, which is in its final year, was to identify, implement, and disseminate research and evaluation projects that fill gaps in our current knowledge on intimate partner violence, sexual violence, stalking, and teen dating violence. This was achieved through the establishment of working groups and the granting of small pools of funding to projects that addressed gaps in the aforementioned areas. In addition to knowledge generation, an identified benefit of the Consortium was its ability to bring together researchers and practitioners from diverse backgrounds to discuss key issues in the field and collaborate on projects. As part of this lightening talk panel, we will present findings from five of the studies funded by the Research Consortium, as well as the utilization of creative dissemination strategies.

See panel details in the ASC 2022 Program: The Rutgers Violence Against Women Research Consortium: Addressing Research Gaps and Fostering Creative Dissemination

Thu, Nov 17, 11:00am to 12:20pm, L508, Lobby Level

NIJ Senior Statistician Elizabeth Groff will serve as a discussant on this panel featuring a diverse set of voices from communities and place research sharing their experiences, thoughts, and advice for scholars and students at different stages of their careers.

See panel details in the ASC 2022 Program: https://convention2.allacademic.com/one/asc/asc22/index.php?cmd=Online+Program+View+Session&selected_session_id=1966387&PHPSESSID=elm2btjhj22d5s4ajs9c2bjtum

Thu, Nov 17, 6:30 to 8:00pm, Atrium Ballroom, Atrium Level

NIJ Senior Advisor Ben Adams and Graduate Research Assistant D. Michael Applegarth will present as part of the poster session.

Facilities often struggle to provide adequate screening and services for youth during detainment and placement. Additionally, limited research has examined the information sharing practices of facilities upon youths’ departure.

Using data from the Juvenile Residential Facility Census from 2010-2018, facilities screening, service provision, and information sharing practices for education, mental health, and substance abuse were examined.

From 2010-2018, 86.8%-88.4% of facilities reported all youth were evaluated for educational needs, 56.7% - 63.4% did so for mental health needs, 89.5%-94.6% for suicidality, and 70.2%-75.2% for substance abuse. In 2018, over 90% of facilities provided services for some youth in the areas of education, mental health therapy and prescriptions, and below 80% provided substance abuse treatment. Over 90% of facilities shared information regarding some youths’ educational, mental health, and substance abuse statuses upon their departure. The proportion of facilities that did so for all youth decreased to near 80% for education and mental health and substance abuse dropped below 70%.

Improvement is needed across the board. Deepening our understanding of why, when, and how facilities share information about youth with other stakeholders and identifying current gaps is important for informing strategies that better target youths’ needs with appropriate and coordinated services.

See panel details in the ASC 2022 Program: Screening, Service Provision, and Information Sharing Practices

Fri, Nov 18, 11:00am to 12:20pm, A705, Atrium Level

NIJ Social Science Analyst Kaitlyn Sill chairs this panel.

This panel will present findings from research studies of the financial costs of crime victimization. Specifically, the panel will highlight: 1) a comprehensive assessment of research and methodologies related to estimating the costs of victimization, and relevant recommendations for the field; 2) new financial cost models to measure the harms of victimization, including new estimates of the harms from violent victimization; and 3) the first two waves of a prospective longitudinal study examining the financial costs and consequences of victimization among college students. Discussion will include policy and practice implications for advancing knowledge and understanding of crime victimization costs.

See panel details in the ASC 2022 Program: Studies of the Financial Costs of Crime Victimization

Sat, Nov 19, 8:00 to 9:20am, M108, Marquis Level

As part of panel, NIJ Computer Scientist Joel Hunt will present "Assessing Spatial and Temporal Aggregation of Point Level Data on Crime Hot Spot Forecasting."

See panel details in the ASC 2022 Program: Advances in Spatial Methods for the Study of Crime & Place

Sat, Nov 19, 8:00 to 9:20am, L504, Lobby Level

NIJ Tamara Herold will present "A Holistic Governance Model to Reduce Gun Violence: Implementation and Outcomes" as part of this panel.

See panel details in the ASC 2022 Program: Balancing Violence Reduction with Police Reform: Research from the UC Center for Police Research and Policy