Multimedia Listing

Bill King discusses the operations of the National Integrated Ballistic Information Network (NIBIN), a program through which firearms examiners at state and local crime laboratories compare tool marks on fired bullets or cartridges found at a crime scene to digitized images of ballistic evidence in a nationwide database.

April 2014

Interview with Dr. Noël Busch-Armendariz, Ph.D., University of Texas at Austin

Watch Dr. Noël Busch-Armendariz discuss what Houston is learning about the role of notifying sexual assault victims when their rape kits are DNA-tested. In talking about the nationwide implications of the Houston action-research project, Dr. Busch-Armendariz says that the nation is ready to move beyond a focus solely on kit-testing to the larger discussion of how to tackle the complicated issue of sexual assault.

April 2014

Interview with Dr. Bill Wells, Ph.D., Sam Houston State University

Watch Bill Wells discuss the problem of unsubmitted sexual assault kits in Houston, including some lessons learned to-date. Dr. Wells also talks about the crucial role of victim cooperation in solving sexual assault cases and the Houston Police Department's hiring of a justice advocate to improve investigations.

Watch Rebecca Campbell discuss the five primary reasons that Detroit developed a large number of sexual assault kits that were not submitted to the crime lab for DNA-testing. Dr. Campbell also talks about how these risk factors" could apply to other jurisdictions.

Watch Caitlin Sulley discuss how action-research team in Houston went about making the action-research project investigating unsubmitted sexual assault kits in Houston as victim-oriented as possible. Ms. Sulley talks about the creation of a hotline for sexual assault victims to call and the police department's hiring of a justice advocate.

Dr. Decker gave a seminar in NIJ's Research for the Real World series about his research on the impact of race, gender and prison records on finding employment.

Before the seminar, we sat down with Dr. Decker for an interview to discuss his findings and their policy implications.

Scientific studies have long documented the negative impact of a prison record on a person's ability to find employment. But what is the impact when gender and race/ethnicity are factored in? Also, most jobs are now advertised online — so how does this affect the ability of former prisoners to find a job?

In the face of budget cuts, changing workforce demands, new varieties of crime and new technologies, how should police executives manage officers and other personnel and still ensure that organizational goals are being met?

Listen to James Doyle discuss the basics of a "sentinel event" review in the criminal justice system. This learning-from-error approach borrows from principles that medicine, aviation and other high-risk enterprises have successfully used. Former NIJ Fellow Doyle offers the basics to understand this innovative idea that takes a system-wide perspective of error, bringing all stakeholders together in a non-blaming, forward-looking way after a bad outcome, such as a wrongful conviction, occurs.

Ohio State University Since World War II, the homicide rate in the U.S. has been three to ten times higher than in Canada, Western Europe, and Japan. This, however, has not always been the case. What caused the dramatic change? Dr. Roth discussed how and why rates of different kinds of homicide have varied across time and space over the past 450 years, including an examination of the murder of children by parents or caregivers, intimate partner violence, and homicides among unrelated adults.

Interview with Ron D'Amico, Social Policy Research Associates. Offender reentry into the community is a pressing social problem. The number of inmates released every year from the nation's prisons increased fourfold over the past three decades.

Since the Second Chance Act (SCA) was passed in 2008, more than $250 million has been awarded to government agencies and non-profits for programs to help offenders successfully reenter society. NIJ is doing an in-depth study of 10 sites to determine the effectiveness of these reentry programs.

Interview with Jon Gould, Ph.D., Director of the Washington Institute for Public and International Affairs Research, American University.

Dr. Gould discusses:

• Bottom line findings from the study "Predicting Erroneous Convictions: A Social Science Approach to Miscarriages of Justice"
• Ten statistically significant factors related to wrongful convictions
• The role of systemic error and tunnel vision

What does science tell us about case factors that can lead to a wrongful conviction? Dr. Jon Gould of American University will discuss the findings of the first large-scale empirical study that has identified ten statistically significant factors that distinguish a wrongful conviction from a "near miss." (A "near miss" is a case in which an innocent defendant was acquitted or had charges dismissed before trial). Following Dr. Gould's presentation, Mr. John R.

Interview with Gary Ackerman, Director for Special Projects, National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, University of Maryland

Mr. Ackerman is conducting an empirical assessment of domestic radicalization, with an emphasis on the process of radicalization. In this interview, Ackerman explains how he is using large empirical analysis and small scale life study analysis to discover which factors might cause an individual to make the leap from illegal terrorist behavior to violent terrorist behavior.

Interview with Mark Hamm, Ph.D., Indiana State University

Dr. Hamm is studying lone wolf terrorism in the United States and how such terrorists become radicalized. In this interview, Hamm explains the difference between mass violence and terrorism and discusses the ways in which many lone wolf terrorists use public forums to broadcast their intent to commit terrorist acts.

Gary Slutkin, Executive Director, The Chicago Project for Violence Prevention, and Professor, University of Illinois, at the 2009 NIJ Conference

More law enforcement officers die each year in traffic incidents than from any other cause, including shootings. Many of these deaths occur on the roadside as officers perform their duties. This public service announcement reminds drives to slow down and move over when they see a public safety responder on the side of the road. This video was produced by Respondersafety.com with funding from the National Institute of Justice, U.S. Department of Justice, and United States Fire Administration, Department of Homeland Security.

In this interview conducted at the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) Conference 2011, Gary LaFree, Ph.D., Director of the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism, University of Maryland, discusses the state of domestic and transnational terrorism research in the social and behavioral sciences prior to and following September 11, 2011.

This video provides information about CrimeSolutions.gov, a site that uses rigorous research to inform practitioners and policy makers about what works in criminal justice, juvenile justice, and crime victim services. Captured in the video are scenarios of how the site can be of use to justice professionals and practitioners who are working to address criminal activity in their communities. Also captured are testimonials from actual CrimeSolutions.gov users, highlighting how the site has proven to be beneficial in meeting their needs.

In this interview, Professor Aileen Wiglesworth, University of California, Irvine and Detective Cherie Hill of the Anaheim Police Department, discuss how research on elder abuse can impact how law enforcements pursue abuse cases.

Dr. Laub discusses fusing NIJ's dual mission through translational criminology, questions that guide NIJ's approach to translational criminology and the role of 'trust' in translational criminology.

A small number of offenders who are heavily involved in drugs commit a large portion of the crime in this country. An evaluation of a "smart supervision" effort in Hawaii that uses swift and certain sanctioning showed that heavily involved drug offenders can indeed change their behavior when the supervision is properly implemented.

Dr. Campbell brings together research on the neurobiology of trauma and the criminal justice response to sexual assault. She explains the underlying neurobiology of traumatic events, its emotional and physical manifestation, and how these processes can impact the investigation and prosecution of sexual assaults. Real-world, practical implications are examined for first responders, such as law enforcement, nurses, prosecutors, and advocates.

With its criminal justice system in disarray following Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans invited the Vera Institute of Justice to examine the city's court and jail operations. For five years, Vera has been tracking arrest-to-first-appearance time, custodial arrests versus summonses, the granting of pretrial release, and many other decision-making points. Based on analysis of these data, Vera is making policy recommendations to assist with the implementation of new procedures and to ensure performance monitoring.

What has been important is still with that data showing the actors in New Orleans, the Criminal Justice Leadership Alliance. For example, how long it takes a detainee to even get charged in the city, for the DA to file a formal charge.