Multimedia Listing

This seminar provides the first set of estimates from a national large-scale survey of violence against women and men who identified themselves as American Indian or Alaska Native using detailed behaviorally specific questions on psychological aggression, coercive control and entrapment, physical violence, stalking, and sexual violence. These results are expected to raise awareness and understanding of violence experienced by American Indian and Alaska Native people.

NIJ Office of Investigative and Forensic Sciences Director Gerald LaPorte and Deputy Director Heather Waltke, along with Heather LaSalle, Forensic Examiner, DNA Casework Unit, and Tina Delgado, Chief, Biometrics Division from the FBI Laboratory discuss how scientific advances can help jurisdictions process a large number of previously unsubmitted sexual assault kits.

The U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Counterterrorism and the National Institute of Justice have partnered with the Kenya Wildlife Service to provide low cost aircraft to assist in the protection of Kenya wildlife. NIJ will take the lessons learned in Kenya to apply to state, local and tribal law enforcement in the United States. The project is funded through the U.S. Department of State counter-terrorism fund.

Dr. Peggy Giordano discusses her research on what characterizes teen dating violence and how it changes over time. Dr. Giordano also talks about how conflict over key areas within a relationship can increase the risk of violence.

In this seminar, Dr. Peggy Giordano of Bowling Green State University presents preliminary findings from the Toledo Adolescent Relationships Study (TARS), a thirteen-year longitudinal study examining the lives of young people transitioning into adulthood. In this study, Dr. Giordano led a team of researchers who performed five waves of structured in-home surveys paired with in-depth qualitative interviews with a subset of respondents who had experienced violence within the context of their dating relationships.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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 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.

February 2013
Interview with David Schanzer, J.D., Associate Professor, Duke University and Director, Triangle Center of Terrorism and Homeland Security

Mr. Schanzer discusses his study of community policing strategies for countering violent extremism. Schanzer points out that there is a wide variety of terrorist ideologies from religious, to environmental, to economic. He is hoping to discover if particular community policing strategies are more effective in countering certain types of terrorism and building resilience against extremism.

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.

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.

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.

Watch two experts talk about developing a computerized system that successfully predicts — with a high degree of accuracy — which probationers are likely to violently reoffend within two years of returning to the community.

Drs. Barnes and Hyatt teamed up with the Philadelphia Adult Probation & Parole Department in an NIJ-funded project. Here they discuss: