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Alternatives to incarceration

Try Again, Fail Again, Fail Better: Lessons from Community Courts

April 2011
Series
Research for the Real World

Change doesn't come easy, particularly within an institution as large and complex as the criminal justice system. Greg Berman, Director of the Center for Court Innovation, offered lessons from several efforts to make reform stick in criminal justice settings. In particular, he focused on the development of community courts — experimental court projects that are attempting to reduce both crime and incarceration in dozens of cities across the U.S. and around the world.

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Alternative Sentencing Policies for Drug Offenders

June 2009

The panel presentations from the 2009 NIJ Conference are based on an NIJ-sponsored evaluation of the effectiveness of Kansas Senate Bill 123, which mandates community-based drug abuse treatment for drug possession by nonviolent offenders in lieu of prison. 

Discussing the Future of Justice-Involved Young Adults

September 2015

New science in brain development is transforming young adult involvement with the justice system. On Tuesday, September 8, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, Assistant Attorney General Karol Mason, and experts from NIJ and the Harvard Kennedy School Program in Criminal Justice who serve on the Executive Session on Community Corrections discussed the future of justice-involved young adults.

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What Works in Offender Supervision

June 2009

This NIJ Conference Panel highlights findings from NIJ projects that evaluated strategies to enhance the supervision of offenders in the community. Researchers discuss the effectiveness of fair, swift and certain sanctions for high-risk probationers in the Hawaii HOPE program. Panelists also provide empirical evidence on the effectiveness of electronic monitoring — including the use of GPS tracking — for medium- and high-risk offenders on supervision and upon completion of their supervision sentence.

NIJ FY18 Research and Evaluation on the Administration of Justice

Closing Date

NIJ seeks applications for funding investigator-initiated, interdisciplinary research and evaluation projects related to the administration of justice in three priority areas: (1) eyewitness evidence; (2) front-end intervention strategies (diversion and deflection, pretrial notification protocols and court appearance compliance, and justice system-led strategies aimed at young-adult offenders); and (3) enhancing investigation and prosecution (body worn cameras, and jury nullification). Strong applications that address the administration of...