Development

Dr. Hamilton discusses his research on risk assessment, needs assessment, and responsivity, examining how the interaction between adults' and juveniles' predictors impact their likelihood of recidivism — and the programming and services that are provided for each.

Dr. Vincent discusses her research on how risk assessment and risk need responsivity affect change in how we handle individuals in the justice system.

This video, produced for IACPTV, provides an overview of the NIJ Law Enforcement Advancing Data and Science (LEADS) program. NIJ LEADS Scholars from Dayton and Newark police departments provide an overview of the LEADS program as they describe their projects and experiences working in the program.

Hear from LEADS scholars Major Wendy Stiver, Dayton Police Department, and Captain Ivonne Roman, Newark Police Department.

As technology improves, demand for analysis of DNA and other forensic evidence to help solve crimes grows. This video describes some of the challenges crime laboratories face in meeting this demand and how National Institute of Justice (NIJ) funding has strengthened crime labs and encouraged innovation in forensic techniques.

This webinar will offer a brief overview of the National Institute of Justice and the data science needs of the criminal justice field. In addition, it will provide details about the Crime Forecasting Challenge, including who can submit, how to retrieve datasets, and the submission categories. The overall goal of the Crime Forecasting Challenge is to harness recent advances in data science to drive innovation in algorithms that advance place-based crime forecasting.

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.

Research tells us that a relatively small fraction of individuals experience a large proportion of violent victimizations. Thus, focusing on reducing repeat victimization might have a large impact on total rates of violence. However, research also tells us that most violent crime victims do not experience more than one incident during a six-month or one-year time period. As a result, special policies to prevent repeat violence may not be cost-effective for most victims.

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.

Professor Lawrence Sherman explains how policing can prevent far more crimes than prison per dollar spent. His analysis of the cost-effectiveness of prison compared to policing suggests that states can cut their total budgets for justice and reduce crime by reallocating their spending on crime: less prison, more police.