Offenders

The COVID-19 pandemic had a detrimental impact on communities across the nation and significantly affected various aspects of individuals’ lives. One of the negative impacts was an increase in gender-based violence accompanied by shifting barriers to accessing services and support. Victims and victim service providers faced various challenges dealing with the increase in need for services, navigating barriers to help-seeking, and addressing logistical issues.

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.

Mass public shootings continue to threaten communities in the United States, yet research on this criminal phenomenon is limited. In this full thematic panel, renowned experts will present a series of research projects summarizing NIJ-funded research projects’ newest findings on public mass shootings. The discussion will focus on NIJ’s investment to address the phenomenon of mass shootings through innovative study approaches to advance our understanding of mass shootings and inform prevention efforts. The implications of this research to criminal justice will also be discussed.

In recent years, NIJ invested in several research projects to advance understanding and inform prevention of public mass shootings.

In recent years, NIJ invested in several research projects to advance understanding and inform prevention of public mass shootings.

In 2004, the National Institute of Justice created the social science research on forensic sciences (SSRFS) research program to explore the impact of forensic sciences on the criminal justice system and the administration of justice. Much of the early research from the SSRFS program focused on DNA processing and the use of DNA in investigations and prosecutions.

Bullying prevention is an important aspect of school safety. During this webinar, co-sponsored by NIJ and the Federal Partners in Bullying Prevention, renowned bullying prevention researchers will share information schools can use to address bullying. This information will include helping teachers respond to bullying in the classroom and giving students who see bullying tools to take action to address it. 

Researchers have devoted considerable attention to mass incarceration, specifically its magnitude, costs, and collateral consequences. In the face of economic constraints, strategies to reduce correctional populations while maintaining public safety are becoming a fiscal necessity. This panel will present strategies that states have undertaken to reduce incarceration rates while balancing taxpayer costs with ensuring public safety.

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.

Professor Ed Latessa describes how his team and he assessed more than 550 programs and saw the best and the worst. Professor Latessa shared his lessons learned and examples of states that are trying to use evidence-based knowledge to improve correctional programs.

T.K. Logan discusses her study that looked at the impact of civil protective orders for domestic violence victims in five Kentucky jurisdictions. Civil protective orders, sometimes known as restraining orders, may cover various situations, such as ordering an assailant to avoid a victim's home and workplace or forbidding any contact with the victim, including by mail or telephone.

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.

Deterrence theory dominates the American understanding of how to regulate criminal behavior but social psychologists' research shows that people comply for reasons that have nothing to do with fear of punishment; they have to do with values, fair procedures and how people connect with one another. Professor Meares discussed the relevance of social psychologists' emerging theory to legal theory and practice and how deterrence and emerging social psychology theories intertwine.

A small number of those who commit crimes 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 individuals committing crimes who are heavily involved in drug use can indeed change their behavior when the supervision is properly implemented.

The criminal justice system encounters and supervises a large number of drug abusing persons. Punishment alone is a futile and ineffective response to the problem of drug abuse. Addiction is a chronic brain disease with a strong genetic component that in most instances requires treatment. Involvement in the criminal justice system provides a unique opportunity to treat drug abuse disorders and related health conditions, thereby improving public health and safety.