Populations

This panel will discuss what inclusive research is, how to conduct it, and what issues and challenges exist about engaging in it. “Inclusive research” has its history as a participatory research method designed to ensure people closest to the issue or problem under study are authentically engaged in the research process rather than simply being “research subjects.” While community-based participatory research has begun to take on greater prominence in the criminal justice realm, such efforts are largely confined to qualitative research inquiries.

This plenary panel from the 2023 NIJ Research Conference features fascinating research on a methodology to improve the detection and documentation of bruises on victims of violence who have dark skin pigmentation. This study highlights the intersection between science, justice, and racial equity, featuring practitioner and victims’ advocacy perspectives. The discussion describes the research and its findings and explore strategies to ensure that this particular evidence-based methodology can be widely implemented by nurse practitioners in the field.

Participants:

Mandates for risk assessment protocols to be trauma-informed are now common across juvenile justice and school settings. However, there is little direction on how to best translate this mandate into evidence-based screening and assessment tools. This presentation will describe the theoretical model underpinning the Vulnerability, Impairment, and Promotive factors (VIP) Study, which seeks to offer an alternative to existing risk assessment approaches in vulnerable adolescents.

The Violence Against Women Act of 1994 (VAWA) and its re-authorizations mandated several research efforts that stimulated a dramatic enhancement to violence against women research supported by the National Institute of Justice (NIJ). This legislation has supported federal, state, local, and private partners in implementing policies and programs and conducting research directly related to gender-based violence. However, questions remain about the effectiveness of those mandates. This brown bag will discuss the gaps and challenges to evaluating gender-based violence interventions.

This webinar presents preliminary findings from a secondary data analysis study using the Haven Online Campus Sexual Assault Prevention program data. The scope and scale of the data used in this study allow for the examination and generalization of findings across contexts and behaviors and may help identify student populations in greatest need of services and resources.

Nearly one in six of women experience stalking victimization at some point during their life, and most are stalked by someone who they know—typically current or former intimate partners. Given the escalation of violence and potential harm that an individual may commit while stalking someone, it is important to bring more attention to this issue. This brown-bag session highlights a panel of scholars to share what the field currently knows about stalking behaviors and victims, including a focus on intimate partner violence, non-partner relationships, and police response.

Objectives:

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 this full thematic panel, renowned experts will present a series of papers summarizing the newest findings of NIJ-funded research projects on criminal offenses with firearms in urban areas. Researchers used various criminological and other theories, including routine activity theory, socio-ecological and socio-environmental perspectives, and advanced mixed-study methods, including surveys and spatio-temporal designs, to produce scientific evidence to inform practice.

Most scholars would agree that desistance from crime – the process of ceasing engagement in criminal activities – is normative. However, there is variability in the literature regarding the definition and measurement of desistance, the signals of desistance, the age at which desistance begins, and the underlying mechanisms that lead to desistance. Even with considerable advances in the theoretical understanding of desistance from crime, there remain critical gaps between research and the application of that research to practice.

On February 16-18, 2021, the National Institute of Justice hosted the Virtual Conference on School Safety: Bridging Research to Practice to Safeguard Our Schools. This video includes the following presentations:

On February 16-18, 2021, the National Institute of Justice hosted the Virtual Conference on School Safety: Bridging Research to Practice to Safeguard Our Schools. This video includes the following presentations: 

Across the country, child welfare and juvenile justice systems now recognize that youth involved in both systems (i.e., dual system youth) are a vulnerable population who often go unrecognized because of challenges in information-sharing and cross system collaboration. In light of these challenges, national incidence rates of dual system youth are not known.