Weapon use

This plenary featured three significant areas of NIJ research investment that have had a tremendous impact on both the research community and the field of practice: advances in forensic DNA, police body armor standards, and place-based analyses of public safety. Each topic was explored by a collection of people representing the researcher, practitioner, policymaker, and advocacy perspectives, exploring how evidence generation resulted in changes that improved public safety and yielded more equitable criminal justice outcomes.

This panel will provide an overview of the current terrorist threat landscape, how it has changed in the last five to ten years, and strategies to best address this threat at the local and national levels. Emphasis will be placed on how several key events in 2021 have shaped the way we think about research and policy in the fields of radicalization and extremism. Panelists will provide data on fluctuations of the most imminent terrorist threats posed to the U.S.

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: 

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

The subprime mortgage industry collapse has led to a record number of foreclosures. In this environment, the interest mortgage fraud has risen, along with questions of how fraud contributed to the crisis. Henry Pontell and Sally Simpson discuss what they have learned about investigating and prosecuting white-collar criminals, the role of corporate ethics in America, and what policymakers and lawyers can learn from evidence of fraud.