national institute of justice journal 241 (october 1999) · 2005. 2. 11. · national institute of...

U.S. Department of JusticeOffice of Justice ProgramsNational Institute of Justice

JOURNALProblem Solvingwith Mapsby Thomas Rich

Prisons Can Reduce Drug Useby Thomas E. Feucht and Andrew Keyser

Teaming up forCommunity Safetyby U.S. Attorneys Veronica Coleman,Walter C. Holton, Jr., Kristine Olson,Stephen C. Robinson, and JudithStewart

and

Cultivating Leaders in Criminal Justice

At-A-Glance:■ School Safety ■ Domestic Violence Arrest

Policies■ Family Group Conferencing

JOURNALOCTOBER 1999 NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF JUSTICE

Director’s Message

This issue of the NIJ Journal demonstrates how sophisticated technologiesand innovative partnerships among law enforcement, corrections, communi-ty leaders, and researchers are evolving. The partners are finding that collab-orations can lead to new ways to restore and maintain safety in neighbor-hoods and correctional settings.

Thomas Rich offers an overview of creative mapping applications that communities across the country are using to identify and address crimeproblems. By integrating crime data with other data––survey data on adolescents’ behavior, for example––these applications go well beyond thetraditional mapping methods. Today’s technology offers expanded possibili-ties for a community’s law enforcement, corrections, and social service agencies to collaborate on analyzing data within and across agency and jurisdictional boundaries.

Thomas E. Feucht and Andrew Keyser describe a collaboration betweenprison officials and researchers that addressed drug use among prisoninmates. In 1995 and 1996, six inmates died of drug overdoses inPennsylvania’s prisons. Recognizing the threat to inmate and correctionalstaff safety, the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections developed a druginterdiction strategy that combined specific steps and actions with analyticevaluation of the outcome. Two years after the program was initiated, inmatedrug use had declined dramatically.

In a third feature article, five U.S. Attorneys describe partnerships in theircities that are targeting serious crime problems. Relying heavily on statisticaldata and information analysis, these U.S. Attorneys have become key prob-lemsolvers by teaming with researchers and other community leaders todevelop crime reduction strategies. Results of their efforts so far are prelimi-nary, and the NIJ Journal will continue to report on progress in the five sites.

The John B. Pickett Criminal Justice Policy and Management fellowship program at Harvard University provides an opportunity for mid-careercriminal justice practitioners to hone their leadership and problem-solvingskills. This issue’s fourth article describes the experiences of four Pickett fellows who have become leaders in their fields. As we approach the newmillennium, their experiences remind us that strong criminal justice leaderswill be the key to developing and sustaining effective problem-solving effortsand to keeping our neighborhoods safe.

Jeremy TravisDirector

National Institute of Justice

Jeremy TravisDirector

The NIJ Journal is published by the NationalInstitute of Justice, the research arm of the U.S. Department of Justice, to announce theInstitute’s policy-relevant research results and initiatives. The Attorney General has determined that publication of this periodicalis necessary in the transaction of the publicbusiness required by law of the Department of Justice.

Opinions or points of view expressed in thisdocument are those of the authors and do notnecessarily reflect the official position of theU.S. Department of Justice.

For more information about NIJ activities,products, and publications, visit NIJ on theWorld Wide Web at http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij.

NIJ Journal Editorial Board

David BoydDeputy Director for the Office ofScience and Technology

Sally T. HillsmanDeputy Director for the Office of Research and Evaluation

John L. SchwarzDeputy Director for the Office of Development and Communications

Christy A. VisherScience Advisor to the Director

Cheryl A. CrawfordA. Trent DePersiaJames O. FinckenauerMary G. GrahamSharla P. RauschGerald P. SoucyLaura Winterfield

Managing EditorsBrenner Brown, Palladian Partners, Inc.Jolene Hernon, National Institute

of Justice

BUILDING

KNOWLEDGE TO

MEET THE CHALLENGE OF

CRIME AND JUSTICE

National Institute of Justice Journal ■ October 19991

features2 Mapping the Path to Problem

Solving ■ Thomas Rich

10 Reducing Drug Use in Prisons:Pennsylvania’s Approach ■ Thomas E. Feucht and Andrew Keyser

16 Using Knowledge and Teamwork To Reduce Crime ■ U.S. Attorneys Veronica Coleman, Walter C.Holton, Jr., Kristine Olson, Stephen C. Robinson, and Judith Stewart

24 The Pickett Fellowships: Cultivating Effective Leaders in Criminal Justice

at-a-glance26 Recent Research Findings:

● School Safety● Domestic Violence Arrest Policies● Family Group Conferencing

departments

29 New & Noteworthy

31 Events

34 Solicitations & Awards

35 NIJ in the Journals

36 Final Reports

Reducing Drug Use in Prisons:

As part of the Pennsylvania Department of Correction’s drugelimination strategy, the department’s K-9 unit increased its

searches of inmate housing and institutional areas. See“Reducing Drug Use in Prisons: Pennsylvania’sApproach,” page 10. Photo: Susan McNaughton

U.S. Attorneys, community leaders, and researchers areteaming up to identify and solve specific crime problems.A pilot initiative in five cities builds on lessons learned inother communities where crime is dropping. See "UsingKnowledge and Teamwork To Reduce Crime," page 16.Photo: Sergeant Joe Humkey

Contents

Using Knowledge and Teamwork


Mapping thePath to

ProblemSolving

by Thomas Rich

Computer mapping and geographic information systems (GIS) are used in a

variety of criminal justice and pub-lic safety settings. Most of the datasets agencies and organizations routinely collect and maintaininclude location information—police files contain addresses ofcrimes and arrests, court files contain addresses of offenders,corrections files contain addresses of probationers. Other public agencies manage property databases,street and physical infrastructurefiles, licensing data, and publichealth data. The Census Bureaumanages block-level demographicinformation.

Many tools allow these data sets tobe viewed and analyzed, but onlycomputer mapping software cancreate a single map that combinesmultiple data sets into one displayso that public agencies not only canisolate factors contributing to crime

and other problems, but also reduceoperating costs, manage resourcesmore effectively, and assess the efficacy of interventions.

In the last 10 years, advances incomputer hardware, software, andnetworking have made mappingmore widely available. Perhaps themost important of these advanceshas been the development of low-cost yet powerful mapping software.In 1989, the National Institute ofJustice (NIJ) had only one activegrant involving computer mapping,although a second, more ambitiousprogram—a five-city Drug MarketAnalysis Program—was underdevelopment. By the mid-1990’s,mapping played highly visible rolesin departmentwide transformationsat the New York City and Chicago

police departments. In 1997, NIJestablished a crime mapping pro-gram to coordinate research, dis-seminate information on mapping,and provide training to spur devel-opment of new spatial analysismethods and software. (See “ForMore Information,” page 9.)Mapping also captured the attentionof both the Vice President, whoestablished a Crime Mapping andData-Driven Management TaskForce in 1998, and more recently thePresident, who highlighted comput-er mapping of crime data in his1999 State of the Union Address.

Mapping in LawEnforcementMapping in criminal justice agenciesstarted with law enforcement agencycrime analysts placing different col-ored pushpins on paper street maps.Today, automated versions of crime“pin maps” represent the most com-mon mapping application amongthe estimated 36 percent of lawenforcement agencies with 100 or more sworn officers that usecomputer mapping.1

Several agencies around the countryare following a process, developedby the New York City Police Depart-ment’s CompStat (computerizedstatistics) unit, that adds mapping tothe mix of information that flowsamong the department’s leaders,precinct commanders, and patrolofficers. Each week, the CompStatunit prepares a report that is thefocal point of discussion at weeklybriefings attended by departmentexecutives and commanders. TheCompStat database is used to createmaps depicting virtually any combi-nation of crime and arrest locations,

Figure 1: Cambridge (Massachusetts) Police Department Crime Bulletin of Larcenies from Motor Vehicles


about the authorThomas Rich is an Associate in the Law and Public Policy area of Abt Associates Inc., a public policy and business research and consulting company headquartered inCambridge, Massachusetts.

This map is part of the Cambridge Police Department’s daily Crime Bulletin. Each Bulletin contains a section that focuses on a different “target” crime each day: street robberies on Monday, house break-ins on Tuesday, larcenies from motor vehicles on Wednesday, auto theft on Thursday, and commercial break-ins on Friday.

Symbol Legend:

DaytimeLarceny

NighttimeLarceny

Unknown TIme

Color Legend:

During Past 7 days

8–30 days ago

Alewife

Fresh Pond

Cemetery

HarvardSquare

DanehyPark

Lesley College

CCHMt AuburnHospital

Hoyt Field

MIT

Kendall Square

Galleria

DonnellyField

Central Square

Tobin School

Porter Square

Mapping the Path to Problem Solving4

crime “hot spots,” and other rele-vant information. The maps areused not only to analyze crime, butalso to enforce accountability andevaluate performance.

In Chicago, community police officers use the department’sInformation Collection forAutomated Mapping (ICAM) program to produce maps of crimeconditions in their assigned beatsand share them with residents atneighborhood beat meetings. Otherlaw enforcement agencies use map-ping to support problem-solvingand community policing, improvelaw enforcement operations, andapprehend and convict offenders.2

Figure 1 (on page 3) shows theCambridge (Massachusetts) Police Department’s “Daily CrimeBulletin,” through which the depart-ment shares maps and crime analysisso that all officers and staff are moreaware and knowledgeable of crimetrends in various neighborhoods.

Regional Law EnforcementSystems. In some areas of thecountry, law enforcement agencieshave established regional systemsthat merge crime and other policedata from several, typically adjacent,law enforcement agencies. Althoughregional systems often are difficultto establish and maintain, they offerobvious benefits, most notably theability to detect crime patterns thatcross jurisdictional boundaries.

Automobiles, for example, often arestolen in one jurisdiction and recov-ered in a neighboring one. A region-al system that includes sophisticatedquery and mapping tools enables acrime analyst to spot patterns inthese and other crimes that other-wise would likely go undetected.

CollaborativeEnforcement andProblem-SolvingEffortsTo address the many factors thatcontribute to crime and disorder,communities are forming partner-ships between their law enforcementagency and other city, State, andFederal agencies. Because of itsability to merge mappable data from different agencies and organi-zations, GIS is an ideal informationtool for these collaborations.

Risk-Focused Policing. InRedlands, California, the policedepartment has adopted “risk-focused policing,” which systemati-cally focuses on the underlyingcauses of disorder and the factorsthat place its youths and familiesmost at-risk for criminal and otherproblem behavior.3 The model isbased on the extensive research liter-ature on risk and protective factors.4

Although Redlands had accuratedata on crime, it did not have

accurate data relating to risk andprotective factors and behaviors ofadolescents, such as the extent ofsubstance abuse, delinquent andviolent behavior, teen pregnancy,truancy, and weapon carrying. Tofill the gap, the city conducted aseries of citywide surveys of highschool students. The police depart-ment then entered the findings intoa database and used mapping soft-ware to display the results by Censusblock. Figure 2 (opposite) is a mapthat the Redlands Police Depart-ment used to examine levels of riskfactors relative to the locations ofcommunity resources that providean opportunity to develop skills andreceive recognition.

The effort enabled various city andcounty agencies and community-based organizations to better targettheir resources. For example, neigh-borhoods where a high percentageof students indicated “there’s noth-ing for me to do” received additionalyouth recreation programming. Inthe future, the city hopes to makethe maps and other survey resultsavailable to city agencies, communi-ty organizations, and the publicthrough a regional Intranet.

Strategic Approaches toCommunity Safety Initiative.Over the past decade, the U.S.Department of Justice has funded a number of community revitaliza-tion efforts involving multiple local, State, and Federal agencies.Examples include the Comprehen-sive Communities Program andOperation Weed and Seed. Mostrecently the Justice Department ini-tiated the Strategic Approaches toCommunity Safety Initiative, orSACSI, a new strategy that buildsfrom the lessons of these earlier pro-grams. (See “Using Knowledge andTeamwork to Reduce Crime,” page16.) Each SACSI site is gatheringdata from its criminal justice andsocial service agencies and mergingthem into one database that will be

Mapping Drug Flow into the United States Research funded by the Office of National Drug Control Policy is examiningthe use of computer mapping to study how drugs flow from source countriesinto the United States. One project uses mapping to examine the spatial relationship between drug smuggling patterns and the use of drug-interdictionassets, such as ships, airplanes, radar, Federal agents, and drug-sniffingdogs. Mapping also provides a visual picture of the number of ships, trucks,passenger vehicles, pedestrians, airplanes, and other conveyors entering the country through ports of entry.

accessible to each of the contribut-ing agencies to help the site analyzeits crime problem, assess the impactof interventions, and make adjust-ments in its strategy.

Mapping Local Drug Marketsand Treatment Needs. Officials inthe 35 metropolitan areas partici-pating in NIJ’s Arrestee Drug AbuseMonitoring (ADAM) program,which tracks drug use trends amongadult and juvenile arrestees, soonwill have more information aboutthe location and characteristics oftheir drug markets and the potentialdemand for treatment and otherhealth services in different neigh-borhoods. In early 2000, the ADAMsites will begin collecting geographicinformation, including arrestees’

ZIP codes and arrest locations.When these new data are combinedand mapped with other ADAMdata—such as the type and quantityof drugs purchased, the purchaseprice, and the arrestee’s level ofdependence on drugs and need fortreatment—analysts will be able tobetter pinpoint where resources aremost needed.

Schools. Some communities,including many receiving fundingfrom the Justice Department’s Officeof Community Oriented PolicingServices’ School-Based Partnershipprogram, have begun to use mapping in conjunction withschool-based problem solving.In these efforts, law enforcementagencies and schools form partner-

ships to develop and use the SARA(scanning, analysis, response, andassessment) model to address spe-cific school-related crime problems.In Akron, Ohio, for example, theSchool-Based Partnership project isfocusing on crimes occurring withina two-block area of a targetedschool, and mapping software willplot the precise locations of juvenilecrime occurring in the area.

Mapping crime and disorder insideschools or on the school groundsrequires a large-scale or “high-definition” mapping system thatincludes digitized floor plans, build-ing blueprints, and detailed maps ofschool grounds and surroundingareas. Crime, victimization, andother data are then linked to specific


Figure 2: Average Risk, Family Domain, and Community Assets Providing Skills, Opportunities, and Recognition

As part of its risk-focused policing strategy, the Redlands (California) Police Department combined crime datawith data from citywide surveys on risk factors to determine where resources were needed most.

ResourcesStreets

Average Risk, Family Domain26%–36%36%–46%46%–51%51%–58%58%–69%


locations (for example, a particularclassroom or section of a parkinglot). Temple University researchersrecently conducted a pilot test of ahigh-definition mapping system atthe university. Working with thecampus police, Temple researchersconstructed digitized maps of allcampus buildings, including floorplans of multistory buildings. Thecampus police department modifiedits records management system tolink crimes to one of several hun-dred specific campus locations.The study included a victimizationsurvey in which students rated thesafety of different geographicregions on campus.5

Community Organizations.Community involvement in crimecontrol and prevention efforts is acentral tenet of community polic-ing. One effective way of getting the community more involved incommunity policing is for city agencies—particularly the policedepartment—to share informationwith the community. Recognizingthis, many law enforcement agenciesroutinely make crime informationavailable to the public, oftenthrough the department’s Web site.

A project in Hartford, Connecticut,is providing local crime preventionorganizations with basic mappingand analytical tools to create their

own maps and analyze incident-level calls for service, crime, andarrest data.6 The mapping systemenables community groups to quantify suspected problems, thusconfirming—or disproving—theperceptions of neighborhood resi-dents. In turn, this enables commu-nity groups to make a stronger caseto residents, the police, and othercity agencies to focus on particularproblems. One community leadernoted, “We were somewhat skittishabout going after a problem if theonly evidence was citizen percep-tion.” Other community leaders saythe system improved communica-tion between the police and resi-dents by ensuring that they shared a common platform on which tojudge the nature and extent ofneighborhood problems.

Mapping inCorrectionsProbation and parole departmentsalso use mapping, often in conjunc-tion with community correctionsinitiatives. Delaware recently undertook a systematic examinationof the proximity of probationers’and parolees’ homes to drug treat-ment, employment, and other socialservice centers and used the resultsto guide future placement of thesecenters.7 Other uses include

electronic monitoring and police-corrections partnerships.

Electronic Monitoring. Electronicmonitoring devices have been usedfor many years to help probationand parole officials enforce homedetention, curfew, and restrainingorders. A typical arrangement in-volves a device connected to a phoneline and a special ankle braceletworn by the offender; each time thedevice is polled, it reports whetherthe offender is at home or at someother location where he is supposedto be (or not supposed to be).

An alternative approach, one withwhich some corrections agencies are beginning to experiment,involves continuously monitoringthe location of offenders using glob-al positioning system (GPS) tech-nology. Computer mapping soft-ware is used in conjunction withGPS to display the location of thetracked offender on a digitized street map and, most importantly,to monitor his location relative toother areas. Thus, a corrections official could be alerted if an offender left a specific area (forexample, the 1-mile radius of hishouse) or if he came within a certain distance of forbidden areas(such as a school, playground, orother location).

Police-Corrections Partnerships.Many cities have implemented lawenforcement-corrections partner-ships as a way to provide enhancedsupervision of probationers, appre-hend persons who abscond fromsupervision, and implement jointproblem-solving efforts.8

Information sharing between law enforcement and correctionsofficials is a key component of thesepartnerships. In Phoenix, Arizona,for example, local law enforcementand probation officials are imple-menting a mapping system that linksto a database containing both policecrime data and information on probationers, including residential

…community leaders say the mapping system

improved communication between the

police and residents by ensuring that

they shared a common platform on which

to judge the nature and extent of

neighborhood problems.

and work addresses, conditions ofprobation, and probation history.Teams of police and probation officials working in targeted areaswill then use this system to plan and implement strategies for reduc-ing burglary. For example, a mapshowing the addresses of currentprobationers convicted of or witha history of burglary might show that there are clusters of these probationers near clusters ofrecent reported burglaries. As aresult, area probation officers mightincrease the frequency of visits to probationers residing near theburglary clusters.9

Analytic MappingComputer mapping can be a highlyeffective technique for presentingdata and communicating ideas.However, maps are sometimes difficult to interpret and may appear simply as a jumble of dots.Comparing two maps that depict,say, crime locations in two differenttime periods can be even more difficult. The development of spatialstatistic methods and software toolswill expand the ability to interpretspatial data.

Various techniques have been developed to identify clusters ofspatial data, the most commonexample being the crime “hot spot.”Researchers at the Illinois CriminalJustice Information Authority devel-oped one of the first of such tech-niques, a computer program calledSTAC (Spatial and TemporalAnalysis of Crime) that constructs

ellipses around the densest concen-trations of crime or other spatialpoint data. (See figure 3.) STAC hasbeen distributed to more than 200law enforcement agencies.

Another technique used to showareas of high crime density wasdeveloped through a research partnership between the CityUniversity of New York and the

Figure 3: Arson “Hot Spots” in Detroit 1994 & 1997


This map shows changes overtime in “hot spots” of incidents ofarson in Detroit. The computersoftware constructs ellipsesaround the areas with the highestconcentrations of arson.

Hot Spots: Change Over Time

Source: D. Martin, E. Barnes, and D. Britt, “Multiple Impacts of Mapping It Out,” in N.LaVigne and J. Wartell, eds., Crime Mapping Case Studies: Successes in the Field,Washington, D.C.: Police Executive Research Forum, pp. 3–14.

1997 Fire Location

1997 Fire “Hot Spot”

1994 Fire “Hot Spot”

Highland Park

Hamtramck

Belle Isle


New York City Police Department.It involves a statistical techniquethat blends, or “smooths out,” thepinpoints that represent specificincidents to create an image thatrepresents the overall density ofcrime rather than the specific locations of those crimes.10

Research on hot-spot identificationand other spatial statistics methodshas applications beyond simplyidentifying areas where criminal justice resources should be focused.For example, measures of spatialcorrelation provide a means tojudge the relationship betweencrime and bars, liquor stores, orother geographic features. Spatialstatistics also can be used to quantify the extent to which

spatial distributions have changedover time. Indeed, law enforcementand problem-solving efforts thatfocus on a particular geographicarea must address two critical ques-tions: (1) Did the interventionschange the geographic distributionof crime, for example, by displacingthe problem to other areas, and (2) to what extent can the detectedchanges be attributed to the intervention.

A logical next question to ask iswhether it is possible to forecastchanges in hot spots or the emergence of new hot spots.Basic research in the area ofpredictive modeling is investigatingwhether spatial forecasting tools can be developed for use by law

enforcement agencies to improvethe targeting of enforcement andprevention efforts.11 One approachinvolves testing the “broken win-dows” theory—that signs of physicaldisorder, such as abandoned cars,graffiti, and litter, will eventuallylead to more serious crime—bystudying the temporal and spatialrelationships between public orderand other “leading indicator” crimehot spots and serious violent andproperty crime hot spots. Anotherapproach incorporates a “rationalcriminal” model and assumes thatcriminals search for geographiclocations that offer a low risk andhigh return, such as a particulartype of house or locations with easy access to getaway routes.

Recent Trends in Analytic MappingAerial Photography. Overlaying criminal justice data on digital aerial photographs makes maps appearmore “real,” and, hence, easier to interpret. This alsoprovides additional environmental context within whichto interpret criminal justice data.

When users of the Baltimore County Police Depart-ment’s mapping system were asked what additionalinformation would be most useful, digital aerial pho-tographs were one of the top three choices, along withthe last known address of offenders and the addressesto which incarcerated offenders are released.

While only a few criminal justice agencies currently useaerial photographs, it is conceivable that in the future,as more cities commission aerial surveys of their jurisdictions and as data storage costs continue todecrease, map displays routinely will show aerial pho-tographs instead of “stick” representations of streets.

Geographic Profiling. A criminal investigative technique called geographic profiling produces a map that shows the probable home or work address of a particular serial offender. Figure 4 shows the locations of robberies thought to have been committedby a single person. The robber’s likely residence isindicated with a house icon. Based on this map, inves-tigators were able to focus their search for the offender, who was eventually arrested. Kim Rossino, a detective in theVancouver Police Department, developed this technique in 1990, incorporating findings from the field of environmentalcriminology, such as the distances offenders travel to commit crimes.* While only three police agencies, all Canadian,currently have full-time geographic profilers, the use of geographic profiling should increase substantially in the future asDNA databases, ballistics identification systems, and other techniques improve investigators’ ability to link crimes.

* Note: For more information, see Rossmo, D. Kim, “Place, Space, and Police Investigations: Hunting Serial Violent Criminals,” in John E.Eck and David Weisburd, eds., Crime and Place, Crime Prevention Studies, Vol. 4, Monsey, NY: Criminal Justice Press, 1985, 217–35.

Figure 4: This map of Vancouver is an example of geographic profiling. The house represents the probable location of the offender’s residence and the dark circles represent the robberiescommitted by the offender in nearby neighborhoods. Source: Vancouver Police Department.

96–100%91–95%86–90%81–85%76–80%71–75%66–70%61–65%56–60%51–55%46–50%41–45%36–40%31–35%26–30%21–25%16–20%11–15%6–10%0–5%

Close

These and other research efforts on spatial methods are all attempting tomove computer mapping beyondsimple pin maps and into analyticmapping. In the near future, it islikely that these tools will be stan-dard features in computer mappingsoftware and will be widely used bylaw enforcement and other criminaljustice agencies.

Notes1. Mamalian, Cynthia, and

Nancy La Vigne, The Use ofComputerized Mapping by LawEnforcement: Survey Results,Research Preview, Washington,DC: U.S. Department of Justice,National Institute of Justice, 1999(FS000237).

2. La Vigne, Nancy and JulieWartell, eds., Crime MappingCase Studies: Successes in theField, Washington, DC: PoliceExecutive Research Forum, 1998.

3. Redlands Police Department,Transforming Community Policingfor the 21st Century: Risk-FocusedPolicing, 1999.

4. This research is discussed in thereport, Comprehensive Strategy forSerious, Violent, and ChronicJuvenile Offenders, by John J.Wilson and James C. Howell,Washington, DC: U.S. Depart-ment of Justice, Office of JuvenileJustice and DelinquencyPrevention, 1993 (NCJ 143453).

5. This project is supported by the NIJ grant Using a High-Definition GeographicInformation System To EnhanceCommunity Policing on CollegeCampuses, grant number98–IJ–CX–0001.

6. This project is supported by theNIJ grant Development of aNeighborhood Problem-SolvingSystem, grant number97–IJ–CX–K017.

7. Harris, Richard, Charles Huenke,and John O’Connell, “Using

Mapping To Increase ReleasedOffenders’ Access to Services,” inCrime Mapping Case Studies:Successes in the Field, Nancy LaVigne and Julie Wartell, eds.,Washington, DC: Police ExecutiveResearch Forum, 1998, 61–67.

8. Parent, Dale, and Brad Snyder,Police-Corrections Partnerships,Issues and Practices, Washington,DC: U.S. Department of Justice,National Institute of Justice, 1999(NCJ 175047).

9. With NIJ funding, researchers atArizona State University areassessing the impact of thisapproach to reduce the incidenceof burglary. The project is sup-ported under the NIJ grantCombining Police and Probation

Research To Reduce Burglary,grant number 98–IJ–CX–0059.

10. The statistical method used inthis technique is called “kernelsmoothing.” The project to devel-op kernel smoothing is beingsupported by the NIJ grantInnovative Crime MappingTechniques and Spatial Analysis,grant number 97–LB–VX–K013.

11. See, for example, Liu, Hua, andDonald E. Brown, “Spatial-Temporal Event Prediction: ANew Model,” proceedings of theInstitute of Electrical andElectronics EngineersInternational Conference onSystems, Man, and Cybernectics,October 1998, San Diego, CA.


For More InformationNIJ has funded several of the efforts discussed in this article and is helping State and local law enforcement and corrections practitioners learn more about geographicinformation systems through grants, fellowships, workshops, annual conferences, Web sites, and a listserv.

The Crime Mapping Research Center supports the development of new analytic software and training curricula, evaluation of best practices, and assessment of the practical applications of mapping as well as its use as a research tool. For more information about the Center, visit its Web site at http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/cmrc/.

The Crime Mapping and Analysis Program, housed at the NIJ-funded National LawEnforcement and Corrections Technology Center at Denver University, provides hands-on crime mapping workshops and technical assistance in the areas of crime and intelligence analysis and geographic information systems to State and local lawenforcement and corrections practitioners. For more information about the Program, visit its Web site at http://www.nlectc.org/nlectcrm/cmap.html.

Additional information on computer mapping applications discussed in this article is available at the following Web sites:

Geographic Profiling: http://www.city.vancouver.bc.ca/police/structure/op-support/geo/geo.html

ADAM Program: http://www.adam-nij.net/

Mapping by Community Organizations:http://www.civic.com/pubs/1999/march/civ-communities-3-1-99.html

Chicago Police Department ICAM Program:http://www.ci.chi.il.us/CommunityPolicing/AboutCAPS/NewTech/ICAM.html

New York City Police Department CompStat Process:http://www.ci.nyc.ny.us/html/nypd/html/chfdept/process.html

Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority’s STAC:http://www.icjia.state.il.us/public/index.cfm?metaSection=data&metaPage=stacfacts

Reducing DrugUse in Prisons:

Pennsylvania’s Approach

by Thomas E. Feucht and Andrew Keyser

Reducing DrugUse in Prisons:

Pennsylvania’s Approach

by Thomas E. Feucht and Andrew Keyser

Drug use and crime areundeniably linked. Morethan half of all adult

arrestees test positive for drug use at the time of their apprehension.1

Self-reports from prison inmatesindicate that their drug use prior to incarceration is typically chronicand linked to other criminal behav-ior. Although only a fifth of inmatesin State prisons in 1997 were incar-cerated for drug crimes, 83 percentreported past drug use and 57 percent were using drugs in themonth before their offense.2

Despite their segregation from society and continuous close super-vision, prison inmates still manageto obtain illicit drugs. Such drug use in prison threatens the safety of inmates and staff, contradictsrehabilitative goals, undermines the authority of the correctionalinstitution, reduces public confi-dence, and ultimately corrodes the safety of communities andneighborhoods to which offendersreturn after prison.

Recognizing the ProblemIn 1994 and again in 1998, as part of a national focus on violent crime,its link to drugs, and the pivotal roleprisons can play in treating drugaddiction, Congress took legislativesteps to encourage States to

implement comprehensive prisondrug-testing and addiction treat-ment policies.3

Even before the congressional impetus, however, Pennsylvania had acknowledged that drug use was pervasive in several of its pris-ons. Governor Tom Ridge appointedMartin F. Horn as secretary for corrections in 1995 and chargedhim with the responsibility of rid-ding the prison system of drugs.

Several prisons within thePennsylvania Department ofCorrections (PDC) system were suffering from widespread drugavailability and use: Six inmatesdied of drug overdoses during 1995and 1996, assaults on correctionsofficers and inmates had increased,and the press reported corruptionamong the staff and collusionbetween inmates and staff in obtaining drugs. The system’s existing policies and resources were overwhelmed by the scope of the problem.

To rid Pennsylvania’s prisons ofdrugs and to secure inmate and staffsafety, Secretary Horn launched

the Drug Interdiction Program, abroad-based strategy combininginterdiction methods, drug testing,and drug treatment.

Secretary Horn also asked theNational Institute of Justice (NIJ) to help assess the impact of the program in five prisons that repre-sented a cross-section of the system.This article describes PDC’s inter-diction strategies, the evaluationeffort, and the subsequent decreasein drug use.

Although Secretary Horn cites interdiction as the main reason forthe decrease, he stresses that it alonedoes not account for the results. Allinmates now undergo an evaluationto determine if they need substanceabuse treatment when they enter the State’s prison system. Nearly 92 percent do. All of Pennsylvania’s24 prisons offer treatment; 7 alsooperate therapeutic communities in which inmates with severe sub-stance abuse problems are housedseparately and undergo intensive,long-term treatment. In 1997, PDCopened its first substance abusetreatment prison, which requiresinmates to undergo difficult, inten-sive, and long-term treatment.

PDC’s DrugInterdictionStrategiesAt the heart of PDC’s comprehen-sive strategy was a zero-tolerancedrug policy: Inmates caught withdrugs were to be criminally prose-cuted. Those testing positive inPDC’s routine urine drug-testingprogram were to serve disciplinarycustody time.

To rid Pennsylvania’s prisons of drugs

and to secure inmate and staff safety,

Secretary Horn launched the Drug Interdiction

Program, a broad-based strategy combining

interdiction methods, drug testing,

and drug treatment.


about the authorsThomas E. Feucht, Ph.D., is Director of the Crime Control and Prevention Division of the Office of Research and Evaluation at the National Institute of Justice. Andrew Keyser is Director of Management Information Services at the PennsylvaniaDepartment of Corrections.

The strategy relied on greater surveillance of both inmates andvisitors, increased frequency ofrandom urinalysis, more cell searches and surprise raids,and increased use of drug-sniffing dogs.

PDC also introduced highly sensi-tive drug detection equipment—ion mobility spectrometers—to

detect drugs that visitors might tryto smuggle into the prison, toinspect packages arriving in themail, and beginning in 1998, todetect drugs that correctional staffmight try to bring into the prison.

In addition, new policies wereissued for inmate movement andvisitation, and new sanctions fordrug violations were instituted. PDC

also installed a new phone system,allowing staff to monitor inmates’calls on a random basis. Table 1summarizes the major features ofthe Drug Interdiction Program putinto place by PDC between 1995and 1998.

Evaluating the Effects of theProgramPDC officials explored severaloptions for measuring the impact of the Drug Interdiction Programand finally decided to measure druguse by adding hair testing to theurine testing already taking place.

Hair analysis is particularly suited toprison-based situations where druguse may be episodic and sporadic.Hair tests can reveal drug use thatoccurred anytime within the previ-ous 90 days, whereas urinalysis islimited to detecting drug use withinthe previous 48 hours or so.4

PDC officers collected hair andurine specimens from inmates on two occasions: in March 1996(the first wave) and in February/March 1998 (the second wave).They collected about 1,000 hairspecimens from a random sample of male and female inmates at thefive prisons. A head hair specimenwas obtained whenever feasible,but axillary (chest or underarm)hair was accepted in those caseswhere sufficient head hair wasunavailable.5 (See sidebar “TheChallenges of Hair Analysis,”opposite)

Urine and hair specimens were collected at the same time.6 To minimize the possibility of detectingdrug use that had occurred prior toincarceration, only specimens frominmates who had been in the PDCsystem for at least 3 months wereanalyzed. The final sizes of the hairsample are shown in table 2.

Reducing Drug Use in Prisons: Pennsylvania’s Approach12

Activity 1995 1996 1997 1998

Cell searches 66,727 73,693 87,039 89,699

K-9 searchesCells None 4,955 11,143 7,725Vehicles None 1,789 3,858 3,041Common areas None 3,813 7,751 5,680

Scan of visitors using drug detecting equipment None 19,036 30,020 22,074

Visitors denied None 952 600 734

Urinalysis drug tests 29,494 50,235 69,926 105,347

* Other program features not reported in this chart included increased phone monitoring, referral to drug treatment, and starting in 1998, scanning of correctional staff using drugdetecting equipment.

Table 1: Type and Frequency of Pennsylvania’s Drug Interdiction Program Activities, 1995–1998*

1996 1998 (Before Drug (After Drug

Interdiction Program) Interdiction Program)

Sample Head Body Sample Head BodySize Hair Hair Size Hair Hair

Institution (N) (%) (%) (N) (%) (%)

Prison #1 202 35% 65% 232 42% 58%

Prison #2 169 32% 68% 196 37% 63%

Prison #3 220 62% 38% 213 57% 43%

Prison #4 187 75% 25% 200 87% 13%

Prison #5* 139 100% None 190 100% None

Total 917 59% 41% 1,031 64% 36%

*Prison #5 is a facility for women.

Table 2: Samples sizes, head hair, and body hair, 1996 and 1998

A RemarkableDecrease in Drug UseResults from the two waves of hairanalysis drug tests show a dramaticdecrease in the use of drugs in theprisons. (See table 3.) Results fromthe initial tests in 1996, taken beforeimplementation of the new strategy,indicate that 7.8 percent of allinmates who provided a head hairspecimen had used at least one illicitdrug during the previous 90 days.Marijuana was the most frequentlyused drug (6.5 percent), followed by


The Challenges of Hair AnalysisAs they drew up their guidelines for using hair to test for drug use, PDC officials reviewed issuespertaining to inmate and correctionalofficer safety, hygiene, and religiousrestrictions on cutting hair. Guide-lines pertaining to religious andother grounds for refusing the testwere reviewed and implemented. In accordance with accepted testingprocedures, head hair was obtainedwhenever possible, but chest hairwas accepted when an inmate’s head hair was too short, shaved, or nonexistent.

In addition, PDC developed proce-dures for protecting the confidentiali-ty of individual results from the hairdrug tests because hair tests were tobe used for research purposes only.Staff at NIJ compiled the statisticaldata and made aggregate reportsavailable to PDC.

Corrections supervisors nominatedofficers to be trained in collecting,handling, and packaging the specimens.

Head Hair vs. Body Hair:Implications for Analysis

The proportion of body hair samplescompared to head hair samples was greater than anticipated, particularly at two of the prisons.

The substitution of body hair for headhair was not an entirely satisfactoryalternative, primarily because of differences in the rate of growth.

Rate of growth. Body hair and headhair grow at very different rates, andas a result, drugs may be incorporat-ed into the two different hair types at different levels. While head hairgrows at a fairly constant rate of about 1.3 centimeters per month,body hair grows to a given length,remains dormant for a period of time, and eventually falls out. Sincedormant hair is not growing, drugmetabolites cannot be efficientlyincorporated into the hair shaft. Atany given time, proportionally morebody hair than head hair is dormant.

Racial and ethnic differences. Someresearchers have suggested thatthicker or darker hairs may morereadily absorb drugs and otherchemicals, resulting in artificiallyinflated levels of drug use for someracial and ethnic groups, such asAfrican Americans and Asian

Americans. Laboratory proceduresused to resolve this possible sourceof bias in test results are largely proprietary and remain a source ofsome debate. In the PDC sample, the differential effect of hair color is probably less problematic than the difference between head andbody hair.

Effects on the analysis. To the extentthat inmates who lack adequate head hair differ from other inmates in important inmate characteristics(like gender, race, and age), theanalysis does not represent drug useacross the entire inmate population.If inmates who lack head hair differfrom other inmates in terms of theiruse of illicit drugs, results based onhead hair only will yield biased esti-mates of the actual prevalence ofdrug use in the inmate population. It should be noted, however, thatbody hair samples showed declinesin drug use between 1996 and 1998similar to those shown by the headhair samples.

Marijuana Cocaine Opiates Any Drug

Before After Before After Before After Before After1996 1998 1996 1998 1996 1998 1996 1998

Type of Test

Urinalysis 2.0 1.6 0.1 0.0 0.6 0.8 3.4 2.2

Hair AssayHead or body 9.3 0.8 2.3 1.2 0.8 0.6 10.6 2.3

Head hair only 6.5 0.3 1.5 0.8 0.9 0.5 7.8 1.4

*Before=1996, After=1998

Table 3: Results of Urine and Hair Tests Showing Drug UseBefore and After Pennsylvania’s Drug Interdiction Program*

Note: A hair specimen of about 60 to 80 strands was collected from each inmate. Eachspecimen was analyzed by Psychemedics Corporation in accordance with rigorous labora-tory procedures. (Psychemedics received a contract from NIJ to conduct the analysis.) Beforeanalysis, hair samples were trimmed to a standard length of 3.9 cm, representing the averagerate of growth of head hair over a 3-month period. Some hair shorter than 3.9 cm was collect-ed, and some longer hair was not trimmed to length because the root ends could not beproperly aligned. Further sample preparation and analysis of the sample were conducted to resolve issues of potential environmental contamination.

cocaine. Two years later, posttestresults showed that marijuana usehad dropped to 0.3 percent and that 1.4 percent had used at leastone illicit drug during the previous90 days. Similar declines were realized for cocaine and opiates.

Hair samples were tested for evidence of use of marijuana,cocaine, opiates, amphetamines,and PCP. Radio-immunoassay(RIA)—a common drug-screeningtechnique—was used to identifysamples presumed to be positive; gaschromatography/mass spectrometry(GC/MS)—sometimes called the“gold standard” confirmatory test—was used to confirm the results.7

Urinalysis was performed accordingto standard laboratory immunoas-say drug-screening procedures.

As table 3 shows, positive ratesbased on urinalysis were generallylower than rates based on head hair,and results based on head and bodyhair specimens were slightly higherthan the results based on head hair only.

Drug Use by InmateCharacteristic andOffense TypeThe first wave of drug tests done in 1996 provided sufficient variancein drug use to allow researchers tocompare groups of inmates (seetable 4), but by the second wave in1998, the prevalence of positive drugtests was so low that similar comparisons could not be made.

Demographic characteristics.Drug use was comparable amongAfrican-American, Caucasian, andHispanic inmates and was largelyunrelated to the length of time theinmate had been incarcerated.Marijuana use was slightly moreprevalent among inmates 35 years of age or younger, while cocaine use was highest among inmates aged 26 to 45 years. Opiate use was limited almost exclusively tothose age 36 or older.

Type of offense. To learn moreabout the relationship between the offense and drug use, tests wereanalyzed using the PDC committingoffense criterion and categorizedinto violent offenses (crimes againstpersons, including robbery), drug or alcohol crimes, property crimes,and other crimes. The analysis showsthat inmates imprisoned for drugoffenses may not be the most likelyto test positive for drug use.

Prisons Virtually 99 Percent Drug-FreeThe second wave of tests, 24 monthsafter the first, showed dramaticdeclines in prison inmate drug use. The prisons were virtually 99percent drug-free. The declines in positive urine and hair assay resultswere matched by similar declines inother measures collected by PDC:

■ The number of drug finds as aresult of cell searches dropped 41percent—from 1,866 to 1,109.

■ Assaults on staff decreased 57 percent.

■ Inmate-on-inmate assaultsdeclined 70 percent.

■ Weapons seized during searchesdropped from 220 to 76.

These drops in drug use and assaultsprovide convincing evidence thatPDC’s efforts to remove drugs fromthe prisons were highly successful.

Reducing Drug Use in Prisons: Pennsylvania’s Approach14

Sample size Marijuana* Cocaine Opiates

Age N % % %18–25 153 12.2 0.0 0.026–35 328 11.4 3.4 0.636–45 291 6.4 3.4 1.0>45 145 6.8 0.0 1.4

RaceBlack 533 9.0 3.0 0.8White 321 8.9 1.6 0.9Hispanic 63 13.8 0.0 0.0

Time in prison<1 yr 206 6.1 5.3 0.51–5 231 6.8 0.9 0.05–12 413 12.6 1.7 1.2>12 67 7.0 1.5 1.5

Committing offenseViolent 514 10.3 1.9 1.4Drugs/alcohol 148 5.6 2.7 0.0Property 184 10.7 3.8 0.0Other 71 6.2 0.0 0.0

TOTAL 917 9.3 2.3 0.8

*Results for marijuana based on a reduced sample size (N=852)

Table 4: Percentage of positive drug test results by age, race, and committing offense of inmate (first wave, 1996)


Implications forCommunitiesBecause drug use in prisons erodesinstitutional authority and control,it also severely undermines the public’s confidence in correctionalinstitutions. It is disturbing to learn that inmates can continuedrug consumption while servingtheir prison sentences.

Eliminating drugs in prisons is a crucial aspect of ensuring thatprison order and safety are main-tained, but perhaps most important,eliminating the problem ensuresthat inmates abstain from drugsduring the time they serve their sentences—a necessary first step on the road to long-term abstinencewith important implications for thetime when inmates return home totheir families and communities.

Notes1. National Institute of Justice,

1998 Annual Report on Drug Use Among Adult and JuvenileArrestees, Washington, DC: U.S.Department of Justice, NationalInstitute of Justice, April 1999 (NCJ 175656).

2. Mumola, Christopher, SubstanceAbuse and Treatment, State andFederal Prisoners, 1997, BJSSpecial Report, Washington, DC:U.S. Department of Justice,Bureau of Justice Statistics,January 1999 (NCJ 172871).

3. See Title II, Subtitle A of the Violent Crime Control and LawEnforcement Act of 1994, as

amended, P.L. 103–322, as well as the 1997 and 1998appropriations bills.

4. See Mieczkowki, Tom, and Kim Lersch, “Drug Testing inCriminal Justice: Evolving Uses,Emerging Technologies,” NIJJournal, December 1997 (no.234) for a discussion of the various types of drug-testingtechnologies.

5. Male inmates provided eitherhead hair or body hair, not both.Females provided head haironly.

6. Before the Drug InterdictionProgram was put into place,urinalysis had been part ofPDC’s routine testing protocol.Results were linked to individualinmates so prison officials couldidentify inmates who tested pos-itive. Compliance rates were 95percent or higher; inmates who refused to comply werewritten up for refusing to obey an order. Hair tests, however,were used solely for researchpurposes and were not part ofthe Interdiction Program. Theresults, therefore, were kept con-fidential so that individual testresults could not be linked tospecific inmates.

7. Presumptive positive tests for opiates were confirmed usingGC/MS. Results reported here as positive for morphine wereconfirmed by GC/MS. Fourother presumptive positive opiate results were confirmed as codeine only. All results formorphine are presented using

the GC/MS results. For marijua-na and cocaine, the RIA resultsare used; because of the largequantity of hair required for the marijuana GC/MS, the confirmatory test could not be performed on a number ofpresumptive positive samples.

The authors would like to thank Daniel J. Woods, Depart-ment of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University ofMaryland, College Park, for his assistance in compiling thedata, and Gary Zajac and Kathy Gnall of the PennsylvaniaDepartment of Corrections for their contributions to theevaluation project.

As part of the Pennsylvania Department ofCorrection’s drug elimination strategy, the department’s K-9 unit increased its searches ofinmate housing and institutional areas. Thesearches have played a significant role in thedetection and confiscation of illegal drugs in the State prison system. Photo: SusanMcNaughton.

Using Knowledge and Teamwork To Reduce Crimeby U.S. Attorneys Veronica Coleman,Walter C. Holton, Jr.,Kristine Olson,Stephen C. Robinson,Judith Stewart

In recent years, women in theMemphis area—especiallyyoung women—have been

falling victim to sexual assault at an alarming rate. General crimerates were falling in Memphis,but sexual assaults continued to rise. The U.S. Attorney for theWestern District of Tennessee,Veronica Coleman, is leading an effort to do something about it. She heads a group formed todevelop new approaches for reduc-ing sexual assaults in Memphis. “Wedon’t want to be known as the rape capital of the world,” she says.

This is the story of how five U.S.cities, including Memphis, with five different crime problems are experimenting with a new way of doing business that makesheavy use of statistical data andinformation analysis, boosts the U.S.attorney’s role as a key community problemsolver, and asks researchers

to serve as navigators—observing,analyzing, and recommendingchanges in direction. (See “KeyPlayers.”)

The pilot project is called theStrategic Approaches to Com-munity Safety Initiative (SACSI)and is supported by more than adozen U.S. Department of Justiceagencies.1

The pilot sites and their targetedcrime problems are:

■ Indianapolis, Indiana—homicide and gun violence.

■ Memphis, Tennessee—sexual assault.


about the authorsVeronica Coleman is the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Tennessee; Walter C. Holton, Jr., is the U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of North Carolina; Kristine Olson is the U.S. Attorney for the District of Oregon; Stephen C. Robinson is the U.S. Attorney for the District of Connecticut; Judith Stewart is the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Indiana.

Key Players Three special roles are key to the SACSI project:

U.S. Attorney. Through SACSI, U.S. attorneys are demonstrating a new, emerging role for Federallawyers: that of prosecutor as proactiveproblemsolver. They are taking a more direct, active interest in find-ing solutions to the problems that jeopardize public safety in particularcommunities.

Project coordinator. This criticalteam member manages the dailyprocess, facilitates the conversation,moves the group toward the collectivegoal, ensures that different compo-nents of the partnerships are workingeffectively, holds the group to task,and works with the research partner tothink through the nexus of operationalcapacities, local data analysis, andcrime control theory.

Researchers. Unlike traditionalresearch involving neutral observation,SACSI expects research partners to befully engaged in problemsolving. Theresearchers are charged with gatheringcrime data and street-level knowledge,analyzing it, and reporting on whatthey find. They bring knowledge ofcrime control theory and the literatureabout “what works” into the strategydevelopment and help craft an inter-vention to reduce the target crimeproblem.

Attorney General Janet Reno meets community leader Karen McClurg in Indianapolis.Deputy Chief of Police Bill Reardon accompanied the Attorney General on her tour ofIndianapolis neighborhoods. Photo: Sergeant Joe Humkey.

■ New Haven, Connecticut—gun-related crime and commu-nity fear.

■ Portland, Oregon—youth gunviolence.

■ Winston-Salem, NorthCarolina—youth violence.

(See “The Five Pilot Sites.”)

The sites are in the beginning of the second year of a 2-year project and results are preliminary.The NIJ Journal will present findings and further develop-ments, including findings from a national evaluation, as theybecome available.

The Theory Behindthe ProgramSACSI is testing the assumption that crime is most effectivelyreduced by:

■ Bringing together the variousperspectives and capacities ofcommunity groups and agenciesto address a major crime problem.

■ Gleaning knowledge from street-level practitioners and workinghand-in-hand with researchersto determine the exact natureand scope of a targeted crimeproblem and to design interven-tions based on the opportunitiesthe analysis reveals.

■ Adapting the strategy whenongoing analysis of informationreveals failures or inefficiencies inspecific aspects of the strategy.

SACSI builds on the lessons learnedfrom crime analysis efforts like theNew York City Police Department’sCompStat unit,2 which emphasizesusing data to solve problems,and the Weed and Seed strategy,3

which emphasizes coordination of resources to revitalize neighbor-hoods. Most directly, SACSI is an outgrowth of Boston’s highly

successful Gun Project,4 which wasresponsible for dramatic reductionsin youth homicides in that city.Key components of the Boston Gun Project included strong emphasis on partnerships, knowl-edge-driven decisionmaking, andongoing strategic assessment.David Kennedy, a senior researcherat Harvard’s Kennedy School ofGovernment and the chief architectof the Boston Gun Project, is providing guidance to the SACSIsites.

The SACSI model follows five majorsteps or stages:

1. Form an interagency workinggroup.

2. Gather information and dataabout a local crime problem.

3. Design a strategic interventionto tackle the problem.

4. Implement the intervention.

5. Assess and modify the strategyas the data reveal effects.

(1) Form an interagency working group.

The U.S. attorneys spearheading theprojects are working in concert witha core group of their communities’decisionmakers and local researchpartners.5 Each site has tailored itspartnership to meet local needs andcharacteristics.

Winston-Salem’s initiative to reducejuvenile violence includes the schoolsuperintendent and the local mentalhealth director as key partners. InNew Haven, with its focus on gunviolence, the core team relies mostheavily on law enforcement agen-cies. In Portland, key members ofthe group include the presidingjudge of the State courts, State and Federal public defenders, andrepresentatives of schools, business-es, faith-based organizations,and medical and public healthproviders.

One difficulty in forming thesegroups has been making sure that all the key players are at the tablewhile at the same time keeping the group small enough to ensureefficiency and progress.

(2) Gather information and data about a local crime problem.

Sources of information about aproblem differ, but all sources—whether firsthand knowledge fromstreet-level practitioners or data collected by the probation office—systematically address the where,when, what, and how of crime incidents.

All sites are going beyond examina-tion of formal police records.Winston-Salem, for example, is analyzing specific incidents of

Using Knowledge and Teamwork To Reduce Crime18

Key components of the Boston

Gun Project included strong

emphasis on partnerships, knowledge-

driven decisionmaking, and ongoing

strategic assessment.

The Five Pilot Sites


Indianapolis

Indianapolis Violence ReductionPartnership (IVRP)

Target problems: Homicide (particu-larly drug-related homicides) and gunviolence.

Goals: To reduce homicides, bring thecommunity into the problemsolvingprocess, and improve communicationand relationships among all agen-cies—Federal, State, and local—operating in Indianapolis.

The IVRP team analyzed data for every homicide in 1997 and 1998 and identified four elements commonto approximately 60 percent of them:young men, firearms, drug use anddistribution, and groups of chronicoffenders known to the police. Inresponse, the team has begun order-ing chronic offenders who are onparole or probation to attend meetingswith law enforcement, neighborhoodresidents, and representatives fromsocial service agencies to inform the offenders about the city’s intoler-ance toward violence and link themwith services designed to reducerecidivism.

Although it is too soon to confirm anydirect causal effect, there are promis-ing signs that the partnership betweenlaw enforcement and communitygroups is having a positive effect.Homicides are down 36 percent for the first 6 months of 1999 comparedto the first 6 months of 1998.

Memphis

Strategic Team Against Rape and Sexual Assaults (STARS)

Target problem: Sexual assault.

Goals: To reduce the number of vehicle-related sexual assaults and the number of sexual assaults by

repeat offenders, enforce a policy of intolerance regarding sexualassaults committed by adult malesagainst teenage girls, and increase the effectiveness of investigative methods for prosecuting offenders and services provided to victims.

According to the FBI, the five-countyMemphis metropolitan area ranked first in the Nation in 1997 with 107forcible rapes per 100,000 population.The team’s research found that a significant portion of these casesinvolve teenage girls and older men(generally 25 years old and older) andthat approximately 10 percent involverepeat offenders. They also learnedthat a large proportion involve womenwho are abducted by men in cars.

Memphis is applying different types of interventions to different types ofsexual assault cases. For example,incidents involving vehicles—bothforced abductions and situations in which women voluntarily get into cars with men—have occurred in specific areas and suggest the need to combine crime preventionthrough environmental design techniques with community policing strategies.

New Haven

New Haven Gun Project

Target problems: Gun-related crime and community fear.

Goals: To reduce assaults and robberies with firearms, shots fired,illegal gun possession, and communi-ty fear of gun violence.

The larger drug gangs in New Havenhave been dismantled through con-certed law enforcement efforts, result-ing in dramatic reductions in violentcrime. However, fear of gun crimesremains high.

The Gun Project team is targetingoffenders associated with the most violent groups of drug dealers. Othergroups are being specifically advisedthat they will be targeted next if violence continues. The groups areoffered social services and other alternatives to crime—and possiblyincentives to use them. The project’sachievements will be communicated tothe public as part of a broad communi-ty effort to more accurately present NewHaven as a safe locale for residents,businesses, and entertainment centers.

New Haven’s efforts have been enthu-siastically embraced by governmentand community groups that do notordinarily participate in the researchand planning for anti-crime strategiesled by law enforcement agencies.

Portland

Strategic Approaches toCommunity Safety (STACS).

Target problem: Youth gun violence,with special attention to 15- to 24-year-olds and the role of alcohol inyouth-related violence.

Goals: To reduce youth gun violence;strengthen and institutionalize intera-gency, street-level collaborations; and ensure that strategies are culturallyrelevant and have minimum disparateimpacts on ethnic groups and peopleof color.

Portland linked its project to a standingcommittee, the city’s 35-memberPublic Safety Coordinating Council.The personal and professional relation-ships already established through the Council have helped to formalizeand institutionalize collaborationamong the frontline professionals who deal with crime and street realities every day.

(Continued on page 20)


juvenile violence and discussingthem with a diverse group of policeofficers, school resource officers,and probation counselors.Indianapolis brought togetherstreet-level law enforcement andcriminal justice agencies to examinethe factors involved in each homi-cide incident.

Combining data with street-levelinformation helps paint a dynamic,real-life picture of the problem.Many police officers report that they have never before sharedinformation with other agencies in such detail or analyzed it so systematically.

(3) Design a strategic intervention to tackle the problem.

Once the problem has been preciselydefined, the teams begin designingthe intervention strategies. This isperhaps the most creative part ofthe project: combining local data,street-level information, crime control theory, best practices,and organizational capacities todevelop strategies that attack thesoft, vulnerable aspects of the prob-lem that are most susceptible tointervention. Harvard’s DavidKennedy says, “The groups shouldcontinue to explore strategic optionsuntil they find a strategy that willhave the biggest impact in the short-est amount of time, using the leastamount of money and State author-ity.” Sites use Kennedy’s basic decision-making questions: How big an impact is the interventionlikely to have? How long will it takebefore we see the impact? Do wehave the capacity and resources to do it? Why do we want to use this intervention rather than anoth-er? What are the side benefits ordrawbacks?

Five Pilot Sites (continued from page 19)

STACS is concentrating its efforts on a few critical issues:

■ Research shows that 60 percent of the city’s 400 high-risk offenders are under probation or parole supervision in three of the city’s ZIP code areas. These inner-city neighborhoods are receiving special attention through joint law enforcement, parole, and probation intervention and youth outreach strategies.

■ The STACS team is anticipating the release of the first wave of prison inmates andjuvenile offenders serving time for “three-strikes” offenses. Many have strengthenedtheir gang affiliations during their incarceration. Team members have targeted theseyouthful offenders to make sure they receive the outreach services and supervisionthey need to transition smoothly from incarceration back into the community.

■ People of color are disproportionately represented in Portland’s criminal justicesystem—both as victims and offenders. STACS has funded research to measure,report, and combat any disparate treatment of ethnic and racial minorities and isdesigning a youth outreach network to address the unique cultural conditions inPortland’s ethnic communities.

Winston-Salem

Strategic Approaches to Community Safety Initiative (SACSI)

Target problem: Violent and assaultive crimes committed by youth, age 17 andyounger.

Goal: In recent years, violent crime arrest rates for youth younger than 18 in ForsythCounty generally have been higher than both State and national levels. Although juve-nile arrest rates decreased slightly in 1998, arrests for such crimes as robberies andweapons violations increased, as did arrests for simple assaults, which for many youthis a precursor to more violent behavior. SACSI’s goal is to reduce violent andassaultive crime below State and national levels.

SACSI draws upon an extensive collaborative process already in place in Winston-Salem called Forsyth Futures, which focuses on youth violence and has helped thecommunity build an electronic network linking youth-serving agencies.

Analysis has shown that juvenile violence is concentrated in four target areas andaccounts for 60 percent of overall juvenile violence. Within these areas, there is evi-dence that older offenders are “recruiting” juveniles into criminal activity, particularlyin the drug trade. A small number of repeat juvenile offenders, who are responsible fora disproportionate amount of violent crime, has been identified. As a result of SACSIanalysis, Winston-Salem has put several specific strategies in place, including:

■ Notifying older offenders to stop involving juveniles in their illegal activity andresponding swiftly to violations through Federal and State prosecution.

■ Expanding the notification process to include (1) repeat juvenile offenders and theirparents and (2) more extensive monitoring by police and probation officers.

■ Enhancing collaboration among community groups to ensure that these repeatoffenders receive priority for intervention services and treatment needs and devel-oping a case-management system based on the Forsyth Futures electronic network.

■ Developing resources (such as mentors, job skills training, and after-school activi-ties) specifically geared toward repeat offenders and others identified throughSACSI analysis as emerging offenders.

In New Haven, some gun-relatedcases that would have been declinedin the past are now likely to be pros-ecuted federally because of thestrategic impact a serious Federal-level sentence can have on the prob-lem. Recently, police apprehended a26-year-old suspect after he fled in ahigh-speed chase. Upon arrest,police found two bullets in his pos-session. He was identified by policeas a person frequently responsiblefor violent crimes. He was chargedin Federal court with felonious pos-session of two rounds of ammuni-tion, brought to trial, and convicted.He was then sentenced to incarcera-tion for a term of 10 years. Thiscase, and others in which similarsentences have been imposed onviolence-prone felons illegally inpossession of firearms, are beingcommunicated to key groups ofknown offenders in the communityto deter them from carrying andusing guns.

(4) Implement the intervention.

At this stage, to enhance the deter-rent effects of their interventions,team members send the message out through their criminal justiceand community networks to letpotential offenders and the largercommunity know their plans.For those who continue to break the law, the team then followsthrough with clear, swift, and certain consequences, as New Havendid in prosecuting the young manmentioned earlier.

Indianapolis sends its messageregarding intolerance for violencethrough an existing network oflaw enforcement and communityleaders.6 The project encouragesprobationers to bring someone whois important in their lives (such as amother, grandmother, or girlfriend)to mandatory meetings at whichthey hear the message of intolerancefor violence and receive a list of

community resources that can helpthem make better choices, stayclean, and reduce their risk ofrecidivism.

When Winston-Salem’s researchrevealed that one-fourth of the juve-nile violent offenses involved youngadult offenders who were “tutoring”juveniles in criminal behavior, theteam began notifying 18-year-oldand older suspects not only to stop their own violent acts but alsoto stop involving juveniles in theviolence. If they persist, the olderoffenders are told, they will faceenhanced penalties and prosecu-tion under Federal gun and drug statutes that forbid the use of juveniles in criminal activity.

(5) Assess and modify the strategy as the data reveal effects.

In many ways, the SACSI team operates like mission controllaunching a satellite: Once it hasdetermined the satellite’s path,it observes carefully, takes measure-ments, makes adjustments, observesagain, and makes more adjustmentsso the satellite’s course remains sure and steady.

To accomplish this task at the SACSIsites, the teams’ research partnerscollect and measure data and reportback on how the strategy is working.If the original plan isn’t having its intended effect or is having unintended consequences, the partners can make adjustments until it succeeds.

Facing theChallengesAs the SACSI partners strive to create new, effective, and lastingrelationships across agencies anddisciplines, they are recognizing how difficult and rewarding their


Once the problem has been precisely

defined, the teams begin designing the

intervention strategies. This is perhaps

the most creative part of the project:

combining local data, street-level

information, crime control theory, best

practices, and organizational capacities

to develop strategies that attack the soft,

vulnerable aspects of the problem that

are most susceptible to intervention.

pioneering efforts are and how their agencies’ cultures differ.

Although local dynamics presentproblems and opportunities uniqueto each site, some common themesappear across all the sites:

■ Among the more significantchallenges have been balancingthe desire for quick action withthe need to collect and analyzesufficient information so thatthe problem and best points of intervention can be defined as precisely as possible and themaximum impact and effective-ness achieved.

■ All the sites recognize how easyit is to slip back into the oldways of doing business—forexample, for research partners to revert to their traditional roleas neutral observer or for policeto believe their job is done whenthey arrest a suspect.

■ Balancing the day-to-day work-load and integrating the tradi-tional way of doing business intothe new and additional require-ments of the SACSI approachalso has been a challenge.

The SACSI partners don’t have theanswers yet for overcoming thesechallenges; they are still devising andrevising their responses, but theyhope to come up with directions andwarnings and to encourage others tofollow where they are leading.

Funding the Projects The Justice Department has fundedthe SACSI project coordinator position in the five U.S. attorneys’offices, the research grants, technicalassistance from experts, and fre-quent cluster meetings at which the sites share lessons learned.

To increase the analytic capability of each site, NIJ’s Crime Mapping

Research Center is helping to devel-op, design, install, or improve eachsite’s crime mapping and data analy-sis capability. The resulting system,called the Community SafetyInformation System, will be an integrated, user-friendly, intera-gency, Internet-based system thatwill allow partner agencies to mergedata from several sources and ana-lyze information across agencies.

A national assessment of the pilotproject, which is being conductedjointly by the University of Illinoisat Chicago and the State Universityof New York at Albany, will docu-ment the processes and theirimpact.

Long-Range OutlookThe five SACSI sites have found thatcriminal justice agencies are not justdoing business differently; they arealso defining success differently.They continue to count arrests,convictions, and recidivism rates,but they also are defining success by how much crime they havedeterred and by how much safertheir citizens feel.

One goal is for the sites to institu-tionalize the project by the summerof 2000, when Federal supportcomes to an end. No one thinksthat all the problems will be solved

by then, but it is hoped that aninfrastructure will be in place tocontinue supporting this way of working together, analyzing data, developing strategies, and fine tuning interventions so the sites can continue to apply theapproach to other crime problemsand so the model can be replicatedin other sites.

A SACSI infrastructure is alreadybecoming apparent in and aroundWinston-Salem and the MiddleDistrict of North Carolina. TheCity of High Point has learned fromits neighbor Winston-Salem how toimplement a SACSI-like approachfor reducing gun homicides. HighPoint experienced 14 murdersbetween January and November1998—all by guns. BetweenNovember 1998, when the SACSIapproach began, and July 1999,there have been none. In addition,assaults and robberies with gunshave been significantly reduced.Because of High Point’s tremendoussuccess, Durham and Greensboroare now applying similar strategiesbased on data and informationanalysis.

Cities that have experienced some of the greatest reductions in crime,such as Boston and New York, havelearned that cooperative efforts togather and analyze information


As the SACSI partners strive to

create new, effective, and lasting relationships

across agencies and disciplines, they are

recognizing how difficult and rewarding

their pioneering efforts are and how their

agencies’ cultures differ.

from multiple agencies can revealopportunities for strategic interven-tions and illuminate more efficientways to employ limited resources.Sustaining such an intense new wayof doing business will be the chal-lenge for the future of SACSI.

Notes: 1. The Office of the Associate

Attorney General; the CriminalDivision; Executive Office ofU.S. Attorneys; the Office ofIntergovernmental Affairs; theOffice of Community OrientedPolicing Services; and the Officeof Justice Programs (Office ofthe Assistant Attorney General,National Institute of Justice,Bureau of Justice Assistance,Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention,Bureau of Justice Statistics,Office for Victims of Crime,and Executive Office for Weedand Seed).

2. The CompStat (computer statistics) unit of the New YorkCity Police Department compilesand analyzes crime statistics,generates electronic pin maps,tracks crime patterns, and holdstwice weekly briefings with high-level officials and precinctcommanders in which the participants examine local crime patterns, devise and select tactical plans, and coordi-nate resources based upon thecrime patterns in particularprecincts.

3. The Weed and Seed strategy aims to mobilize resources in a coordinated way. Law enforce-ment efforts work to removecrime, human services andneighborhood revitalizationefforts work to prevent and deter further crime, and com-munity policing efforts work to engage the community inproblem solving.

4. For a full description of theBoston experience, see DavidKennedy, “Pulling Levers: GettingDeterrence Right,” NIJ Journal,July 1998 (no. 236).

5. Research partners include crimi-nologists, preventive medicineand public health specialists,sociologists, psychologists, andpublic policy professionals.

6. Indianapolis partners include themayor’s office; the IndianapolisPolice Department; the IndianaState Police; the IndianaDepartment of CorrectionsParole Commission; MarionCounty’s Probation Department,Prosecutor’s Office, Sheriff ’s

Department, and SuperiorCourt; the Indiana AttorneyGeneral; the United StatesAttorney’s Office; The HudsonInstitute; Indiana University;Indiana 10 Point Coalition; Weedand Seed representatives; the U.S.Department of Justice’s DrugEnforcement Administration,Federal Bureau of Investigation,Marshals Service, andImmigration and NaturalizationService; representatives of theU.S. Internal Revenue Service;the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobaccoand Firearms; the U.S. CustomsService; the Postal InspectionService; and the Secret Service.


For More InformationAmy Solomon, Policy Analyst, U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice, 810 Seventh Street, N.W., Room 7435, Washington, DC 20531, 202–305–7941,[email protected].

Tom Roberts, Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General, U.S. Department of Justice, Criminal Division, 950 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., Room 2217, Washington, DC 20530,202–307–3950, [email protected].

Dunworth, Terence, Gregory Mills, Gary Cordner, and Jack Greene, National Evaluation ofWeed and Seed: Cross-Site Analysis, Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, NationalInstitute of Justice and Executive Office for Weed and Seed, 1999 (NCJ 176358).

Eck, John E., and William Spelman, Problem Solving: Problem-Oriented Policing in Newport News, Washington, DC: Police Executive Research Forum, 1987.

Goldstein, Herman, Problem-Oriented Policing, Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990.

Kennedy, David, “Pulling Levers: Getting Deterrence Right,” NIJ Journal, Washington, DC:U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice (July 1998, Issue no. 236). This article describes in detail Boston’s Ceasefire strategy.

Kennedy, David, “Research for Problem Solving and the New Collaborations,” J. PhillipThompson, “Changing Role of the Researcher in Working With Communities,” LisabethSchorr, “Replicating Complex Community Partnerships,” and Jeffrey L. Edleson and Andrea L. Bible, “Forced Bonding or Community Collaboration? Partnerships BetweenScience and Practice in Research on Woman Battering,” in Viewing Crime and Justice From a Collaborative Perspective: Plenary Papers of the 1998 Conference on Criminal JusticeResearch and Evaluation, Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute ofJustice, 1999 (NCJ 176979).

What Can the Federal Government Do To Decrease Crime and Revitalize Communities?Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice and ExecutiveOffice for Weed and Seed, 1998 (NCJ 172210). Collected papers from a symposium sponsored by the U.S. Department of Justice and held in January 1998.

The Pickett Fellowships: Cultivating Effective Leaders in Criminal Justice24

CultivatingEffective Leadersin CriminalJustice Today, D’Arcy Morgan, a formerRoyal Canadian Mounted Police officer and Vancouver (BritishColumbia) City Police officer, isdeveloping a training and technicalassistance program with his colleagues at the Justice Depart-ment’s Office of CommunityOriented Policing Services. He tookthe position after earning his masterin public administration (MPA)degree at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.The master degree became possiblebecause of NIJ’s John B. PickettCriminal Justice Policy andManagement fellowship program.

At Harvard, Morgan pursued hisideal education—he took classes not only from the Kennedy School but also from Harvard’s business andlaw schools and thus achieved a dualconcentration in public financialmanagement and leadership.

“I built an unbelievable network of colleagues—former fellows andHarvard students from both criminaljustice and the business sector,”Morgan says. “I studied with peoplewho were identifying problems andactually solving them.”

Morgan also says his degree has takenhim to a higher level of performance.“I’ve become more tenacious andhave the skills to implement my ideasin more sophisticated, systematicways.”

The John B. Pickett Fellowships in Criminal Justice Policy andManagement provide assistance to

practitioners who are interested inattending a 1-year Mid-Career Masterin Public Administration program atthe Kennedy School. (See “Applyingfor the Mid-Career MasterProgram.”)Students are required to select at leastone course from each of the KennedySchool's core methodological areas:quantitative methods, public manage-ment, and politics/ leadership/ethicsand can choose courses from selectedother Harvard graduate and profes-sional schools. In addition, Pickettfellows select courses in criminal justice policy.

Since 1992, when the fellowship program began, 16 master degree students have received fellowships,which were established to honor thememory of John B. Pickett, NIJ’s firstdirector of planning and manage-ment. Pickett attended one of theKennedy School’s executive programsand worked closely with the facultyand staff at the school’s Program inCriminal Justice Policy and Manage-ment to address issues on policingstrategies. He was instrumental inestablishing the Executive Session onPolicing, a 7-year Kennedy Schoolproject. The fellowships encouragecriminal justice professionals to con-tinue Pickett’s legacy of commitmentto public service and criminal justiceadministration. NIJ also providesfunds for a 3-week program at theKennedy School for senior executivesin State and local government.

When former Pickett fellows talkabout their experiences at Harvard,they echo several recurring themes:The broad diversity of the studentbody gave them an expanded per-spective on the problems in their fieldand a ready-made network of profes-sional friends from around the worldwhom they can call upon to talkthrough a tough problem. The invigorating academic environment

stimulated their intellectual skills,sharpened their management skills, and enhanced their overall performance.

Frank Dwyer is a lieutenant withresponsibility for special projects who works directly with New YorkCity Police Commissioner HowardSafir. A former patrol officer, Dwyerwas working for the New York City Police Department’s Office ofManagement and Planning when hedecided to return to school for hisMPA to gain new analytical skills andlearn fresh ways of looking at policingand community issues.

Dwyer received his degree from the Kennedy School in 1993. He says the fellowship offered him theopportunity to study with a diverse,stimulating group of people and togain a better understanding of non-law enforcement professionals’perspectives on the role of police in government.

Today, when Dwyer confronts tough issues, he finds himself askingbroader questions and considering a wider range of resources and mod-els, from both inside and outside government, to resolve problems.

Margaret Poethig worked in a veryintense, challenging environment at the Chicago Police Departmentbefore undertaking her MPA. Shemanaged the Chicago ProcessMapping Project, the lead pilot program of the Police ExecutiveResearch Forum’s 21st CenturyPolicing program. She also had beena member of Chicago’s AlternativePolicing Strategy management team.

Poethig views her Kennedy Schoolexperience as a refreshing sabbatical.“I wanted to obtain a master’s degreein a way that had the least negativeimpact on the course my career wastaking,” she says.

The Pickett Fellowships:


When she graduated in 1997 andreturned to the Chicago PoliceDepartment, Poethig says she had“gained a better understanding ofthe different roles people play in government and of the necessary balance between career professionals,appointees, and publicly elected offi-cials. Each has a necessary role, eventhough each may not share the samevision of an organization’s goals.”

Poethig is currently the Policing for Prevention Strategy coordinatorfor the District of ColumbiaMetropolitan Police Department.She helped to conceptualize thedepartment’s new policing strategyand expects to tap into her Harvardcontacts as the program progresses.

At the Iowa Department of Correc-tions, Patrick Coleman directed 10prison-based substance abuse treat-ment programs and managed theIowa Treatment Alternatives to StreetCrimes program before completinghis Mid-Career MPA in 1997. Hecredits his Pickett fellowship educa-tion with helping him to obtain aposition as a resident practitioner atthe Justice Department’s Bureau ofJustice Assistance (BJA). He is cur-rently BJA’s deputy director for policy and management.

Coleman says his career had reachedthe limits of his education and expe-rience. “There’s only so much youcan learn from trial and error,” hesays. His Kennedy School educationsupplied what he needed to knowabout business and managementstrategies and practices.

Coleman said the Pickett fellowshipallowed him not only the opportuni-ty to obtain a master’s degree froman exceptional academic institution,but a chance to meet and learn froma rich variety of highly educated andexperienced people, many of whomhave remained his close colleagues.“Harvard University brings togetherpeople from all over the world—about half of the 260 people gathered

in my class were from outside theUnited States,” says Coleman. “Thegroup included people from the military and from private and non-profit organizations, as well as frompublic sectors at both the State and Federal levels.”

Before his Pickett fellowship,Coleman focused primarily on program details. Now his vision has expanded—he sees more clearlythe essential interrelationshipsamong the three branches of

government, the public sector,advocacy groups, and constituents at the grass-roots level, which mustbe considered when program deci-sions are made. “Someone has aninterest in every move we make,”he says, “and the Pickett Fellowshiphelped me see that more clearly.”

Applying for the Mid-Career Master Degree To be selected for a Pickett fellowship, candidates must demonstrate the qualities ofintegrity, professionalism, and dedication to public service exemplified in John Pickett’scharacter and distinguished career. They must have the motivation and values to lead intheir fields and to meet society’s need for excellence in government. In addition:

■ Applicants must have an outstanding academic and professional record and be enrolled in or admitted to the Kennedy School of Government.

■ Applicants should have at least 7 years of experience in law enforcement, corrections, courts, or other criminal justice professions.

■ Preference is given to applicants who demonstrate a desire to continue in the field of criminal justice policy and management, although not necessarily in their current capacity.

NIJ supports one Mid-Career master degree tuition each year—either for one student or split among two or more students, depending on the pool of applicants. The KennedySchool manages the application and selection process.

The admissions process for entering the Mid-Career Master in Public Administration in fall 2000 begins in March 2000.

For information, contact:

Mid-Career Master in Public AdministrationEnrollment ServicesJohn F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University79 John F. Kennedy Street, Cambridge, MA 02138Phone: 617–495–1152

NIJ also supports a 3-week executive education program at the Kennedy School—the Program for Senior Executives in State and Local Government. This Program usuallytakes place in the summer, although a special session will be offered in January 2000. For information about the 3-week program, contact:

Program for Senior Executives in State and Local GovernmentJohn F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University79 John F. Kennedy Street, Cambridge, MA 02138Phone: 617–495–0652

At-A-Glance: Recent Research Findings26

At-A-Glance: Recent Research Findings

The summaries in this section arebased on recent NIJ reports and/or ongoing research. The ongoingresearch was presented as part of theNIJ Research in Progress seminarseries, which features well-knownscholars discussing their work with an audience of researchers and criminal justice professionals andpractitioners. The reports and 60-minute VHS videotapes of theResearch in Progress seminars areavailable from the National CriminalJustice Reference Service (NCJRS) at 1–800–851–3420. Videotapedseminars are $19 ($24 in Canada and other countries). Many reportsalso can be downloaded from the NIJ Web site at http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij.

School-Based Prevention of Problem Behavior:What’s Being Done, Where,and How WellNIJ Research in Progress seminar:available on videotape from NCJRS

Schools should not necessarilyincrease the number of delinquencyprevention activities, but manycould improve those already inplace, according to preliminary findings of the National Study ofDelinquency Prevention in Schools.The study found that schools engagein many prevention activities, butthat the quality of these programsvaries greatly.

The study’s authors found thatimportant predictors of quality and extensiveness of school-basedprevention activities include theamount and quality of training;the supervision of workers carryingout the activity; support from theprincipal; the degree of structure

involved; local responsibility for initiating the activity; the use ofmultiple sources of information toshape the program; and the extentto which the activity is part of theregular school program.

Gary Gottfredson of GottfredsonAssociates, Inc., and DeniseGottfredson of the University ofMaryland led the NIJ-sponsoredstudy. The researchers collected,examined, and classified examples of prevention models used in schoolsand gathered data on the implemen-tation and quality of programs innationally representative surveys ofprincipals in more than 845 schoolsand activity coordinators in morethan 550 schools. They obtaineddetailed information about morethan 3,700 activities directed at pre-venting problem behavior or pro-moting safe and orderly schools.

The most common preventionapproach involves curriculum,instruction, or training, with 76 percent of schools reporting that they implemented at least one such activity.

Other common approaches includecounseling/social work programs,the use of outside personnel, creat-ing or maintaining a climate ofexpectations for student behavior,and behavioral programming ormodification.

The researchers used the scientificliterature to develop scales for rating prevention programs. Theyidentified attributes required for anactivity to be judged “adequate.” Forexample, a behavior modificationprogram was judged “adequate” if70 percent or more of the followingattributes were present: one or more

persons conducted the activity on aregular basis, 70 percent or more ofbest practices with respect to bothcontent and methods were used, andstudents participated in the activityat least daily. The best practices theresearchers examined differedaccording to activity type.

The researchers found that 73 percent of security and surveillanceactivities met the criteria for adequate, whereas 42 percent ofservices for family members and 57 percent of prevention curricu-lum, instruction, or training pro-grams were rated as adequate. Therewas great variability in quality ofimplementation for each kind ofprevention activity. Better programsusually involved more structure,more supervision, better training,and the use of more information—suggesting that there are mecha-nisms for improving the quality ofdelinquency prevention in schools.

Guidelines for MakingSchools SaferReport available from the NIJ Website at http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij orfrom NCJRS

Recent, tragic instances of violencein the Nation’s schools have broughtthe issues of school security andsafety to the top of the agenda ofpublic policymakers, school admin-istrators, and the public. Causes andsolutions remain a matter of debate,but guidance on the benefits andlimitations of various security tech-nologies is available in a handbookNIJ recently published for schooladministrators and their lawenforcement agency partners whoare considering ways to makeschools safer.

At-A-Glance:Recent Research Findings


The Appropriate and Effective Use ofSecurity Technologies in U.S. Schoolscovers products that can be used toaddress violence, with separatechapters on video surveillance,weapons detection, entry control,and alarm devices.

In language accessible to the nonexpert, the guide presents information about the kinds ofdevices on the market; explains how they work; lists their advan-tages and disadvantages and theirexpected effectiveness; and exploreslegal implications for their use.Although one of the most attractivefeatures of technology-based devicesis the possibility for savings, costremains a consideration. Thus theguide also contains informationabout the costs of installation, long-term operation and maintenance,staffing, and training.

The report’s appendix features anextensive list of resources containingthe names of organizations, booksand other publications, Web sites,and conferences concerned withschool safety and security. Futurevolumes in the series will deal withsuch issues as door, lock, and keycontrol devices; glass-break sensors;explosives detection; and drug andalcohol use detection.

The guidelines were the product ofan interagency agreement betweenNIJ and the U.S. Department ofEnergy’s Sandia National Labora-tories and were developed with the participation of the U.S.Department of Education’s Safe and Drug-Free Schools programand officials responsible for schoolsecurity in various school districtsand police departments nationwide.

The Appropriate and Effective Use of Security Technologies in U.S. Schools: A Guide for Schools and Law Enforcement Agencies, by Mary W. Green (Research Report,Washington, DC: U.S. Department

of Justice, National Institute ofJustice, September 1999), can bedownloaded from the NIJ Web siteat http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij orordered from the National CriminalJustice Reference Service (NCJ178265).

The Impact of Arrest onDomestic Violence: ResultsFrom Five PolicyExperimentsNIJ Research in Progress seminar:available on videotape from NCJRS

Arresting domestic violence suspectshas modest deterrent effects, accord-ing to the preliminary findings of astudy sponsored by the NationalInstitute of Justice, the Centers forDisease Control and Prevention,and the Harry Frank GuggenheimFoundation. Researchers also foundthat younger men and men withprior arrests are more likely torecidivate.

The Spouse Assault ReplicationProgram (SARP) collected andarchived arrest and outcome data in five jurisdictions: Charlotte,North Carolina; Colorado Springs,Colorado; Dade County, Florida;Milwaukee, Wisconsin; and Omaha,Nebraska. The study was conductedby Christopher Maxwell ofMichigan State University, JoelGarner of the Joint Centers forJustice Studies, and Jeffrey Fagan of Columbia University.

To some extent, SARP is modeledafter the Minneapolis DomesticViolence Experiment of the early1980’s, which is considered a land-mark study of responses to domesticviolence because it was the first tofocus on victim safety. (Previousresearch concentrated on the safetyof officers responding to domesticdisputes.) The Minneapolis experi-ment showed that arresting theoffender was more effective thanofficers advising and informally

mediating or separating the couple.The study’s authors, the AttorneyGeneral’s Task Force on FamilyViolence, and the scientific commu-nity called for replication of theMinneapolis experiment.

Although SARP is an outgrowth ofthe Minneapolis research, it is not adirect replication: The researchersredesigned the victim interview procedures, enhanced the analyticprocedures, and chose not to use the procedures for randomizationused in Minneapolis.

SARP’s primary data sources werepolice arrest reports, supplementaryreports about the incidents, initialand followup interviews with thevictims, and police records aboutsubsequent complaints or arrestsinvolving the suspects and their victims. Common data included thenature of the incident, the treatmentassigned and delivered by the policeofficers, demographic informationabout the parties, and outcomespertaining to later violence.

According to the victim interviews,postincident aggression occurred onaverage 30 percent less often againstthe victims whose batterers werearrested. These data also showedthat suspects who were older andemployed reoffended less often.However, white batterers committedabout 35 percent more acts ofaggression against their victims than did African-American andother minority suspects. Suspectswho were under the influence ofalcohol or drugs at the time of the incident offended more frequentlyagainst the victim than those whowere not drinking or using drugs.Having at least one prior arrestincreased by 56 percent the likeli-hood that a suspect would have atleast one more incident of aggres-sion after the experimental incident.

According to the official records,approximately 60 percent of all

At-A-Glance: Recent Research Findings28

suspects never reoffended duringthe study’s followup period, whichfor some suspects lasted more than3 years. With the exception of arrestand race, the relationship betweenother measures and reoffendingwere similar to those from the vic-tim interviews. With regard to theeffect of arrest, the researchersfound consistently that the level of aggression was only slightly lessamong suspects arrested at the timeof the experimental incident. Theresearchers also found that minoritysuspects were 30 percent more likelyto have a subsequent officiallyrecorded incident of aggression than were white suspects. Analysisof the official records also found no significant variation among thesites in terms of the relationshipbetween arrest and subsequentoffenses against the victim. But theresearchers did find that the longerthe period between the experimen-tal incident and the last victiminterview, the more likely the suspects were to have reoffendedagainst the victim.

The researchers describe severalareas needing further research,including the level of deterrence created by more severe sanctionsand the effects of arrest policies on the overall rate of domestic violence. They recommend researchon the impact of sanctions in moreserious domestic violence cases and situations in which the suspectis not present when the policearrive, as well as studies to developenhanced measures of aggressionand injury.

Family Group ConferencingFinal report available from NCJRS

Restorative justice is an innovativeconcept generating a great deal of interest as an alternative to the

conventional, retributive approach.It is grounded in ancient tradition,aiming to “restore” all parties affect-ed by a crime—victims, offenders,and communities—by bringingthem together to work out a resolu-tion. Among its appeals are the considerable empowerment ofvictims and the requirement thatoffenders take steps to repair theharm they have done.

NIJ has been promoting the under-standing of restorative justice in anumber of ways. One was througha study of a family group conferenc-ing project operated by theBethlehem (Pennsylvania) PoliceDepartment. Family group confer-encing, which originated in NewZealand, is a form of restorative justice that diverts young offendersfrom court by involving their families and their victims’ familiesin the adjudication process.

In Bethlehem, uniformed communi-ty policing officers conduct the conferences. The police-basedmodel was developed in Australia,where some of the Bethlehem pro-ject staff were sent for training. NIJevaluated the project to find out ifthe approach was acceptable to thecommunity and whether it helpedsolve ongoing problems.

Researchers Paul McCold and Benjamin Wachtel of theCommunity Service Foundationconcluded that police officers areindeed capable of conducting theconferences, provided they receiveadequate training and supervision;that while conferencing did nottransform the attitudes, organiza-tional culture, or role perceptions of officers overall, citizens who wereexposed to it became more favorableto community-oriented policing;and that victims, offenders, andoffenders’ parents were satisfied

with the conferencing process.However, when the researchers measured satisfaction with theirparticular case on the part of thoseinvolved, they found no differencebetween participating and nonpar-ticipating groups. When theresearchers examined how the program affected recidivism, theyfound that for property offenses,the rearrest rates of participantswere no lower than those of non-participants, although for violentoffenses the rate for participants was lower. The researchers cau-tioned that the likely reason for thislower rate was that participationwas voluntary, producing a self-selection effect.

The final report of the study,“Bethlehem Police Family GroupConferencing Project,” by P. McColdand J. Stahr, is available from theNational Criminal Justice ReferenceService (NCJ 173725).

NIJ has explored restorative justicein a series of regional symposia, oneproduct of which was a “notebook”of symposia materials, accessibleonline at NIJ’s Web site. The concept and its prospects are examined by John Braithwaite in “Restorative Justice: AssessingOptimistic and PessimisticAccounts,” in Crime and Justice: A Review of Research, vol. 25, ed.Michael Tonry, Chicago: Universityof Chicago Press, forthcoming.For an overview, see Leena Kurki’sIncorporating Restorative andCommunity Justice into AmericanSentencing and Corrections,Sentencing and Corrections—Issues for the 21st Century, Researchin Brief, Washington, DC: U.S.Department of Justice, NationalInstitute of Justice, September 1999(NCJ 175723).


Child Maltreatment theFocus of Planning Meeting

Although the rates of violencetoward children generally havedeclined during the past few years,the total number of child abuse fatalities has remained stable.Schools, courts, community-basedorganizations, and social service andlaw enforcement agencies all playimportant roles in responding tochild maltreatment. NIJ, the Officeof Juvenile Justice and DelinquencyPrevention, and the Office of Com-munity Oriented Policing Serviceslast spring sponsored a strategicplanning meeting to delineate suc-cessful, collaborative, and interdisci-plinary responses to child abuse.

More than 50 people, includingresearchers, administrators, andpractitioners, attended the meeting.Representatives from Westminster,California; New Haven, Connecticut;New Orleans, Louisiana; andManatee County, Florida, gave presentations on how their commu-nities have developed innovativeinterventions in response to childmaltreatment. Cathy Spatz Widom,Professor of Criminal Justice andPsychology at the State University of New York at Albany, moderatedthe meeting discussion.

Joyce Thomas, a guest speaker fromthe Center for Child Protection andFamily Support in Washington, D.C.,described a cross-system protocol for domestic violence and child maltreatment that is being imple-mented jointly by the Washington,D.C., Metropolitan Police, the city’sOffice of the Corporation Counsel,the U.S. Attorney’s Office, theEmergency Domestic RelationsProject at the Georgetown UniversityLaw School, and the Child andFamily Superior Court.

For more information about NIJ’sresearch portfolio in this area or for a copy of the planning meeting

summary, contact Cynthia A.Mamalian at 202–514–5981 [email protected].

International Perspectives onCrime and Justice Research

New & Noteworthy

NIJ is involved in many ongoing activities focused on international perspectives on crime and justiceresearch. Several of these activitiesare highlighted below.

Drug Treatment in Thailand and the Philippines

A therapeutic community (TC) is aself-contained drug treatment modelthat focuses on treating the wholeperson, building an offender’s self-esteem, and changing his values andattitudes. It is employed in residentialsettings, including prisons. The U.S.Department of State’s Bureau ofInternational Narcotics and LawEnforcement Affairs is supporting thedevelopment of the TC model in anumber of foreign settings. To helpthe State Department assess develop-ments in other countries, James O.Finckenauer, Director of NIJ’sInternational Center, and SpurgeonKennedy, Program Manager for NIJ’s Breaking the Cycle program,visited TC initiatives in Manila, thePhilippines, and Bangkok, Thailand.

The Philippines has very recentlyestablished nonresidential TC pro-grams in government-run correctionalfacilities. Although officers hold aweekly “morning meeting” with drugoffenders (a formal component of theTC model), these programs cannot beconsidered true therapeutic communi-ties because they are not residential.Approximately 30 nongovernmental

inpatient or residential treatment andrehabilitation centers for drug usersalso operate in the Philippines, andapproximately half of these use the TCtreatment modality. Some have beendoing so for a number of years.However, the clients of these centersare not necessarily criminal drugoffenders as are the clients of thegovernment-run facilities. Rather, theyhave admitted themselves voluntarilyand pay for their treatment.

Thailand has a somewhat longer his-tory in implementing the TC model inits correctional facilities. Currently,Thai government facilities have a rela-tively small number of correctionalpersonnel trained in TC, but the coun-try is investing in new prison con-struction and is expanding its capacityto provide TC treatment.

Each country has a distinctive style oftreatment delivery, but in both thereare stark differences with the generallyharsher and more intrusive methodsassociated with TC as employed inU.S.-based programs. The differencesbetween American and Asian stylesseem to reflect the traditional Asianemphasis on politeness and respectfor personal dignity and esteem.

For more information about NIJ’sactivities in this area, contactFinckenauer at 202–616–1960 or at [email protected].

(continued on page 30)

Health Care Issues inCorrectional Facilities

New findings suggest there havebeen improvements in many aspectsof the United States’ policy responseto HIV/AIDS, STD’s, and TB in cor-rectional facilities.

NIJ recently released copies of1996–1997 Update: HIV/AIDS,STD’s, and TB in CorrectionalFacilities, which updates the lateststatistics from the Bureau of JusticeStatistics’ surveys on the extent of HIV/AIDS infection amonginmates. The statistics are combinedwith the findings on policy andpractice from the ongoing series of national surveys sponsored byNIJ and the Centers for DiseaseControl and Prevention.

The report indicates that collabora-tion to solve these health problemsis increasing among correctional,public health, and community-based agencies. There remains,however, much room for improve-ment, particularly in the area of comprehensive prevention programs, discharge planning,community linkages, and contin-uity of treatment.

Obtain copies of 1996–1997 Update: HIV/AIDS, STDs, and TB in Correctional Facilities (NCJ 176344) by visiting NIJ’s Web site at http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij or by calling the NationalCriminal Justice Reference Service at 1–800–851–3420.

New & Noteworthy30

International Perspectives on Crime and Justice Research(continued from page 29)

Women in the Criminal JusticeSystem To Be Focus of UNWorkshop

The Tenth United Nations Congress onthe Prevention of Crime and theTreatment of Offenders will convene inVienna, Austria, April 10–17, 2000. Topromote the exchange of informationand experiences among UN memberson efforts to improve the situation ofwomen in criminal justice, the UNCongress plans to conduct a workshopon women in the criminal justice sys-tem. The workshop will examine thisissue from several perspectives, includ-ing female criminality, the treatment offemale offenders, and women as crimi-nal justice practitioners.

NIJ has been invited to organize a pre-sentation focusing on women as vic-tims and survivors. This presentationwill feature several practitioners repre-senting both developed and developingcountries who will discuss best prac-tices in the areas of prevention, victim

advocacy, combating forced prostitu-tion, and the improvement of socialservices. NIJ’s Director of Planning andManagement, Edwin W. Zedlewski, lastApril traveled to Helsinki, Finland, toparticipate in a planning meeting forthe workshop.

“Eurogang” Workshops BringTogether International Researchers

An increase in youth violence has beena concern in Europe much as it hasbeen in the United States, though inEurope, youth violence has not beenaccompained by crack sales and theproliferation of sophisticated firearms.Researchers from Europe and theUnited States gathered a year ago inSchmitten, Germany, to discuss thesimilarities and differences betweenand among European and Americanyouth gangs and youth groups and todevelop collaborative research efforts.A second workshop was held inSeptember in Oslo, Norway.

At last year’s meeting, which was spon-sored by the Dutch Ministry of Justice,the Dutch Ministry of the Interior, theGerman Ministry of Justice, the

University of Southern California, andNIJ, researchers discussed both the rel-evance and the limitations of generaliz-ing the American body of knowledge ongangs to the European situation. Theresearchers agreed that the similaritiesin the U.S. and European situations,such as gang proliferation, the margin-alization of minorities, and commongang structures, are strong evidencethat the U.S. gang research can provideuseful starting points for research thatwould have policy implications forEurope.

The second workshop, which was host-ed by the Norwegian Institute ofInternational Affairs, built on the firstmeeting and included policy personnelinterested in developing and imple-menting interventions. NIJ and theJustice Department’s Office of JuvenileJustice and Delinquency Preventionsponsored the U.S. researchers whoparticipated in the workshops. NIJanticipates publishing a report basedon the workshop papers and thegroup’s related discussions.


Annual Research andEvaluation Conference

“Enhancing Policy and Practice”was the theme of this year’s AnnualConference on Criminal JusticeResearch and Evaluation sponsoredby the Office of Justice Programs’Bureaus and Offices.

Highlights of the event included an account of trends and issues incrime and justice by Jan Chaiken,Director of the Bureau of JusticeStatistics, and a reception on CapitolHill to celebrate NIJ’s 30 years ofscientific endeavor to understandcrime and improve justice.

More than 60 sessions, includingpanels, workshops, a cybercafe, and5 plenary sessions, were available to the more than 800 people whoattended the annual Washington,D.C., event.

The plenary papers from last year’sresearch and evaluation conferencenow are available. (See “ViewingCrime and Justice From aCollaborative Perspective.”)

Environmental Crime theFocus of Research Forum

Little research is available on themost effective means to promotecompliance with environmental regulations among regulated entities.To learn more about these issues,NIJ partnered with the U.S. Environ-mental Protection Agency (EPA) andthe Justice Department’s Division ofEnvironment and Natural Resourcesto host a research forum. The pri-mary goal of the forum, which washeld in July, was to develop prioritiesfor a research program on promot-ing compliance with environmentalregulations. Felice Levine, ExecutiveDirector of the American Socio-logical Association, facilitated thediscussions.

Approximately 50 people attendedthe forum, including Justice Depart-ment and EPA staff, criminal justiceand environmental researchers, andpolicymakers and experts on theenvironment from the State andlocal levels. Elaine G. Stanley,Director of the EPA’s Office forEnforcement and ComplianceAssurance, discussed EPA data available for research on deterringenvironmental crime. Papers on

environmental regulation compli-ance issues were presented by RobertKagan of the University of Californiaat Berkeley’s Center for the Study ofLaw and Society; Walter Mugdan ofthe EPA; David Word of the GeorgiaNatural Resources Department;Daniel S. Nagin of Carnegie MellonUniversity; Mark Cohen of Vander-bilt University; Peter Reuter ofthe University of Maryland; andRichard Lempert of the Russell Sage

Events

Viewing Crime and Justice From a Collaborative Perspective

The plenary papers from last year’s Research and Evaluation conference are now available in the report, Viewing Crime and Justice From a Collaborative Perspective: Plenary Papers of the 1998 Conference on Criminal Justice Research and Evaluation (NCJ 176979). The plenary presentations last year were:

■ David Kennedy, “Research for ProblemSolving and the NewCollaborations.”

■ J. Phillip Thompson, “The Changing Role of the Researcher in WorkingWith Communities.”

■ Lisbeth B. Schorr,“Replicating ComplexCommunity Partnerships.”

■ Jeffrey L. Edleson and AndreaL. Bible, “Forced Bonding orCommunity Collaboration?Partnerships Between Scienceand Practice in Research onWoman Battering.”

Download a copy from the NIJ Website at http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nijor contact the National CriminalJustice Reference Service at1–800–851–3420.

Events32

Foundation. Their papers focusedon the following topics:

■ The relationship betweenFederal and State enforcementactivities and the range ofgovernment responses to non-compliance and their impact on deterrence.

■ General research on deterrenceand how it can be applied in thecontext of environmentalenforcement.

■ Existing research on deterrenceand compliance in the context of environmental enforcement.

■ Issues warranting new or additional research.

Participants discussed such issues as the motivations of regulated entities to violate or comply withenvironmental regulations; com-parisons of the deterrent impacts of inspections, enforcement actions, penalties, and complianceassistance; and the possibility of secondary benefits, such as preventing pollution, of enforce-ment efforts.

Executive Sessions onSentencing and Corrections:First Papers Published

NIJ just released the first fourpapers from the Executive Sessionson Sentencing and Corrections,which NIJ sponsors with the Officeof Justice Programs’ CorrectionsProgram Office. This series of exec-utive sessions brings together distin-guished practitioners and scholarsto examine the complex, often con-flicting issues in the field.

Patterned on the influential HarvardUniversity executive sessions onpolicing held under NIJ sponsor-ship, the series aims to find outwhether current policies and prac-tices are achieving their intendedpurposes.

The first four papers, which dealwith the competing conceptions of sentencing and corrections thatcoexist today, serve as a frameworkfor understanding the issues:

■ “Incorporating Restorative and Community Justice intoAmerican Sentencing andCorrections,” by Leena Kurki(NCJ 175723).

■ “The Fragmentation ofSentencing and Corrections inAmerica,” by Michael Tonry(NCJ 175721).

■ “Reconsidering Indeterminate and Structured Sentencing,” byMichael Tonry (NCJ 175722).

■ “Reforming Sentencing andCorrections for Just Punishmentand Public Safety,” by Michael E. Smith and Walter Dickey(NCJ 175724).

In all, approximately 16 papers willbe published in the series. To obtaincopies of the papers, watch the“What’s New” section of the NIJWeb site at http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij or contact the NationalCriminal Justice Reference Service at 1–800–851–3420.

DNA Commission ContinuesTo Hear Testimony

The National Commission on theFuture of DNA Evidence held itssixth meeting in Boston on July25–26, and its seventh meeting inWashington, D.C., on September26–27. The members discussed privacy and evidence storage issuesand heard reports from severalworking groups.

At the sixth meeting, Lynn Feredayfrom the Forensic Science Service in Great Britain described develop-ments in technology needed to gather DNA from fingerprints.Representatives from the LosAngeles Police Department testified about evidence storageissues.

For more information and copies of the proceedings, visit the Commission’s Web site at http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij/dna or call the Commission’s executiveassistant, Robin Wilson, at 202– 307–5847.

What Every Officer Should Know About DNA Evidence

Every law enforcement officerknows to look routinely for finger-prints. And now officers also must routinely think about gathering evidence that might contain DNA.

Today’s investigators can solvecrimes using the DNA collectedfrom the perspiration on a rapist’sdiscarded baseball cap, the saliva on a stamp of a stalker’s threateningletter, and the skin cells shed on a ligature of a strangled victim.

NIJ recently published a handypocket flyer for law enforcementofficers that explains where to find DNA, how to collect it,how to avoid contaminating it, and how to transport and store it.

NIJ is providing free copies of theflyer to every law enforcementagency in the country. Copies alsocan be downloaded from NIJ’s Webpage at http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij/dna or obtained by callingNCJRS at 1–800–851–3420.


Law Enforcement-Corrections Partners Share Experiences

To tackle youth gun violence inBoston, the Boston Gun Project and its Ceasefire Working Groupbrought together the Boston PoliceDepartment’s gang unit, the depart-ments of probation and parole, theU.S. Attorney’s and county prosecu-tor’s offices, the Office of the StateAttorney General, school police officers, youth corrections staff,youth workers, religious leaders,and other community advisors.The resulting decline in Boston’syouth homicides demonstrated the effectiveness of such successfulpartnerships.

To facilitate similar efforts, a 3-dayMidwest regional workshop recentlywas held in Minneapolis. The meeting brought together 18 inter-disciplinary teams from jurisdic-tions with experience or interest in forming law enforcement-corrections partnerships.

The partnership teams discussedissues of mutual concern withnational experts and experiencedpractitioners, shared informationand experiences, discussed the concepts and research associatedwith law enforcement-correctionspartnerships, and developed strate-gies to combat an identified crimeproblem in their communities.

Representatives from 12 MidwesternStates—Kansas, Illinois, Indiana,Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota,Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota,and Wisconsin—were invited toapply to send jurisdictional teams to the workshop. A similar meetingwas held in Boston for Northeastand mid-Atlantic States; additionalworkshops are scheduled to takeplace in Raleigh, North Carolina,and Seattle, Washington.

The workshop was sponsored by the Boston Police Department, theFord Foundation, NIJ, and theJustice Department’s CorrectionsProgram Office and Office ofCommunity Oriented PolicingServices, in cooperation with theJustice Department’s NationalInstitute of Corrections and theOffice of Juvenile Justice andDelinquency Prevention.

For more information, contactAlanna LaFranchi at the Institutefor Law and Justice at703–684–5300.

Crime Mapping ConferenceGoes International

NIJ’s third annual crime mappingresearch conference, Mapping OutCrime: Expanding the Boundaries,will feature presentations fromresearchers and others from aroundthe world who will highlight theirinnovative uses of computerizedcrime mapping for research andpractice. The conference will takeplace at the Renaissance Hotel inOrlando, Florida, December 11–14,1999. Participants at the 4-dayinternational conference can attend plenary sessions, panels,and workshops conducted by morethan 70 leading experts, includingpolice managers, crime analysts,geographers, and criminal justiceresearchers. More than 750 people participated in last year’sconference.

To register for the conference, con-tact the Institute for Law and Justiceat 703–684–5300 or register onlineat http://nijpcs.org/upcoming.htm.

Confidentiality, the Internet,and Crime Mapping

Criminal justice agencies are usingGeographical Information Systems(GIS) for a variety of applications:to allocate resources, to identifycrime “hot spots,” to aid in criminalinvestigations, and to support data-driven decision-making processes.Despite the widespread use of crimemapping, standards or guidelinesaddressing privacy, confidentiality,data sharing, and the disseminationof geocoded crime data have not yetbeen developed.

To generate discussion on thesecomplex issues, NIJ’s CrimeMapping Research Center hosted a 2-day Crime Mapping and Data Confidentiality Roundtable.Participants included representativesfrom law enforcement, the researchcommunity, the legal profession, theGIS field, the media, and victims’rights advocates.

The roundtable discussions wereguided by the following questions:

■ Where is the balance betweenthe public’s right to know and a victim’s right to privacy?

■ When information passes fromone agency to another, who isliable or accountable for theinappropriate use of crime mapsor the sharing of inaccurategeocoded data?

■ Should professional standards or guidelines be developed forcrime mapping as it pertains toprivacy and freedom of infor-mation issues? If so, whatshould these standards look like and who should promotethem?

■ What is the appropriate modelfor partnerships between lawenforcement agencies andresearchers with regard to sharing geocoded crime data?

Solicitations & Awards34

■ What security measures areavailable for sharing geocodedcrime data over Internet orintranet environments, and how can they be disseminated to local agencies?

A white paper based on the tran-scripts of the discussion will bedeveloped and posted on the CrimeMapping Research Center Web pageat http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/cmrc.For more information, contactDebra Stoe at 202–616–7036 [email protected].

American Society ofCriminology To Meetin Toronto

The American Society ofCriminology (ASC), an inter-national organization that represents criminologists and others concerned with criminologyand scientific research on the etiology, prevention, control, andtreatment of crime and delinquency,will convene its annual meeting inToronto this year. The meeting

will cover topics of general interestto the membership, rather than concentrate on a particular theme.

The meeting will be held November17–20 at the Royal York Hotel.Registration is $75 for ASC mem-bers, $85 for nonmembers, and $15for student members. Registrationfees increase after November 1.For more information, contact theASC at 614–292–9207 or visit itsWeb site at http://www.asc41.com.

Methamphetamine TaskForce Hears Final Opinions

The Methamphetamine Task Force,which over the past 2 years has beenexploring issues associated withmethamphetamine abuse, will con-vene its final meeting November30–December 1 in Washington, D.C.

Community stakeholders will pre-sent opinions and concerns about a wide range of drug issues at theNovember meeting. Invited guestsinclude drug abuse experts from the

fields of medicine and public health,neighborhood revitalization special-ists, family advocates, and preven-tion and education specialists.

Attorney General Janet Reno andOffice of National Drug ControlPolicy (ONDCP) Director BarryMcCaffrey cochair the task force.The executive cochairs are NIJDirector Jeremy Travis and ONDCPDeputy Director Donald R. Vereen,Jr. Other members of the TaskForce include representatives ofthe secretaries of the U.S. Depart-ments of Health and HumanServices and Education, members of the judiciary and public healthagencies, researchers, substanceabuse specialists, and law enforce-ment officials.

The Task Force released its interimreport in September. The finalreport, which NIJ anticipates releas-ing in December, will propose recommendations to Congress.Copies will be available on NIJ’sWeb site at http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij.

NIJ will soon issue open solicita-tions to the criminal justice researchfield to propose innovative researchendeavors.

The Office of Science and Techno-logy accepted proposals from thephysical sciences field until October7, 1999. The Office of Research andEvaluation will solicit social scienceresearch proposals, which will bedue January 18, 2000.

This year, there will be one fundingcycle for each of the two parts of thesolicitation, rather than two cyclesfor one solicitation, as in previousyears. The broad themes that haveguided NIJ’s research agenda inrecent years still apply:

■ Rethinking Justice

■ Understanding the Nexus

■ Breaking the Cycle

■ Creating the Tools

■ Expanding the Horizons

Both parts of the “Solicitation forInvestigator-Initiated Research”will include a discussion and exam-ples of how proposed research canfit into these themes. A discussionof these themes also can be found inBuilding Knowledge About Crimeand Justice: the 1998 ResearchProspectus of the National Institute ofJustice (Washington DC: U.S.Department of Justice, National

Institute of Justice, November 1998,NCJ 172883, and National Instituteof Justice 1997 Annual Report toCongress (Washington, DC: U.S.Department of Justice, NationalInstitute of Justice, August 1998,NCJ 171679).

Visit NIJ’s Web site at http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij for the publica-tions mentioned above and for the latest information on the release of the “Solicitation forInvestigator-Initiated Research.”NIJ publications also are availablefrom the National Criminal JusticeReference Service by calling1–800–851–3420.

Solicitations & Awards


The following summarizes key articlesof interest to the Journal’s readers.Most are based on studies sponsoredby NIJ. Copies are available on loanfrom the National Criminal JusticeReference Service (NCJRS); in somecases, photocopies may be obtainedand a corresponding fee charged.For information on availability,contact NCJRS at 1–800–851–3420 or [email protected]. Please cite the accession (ACCN) number when contacting NCJRS.

“Criminalizing White-CollarMisconduct: Determinants ofProsecution in Savings and LoanFraud Cases,” Crime, Law, andSocial Change, 26 (1997), 53–76,by Tillman, R., K. Calavita, and H. Pontell, grant number90–IJ–CX–0059, ACCN 175387.This analysis focused on threeexplanations for the differentialhandling of white-collar offenders.Using data on individuals suspectedof having committed serious crimesagainst savings and loan institu-tions, researchers sought to deter-mine the factors that influencedprosecutors to file criminal chargesagainst some suspects and not oth-ers. The findings indicated that allthree models may be limited in theirability to explain low rates of prose-cution involving white-collarcrimes.

“School Disorder: The Influence of Individual, Institutional, andCommunity Factors,” Criminology,37(1) (1999), 73–115, by Welsh,W.N., J.R. Greene, and P.J. Jenkins,grant number 93–IJ–CX–0038,ACCN 176452. This study examinedthe influence of individual, institu-tional, and community factors onmisconduct in Philadelphia middle

schools. Using data from the U.S.Census, school districts, policedepartments, and a survey of“school climate”—the unwrittenbeliefs, values, and attitudes thatbecome the style of interactionamong students, teachers, andadministrators—researchers studied the following predictors of school misconduct: communitypoverty and residential stability;community crime; school size;student perceptions of school climate; and individual studentcharacteristics.

The authors found that the level of crime in a community has lesseffect on student misconduct thanindividual student characteristics,such as belief in rules and positivepeer associations. They concludethat the assumption that “bad” com-munities produce “bad” schools isunwarranted and that a school isneither blessed nor doomed entirelyon the basis of where it is located,nor on the basis of its studentdemographics.

“Stick-Up, Street Culture, andOffender Motivation,” Criminology,37(1) (1999), 149–73, by Jacobs,B.A., and R. Wright, grant number94–IJ–CX–0030, ACCN 176453.This article explores the decision-making processes of active armedrobbers in real-life settings and circumstances. The authors attemptto understand how and why offend-ers move from an unmotivated stateto one in which they are determinedto commit robbery. They concludethat street culture represents anessential intervening variable linkingcriminal motivation to background,or behavioral, risk factors and the conditions of the subjective

“foreground”—the immediate context in which decisions to offend are activated.

“Violent Crime and the SpatialDynamics of NeighborhoodTransition: Chicago, 1970–1990,”Social Forces, 76(1) (September1997), 31–64, by Morenoff, J.D.,and R.J. Sampson, grant number93–IJ–CX–K005, ACCN 175654.Integrating ecological, demographic,and criminological theory, theauthors examined the roles ofviolent crime and socioeconomicdisadvantage in triggering popula-tion decline in Chicago neighbor-hoods from 1970 to 1990. Althoughboth black and white populationsdeclined in response to high initiallevels of homicide and socioeco-nomic disadvantage, increases in neighborhood homicide, spatialproximity to homicide, and socio-economic disadvantage were associ-ated with black population gain andwhite population loss.

NIJ in the Journals

Final Reports36

The following final reports of com-pleted NIJ-sponsored research weresubmitted by the authors in manu-script form. The reports are availablefrom the National Criminal JusticeReference Service (NCJRS) throughinterlibrary loan and as photocopies.For information about fees, callNCJRS at 1–800–851–3420.

“Civil Remedies for ControllingCrime: The Role of CommunityOrganizations,” by Roehl, J., ACCN175519, 1998, 19 pp., grant number93–IJ–CX–K010. This paper reviewscivil remedies used by communityorganizations to control crimes. Itpresents the results of a nationalsurvey on the types and prevalenceof civil remedies used, problemsencountered, and outcomes. Thetwo most common forms of civilremedies were environmentalchanges and enforcement strategies.Community organizations oftenused nuisance and drug abatementordinances and municipal codes;sometimes they collaborated withpolice, prosecutors, and other gov-ernment agencies. These methodsdisplaced rather than eliminatedcrime and drug problems.

“Exploration of the Experiencesand Needs of Former IntimateStalking Victims,” by Brewster, M.P.,ACCN 175475, 1998, 81 pp., grantnumber 95–WT–NX–0002. Thisresearch explored the nature of the

stalking experiences of noncelebrity,former intimate victims. The vic-tims provided data on the relation-ship between victim and stalker, vic-tims’ responses to the stalking, con-sequences of the stalking for the vic-tims, and the fulfillment of victims’needs in terms of victim servicesand the criminal justice system. Thepaper includes policy recommenda-tions for law enforcement agencies,the courts, State legislatures, andvictim service agencies.

“Fast Track Program Study,” byCollier, L., P. Phelps, M. Barnett, K.Gewerth, and M. Hedberg, ACCN175476, 23 pp., grant number96–IJ–CX–0072. This study evalu-ates the effectiveness of the Bay City,Michigan, Fast Track Program incurbing and retracking nonviolentjuvenile delinquents. The programwas designed to provide immediatesanctions for status offenders andnonviolent juveniles who committedminor delinquent acts. Successfulcompletion of the programexpunges the charge for which ayouth entered the program.

“Improving the Management ofRental Properties With DrugProblems: A RandomizedExperiment,” by Eck, J.E., and J.Wartell, ACCN 175516, 1998, 25 pp.,grant number 90–IJ–CX–K006. Arandomized experiment was con-ducted in 121 San Diego, California,

rental properties to test the theorythat property managers can helpprevent illicit activities. It also testeda drug sales prevention tacticdesigned to pressure landlords withdrug-plagued rental properties toimprove their management prac-tices. Two experimental groupsreceived different interventions; acontrol group received no furtherpolice actions. Followup analysisrevealed more evictions of drugoffenders for both experimentalgroups relative to the control group.The findings support the hypothesisthat place management is causallyrelated to crime and drug dealing.

“On-Campus VictimizationPatterns of Students: Implicationsfor Crime Prevention by Studentsand Post-Secondary Institutions,”by Fisher, B.S., J.J. Sloan III, F.T.Cullen, and C. Lu, ACCN 175504, 25pp., grant number 93–IJ–CX–0049.This study reports on the victimiza-tion experiences of college studentsand the crime prevention challengesfacing campuses today. It alsoexamines the frequency and natureof on-campus victimizations; thecrime-prevention behavior of stu-dents; and the crime-preventionprograms, services, and measures atselected schools.

Final Reports

U.S. Department of JusticeOffice of Justice Programs

810 Seventh Street N.W.

Washington, DC 20531

Janet RenoAttorney General

Raymond C. FisherAssociate Attorney General

Laurie RobinsonAssistant Attorney General

Noël BrennanDeputy Assistant Attorney General

Jeremy TravisDirector, National Institute of Justice

Office of Justice Programs National Institute of JusticeWorld Wide Web Site World Wide Web Site

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij

The National Criminal Justice Reference Service (NCJRS), a centralized national clearinghouse of criminal justice information, is sponsored by the Office of Justice Programs agencies and the Office of National Drug

Control Policy. Registered users of NCJRS receive the NIJ Journal and NCJRS Catalog free. To become a registered user, write NCJRS User Services, Box 6000, Rockville, MD 20849–6000, call 800–851–3420, or

e-mail [email protected]. Visit the NCRJS World Wide Web site at http://www.ncjrs.org.

The National Institute of Justice is a component of the Office of Justice Programs, which also includes the Bureau of Justice Assistance, the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the Office of Juvenile Justice and

Delinquency Prevention, and the Office for Victims of Crime.

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national institute of justice journal 241 (october 1999) · 2005. 2. 11. · national institute of...

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