Week 1.1

2.1 The Commencement of Criminal Justice Research

The first efforts to produce and fund wide-scale research on criminal justice came in 1968 with the passage of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act (OCCSSA). This act established the Law Enforcement Assistance Agency (LEAA), and within it the National Institute of Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice (NILECJ). LEAA, the lead agency, provided grants to law enforcement agencies to improve public safety (most often to purchase new equipment and personnel) while NILECJ was the research center of the LEAA.

As the criminal justice research arm of the federal government, the NILECJ (since renamed the National Institute of Justice [NIJ]) was created to “advance scientific research, development, and evaluation to enhance the administration of justice and public safety” (Wellford, Chemers, & Schuck, 2010, p.14). It accomplishes this mandate by awarding federal grants and contracts to universities, public agencies, and private institutions engaged in research and demonstration projects that expand our knowledge of “what works” in preventing and controlling crime, and by disseminating those findings to researchers and practitioners. It may be surprising to learn that prior to the establishment of the NILECJ in 1968, there was no national agency encouraging, conducting, or disseminating criminal justice research. Research was conducted by a few small, independent agencies (such as California Institute for the Study of Crime and Delinquency, National Council on Crime and Delinquency, and the Vera Institute), but there was no unified research agenda nor concerted effort to organize or circulate the findings (Wellford et al., 2010).

This changed when Congress passed the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 to provide federal monies to research criminal justice issues and to “provide more accurate information on the causes of crime and the effectiveness of various means of preventing crime” (Wellsford et al., 2010, p. 27). As a result of this funding, we expanded our knowledge about crime control strategies and learned a great deal about policing practices, and a few things about prison alternatives, drug treatment programs, and other programs thought to prevent crime. Some of the well-known studies that you may be familiar with that were funded as a result of this act include: the Kansas City Preventative Patrol Experiment, the Newark and Flint Foot Patrol Experiments, as well as many other studies on police response time, neighborhood watch programs, team policing strategies, crime prevention through environmental design, fingerprinting, investigations, habitual criminals, and plea bargaining (LEAA, 1978).

Only a few of the funded studies were methodologically rigorous by today’s standards. Still, this was the first time that federal grant money was made available on a wide-scale for criminal justice research, and the legislation was vitally important for the avenues of inquiry it initiated. The legislation is also highly important for having instigated the creation of criminal justice as a discipline, separate and distinct from sociology. Unfortunately, the money spent on criminal justice programs (and research) did not have any effect on the rising crime rates at the time; so much of the grant money disappeared. Some of the early programs funded by the 1968 OCCSSA are still in existence today (Barker, 2010). Incidentally, many researchers made a name for themselves on these research projects and went on to have long, successful research careers as a result.

One of the first efforts to disseminate research findings came 40 years ago with the passage of the Crime Control Act of 1973, which established NILECJ as the first clearinghouse of criminal justice information. There are now many federal agencies that fund or disseminate research (e.g., Office of Justice Programs, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, Community Oriented Policing Services, Office on Violence Against Women); each plays an important role in criminal justice research and policy in the United States. There are also numerous private (partisan and nonpartisan) foundations and organizations that fund, conduct, and/or disseminate criminal justice research and which have been integral in our quest to understand, control, and prevent crime and ascertain the benefits and consequences of criminal justice related policies.

Although the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 provided considerable federal monies to local agencies to implement new programs and conduct research, it did not require research of funded programs right away. There were a few instances in which Congress required program evaluations, but for the most part these directives went unfulfilled due to budget and resource constraints (Sherman et al., 1997). More recently in 1996, Congress mandated that crime prevention programs funded by the federal government be evaluated for effectiveness. It stipulated that the evaluations be “independent,” “employ rigorous and scientifically recognized standards and methodologies,” and focus on the correlates of juvenile crime and the effectiveness of the programs to address known correlates (Sherman et al., 1997). As a result of this mandate, University of Maryland scholars, led by Lawrence Sherman, were commissioned by the National Institute of Justice in 1996 to conduct an independent review of the 500+ program evaluations that constituted the relevant scientific literature at the time. This was a “state of the science report on what [was] known—and what [was] not—about the effectiveness of local crime prevention programs and practices” (Sherman et al., 1997, p. 1–1).

The report examined more than 500 studies of crime prevention programs in seven institutional settings: communities, families, schools, places, labor markets, police agencies, and other criminal justice agencies. Using established scientific standards for inferring causation, researchers placed programs into one of four classifications (what works, what doesn’t, what’s promising, and what’s unknown) for each crime prevention category. Each study was rated on rigor of scientific methods and program effectiveness on a scale of 1 to 5 (1 was the lowest, 5 was the highest, 3 was considered “moderately strong”).

Of the 500+ studies evaluated, 14 programs had at least two moderately strong studies (scientific methods score of 3 or higher) that demonstrated program effectiveness and received the “what works” label; 23 programs had at least two moderately strong studies that demonstrated program ineffectiveness, and were classified in the “what doesn’t work” category; and 30 programs were catalogued as “promising” because they had at least one moderately strong research study that suggested the program was effective. All other programs were classified as “what’s unknown” (Sherman et al., 1997). See Table 2.1 for a list of programs in each classification.

Table 2.1 University of Maryland Report: What Works, What’s Promising, and What Doesn’t Work

What Works

Home visiting programs for moms Preschool with home visits by teacher

Teaching competency skills in schools Family therapy & parent training

Coaching high-risk youth in thinking skills

Vocational training for male ex-offenders

Schools that communicate & reinforce clear, consistent norms

Therapeutic community treatment for substance users in prison

Nuisance abatement action on landlords of rental housing with drug dealing

On-scene arrests for domestic abusers

Rehabilitation programs with risk-focused treatment

Monitoring high-risk repeat offenders by specialized police units

Incarcerating high-risk repeat offenders Extra police patrols in high crime hotspots

What’s Promising

Improved classroom management & instructional techniques

“Thinking skills” training for high-risk youth

Community-based mentoring by Big Brothers/Big Sisters of America

Community-based after-school recreation programs

Gang member monitoring by community members, police, probation

Job Corps residential training programs for at-risk youth

“Schools within schools” that group students into smaller units

Building school capacity through organizational development

Community policing with meetings to set priorities

Police showing greater respect to arrested offenders

Polite field interrogations of suspicious persons

Higher numbers of police officers

Mailing arrest warrants to domestic violence suspects who leave before police arrive

Proactive drunk driving arrests with breath testing

Battered women’s shelters Enterprise zones

Two store clerks in already-robbed convenience stores

Improved training & management of bar staff

Redesigned layout of retail stores Metal detectors

Street closures, barricades, & rerouting Target hardening

Problem solving analysis unique to the crime situation

Proactive arrests for carrying concealed weapons

Drug courts Fines for criminal acts

Drug treatment in jails followed by urine testing in the community

Intensive supervision and aftercare of juvenile offenders

Prison-based vocational education programs for adult inmates

Moving urban public housing residents to suburban homes

What Doesn’t Work

Gun buy-back programs Arrests of juveniles for minor offenses

Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.)

Drug prevention classes focused on fear or self-esteem

School-based, leisure-time enrichment programs

Counseling and peer counseling of students in schools

Short-term, nonresidential training programs for at-risk youth

Summer jobs or subsidized work programs for at-risk youth

Diversion from court to job training as a condition of case management

Community mobilization against crime in high-crime poverty areas

Police organized neighborhood watch programs

Police newsletter with local crime information

Police counseling visits to couples days after a domestic violence incident

Arrests of unemployed suspects for domestic assault

Increased arrests or raids on drug markets Storefront police offices

Correctional boot camps using traditional military basic training

“Scared Straight” programs in which juveniles visit adult programs

Shock probation, shock parole, and split sentences adding jail time to probation/parole

Residential programs for juvenile offenders using challenging experiences in rural settings

Rehabilitation programs using vague, unstructured counseling

Intensive supervision parole or probation (ISP)

Home detention with electronic monitoring

Source: Adapted from Sherman, Gottfredson, MacKenzie, Eck, Reuter, & Bushway (1998).

This report was a first of its kind in the criminal justice arena and sparked a new interest in summative studies. Unfortunately, however, the authors concluded that the “number and strength of available evaluations [was] insufficient for providing adequate guidance to the national effort to reduce serious crime” (Sherman et al., 1997, p. vi); and further, limited funding did not allow “the nation to learn why some innovations work[ed], exactly what was done, and how [programs/practices could] be successfully adapted in other cities” (emphasis in original, p. xi). In other words, we needed better (more scientifically rigorous) studies that could adequately guide replication efforts. Unfortunately, federal money invested in criminal justice research continues to lag far behind money invested in research on other social issues. On a brighter note, the federal grant money devoted to criminal justice research has improved over time, and research on crime prevention programs has significantly advanced since this 1997 report. Our commitment to research has evolved to the point where federal grant seekers are now required to incorporate best practices as well as methodologically rigorous evaluations of the proposed programs into their applications for funding.

1

2.1 The Commencement of Criminal Justice…

11/14/18, 11'55 PM Page 1 of 1