Digital Commons Network^™

Dreaming Of Home: Youth Researchers Of Color Address Nyc’S Housing Crisis, Samuel Finesurrey, Waleska Cabrera, Meldis Jimenez, Brittiny Ando, Alanna Garcia, Alexander Garcia, Jayden Johnstone, Abdul Mohammed, Sheylany Paulino, Edwin Reed, Emelyn Saavedra, Gisselle Saavedra, Rajendra Singh, Aysia Smith, Marlena Syriaque

Publications and Research

New Yorkers are facing a housing crisis. Long-standing disparities of race and class in New York City have been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Coronavirus and the looming eviction crisis threaten working-class communities, immigrant families and youth searching for housing stability throughout the city. This report is a call to action demanding that city and state elected officials, along with civic leaders, address the housing crisis that youth are inheriting. A team of youth housing fellows, housing organizers from the Broadway Housing Communities, and CUNY academics shaped this project around the ethos, “No research about us, without us.” The work …

Shooting Surge Beginning To Slow Across New York City, Jeffrey A. Butts, Richard A. Espinobarros

Publications and Research

Many cities in the United States experienced increased gun violence during the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 and 2021. Shootings in New York City grew sharply in 2020 and remained elevated in 2021, but the degree of increase may be in decline. This databit looks at the percent change in shootings citywide by quarter and shooting incidents across the NYC boroughs by quarter from 2007 to 2021.

Reducing Violence Without Police: A Review Of Research Evidence, Charles Branas, Shani Buggs, Jeffrey A. Butts, Anna Harvey, Erin M. Kerrison, Tracey Meares, Andrew V. Papachristos, John Pfaff, Alex R. Piquero, Joseph Richardson Jr., Caterina Gouvis Roman, Daniel Webster

Publications and Research

Arnold Ventures sought to review the research evidence for violence reduction strategies that do not rely on law enforcement. The John Jay College Research and Evaluation Center (JohnJayREC) and an expert group of researchers from public policy, criminology, law, public health, and social science fields conducted the scan. The research group members worked collaboratively to identify, translate, and summarize the most critical and actionable studies.

Reducing Gun Violence In New York City, Jeffrey A. Butts, Sheyla A. Delgado

Publications and Research

Most large American cities experienced falling client crime rates in recent decades, with New York City only being second to San Diego is the scale of its decline. This databit looks at the array of initiatives the city implemented to address gun violence as a possible contribution to the decline.

Who Pays For Gun Violence? You Do., Edda S. Fransdottir, Jeffrey A. Butts

Publications and Research

The total economic impact of gun violence is unknown. Studies focus on the direct and short-term expenses immediately following a shooting but often exclude the long-term and far-reaching effects of gun violence on the victim, their family, and their community. Available data vastly underestimate the full economic impact of firearm injuries in the United States, including the fact that taxpayers often get the bill.

We Need A Loud And Fractious Poor, Jeff Maskovsky, Frances Fox Piven

Publications and Research

This article explores the political consequences of four decades of consistent humiliation of the poor by the most authoritative voices in the land, and offers insights into ways that new movements are creating spaces for poor people’s political voices to surface and become relevant again. Our specific concern is the challenge that the current humiliation regime poses to those who seek to revive radical, disruptive and fractious anti-poverty activism and politics. By humiliation regime, we mean a form of political violence that maltreats those classified popularly and politically as “the poor” by treating them as undeserving of citizenship, rights, public …

Easily Overstated: Estimating The Relationship Between State Justice Policy Environments And Falling Rates Of Youth Confinement, Douglas N. Evans, Gina Moreno, Kevin T. Wolff, Jeffrey A. Butts

Publications and Research

Researchers used state-level data on youth justice policies and practices to explore the association between state policy environments and recent changes in the use of residential placements for adjudicated youth (i.e., confinement). The study assigned a score to each of the 50 states based on the extent to which their youth justice policy environments could be considered "progressive" as opposed to punitive or regressive. Using data from the National Center for Juvenile Justice's compendium of justice system characteristics, "Juvenile Justice, Geography, Policy, Practice & Statistics" (JJGPS), the research team created an index that accounts for 16 policies that are more …

Older Adults Responsible For Total Growth In Drug Arrests, Jeffrey A. Butts

Publications and Research

After years of decline, adults 25 and older were responsible for increasing drug crime arrests after 2015. In contrast, young adults, teenagers, and children experienced drug arrest drops. This databit looks at the drug violation arrest rates from 2000 to 2018 and trends between various age groups.

Gun Violence Is Not An “Inner City” Problem, Jeffrey A. Butts

Publications and Research

Policy debates about gun violence often focus on cities. This data bit showed how 33 states in the U.S. compare regarding gun violence rates, demonstrated how gun violence rates are not an issue exclusive to cities, and tested whether states conform to the conventional narrative of "urban gun violence."

Crimmigration, Deportability And The Social Exclusion Of Noncitizen Immigrants, Shirley P. Leyro, Daniel L. Stageman

Publications and Research

The spread of crimmigration policies, practices, and rhetoric represents an economically rational strategy and has significant implications for the lived experience of noncitizen immigrants. This study draws up in-depth interviews of immigrants with a range of legal statuses to describe the mechanics through which immigrants internalize and respond to the fear of deportation, upon which crimmigration strategies rely. The fear of deportation and its behavioral effects extend beyond undocumented or criminally convicted immigrants, encompassing lawful permanent residents and naturalized citizens alike. This fear causes immigrants to refuse to use public services, endure labor exploitation, and avoid public spaces, resulting in …

Introduction: For Better Or For Worse? Relational Landscapes In The Time Of Same-Sex Marriage, Michael W. Yarbrough

Publications and Research

As same-sex marriage has become a legal reality in a rapidly growing list of countries, the time has come to assess what this means for families and relationships on the ground. Many scholars have already begun to examine how marriage is helping some same-sex couples, but in this introduction I call for a broader and more critical research agenda. In particular, I argue that same-sex marriage crystallizes a key tension surrounding families and relationships in many contemporary societies. On the one hand, strict family norms are relaxing in many places, allowing more people to form more diverse types of caring …

The Punishment Marketplace: Competing For Capitalized Power In Locally Controlled Immigration Enforcement, Daniel L. Stageman

Publications and Research

Neoliberal economics play a significant role in US social organization, imposing market logics on public services and driving the cultural valorization of free market ideology. The neoliberal ‘project of inequality’ is upheld by an authoritarian system of punishment built around the social control of the underclass—among them unauthorized immigrants. This work lays out the theory of the punishment marketplace: a conceptualization of how US systems of punishment both enable the neoliberal project of inequality, and are themselves subject to market colonization. The theory describes the rescaling of federal authority to local centers of political power. Criminal justice policy activism by …

The Effects Of Cure Violence In The South Bronx And East New York, Brooklyn, Sheyla A. Delgado, Laila Alsabahi, Kevin T. Wolff, Nicole Marie Alexander, Patricia A. Cobar, Jeffrey A. Butts

Publications and Research

New York City launched its first Cure Violence program—which uses community outreach to interrupt violence—in 2010 with funding from the U.S. Department of Justice. By 2017, there were 18 programs around the city. This report examines Man Up! Inc. in East New York, Brooklyn, and Save Our Streets South Bronx. Each neighborhood was compared to another neighborhood similar in demographics and crime trends but without a Cure Violence program. There is promising evidence that Cure Violence may help to create safe and healthy communities.

South African Marriage In Policy And Practice: A Dynamic Story, Michael W. Yarbrough

Publications and Research

Law forms one of the major structural contexts within which family lives play out, yet the precise dynamics connecting these two foundational institutions are still poorly understood. This article attempts to help bridge this gap by applying sociolegal concepts to empirical findings about state law's role in family, and especially in marriage, drawn from across several decades and disciplines of South Africanist scholarly research. I sketch the broad outlines of a nuanced theoretical approach for analysing the law-family relationship, which insists that the relationship entails a contingent and dynamic interplay between relatively powerful regulating institutions and relatively powerless regulated populations. …

Straight Lives: The Balance Between Human Dignity, Public Safety, And Desistance From Crime, Lila Kazemian

Publications and Research

This report looks at how the academic and practitioner worlds must collaborate to develop an effective, desistance-promoting approach to criminal justice. Interventions need to be desistance-focused and tailored to individual circumstances rather than standardized programming. Interventions should shift away from an emphasis on risk and criminogenic needs and help individuals overcome obstacles to desistance.

Moving The Needle On Justice Reform: A Report On The American Justice Summit 2014, Daniel L. Stageman, Robert Riggs, Jonathan Gordon, Ethiraj G. Dattatreyan

Publications and Research

Executive Summary: Taking place over 5 hours during the afternoon of November 10th, 2014, in John Jay College’s Gerald W. Lynch Theater, the American Justice Summit was an unprecedented public meeting of some of the most important individuals working in contemporary criminal justice reform. The event placed these individuals in front of an audience of six hundred-odd practitioners, activists, students, elected officials, and policy professionals, in conversation with leading journalists and each other, to describe the scope and contours of the problems posed by the country’s dysfunctional and interlocking systems of criminal justice – mass incarceration, police-community relations, the system’s …

Staying Connected: Keeping Justice-Involved Youth “Close To Home” In New York City, Jeffrey A. Butts, Laura Negredo, Evan Elkin

Publications and Research

When justice-involved youth are supervised by local agencies and placed with locally operated programs rather than being sent away to state facilities, they are better able to maintain community ties. They stay connected with their families, and they are more likely to remain in local schools. Policy reforms that localize the justice system are often called “realignment.” New York’s “Close to Home” (or C2H) initiative is a prominent example of youth justice realignment. Launched in 2012, it is the latest chapter in a decade-long commitment by New York State and New York City to improve the justice system for young …

The Debt Penalty: Exposing The Financial Barriers To Offender Reintegration, Douglas N. Evans

Publications and Research

Financial debt associated with legal system involvement is a pressing issue that affects the criminal justice system, offenders, and taxpayers. Mere contact with the criminal justice system often results in fees and fines that increase with progression through the system. Criminal justice fines and fees punish offenders and are designed to generate revenue for legal systems operating on limited budgets. However, fines and fees often fail to accomplish this second goal because many offenders are too poor to pay them. If they do not pay their financial obligations, they may be subject to late fees and interest requirements, all of …

Punishment Without End, Douglas N. Evans

Publications and Research

Criminal justice punishments are an investment that societies make to protect the safety and order of communities. Following decades of rising prison populations, however, U.S. policymakers are beginning to wonder if they have invested too much in punishment. Policies adopted in previous decades now incarcerate large numbers of Americans and impose considerable costs on states. Mass incarceration policies are costly and potentially iatrogenic—i.e., they may transform offenders into repeat offenders. Public officials and citizens alike often assume that known offenders pose a permanent risk of future offending. This belief entangles millions of offenders in the justice system for life, with …

Compensating Victims Of Crime, Douglas N. Evans

Publications and Research

Victims of violent crime are often unable to access financial compensation to offset the costs of victimization (e.g., medical, lost wages, funeral expenses) despite the massive amounts of money set aside for just that purpose. Currently, there is about $11 billion in the federal Crime Victims Fund (CVF). Less than 10 percent of this amount is allocated to state victim compensation programs. This report explores the funding mechanisms used by federal and state governments to compensate victims of crime, and it describes the administrative and policy problems in these systems. The report offers several recommendations for improvement. States have their …

Theorizing More Inclusive Cities: A Relational Model Of Boundary Transformation And Urban Research Agenda, Leigh Graham

Publications and Research

To generate more inclusive environments for marginalized urban communities of color demands a strategy that privileges symbolic boundary change and uses it as the inroad towards spatial changes. This paper theorizes a three step relational process of a) communicative democratic activism, b) "multicultural" capital brokers providing access to the policy making process, and c) practices of community building that reflect the role of cities as key sites for sociospatial boundary transformation. An emphasis on discursive and ideational change, relying on communicative democratic processes steeped in historical, comparative analysis opens up our minds towards different classification schemes for stigmatized groups. Participating …

"These Illegals": Personhood, Profit, And The Political Economy Of Punishment In Federal-Local Immigration Enforcement Partnerships, Daniel L. Stageman

Publications and Research

Contemporary popular discourse linking immigration and immigrants to crime has proved extremely difficult to dislodge, despite clear evidence that immigrant labor provides broad and direct economic benefits to a significant proportion of the US population. The criminalizing discourse directed at immigrants may in part be functional, by leading to restrictionist immigration policies and practices and subjecting immigrants to intensified economic exploitation.

This study examines the economic context in which state and local governments adopt restrictionist immigration policies and practices, and implicates the political economy of punishment (Rusche and Kirchheimer, Punishment and social structure. New York: Columbia University Press, 1939) …

Homicide By Neighborhood: Mapping New York City’S Violent Crime Drop, Preeti Chauhan, Lauren Kois

Publications and Research

Researchers, scholars, and policymakers interested in the falling rate of violent crime in New York City (NYC) have attempted to pinpoint causes of the welcome trend. Discovering the causes of the city’s crime drop may lead to important lessons for the city itself and may influence policy and practice throughout the state, nation, and perhaps other countries. Researchers have suggested a host of mechanisms that may explain the dramatic decline in violence, but two factors—misdemeanor policing and the transformation of drug markets—continue to receive the most attention. This report focuses on these factors in relation to gun-related homicide rates. It …

Pioneers Of Youth Justice Reform: Achieving System Change Using Resolution, Reinvestment, And Realignment Strategies, Douglas N. Evans

Publications and Research

In the past three decades, state and local governments implemented various reform strategies to reduce the youth justice system’s reliance on confinement facilities and serve as many youths as possible in their own homes or at least in their own communities when removal from the home is warranted. The various reform strategies may be conceptualized as relying on three distinct but interrelated mechanisms: resolution, reinvestment, and realignment (Butts and Evans 2011). Resolution refers to the use of managerial authority and administrative directives to influence system change; reinvestment entails using financial incentives to encourage system change, and realignment employs organizational and …

The French Prison System: Comparative Insights For Policy And Practice In New York And The United States, Lila Kazemian, Catrin Andersson

Publications and Research

Despite many differences between French and American correctional practices, the two countries have common challenges as well. This report offers a brief overview of the French prison system and describes how the elements of that system compare with the policies and practices of corrections agencies in New York and the United States.

Mental Health And Drug Disorders Less Common At Early Stages Of Juvenile Justice, Jeffrey A. Butts

Publications and Research

Youth in the juvenile justice system are at a higher risk for mental health disorders and substance abuse problems, but these differences in risk are often misunderstood. This databit looks at the prevalence of mental health and substance abuse and makes recommendations for early intervention and prevention programs.

Transfer Of Juveniles To Criminal Court Is Not Correlated With Falling Youth Violence, Jeffrey A. Butts

Publications and Research

Though it may seem that transferring youth to criminal court should lower youth violent crime, this analysis shows no relationship. This databit looks at the transfer rate and violent crime declines in the six states that reported juvenile arrests to the FBI.

Citizen Bunker: Archie Bunker As Working-Class Icon., Kathleen Collins

Publications and Research

Archie Bunker, the central character and patriarch of Norman Lear’s “All in the Family,” (1971-1979) has been referred to as an “everyman” and an “angry-man prototype” with “hard had prejudice.” The name Archie Bunker itself has become synonymous with a blue-collar, racially chauvinistic mentality. The title of the show’s pilot and theme song, “Those Were the Days,” emphasized Archie’s dream of a simpler (though idealized) time, a world that he could understand and upon which he could exert some control. In 1970s America, Archie seemed to feel that the world was against him – economically, socially, politically and culturally – …

Critical Bifocality And Circuits Of Privilege: Expanding Critical Ethnographic Theory And Design, Lois Weis, Michelle Fine

Publications and Research

Almost 10 years ago, in Working Method (2004), we argued for a critical theory of method for educational studies, which would analyze lives in the context of history, structure, and institutions, across the power lines of privilege and marginalization.

Resolution, Reinvestment, And Realignment: Three Strategies For Changing Juvenile Justice, Jeffrey A. Butts, Douglas N. Evans

Publications and Research

In recent decades, legislators and administrators have created innovative policies to reduce the demand for expensive state confinement and to supervise as many young offenders as possible in their own communities. This report reviews the history and development of these strategies and portrays their methods as following one of three models: resolution, reinvestment, and realignment.