Criminology Commons^™

Youth Advocate Programs (Yap) Helps To Keep Youth Out Of Secure Facilities And Living In Their Communities, Douglas N. Evans, Sheyla A. Delgado

Publications and Research

This report, conducted by the Research and Evaluation Center at John Jay College, examines the impact of Youth Advocate Programs, Inc. (YAP) on youth living situations. The study, based on a sample of 1,851 youth aged 14-17, found that YAP participation was associated with increased community living and reduced reliance on secure confinement. While nearly 85% of youth were living in the community upon entry, over 87% remained in the community six to 12 months after discharge, with less than 5% in secure placement. This suggests YAP’s effectiveness in helping youth remain in their homes and engage with community resources.

Youth Advocate Programs' (Yap) Approach To Wrap-Around Services Appears Intensive And Flexible, Douglas N. Evans, Sheyla A. Delgado

Publications and Research

This report, conducted by the Research & Evaluation Center at John Jay College, evaluates the impact of Youth Advocate Programs, Inc. (YAP) on high-risk youth referred by the juvenile justice system. The study, based on 3,523 cases of youth aged 11-18, found that YAP provides intensive, short-term services with an average length of stay of 17 weeks. On average, youth received 173 total service hours, with some receiving up to 250 hours or more. The findings highlight the program's flexibility in accommodating individual needs, providing a significant amount of advocacy contact and support to youth and their families.

Most High Risk Youth Referred To Youth Advocate Programs, Inc. Remain Arrest Free And In Their Communities During Yap Participation, Douglas N. Evans, Sheyla A. Delgado

Publications and Research

This report, conducted by the Research & Evaluation Center at John Jay College, assesses Youth Advocate Programs, Inc. (YAP), which offers community-based services to high-risk youth to reduce reliance on out-of-home placements. Analyzing 3,523 juvenile justice-referred cases of youth aged 11-18, the study finds that YAP effectively serves the highest-risk youth, with judicial authorities showing confidence in referring these youth to the program. The findings demonstrate YAP’s commitment to providing intensive, community-based services aimed at long-term client well-being and reducing the need for institutional placements.

Denormalizing Violence: Evaluation Framework For A Public Health Model Of Violence Prevention, Jeffrey A. Butts, Lindsay Bostwick, Jeremy Porter

Publications and Research

John Jay College's Research and Evaluation Center evaluated the effectiveness of the Cure Violence approach to violence reduction. Between April 2013 and February 2014, researchers began the project by visiting Cure Violence sites in New York City and Chicago, the home base for Cure Violence. The research team observed the program's operation and assessed the model's suitability for detailed evaluation. The report addresses the operations of the Cure Violence model and how it differs from other approaches for reducing gun violence. It reviews the evidence underlying these models and proposes an agenda for future evaluation research.

Line Drawing: Raising The Minimum Age Of Criminal Court Jurisdiction In New York, Jeffrey A. Butts, John K. Roman

Publications and Research

This report was designed to inform New York's 2014 state commission on raising the age at which juveniles were charged as adults in New York courts. The report includes a review of existing evidence that supports raising the minimum age of criminal court jurisdiction in New York, describes the critical role economic consequences often play in such policy debates, and suggests how lawmakers should move forward by projecting the costs and benefits of reform transparently and objectively.

Saturation Foot-Patrol In A High-Violence Area: A Quasi-Experimental Evaluation, Eric L. Piza, Brian A. O'Hara

Publications and Research

This study incorporates a quasi-experimental design to evaluate a saturation foot-patrol initiative in Newark, NJ. Violent crime was measured for one year prior and during the initiative within the target area, a surrounding catchment area, and two separate control areas. The overall findings provide further sup- port for foot-patrol as a crime prevention tactic. Total street violence as well as the disaggregate categories of murder, shootings, and nondomestic aggravated assault decreased within the target area absent of any displacement effects. However, robbery suffered from substantial levels of both temporal and spatial displacement, showing saturation foot-patrol to have varying impact on …

Analyzing The Influence Of Micro-Level Factors On Cctv Camera Effect., Eric L. Piza, Joel M. Caplan, Leslie W. Kennedy

Publications and Research

Objectives Despite the popularity of closed circuit television (CCTV), evidence of its crime prevention capabilities is inconclusive. Research has largely reported CCTV effect as ‘‘mixed’’ without explaining this variance. The current study contributes to the literature by testing the influence of several micro-level factors on changes in crime levels within CCTV areas of Newark, NJ.

Methods Viewsheds, denoting the line-of-sight of CCTV cameras, were units of analysis (N = 117). Location quotients, controlling for viewshed size and control-area crime incidence, measured changes in the levels of six crime categories, from the pre-installation period to the post-installation period. Ordinary least squares …

A Plague On Both Your Houses? Risks, Repeats, And Reconsiderations Of Urban Residential Burglary, William D. Moreto, Eric L. Piza, Joel M. Caplan

Publications and Research

Research has shown that mapping techniques are useful in forecasting future crime events. However, the majority of prospective mapping techniques has focused on the event-dependent influence of instigator incidents on subsequent incidents and does not explicitly incorporate the risk heterogeneity of the setting. The study here discussed is a modest attempt to address this issue by using a two-step process: first, using risk terrain modeling, we operationalized the “environmental backcloth,” (the risk heterogeneity of an area) to forecast locations of residential burglaries in the urban city of Newark, New Jersey. Second, using the near repeat calculator, we assessed the variability …

Spatial Risk Factors Of Felonious Battery To Police Officers, Joel M. Caplan, Philip L. Marotta, Eric L. Piza, Leslie W. Kennedy

Publications and Research

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the spatial influence of features of the physical environment on the risk of aggression toward law enforcement.

Design/methodology/approach – The spatial analytic technique, risk terrain modeling was performed on felonious battery data provided by the Chicago Police Department.

Findings – Out of the 991 batteries against law enforcement officers (LEOs) in Chicago, 11 features of the physical environment were identified as presenting a statistically significant spatial risk of battery to LEOs. Calls for service within three blocks of foreclosures and/or within a dense area of problem buildings pose as much …

The Growth Of Incarceration In The United States: Exploring Causes And Consequences, Jeremy Travis, Bruce Western, F. Stevens Redburn

Publications and Research

After decades of stability from the 1920s to the early 1970s, the rate of incarceration in the United States more than quadrupled in the past four decades. The Committee on the Causes and Consequences of High Rates of Incarceration in the United States was established under the auspices of the National Research Council, supported by the National Institute of Justice and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, to review evidence on the causes and consequences of these high incarceration rates and the implications of this evidence for public policy.

Our work encompassed research on, and analyses of, the …

Joint Utility Of Event- Dependent And Environmental Crime Analysis Techniques For Violent Crime Forecasting, Joel M. Caplan, Leslie W. Kennedy, Eric L. Piza

Publications and Research

Violent crime incidents occurring in Irvington, New Jersey, in 2007 and 2008 are used to assess the joint analytical capabilities of point pattern analysis, hotspot mapping, near-repeat analysis, and risk terrain modeling. One approach to crime analysis suggests that the best way to predict future crime occurrence is to use past behavior, such as actual incidents or collections of incidents, as indicators of future behavior. An alternative approach is to consider the environment in which crimes occur and identify features of the landscape that would be conducive to crime. Thanks to advances in geographic information system technology and federally funded …

"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) …

Stage As Street: Representation At The Juncture Of The Arts And Justice, E. Gabriel Dattatreyan, Daniel L. Stageman

Publications and Research

Arts educators working with court-involved youth face a set of complex and imbricated challenges. First, how do we gain the interest of the young people we would have participate in what we imagine are col-laborative and mutually generative projects? Second, how do we mediate representational tensions when the project is not solely therapeutic but has a broader public pedagogical purpose—to disrupt the simplistic and pathologizing discourses of poverty and violence that so often capture young men and women of color in the United States? (Bourgois, 2002; Noguera, 2008). Third, and not least, how do we navigate the institutional settings where …

Alchemy And Inquiry: Reflections On An Inside-Out Research Roundtable, Sarah Allred, Angela Bryant, Simone Weil Davis, Kurt Fowler, Phil Goodman, Jim Nolan, Lori Pompa, Barbara Sherr Roswell, Daniel L. Stageman

Publications and Research

In 2008, The Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program convened a Research Committee to (1) facilitate a collective, critical, and professional consciousness about social justice, crime, and incarceration through the exploration of the Inside-Out program pedagogy, impact, and effectiveness; (2) develop and encourage proposals for various types of research that focus on The Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program; and (3) establish ethical guidelines for inquiry that would meet and exceed the federal human subjects guidelines in research practices. In fall 2012, Research Committee members Sarah Allred, Angela Bryant, Phil Goodman, Kurt Fowler, Jim Nolan, Lori Pompa, and Dan Stageman joined with Simone Davis …

Greece In Crisis: An Interview With Despina Lalaki, Despina Lalaki

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

The Greek Crisis As Racketeering And Organized Crime, Despina Lalaki

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Is The Punishment More Certain? An Analysis Of Cctv Detections And Enforcement, Eric L. Piza, Joel M. Caplan, Leslie W. Kennedy

Publications and Research

The primary preventive mechanism of CCTV is considered to be deterrence. However, the relationship between CCTV and deterrence has been left impli- cit. Empirical research has yet to directly test whether CCTV increases the certainty of punishment, a key component of the deterrence doctrine. This study analyzes CCTV’s relation to punishment certainty in Newark, NJ. Across eight crime categories, CCTV and 9-1-1 calls-for-service case processing times and enforcement rates are compared through Mann-Whitney U and Fisher’s Exact tests, respectively, with a Holm-Bonferroni procedure correcting for multiple comparisons. ANOVA and negative binomial regression models further analyze the frequency of CCTV activity …

Risk Clusters, Hotspots, And Spatial Intelligence: Risk Terrain Modeling As An Algorithm For Police Resource Allocation Strategies, Leslie W. Kennedy, Joel M. Caplan, Eric L. Piza

Publications and Research

The study reported here follows the suggestion by Caplan et al. (Justice Q, 2010) that risk terrain modeling (RTM) be developed by doing more work to elaborate, operationalize, and test variables that would provide added value to its application in police operations. Building on the ideas presented by Caplan et al., we address three important issues related to RTM that sets it apart from current approaches to spatial crime analysis. First, we address the selection criteria used in determining which risk layers to include in risk terrain models. Second, we compare the ‘‘best model’’ risk terrain derived from our analysis …

Policing: A Sociologist’S Response To An Anthropological Account, Peter Moskos

Publications and Research

Social science writing should not ape quantitative science in format, structure, or style. If we can’t explain ourselves to others in a style both illuminating and interesting, we won’t and don’t deserve to be taken seriously. Too many in the Ivory Tower cling to the belief that research and academic writing must conform to a “scientific” format. Quality writing is more art than science. To be relevant, writing need not be – indeed should not be – rooted in a limited model of “hypothesis, replicable experiment, findings, discussion.” The more jargon and sociobabble we anthropologists, sociologists, and ethnographers spew out, …

Digitizing Criminals: Web Delivery Of A Century On The Cheap., Ellen A. Sexton, Ellen Belcher Dr.

Publications and Research

This article presents the process, challenges and lessons learned from carrying out a small digital project to create a web resource of unique historic materials related to crime in New York City. All aspects of digital project management are discussed including selection, infrastructure, budgeting, workflow and delivery. Experiences from project administration, including management of a combination in-house and outsourced digitization and metadata are discussed. Formation and management of the resulting web resource is explained, which is the product of a creative amalgamation of commercial and open source software. Challenges encountered are presented with suggestions for practical solutions and considerations …