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335 Pages·2010·2.43 MB·English
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Committee on Assessing the Research Program of the National Institute of Justice Charles F. Wellford, Betty M. Chemers, and Julie A. Schuck, Editors Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education Strengthening the National Institute of Justice THE NATIONAL ACADEMIES PRESS 500 Fifth Street, N.W. Washington, DC 20001 NOTICE: The project that is the subject of this report was approved by the Govern- ing Board of the National Research Council, whose members are drawn from the councils of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineer- ing, and the Institute of Medicine. The members of the committee responsible for the report were chosen for their special competences and with regard for appropri- ate balance. This study was supported by Contract No. 2007-IJ-CX-0001 between the National Academy of Sciences and the U.S. Department of Justice. Any opinions, fndings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily refect the views of the organization or agencies that provided support for the project. International Standard Book Number-13: 978-0-309-15635-6 International Standard Book Number-10: 0-309-15635-1 Additional copies of this report are available from the National Academies Press, 500 Fifth Street, NW, Lockbox 285, Washington, DC 20055; (800) 624-6242 or (202) 334-3313 (in the Washington metropolitan area); Internet, http://www.nap. edu. Copyright 2010 by the National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America Suggested citation: National Research Council. (2010). Strengthening the National Institute of Justice. Committee on Assessing the Research Program of the National Institute of Justice, C.F. Wellford, B.M. Chemers, and J.A. Schuck, Editors. Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. Copyright © National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. Strengthening the National Institute of Justice The National Academy of Sciences is a private, nonproft, self-perpetuating society of distinguished scholars engaged in scientifc and engineering research, dedicated to the furtherance of science and technology and to their use for the general welfare. Upon the authority of the charter granted to it by the Congress in 1863, the Acad- emy has a mandate that requires it to advise the federal government on scientifc and technical matters. Dr. Ralph J. Cicerone is president of the National Academy of Sciences. The National Academy of Engineering was established in 1964, under the charter of the National Academy of Sciences, as a parallel organization of outstanding en- gineers. It is autonomous in its administration and in the selection of its members, sharing with the National Academy of Sciences the responsibility for advising the federal government. The National Academy of Engineering also sponsors engineer- ing programs aimed at meeting national needs, encourages education and research, and recognizes the superior achievements of engineers. Dr. Charles M. Vest is presi- dent of the National Academy of Engineering. The Institute of Medicine was established in 1970 by the National Academy of Sciences to secure the services of eminent members of appropriate professions in the examination of policy matters pertaining to the health of the public. The Insti- tute acts under the responsibility given to the National Academy of Sciences by its congressional charter to be an adviser to the federal government and, upon its own initiative, to identify issues of medical care, research, and education. Dr. Harvey V. Fineberg is president of the Institute of Medicine. The National Research Council was organized by the National Academy of Sci- ences in 1916 to associate the broad community of science and technology with the Academy’s purposes of furthering knowledge and advising the federal government. Functioning in accordance with general policies determined by the Academy, the Council has become the principal operating agency of both the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering in providing services to the government, the public, and the scientifc and engineering communities. The Coun- cil is administered jointly by both Academies and the Institute of Medicine. Dr. Ralph J. Cicerone and Dr. Charles M. Vest are chair and vice chair, respectively, of the National Research Council. www.national-academies.org Copyright © National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. Strengthening the National Institute of Justice Copyright © National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. Strengthening the National Institute of Justice COMMITTEE ON ASSESSINg THE RESEARCH PROgRAM OF THE NATIONAL INSTITuTE OF JuSTICE CHARLES F. WELLFORD (Chair), Department of Criminology, University of Maryland GEORGE F. SENSABAUGH, JR. (Vice Chair), School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley CHARLES E. ANDERSON, JR., Engineering Dynamics Department, Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio ROBERT D. CRUTCHFIELD, Department of Sociology, University of Washington JOEL S. ENGEL, JSE Consulting, Armonk, New York JOHN L. HAGAN, Department of Sociology, Northwestern University ADELE V. HARRELL, Independent Consultant, Washington, DC DAVID D. JENSEN, Knowledge Discovery Library, University of Massachusetts, Amherst TRACEY L. MEARES, Yale Law School EDWIN MEESE III, Heritage Foundation, Washington, DC DANIEL S. NAGIN, H.J. Heinz School of Public Policy, Carnegie Mellon University ALEX R. PIQUERO, College of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Florida State University CHARLES H. RAMSEY, Philadelphia Police Department MARY ANN SAAR, Independent Consultant, Baltimore JAY A. SIEGEL, Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Indiana University–Purdue University, Indianapolis CAROL H. WEISS, Harvard Graduate School of Education, Harvard University BETTY M. CHEMERS, Study Director CAROL PETRIE, Director, Committee on Law and Justice JULIE ANNE SCHUCK, Research Associate JACQUELINE R. SOVDE, Program Associate Copyright © National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. Strengthening the National Institute of Justice COMMITTEE ON LAW AND JuSTICE JAMES Q. WILSON (Chair), University of California, Los Angeles PHILIP J. COOK (Vice Chair), Sanford Institute of Public Policy, Duke University CARL C. BELL, Community Mental Health Council, Inc., Chicago ROBERT D. CRUTCHFIELD, Department of Sociology, University of Washington GARY LaFREE, National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, University of Maryland JANET L. LAURITSEN, Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Missouri, St. Louis GLENN C. LOURY, Department of Economics, Brown University CHARLES F. MANSKI, Department of Economics, Northwestern University TRACEY L. MEARES, Yale Law School TERRIE E. MOFFITT, Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Duke University RUTH D. PETERSON, Department of Sociology, Criminal Justice Research Center, Ohio State University ROBERT J. SAMPSON, Department of Sociology, Harvard University JEREMY TRAVIS, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York DAVID WEISBURD, Department of Administration of Justice, Center for Evidence Based Crime Policy, George Mason University PAUL K. WORMELI, IJIS Institute, Ashburn, Virginia JANE L. ROSS, Acting Director BETTY M. CHEMERS, Senior Program Offcer LINDA DEPUGH, Administratie Assistant i Copyright © National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. Strengthening the National Institute of Justice Preface xperience strongly suggests that few people or organizations seek public assessments of their performance. This is especially true for Egovernment agencies, for which the consequences of such reviews can be painful and seldom seem to result in agency enhancements. It was therefore both surprising and exciting when the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) asked the National Research Council (NRC) to conduct an assessment of its operations, research, and impact. Although NIJ was prompted to seek this review by the requirements of the Offce of Management and Budget’s Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART) process and the results of some assessments by the Government Accountability Offce, the agency’s genuine interest in having a comprehensive and objective assessment impressed me as well as the other members of the committee. Having worked at NIJ for a year following completion of my graduate work and in a number of differ- ent capacities over the years since then, I knew how important the decision of the NIJ leadership to seek this review was to the committee’s ability to conduct the assessment. While the committee received admirable cooperation from NIJ and other components of the U.S. Department of Justice, the reader will see that our assessment was at times limited by the absence of basic data describing NIJ’s work and accomplishments. Time and again, information that any effective agency would be expected to maintain as part of its review of its operations was diffcult to access or not available. We detail these prob- lems in the report and call for changes in management and record-keeping that, if implemented, will mean that future assessments will not face this problem. ii Copyright © National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. Strengthening the National Institute of Justice iii PREFACE A vibrant and effective federal research agency addressing issues of crime and justice continues to be vital to an improved ability to reduce crime and increase justice. The committee concluded this after a careful review of NIJ and a consideration of the role that other federal, state, and nonproft orga- nizations can and do play in advancing knowledge about crime and justice. Nothing in this report should be construed to suggest otherwise. We expect there will be debate about some of our recommendations, but there should be no debate on whether an NIJ is important to facing the “challenge of crime in a free society.” This report is the product of collective contributions. We could not have completed our work without the assistance of the NRC staff who provided wise counsel as well as invaluable support in drafting our report, and of numerous scholars, practitioners, policy offcials, and program man- gers who met with the committee and provided the information, data, and research necessary for our assessment. We are grateful for the involvement of staff from NIJ. The director, deputy directors, and division chiefs briefed the committee on their pro- grams and felded numerous questions. These staff included David Hagy, director; Marc Caplan, chief, Operational Technologies Division; Christine Crossland, acting chief, Violence and Victimization Research Division; Thomas Feucht, executive science advisor and previous director of the Of- fce of Research and Evaluation; William Ford, acting chief, Information and Sensor Technology Division; Nancy Merritt, chief, Justice Systems Research Division; John Morgan, director, Offce of Science and Technol- ogy; Winifred Reed, chief, Crime Control and Prevention Research Divi- sion; Mike Sheppo, chief, Investigative and Forensics Sciences Division; Cindy Smith, chief, International Center, Offce of the Director; and Edwin Zedlewski, senior science advisor. We also recognize the NIJ staff that as- sisted the committee in assembling documents and data on the agency and clarifying information on their programs. These included Portia Graham, associate director, Offce of Operations; Jolene Hernon, director, Offce of Communications; Angela Moore Parmley, acting director, Offce of Re- search and Evaluation; John Picarelli, social science analyst; and George Tillery, associate director, Offce of Science and Technology. A special note of thanks goes to Patrick Clark, senior social science analyst, and Karen Stern, social science analyst, who served as the NIJ liaisons to the committee. We also thank the many individuals who served as presenters and discussants at our meetings and provided perspective on NIJ from the feld as well as inside the Department of Justice. These included Richard Thornburgh, former U.S. Attorney General (1988-1991); Janet Reno, former U.S. Attorney General (1993-2001); Alfred Blumstein, J. Erik Jonsson uni- versity professor, urban systems and operations research, Carnegie Mellon Copyright © National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. Strengthening the National Institute of Justice PREFACE ix University; Charles Bostian, alumni distinguished professor, electrical and computer engineering, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and University; Ronnie Earle, district attorney, Travis County, Texas; Michael J. Farrell, deputy commissioner, New York City Police Department; Jeff Frazier, global justice and public safety director, Cisco Systems, Inc.; Bruce Goldberger, professor, toxicology, University of Florida College of Medicine and ex offcio trustee of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences; Martin F. Horn, commis- sioner, Corrections and Probation, New York City; Gary LaFree, professor, criminology and criminal justice and director of the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, University of Maryland; John M. Pellegrino, director, Sensors and Electron Devices Di- rectorate, U.S. Army Research Laboratory; Richard Rosenfeld, professor, criminology and criminal justice, University of Missouri; David G. Ross, former circuit court judge, Seventh Judicial Circuit, Maryland; and Howard Silver, executive director, Consortium of Social Science Associations. We are particularly grateful that several former Department of Justice offcials took time out of their schedules to meet with committee members. We thank former NIJ directors Sarah Hart, James K. Stewart, and Jeremy Travis for their perspectives on challenges facing NIJ as well as NIJ’s role in priority setting and dissemination, and former assistant attorneys general, Offce of Justice Programs (OJP), Deborah Daniels and Laurie Robinson for their perspectives, respectively, on the need for a criminal justice research institute and on transition activities of the new administration and their effect on NIJ. Laurie Robinson, at the time she briefed the committee, was director, Master of Science in Criminology Program at the Jerry Lee Center of Criminology, University of Pennsylvania, and has since been reappointed as assistant attorney general, OJP. We also received briefngs from agency directors and program division directors of several federal research agencies. We thank those individuals who provided perspective on the roles and responsibilities of a research agency: Wilson Compton, director, Division of Epidemiology, Services and Prevention Research, National Institute of Drug Abuse; Rolf Dietrich, deputy director, Research Division, U.S. Department of Homeland Security; Christopher Doyle, director, Infrastructure and Geophysical Division, U.S. Department of Homeland Security; Naomi Goldstein, director, Planning, Research and Evaluation, Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; Wayne Goodman, director, Division of Adult Translational Research, National Institute of Mental Health; Patricia Gruber, director of research, Offce of Naval Research; Susan Haire, project offcer, Law and Science Program, National Science Foundation; Ralph Hingson, acting director, and Vivian Faden, deputy director, Division of Epidemiology and Prevention, National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism; David Lightfoot, assistant director, Social, Copyright © National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.

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