Author: JeffreyButts

Director, Research and Evaluation Center, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York
Monographs & Reports

Measurement Plan and Analytic Strategies for Evaluating the Mayor’s Action Plan for Neighborhood Safety

by JeffreyButts
Measurement Plan and Analytic Strategies for Evaluating the Mayor’s Action Plan for Neighborhood Safety

This second in a series of reports about the evaluation of the New York City Mayor’s Action Plan for Neighborhood Safety (MAP). This Evaluation Update: summarizes the goals and methods used to evaluate the Mayor’s Action Plan; describes the quasi-experimental design used to test the outcomes and impacts of MAP as well as the data sources assembled by the research team and how they are used; and portrays a logical framework the research team used initially to identify causal pathways through which various elements of MAP were intended to achieve their desired effect.

Trade

Nonprofit Quarterly—Community Nonprofits Reduce Gun Violence through Peer Networks

by JeffreyButts
Nonprofit Quarterly—Community Nonprofits Reduce Gun Violence through Peer Networks

The John Jay College of Criminal Justice Research and Evaluation Center analyzed the New York City experience with the Cure Violence model in 2017, seven years after the strategy was adopted. It found reductions in gun injuries of 37–50 percent in the South Bronx and Brooklyn. The center also documented a 14 percent reduction in attitudes supporting violence, with no change in control populations. However, more research is needed.

Presentations

California Probation, Parole & Correctional Association: 2018 Conference

by JeffreyButts
California Probation, Parole & Correctional Association: 2018 Conference

Justice practitioners and policymakers recognize the limited information available from official recidivism measures when agencies need to develop strong evidence of their own effectiveness. The wide array of alternative measures, however, can be overwhelming and many are either impossible or impractical from a data collection and data integration perspective. This training provides participants with added knowledge and skills with which to formulate a set of outcome measures that provide a fuller picture of the effectiveness of offender supervision and other justice interventions.

Regional Print

Nashville Tennessean—Violent Crime on the Rise as Nashville Grows, but East Nashville Bucks the Trend

by JeffreyButts
Nashville Tennessean—Violent Crime on the Rise as Nashville Grows, but East Nashville Bucks the Trend

Another explanation could be an affordable housing crisis exacerbated by Nashville's booming economy, said Jeffrey Butts, the director of the Research & Evaluation Center at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. This can be particularly true for some neighborhoods. “The social stresses of shared housing and multifamily housing increase the chances that adolescents become frustrated and alienated," Butts said, creating an environment conducive to more crime.

Monographs & Reports

Quasi-Experimental Comparison Design for Evaluating the Mayor’s Action Plan for Neighborhood Safety

by JeffreyButts
Quasi-Experimental Comparison Design for Evaluating the Mayor’s Action Plan for Neighborhood Safety

To evaluate the New York City Mayor’s Action Plan for Neighborhood Safety (MAP), an initiative to improve the safety of public housing developments, researchers estimated the counterfactual (no intervention) by selecting a set of comparison housing developments not involved in the initiative. The study relied on the statistical method known as propensity score analysis (PSA) to select the comparison group.

Academic Journals

Good Questions: Building Evaluation Evidence in a Competitive Policy Environment

by JeffreyButts
Good Questions: Building Evaluation Evidence in a Competitive Policy Environment

Experiments are also rarely able to reliably measure and isolate the effects of very complex justice interventions. Policymakers and practitioners in the justice sector should consider evaluation research as a portfolio of strategic investments in knowledge development. Randomized controlled trials are merely one asset in a broader investment strategy.

Varied & Misc

It’s Not About the Art; It’s About the Artist

by JeffreyButts
It’s Not About the Art; It’s About the Artist

We actually need young people who are bold, willing to challenge conventional thinking, and to break rules, but we also need them to respect others, to rely on logic rather than force, and to appreciate the corrosive effects of violence and exploitation. In short, our communities need powerful and creative young people who want to improve us and not simply to fight us. These should seem like obvious concepts to anyone working around the youth justice system, but it is often surprisingly difficult to implement them in practice.

Briefs

Gun Violence is not an “Inner City” Problem

by JeffreyButts
Gun Violence is not an “Inner City” Problem

Using data from the National Center for Health Statistics and the U.S. Census Bureau in states with sufficient data, this analysis tests whether states conform to the conventional narrative of “urban gun violence.” Of 33 states in the analysis, 19 failed to conform to the urban gun violence narrative. Gun homicides in those states are just as likely (often, more likely) to occur in small, rural communities.