Category: Monographs & Reports

Monographs & Reports

Easily Overstated

by JeffreyButts
Easily Overstated

Policymakers, advocates, and even some researchers claim that youth confinement rates across the United States dropped in recent years due to changes in policy and practice. Such claims remain unproven, but voters and elected officials are inclined to accept them as factual because they are offered by reputable agencies and repeated in news media sources. Without reliable evidence, however, the notion that state-level youth confinement rates fall primarily in response to progressive policy reforms is merely appealing rhetoric.

Monographs & Reports

Public Safety Trends in MAP Communities and Matched Comparison Areas

by JeffreyButts
Public Safety Trends in MAP Communities and Matched Comparison Areas

Was the presence of the MAP initiative in some NYCHA developments associated with greater improvements in crime and victimization outcomes compared with the same outcomes in NYCHA developments not involved in MAP? The results presented here do not answer the question in full, but they offer an early look at efforts by the research team to generate more precise answers. Additional analyses are needed to rule out competing explanations and to examine the complex series of relationships among all the study’s variables. Based on the preliminary findings in this report, however, the results of MAP to date may be considered promising.

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.

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.

Monographs & Reports

Recidivism Reconsidered

by JeffreyButts
Recidivism Reconsidered

Recidivism is not a comprehensive measure of success for criminal justice in general or for community corrections specifically. When used to judge the effects of justice interventions on behavior, the concept of recidivism may even be harmful, as it often reinforces the racial and class biases underlying much of the justice system. We encourage justice systems to rely on more flexible and more responsive outcome measures. Community corrections agencies should encourage policymakers to rely on outcomes related to criminal desistance and the social integration of people on probation or parole. Measures focused on social development and community wellbeing are more useful for evaluating the effects of justice interventions, and they are less likely to distort policy discussions.

Monographs & Reports

Positive Outcomes

by JeffreyButts
Positive Outcomes

Measuring positive outcomes in youth justice requires a shift away from recidivism as the sole indicator of program effectiveness. A youth justice system embracing the PYD approach would gauge its success by tracking positive youth outcomes, such as the formation of strong and supportive relationships, academic engagement, labor market readiness, and improved socio-emotional skills.

Monographs & Reports

Repairing Trust

by JeffreyButts
Repairing Trust

As part of an ongoing evaluation of the Cure Violence strategy, researchers found the program was potentially associated with less support for the use of violence and greater confidence in police. In a series of neighborhood surveys, young men in areas with Cure Violence programs were less likely to use violence to settle personal disputes and more likely to rely on law enforcement.

Monographs & Reports

The Effects of Cure Violence in the South Bronx and East New York, Brooklyn

by JeffreyButts
The Effects of Cure Violence in the South Bronx and East New York, Brooklyn

Promising evidence that the public health approach to violence reduction championed by Cure Violence may be capable of creating safe and healthy communities. "A recent evaluation of the NYC program is perhaps most convincing. It was a very sophisticated analysis, done by experienced researchers using police data, hospital data, interviews and surveys. It showed not only reductions in shootings by up to 63 percent, and a change in norms (towards rejecting the use of violence). It also showed that the program resulted in an increase in confidence in police. We’ve heard from several people that this study convinced them even more that the Cure Violence approach really worked." - Gary Slutkin quoted in the Washington Post - June 18, 2018.

Briefs, Monographs & Reports

Young Men in Neighborhoods with Cure Violence Programs Adopt Attitudes Less Supportive of Violence

by JeffreyButts
Young Men in Neighborhoods with Cure Violence Programs Adopt Attitudes Less Supportive of Violence

Young men living in neighborhoods with Cure Violence programs reported significant reductions in their willingness to use violence compared with men in similar areas without programs. Regression analysis explained 20 percent of the total variance in violence-related norms with significant reductions in willingness to use violence among young men in Cure Violence areas (–14%) and no significant change among residents in matched comparison neighborhoods.

Monographs & Reports

Savings Rate

by JeffreyButts
Savings Rate

YAP services generate considerable savings by reducing the need for commitment and out-of-home placement among court-involved youth. Based on average lengths of stay in out-of-home placements in Florida and the actual placement settings used for committed youth in this study, we estimate that the State of Florida saves more than $2.7 Million in avoided placement costs for every 1,000 youth referred to YAP rather than DJJ probation.