Kennebec Journal / Morning Sentinel—Claudia Viles, Even After Tax Theft Conviction, Commands Community Favor
“It’s not unheard of for good people to commit crimes; in fact, it’s common,” said Jeffrey Butts, director of the John Jay College Research and Evaluation Center, a criminal justice academy in New York City. “Most of the people who get caught up in the justice system are not evil people in all areas of their life. A few are, but they’re a small proportion.” Continue reading Kennebec Journal / Morning Sentinel—Claudia Viles, Even After Tax Theft Conviction, Commands Community Favor
The Atlantic—Treating Young Offenders Like Adults Is Bad Parenting
“No one has ever been able to find direct, defensible evidence that the behavior of the system regarding juvenile versus adult jurisdiction plays a direct role in overall crime trends,” said Jeffrey Butts, director of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice’s Research and Evaluation Center. “Crime trends behave the way they behave, and they have a lot more to do with general conditions in the community and everything else. If you’re working in the system, you start developing the belief that you are in control of these trends. Whenever people look at it seriously, it’s never true.” Continue reading The Atlantic—Treating Young Offenders Like Adults Is Bad Parenting
The Atlantic—Judge’s Football Team Loses, Juvenile Sentences Go Up
Jeffrey Butts, the director of the Research and Evaluation Center at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, said the study seemed like “academic clickbait.” What are judges supposed to do, he asked rhetorically, not handle cases in the week following each unexpected loss? Butts is open to good data analysis, he said, and appreciates transparency, but he has concerns about what he sees as a movement toward using large data sets for things like predictive policing, where police use math and data analysis to pinpoint potential criminal activity. That may be acceptable as long as it’s one tool in many, he said, but data shouldn’t drive the entire justice system. Continue reading The Atlantic—Judge’s Football Team Loses, Juvenile Sentences Go Up
Reuters—Parole System Questioned After Murder of NBA Star’s Cousin
Some criminal justice experts caution that limiting early release programs or imposing harsher sentences could backfire by increasing costs, straining overcrowded prisons and eliminating incentives for prisoners to behave well while incarcerated. “It’s easy after the fact to say: ‘If I were king of the forest, I would never have let these two guys out,'” said Jeffrey Butts, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York who studies the effectiveness of criminal justice programs. Continue reading Reuters—Parole System Questioned After Murder of NBA Star’s Cousin
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