“If we don’t do this type of a program… the only thing we have is police and formal policies and protocols, and that’s no way to run a society,” said Jeffrey Butts, a professor at John Jay College who has studied the Cure Violence programs.
WBUR Public Radio: Here & Now
Police have announced a suspect in the Brooklyn subway shooting that left many wounded Tuesday. We discuss the implications of the apparently random gun violence with Jeffrey Butts, director of the Research and Evaluation Center at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
Baltimore Sun — After killings of 3 workers, Baltimore’s Safe Streets anti-violence program at a crossroads: ‘We have to continue to evolve’
Understanding what work is being done, anything that lets researchers “pull back the curtain,” is important, said Jeffrey Butts, director of the Research & Evaluation Center at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.
The Virginian-Pilot — In Portsmouth, Violence Interrupters Defuse Tense Scenes Before the Bullets Fly
Jeffrey Butts, a researcher at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, likens it to the decades-long — and eventually successful — campaign to end smoking. “So can that strategy be used to reduce the incidence of gun violence? And that’s the big question,” Butts said.
Neighbors at Risk
Shooting incidents reported in each New York City census block group were divided over the population to create yearly rates of shooting incidents. Researchers then ranked all CBGs based on their rates of shooting incidents and identified the 50 CBGs with the highest rates in each year from 2015 to 2021.
NYTimes — Shootings Rise in New York, Coloring Perceptions of City’s Safety
. “It reminds me of the 1990s, in the sense that every incident of violence becomes a major news story,” said Jeffrey Butts, director of the research and evaluation center at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
NY1— Shootings Rise in Bronx, Fall in Brooklyn, as Anti-gun Efforts Start
“If all we ever do is call the police in, and we never invest in those other things, we’re just living in a police state,” said Jeffrey Butts, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. “We sort of did that in the ’80s and ‘90s, and didn't get much back from it.”
CSM — CURBING CHICAGO CRIME, ONE JIGSAW CUT AT A TIME
“There’s a whole garden of approaches, with different styles and modalities and theories of change,” says Jeffrey Butts, director of the Research and Evaluation Center at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City. “What’s new, or seems new, is that we’ve reached the point that relying on law enforcement for all of our public safety problems became too obviously problematic.”
San Francisco Chronicle — Crime Statistics and Politics are a Deadly Mix
“Sadly, I’ve dedicated my life to using facts and data to influence crime policy. I don’t think we’re any better at it than we were 30 years ago,” Butts said. He has seen both Democrats and Republicans try to use crime stats to scare voters. It’s hard to stop them because “politics was way out ahead of information and the facts.”
Univision News — Increases in Violent Crime
Jeffrey Butts interviewed by Andrea Linares about violent crime surges around the U.S. as President Biden unveils his plan to reduce nationwide violence.
ABC7 Newscenter, New York, June 10, 2021
Jeffrey Butts interviewed by N.J. Burkett of ABC7 New York on June 10, 2021 about the rise in shooting incidents across New York City.
MSNBC — The Sunday Show with Jonathan Capehart
"Researchers can at least eliminate possible explanations. So, you can look at data and test hypotheses. One hypothesis that has been around (you alluded to it) is that it’s somehow related to Defunding the Police. So, there have been researchers who have looked at police budgets, and changes from year to year... and there’s really no relationship there.”
Fox5 New York — Chinatown Assault Suspect was Arrested Last Week on Other Charges
Police often say the criminal justice system is a revolving door but Jeffrey Butts of John Jay College of Criminal Justice said his research proves otherwise. "The vast majority of people who are released pretrial do not get arrested again while they are waiting for trial," he said. "About 5%, at most, of people who are arrested and waiting trial and then released get rearrested prior to their trial."
Vox — No, Biden did not call Black people “superpredators”
Violent crimes committed by juveniles rose a precipitous 64 percent from 1980 to 1994 according to a March 2002 study by the Urban Institute’s Jeffrey Butts and Jeremy Travis. This figure includes forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault, but to underscore the horror of this era, arrests for murder alone “jumped 99 percent during that time.”
WNYC –30 Issues: Who is the Real Law and Order Candidate?
Participated in a discussion as part of the Brian Lehrer show on WNYC.
The Intercept — Credible Messengers: Baltimore’s Violence Interrupters Confront Shootings, the Coronavirus, and Corrupt Cops
Jeffrey Butts, director of the Research & Evaluation Center at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, believes there are productive ways for police and violence interrupters to work together.
Reported Crime in MAP Communities Compared with Other NYC Areas
While effects are modest and largely found in misdemeanor offenses, this rigorous test of the Mayor’s Action Plan for Neighborhood Safety indicates that New York City’s effort to improve the safety of public housing communities was beginning to show benefits by the end of 2019. Based on these findings, the results of MAP are promising.
Albany Times Union — Reason for Drop in Youth Arrests Hard to Pin Down
Over the last five years the number of police stops and arrests involving Capital Region youths has fallen more than 45 percent, according to state data. It's a stunning drop -- but one without a clear single reason, say law enforcement and juvenile justice system professionals. Several factors are likely in play, including an overall drop in crime in the country, changes in the drug trade, increased use of alternatives to incarceration and changes in youth culture, said Jeffrey Butts, director of the Research and Evaluation Center at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. “I’ve been doing this for a long time, tracking trends, and something definitely feels different than it did 20 years ago,” Butts said.
Youth Still Leading Violent Crime Drop: 1988-2018
Based on the latest statistics compiled by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the national violent crime arrest rate declined 38 percent overall between 1988 and 2018, but the steepest declines were observed among youth ages 10 to 14 (–53%) and 15 to 17 (–54%). The arrest rate for 18-20 year-olds dropped 47 percent while the arrest rates for adults ages 21-24 and 25-49 declined 42 percent and 23 percent, respectively.
Bangor Daily News — Maine Kids are Actually Bringing Fewer Weapons to School
The decline in possession of weapons at school and in the prevalence of weapon-related threats in schools also holds true for overall juvenile crime, according to Jeffrey Butts, director of the Research and Evaluation Center at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City. “One popular theory is that the drug trade was much more dangerous 30 years ago. Kids that lived in neighborhoods with active drug sales going on often felt that they needed to have a gun on them to protect themselves,” he said. “The daily threat from street-corner drug sales has gone way down.”
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.
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.
Mixed News About Youth Violence in Recent FBI Crime Data
In 1993, a peak year for violent crime, police agencies nationwide reported about 13 under-age-18 murder arrests for every 100,000 youth ages 10 to 17. The youth arrest rate for murder dropped 79 percent between 1993 and 2017.
The Guardian — US Violent Crime and Murder Down After Two Years of Increases, FBI Data Shows
“You lost 50lb. You gained back a couple. You’re not fat,” Jeffrey Butts, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said in 2016, in response to the 2015 uptick. “That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t look at your behavior, because the trend is not good.”
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.
Jeffrey Butts 