Twin Cities Pioneer Press — Treating Violence like a Contagious Disease? Some Think this Might be the Way

As Jeffrey Butts, director of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice research and evaluation center in New York City, noted four years ago, “the public health approach of [Cure Violence] CV currently merits the label ‘promising’ rather than ‘effective.’” “CV, however, offers something to communities that other well-known violence reduction models cannot,” he added. “It is potentially very cost-efficient, and it places less demand on the political and administrative resources of law enforcement and the larger criminal justice system. ” Continue reading Twin Cities Pioneer Press — Treating Violence like a Contagious Disease? Some Think this Might be the Way

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. Continue reading Public Safety Trends in MAP Communities and Matched Comparison Areas

Estimating Causal Relationships Among Youth Justice Policies and Rates of Juvenile Confinement

Researchers used state-level data on youth justice policies and practices to explore the association between state policy environments and recent changes in the use of residential placements for adjudicated youth (i.e., confinement). The study assigned a score to each of the 50 states based on the extent to which their youth justice policy environments could be considered “progressive” as opposed to punitive or regressive. Continue reading Estimating Causal Relationships Among Youth Justice Policies and Rates of Juvenile Confinement