TY - BOOK AU - National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine A2 - Abigail Allen A2 - Emily Backes TI - Crime Rates During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Proceedings of a Workshop—in Brief DO - 10.17226/26920 PY - 2023 UR - https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/26920/crime-rates-during-the-covid-19-pandemic-proceedings-of-a PB - The National Academies Press CY - Washington, DC LA - English KW - Behavioral and Social Sciences AB - The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Committee on Law and Justice convened a workshop through its Planning Committee on Crime Rates during the SARS-CoV-2 or COVID-19 pandemic on November 10, 2022, to explore crime rate changes during the pandemic, potential explanations for those rates, and opportunities for future methods, data, and research. Specifically, it sought to (1) explore existing data on the trends in multiple criminal offenses during the pandemic; (2) explore existing explanations for the crime rate changes in multiple offense types during the pandemic for their scope, logical consistency, empirical support, and limitations, with special attention to explanations related to the pandemic and associated population restrictions (e.g., stay at home orders, social gathering restrictions, etc.), as well as the diffusion and availability of firearms; and (3) discuss methodological issues, data infrastructure needs, and research gaps to inform understanding of crime problems and rates. This publication summarizes the presentation and discussion of the workshop. ER - TY - BOOK AU - National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine A2 - Janet L. Lauritsen A2 - Daniel L. Cork TI - Modernizing Crime Statistics: Report 1: Defining and Classifying Crime SN - DO - 10.17226/23492 PY - 2016 UR - https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/23492/modernizing-crime-statistics-report-1-defining-and-classifying-crime PB - The National Academies Press CY - Washington, DC LA - English KW - Behavioral and Social Sciences KW - Surveys and Statistics AB - To derive statistics about crime – to estimate its levels and trends, assess its costs to and impacts on society, and inform law enforcement approaches to prevent it – a conceptual framework for defining and thinking about crime is virtually a prerequisite. Developing and maintaining such a framework is no easy task, because the mechanics of crime are ever evolving and shifting: tied to shifts and development in technology, society, and legislation. Interest in understanding crime surged in the 1920s, which proved to be a pivotal decade for the collection of nationwide crime statistics. Now established as a permanent agency, the Census Bureau commissioned the drafting of a manual for preparing crime statistics—intended for use by the police, corrections departments, and courts alike. The new manual sought to solve a perennial problem by suggesting a standard taxonomy of crime. Shortly after the Census Bureau issued its manual, the International Association of Chiefs of Police in convention adopted a resolution to create a Committee on Uniform Crime Records —to begin the process of describing what a national system of data on crimes known to the police might look like. The key distinction between the rigorous classification proposed in this report and the “classifications” that have come before in U.S. crime statistics is that it is intended to partition the entirety of behaviors that could be considered criminal offenses into mutually exclusive categories. Modernizing Crime Statistics: Report 1: Defining and Classifying Crime assesses and makes recommendations for the development of a modern set of crime measures in the United States and the best means for obtaining them. This first report develops a new classification of crime by weighing various perspectives on how crime should be defined and organized with the needs and demands of the full array of crime data users and stakeholders. ER - TY - BOOK AU - National Research Council A2 - Albert J. Reiss, Jr. A2 - Jeffrey A. Roth TI - Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 4: Consequences and Control SN - DO - 10.17226/4422 PY - 1994 UR - https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/4422/understanding-and-preventing-violence-volume-4-consequences-and-control PB - The National Academies Press CY - Washington, DC LA - English KW - Behavioral and Social Sciences AB - This book analyzes the consequences of violence and strategies for controlling them. Included are reviews of public perceptions and reactions to violence; estimates of the costs; the commonalities and complementarities of criminal justice and public health responses; efforts to reduce violence through the prediction and classification of violent offenders; and the relationships between trends in violence and prison population during a period of greatly increased use of incarceration. ER - TY - BOOK AU - National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine A2 - Janet L. Lauritsen A2 - Daniel L. Cork TI - Modernizing Crime Statistics: Report 2: New Systems for Measuring Crime SN - DO - 10.17226/25035 PY - 2018 UR - https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/25035/modernizing-crime-statistics-report-2-new-systems-for-measuring-crime PB - The National Academies Press CY - Washington, DC LA - English KW - Behavioral and Social Sciences KW - Surveys and Statistics AB - To derive statistics about crime – to estimate its levels and trends, assess its costs to and impacts on society, and inform law enforcement approaches to prevent it - a conceptual framework for defining and thinking about crime is virtually a prerequisite. Developing and maintaining such a framework is no easy task, because the mechanics of crime are ever evolving and shifting: tied to shifts and development in technology, society, and legislation. Interest in understanding crime surged in the 1920s, which proved to be a pivotal decade for the collection of nationwide crime statistics. Now established as a permanent agency, the Census Bureau commissioned the drafting of a manual for preparing crime statistics—intended for use by the police, corrections departments, and courts alike. The new manual sought to solve a perennial problem by suggesting a standard taxonomy of crime. Shortly after the Census Bureau issued its manual, the International Association of Chiefs of Police in convention adopted a resolution to create a Committee on Uniform Crime Records —to begin the process of describing what a national system of data on crimes known to the police might look like. Report 1 performed a comprehensive reassessment of what is meant by crime in U.S. crime statistics and recommends a new classification of crime to organize measurement efforts. This second report examines methodological and implementation issues and presents a conceptual blueprint for modernizing crime statistics. ER - TY - BOOK AU - National Research Council TI - Research on Sentencing: The Search for Reform, Volume I SN - DO - 10.17226/100 PY - 1983 UR - https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/100/research-on-sentencing-the-search-for-reform-volume-i PB - The National Academies Press CY - Washington, DC LA - English KW - Behavioral and Social Sciences ER - TY - BOOK AU - National Research Council A2 - Alfred Blumstein A2 - Jacqueline Cohen A2 - Jeffrey A. Roth A2 - Christy A. Visher TI - Criminal Careers and "Career Criminals,": Volume I SN - DO - 10.17226/922 PY - 1986 UR - https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/922/criminal-careers-and-career-criminals-volume-i PB - The National Academies Press CY - Washington, DC LA - English KW - Behavioral and Social Sciences AB - By focusing attention on individuals rather than on aggregates, this book takes a novel approach to studying criminal behavior. It develops a framework for collecting information about individual criminal careers and their parameters, reviews existing knowledge about criminal career dimensions, presents models of offending patterns, and describes how criminal career information can be used to develop and refine criminal justice policies. In addition, an agenda for future research on criminal careers is presented. ER - TY - BOOK AU - National Research Council A2 - Alfred Blumstein A2 - Jacqueline Cohen A2 - Jeffrey A. Roth A2 - Christy A. Visher TI - Criminal Careers and "Career Criminals,": Volume II SN - DO - 10.17226/928 PY - 1986 UR - https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/928/criminal-careers-and-career-criminals-volume-ii PB - The National Academies Press CY - Washington, DC LA - English KW - Behavioral and Social Sciences AB - Volume II takes an in-depth look at the various aspects of criminal careers, including the relationship of alcohol and drug abuse to criminal careers, co-offending influences on criminal careers, issues in the measurement of criminal careers, accuracy of prediction models, and ethical issues in the use of criminal career information in making decisions about offenders. ER - TY - BOOK AU - National Research Council A2 - Robert M. Groves A2 - Daniel L. Cork TI - Surveying Victims: Options for Conducting the National Crime Victimization Survey SN - DO - 10.17226/12090 PY - 2008 UR - https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/12090/surveying-victims-options-for-conducting-the-national-crime-victimization-survey PB - The National Academies Press CY - Washington, DC LA - English KW - Behavioral and Social Sciences KW - Surveys and Statistics AB - It is easy to underestimate how little was known about crimes and victims before the findings of the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) became common wisdom. In the late 1960s, knowledge of crimes and their victims came largely from reports filed by local police agencies as part of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) system, as well as from studies of the files held by individual police departments. Criminologists understood that there existed a "dark figure" of crime consisting of events not reported to the police. However, over the course of the last decade, the effectiveness of the NCVS has been undermined by the demands of conducting an increasingly expensive survey in an effectively flat-line budgetary environment. Surveying Victims: Options for Conducting the National Crime Victimization Survey, reviews the programs of the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS.) Specifically, it explores alternative options for conducting the NCVS, which is the largest BJS program. This book describes various design possibilities and their implications relative to three basic goals; flexibility, in terms of both content and analysis; utility for gathering information on crimes that are not well reported to police; and small-domain estimation, including providing information on states or localities. This book finds that, as currently configured and funded, the NCVS is not achieving and cannot achieve BJS's mandated goal to "collect and analyze data that will serve as a continuous indication of the incidence and attributes of crime." Accordingly, Surveying Victims recommends that BJS be afforded the budgetary resources necessary to generate accurate measure of victimization. ER - TY - BOOK AU - National Research Council A2 - Arthur S. Goldberger A2 - Richard Rosenfeld TI - Understanding Crime Trends: Workshop Report SN - DO - 10.17226/12472 PY - 2008 UR - https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/12472/understanding-crime-trends-workshop-report PB - The National Academies Press CY - Washington, DC LA - English KW - Behavioral and Social Sciences AB - Changes over time in the levels and patterns of crime have significant consequences that affect not only the criminal justice system but also other critical policy sectors. Yet compared with such areas as health status, housing, and employment, the nation lacks timely information and comprehensive research on crime trends. Descriptive information and explanatory research on crime trends across the nation that are not only accurate, but also timely, are pressing needs in the nation's crime-control efforts. In April 2007, the National Research Council held a two-day workshop to address key substantive and methodological issues underlying the study of crime trends and to lay the groundwork for a proposed multiyear NRC panel study of these issues. Six papers were commissioned from leading researchers and discussed at the workshop by experts in sociology, criminology, law, economics, and statistics. The authors revised their papers based on the discussants' comments, and the papers were then reviewed again externally. The six final workshop papers are the basis of this volume, which represents some of the most serious thinking and research on crime trends currently available. ER - TY - BOOK AU - National Research Council A2 - Philip Heymann A2 - Carol Petrie TI - What's Changing in Prosecution?: Report of a Workshop SN - DO - 10.17226/10114 PY - 2001 UR - https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/10114/whats-changing-in-prosecution-report-of-a-workshop PB - The National Academies Press CY - Washington, DC LA - English KW - Behavioral and Social Sciences AB - This workshop arose out of the efforts of the Committee on Law and Justice to assist the National Institute of Justice in identifying gaps in the overall research portfolio on crime and justice. It was designed to develop ideas about the kinds of knowledge needed to gain a better understanding of the prosecution function and to discuss the past and future role of social science in advancing our understanding of modern prosecution practice. The Committee on Law and Justice was able to bring together senior scholars who have been working on this subject as well as current or former chief prosecutors, judges, and senior officials from the U.S. Department of Justice to share their perspectives. Workshop participants mapped out basic data needs, discussed the need to know more about recent innovations such as community prosecution, and discussed areas where one would expect to see changes that have not occurred. The resulting report summarizes these discussions and makes useful suggestions for learning more about prosecution. ER - TY - BOOK AU - National Research Council A2 - Peter Reuter A2 - Carol Petrie TI - Transnational Organized Crime: Summary of a Workshop SN - DO - 10.17226/9631 PY - 1999 UR - https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/9631/transnational-organized-crime-summary-of-a-workshop PB - The National Academies Press CY - Washington, DC LA - English KW - Behavioral and Social Sciences AB - Crime statistics assail us from the front pages of newspapers around the country—and around the globe. As the world's economic systems become integrated, as barriers to trade, travel, and migration come down, criminal opportunities have rapidly expanded across national borders. Transnational crime has become a problem of considerable political urgency that requires long-term attention. The United States and other countries are devoting significant resources to its investigation and control. The National Academies Committee on Law and Justice convened a workshop to elicit ideas about this phenomenon and to discuss the research and information needs of policy officials. This report lays out the full range of research issues and makes useful suggestions for learning more about transnational crime. ER - TY - BOOK AU - National Research Council A2 - Robert M. Groves A2 - Daniel L. Cork TI - Ensuring the Quality, Credibility, and Relevance of U.S. Justice Statistics SN - DO - 10.17226/12671 PY - 2009 UR - https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/12671/ensuring-the-quality-credibility-and-relevance-of-us-justice-statistics PB - The National Academies Press CY - Washington, DC LA - English KW - Behavioral and Social Sciences KW - Surveys and Statistics AB - The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) of the U.S. Department of Justice is one of the smallest of the U.S. principal statistical agencies but shoulders one of the most expansive and detailed legal mandates among those agencies. Ensuring the Quality, Credibility, and Relevance of U.S. Justice Statistics examines the full range of BJS programs and suggests priorities for data collection. BJS's data collection portfolio is a solid body of work, well justified by public information needs or legal requirements and a commendable effort to meet its broad mandate given less-than-commensurate fiscal resources. The book identifies some major gaps in the substantive coverage of BJS data, but notes that filling those gaps would require increased and sustained support in terms of staff and fiscal resources. In suggesting strategic goals for BJS, the book argues that the bureau's foremost goal should be to establish and maintain a strong position of independence. To avoid structural or political interference in BJS work, the report suggests changing the administrative placement of BJS within the Justice Department and making the BJS directorship a fixed-term appointment. In its thirtieth year, BJS can look back on a solid body of accomplishment; this book suggests further directions for improvement to give the nation the justice statistics--and the BJS--that it deserves. ER - TY - BOOK AU - National Research Council TI - Research on Sentencing: The Search for Reform, Volume II SN - DO - 10.17226/101 PY - 1983 UR - https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/101/research-on-sentencing-the-search-for-reform-volume-ii PB - The National Academies Press CY - Washington, DC LA - English KW - Behavioral and Social Sciences ER - TY - BOOK AU - Transportation Research Board AU - National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine A2 - Ernest "Ron" Frazier TI - Policing and Security Practices for Small- and Medium-Sized Public Transit Systems DO - 10.17226/22115 PY - 2015 UR - https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/22115/policing-and-security-practices-for-small-and-medium-sized-public-transit-systems PB - The National Academies Press CY - Washington, DC LA - English KW - Transportation and Infrastructure AB - TRB's Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP) Report 180: Policing and Security Practices for Small- and Medium-Sized Public Transit Systems explores the current state of practice and identifies and responds to the specific challenges and issues associated with the security of small- and medium-sized transit agencies. The report follows the five stages of protection activity (prevention, mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery) by providing baseline options and identifying potential security countermeasures that could be deployed by both of these sizes of transit agencies.The report is accompanied by a PowerPoint presentation. ER - TY - BOOK AU - National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine A2 - Sharon L. Lohr A2 - Daniel H. Weinberg A2 - Krisztina Marton TI - Toward a 21st Century National Data Infrastructure: Enhancing Survey Programs by Using Multiple Data Sources SN - DO - 10.17226/26804 PY - 2023 UR - https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/26804/toward-a-21st-century-national-data-infrastructure-enhancing-survey-programs-by-using-multiple-data-sources PB - The National Academies Press CY - Washington, DC LA - English KW - Behavioral and Social Sciences AB - Much of the statistical information currently produced by federal statistical agencies - information about economic, social, and physical well-being that is essential for the functioning of modern society - comes from sample surveys. In recent years, there has been a proliferation of data from other sources, including data collected by government agencies while administering programs, satellite and sensor data, private-sector data such as electronic health records and credit card transaction data, and massive amounts of data available on the internet. How can these data sources be used to enhance the information currently collected on surveys, and to provide new frontiers for producing information and statistics to benefit American society? Toward a 21st Century National Data Infrastructure: Enhancing Survey Programs by Using Multiple Data Sources, the second report in a series funded by the National Science Foundation, discusses how use of multiple data sources can improve the quality of national and subnational statistics while promoting data equity. This report explores implications of combining survey data with other data sources through examples relating to the areas of income, health, crime, and agriculture. ER - TY - BOOK AU - National Research Council TI - Parole, Desistance from Crime, and Community Integration SN - DO - 10.17226/11988 PY - 2008 UR - https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/11988/parole-desistance-from-crime-and-community-integration PB - The National Academies Press CY - Washington, DC LA - English KW - Behavioral and Social Sciences AB - Every day, about 1,600 people are released from prisons in the United States. Of these 600,000 new releasees every year, about 480,000 are subject to parole or some other kind of postrelease supervision. Prison releasees represent a challenge, both to themselves and to the communities to which they return. Will the releasees see parole as an opportunity to be reintegrated into society, with jobs and homes and supportive families and friends? Or will they commit new crimes or violate the terms of their parole contracts? If so, will they be returned to prison or placed under more stringent community supervision? Will the communities to which they return see them as people to be reintegrated or people to be avoided? And, the institution of parole itself is challenged with three different functions: to facilitate reintegration for parolees who are ready for rehabilitation; to deter crime; and to apprehend those parolees who commit new crimes and return them to prison. In recent decades, policy makers, researchers, and program administrators have focused almost exclusively on "recidivism," which is essentially the failure of releasees to refrain from crime or stay out of prison. In contrast, for this study the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) of the U.S. Department of Justice asked the National Research Council to focus on "desistance," which broadly covers continued absence of criminal activity and requires reintegration into society. Specifically, the committee was asked (1) to consider the current state of parole practices, new and emerging models of community supervision, and what is necessary for successful reentry and (2) to provide a research agenda on the effects of community supervision on desistance from criminal activity, adherence to conditions of parole, and successful reentry into the community. To carry out its charge, the committee organized and held a workshop focused on traditional and new models of community supervision, the empirical underpinnings of such models, and the infrastructure necessary to support successful reentry. Parole, Desistance from Crime, and Community Integration also reviews the literature on desistance from crime, community supervision, and the evaluation research on selected types of intervention. ER - TY - BOOK AU - National Research Council A2 - Jeremy Travis A2 - Bruce Western A2 - Steve Redburn TI - The Growth of Incarceration in the United States: Exploring Causes and Consequences SN - DO - 10.17226/18613 PY - 2014 UR - https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/18613/the-growth-of-incarceration-in-the-united-states-exploring-causes PB - The National Academies Press CY - Washington, DC LA - English KW - Behavioral and Social Sciences AB - After decades of stability from the 1920s to the early 1970s, the rate of imprisonment in the United States more than quadrupled during the last four decades. The U.S. penal population of 2.2 million adults is by far the largest in the world. Just under one-quarter of the world's prisoners are held in American prisons. The U.S. rate of incarceration, with nearly 1 out of every 100 adults in prison or jail, is 5 to 10 times higher than the rates in Western Europe and other democracies. The U.S. prison population is largely drawn from the most disadvantaged part of the nation's population: mostly men under age 40, disproportionately minority, and poorly educated. Prisoners often carry additional deficits of drug and alcohol addictions, mental and physical illnesses, and lack of work preparation or experience. The growth of incarceration in the United States during four decades has prompted numerous critiques and a growing body of scientific knowledge about what prompted the rise and what its consequences have been for the people imprisoned, their families and communities, and for U.S. society. The Growth of Incarceration in the United States examines research and analysis of the dramatic rise of incarceration rates and its affects. This study makes the case that the United States has gone far past the point where the numbers of people in prison can be justified by social benefits and has reached a level where these high rates of incarceration themselves constitute a source of injustice and social harm. The Growth of Incarceration in the United States recommends changes in sentencing policy, prison policy, and social policy to reduce the nation's reliance on incarceration. The report also identifies important research questions that must be answered to provide a firmer basis for policy. The study assesses the evidence and its implications for public policy to inform an extensive and thoughtful public debate about and reconsideration of policies. ER - TY - BOOK AU - National Research Council A2 - John V. Pepper A2 - Carol V. Petrie TI - Measurement Problems in Criminal Justice Research: Workshop Summary SN - DO - 10.17226/10581 PY - 2003 UR - https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/10581/measurement-problems-in-criminal-justice-research-workshop-summary PB - The National Academies Press CY - Washington, DC LA - English KW - Behavioral and Social Sciences KW - Surveys and Statistics AB - Most major crime in this country emanates from two major data sources. The FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports has collected information on crimes known to the police and arrests from local and state jurisdictions throughout the country. The National Crime Victimization Survey, a general population survey designed to cover the extent, nature, and consequences of criminal victimization, has been conducted annually since the early1970s. This workshop was designed to consider similarities and differences in the methodological problems encountered by the survey and criminal justice research communities and what might be the best focus for the research community. In addition to comparing and contrasting the methodological issues associated with self-report surveys and official records, the workshop explored methods for obtaining accurate self-reports on sensitive questions about crime events, estimating crime and victimization in rural counties and townships and developing unbiased prevalence and incidence rates for rate events among population subgroups. ER - TY - BOOK AU - National Research Council A2 - Candace Kruttschnitt A2 - Brenda L. McLaughlin A2 - Carol V. Petrie TI - Advancing the Federal Research Agenda on Violence Against Women SN - DO - 10.17226/10849 PY - 2004 UR - https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/10849/advancing-the-federal-research-agenda-on-violence-against-women PB - The National Academies Press CY - Washington, DC LA - English KW - Behavioral and Social Sciences KW - Health and Medicine AB - This report expands on the work of an earlier National Research Council panel whose report, Understanding Violence Against Women, was published in 1996. The report is based on the presentations and deliberations of a workshop convened in January 2002, at the request of Congress, to develop a detailed research agenda on violence against women. While some of the research recommendations in the earlier report have been funded and carried out, the workshop demonstrated that important gaps remain. For example, prevalence and incidence data are still inadequate to measure trends or to reveal whether interventions being designed under federal programs are, in fact, working. Among its primary recommendations, the committee underscored the importance of strengthening the data and research infrastructure in this area, especially the need for better prevalence data and longitudinal data to determine the causes of violent victimization of women and the impact of interventions. ER - TY - BOOK AU - National Research Council A2 - Daniel L. Cork A2 - John E. Rolph A2 - Eugene S. Meieran A2 - Carol V. Petrie TI - Ballistic Imaging SN - DO - 10.17226/12162 PY - 2008 UR - https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/12162/ballistic-imaging PB - The National Academies Press CY - Washington, DC LA - English KW - Conflict and Security Issues KW - Behavioral and Social Sciences AB - Ballistic Imaging assesses the state of computer-based imaging technology in forensic firearms identification. The book evaluates the current law enforcement database of images of crime-related cartridge cases and bullets and recommends ways to improve the usefulness of the technology for suggesting leads in criminal investigations. It also advises against the construction of a national reference database that would include images from test-fires of every newly manufactured or imported firearm in the United States. The book also suggests further research on an alternate method for generating an investigative lead to the location where a gun was first sold: "microstamping," the direct imprinting of unique identifiers on firearm parts or ammunition. ER -