Crime and Victimization
Recent research focuses on the status of victim rights legislation in the 50 states and the impact of new laws on the operations of state prosecutors' offices. We surveyed prosecutors in 400 counties and conducted an in-depth examination of practices in two states with strong legislation and learned that the burdens imposed by implementing the legislation are lighter than practitioners have feared. The main reason is that fewer than half of victims choose to exercise their rights, even in jurisdictions where notification procedures are strong.

Policing
Recent research is concerned primarily with issues of police accountability. The Public Accountability of Private Police: Lessons from New York, Johannesburg, and Mexico City shows that private police can fulfill even the most complex police functions without infringing on civil rights. Key factors are oversight by government and private clients, internal controls, and training. Respectful and Effective Policing: Two Examples in the South Bronx reports on the results of a study of two precincts that had reduced crime and civilian complaints against the police. How? The commanding officers in the precincts had instituted management practices that stipulated consequences for receiving civilian complaints.

Other studies examine the use of citizen surveys as means of holding police accountable. The Use of Citizen Surveys as a Tool for Police Reform shows that established ethnic groups feel well-represented in local politics and are satisfied with police behavior, while newer groups are less satisfied. People who do not feel empowered are less likely to voluntarily report crime and are more likely to see the police as perpetrators of misconduct.

The Judicial Process
An evaluation of the Appearance Assistance Program, a Vera demonstration project that provided community supervision as an alternative to detention for people in immigration removal proceedings, found that more than 90 percent of participants appeared for all of their required hearings. For more information, read Testing Community Supervision for the INS: An Evaluation of the Appearance Assistance Program.

Sentencing and Corrections
The research department’s work in this area has focused primarily on evaluations of alternatives-to-incarceration (ATI) and drug treatment programs. A recently completed evaluation of 10 ATIs in New York City showed that the programs do not compromise public safety. Over the nearly three years studied, ATI participants were no more likely to be convicted of new offenses than the comparison group, two-thirds of whom were sentenced to incarceration, rather than to ATIs. The evaluation also points to the rehabilitative potential of the ATIs. Three-quarters of the ATI participants who successfully completed the programs were not convicted of new offenses over the study period. To see the results, read the report Balancing Punishment and Treatment: Alternatives to Incarceration in New York City.

In Do Drug Courts Save Jail and Prison Beds?—a review of drug court evaluations—we concluded that these courts save resources by reducing pretrial detention and future reoffending. There is less convincing evidence about whether or not drug courts divert offenders who would otherwise have been sentenced to jail or prison. Process evaluations of new drug courts in Queens and the Bronx, New York, show the importance of collaboration among judges, prosecutors, and treatment providers. We also found that any savings from these courts would come from longer-term reductions in reoffending. For more information, read: Implementing a Drug Court in Queens: A Process Evaluation, and Treatment Alternatives in the Criminal Court: A Process Evaluation of the Bronx Drug Court.

Looking at jail- and prison-based drug treatment, we developed statistical models to predict how long inmates will stay in local jails—models that enable the New York City Department of Correction to tailor its drug treatment program for different inmates. To learn more, see Classifying Inmates for Strategic Programming. A Collaborative Evaluation of Pennsylvania’s Program for Drug-Involved Parole Violators explores how residential substance abuse treatment programs deal with the tensions between the goals of treatment and security.

Institutions for Youth
Research in this area has focused on the experiences of children in foster care. Researchers conducted an evaluation of Project Confirm, a former Vera demonstration project that is now a part of the Administration for Children's Services. The research documented that prior to Confirm, adolescents in foster care who were arrested were more likely to be detained than their nonfoster peers who had committed similar crimes; it also showed that Confirm eliminated that bias for foster teens who have never been in detention before and who face misdemeanor or minor felony charges. Vera has also helped New York City’s child welfare agency understand changes in the foster care population over the last 15 years. While the overall number of children in foster care has been decreasing, adolescents make up an increasing share of the total. To help the agency plan for the future, Vera analyzed data to determine how many adolescents the agency serves, why they enter care, what kinds of homes they stay in, how long they remain in care, and where they go when they leave care. Researchers also recently completed a study of what keeps early adolescents in foster care from succeeding in school. Finally, a study exploring the reasons foster children leave care without permission and what happens when they do is in progress.

[ last modified 5/10/2004 ]